Where course creators are moving in 2026
Five platforms run most of the online-course world — Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Maven, and Skool. This is a map of who sits where, what each actually costs, and which way creators are drifting.
The sources behind this
Every number here comes from a platform's own pricing page or a creator's first-hand account. Nothing is taken from a comparison blog.
Five platforms, two directions
- The market has split in two: all-in-one course platforms built to sell content (Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi) and community-first platforms built to keep people coming back (Skool, Maven).
- The creators who are switching mostly aren't switching for features. They're switching for where their students actually show up.
- Skool is a flat $99/month for unlimited everything. Alex Hormozi called his 2024 stake in it "the biggest investment of my life." It's a common landing spot for newer creators because there's almost nothing to configure.
- Maven takes 10% of revenue, nothing upfront, and is built entirely around live cohorts — which tends to attract creators who already have a teaching reputation.
- The old guard still wins on funnels, email, and a polished storefront in one place. Kajabi bundles all of it at 0% transaction fee; Teachable's cheapest plan still takes 7.5% per sale until you upgrade.
Two kinds of platform, doing two different jobs
The five names get lumped together as "course platforms," but they were built around opposite ideas of what the product is.
Line the five up and they fall cleanly into two groups. One group treats the course as the product: you upload lessons, build a sales funnel, and sell access. The other treats the room full of people as the product: the lessons are there, but the point is the live calls, the posts, the cohort going through together.
Teachable · Thinkific · Kajabi
All-in-one homes for self-paced courses. Funnels, email, landing pages, checkout, hosting — assembled so one person can run a storefront. The course is the thing being sold.
Skool · Maven
Community- and cohort-first. The content sits inside an ongoing relationship — a paid community on Skool, a scheduled live cohort on Maven. The room is the thing being sold.
That split is the whole story. When a creator moves from one group to the other, it usually isn't because the new platform has a feature the old one lacked. It's because they decided the product was no longer the content on its own.
Megan Minns left Circle for Skool when the room went quiet
Minns writes that the problem on her previous platform wasn't pricing or missing features — it was silence. Members who used to be active simply stopped showing up.
Engagement dropped significantly — clients who previously posted regularly became quiet. — Megan Minns, on her time with the old platform
After moving her programs onto Skool, she describes the shift in terms of attendance and participation rather than tooling. The platform's stripped-back, Facebook-group-like feel is what she credits.
Call attendance skyrocketed — 80% live on a recent group call. — Megan Minns, after moving to Skool
What stands out in her account is what she doesn't say. She doesn't talk about better analytics, more course features, or a cheaper plan. The reason she gives for the move is entirely about whether people came back.
Dave Kline skipped the self-paced course entirely for Maven
Kline went the other direction from Minns — not toward an open community, but toward a structured live cohort. Rather than packaging his knowledge as a self-paced course to sell on repeat, he built the Management Accelerator as a cohort-based program on Maven, where students move through it together on a schedule.
The result described in the breakdown is scale through a small number of high-priced cohorts rather than a large catalog of cheap content: he has taught over 1,000 students through the program since launching it in 2022.
Maven's model is the opposite of a content storefront. It charges nothing upfront and takes 10% only when a student pays — so the platform is betting on the cohort filling up, not on you buying a subscription. That structure suits creators selling a live experience, not a download.
What Skool and Maven actually charge
Two community-first platforms, two very different economic models.
One flat price per community for unlimited members, courses, videos, and live calls. Payment processing is 2.9% on the Pro plan; a $9/mo Hobby tier exists with a 10% fee. There's almost nothing to configure — which is part of the appeal for first-time creators. In 2024 Alex Hormozi took a stake he called "the biggest investment of my life" and is now listed as a cofounder.
No monthly fee. Maven keeps 10% of what students pay and the instructor keeps 90%, charged only once an enrollment happens. Built around live, scheduled cohorts rather than self-paced libraries — which is why it tends to attract experienced creators selling a premium, time-bound program.
The two aren't really competing for the same person. Skool's flat fee rewards a large, always-on community; Maven's revenue share rewards a high-ticket cohort that runs a few times a year. Both, though, sell access to something live — not a file you download once.
Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi still own the storefront
The platforms that defined the last decade haven't gone anywhere — they're just built for a different job.
If the product is a self-paced course you want to sell with funnels, email sequences, and a branded checkout, these three are still the default. The differences between them mostly come down to how they price and where the transaction fees land.
The cheapest Starter plan looks inexpensive but takes a 7.5% cut of every sale. That fee only drops to 0% once you move up to the Builder plan (around $69/mo). Easy to start on; the math changes as you sell more.
No transaction fees on its paid plans, with a focus on course delivery and a clean student experience. Often picked by creators who want a straightforward course host without giving up a slice of each sale.
The most all-in-one of the three: website, email marketing, funnels, landing pages, and hosting bundled together with no platform transaction fee. The trade-off is price — it's the most expensive entry point, in exchange for replacing several separate tools.
The choice isn't really about the tool anymore
Put the two creators next to the five platforms and the same theme keeps surfacing. Minns moved toward an always-on community; Kline built around a live cohort. Neither framed the decision as "this platform has a better feature." Both framed it as a decision about what they were selling — a relationship that keeps people engaged, versus a course someone buys and consumes alone.
The older platforms were built to sell content efficiently, and they still do that well. The newer ones were built to keep people coming back. Which is why the real question underneath "which platform" turns out to be a different one entirely: is the product the course, or the room full of people?
Prepared by the Kinescope team
Kinescope is a video hosting platform built for course creators, online schools, and businesses running educational content. The team focuses on three things:
- Host your course videos. Fast adaptive streaming worldwide, on a global CDN tuned for long-form educational content.
- Protect them from piracy. DRM, dynamic watermarking, and download prevention — so your content doesn't end up on pirate sites the day after launch.
- Integrate into any platform. Embed your videos into Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Skool, Moodle, or your own site — through a single embed code or API. No migration required.
Whichever side of the split you land on — selling a course or running a community — Kinescope is the layer underneath that handles the video, so you can focus on the rest.