We’ve all turned to the internet to learn something new. From mastering a new language to tackling DIY projects or developing career skills, online learning has become part of everyday life. That also means there’s a growing opportunity for creators, coaches, and educators to earn by sharing what they know.
The good news is that you don’t have to build everything from scratch. Plenty of platforms make it easier to create, host, and sell your courses and learning materials. In this article, we’ll compare two popular options, Teachable and Buy Me a Coffee, to help you figure out which one is the right fit for you.
At a Glance
| Teachable | Buy Me a Coffee | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to start | No free plan; 7-day trial, then $29–309/mo | Free, no trial limit |
| Per-sale fee | 7.5% on Starter | Flat 5% |
| One-time tips | Not offered | Core feature |
| Products allowed | 5 on entry (Starter) plan | Unlimited |
| Students/followers | Capped around 100 on Starter | Uncapped |
| Buyer account needed | Yes, full enrollment | No, for one-time support |
| Time to first sale | Needs a course structure | Minutes |
| Best suited for | Structured, multi-week programs | Flexible learning content |
Start free or go all in?
For any business, one of the first decisions to make is understanding the costs involved. Here’s what you’d be spending to get your content up and running on each platform.
Teachable is free to try for 7 days. After that, you can choose from four paid plans, starting at $29/month (plus 7.5% transaction fees) and going up to $309/month for the advanced plan.
The plan you choose determines the features available, including limits on the number of products you can sell and students you can enroll. For creators who already have a proven course idea and steady demand, these costs may be a worthwhile investment. However, for someone testing the waters or building an audience from scratch, the upfront commitment may feel harder to justify.
The bigger question is what those costs look like as your audience grows. If you start building a learner base on Teachable and the platform increases its pricing, you may have to either accept the higher costs or spend time moving your content elsewhere.
Buy Me a Coffee is free to start and doesn’t require a subscription. Instead, the platform takes a 5% transaction fee when you earn, along with payment processing fees. There are no limits on how much content you can share or how much you can earn, making it a flexible option for creators who want to start small and grow over time.
How much structure is too much?
The biggest differences appear when you look at how each platform handles content.
Teachable is a learning management system (LMS) built specifically for creating and selling online courses. Creators can:
- Build structured courses with lessons and modules
- Upload videos, files, and other learning materials
- Create quizzes and certificates
- Sell courses through customizable sales pages
- Manage students and track engagement
- Offer memberships and coaching programs
It works well for a more traditional online learning business, where students follow a clear path from one lesson to the next.
Buy Me a Coffee takes a more flexible approach to educational content. Instead of giving you a traditional course-building system with modules and lessons, it allows you to share knowledge your way.
With Buy Me a Coffee, creators can:
- Upload and sell digital resources such as guides, templates, ebooks, and downloadable lessons
- Share educational posts and updates with their audience
- Create membership tiers for exclusive learning content
- Offer tutorials, resources, and behind-the-scenes content to learners
- Share content wherever they post, like YouTube or Substack, and add a link for people to show their support
The platform works well for creators who want to share smaller learning resources, build a community around their expertise, or test an idea before creating a full course.
What does the learning experience look like?
We’ve looked at what creators can build. Now, here’s what the experience feels like for the person on the other side: the learner.
On Teachable, students enroll in your course and move through it lesson by lesson, the way they would with any traditional course. Depending on how you’ve set things up, they get:
- Progress tracking, so they can see exactly how far they’ve gotten
- Quizzes to check understanding, with scores saved along the way
- Drip-scheduled lessons, if you’ve chosen to release content over time instead of all at once
- Rules that require finishing one lesson before moving to the next
- A certificate at the end, if you’ve set one up
Buy Me a Coffee doesn’t work this way because there’s no course to enroll in. Instead, how someone experiences your content depends on how they’re engaging with your page:
- As someone who follows your tutorials on YouTube, they might simply tip you, with no membership or purchase needed
- As a follower, they see whatever you post publicly, the same way they’d follow you anywhere else online
- As a member, they get access to member-only posts as you publish them
- As a coaching client, they can book a paid call with you directly
- As a one-time buyer, they can purchase a single resource, like a guide or template, and get it instantly
How easy is it to start?
For creators, the time between having an idea and sharing it matters. The more steps involved, the longer it takes to get your content in front of your audience.
On Teachable, getting started takes a bit of setup before you can sell anything. You’ll need to:
- Sign up and choose a plan
- Create your school and set up your branding
- Build out your curriculum, section by section and lesson by lesson
- Upload your videos, files, or quizzes into each lesson
- Set up your sales page and connect payments
Teachable does offer shortcuts, like AI-generated course outlines and bulk file uploads, but you’re still building a full course before a single student can enroll.
On Buy Me a Coffee, you can be live in minutes. Setting up your page just takes:
- Creating an account and adding a profile photo and bio
- Posting your first tutorial or listing a template or guide for sale in your shop
Here’s an example.
Say you’re a fitness coach. You create dance workout courses for different audiences, focusing on weight loss, endurance, core strength, and casual follow-along workouts.
With Teachable, your content is organized into structured courses. To launch a course, you need to create the course structure, add lessons, upload your videos and learning materials, and set up how students will access the content.
Each course is treated as a separate product. If you create different programs for weight loss, endurance, and core workouts, each one would be a separate course offering. Depending on your Teachable plan, there may be limits on the number of products you can create.
Buy Me a Coffee works differently. Instead of organizing everything into traditional courses, you can share different types of content based on what your audience needs.
You could sell a workout guide, offer a collection of videos, create membership content with new routines, or share individual resources with your audience. You can choose how to package your content without having to fit everything into a course format.
How quickly can you earn?
On Teachable, earning depends on finishing the setup first. You won’t see a payment until your course is built, published, and someone has gone through the enrollment process to buy it. Even with shortcuts like AI-generated outlines and bulk uploads, you’re still setting up a full course, a sales page, and a payment connection before the first dollar can come in.
On Buy Me a Coffee, you can start monetizing without first building a full course. Someone can tip you for a tutorial you just shared or buy a template within minutes of listing it, with no enrollment, curriculum, or waiting for anything else to be finished first. Once your balance hits $10, you can request a payout, and funds move straight to your bank account.
If you’re testing an idea, this speed matters. You can post something today, share your link, and see whether people are willing to support you before you’ve invested a single dollar or built out a full curriculum.
What happens if you want to leave?
This is worth thinking about before you build anything, not after.
If you cancel a Teachable plan, your school goes offline. You lose admin access, and students lose access to their courses once your billing period ends. However, your content and settings aren’t deleted right away; they stay intact in case you re-upgrade later.
Teachable recommends exporting what you need before canceling, since there’s no bulk export for videos or files. You’d need to download them individually, and lesson text has to be copied over manually. You can export your student email list, though the extent of that export depends on your plan tier.
Buy Me a Coffee gives creators access to their supporter information, which they can export and use outside the platform. Your content is whatever files you’ve uploaded or linked to, which you already control. There’s no subscription tied to keeping your page live, so there’s no cancellation event that changes what you have access to.
Do you build an audience or manage students?
Creating educational content is not just about publishing lessons. Over time, creators also need to build relationships with the people who follow their work.
With Teachable, that relationship is mainly built around students who enroll in your courses. Someone finds your course, signs up, and follows the learning path you have created for them.
This works well for creators who want to build a traditional online education business. Your audience comes in through a specific offer, and the focus is on helping students complete that program.
Buy Me a Coffee takes a broader approach. Instead of everyone needing to become a student in a course, people can engage with your work in different ways.
Someone might follow your tutorials, support you with a one-time contribution, buy a resource, join a membership, or book a one-on-one session. The relationship can grow over time without being tied to a single course.
For example, a language teacher could sell a complete beginner course, but they could also share vocabulary guides, conversation exercises, and weekly lessons with their community.
A fitness coach could offer workout plans, share new routines through memberships, run live sessions, or provide personalized coaching.
The difference comes down to the type of audience you want to build. If you want students to follow a structured learning path, a course platform can give you the tools to create that experience. If you want to build a community around your knowledge and offer different ways for people to engage with your work, a more flexible platform gives you more options.
Which one should you choose?
There’s no single right answer. The best platform depends on what you’re trying to build and where you are in your creator journey.
Choose Teachable if you want to build a structured online learning business. It’s a good fit for creators who have a clear course idea, want to organize content into lessons and modules, and want students to move through a defined learning path.
It makes sense for things like:
- Multi-week courses
- Certification programs
- Structured coaching programs
- Learning experiences where progress tracking and assessments matter
Choose Buy Me a Coffee if you want more flexibility in how you share and monetize your knowledge. It works well for creators who are building an audience, testing ideas, or creating different types of content beyond traditional courses.
It makes sense for things like:
- Tutorials and guides
- Templates and digital resources
- Membership content
- Community-driven learning
- Supporting your work across platforms like YouTube, newsletters, or social media
So, where should you host your learning content?
Teachable and Buy Me a Coffee are solving two different problems, not competing for the same job. Teachable exists to turn a course idea into a structured program, with the cost, the curriculum tools, and the setup time that comes with building a formal learning experience. Buy Me a Coffee exists to let you start sharing and earning from what you know today, without deciding upfront that it has to become a course at all.
If you already know what you’re teaching, and know it needs a defined path with lessons, quizzes, and a clear finish line, Teachable gives you the infrastructure to do that properly, and the cost starts to make sense once you have the demand to match it. If you’re still figuring out what your audience actually wants or your knowledge doesn’t naturally fit into modules and a syllabus, Buy Me a Coffee lets you find that out first, then decide what comes next.
Neither platform is the wrong choice. The wrong choice is picking one before you know which problem you’re actually trying to solve.
Ready to start? Set up your Buy Me a Coffee page in minutes.
Still weighing your options? See why more creators are choosing Buy Me a Coffee over Teachable.
