Full disclosure first. We build Crownerr, and this is the Crownerr blog, so this is a view from people who built one of the options, not a neutral review. We will still be honest about where the others win. When you pick an online course platform, most comparison tables fuss over feature checklists. Quizzes, drip scheduling, certificates. Those almost never decide whether your course business works. Two things do. The real cost, meaning everything that leaves your account per sale rather than the headline price. And who keeps the student relationship.
Here is why that second one matters more than people expect. A student who bought one course is the cheapest person on earth to sell a second course to. If you own their email and their purchase history, your next launch costs you an email. If a marketplace owns them, your next launch costs you another marketplace cut, or another ad spend, every single time. Over two years that gap usually dwarfs any monthly fee you were fretting about.
The three ways a platform takes your money
A flat SaaS fee is predictable. It hurts when you are small and gets cheap per sale once you scale. A revenue cut feels gentle at low volume and turns quietly enormous at high volume. The third one hides: marketplaces bring you buyers but keep the customer list. Most people only price the first. We dig into the rest in creator platform fees explained. Run the numbers against the revenue you actually expect, not the sticker on the tin.
A worked example makes the trap obvious. Say you sell a £100 course. On a 30% revenue cut you keep £70 before payment fees, and you keep £70 whether you sell one course or a thousand. On a £50/month tool with no extra cut, one sale that month costs you £50 in fees, but ten sales costs you £5 each, and a hundred sales costs you 50p each. The percentage model never gets cheaper per sale. The flat model gets cheaper every time you sell again. The crossover point is the number that should drive your decision, and most people never bother to find it.
Three numbers tell you where you sit: your price per course, your sales per month, and how often the same buyer comes back. Plug those in and the right structure usually picks itself.
All-in-one platforms (Kajabi, Teachable, Thinkific)
These bundle hosting, checkout, email and a course player into one subscription. Kajabi is genuinely strong if your whole business is courses and funnels, with email sequences, landing pages and pipelines built around selling a course. Teachable and Thinkific sit a little lower on price and a little lighter on the marketing toolkit, which suits creators who already run their email elsewhere. The shared cost is a monthly fee that climbs with the tier, and at the time of writing the cheaper plans on several of these tools still skim a revenue cut on top of the subscription. So you can pay the SaaS fee and the percentage at once, which is the worst of both models until you upgrade out of it.
Watch the upgrade ladder, because that is where the real spend hides. The tier that removes the revenue cut, or unlocks the number of courses or admin seats you need, is often two or three steps up from the headline price you saw on the homepage. Price the plan you will actually be on in six months, not the one in the advert. Already on Kajabi and feeling the squeeze? Read how to leave Kajabi.
Marketplaces (Udemy, Skillshare)
No subscription, but a big cut, and they own the audience. They do one thing nothing else does: they put your course in front of buyers you would never reach on your own. Someone searching the marketplace for "intermediate watercolour" lands on your course without ever having heard your name, and that discovery is real value you cannot fake with a fresh website and no traffic.
The catch is everything downstream of that first sale. The marketplace usually controls the pricing, runs the discounts, owns the student email, and limits how you contact buyers. Skillshare pays on watch time rather than a clean per-sale price, so your income tracks engagement and platform payout pools rather than a number you set. The healthy way to use these is as paid acquisition. Get found, do excellent work, then give buyers a reason to follow you somewhere you control, a free resource, a community, a deeper programme. Treat the marketplace as the top of your funnel, not the whole funnel, and never as your forever home.
Cohort and community platforms (GroupApp)
These sit between an all-in-one course tool and a community app. The course on its own is not the product. The group going through it together is. GroupApp is the clearest example: courses with drip scheduling, but arranged around cohorts, discussion channels, live sessions that get filed back into the library afterwards, and a branded mobile app if you want one. It suits coaching programmes, certifications and training bodies, where people work through the material on a schedule alongside other people instead of clicking through video alone.
The catch is that cohort delivery is a commitment rather than a setting you switch on. Someone has to run the live calls and keep the room warm, week after week. If your course is genuinely self-paced, you are paying for a room nobody sits in. If it is not, the group is usually what gets people to the end, and finishing is what earns you the second sale.
An owned space
You run your own platform on infrastructure you control. On Crownerr, Free is £0/month with a 6% fee, Creator is £79/month with a 3% fee, and Studio is £149/month with a 0% fee. Stripe (UK) adds 1.5% + 20p per transaction on every tier, and that part is the same wherever you sell, since someone has to process the card.
The tiers are meant to track your growth. Start on Free while you are validating, because £0/month and 6% means the platform only earns when you do. Move to Creator once steady sales make the £79 cheaper than the 6% you were paying, then to Studio once your volume makes £149 cheaper than the 3%. A quick way to find each crossover: divide the monthly fee by the fee saving. Creator at 3% saves you 3 percentage points versus Free, so it pays off once you clear roughly £2,630 a month in sales (79 divided by 0.03). Studio at 0% saves a further 3 points versus Creator, so it pays off past roughly £4,970 a month (149 divided by 0.03). Run it on your own numbers, not these round ones.
The honest catch: if you are brand new with no audience, an owned space will not conjure buyers the way a marketplace can. It keeps the relationship, but you still have to go and start the relationship. That is the trade you are making. See also how to sell digital products as a creator.
How to choose, in order
Run down this list and stop at the first honest answer.
- Do you have an audience yet? If no, lean on a marketplace or a strong organic channel for discovery first. Owning the relationship is pointless if there is no relationship.
- How often will the same person buy again? If repeat purchases matter, owning the email and history is worth more than any monthly saving. This is where marketplaces quietly cost the most.
- What are your sales per month? Find the crossover between a flat fee and a percentage cut using your real price and volume. Below it, percentage wins. Above it, flat wins.
- Will you sell more than courses? If you see memberships, downloads, coaching or events in your future, pick something that does more than host video so you are not migrating again next year.
- Can you stomach the upgrade ladder? Check the plan that removes the revenue cut and unlocks what you need, then price that one. The homepage price is rarely the price you live on.
Where Crownerr fits
We fit when you want to own your audience, sell more than just courses over time, and keep costs predictable. We are the wrong pick if you need a marketplace to find your first students, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise. Weighing us against a course-first incumbent? Read Crownerr vs Kajabi, or check the pricing page.