Choosing a course platform feels like a one-way door. You spend a few weekends loading in your videos, wiring up the checkout and getting the branding just so — and by the time it’s live, moving to a different tool means rebuilding the lot. So it’s worth a few minutes now to pick the one you won’t want to leave.
Here’s the short version. Teachable is a fast, hosted, US-based platform that lets you spin up a “school” and start selling quickly. Maatos gives you your own branded course website on your own domain, with European payment methods and VAT built in. They overlap a lot, but they’re aimed at slightly different people — and the right choice comes down to who owns the experience, where your buyers are, and how much of your revenue you’re happy to hand over. We make Maatos, so treat this as us showing our work rather than pretending we’re neutral; every Teachable figure below is the public 2026 pricing, dated so you can check it yourself.
Maatos vs Teachable, in one paragraph
Pick Teachable if you want a well-known hosted platform, you sell mainly to a US or global card-paying audience, and you’re happy for your courses to live inside Teachable’s environment. Pick Maatos if you want to own a fully branded website on your own domain, you sell to European customers who expect local payment methods and proper VAT invoices, and you’d rather not lose a slice of every sale to platform fees. Both let you build real courses with video, quizzes and certificates; the difference is everything around the course.
What’s the real difference between Maatos and Teachable?
The core difference is what you end up owning. With Teachable you get a course “school” hosted on Teachable’s platform — quick to launch, but the school lives inside their ecosystem, and a custom domain only comes in on the paid plans. With Maatos you get a complete website of your own: pages, a blog, a webshop and your courses, all on your own domain and fully in your branding, from the colours and logo down to the sender name on your automated emails and invoices.
That sounds like a small distinction until you think a few years ahead. A course platform isn’t just where your lessons sit — it’s your homepage, your sales pages, your email sender, your checkout and your search-engine presence. When all of that is genuinely yours, you’re building an asset rather than renting a storefront. It’s the same argument we make in our piece on the long-term benefits of owning your course website, and it’s why so many creators eventually move off all-in-one hosted tools.
To be fair to Teachable: that hosted simplicity is a real strength. You don’t touch hosting, updates or security, and you’re inside a mature platform with a big creator community and a lot of polish. If “owning the whole website” sounds like more than you want to think about, that’s a point in Teachable’s favour, not against it. If you’re weighing this trade-off more broadly, our open-source vs SaaS course platforms guide walks through the control-versus-convenience spectrum that Maatos and Teachable both sit on. And if Skool is the other name on your shortlist, we’ve done the same honest breakdown in our Maatos vs Skool comparison.
What do Maatos and Teachable cost in 2026?
As of June 2026, Teachable starts at $29/month (billed annually) and Maatos starts at €49/month (excl. VAT). Neither has a permanent free tier any more, but both let you try before you pay: Teachable offers a 7-day free trial, Maatos a 30-day free trial.
Teachable dropped its free plan in a 2025 restructuring and now runs four paid tiers. On annual billing they’re Starter at $29/month, Builder at $69/month, Growth at $139/month and Advanced at $309/month; pay monthly instead and the lower tiers rise to roughly $39, $89 and $189. Annual billing saves about 22%.
Maatos runs three tiers, priced in euros and excluding VAT: Basic at €49/month (€40.83/month if you pay yearly) for up to three courses, Premium at €99/month (€82.50 yearly) for up to fifteen courses plus subscriptions, installment payments and your own custom domain, and Complete at €199/month (€165.83 yearly). Every Maatos plan includes hosting, the drag-and-drop course and website builder, a full webshop, unlimited video storage and no cap on the number of students.
One honest caveat on any price table: the headline number isn’t the real number. Course limits, transaction fees and which features sit behind which tier matter at least as much, so read on before you decide on price alone.
Do you pay transaction fees on your sales?
This is where the gap can get expensive. Teachable charges a 7.5% transaction fee on every sale on its entry-level Starter plan; that fee disappears on Builder, Growth and Advanced. Maatos takes 0% in platform fees on any plan — you connect your own Stripe or Mollie account and the money lands with you directly.
To keep this fair: on both platforms you still pay your payment processor’s standard fees, because everyone does. Teachable’s built-in Teachable:pay (powered by Stripe) charges roughly 2.9% + 30¢ per US card and 3.9% + 30¢ per international card. Maatos doesn’t add anything on top of whatever Stripe or Mollie charges you. So the real comparison is “processor fee plus 7.5%” on Teachable’s cheapest plan versus “processor fee only” on Maatos — or you climb to Teachable’s $69/month Builder plan to escape the 7.5%.
That 7.5% adds up faster than it looks. At €2,000 of course sales in a month, Teachable’s Starter fee alone is €150 — every month, on top of the subscription — while Maatos’s platform cut is nothing. It’s the same maths we lay out in stop paying platform fees: past a fairly modest sales volume, a percentage-of-revenue model quietly becomes your biggest software cost.
Which is better for selling courses in Europe?
For selling into Europe, Maatos is the more natural fit because it’s built around how Europeans actually pay and how VAT actually works. Maatos connects to both Stripe and Mollie, so your students can pay with credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and the local methods they expect — iDEAL in the Netherlands, Bancontact in Belgium, SEPA across the eurozone — and Maatos calculates VAT automatically and sends each customer a proper invoice without you lifting a finger.
Teachable can absolutely sell to European buyers, but it’s a US-headquartered platform built first and foremost around the global card model through Teachable:pay. Local European payment methods like iDEAL and Bancontact aren’t its focus, and EU VAT handling leans more on you and your integrations. If most of your audience is in the US or paying by card, that’s no problem at all. If a meaningful share of your buyers are European, the difference in checkout conversion and admin time is real. (Tax rules change, so always check the current specifics for your own country — we keep a plain-English overview in the Build Course Website hub.)
Who should choose Teachable?
Teachable is the better pick for creators who want a hosted, low-maintenance platform and a fast start, sell mainly to a US or global card-paying audience, and like being inside an established, polished ecosystem with a large creator community. If you don’t want to think about a website at all — just a clean place to host and sell courses — Teachable does that well, and its higher tiers come with mature marketing and affiliate tooling. The trade-offs are the 7.5% fee on the cheapest plan, pricing and tax handling built around the US, and the fact that your school ultimately lives on Teachable rather than on a site that’s wholly yours.
Who should choose Maatos?
Maatos is the better pick if you want to own a complete branded website on your own domain, keep 100% of your sales minus only the processor’s fee, and sell smoothly to European customers with local payment methods and automatic VAT invoicing. It suits creators who see their course business as a long-term asset rather than a quick storefront — and who’d like a hand setting it up. If building the site yourself isn’t your idea of fun, our done-for-you setup service builds it in your branding for you, and our features page shows the full toolkit, from quizzes and certificates to the integrated webshop. The honest trade-off in the other direction: Maatos asks a little more of you up front because you’re building a real website, and the lower tier caps you at three courses.
Can you move from Teachable to Maatos?
Yes — moving from Teachable to Maatos is mostly a matter of rebuilding your course structure and re-uploading your content into the Maatos builder, then pointing your domain at the new site. There’s no one-click importer between the two, so it’s manual work, but it’s a one-time job and it’s exactly the kind of thing our setup team can take off your hands. The upside is that once you’re on your own domain, you never have to do this migration again.
Maatos vs Teachable: frequently asked questions
Is Maatos better than Teachable?
Neither is universally better — it depends on what you’re optimising for. Maatos is better if you want to own a branded website on your own domain, pay no platform transaction fees and sell easily in Europe. Teachable is better if you want a fast, hosted, US-centric platform inside a large established ecosystem and don’t mind your courses living on their system.
Does Teachable have a free plan?
No. Teachable removed its free plan in a 2025 pricing change and now offers a 7-day free trial on its paid plans, with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Maatos offers a 30-day free trial.
How much does Teachable cost compared to Maatos?
As of June 2026, Teachable runs from $29/month (annual billing) to $309/month, and Maatos from €49/month (excl. VAT) to €199/month. Teachable’s cheapest plan also charges a 7.5% transaction fee per sale; Maatos charges 0% in platform fees on every plan.
Which is better for VAT and European payment methods?
Maatos, for most European sellers. It calculates VAT automatically, sends customers an invoice, and supports local methods like iDEAL and Bancontact through Mollie alongside Stripe. Teachable is built mainly around global card payments.
Can I use my own domain?
On Maatos, a custom domain is included from the Premium plan upward. On Teachable, a custom domain is available on its paid plans rather than at the entry level. Either way, your branding sits on your own web address rather than a shared subdomain.
You don’t have to decide from a feature list. The fastest way to know whether Maatos fits the way you want to teach and get paid is to build a course in it — so take a proper look at what Maatos can do, then start your free 30-day trial and put your real course inside it before you commit a euro.
