LifterLMS vs Teachable, Thinkific and Kajabi: Own the Platform or Rent It?

Comparing LifterLMS with Teachable, Thinkific, or Kajabi is not really a feature comparison. All four let you publish courses, take payments, and track students. The real choice is between renting a finished platform and owning one you run yourself.

We are a LifterLMS-only agency, and LifterLMS is the ownership option, so you know which way we lean. We also think a hosted platform is the right answer for a lot of people, and this article says when. Details about the hosted platforms come from their own pricing and help pages, read in October 2026.

What you are really choosing

Teachable, Thinkific, and Kajabi are hosted services. You pay a subscription, log in, and build inside their system. The vendor runs the servers, the software, the video delivery, and the checkout. Teachable and Thinkific center on courses and related products such as memberships, communities, coaching, and digital downloads. Kajabi presents itself as a wider business suite, with a website builder, landing pages, funnels, email marketing, a contact CRM, podcasts, and newsletters alongside courses.

LifterLMS is a plugin for WordPress. The core is free, and you install it on a WordPress site that you host. The software, the database, and the design all sit in your own account. So does the responsibility for keeping them running.

Neither model is better in the abstract. One buys you time and the other buys you control. The question is which you are short of.

The trade-off at a glance

Question	Hosted platform	LifterLMS on WordPress
Who runs hosting, updates, and security?	The vendor	You, your host, or a maintenance provider
How do you pay for the software?	A monthly or annual subscription, in tiers	Free core, plus paid add-ons or a bundle as needed
What do plan tiers limit?	Things such as products, admin seats, branding removal, or API access, depending on the vendor	The core has no cap on courses, memberships, or enrollments; paid tiers add features and site licenses
How are payments taken?	Usually the vendor's own payment service, with other options that vary by plan	Your own gateway account, through a paid gateway add-on
How far can you customize?	Within the vendor's themes, settings, and integrations	Anything WordPress allows, down to the code
Where does your data live?	In the vendor's system, with the exports it offers	In your own WordPress database
How fast can you launch?	Quickly; there is nothing to install	Slower; the site has to be built first

Hosting and maintenance: who does the work

This is the strongest argument for a hosted platform, and it should not be played down. Someone else applies updates, watches for security problems, keeps video playing, and makes sure checkout works. If something breaks at the platform level, fixing it is not your job.

With LifterLMS that work is yours. You choose a host, keep WordPress, the theme, and plugins updated, run backups, and test before each major change. An LMS is also harder on hosting than a brochure site, because logged-in students cannot be served cached pages. The LifterLMS documentation warns that hosts which cache dynamic pages, such as the student dashboard, cause problems. Video is a separate decision as well: LifterLMS embeds lessons from a video host such as Vimeo, Wistia, or YouTube instead of storing them for you.

None of this is difficult for someone who runs WordPress sites for a living. It is a real, ongoing cost for someone who does not, whether you pay it in your own hours or through a service such as our LifterLMS support plans. Count it honestly when you compare prices.

Time to launch

A hosted platform wins on speed. You sign up, upload lessons, set a price, and connect payouts. All three vendors offer a free trial in place of a permanent free plan, so you can see the builder before you pay.

A LifterLMS site needs more groundwork: hosting, WordPress, a theme, the plugin, a payment gateway, email delivery, and testing. LifterLMS shortens part of this with a setup wizard that creates the catalog, checkout, and student dashboard pages, and our guide on how to set up LifterLMS step by step covers the sequence. It is still a build project.

If you have not yet proven that people will pay for your course, speed matters more than control. Validating an idea on a hosted platform and moving later is a legitimate plan, as long as you go in knowing what the move involves.

Payments and the transaction model

Hosted platforms combine three kinds of cost, and the mix differs by vendor and plan:

• The subscription. All three sell monthly or annual plans in tiers. Tiers limit different things. Teachable's pricing page caps published products and admin seats by plan. Thinkific's lists unlimited published courses but varies admin seats, communities, and features by plan. Kajabi's limits products, contacts, websites, and admin users.
• Platform fees on sales. Some plans add a fee on each sale on top of card processing. Teachable lists a transaction fee on its entry plan and none on higher plans when you use its own payments. Kajabi says it takes no revenue share, and lists an added fee when you use a third-party payment provider. Thinkific says fees for third-party gateways vary by plan.
• Card processing. Every platform passes on standard processing fees, usually through its own payment service: Teachable Payments, Thinkific Payments, or Kajabi Payments.

Read the current terms on the Teachable, Thinkific, and Kajabi pricing pages, because these details change.

In return, the hosted services take work off your plate. Teachable, for example, lists handling of US sales tax, VAT, and GST. That is real value if you sell across borders and have no accountant set up for it.

LifterLMS works differently. The plugin charges no fee on your sales. You connect your own Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.Net account through a paid gateway add-on, or sell through WooCommerce with the integration add-on, and you pay your processor's normal fees. The software cost is the add-ons or bundle you choose on the LifterLMS pricing page, plus hosting. Tax compliance is your responsibility to arrange. How to sell courses with LifterLMS explains the checkout side.

As a rule, fixed costs favor ownership as revenue grows, and convenience favors renting while revenue is small. Run the numbers for your own sales volume instead of trusting a rule of thumb.

Control over design, data, and features

On a hosted platform you work inside the product's boundaries. Those boundaries are wider than they used to be. Thinkific has an app store and lists advanced CSS and HTML editing above its entry plan. Teachable lists a public API, webhooks, and CSS snippets. Kajabi's plan comparison includes a custom code editor, an API, and webhooks. Several of these depend on your tier, and so does removing the vendor's branding.

What you cannot do is change how the platform itself behaves. If the checkout lacks a field you need, or enrollment has to follow a rule the product does not support, you wait for the vendor or build a workaround outside it.

With LifterLMS the limit is what WordPress allows, which is nearly everything. The core includes a REST API, webhooks, and WP-CLI commands. Templates can be overridden from your theme, and behavior can be changed through hooks without editing the plugin. Student records, orders, and progress sit in your own database, where you can query and report on them. That freedom has a cost: custom work has to be built and maintained, which is what our LifterLMS customization service exists for.

Hosted platforms hold some advantages here too. Teachable lists iOS and Android student apps, and Kajabi lists a branded mobile app in its plan comparison. A LifterLMS site is a responsive website, and a native app would be a separate project.

Exit cost

Leaving is where renting shows its price. According to each vendor's help center:

• Teachable has no feature for exporting a course as a single unit. Individual files such as videos and PDFs can be downloaded, and users and transactions export as CSV files.
• Thinkific does not export an entire course as one file. Video, PDF, and audio files download one at a time, and text, quiz, and survey lessons are copied by hand.
• Kajabi lets you export a course template, while product properties and content need a manual backup.

So content can come out, but lesson by lesson, and student progress and active subscriptions need their own plan. The Teachable export article is a fair example of what to expect.

Ownership does not make leaving free. LifterLMS exports courses in its own format, and its importer reads only that format, so moving to a different LMS would still be a project. The difference is that the database, the files, and the domain are yours throughout, and you can change hosts without touching the courses. Our LifterLMS migration guide explains what a move from a hosted platform involves.

Choose a hosted platform when, choose LifterLMS when

Choose Teachable, Thinkific, or Kajabi when:

• You are testing a first course and need to be selling soon.
• Nobody on your team wants to manage hosting, updates, and backups, and you do not want to pay someone to do it.
• The platform's standard checkout, course player, and design options already fit your offer.
• You value bundled extras such as tax handling, mobile apps, or, with Kajabi, marketing tools in the same login.

Choose LifterLMS when:

• You already run a WordPress site and want courses in the same place as your content and audience.
• You need enrollment rules, integrations, or a design that hosted settings cannot express.
• You want student and sales data in your own database.
• Your catalog or team is growing past the limits of a hosted tier.
• You have someone, in-house or hired, to look after the site.

How to decide, and when to get help

List what you need in the next year: products, pricing models, integrations, team members, and anything unusual about how students get access. Check each item against a hosted plan and against a LifterLMS build. If a hosted plan covers the list, use it.

If you are already on a hosted platform and feeling its limits, do not move on impulse. Price the migration, decide what happens to current subscribers, and run both systems side by side for a short period. Professional help earns its fee here, because mistakes show up as lost access or failed renewals. Our LifterLMS migration service handles that work, and LifterLMS consulting is the place to start if you are still unsure which model suits you.