Lessonforge and Teachable solve the same problem from opposite directions: one is source-available software you can own outright for $49, the other is a subscription at $39+/mo run entirely on someone else's servers.
Head to head
| Lessonforge | Teachable | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $49 once | $39+/mo |
| Transaction fee | 0% (Stripe direct) | 5% on Basic |
| Courses / modules / lessons | Unlimited | Plan-limited |
| Certificates | Yes | Pro plan only |
| Custom domain | Yes | Paid plans |
| Your data | Your SQLite file | Their cloud |
| Self-hosted | Yes | No |
What Lessonforge does well
- Courses, modules, lessons — Video via YouTube/Vimeo embed or self-hosted upload up to 500MB, rich-text lessons, downloadable attachments, reorder everything.
- Three enrollment paths — Add a student manually, let them self-serve with a per-course access code, or take paid enrollment via your own Stripe Checkout.
- Progress and certificates — Mark-complete per lesson with a live completion percentage, and a PDF certificate generated the moment a student hits 100%.
- Quizzes per module — Multiple-choice and true/false with a configurable pass threshold and unlimited retakes; correct answers are never sent to the browser.
What Teachable still does better
There's a real reason Teachable costs what it does: a bigger team, broader integrations and dedicated support behind it. If that ecosystem is genuinely what you need, it's worth paying for.
Which one should you pick
If your workflow depends on Teachable's specific integrations or you'd rather not run anything yourself, stay put — that's a legitimate call. If you're comfortable owning the tool and want to stop paying $39+/mo for a job your own hardware can do, Lessonforge pays for itself and then some: selling one course to a handful of students on Teachable Basic costs more in a single month than Lessonforge costs once.
Try Lessonforge — $49, once
Self-hosted LMS with modules, quizzes, progress tracking and PDF certificates — payments run through your own Stripe.