How To Offer Payment Plans On Teachable Step By Step
A payment plan on Teachable is not free money — it is a lever with a cost. You trade a cleaner checkout and more enrollments for a touch more fee friction and real default risk. On the right course it lifts revenue; bolted onto a cheap one it quietly loses money. This guide shows exactly how Teachable payment plans work, what they really cost, how to set one up, and who should skip them.
What a Teachable payment plan actually is
Teachable gives every product four pricing types: free, one-time purchase, payment plan, and subscription. A payment plan charges the student a fixed amount every month for a set number of months — up to 36 — and, crucially, the student gets full access after the first payment, not the last. That single detail is what makes a plan feel generous to the buyer: they start learning on day one while paying over time.
It is not the same as a subscription. A subscription bills on a repeating schedule for continued access and has no finish line; a payment plan has a fixed total and a fixed end date, after which the student owns the course outright. For most creators selling a finite program — a cohort, a certification track, a coaching bundle — the payment plan is the tool you want, because the relationship ends cleanly once the installments are done.
The real cost: fee friction and default risk
The part most tutorials get wrong: splitting a sale into installments does not multiply your percentage fees. Teachable’s platform fee and the processor’s percentage apply to the total either way — 7.5% of a $600 sale is $45 whether the student pays once or six times. What splitting actually adds is smaller and more specific. Here is what Teachable charges by plan, taken from Teachable’s published pricing (checked 4 October 2026):
| Teachable plan | Price (annual billing) | Platform transaction fee | Processing fee per charge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $39/mo ($29 billed yearly) | 7.5% | 2.9%–4.99% |
| Builder | $89/mo ($69 billed yearly) | 0% | 2.9%–4.99% |
| Growth | $189/mo ($139 billed yearly) | 0% | 2.9%–4.99% |
So the real cost of a plan is two things, and neither is the headline percentage. The first is which tier you are on. On Starter, the 7.5% platform fee takes $45 out of a $600 sale on top of processing, on a plan or not; move up to Builder or Growth and that 7.5% disappears, leaving only the 2.9%–4.99% processing. The only fee a plan genuinely adds is the fixed part of each processing charge — roughly 30 cents an installment — so a six-payment plan costs you a couple of dollars more in fixed fees than a single charge. Trivial.
The second cost is the one creators underestimate: default. Some students simply stop paying. Teachable retries a failed charge on day 3, day 7, and day 14, and after four failed attempts the student is automatically unenrolled — so you are not chasing cards by hand, but you do forfeit the unpaid tail of the plan. A six-month plan has six chances to break; a three-month plan has three. The longer the plan runs, the more of that risk you carry, which is the single best argument for keeping plans short.
How to set up a payment plan on Teachable, step by step
- Open the product in your Teachable school and go to its Pricing section.
- Add a new pricing option and choose Payment plan as the type.
- Set the fixed monthly amount and the number of monthly payments (anything from two up to 36).
- Name the option clearly at checkout — for example “3 monthly payments of $120” — so the total and the commitment are obvious before purchase.
- Save, then test the checkout yourself to confirm the installment schedule and the receipts behave as expected.
A few settings worth knowing, drawn from Teachable’s product-pricing documentation (checked 4 October 2026): receipts are sent automatically after each successful charge, and if you want to stop students cancelling mid-plan you can lock that under Settings > Roles > Student Permissions. Keep the number of months realistic — a 36-month plan is allowed, but every extra month is one more chance for a card to fail, and few course promises justify a three-year commitment.
Who should offer Teachable payment plans — and who shouldn’t
Our take, after watching how these play out across course businesses: payment plans earn their keep on high-ticket, outcome-driven courses. If you sell a $500–$2,000 transformation — a cohort, a credential, a done-with-you coaching program — the plan removes the single biggest reason motivated buyers hesitate, and the extra enrollments comfortably outweigh a few failed installments. Hesitant-but-serious students are exactly who a plan converts, and first-payment access means they feel the value before the second charge lands.
They are usually a mistake on low-ticket or impulse courses. Below roughly $100 there is little hesitation for a plan to solve, the fixed per-charge fees and the admin of failed payments nibble at a thin margin, and you invite buyers to abandon a course they have barely started. A clean one-time price converts better there, and it keeps your reporting simple.
The sweet spot is a short plan of two to four months on a course priced above about $300, ideally with a small premium over the one-time price to reflect the convenience and cover default risk. For help setting that underlying number, see our complete guide to pricing an online course. Once a plan is converting, layer in the tactics from upselling and cross-selling your courses to raise each student’s lifetime value, and creators scaling past this stage will find the bigger picture in our guide to scaling an online school to six figures.
Payment plan questions creators actually ask
Do students get access before they finish paying?
Yes. On Teachable a student receives full product access after their first payment, then keeps it while the remaining installments process.
What happens if an installment fails?
Teachable automatically retries the charge on day 3, day 7, and day 14. If all four attempts fail, the student is unenrolled from the product, so you do not have to manage collections yourself.
How many installments can I offer?
You can bill a fixed monthly amount for up to 36 months. In practice, shorter plans carry far less default risk, so most creators stay well below that ceiling.
Can a student cancel partway through a plan?
By default students can cancel, which ends both their remaining payments and their access. You can prevent this under Settings > Roles > Student Permissions if your offer requires a full commitment.
Does Teachable charge extra to run a payment plan?
There is no separate per-plan fee. Your plan’s transaction fee and the processor’s percentage apply to the total the same as a one-time sale; the only genuine extra is the fixed part of each processing charge, plus the risk of unpaid installments.
The bottom line
A Teachable payment plan is a conversion tool with a modest price tag — and the price tag is mostly default risk, not fees. It shines on high-ticket programs where first-payment access and a lower entry point unlock students who would otherwise walk, and it drags on cheap courses where there is no hesitation to solve. Decide by the course, not the trend: match a short plan to a genuinely high-value offer, keep it to a handful of months, and price in a little cushion. Do that and you turn hesitation into enrollment without giving away your margin.
