LearnDash

LearnDash has been the default recommendation for a WordPress-based course business for years, widely used enough that a large ecosystem of add-ons, themes, and integrations has grown up around it, covering everything from drip-fed lesson schedules to detailed quiz logic and course prerequisites. Licensing is a yearly fee per site rather than a percentage of sales, so cost stays flat regardless of how much revenue a course generates.

Because it's a plugin rather than a hosted platform, setup requires an existing WordPress site, a reliable host, and usually a separate payment processor integration, more moving parts than Teachable's turnkey approach, but nothing about your course or student data ever leaves a server you control. It fits a creator or business already comfortable running WordPress who wants to own the entire platform outright rather than pay a monthly fee to a hosted competitor.