EdTech sells on cohorts and outcomes.

Pick your platform by revenue scale and course complexity. Thinkific is the middle-market workhorse: deep Shopify integration via the official app, a strong API for custom flows, and competitive pricing (49 to 499 per month for most brands). It fits brands from 1M to 10M revenue running multiple courses with similar mechanics.

Kajabi is all-in-one, with LMS, email, landing pages, and commerce built in. That suits solo creators, but Kajabi often competes with Shopify for the commerce layer, and brands running both end up with unclear ownership. Podia is simpler and cheaper (39 to 199 per month), best for brands under 500K revenue with 1-3 courses.

Teachable is solid but has thinner Shopify integration. Zapier is the main integration path; it works for basic flows and breaks for complex institutional sales. Custom LMS (built on top of Thinkific's API, or fully custom) wins for brands above 5M revenue, where specific cohort mechanics, branded UX, and deep data integration justify the engineering investment.

Custom runs 12 to 20 weeks vs 4 to 6 weeks for platform integration. The long-term flexibility compounds.

The decision hinges on two axes. Revenue scale: below 1M favors platforms, above 5M favors custom, and 1M-5M favors a platform plus custom extensions. Course complexity: simple self-paced courses fit platforms, while cohort programs with live sessions, community, and custom assessments often outgrow them.

Most EdTech brands start on a platform. They migrate to custom around year 3 to 5, when revenue and complexity both outgrow platform constraints.

Institutional sales drive 40 to 60 percent of revenue for mature EdTech brands. The buyers are schools, universities, corporate L&D teams, training companies, and professional associations. Their buying process looks nothing like individual checkout: longer cycles (30 to 90 days), procurement involvement (purchase orders, net-30 or net-60 invoicing), bulk-seat volume discounts, and a seat-management workflow individual sales never need.

A proper institutional portal has four capabilities. First, a bulk-seat purchase flow where an admin specifies a seat count and pays via invoice, purchase order, or credit card. Second, a seat assignment workflow: the admin uploads a CSV of student emails for immediate enrollment, or keeps a pool of unassigned seats to distribute over time.

Third, an admin dashboard showing which students are enrolled, which have started, which have completed, plus aggregate completion, time, and score metrics. Fourth, reporting exports for L&D compliance and training program documentation.

Pricing runs on volume tiers. Typical breaks: 10-24 seats at 20-25 percent off, 25-99 seats at 30-40 percent off, 100-499 seats at 40-50 percent off, 500+ seats at custom pricing. The discount is smaller than wholesale in physical goods because course delivery has marginal cost near zero. It is a customer-acquisition tactic, not a cost-pass-through.