SubSchool vs Udemy: Choose Marketplace Discovery or More Control of Your Teaching Workflow

Choosing between SubSchool and Udemy is less about which platform has the longest feature list and more about deciding how you want your teaching business to work. Both can support paid educational content, but the underlying models are different.

Udemy is a course marketplace. It can place a course in front of learners already browsing a large catalog, and its promotional systems may increase visibility. In return, teachers work within Udemy’s marketplace rules, pricing structure, communications policies, and revenue-share model.

SubSchool is positioned as a connected teaching platform. Its public product pages describe a workspace for creating and selling courses, assigning and reviewing homework, running live lessons and one-to-one tutoring, tracking progress, and managing payments. This makes it a potentially stronger fit for educators whose offer depends on an ongoing learning journey rather than a standalone, self-paced course.

The practical question is: do you primarily need help being discovered by new learners, or do you need a more integrated environment for teaching people who enter your own courses, tutoring, and follow-up offers?

The short answer

Marketplace discovery: Udemy’s main advantage

Udemy’s distinctive value is marketplace discovery. Its instructor guidance describes Udemy as a platform used by millions of learners, and it provides Marketplace Insights to help instructors assess demand, search volume, and revenue for course topics. For a teacher entering a competitive subject area, that can be useful: rather than building every audience channel from zero, you can publish into an established browsing environment.

Udemy’s optional Deals Program is part of that trade-off. If you opt in, Udemy can use its pricing data to set course list prices and run promotional discounts. Udemy says participation can increase visibility through marketing such as emails, paid advertising, and affiliate marketing. If you opt out, you retain control over the course price tier, but you do not receive the visibility associated with those promotional activities.

This model can suit a course creator who has a well-defined, self-contained topic, can compete on a marketplace course page, and is comfortable treating Udemy as one distribution channel among several. It is especially worth considering when finding new learners is a bigger challenge than delivering high-touch instruction after purchase.

However, marketplace discovery is not the same as a predictable enrolment pipeline. Course positioning, learner demand, reviews, competition, promotion eligibility, and marketplace policies can all affect results. Udemy itself notes that instructor success is not guaranteed.

Teacher control: where SubSchool takes a different approach

SubSchool’s public materials present courses, live sessions, homework, feedback, learner progress, payments, and tutoring as parts of one teaching workspace. Instead of separating a recorded course from the rest of your service, the platform is designed around a learning path that can include video, slides, text, live classes, recordings, and assignments.

That matters for teachers who sell more than content access. A language tutor may want learners to complete homework between lessons. An exam-preparation provider may want to sell an initial diagnostic lesson, then a structured course, then additional one-to-one support. A small learning centre may need teachers, student progress, course sales, and teaching operations in one place.

SubSchool also states that students can purchase a course from a single lesson, rather than committing immediately to a full course. For some education businesses, that can support a lower-risk entry offer: a learner tries a focused lesson before choosing a wider programme. The educational value still depends on the teacher’s curriculum, assessment design, feedback, and professional judgement.

Do not confuse a connected workflow with automatic ownership of every aspect of the learner relationship. Before choosing any platform, ask specific questions about learner-data access, exports, branded communications, payment records, refund handling, and what happens to course and learner information if you leave. The reviewed public pages do not provide enough detail to make a definitive comparison on those points.

Pricing: compare control, revenue share, and the cost of delivery

Udemy has no fee to create and host a course, but paid-course instructors must become premium instructors and Udemy retains a share of each sale. For transactional sales using an instructor’s coupon or referral link, Udemy says the instructor receives 97% of net revenue. For sales that do not use an instructor promotion, Udemy says the instructor receives 37% of net revenue. Net revenue is the learner payment after applicable taxes and fees.

That distinction is commercially important. An educator who brings their own audience through referral links has a different economics profile from one relying mainly on Udemy marketplace discovery. Teachers should model both paths before deciding where to place a flagship course.

For Connect 1:1 sessions, Udemy states that instructors receive 80% of net revenue from completed booked sessions. Connect 1:1 is described as beta, so educators should confirm availability, eligibility, regional access, and current terms before building a tutoring offer around it.

SubSchool publicly states that it supports paid courses, individual lessons, and tutoring. A teacher-facing page says SubSchool offers commission-based and subscription options, but the current rates were not available in the reviewed source material. Treat SubSchool’s specific fees as a direct-sales question to verify before comparing total costs.

A useful comparison is not simply “which platform is cheaper?” Instead, calculate the cost of acquiring a learner, the platform share or subscription cost, the time needed to manage assignments and tutoring, and the revenue available from follow-on learning. A low upfront cost can be attractive, but it may not be the best fit if your delivery requires several disconnected tools.

Assignments and feedback: both support learning activity, but the workflow differs

Udemy supports assignments within a course curriculum. Instructors can create question-based tasks, include text or video instructions and downloadable resources, review completed work, and provide feedback. Learners may also compare their work with instructor solutions and, where enabled, receive peer feedback.

There is an important design limitation for educators using assignments as a progression gate: Udemy says learners do not have to submit assignments to complete a course and receive a certificate of completion. Therefore, if your pedagogy depends on required practice, teacher review, and a clear next-step sequence, test the learner experience carefully before publishing.

SubSchool describes homework as integrated with its course and tutoring workflows. Its pages state that teachers can generate tasks, review submissions, track progress, and use AI assistance for grading essays, presentations, and video answers; the teacher can review the AI assessment and correct it. This can reduce repetitive handling, but automated suggestions should remain subject to teacher oversight, particularly for nuanced writing, high-stakes preparation, or feedback that may affect a learner’s confidence.

Tutoring and the student relationship

For tutoring-led businesses, the decisive difference may be workflow continuity. SubSchool describes built-in availability, booking approval, automatic session links, recordings, and homework in the same thread as a tutoring call. That is suited to an educator who wants a course and tutoring experience to reinforce each other.

Udemy now offers Connect 1:1, a beta feature for personalised instructor sessions directly on the platform. It may be useful for instructors who want to add individual support to an existing Udemy presence. But educators should evaluate it as a separately governed service, including its revenue share and availability, rather than assuming it creates the same course-to-homework-to-tutoring operating model described by SubSchool.

Udemy also gives instructors communication tools: direct messages can be enabled or disabled, and instructors can send educational announcements and promotional emails under platform rules. For example, Udemy limits educational announcements to four per course per month. These tools can support learner engagement, but they are platform-mediated communications rather than an unrestricted messaging system.

Which platform fits your teaching business?

• Choose Udemy first if marketplace discovery is your priority, your product is primarily a self-paced course, and you are comfortable with marketplace pricing and revenue-share trade-offs.
• Choose SubSchool first if you want to connect courses with live teaching, homework, feedback, tutoring, payments, and learner progress in a single operating workflow.
• Use a channel strategy if appropriate: a focused Udemy course may introduce learners to your expertise, while a more structured programme can be delivered through a platform designed for ongoing teaching. Confirm each platform’s current terms before implementing this approach.

The best choice follows your teaching model. Marketplace reach can be valuable, but so can control over how learning is structured, supported, and extended after the first purchase.

If your priority is to build courses, assignments, and tutoring into one teacher-led workflow, explore SubSchool’s comparison page and map your current learner journey before moving platforms.