Teachable

House Rules

By using the Teachable Platform, you agree to follow the rules and guidelines set out in the Terms of Use and these House Rules, which are designed to make your rights and responsibilities as a user of our platform clear.

Teachable’s role as a platform is to provide our creators with the tools to help them build successful online, course-based and coaching businesses.

Creators (aka the “Primary School Owner”) are responsible for establishing and maintaining a direct relationship with their audience and students.

As a student, if you have any questions or concerns regarding a creator’s offering on the platform, you should reach out directly to the creator. Authors, affiliates, non-primary owners, and other custom users should also reach out directly to the creator. Click here for guidance on how to reach out to a creator.

If you have concerns that someone is violating these House Rules or Teachable’s Terms of Use, please reach out to Teachable Customer Support. Teachable will review your complaint and take appropriate action, as necessary.

Creator’s responsibilities

Managing your school
When you sign up for Teachable as a creator, you become the “primary owner” of any schools you create under your Teachable account. As the primary owner, you’re in charge of those schools.

Primary owners have rights above and beyond other admin accounts associated with the school. Primary owners are the only users who can delete a school or regain access to associated accounts should the associated email addresses be removed. If you created a school but did not intend to be the primary owner of the school, you can transfer ownership of the account through your dashboard.

Managing associated accounts
You’re responsible for managing other admin accounts associated with your school, including non-primary owners, custom users, authors, and affiliates.

Teachable provides various tools to facilitate your relationship with your partners, but you’re responsible for managing these relationships. As your platform provider, Teachable will not mediate disputes between you and your partners.

Creating your school’s terms
Each creator offering and market is different, so it is very important that your school’s Terms of Use & Privacy Policy reflect your particular business structure and industry.

Creators can find out more about drafting their terms at Teachable’s Knowledge Base.

Structuring and monitoring your school for compliance
You’re responsible for making sure your school complies with laws and standards that apply to your industry. For example, if you teach courses on financial literacy, you’re responsible for making sure that your business complies with applicable consumer protection laws.

Likewise, you’re responsible for making sure that your students adhere to your school’s and Teachable’s policies and guidelines. Creators should remove students and other users from their schools who do not follow Teachable’s Terms of Use, House Rules, and content guidelines.

Providing off-Platform content, products and other services
The Teachable platform is designed to help creators develop and sell their online course business and related services on Teachable’s platform. The Teachable platform is not set up for creators to sell other types of products, such as physical products.

Teachable Support is trained to assist with issues and questions related to the functionality of the Teachable platform.

Teachable is not involved in, has no visibility into, and cannot provide any support for services or products offered off-platform. Any off-platform services, products, communications, or other parts of your business are not eligible for Teachable support services.

Creators may customize their web pages on the Teachable platform through code and third-party integrations. The creator is fully responsible for any customization of their Teachable web pages. Teachable is not responsible for—and does not provide any support services for—customizations, including but not limited to troubleshooting custom HTML, CSS, or other code.

Please keep in mind that Teachable regularly updates its platform features, and that these updates may interfere with a creator’s customization.

Providing strong customer service
While businesses come in all shapes and sizes, a key element for success is providing strong customer service. By offering a business through the Teachable platform, you’re committing to being respectful of your students, including offering a way for your students to contact you with questions, directly responding to your students’ questions in a timely manner, and resolving disputes with your customers and employees.

Backing up your content
Teachable is not intended to be used as a backup for your content. Be safe and keep a secure copy of all the content that is uploaded to Teachable, including content uploaded by other administrator users associated with your school, such as non-primary owners and authors.

Being transparent in your sales practices

As a business owner, setting out clear expectations about what you’re offering is not only good business, it’s the law.

Including important information on your sales page
Your sales pages are expected to include all important terms about your offering that someone should know before they buy, such as pricing information, how customers can get in touch with you if they run into issues, and your cancellation and refund policies.

Establishing a reasonable length of time for content availability
You’re expected to set reasonable and realistic terms around when and how long students will have access to your courses after purchase.

Unless you give students the option to download all content in your offering, you cannot advertise that the student will be given unlimited or lifetime access.

Paying special attention to refunds and pre-sales

Refunds
As a creator, if you’re selling a course through Teachable Payments or the Monthly Payment Gateway, Teachable’s standard 30-day refund policy will automatically apply to your sale unless you get an exemption from Teachable.

To apply for an exemption that’ll allow you to set your own custom refund policy, you’ll need to reach out to Teachable customer support and provide a rationale for your request. Teachable’s finance team, in its sole discretion, will determine whether your offerings are eligible for the exemption.

Read more about Teachable’s refund policy.

Pre-sales
If you’re planning on offering a pre-sale (that is, selling your offering before your content is available for use by the purchasing students), there are important elements of your offer that need to be included in your sales page:

  • Explain that the content will only be available in the future. Be clear that your content will only be available at a later date.

  • State when the content will become available. Let students know when they can expect the content to be published. Failure to do this on your sales page may result in outreach from our risk team. Additionally, if your content is still not available by the date specified, your payouts may be delayed.

  • Provide a description of the content. Include a clear description of what the content will include.

Learn about how to offer pre-sales on the Teachable platform.

Delivering what you’ve promised

Once you’ve set clear expectations for your students, they’ll expect you to deliver on them. This includes delivering the content you promised on the expected date and including all the support and other features that you’ve advertised.

Not delivering on the promises you’ve made can result in customer complaints, refund requests, and chargebacks. Teachable may also take further action including withholding payouts, blocking your checkout page, and terminating your account.

Offering off-platform delivery
While delivering your content outside of the platform is not against our rules, the Teachable platform is not meant to be used solely for the purpose of processing payments. If you are planning to deliver content outside of our platform we ask that you use your sales page to let Teachable as well as your students know where it will be delivered.

Protecting your users’ personal information

As a Creator on the Teachable platform, you’re responsible for protecting your users’ personal information and for complying with applicable data privacy and protection laws.

When you offer courses or other services through the Teachable platform, Teachable will share with you certain personal information about students who enroll in your offerings, such as the student’s name, email address, and purchase details. You may also collect additional personal information about your students and other customers through direct interactions with them on and off the platform, their participation in your course, tracking tools, or integrations.

You’re responsible for handling any customer personal information that you process through the Teachable platform in line with Teachable’s Data Processing Agreement, Teachable’s Privacy Policy, and applicable privacy and protection laws. This includes letting your customers know how you’ll be collecting and using their personal information by establishing your school’s Privacy Policy, as well as getting your users’ consent before collecting and sharing their personal information, as applicable. For more information about setting up your Privacy Policy, please see Teachable’s Knowledge Base.

Privacy laws are complex, quickly evolving, and vary from place to place. If you have any doubts about your obligations in this area, we encourage you to consult with a privacy professional. Teachable’s customer support team will not be able to assist you with this topic.

Sharing your users’ personal information
By offering your courses and other services through the Teachable platform, you agree to protect your users’ privacy by adhering to the following:

  • Not selling, trading, or renting personal information you collect from your students and other customers through the Teachable platform; and

  • Not sharing or otherwise disclosing personal information you collect from your students and other customers through the Teachable platform with others for their own business purposes, unless the user has first given you written permission to do so.

Sensitive personal information
Teachable does not allow creators to maintain sensitive personal information on the Teachable platform, such as a student’s health information or financial account information. To the extent that creators offer courses where sensitive information may be shared, this type of information must not be shared or maintained on the platform, such as the comment feature or intake forms.

Responding to data privacy requests
When Teachable receives a user privacy request that pertains to personal information that Teachable is hosting, Teachable will assist the creator by fulfilling the request to the extent that the user’s personal information is being hosted on Teachable. However, the creator is still responsible for fulfilling the request to the extent that the creator is handling the user’s personal information outside of the Teachable platform.

For example, when a student submits a deletion request, Teachable will delete the student’s information on the Teachable Platform. However, the creator is still responsible for deleting the student’s data to the extent they’re storing that data elsewhere, and directing their service providers to do the same.

Creators are also responsible for notifying Teachable within three business days if they receive a privacy request from their users that involves data being hosted by Teachable. For more information about your privacy responsibilities as a creator on the Teachable platform, please review Teachable’s Data Processing Agreement and Teachable’s Privacy Policy.

Protecting your intellectual property

Monitoring and enforcing the use of your content by third parties
Understanding that your intellectual property is one of your most valuable assets, we’ve structured our platform to keep your content safe. Nevertheless, there is no way to completely prevent piracy. As an online course business owner, you’re responsible for safeguarding and monitoring the use of your intellectual property by others.

When Teachable is notified that there is pirated content on the Teachable platform, Teachable will promptly remove the infringing material pursuant to our DMCA process. To submit a copyright complaint, please fill out Teachable’s DMCA Takedown Notice form.

If you discover that someone is displaying your content without your permission on another website, we encourage you to reach out to the website hosting the content, as Teachable is only able to take down material that is on its own platform.

Student’s responsibilities

Reading the fine print
We ask our creators to be transparent about their offerings and to share all relevant terms of their product on their sales pages. In turn, students also have the responsibility to understand the school’s refund policy, the promised content, and the payment plan for which they are signing up.

If you have any questions about a course or other offering, you should contact the school directly.

Understanding your privacy rights and obligations
As a student, when you sign up for a course or other offering on the Teachable platform, Teachable will collect certain information about you on behalf of the creator whose offering you’re enrolling into. This information is shared with the creator in order for them to provide you with their services. Examples of information collected include your email address, purchase information, and course enrollment. For more information about how Teachable handles your personal information, please visit Teachable’s Privacy Policy.

A creator may also directly collect certain personal information from you through their school’s pages by directly interacting with you on or off the platform or through integrations. In these instances, the creator is primarily responsible for how they handle and safeguard your information. Please review the creator’s privacy policy and reach out to the creator if you have questions about how the creator uses your personal information.

Keep in mind that information that you share through comments may be shared with other participants in the school or publicly, depending on the school’s setting. It is up to the creator to determine the visibility settings of their lectures, including comments.

We ask you to exercise care in deciding what personal information you choose to share, and refrain from sharing your sensitive personal information and that of others.

Contacting the school
Creators are in charge of the businesses they run through the Teachable platform. As such, they are responsible for providing customer support related to their offerings.

This means that if you have any questions or problems about a creator’s offering, your first and best point of contact is the creator. They’ll be able to help you with any questions about their content, getting a refund, or even compliments. As the platform service provider, Teachable is not involved in and will be unable to assist you with questions about a school’s content or policies.

Reporting creators and other users
Teachable is designed so that creators are responsible for resolving questions, issues, and disputes directly with their students. However, there is certain conduct and content that Teachable does not tolerate on the Teachable platform.

If you’d like Teachable to review a creator or other user for violating Teachable’s terms, please reach out to Teachable customer support. Teachable will review your complaint and take appropriate action, as necessary.

Please keep in mind that Teachable’s review of violation of our policies are confidential, and we’re unable to share details about the actions that were taken. If you ever feel unsafe, we encourage you to reach out directly to law enforcement.

Unacceptable Conduct

No harassment, bullying, or threats
Teachable has a zero tolerance policy for harassment, bullying, or threats.

Harassment consists of any repeated and unwanted action or behavior directed towards an individual or a group of individuals.

Bullying consists of any abusive action or behavior targeted at an individual or a group of individuals.

A threat consists of any menace to injure a person or destroy their property. Be respectful of others.

No hateful conduct
There’s no place for hate on our platform. This includes any kind of promotion of violence towards an individual or a group of individuals based on, but not limited to, their gender, religion, race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation or physical or mental ability.

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