ChatGPT answers, unedited

For a multi-instructor online school, you usually need two separate capabilities:

1. Learning management + access control (students, courses, memberships, instructor permissions)
2. Marketplace-style revenue splitting + payouts (who earned what, automatic instructor payments)

The best stack depends on whether you want a simple school or a marketplace.

Option 1: All-in-one course platform (fastest setup)

Thinkific

thinkific.com

Good for: A school where you control the catalog and instructors are more like contractors.

• Student accounts and course access
• Memberships/subscriptions
• Course hosting
• Instructor/admin roles
• Analytics
• Integrations

Potential issue: It is primarily built for a single course business, not a true instructor marketplace. Revenue sharing may require manual accounting or external tools.

Kajabi

kajabi.com

Good for: Premium education businesses focused on marketing.

• Courses
• Communities
• Email funnels
• Payments
• Memberships

Potential issue: Like Thinkific, it is not designed around automated instructor commission payouts.

Option 2: Marketplace-style setup (best for automatic splits)

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For revenue sharing, this is usually the missing piece. Stripe Connect is designed for platforms that collect money from customers and route payouts to multiple providers, including onboarding recipients and handling payouts. Stripe Stripe

Typical flow:

1. Student buys a course → $200
2. Platform keeps 30% → $60
3. Instructor receives 70% → $140
4. Refunds, taxes, and payout records are tracked

This avoids manually calculating commissions every month. Stripe

Pair Stripe Connect with:

Moodle

moodle.org

Good for: A serious academic-style school.

• Powerful permissions
• Multiple instructors
• Cohorts
• Quizzes/certificates
• Custom workflows

Tradeoff: More setup and technical administration.

WordPress stack (flexible, lower cost)

Common setup:

• WordPress + LearnDash or Tutor LMS
• WooCommerce for payments
• Stripe Connect or a marketplace payout extension

Good for:

• Owning your platform
• Custom instructor dashboards
• SEO/content marketing

Tradeoff: More plugins and maintenance.

Option 3: Build a true instructor marketplace

If your model is:

"Anyone can become an instructor, publish courses, and earn automatically"

look at marketplace-oriented systems:

• Custom web app + Stripe Connect
• A headless LMS
• A marketplace backend

You need:

• Instructor onboarding
• Course ownership permissions
• Commission rules
• Earnings ledger
• Refund handling
• Tax reporting
• Payout scheduling

Stripe Connect specifically supports split payments, transfers, payout timing, and platform fees. Stripe Stripe

My recommended setups by size

Minimum features I would require before choosing software

Make sure it supports:

• ✅ Instructor-specific course permissions
• ✅ Student enrollment rules
• ✅ Revenue attribution by course/instructor
• ✅ Refund adjustments
• ✅ Coupons and affiliates
• ✅ Subscription revenue splits
• ✅ Instructor dashboards
• ✅ Automated payouts
• ✅ Tax reporting/export

If you tell me:

1. number of instructors (e.g., 5 vs 500),
2. whether instructors create their own courses,
3. your revenue split model (70/30, tiered, per-course, etc.), and
4. whether courses are live, recorded, or both,

I can narrow this to a specific stack.

For an online school with multiple instructors, student access controls, and revenue-sharing, I’d generally build around an LMS + Stripe Connect, rather than trying to make one all-in-one platform handle everything.

A practical stack

• LMS: Thinkific, LearnWorlds, Kajabi, or a custom LMS

• Courses, lessons, quizzes, student accounts
• Instructor permissions
• Enrollment/access rules
• Course completion and student reporting
• Payments & instructor payouts: stripe.com

• Students pay your school.
• Each instructor gets a connected Stripe account.
• You can calculate a revenue share and transfer the instructor's portion.
• Stripe supports scheduled or manual payouts and can handle onboarding/identity verification. Stripe Stripe Docs
• It also supports splitting one payment among multiple parties, which is useful if a course has multiple instructors. Stripe
• Accounting: QuickBooks or Xero, with Stripe feeding transaction/payout data into your accounting workflow.

The architecture I'd use

For example, suppose a $200 course has:

• School: 60% = $120
• Instructor: 40% = $80

The student pays the school → your system records the enrollment → Stripe allocates the instructor's share → Stripe pays the instructor according to your schedule.

You can make the revenue-share rules considerably more sophisticated:

• 70/30 for Instructor A
• 50/50 for Instructor B
• Different percentages for different courses
• Multiple instructors on one course
• Bonuses after a certain number of enrollments
• Refund/chargeback adjustments
• Monthly instructor payouts

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms that need to move money between multiple parties and supports application fees, transfers, payout scheduling, reporting, and tax-related workflows. Stripe Docs Stripe

Which setup I'd choose

The important distinction is that course access and money movement are separate problems. Your LMS should be the source of truth for who can access what, while Stripe Connect should be the source of truth for who gets paid what. Stripe explicitly supports marketplace models where a platform collects customer payments and distributes funds to connected accounts. Stripe Docs

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect, whether they create their own courses, whether students pay monthly or per-course, and your desired revenue split, I can recommend a specific stack and show you the exact workflow.

For an online school with multiple instructors, student access control, and revenue-sharing, I’d separate the problem into two layers:

1. Learning platform — courses, students, memberships, progress, instructor permissions.
2. Payments/payouts — collecting tuition and automatically calculating/sending instructor shares.

My preferred setup

LMS + Stripe Connect is the architecture I’d look at first.

• LMS: Thinkific, LearnWorlds, or a custom LMS depending on how sophisticated your school is.
• Payments: stripe.com
• Accounting: QuickBooks or Xero.
• Automation: Zapier/Make or a small custom integration.

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms where money needs to move between a customer, your platform, and multiple sellers/service providers. It supports connected accounts, onboarding/verification, payment splitting, application fees, scheduled payouts, and reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

For example, if a student pays $500 for a course:

Student → $500 → School
School keeps 30% → $150
Instructor receives 70% → $350

You can make the revenue split part of the payment flow rather than maintaining a spreadsheet and manually paying instructors. Stripe also supports different payout schedules, including weekly/monthly/manual payouts. Stripe Docs Stripe

Which LMS approach makes sense?

The important distinction is how complicated your revenue-sharing rules are.

If it's simply:

"Instructor gets 50% of every sale of their course"

you can potentially use a relatively straightforward LMS/payment setup.

If it's:

"Instructor A gets 40%, Instructor B gets 20%, school gets 40%; discounts reduce everyone's share; refunds reverse commissions; subscriptions are allocated based on student usage; instructors get paid monthly"

then I'd design the financial layer around Stripe Connect, rather than relying on the LMS's native instructor-payout functionality. Stripe explicitly supports splitting payments between multiple parties and retaining a platform fee. Stripe Docs Stripe

One architecture I'd seriously consider

Website/LMS
→ student authentication & course access
→ enrollment records
→ instructor/course ownership

Stripe
→ checkout
→ subscriptions
→ refunds/chargebacks

Stripe Connect
→ instructor onboarding
→ instructor bank information
→ revenue allocation
→ instructor balances
→ automatic payouts
→ tax/reporting support

Accounting system
→ reconciliation
→ expenses
→ financial reporting

That gives you a clean separation: the LMS decides who gets access; the payment system decides who gets paid.

If you tell me roughly (a) number of instructors, (b) number of students, (c) whether courses are one-time or subscription, and (d) your revenue split rules, I can narrow this down to 2–3 specific software stacks and their approximate monthly costs.

For an online school with multiple instructors + course access + revenue sharing, I’d narrow it to three approaches:

My recommendation

1. Best overall: Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Thinkific is a strong fit if you want a relatively turnkey school.

Thinkific has built-in Revenue Partners, where you can assign an instructor/contributor a percentage of sales for particular courses, communities, or bundles and track the amount owed. Thinkific Support Thinkific Support

The catch: Thinkific tracks the revenue split but doesn't automatically make the partner payment; payouts to Revenue Partners are handled outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support

If automated instructor payouts are important, I'd pair the learning platform with stripe.com. Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms that need to split payments, route funds to multiple parties, onboard/verify recipients, and control payout schedules. Stripe Stripe

This gives you roughly:

Student → Thinkific checkout → Stripe → School's share + Instructor's share → automatic payout

2. Simplest: Teachable

Teachable is worth considering if you want fewer systems to administer.

It has roles for owners, authors, custom users, students, and affiliates, so you can control who has access to what. Teachable Help Center

Its current payment system, Teachable Payments, is built on Stripe and handles payment processing, payouts, tax, fraud protection, and student subscriptions. Teachable Help Center

However, if your business model involves complex instructor-specific revenue splits, I'd be more comfortable with Thinkific + a dedicated payout layer rather than trying to force everything through the LMS.

3. Best for a custom/large school: Your own platform + Stripe Connect

If you're building something closer to a marketplace for instructors rather than simply a school, I'd seriously consider:

• LMS: custom application, or a headless LMS
• Authentication/access: your application + Stripe/customer records
• Payments: Stripe
• Instructor accounts: Stripe Connect
• Revenue splits: Stripe Connect
• Accounting/reporting: accounting system + your own revenue ledger

Stripe Connect lets you define how money gets routed and supports daily, weekly, monthly, or manual payouts. It also handles onboarding and identity/KYC requirements for connected accounts. Stripe Stripe

That architecture is much better if you eventually have 50–500+ instructors, different commission percentages, refunds, subscriptions, coupons, bundles, affiliate commissions, etc.

What I'd choose based on your situation

The key distinction is "revenue sharing" vs. "payroll." If an instructor gets, say, 40% of the net revenue from courses they teach, Stripe Connect is a much better conceptual fit than payroll software: the instructor becomes a connected payee and the platform controls how the transaction is split.

Stripe specifically supports platform models where the platform takes its fee and transfers the remainder to sellers/providers, including splitting one charge among multiple parties. Stripe

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you have, whether students pay monthly or one-time, and an example like "Instructor gets 40%, school gets 60%," I can recommend the exact stack and payment flow—including what happens with refunds, coupons, taxes, and instructor access.

Teachable is worth considering if you want fewer systems to administer.

It has roles for owners, authors, custom users, students, and affiliates, so you can control who has access to what. support.teachable.com

Its current payment system, Teachable Payments, is built on Stripe and handles payment processing, payouts, tax, fraud protection, and student subscriptions. support.teachable.com

However, if your business model involves complex instructor-specific revenue splits, I'd be more comfortable with Thinkific + a dedicated payout layer rather than trying to force everything through the LMS.

3. Best for a custom/large school: Your own platform + Stripe Connect

If you're building something closer to a marketplace for instructors rather than simply a school, I'd seriously consider:

For an online school with multiple instructors, student access control, and revenue-sharing, I’d avoid trying to make one platform do everything. The cleanest setup is usually:

My recommendation: Thinkific + Stripe Connect

• Thinkific — manage courses, students, enrollments, instructor permissions, communities, and course access.
• Stripe Connect — handle instructor onboarding, revenue splits, and automated payouts.
• Accounting software such as QuickBooks or Xero — keep the school's books and reconcile payouts.

Thinkific has a Revenue Partners feature that can calculate/track an instructor's percentage of course sales, but importantly, Thinkific says those commissions are paid manually outside the platform. Thinkific Support Thinkific Support

Stripe Connect is much stronger for the actual money movement: it can onboard instructors as connected accounts, split payments, route funds to multiple parties, schedule payouts, and handle things such as identity verification and U.S. 1099 reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe

So I'd structure it like:

Student → Thinkific checkout → Stripe → split → School + Instructor → instructor's bank account

For example, on a $1,000 course:

• School: 60% = $600
• Instructor: 40% = $400
• Stripe/payment costs handled according to your configuration
• Instructor gets paid automatically according to your payout schedule

Stripe explicitly supports splitting a single payment among multiple connected accounts, which is particularly useful if a course has two or more instructors. Stripe Stripe Docs

Other options

LearnWorlds is worth considering because it has instructor roles and automatically calculates instructor revenue/commissions, but its documentation says payouts are handled outside the platform. LearnWorlds Help Center

Kajabi is excellent if the school is essentially owned/operated by one organization, but its current educator offering emphasizes that Kajabi itself doesn't take revenue share rather than providing a sophisticated multi-instructor payout system. kajabi.com

What I'd choose

If you're building a real multi-instructor school/academy, I'd choose:

Thinkific + Stripe Connect + QuickBooks/Xero

The important distinction is that Thinkific should own "who gets access to what," while Stripe Connect should own "who gets paid what."

If you tell me roughly (1) number of instructors, (2) whether instructors create their own courses, (3) whether revenue splits are per-course or school-wide, and (4) whether students pay subscriptions, one-time fees, or both, I can recommend the exact architecture and software stack—including the cheapest option.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d separate the problem into two layers:

1. Course/LMS software — controls student access, courses, memberships, instructor permissions, etc.
2. Payments/revenue-sharing software — calculates and actually pays instructors.

My top recommendation: LMS + Stripe Connect

If you expect this to become a serious multi-instructor business, I’d build around:

LMS: Thinkific, LearnWorlds, or a similar course platform
Payments/payouts: stripe.com

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms that collect money from customers and distribute portions to multiple sellers/service providers. It supports connected instructor accounts, payment splitting, scheduled payouts, onboarding/KYC, refunds, and payout reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

For example:

Student pays $500 → school keeps 40% → Instructor A gets 50% → Instructor B gets 10%

You can automate that allocation rather than having someone calculate instructor commissions in a spreadsheet every month.

Stripe also lets you control whether instructors are paid daily, weekly, monthly, or manually. Stripe Docs Stripe

Where Thinkific fits

Thinkific is attractive if you want something relatively turnkey for the learning/access side.

However, there's an important limitation: Thinkific's built-in revenue-partner functionality tracks revenue sharing but doesn't automatically pay the partners; payments to revenue partners are handled manually outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support

So I'd consider:

If you want the simplest possible setup

If you have 5–20 instructors and don't need complicated automated splits, you could start with:

Thinkific + Stripe + accounting software + monthly instructor payout report

You'd calculate each instructor's share monthly and pay them manually. Thinkific explicitly supports this type of revenue-allocation workflow. Thinkific Support

If you're building a platform with dozens/hundreds of instructors

I'd go further:

Custom website/app + LMS or headless learning system + Stripe Connect

That's particularly compelling if instructors will be independent businesses rather than employees. Stripe Connect gives each instructor a connected account and handles much of the onboarding/payment infrastructure, while your system determines how each transaction is split. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

One important architectural question is who is the merchant of record. Stripe's marketplace model assumes the platform processes the customer's payment and then distributes funds to instructors; that also means the platform takes on certain responsibilities for refunds, disputes, and negative balances. Stripe Docs

My default choice: if you're starting today, I'd use Thinkific + Stripe Connect, but I'd only choose that after confirming exactly how complex your revenue rules are.

If you tell me (a) number of instructors, (b) whether courses are one-time purchases or subscriptions, (c) whether one purchase can involve multiple instructors, and (d) whether instructors are employees or independent contractors, I can recommend a specific stack and show you exactly how the money/access flow should work.

For an online school with multiple instructors, course access control, and revenue-sharing, I’d avoid trying to make one all-in-one tool do everything. The best setup is usually:

My recommended stack

• Learning platform: Thinkific or Kajabi

• Courses, memberships, student accounts, access rules, progress tracking, etc.
• Thinkific is particularly well suited if the school—not individual instructors—is the primary business.
• Payments & instructor payouts: Stripe Stripe Connect

• This is the piece I'd pay particular attention to.
• Connect is designed for platforms that collect money from customers and then distribute funds to multiple instructors/service providers. It supports onboarding and verification, payment splitting, payout schedules, refunds/chargebacks, and tax reporting. Stripe Stripe
• You can, for example, take a $1,000 course sale and automatically route 70% to the instructor and 30% to the school—or split a transaction among multiple instructors. Stripe
• Accounting: QuickBooks or Xero

• Keep the accounting system separate from the LMS.
• Reconcile Stripe revenue, instructor expenses/payouts, refunds, taxes, etc.

The architecture I'd use

Student → LMS/checkout → Stripe → revenue allocation → instructor Stripe accounts → payouts

For example:

Student buys Course A for $500
→ School receives payment
→ Stripe records $500 transaction
→ Instructor A gets 60% ($300)
→ School retains 40% ($200)
→ Stripe pays Instructor A according to your schedule

You can also have more complicated rules:

Course revenue − refunds − payment fees = distributable revenue
→ Instructor 1: 40%
→ Instructor 2: 20%
→ School: 40%

Stripe Connect supports configurable routing and payout timing, including daily, weekly, monthly, or manual payouts. Stripe Stripe

One important distinction

If you own all the courses and instructors are essentially contractors, I'd probably use:

Thinkific/Kajabi + Stripe + accounting/payroll

and calculate instructor compensation internally.

If instead instructors are independent sellers on your platform, where each instructor has their own catalog and earns a contractual percentage of sales, I'd strongly favor:

Thinkific (or a custom LMS) + Stripe Connect

because Connect is specifically built around connected sellers/service providers, including onboarding, KYC, payouts and 1099 support. Stripe Stripe

What I'd choose

For a small-to-medium school launching now:
Thinkific + Stripe Connect + QuickBooks

For a large school with complicated instructor contracts, bundles, subscriptions, multiple instructors per course, and sophisticated revenue rules:
Custom LMS/access layer + Stripe Connect + QuickBooks/Xero.

The latter gives you much more control over rules such as "Instructor gets 50% of net course revenue, but 30% on subscription revenue, with a different split for sales generated by another instructor."

If you tell me roughly how many instructors/students you expect and how your revenue split works (e.g. 70/30 per course, multiple instructors per course, subscriptions, memberships), I can recommend the exact software stack and workflow.

For an online school with multiple instructors + student access control + revenue sharing, I’d avoid trying to make one generic LMS do everything. The cleanest setup is usually:

My top recommendation: LMS + Stripe Connect

Use:

• LMS: Thinkific or Kajabi
• Payments/payouts: stripe.com
• Accounting: QuickBooks or Xero
• Automation: Zapier/Make if the LMS doesn't have the integrations you need

The important distinction is that Stripe Connect should handle the instructor money, rather than trying to manually calculate and pay instructors from the LMS.

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms where money needs to move between a customer, the platform, and multiple sellers/service providers. It supports connected-account onboarding, payment splitting, payout scheduling, refunds/chargebacks, and tax reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

For example, if a student pays $1,000 for a course:

Student → $1,000 → Your school
→ $700 instructor
→ $300 school

You can make the split automatically rather than keeping an instructor spreadsheet and sending payments manually. Stripe also lets you control whether payouts happen daily, weekly, monthly, or manually. Stripe Docs Stripe

Which LMS I'd choose

The biggest question is how your instructor revenue sharing works.

If it's simply:

• Instructor A owns Course A → gets 60%
• Instructor B owns Course B → gets 50%
• School keeps the remainder

that's relatively straightforward.

If it's more complicated:

• Multiple instructors teach one course
• Different percentages by course
• Instructor gets paid based on actual enrollments/watch time
• Affiliates also get a percentage
• Refunds need to reverse instructor commissions
• Subscriptions need to allocate revenue across several instructors
• You want instructor dashboards showing earnings

then I'd strongly favor Stripe Connect + a custom revenue ledger, rather than relying entirely on an LMS's built-in instructor functionality.

Stripe Connect supports splitting funds between multiple parties and gives you considerable control over routing and payout timing. Stripe Docs Stripe

One important business/legal consideration

Decide whether your school or the instructor is the merchant of record. Stripe's architecture differs depending on this. In a marketplace model, your platform generally controls the payment flow and assumes additional responsibilities; in a SaaS/direct-payment model, the instructor can be the merchant of record. Stripe Docs

That decision can affect taxes, refunds, chargebacks, instructor agreements, and accounting, so I'd settle it before choosing the architecture.

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect (e.g. 10 vs. 500), whether instructors create their own courses, and an example of your revenue split, I can recommend a specific stack and workflow—including exactly how enrollment, access, commissions, refunds, and payouts should work.

Stripe Connect supports splitting funds between multiple parties and gives you considerable control over routing and payout timing.

One important business/legal consideration

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d separate the problem into two systems:

1. Learning platform — controls student access, courses, memberships, instructor permissions.
2. Payment/payout system — calculates and actually distributes instructor revenue.

My top recommendation: Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Thinkific is a strong fit if you want a conventional online-school experience. Thinkific has a built-in Revenue Partners feature that can track the percentage owed to co-instructors/contributors for specific courses, communities, and bundles. However, Thinkific explicitly says those revenue-partner payments are made manually outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support Thinkific Support

For the actual money movement, Stripe Stripe Connect is the piece I'd consider if you want automated payouts. Connect is designed specifically for platforms with multiple sellers/service providers and can split payments, route funds, onboard instructors, handle verification, and pay connected accounts. Stripe Stripe Docs

A typical setup would look like:

Student → School checkout → Stripe → School's share + Instructor's share → Instructor bank account

For example, a $500 course sale could be configured as:

• $300 → instructor
• $200 → school
• Stripe/payment costs handled according to your chosen Connect structure
• Instructor gets paid weekly/monthly or according to your payout rules

Stripe supports splitting a single payment between multiple parties, including more complex cases where one purchase involves multiple instructors. Stripe Stripe Docs

What I'd choose by school size

The important distinction is that Thinkific's Revenue Partners feature isn't the same thing as automated payouts. It's primarily revenue allocation/tracking; the actual partner payments are outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support Thinkific Support

One architecture I'd seriously consider

If you're building the school from scratch, I'd use:

Thinkific

• Courses
• Student accounts
• Course access
• Communities
• Instructor/admin permissions
• Enrollment history

Stripe Connect

• Student payments
• Instructor onboarding
• Revenue splits
• Instructor bank accounts
• Automated payouts
• Refund/chargeback handling
• Tax reporting/1099 support

QuickBooks/Xero

• Accounting
• Expense tracking
• Financial reconciliation

Stripe Connect also supports payout scheduling, global payouts, tax reporting and 1099 workflows, which becomes valuable once you have a meaningful instructor network. Stripe

stripe.com

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect (e.g. 5, 25, 100+) and whether they get a fixed % of each course sale or different splits by course, I can recommend the exact software stack and payout architecture.

For an online school with multiple instructors, course-level access, and revenue sharing, I’d separate the problem into two systems:

1. Learning/access management — who can see which courses, lessons, communities, etc.
2. Money management — calculating each instructor’s share and actually paying them.

My recommendation

Best overall setup: Thinkific + Stripe Connect, with a small payout/accounting layer if needed.

• thinkific.com — use it for courses, student accounts, enrollment/access, instructor/course administration, and reporting.
• stripe.com — use it for instructor onboarding, connected accounts, revenue splits, and payouts.

The important caveat is that Thinkific's built-in Revenue Partners functionality tracks revenue sharing but does not automatically pay the partners; Thinkific says those payments are made manually outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support

Stripe Connect is much better suited to the actual marketplace-style money flow. It can onboard instructors as connected accounts, route/split payments, control payout timing, and handle things like verification and tax reporting. Stripe Stripe

What I'd build

For example, suppose a student buys a $500 course:

Your system records the $500 transaction, determines the contractual split, and Stripe Connect sends the appropriate amounts to the instructors.

That becomes particularly valuable if you have arrangements like:

• Instructor gets 60% of sales of their course
• School gets 40%
• Two instructors co-teach a course 30%/30%
• Instructor receives 50% after refunds/discounts
• Different instructors have different percentages
• Instructor gets paid monthly rather than immediately

Stripe Connect explicitly supports splitting a payment among multiple recipients and controlling payout timing. Stripe Stripe

When I'd choose something different

If you're small and want no custom development:
Thinkific alone may be enough initially. Track revenue shares in Thinkific and pay instructors manually each month. That's much simpler operationally, although it becomes painful as instructor count and transaction volume grow.

If the school is really becoming a marketplace:
I'd strongly favor Stripe Connect + a custom/admin layer. For example:

Website → Course platform → Stripe Connect → Instructor bank accounts

Then you can have your own admin dashboard showing:

• Instructor
• Courses taught
• Students
• Gross sales
• Discounts
• Refunds
• Net revenue
• Revenue-share percentage
• Amount owed
• Amount paid
• Payment date
• Outstanding balance

If instructors need sophisticated business operations beyond teaching: I'd also consider a dedicated LMS plus accounting/payroll software rather than forcing the LMS to be the financial system.

One important architectural decision

I would not make the LMS responsible for actually moving instructor money.

Thinkific itself acknowledges that its Revenue Partners feature is primarily for tracking revenue allocation, with payments made separately. Thinkific Support

Instead:

LMS = access + learning + sales data

Stripe Connect = instructor identity + payment routing + payouts

Accounting system = books + reconciliation + tax records

That separation will save you a lot of headaches once you have dozens or hundreds of instructors.

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect, whether each instructor owns their own courses, and whether the revenue split is per-course or per-sale, I can recommend a specific stack (including lower-cost options) and show you exactly how I'd structure the payouts.

For an online school with multiple instructors, paid courses, student access, and revenue-sharing, I’d avoid stitching together a normal LMS + PayPal + spreadsheets. You want the system to understand who owns each course, who gets what percentage, and when they get paid.

My recommendation

Best overall: LMS + Stripe Connect

Use an LMS/course platform for student access and course delivery, and Stripe Connect for instructor onboarding and payouts.

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms that collect money and distribute it to multiple sellers/service providers. It can split payments, maintain connected instructor accounts, control payout schedules, and handle onboarding/KYC and tax reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

A typical setup would be:

Student → School checkout → Stripe → School + Instructor(s)

For example, a $500 course:

• School: 30% = $150
• Instructor: 70% = $350
• Stripe/payment costs handled according to your configuration
• Instructor gets paid automatically on your chosen schedule

Stripe also supports multiple recipients from a single payment, which becomes important if a course has a primary instructor plus a co-instructor or affiliate. Stripe

What I'd use for each piece

stripe.com is particularly attractive if revenue sharing is a core part of the business rather than an occasional manual payment. Stripe provides payout scheduling, connected-account dashboards, reporting, and US 1099 support. Stripe Stripe

One important distinction

If you're saying:

"We sell our school's courses, and then periodically calculate what each instructor earned."

I'd probably build the system around Stripe Connect + an LMS.

If instead you're saying:

"Each instructor is effectively an independent seller, and our school takes a commission."

Then I'd structure it more like a marketplace, with instructors as Stripe connected accounts. Stripe explicitly supports this model and lets the platform control the flow of funds and its commission. Stripe Docs

When I'd choose an all-in-one platform

If you have only a handful of instructors and don't need sophisticated revenue rules, an all-in-one LMS can be simpler.

But I'd be cautious if your requirements include things like:

• Instructor A gets 60% of Course A
• Instructor B gets 40%
• Instructor A gets 70% of Course B
• School keeps 100% of enrollment fees
• Refunds reduce the instructor's earnings
• Affiliates get another 10%
• Different instructors have different payout schedules
• One student can purchase a bundle containing courses from several instructors

That's where a dedicated revenue/payout layer becomes much more valuable.

The architecture I'd favor

Thinkific/Teachable → Stripe → Stripe Connect → instructors

with a small revenue ledger in the middle that records:

Order → Course → Instructor → Gross revenue → Fees → Refunds → Revenue-share percentage → Instructor balance → Payout

That gives you an auditable record instead of trying to reconstruct instructor earnings from payment transactions later.

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect, whether instructors create/own their own courses, and whether you want subscriptions or one-time course purchases, I can recommend the specific stack (e.g. Thinkific vs Teachable vs Kajabi vs a custom setup) and show you how the money should flow.

Then I'd structure it more like a marketplace, with instructors as Stripe connected accounts. Stripe explicitly supports this model and lets the platform control the flow of funds and its commission.

When I'd choose an all-in-one platform

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d separate the problem into two systems:

1. Course/LMS platform — controls who can access which courses.
2. Payments/payouts system — calculates and pays instructors their share.

My top recommendation: Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Thinkific is a strong fit for the learning side, while Stripe Connect is particularly well suited to the instructor-payment side.

Stripe Connect is designed for platforms with multiple recipients: it can onboard instructors, verify them, split payments, route funds, control payout timing, and handle tax reporting such as U.S. 1099s. Stripe Stripe

A typical setup would look like:

Student → School checkout → Stripe → School's share + Instructor's share → Instructor bank account

For example, if a $500 course sale is 60/40:

• $500 collected
• $300 allocated to the school
• $200 allocated to the instructor
• Stripe handles the instructor's payout
• Your system records the transaction and revenue-share calculation

Stripe specifically supports splitting a payment among multiple sellers/recipients. Stripe

When I'd choose something else

The important distinction is that I wouldn't rely on the LMS alone for complicated revenue sharing. Once you have things like:

• different percentages by instructor
• co-teaching
• refunds
• coupons
• subscriptions
• affiliate commissions
• payment-plan revenue
• instructor-specific expenses
• monthly payout statements

you want a proper payment/ledger layer underneath.

Stripe Connect also lets you control payout timing—daily, weekly, monthly, or manually—and provides connected-account dashboards and reporting. Stripe Stripe

If you're building the school from scratch

I'd architect it roughly as:

LMS
→ students, courses, lessons, access

Stripe
→ checkout, subscriptions, refunds

Stripe Connect
→ instructor accounts, KYC, revenue splits, payouts

Your database
→ student → enrollment → course → instructor → revenue-share rule → transaction → payout

That last piece is important: don't make Stripe your source of truth for the school's commission logic. Keep a transaction/commission ledger so you can explain exactly why an instructor received $1,247.83.

If you tell me (a) how many instructors you expect, (b) whether students buy individual courses or subscriptions, and (c) whether one course can have multiple instructors, I can recommend the specific stack and architecture I'd use—including the lowest-maintenance option versus the most scalable option.

For an online school with multiple instructors + percentage-based revenue sharing, I’d separate the problem into two layers:

1. Course/LMS platform — controls who can access what.
2. Payments/payout system — calculates and sends each instructor their share.

My top choices

🥇 Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Thinkific is a strong choice if you want a conventional online-school experience.

Thinkific has a Revenue Partners feature that can track the percentage owed to co-instructors/contributors, but importantly, Thinkific itself does not automatically make those revenue-share payments; payments are handled manually outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support Thinkific Support

For a school where you want payouts to be automated, I'd pair the LMS with Stripe Stripe Connect. Connect is specifically designed for platforms that collect money and distribute portions to multiple sellers/service providers. It supports connected instructor accounts, verification/onboarding, split funds, scheduled payouts, refunds/chargebacks, and tax reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

That gives you a structure like:

Student buys $500 course

→ Stripe collects $500
→ School retains, say, 40%
→ Instructor receives 60%
→ Stripe Connect handles the instructor's payout
→ Thinkific controls course enrollment/access

You can also choose weekly/monthly payout schedules or manually trigger payouts. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

🥈 Teachable

Teachable is worth considering if your priority is simplicity rather than sophisticated revenue sharing.

Teachable Payments is built on Stripe infrastructure and handles payment processing, payouts, tax, fraud protection, and student subscriptions inside the admin interface. Teachable Help Center

The catch is that once you have a model like:

• Instructor A: 50%
• Instructor B: 20%
• School: 30%
• Different percentages for different courses
• Bonuses after certain enrollment thresholds
• Refunds deducted proportionally
• Affiliate commissions

…I'd rather have a dedicated payout layer such as Stripe Connect than force the LMS to be your accounting system.

What I'd build for your situation

If you're serious about having multiple instructors, I'd use:

Thinkific → Stripe → Stripe Connect → instructor bank accounts

And maintain a simple internal "royalty ledger" containing:

• Student/order
• Course
• Instructor(s)
• Gross sale
• Discounts
• Refunds
• Payment processing fees
• School's percentage
• Each instructor's percentage
• Amount currently owed
• Amount already paid
• Payout date

That becomes much easier to audit than trying to derive instructor payments from LMS reports.

Stripe Connect also has built-in support for connected-account onboarding, payout management and US 1099 reporting, which becomes increasingly important as the number of instructors grows. Stripe Stripe

One important distinction

If you mean "multiple instructors teaching courses on our school", I'd choose Thinkific + Stripe Connect.

If you mean "we are essentially an Udemy-like marketplace where instructors own their businesses and we take a platform commission", I'd lean toward a custom LMS/marketplace + Stripe Connect from the beginning. Stripe Connect is explicitly designed for marketplace-style collection and distribution of funds. Stripe Docs

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect, whether they create their own courses, and an example revenue split (e.g. 70/30), I can recommend the exact stack and show you how the money/access flow should work.

For a multi-instructor online school, you usually need two systems working together:

1. Learning management system (LMS) — controls student access, courses, instructor permissions, content, analytics.
2. Payments + revenue-sharing system — calculates instructor shares, handles tax/payment onboarding, and pays instructors.

The best choice depends on whether you are building a school with hired instructors or a marketplace where instructors own courses and earn splits.

Best all-around setups

Option 1: Thinkific Plus + Stripe Connect (best for a branded academy)

Thinkific is a strong fit if you own the school brand and have multiple instructors contributing courses. Its Revenue Partners feature can track commissions owed to contributors on courses, communities, and bundles. Thinkific Support

Good for:

• 5–50 instructors
• Your brand owns the customer relationship
• Revenue splits like: - Instructor: 50%
• School: 50%
• Guest expert: 20%

Stack:

• LMS: Thinkific
• Payments: stripe.com
• Payout automation: Stripe Connect
• Accounting: quickbooks.intuit.com or xero.com

Option 2: Teachable (simplest for instructor revenue sharing)

Teachable is designed around creator-led courses and has author/instructor management features that allow assigning products to authors and sharing revenue. CourseStack Review

Good for:

• A smaller instructor roster
• Each instructor has their own courses
• You want less technical setup

Stack:

• LMS + checkout: Teachable
• Payouts/accounting: Stripe + accounting software

Option 3: Kajabi (best if marketing is the priority)

Kajabi is excellent for:

• memberships
• email marketing
• funnels
• communities

But revenue sharing is usually more manual, so it is less ideal if you have many instructors with complex splits. CourseStack Review

Option 4: WordPress + LearnDash + WooCommerce + Stripe Connect (most customizable)

If you want maximum control:

• LMS: LearnDash
• Website: WordPress
• Commerce: WooCommerce
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Marketplace/revenue split plugin

This is better if you need:

• custom instructor dashboards
• unusual payout rules
• licensing
• memberships
• certifications

The downside is more maintenance.

If instructors are true partners (like an Udemy-style marketplace)

Use a marketplace architecture:

• LMS: LearnWorlds, Thinkific, Teachable, or custom LMS
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Payout engine: Stripe Connect Express accounts
• Contracts: DocuSign / PandaDoc
• Accounting: QuickBooks/Xero

Your workflow:

1. Student buys course.
2. Payment goes through Stripe.
3. Platform keeps its percentage.
4. Instructor automatically receives their share.
5. Refunds, taxes, and chargebacks are tracked.

My recommendation by school size

For most multi-instructor schools, I would start with Thinkific + Stripe Connect + accounting software. It gives you professional access control without building a marketplace from scratch. Thinkific Support

A few details would change the recommendation:

• Are instructors employees, contractors, or partners who own their courses?
• Are you selling one-time courses, subscriptions/memberships, or both?
• Roughly how many instructors and students do you expect in year one?

A few details would change the recommendation:

For an online school with multiple instructors, paid courses, and revenue-sharing, I’d separate the problem into two systems:

1. Learning/access management — who can access which course, community, recordings, etc.
2. Money management — calculating each instructor’s share and actually paying them.

My top recommendation: Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Thinkific is a strong fit if you want a relatively turnkey school platform. It handles courses, student accounts, access, bundles, communities, and instructor/course administration.

Thinkific has a Revenue Partners feature that can track the percentage owed to co-instructors/contributors for courses, communities, and bundles. However, Thinkific explicitly says those revenue-share payments are made manually outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support Thinkific Support

For the actual money movement, I'd use stripe.com. It's specifically designed for platforms that collect money and distribute it among multiple parties. It supports connected instructor accounts, split payments, payout schedules, reporting, KYC/identity verification, and tax reporting. Stripe Stripe

A typical flow would be:

Student pays $500 → Stripe → school keeps its share → instructor receives their contracted share → Thinkific controls course access.

For example:

The important caveat is that Thinkific + Stripe Connect isn't a completely native plug-and-play combination for arbitrary per-sale automated revenue splitting. Thinkific's own Revenue Partners feature tracks what is owed, while Connect is the infrastructure you'd use if you're building the automated payout layer. Thinkific Support Thinkific Support

If you want everything highly automated

If your business is closer to a marketplace of instructors than a traditional school, I'd consider building the payment layer around Stripe Connect from the beginning.

Connect can:

• onboard each instructor as a connected account
• verify their identity
• route portions of a sale to different instructors
• control payout timing
• handle refunds/chargebacks
• maintain transaction/payout records
• support international payouts
• generate U.S. 1099s in supported setups Stripe Stripe

That's much more scalable than having an accountant calculate everyone's commissions in a spreadsheet every month.

Other platforms I'd consider

• Thinkific — my choice for a conventional online school with multiple instructors.
• Kajabi — excellent for marketing, memberships, funnels, and creator businesses, but I'd be more cautious if sophisticated multi-party revenue sharing is a core requirement.
• Teachable — good for straightforward course selling, but I'd choose Thinkific if instructor collaboration/revenue allocation is central.
• Custom platform + Stripe Connect — best if you expect dozens/hundreds of instructors and want marketplace-style economics and automated payouts.

What I'd build for your use case

If I were designing it today, I'd use:

Thinkific → courses, students, permissions, content
Stripe → student payments
Stripe Connect → instructor onboarding + payouts
QuickBooks/Xero → accounting
A small commission database/workflow → contracts, percentages, refunds, scholarships, affiliate deductions, etc.

The key is to define the revenue-sharing formula before choosing the software. For example:

Instructor receives 60% of net course revenue after refunds and payment processing, school receives 40%.

That's substantially different from:

Instructor receives 60% of the gross sale price.

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you have, whether each instructor owns specific courses, and whether you want payouts automatically after every sale or monthly, I can recommend the exact software stack and architecture I'd use.

Yes. For an online school with multiple instructors, student access control, and revenue-sharing, I’d separate the problem into two systems:

1. Learning platform → courses, students, instructor permissions, access.
2. Payment/revenue system → calculate each instructor’s share and actually pay them.

My recommendation

Best overall architecture: Thinkific + Stripe Connect + accounting/payroll layer.

thinkific.com is a good fit for the school side: courses, student enrollment, access, and instructor/course management. Thinkific does have a Revenue Partners feature for tracking revenue splits, but importantly, it does not automatically pay the revenue partners; payments are made manually outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support

For the payout side, stripe.com is much more compelling if instructors are effectively independent recipients. Connect is specifically designed for platforms that collect money from customers and distribute portions to multiple sellers/service providers. It supports connected-account onboarding, identity verification, split payments, scheduled payouts, and tax reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

A typical setup would look like:

Student
   ↓
School website / Thinkific
   ↓
Payment
   ↓
Stripe
   ├── School's share
   └── Instructor's share
          ↓
       Instructor's bank

You could define rules such as:

• Instructor A: 60% of course revenue
• School: 40%
• Instructor B: 70% of private-session revenue
• Guest instructor: 50% after refunds/fees
• Monthly minimum payout: $100
• Refunds deducted from the instructor's future balance

Stripe Connect can control payout timing—including daily, weekly, monthly, or manual payouts—and supports routing/splitting funds between parties. Stripe Docs Stripe

When I'd choose something different

The important distinction is whether instructors are employees, contractors, or independent sellers/providers. If they're independent recipients, Stripe Connect is particularly attractive because onboarding and verification are built into the platform model. Stripe Docs

One thing I would not do

I wouldn't rely on a spreadsheet as the source of truth for revenue sharing once you have meaningful volume.

Instead, maintain a transaction-level revenue ledger:

Student purchase
      ↓
Gross sale
      ↓
- refunds
- payment fees
- discounts
      ↓
Net distributable revenue
      ↓
Revenue-share rule
      ↓
Instructor balance
      ↓
Payout

That makes it much easier to answer questions like “Why did Professor Smith receive $1,247.38 this month?” and to handle refunds, coupons, multiple instructors on one course, and changing commission agreements.

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect (e.g. 5, 50, or 500), whether they are employees or contractors, and whether they each teach their own courses or collaborate on the same courses, I can recommend a specific stack and pricing tier.

For an online school with multiple instructors, different courses, and revenue-sharing, I’d avoid trying to make the LMS itself handle all the financial logic. The cleanest setup is usually:

My recommended stack

1. LMS / course platform: Thinkific, LearnWorlds, or Kajabi
Use this for:

• Student accounts and course access
• Instructor/course management
• Video, lessons, quizzes, certificates
• Subscriptions and memberships
• Student progress

2. Payments + instructor payouts: stripe.com
This is the important piece for your business model. Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms where money needs to move between multiple parties. It supports splitting a payment among multiple recipients, platform fees, scheduled payouts, onboarding/verification of instructors, and tax reporting such as U.S. 1099s. Stripe Stripe

For example:

Student pays $200 → Stripe → $120 Instructor A + $40 Instructor B + $40 School

You can also structure it as:

Student pays $200 → School receives payment → Stripe automatically allocates instructor shares → remaining amount belongs to school.

Stripe supports daily, weekly, monthly, or manual payout schedules. Stripe

If you want minimal custom development

I'd look at LearnWorlds + Stripe or Thinkific + Stripe, depending on how sophisticated your instructor/course model is.

If instructors are essentially partners who each own courses, the workflow could be:

One important distinction

If your revenue share is simple—e.g. "Instructor gets 50% of every sale of their course"—you can build this relatively easily.

If it's more like:

• Instructor A gets 40%
• School gets 60%
• Guest instructor gets 10% of A's share
• Different percentages for subscriptions
• Revenue shared across bundles containing several courses
• Discounts affect the split
• Refunds reverse the appropriate commissions
• Monthly minimum guarantees
• Different contracts for different instructors

then I'd make Stripe Connect the financial backbone and put a dedicated commission/revenue-share layer between your LMS and Stripe. Stripe explicitly supports transfers to multiple connected accounts and provides reporting/reconciliation capabilities. Stripe

What I would choose

For a school that you expect to grow into a multi-instructor marketplace, my architecture would be:

LearnWorlds/Thinkific → Stripe Connect → QuickBooks/Xero

rather than relying on an LMS's native instructor-payment functionality.

If you tell me (1) how many instructors you expect, (2) whether instructors create/own their own courses, (3) whether students buy individual courses or memberships, and (4) an example of how you'd split a $100 sale, I can recommend the specific platform and map out exactly how the money and access should flow.

One important distinction

If your revenue share is simple—e.g. "Instructor gets 50% of every sale of their course"—you can build this relatively easily.

If it's more like:

For a multi-instructor online school, the right stack depends mostly on how complex your revenue-sharing model is. You usually need four systems working together:

1. Learning management system (LMS) — courses, lessons, student access, progress
2. Membership/access control — who can see what, subscriptions, cohorts
3. Payments + revenue splitting — collect money and automatically pay instructors
4. Instructor/admin reporting — earnings, enrollments, refunds, taxes

Here are the strongest options by business model:

Option 1: All-in-one course marketplace (fastest setup)

Kajabi

Best for: a premium online school with a small-to-medium instructor team.

Pros

• Excellent course hosting
• Memberships and subscriptions
• Strong marketing automation
• Good student experience
• Less technical maintenance

Cons

• Revenue sharing is not its strongest feature; you may still need a payout workflow.

Good if:

• You have 5–20 instructors
• You control the brand
• You pay instructors monthly based on contracts rather than automatic per-sale splits

Teachable

Best for: creator schools with multiple instructors.

Pros

• Built for selling courses
• Handles student accounts and payments
• Easier than building your own platform

Cons

• Multi-instructor royalty logic can become limiting if you need complicated splits.

Option 2: Build a true instructor marketplace

Mighty Networks + Stripe

Best for: community-driven schools.

Pros

• Strong communities
• Memberships
• Events/cohorts
• Instructor-led groups

Cons

• You may need custom payout logic.

WordPress + LMS plugins

Best for: maximum flexibility.

Typical stack:

• LMS: LearnDash or LifterLMS
• Commerce: WooCommerce
• Payments: Stripe
• Revenue sharing: plugins such as Masteriyo can add instructor commission logic. Themeisle Masteriyo

Pros

• You own the data
• Custom instructor permissions
• Flexible commission rules

Cons

• More maintenance

Option 3: Custom marketplace architecture (best for scale)

If you want something like "Udemy but for your niche," use:

• Frontend/LMS: custom app or headless LMS
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Identity/access: Auth0 or similar
• Database/reporting: your own analytics layer

Stripe Connect is commonly used for platforms that collect customer payments and then distribute funds to multiple sellers/providers.

This is best when you need:

• Different instructor percentages
• Co-instructors
• Affiliate commissions
• Subscription revenue pools
• Automatic tax forms
• International payouts

My recommendation by stage

If you have under ~20 instructors

Use:

Kajabi or Teachable + Stripe + monthly instructor payouts

Keep the payout rules simple:

• Instructor A gets 50% of course sales
• Instructor B gets 30%
• Platform keeps the rest

A spreadsheet + accounting system can manage this early.

If you have 20–100 instructors

Use:

WordPress + LearnDash/LifterLMS + WooCommerce + Stripe Connect

You’ll get:

• Instructor dashboards
• Course ownership
• Automated calculations
• More control

If you are building a marketplace

Use:

Custom platform + Stripe Connect

You’ll want this if:

• instructors join and leave frequently
• instructors set their own prices
• you have hundreds of creators
• revenue sharing is the core business model

A few design decisions to make before choosing software

1. What is being split?

• Individual course sales?
• Membership revenue?
• Cohort tuition?
• Live coaching fees?
• When do instructors get paid?

• Immediately?
• After refund period?
• Monthly?
• Who owns the student relationship?

• Your school?
• The instructor?
• Shared?
• Do instructors upload and manage their own courses?

• If yes, you need marketplace features.
• If no, a simpler LMS works.

A common mistake is choosing an LMS first and discovering later that it cannot handle payouts. For a revenue-sharing school, payments architecture is usually the deciding factor, not course hosting. Platforms like Udemy illustrate this model with instructor revenue reports and payout workflows built around instructor earnings. Udemy Support Udemy Support

If you tell me:

• number of instructors,
• expected students,
• whether courses are one-time purchase vs subscription,
• and whether instructors upload their own content,

I can recommend a specific stack.

For an online school with multiple instructors, student access control, and revenue sharing, I’d avoid trying to make the LMS itself handle all the money movement. A better architecture is:

LMS for courses/access + Stripe Connect for instructor payouts + accounting system for reconciliation.

My top choices

The important distinction is that Stripe Connect is designed specifically for platforms that collect money and distribute it among multiple parties. It supports connected instructor accounts, payment routing, split payments, payout schedules, and tax reporting such as 1099s in the U.S. Stripe Docs Stripe

stripe.com

What I'd build

For example, suppose a student pays $1,000 for a course:

• School: 30% = $300
• Instructor: 70% = $700
• Stripe/payment costs are handled according to your chosen Connect configuration.
• Student automatically gets access to the course.
• Instructor has their own payout account.
• Payouts happen weekly/monthly, rather than someone manually calculating them.
• Refunds and chargebacks can be incorporated into the accounting/revenue rules.

Stripe Connect supports both destination charges and more sophisticated separate-charge/transfer arrangements, including splitting a payment among multiple connected accounts. Stripe

One caveat with Thinkific

Thinkific itself can track revenue sharing, but its documentation says payments to revenue partners are made manually outside Thinkific. Its built-in checkout supports only one Stripe and one PayPal account per Thinkific account. Thinkific Support

So if you have, say, 5–50 instructors and need automated payouts, I'd consider Thinkific primarily the learning/access layer, not the financial layer.

If you're starting from scratch

I'd seriously consider:

Thinkific → student/course management
Stripe Connect → instructor onboarding + revenue splits + payouts
QuickBooks/Xero → accounting
Zapier/Make or a small custom integration → synchronization

The key is to define your revenue rules before choosing software. For example:

• Is the instructor paid based on gross sales or net revenue?
• Who absorbs Stripe fees?
• What happens when a student gets a refund?
• What happens when an instructor teaches a course with another instructor?
• Are subscriptions allocated monthly?
• Do instructors get paid immediately or after a refund window?
• Do you need U.S. 1099s?
• Can instructors sell their own courses independently?

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you have, whether courses are one-time purchases or subscriptions, and whether instructors are employees/contractors/independent businesses, I can recommend a specific stack and show you exactly how I'd structure the revenue-sharing workflow.

So if you have, say, 5–50 instructors and need automated payouts, I'd consider Thinkific primarily the learning/access layer, not the financial layer.

If you're starting from scratch

I'd seriously consider:

Thinkific → student/course management
Stripe Connect → instructor onboarding + revenue splits + payouts
QuickBooks/Xero → accounting
Zapier/Make or a small custom integration → synchronization

The key is to define your revenue rules before choosing software. For example:

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, you usually need two separate capabilities:

1. Learning management (student access, courses, permissions, progress)
2. Marketplace-style finance (track instructor ownership, calculate splits, pay instructors, handle tax records)

The best choice depends on whether you are building a school brand (you control everything) or a marketplace (instructors act like independent sellers).

Recommended setups

Option 1: Thinkific Plus + payout workflow (best for a branded academy)

Thinkific is a strong fit if you own the school brand and instructors contribute courses. It supports admin roles, course management, and enterprise-style permissions. Some plans include revenue-sharing capabilities. CourseStack Review

Typical stack:

• Thinkific Plus → courses, student accounts, instructor access
• stripe.com → automated instructor payouts
• Accounting software (e.g., QuickBooks/Xero) → reconciliation
• E-signature tool → instructor agreements

Good for:

• 5–50 instructors
• Your brand owns the customer relationship
• Fixed splits (example: instructor gets 40%, school keeps 60%)

Option 2: Teachable Business + BackOffice (simplest all-in-one)

Teachable is worth considering if you want built-in author/instructor management. Its author model allows assigning instructors to products and configuring revenue shares, and its BackOffice tools can help with payouts and tax-related workflows. CourseStack Review

Good for:

• Small-to-medium instructor teams
• Less technical operations
• You want fewer integrations

Tradeoff:

• Transaction-based payout services can become expensive at high volume. CourseStack Review

Option 3: WordPress + LMS + Stripe Connect (most flexible)

For a true “Udemy-style” marketplace:

Stack:

• WordPress
• LearnDash or LifterLMS
• WooCommerce
• Stripe Connect

You can create:

• instructor dashboards
• instructor storefronts
• custom commission rules
• subscription revenue pools
• automated payouts

This takes more setup but gives you ownership of the platform economics. Multi-instructor WordPress setups commonly use LMS + marketplace/payment extensions to calculate commissions and manage withdrawals. Themeisle

Option 4: Custom marketplace platform (for a large school)

If instructors are essentially partners/vendors, consider building around:

• LMS
• CRM
• payment split engine
• analytics warehouse

This makes sense when you have:

• 100+ instructors
• multiple revenue streams
• subscriptions
• affiliates
• corporate licensing

My suggested architecture for most growing online schools

Student experience

• Thinkific or LearnDash

Payments

• Stripe Checkout

Revenue splitting

• Stripe Connect

Instructor portal

• LMS instructor dashboard + reporting

Contracts

• DocuSign/Dropbox Sign

Accounting

• QuickBooks Online

Your core data model should track:

What I would choose by stage

• Under 10 instructors: Teachable Business or Thinkific + Stripe Connect
• 10–100 instructors: Thinkific Plus or LearnDash + Stripe Connect
• 100+ instructors / marketplace model: Custom stack

A key question is: are instructors employees/contractors teaching under your brand, or are they independent creators selling their own courses through your platform? That changes the ideal software choice quite a bit.

For a multi-instructor online school, you usually want two separate systems:

1. Learning management system (LMS) — controls student access, courses, instructors, memberships.
2. Revenue-share/payout system — calculates splits and pays instructors accurately.

The best choice depends on whether you have a few instructors or are building an academy.

Best overall setups

Option 1: Thinkific Plus + Stripe Connect (best for a true academy)

Thinkific is a strong fit when you have multiple instructors, branded courses, and need structured learner management. CourseStack Review

Use it for:

• Student accounts and course access
• Instructor/admin permissions
• Course ownership
• Memberships and bundles
• Certificates and reporting

Pair with:

• stripe.com for automated instructor payouts

Good if:

• You have 5–50 instructors
• Each instructor has different revenue splits
• You want your own brand (not a marketplace)

Typical workflow:

1. Student buys course → payment goes to your Stripe account
2. System tracks instructor attribution
3. Instructor receives their percentage automatically
4. You keep your platform share

Option 2: Teachable Business (simpler all-in-one)

Teachable is designed for creator-led schools and supports instructor/author models where contributors can be assigned to products and receive shares. CourseStack Review

Good if:

• You have fewer instructors
• You want less technical setup
• Your revenue splits are mostly course-by-course

Pros:

• Easier administration
• Built-in checkout
• Instructor dashboards

Cons:

• Less flexible for complex revenue waterfalls

Option 3: Kajabi + manual payout automation (best for premium brands)

Kajabi is excellent for marketing funnels, email, communities, and high-ticket programs, but revenue sharing often requires additional accounting or automation. CourseStack Review

Good if:

• Your courses sell for $500–$10,000+
• Marketing automation matters more than instructor accounting

Pair with:

• Stripe
• Zapier/Make
• Airtable
• QuickBooks

Option 4: WordPress + LearnDash + WooCommerce + Stripe (maximum control)

For a large school that wants ownership:

Stack:

• LearnDash — LMS
• WooCommerce — payments
• Stripe Connect — payouts
• AffiliateWP / SliceWP / custom logic — revenue tracking

Best when:

• You need custom rules: - Instructor A gets 40%
• Assistant instructor gets 10%
• Referral partner gets 15%
• School keeps remainder

Downside:

• More maintenance

What I would avoid

Marketplace platforms (unless you want discovery)

Platforms like Udemy are built around marketplace distribution rather than owning an academy. Their revenue-sharing model is different from running your own school. Udemy Support

You lose some control over:

• Branding
• Pricing
• Student relationship
• Instructor payout rules

My recommendation by school size

For most multi-instructor schools, I would start with Thinkific + Stripe Connect + an accounting layer (QuickBooks/Xero). It gives you clean student access control and avoids turning instructor payments into a monthly spreadsheet exercise. CourseStack Review

A few details would change the recommendation:

• How many instructors do you expect (5, 50, 500)?
• Are courses one-time purchases, subscriptions, or cohorts?
• Do instructors get paid by course sales, student usage, or a general revenue pool?

A few details would change the recommendation:

For an online school with multiple instructors, course-level access, and revenue sharing, I’d avoid trying to make one platform do everything. The best setup depends on whether you want no-code simplicity or full control over instructor payouts.

My top choices

1. Thinkific + Stripe — best for getting started quickly

Thinkific is probably the simplest fit if your school primarily sells courses.

It gives you:

• Student accounts and course access
• Multiple instructors/contributors
• Courses, bundles, communities, etc.
• A built-in Revenue Partners feature that tracks what each partner is owed. Thinkific Support
• Stripe/Thinkific Payments for collecting student payments

Important limitation: Thinkific's Revenue Partners feature tracks the revenue owed but does not automatically pay the instructors; payouts are handled manually outside Thinkific. Thinkific Support

So I'd use:

Thinkific → student access + course management
Stripe → payments
Accounting/payroll system → instructor payouts

This is my recommendation if you have, say, 5–30 instructors and don't need complicated automated splits.

thinkific.com

2. Custom LMS + Stripe Connect — best if revenue sharing is central

If your business model is more like:

Student pays $500 → school keeps 40% → Instructor A gets 40% → Instructor B gets 20%

then Stripe Connect is much more powerful.

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms that collect money and distribute it among multiple parties. It supports splitting a single payment among multiple connected accounts and controlling payout timing. Stripe Stripe Docs

You could build:

Your LMS
→ student authentication/access
→ courses/videos/content
→ instructor dashboard
→ enrollment tracking

Stripe Connect
→ collect payment
→ calculate revenue shares
→ maintain instructor accounts
→ automatically transfer payouts
→ handle onboarding/KYC and tax-related infrastructure

Stripe can even split one transaction between multiple instructors. Stripe Docs

This is the architecture I'd choose if you're building a serious marketplace/school where instructors are effectively independent sellers.

stripe.com

3. Kajabi — best if you're primarily a marketing/business operation

Kajabi is excellent for marketing, landing pages, email, memberships, funnels, and selling digital education.

But if your defining requirement is complex instructor-by-instructor revenue splitting, I'd favor a platform/payment architecture built around Stripe Connect rather than choosing Kajabi specifically for payouts.

kajabi.com

What I'd choose

One important distinction

There are really two different problems here:

Access management:
Who bought what → what courses can they access → when does access expire → which instructor can manage which course?

Money management:
Who generated the sale → what percentage does each instructor receive → how are refunds handled → when do instructors get paid → tax reporting?

I'd keep those systems conceptually separate.

For example:

LMS: "Jane bought Professor Smith's $300 course."
Revenue engine: "Smith gets 60%, School gets 40%."
Stripe Connect: "Send Smith's $180 share to her connected account."

Stripe explicitly supports platform fees, connected accounts, payouts, and multi-party payment splitting. Stripe Stripe

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect, whether students pay per-course or subscription, and whether instructors are employees or independent contractors, I can recommend a specific stack and architecture.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d avoid trying to make the LMS handle the entire financial workflow. The cleanest setup is usually:

My recommended stack

The key piece is Stripe Connect. It is explicitly built for platforms/marketplaces that collect money from customers and distribute portions to multiple sellers or service providers. It supports connected instructor accounts, onboarding/verification, payment splitting, scheduled payouts, refunds, and tax reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

stripe.com

How I'd structure it

Suppose a student pays $500 for Instructor A's course.

Your system records:

• Gross sale: $500
• School share: 30% = $150
• Instructor share: 70% = $350
• Stripe/payment costs: handled according to your chosen accounting/revenue-share rules
• Refund/chargeback: automatically attributed according to your agreement
• Instructor payout: weekly or monthly

Stripe Connect can route funds to connected instructor accounts and gives you control over payout timing. Stripe Stripe Docs

That is much better than paying instructors manually from a spreadsheet once a month.

One important caveat with Thinkific

Thinkific does have a Revenue Partners feature for tracking revenue sharing, but its own documentation says that payments to the partners are made manually outside Thinkific. It also only supports one PayPal and one Stripe account per Thinkific account for built-in checkout. Thinkific Support

So if your revenue-sharing model is going to be a core part of the business, I'd use Thinkific/Kajabi primarily for access and course management, while making Stripe Connect the financial backbone.

If you want the simplest possible setup

I'd choose:

Thinkific + Stripe Connect + QuickBooks Online

Students buy through your school → Thinkific controls access → your backend associates the sale with the instructor → Stripe Connect calculates/routes the instructor's share → QuickBooks records the transaction.

If you're building a larger school/marketplace where instructors can independently publish courses, I'd go one step further and build a lightweight custom "instructor/revenue" layer around Stripe Connect. Connect supports onboarding instructors, KYC/verification, split payments, payouts, reporting, and 1099 support, which makes it much more suitable for this model than ordinary Stripe payments. Stripe Stripe

If you tell me (1) roughly how many instructors, (2) whether they create their own courses, (3) whether revenue splits vary by course, and (4) whether students pay subscriptions or one-time fees, I can recommend the exact architecture and 2–3 software options at different budgets.

For a multi-instructor online school, you usually need three systems working together:

1. Learning management system (LMS) — controls student access, courses, memberships, progress
2. Payments + revenue split system — calculates instructor shares and pays people
3. Admin/accounting layer — handles reporting, taxes, refunds, disputes

The best choice depends on whether you are building a school (your brand, your instructors) or a marketplace (many independent instructors selling under your platform).

Option 1: Best all-around for a branded school

Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Good if:

• You own the student relationship
• Instructors teach under your brand
• You need revenue sharing but not a full marketplace

Strengths:

• Strong course hosting, memberships, communities
• Instructor/content partner revenue tracking (Thinkific has a Revenue Partners feature for splitting sales with contributors) support.thinkific.com
• Stripe Connect can automate payouts to instructors

Typical setup:

• Student pays $199
• Platform keeps 30%
• Instructor receives 70%
• Stripe Connect sends payouts automatically

Best for: 10–100 instructors

Option 2: Best for a true instructor marketplace

Moodle or WordPress LMS + marketplace plugins + Stripe Connect

Good if:

• Each instructor has their own profile
• Instructors create their own courses
• You need complex splits

Possible stack:

• LMS: Moodle / LearnDash / LifterLMS
• Commerce: WooCommerce
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Revenue rules: marketplace/revenue-share plugin

WordPress-based setups can support instructor commissions and automated revenue sharing through add-ons. masteriyo.com

Best for: Udemy-style businesses

Option 3: Simplest managed solution

Kajabi

Good if:

• You have fewer instructors
• You want marketing + email + courses in one place

Weakness:

• It is designed more for creators/business owners than multi-vendor instructor marketplaces.
• Complex payout logic often requires external tools.

Best for: 1–20 instructors

Option 4: Build a custom academy platform

Use:

• Front end: custom web app
• LMS/content: custom or headless LMS
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Accounting: QuickBooks/Xero
• Analytics: Metabase/Looker

Best if:

• You expect thousands of instructors
• You need complicated royalty rules
• You have B2B licensing, affiliates, subscriptions, or co-teaching splits

Custom marketplace platforms often include instructor portals, revenue-share rules, and automated payouts as core features. www.webority.com

My recommended architecture for most multi-instructor schools

Student experience

• Thinkific or Kajabi

Payments

• Stripe Connect

Instructor management

• Airtable/Notion initially → dedicated instructor dashboard later

Accounting

• QuickBooks Online

Automation

• Zapier/Make

Your payout rules should be defined before choosing software. Common models:

Large course marketplaces typically have separate rules for instructor-attributed sales, marketplace sales, subscriptions, and payment timing. support.udemy.com

If I were choosing today:

• Small/medium school (under ~100 instructors): Thinkific + Stripe Connect
• Marketplace model: WordPress LMS + Stripe Connect or custom platform
• High-growth academy: custom platform built around Stripe Connect

The key question is: Are instructors employees/contractors teaching inside your school, or are they independent creators selling their own courses through your marketplace? That changes the ideal stack significantly.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I would avoid a simple course marketplace. You’ll usually want a stack that separates:

1. Student access management (who can see what content)
2. Instructor management (permissions, content ownership)
3. Sales tracking (who sold which course, subscriptions, bundles)
4. Automated payouts (splitting revenue and paying instructors)
5. Accounting/reporting (statements, taxes, disputes)

The best setup depends on your size and business model.

Option 1: All-in-one platform (simplest)

Best for: 5–50 instructors, launching quickly

Kajabi + Stripe Connect

• Kajabi handles: - courses
• memberships
• student accounts
• email funnels
• payments
• Stripe Connect handles: - instructor onboarding
• automated revenue splits
• payouts

Good if instructors are mostly content creators and you need a polished consumer experience. Kajabi is positioned as an all-in-one course business platform with marketing, sales, and course delivery features. Mighty Networks

Downside: revenue-share logic can become complicated if instructors share bundles, subscriptions, affiliates, or cohort revenue.

Option 2: Best scalable setup (what I’d choose for a serious academy)

Best for: 20+ instructors, complex revenue rules

Thinkific + Stripe Connect + Zapier/Make + accounting software

Architecture:

Student buys subscription/course
          ↓
Thinkific manages access
          ↓
Stripe records payment
          ↓
Revenue split rules calculate shares
          ↓
Stripe Connect pays instructors
          ↓
QuickBooks/Xero records payouts

Thinkific is designed around structured courses, student management, and monetization, making it a common fit for multi-course academies. Circle

You can create rules like:

• Instructor A: 40% of Course X sales
• Instructor B: 20% of membership revenue
• School: 40%
• Guest instructor: fixed royalty per enrollment

Option 3: Community-driven school

Best for: cohorts, memberships, creator communities

Use:

• Circle
• Stripe
• Stripe Connect
• Airtable/Notion for instructor contracts

Good if the value is interaction, live sessions, and community rather than just video lessons. Community-first platforms are increasingly used for courses that combine learning and memberships. Circle

Option 4: Enterprise LMS

Best for: accreditation, corporate training, thousands of learners

Consider:

• Docebo
• Moodle
• Canvas LMS

These are stronger for compliance, reporting, certifications, and large organizations, but they usually require more customization.

Payout software options

For instructor revenue sharing, the payment layer matters most.

Stripe Connect

Best default choice.

Supports:

• instructor onboarding
• KYC/tax requirements
• automatic transfers
• marketplace-style payments

Tipalti

Better when you have:

• hundreds of instructors
• international payments
• complex tax forms

Bill.com

Better for manual approval workflows.

My recommended stack by stage

Starting school (under ~$500k/year revenue)

• Thinkific or Kajabi
• Stripe Connect
• Zapier/Make
• QuickBooks

Growing school ($500k–$5M/year)

• Thinkific/LearnWorlds
• Stripe Connect
• Airtable instructor database
• automated royalty calculations
• accounting integration

Marketplace model (hundreds/thousands of instructors)

• Custom frontend
• LMS backend/API
• Stripe Connect
• dedicated royalty engine

Features I would require before choosing software

Make sure it supports:

• ✅ multiple instructors/admin roles
• ✅ private instructor dashboards
• ✅ course-level permissions
• ✅ subscription revenue allocation
• ✅ refunds reducing instructor payouts
• ✅ coupon attribution
• ✅ affiliate commissions
• ✅ payout history/statements
• ✅ tax reporting exports

A common mistake is choosing an LMS first and discovering later that it cannot handle revenue splits. For a multi-instructor school, I would treat Stripe Connect + a clear royalty model as the foundation, and choose the LMS around that.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d avoid stitching together a generic LMS and a separate payroll system if you can. The cleanest architecture is:

My recommendation

LMS: teachable.com
Payments/payouts: Stripe Connect
Accounting: quickbooks.intuit.com or Xero

The key is that Stripe Connect is designed specifically for platforms that collect money and then split it among multiple recipients. It can onboard instructors, verify them, route/split payments, control payout schedules, and handle tax reporting such as 1099s in the U.S. Stripe Stripe

Teachable itself can handle the school side—courses, student access, subscriptions, etc.—and its native payment system is built on Stripe infrastructure. Teachable Help Center

But there's an important distinction

If your revenue sharing is simple, such as:

Student pays $500 → instructor gets 50% → school gets 50%

then a platform like Teachable may be sufficient.

If you have more complicated rules, for example:

• Instructor A gets 40% of Course A
• Instructor B gets 20%
• school keeps the remainder
• affiliates get another percentage
• different instructors have different splits
• refunds need to reverse the appropriate shares
• instructors are paid monthly
• one instructor teaches several courses

then I'd build the financial layer around Stripe Connect. It supports splitting a transaction among multiple sellers/recipients and controlling payout timing. Stripe Stripe

Other LMS options

What I'd choose

If you're launching with 5–20 instructors, I'd start with:

Teachable + Stripe + accounting software

But if the business model itself is essentially a marketplace for instructors, I'd go straight to:

Custom/white-label LMS + Stripe Connect + accounting system

That gives you a clean model:

Student → checkout → payment → revenue allocation → instructor Stripe account → automatic payout

Stripe also provides onboarding/KYC, payout scheduling, reporting, and U.S. 1099 support, which saves you from building a lot of financial infrastructure yourself. Stripe Stripe Support

One caveat: Stripe Connect's pricing depends on how you structure the platform and connected accounts; for example, Stripe currently lists different pricing depending on whether Stripe or your platform handles payment pricing. Stripe

If you tell me (1) number of instructors, (2) whether they are employees or independent contractors, (3) whether revenue is per-course or subscription-based, and (4) whether students can buy bundles containing multiple instructors' courses, I can recommend the exact stack and architecture.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d narrow it to two strong approaches:

My default recommendation: Thinkific + Stripe

thinkific.com is probably the easiest fit if your priority is running the school rather than building software.

• Student access: courses, memberships, communities, bundles, enrollments, etc.
• Instructor management: Thinkific supports instructor profiles and separate course/admin roles. Thinkific Support
• Revenue sharing: its Revenue Partners feature lets you assign a percentage of sales to co-instructors/contributors and tracks commissions owed. Thinkific Support
• Payments: Thinkific Payments tracks sales and payouts in the admin dashboard. Thinkific Support
• Much less custom development than building your own access/payout system.

Best when: you have, say, 5–50 instructors and mostly straightforward arrangements such as “Instructor gets 40% of sales of Course A.”

More powerful: Custom/white-label school + Stripe Connect

If you expect the school to become more like a marketplace, I'd use stripe.com as the financial backbone.

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for businesses where multiple parties receive money from a transaction. It can onboard instructors, verify them, split payments, maintain balances, and automate payouts. Stripe Stripe

For example:

Student pays $500 → School keeps $200 → Instructor A gets $200 → Instructor B gets $100

You can also control payout schedules and handle refunds/chargebacks and U.S. 1099 reporting. Stripe Stripe

Then you'd pair Stripe Connect with a learning platform or custom application that handles:

Student → enrollment/access → course → instructor attribution → revenue calculation → Stripe payout

What I'd choose

One important distinction: don't treat payouts as just an accounting spreadsheet. Once you're collecting money from students and then distributing portions to independent instructors, you want a payment architecture designed for marketplace/platform payouts. Stripe Connect specifically handles onboarding, KYC, payout routing, and related compliance rather than leaving you to build all of that yourself. Stripe

If you tell me (1) number of instructors, (2) whether students pay one-time or subscriptions, (3) whether each instructor sets their own percentage, and (4) whether instructors are employees or independent contractors, I can recommend the exact stack—including LMS, payments, CRM, accounting, and payout workflow.

For an online school with multiple instructors, course access, and revenue sharing, I’d separate the problem into two systems:

1. Learning platform → students, courses, memberships, access
2. Payments/payouts → instructor splits, onboarding, tax paperwork, payouts

My top recommendation: Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Thinkific is probably the best fit if you want something relatively turnkey. Thinkific has a built-in Revenue Partners feature that can track a percentage of sales owed to co-instructors/contributors. support.thinkific.com

For the actual money movement, Stripe Connect is the stronger long-term solution. It is specifically designed for platforms that collect money and distribute it among multiple parties, including split payments and configurable payout timing. stripe.comstripe.com

Architecture:

Student pays $500 → payment recorded → school keeps its share → instructor gets their percentage → Stripe handles payout/onboarding → Thinkific controls course access.

This becomes particularly attractive if you have, say, 20+ instructors or expect the school to become a marketplace/platform rather than simply a school with a few contractors.

Other options

Teachable is also worth considering for simplicity. Its current payment system handles processing, payouts, tax, fraud protection, and subscriptions inside the admin experience. support.teachable.com

One important distinction

If your instructors are employees/contractors whom the school pays periodically, rather than independent sellers receiving their portion of each transaction, I would not necessarily use Stripe Connect.

In that case I'd use:

Thinkific/Kajabi → Stripe → accounting/payroll system → instructor payments

If instructors are effectively partners/sellers, where a $1,000 course sale might automatically become $700 school / $300 instructor, Stripe Connect is much more appropriate. Stripe supports splitting a single payment among multiple connected accounts and controlling payout timing. stripe.comstripe.com

What I'd build for a serious school

Student side

• Thinkific
• Stripe checkout
• Membership/course access
• Coupons, bundles, subscriptions

Instructor side

• Instructor profile
• Courses they teach
• Agreed revenue-share %
• Sales attributable to their courses
• Refund/chargeback adjustments
• Earnings dashboard
• Stripe onboarding
• Automatic monthly/weekly payouts

Admin side

• Revenue by course
• Revenue by instructor
• School's gross/net revenue
• Instructor commissions
• Refunds
• Payment processing fees
• Payout reconciliation
• 1099 reporting

Stripe Connect can also provide connected-account onboarding, payout management, reporting, and U.S. 1099 support, which eliminates a substantial amount of payment infrastructure you'd otherwise have to build. stripe.comstripe.com

If you tell me roughly how your revenue model works—e.g. “Instructor A gets 40% of every sale of their course, Instructor B gets 20%, and the school keeps the rest”—I can recommend the exact stack and explain how I'd structure the payments, access rules, and accounting.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d avoid trying to make the course platform itself handle all the accounting. A better setup is:

My recommended stack

Stripe Connect is particularly well suited to your model: it supports connected accounts for instructors, payment splitting, payout schedules, refunds/chargebacks, and tax reporting such as 1099s. docs.stripe.com

Stripe Connect

The architecture I'd use

For example, suppose:

• Student pays $200
• School keeps 40%
• Instructor gets 60%
• Stripe/payment fees are handled according to your agreement

The flow would be:

Student → Course platform → Stripe → School + Instructor

Each instructor gets a Stripe Connected Account. Stripe can then route the instructor's share to their bank account and control whether payouts happen daily, weekly, monthly, or manually. docs.stripe.com

This is much better than paying instructors manually from a spreadsheet once a month.

The important design decision

I'd make the course platform responsible for access and Stripe responsible for money.

For example:

Thinkific/Kajabi

• Instructor creates/owns course
• Student purchases course
• Student automatically receives access
• Course enrollment is recorded
• Refund/cancellation removes or changes access

Stripe Connect

• Knows which instructor is associated with the sale
• Calculates/routes the instructor's share
• Handles instructor onboarding/KYC
• Pays instructors
• Provides transaction/payout records
• Supports tax reporting

Stripe explicitly supports marketplace-style models where a platform collects a customer's payment and transfers funds to sellers, including splitting one payment among multiple sellers. stripe.com

One thing I'd not do

I wouldn't build the system around PayPal + spreadsheets + manual bank transfers once you have more than a handful of instructors. It becomes painful to reconcile:

• refunds
• coupons
• payment fees
• chargebacks
• subscriptions
• instructor commissions
• partial refunds
• multiple instructors on one course
• tax reporting

If you're building a serious school

I'd actually consider a slightly more sophisticated setup:

Thinkific/Kajabi → Stripe → Stripe Connect → QuickBooks

with a database/automation layer containing:

Instructor
  ├── Stripe Connected Account
  ├── Revenue Share %
  ├── Courses
  └── Payout Rules

Course
  ├── Instructor(s)
  ├── Revenue Share %
  └── Access Rules

Transaction
  ├── Student
  ├── Course
  ├── Gross Revenue
  ├── Discounts
  ├── Payment Fees
  ├── Refunds
  ├── School Share
  └── Instructor Share

That gives you a clean source of truth for who gets paid what, rather than trying to infer commissions from Stripe transactions after the fact.

If you tell me roughly how your school works—e.g. 10 instructors vs. 100, one-time courses vs. subscriptions, whether an instructor can teach multiple courses, and whether you already use Kajabi/Thinkific/Teachable—I can recommend the specific stack and explain exactly how I'd structure the revenue-sharing and payouts.

For an online school with multiple instructors + course access + revenue sharing, I’d shortlist these:

My recommendation: Thinkific

For your particular model, Thinkific is probably the first platform I'd evaluate. Its Revenue Partners feature lets you assign an instructor/contributor to a course, community, or bundle and specify their percentage. It then tracks the commissions and provides a place to manage the resulting payments. support.thinkific.com

It also gives you the underlying student-access infrastructure—accounts, enrollments, courses, communities, etc.—so you don't have to build an access-control system yourself.

One important caveat: Thinkific's native revenue-partner tracking is tied to sales through its built-in checkout; external payment systems aren't automatically included in those calculations. support.thinkific.com

Thinkific

Teachable is a very close alternative

Teachable has a particularly straightforward Author model. You can give an instructor administrative access to assigned courses and establish a percentage revenue share. Authors get their own dashboard with relevant courses, sales and payout information. support.teachable.com

Its current payment system is also built around Stripe infrastructure and handles payments, payouts, taxes and fraud protection within Teachable. support.teachable.com

Teachable

When I'd build around Stripe Connect instead

If your school is really becoming a marketplace, rather than simply "our school has instructors," I'd seriously consider:

Course platform/LMS + Stripe Connect + accounting

For example:

Student pays $1,000 → school keeps $300 → Instructor A gets $500 → Instructor B gets $200

Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms that need to split payments among multiple sellers/recipients and can route funds and payouts to connected accounts. stripe.com

Stripe Connect

That architecture becomes much more attractive if you need things like:

• different splits for every instructor
• multiple instructors on one course
• recurring subscriptions split among instructors
• refunds and chargebacks allocated proportionally
• instructor-specific payout schedules
• international instructors
• instructor onboarding/KYC
• detailed statements showing exactly why someone was paid
• eventually allowing instructors to sell their own courses

Stripe's connected-account infrastructure also handles verification requirements for payout recipients. support.stripe.com

The key decision

I'd choose based on how complicated your revenue model is:

Simple school

One business owns everything → instructors receive predefined percentages

→ Thinkific or Teachable

Growing school

Multiple instructors, different percentages, occasional co-teaching

→ Thinkific is particularly compelling because of Revenue Partners.

Marketplace

Instructors are effectively independent sellers and money needs to be divided automatically

→ LMS + Stripe Connect

If you tell me (1) how many instructors you expect, (2) whether one course can have multiple instructors, (3) whether you're selling subscriptions or one-time courses, and (4) an example of how a $1,000 sale should be divided, I can recommend the exact stack and workflow—including how I'd handle student access, instructor permissions, revenue calculation, refunds, and monthly payouts.

For an online school with multiple instructors, shared revenue, and controlled student access, I’d avoid stitching together too many systems at first. The best setup depends on whether instructors are employees, contractors, or true revenue partners.

Here are the strongest options:

My default recommendation for a multi-instructor school

Use:

1. Thinkific (or LearnWorlds) — course hosting, student accounts, instructor roles
2. Stripe — collecting tuition
3. Stripe Connect or a payout platform — automating instructor payments
4. QuickBooks/Xero — accounting and reconciliation
5. Zapier/Make — connecting sales → commissions → payouts

Thinkific is particularly suited if you need instructors to have defined shares per course. Its Revenue Partners feature can track commissions owed to collaborators based on course/community/bundle sales, although payments to partners are typically handled outside Thinkific. support.thinkific.com

If your model is like “MasterClass with many teachers”

I’d lean toward:

• Thinkific if the core product is courses
• Kajabi if you also need funnels, email marketing, memberships, and community in one place www.kajabi.com
• Add Stripe Connect if instructors should automatically receive their percentage after each sale

Example revenue flow:

Student pays $500
        ↓
Stripe processes payment
        ↓
Platform keeps 30%
        ↓
Instructor A receives 50%
Instructor B receives 20%
        ↓
Automatic payout

Questions that change the recommendation:

1. How many instructors do you expect (5, 50, 500)?
2. Are instructors paid per course sale, per student enrolled, or a percentage of total school revenue?
3. Do instructors need their own dashboards to upload/manage courses?
4. Are you selling subscriptions/memberships or one-time courses?
5. Do you want instructors paid automatically, or are monthly manual payouts acceptable?

For an online school with multiple instructors, course-specific access, revenue sharing, and payouts, I’d shortlist Thinkific and Teachable first.

Best fit: Thinkific

Thinkific

Thinkific has a built-in Revenue Partners system specifically for sharing course/community/bundle revenue with instructors or contributors. You can assign a percentage to each person, and it tracks commissions, including on subscriptions and payment plans. support.thinkific.com

The catch: Thinkific tracks what is owed, but the actual revenue-share payment is recorded manually. support.thinkific.com

So the setup would be:

Thinkific → student access + courses + instructor permissions + revenue calculations → accounting/payment system → instructor payouts

This is a good choice if you want control and flexibility, particularly if your instructors have different percentages by course.

Easiest all-in-one: Teachable

Teachable

Teachable has an Author system where instructors can be assigned to specific courses and given a default revenue-share percentage, with product-specific overrides. support.teachable.com

More importantly, Teachable can automatically pay authors when its BackOffice/appropriate payment services are enabled. support.teachable.com

That makes it particularly attractive if your priority is:

• Instructor login/access
• Assigning instructors to courses
• Automatic revenue calculations
• Minimal bookkeeping
• Automatic instructor payouts

Teachable also handles student payment processing and, depending on the payment configuration, tax-related functionality. support.thinkific.comsupport.teachable.com

If I were launching a school today and wanted the least operational complexity, I'd probably start here.

LearnWorlds: good LMS, weaker payout automation

LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds has particularly good instructor permissions and can calculate instructor revenue automatically, including proportional allocation of bundle/subscription revenue. However, the actual instructor payouts are handled outside LearnWorlds. support.learnworlds.com

So I'd choose it if the learning experience/LMS capabilities are more important than having payouts automated.

What I'd choose based on your model

The last option becomes interesting if you're building something closer to a multi-instructor marketplace than a traditional school—for example, 20+ instructors, different splits, refunds/clawbacks, affiliates, recurring subscriptions, instructor balances, tax documentation, etc.

In that case, I wouldn't make the LMS responsible for the money. I'd architect it as:

LMS / membership → Stripe Connect → instructor connected accounts → automated payouts

That gives you a clean separation between who gets access to what and who gets paid what.

My recommendation

If you tell me roughly (1) number of instructors, (2) whether each instructor owns specific courses or multiple instructors collaborate on one course, (3) whether revenue share is a percentage of gross or net revenue, and (4) whether you need subscriptions, I can recommend the exact stack and explain how I'd structure the payouts.

For a multi-instructor online school, I’d avoid trying to make the course platform itself handle all the money movement. The cleanest setup is usually:

Course platform + Stripe Connect + accounting

My recommended architecture

1. Course/access management: use a platform such as Thinkific, Teachable, or Kajabi.

You want the course system to handle:

• Student accounts and logins
• Course/video access
• Instructor permissions
• Enrollment and subscriptions
• Coupons/refunds
• Student progress
• Instructor content

2. Revenue sharing & payouts: use Stripe Connect.

This is the piece I'd strongly recommend for your particular model. Stripe Connect is designed for platforms with multiple recipients: it can onboard instructors, verify their identity/bank information, split transactions, calculate the platform's share, and pay instructors according to a schedule. stripe.comstripe.com

For example, if a student pays $500:

You can also have different instructors receive different percentages depending on the course.

3. Accounting: use something like QuickBooks Online or Xero for your books, with Stripe feeding transaction/payout information into accounting.

The important design decision

I'd structure the business around courses → instructors → revenue-share rules, rather than simply paying instructors a percentage of your overall Stripe balance.

For example:

Course A → Instructor Jane → 60%
Course B → Instructor John → 50%
Course C → Jane + John → 40% / 30%, school retains 30%

Then your system calculates the instructor's earnings for every transaction and Stripe Connect handles actually getting the money to them.

Stripe specifically supports splitting a single payment among multiple recipients, as well as controlling payout timing. stripe.com

If you're starting small

I'd choose:

Thinkific/Teachable + Stripe Connect + QuickBooks

If you're building a serious marketplace-like school where instructors are essentially independent sellers, I'd lean toward:

Custom/strong LMS + Stripe Connect + accounting

Stripe Connect also provides instructor onboarding, KYC/compliance, payout dashboards, reporting, refunds/chargebacks, and U.S. 1099 support, which becomes valuable as the instructor count grows. stripe.com

One caution

Don't build your own spreadsheet-based payout system as the long-term solution. It's deceptively complicated once you have refunds, chargebacks, coupons, subscriptions, taxes, multiple instructors on one course, cancellations, and different revenue-share agreements.

Stripe Connect is specifically built to deal with this kind of multi-party money movement. stripe.comstripe.com

If you tell me (a) roughly how many instructors, (b) whether they create their own courses, (c) whether students pay one-off or subscriptions, and (d) your revenue-share formula, I can recommend the specific stack and explain how I'd wire the whole thing together.

For an online school with multiple instructors, controlled course access, and revenue-sharing, I’d separate the problem into two systems:

1. Learning platform → courses, memberships, student access, instructor permissions.
2. Payout layer → automatically calculate/split instructor earnings and pay them.

My top choice: Thinkific + Stripe Connect

Thinkific is a good fit for the school side: course hosting, student accounts, memberships, access rules, and instructor/course management.

However, Thinkific's built-in Revenue Partners feature is primarily for tracking revenue shares; Thinkific says payments to partners are made manually outside the platform. support.thinkific.com

For actual automated instructor payouts, I'd use Stripe Connect. Connect is specifically designed for platforms that collect money and distribute it among multiple sellers/service providers. It supports connected instructor accounts, onboarding/KYC, payment splitting, scheduled payouts, and tax reporting. docs.stripe.com

A typical setup would be:

Student → Thinkific checkout → Stripe →

• 70% Instructor A
• 20% Instructor B
• 10% School

You can also make the rules more sophisticated—for example, different percentages by course, instructor, promotion, or subscription. Stripe supports controlling payout timing and retaining funds before paying instructors. docs.stripe.com

Other options

The important distinction is whether you're simply paying instructors a commission or actually operating a marketplace where instructors are independent sellers. Stripe's architecture and merchant-of-record implications differ substantially between those models. docs.stripe.com

If I were building this today, I'd start with Thinkific + Stripe Connect, unless you expect dozens/hundreds of instructors and highly dynamic revenue-sharing. At that point, I'd consider a custom LMS/application with Stripe Connect as the financial backbone.

If you tell me (a) number of instructors, (b) whether they are employees or independent contractors, (c) whether students buy individual courses or subscriptions, and (d) whether one purchase can involve multiple instructors, I can recommend the exact architecture and software stack.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d generally avoid trying to make the LMS handle everything. The cleanest setup is:

My recommended stack

1. LMS / access management: Thinkific or Kajabi
Use the LMS for:

• Student accounts and logins
• Course access
• Memberships/subscriptions
• Instructor/admin permissions
• Course delivery and progress

2. Payments + instructor payouts: Stripe Connect
This is the important piece for revenue sharing. Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms that collect money from customers and then distribute portions to multiple sellers/service providers. It supports connected instructor accounts, onboarding/verification, split payments, payout schedules, refunds, and tax reporting. docs.stripe.com

For example, if a $500 course sale is split:

Student pays $500 → school keeps 30% → Instructor A gets 50% → Instructor B gets 20%

Stripe Connect can route those funds rather than requiring you to calculate everything and manually send payments. It also supports different payout schedules, including weekly, monthly, or manual payouts. stripe.com

If your revenue-sharing is more complicated

If instructors have arrangements like:

• Instructor gets 40% of net revenue
• School gets 60%
• Stripe fees come out before the split
• Refunds reverse the instructor's commission
• Multiple instructors can contribute to one course
• Different commission rates by course
• Bonuses based on enrollment thresholds

I'd use:

LMS → Stripe → Revenue/commission database → Stripe Connect

In that scenario, you maintain a ledger of exactly who earned what, while Stripe handles the actual money movement and instructor onboarding/payout infrastructure.

Stripe even supports splitting one payment among multiple connected accounts, which is useful when a course has several revenue participants. docs.stripe.com

What I'd choose by school size

One reason I particularly like Stripe Connect for this model is that instructor onboarding can include identity verification and bank-account setup, while Stripe handles much of the compliance infrastructure. In the U.S., Connect also supports 1099 generation/delivery for connected accounts. stripe.com

The key architectural decision is whether instructors are just employees/contractors you pay, or whether they're effectively independent sellers on your platform. If they're independent sellers receiving a percentage of each student's purchase, I'd design around Connect rather than building your own payout system.

If you tell me (a) number of instructors, (b) whether courses are one-time purchases or subscriptions, (c) how the revenue split works, and (d) whether you want no-code/low-code or are willing to build, I can recommend the specific software stack and approximate monthly cost.

For an online school with multiple instructors, student access control, and revenue-sharing, I’d avoid trying to make one tool do everything. The cleanest setup is:

My top recommendation: LearnWorlds + Stripe

LearnWorlds is unusually well suited to the school side. It supports instructor accounts and can automatically calculate each instructor’s commission based on an assigned percentage. It can also handle commissions across courses, bundles, subscriptions, and installment plans. The important catch: LearnWorlds calculates the commissions, but the actual instructor payouts are handled outside LearnWorlds. support.learnworlds.com

Pair it with Stripe Connect for the money movement. Stripe Connect is specifically designed for platforms with multiple recipients: you can onboard instructors, verify them, split/rout payments, control payout schedules, and generate U.S. 1099s. stripe.comstripe.com

So the architecture would be:

Student → LearnWorlds checkout → payment → revenue allocation → instructor Stripe account → scheduled payout

For example, if a $1,000 course sale is split 60/40:

• School: $600
• Instructor: $400
• Stripe/payment fees: handled according to your chosen Connect structure
• LearnWorlds records the instructor's commission
• Stripe Connect handles the actual transfer/payout

That gives you a fairly robust system without having to build your own LMS or payments infrastructure.

Other good options

Circle is worth considering if your “school” is really a membership/community + courses business. It has built-in courses, memberships, access control, subscriptions, and Stripe-powered payments. circle.so But I'd still use a separate revenue-allocation/payout layer if instructors need sophisticated contractual splits.

Kajabi is less attractive for this particular model. Its current positioning emphasizes that there is no revenue sharing or complicated payout system, which is great for an individual creator but not what you need when your business itself is sharing revenue with instructors. www.kajabi.com

One important distinction

There are actually two different revenue-sharing models, and the software choice depends on which you mean:

A. Instructor commission

"Instructor gets 30% of sales of courses they teach."

LearnWorlds handles this nicely.

B. Marketplace-style split

"Customer buys a $500 package containing courses from three instructors, and the system automatically distributes the appropriate portion to each instructor."

For this, I'd lean more heavily toward Stripe Connect + a custom commission ledger, because Connect can explicitly split a payment between multiple recipients and gives you much more control over the money flow. stripe.comstripe.com

What I'd build

If you're starting the school now, I'd probably use:

LearnWorlds → courses, instructors, student accounts, access, progress, assessments
Stripe Connect → instructor onboarding, bank accounts, payouts, tax reporting
QuickBooks/Xero → accounting
Zapier/Make → only for miscellaneous automation

And I'd define the revenue rules before implementing anything: gross vs. net revenue, refunds, payment fees, discounts, affiliates, taxes, subscription renewals, bundles, and chargebacks. Those details can otherwise make "30% revenue share" surprisingly ambiguous.

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect (e.g. 5, 50, or 500), whether students buy individual courses or a school-wide membership, and whether instructors are U.S.-based, I can narrow this down to a specific stack and explain exactly how I'd structure the payouts.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d separate the problem into two layers:

1. LMS / access management — who gets access to which courses, cohorts, memberships, etc.
2. Revenue accounting + payouts — who earned what and automatically getting instructors paid.

My recommendation

For most schools: Thinkific + Stripe Connect (or an accounting/payout layer on top).

Thinkific already has Revenue Partners and revenue-allocation functionality, so you can define how sales are allocated among relevant parties. However, Thinkific's affiliate payout functionality is primarily tracking: the actual affiliate payments happen outside Thinkific. support.thinkific.com

Stripe Connect is much stronger if instructors are effectively independent sellers/partners who need to receive their share of each transaction. It supports onboarding/verification, splitting funds between multiple recipients, configurable payout schedules, reporting, and 1099 support in the U.S. stripe.comstripe.com

Stripe Connect

When I'd choose something different

If you're building a serious multi-instructor marketplace:
I'd consider custom LMS + Stripe Connect rather than trying to force everything into an all-in-one course platform. Stripe specifically supports the model where one customer payment gets split among multiple sellers/recipients. stripe.comstripe.com

If you're a relatively small school:
Thinkific alone may be enough initially. Its payment system provides centralized sales and payout reporting, while you calculate instructor shares and pay them through your normal process. support.thinkific.com

The key architectural question

There's a big difference between:

A. "The school owns all revenue, then pays instructors commissions."

and

B. "Each instructor is effectively a seller, and the platform takes its percentage."

If it's A, I'd use Thinkific + Stripe + accounting/payroll, with a monthly instructor commission report.

If it's B, I'd strongly favor Stripe Connect, because the payment infrastructure is designed around connected accounts, fund routing, KYC, and payouts. stripe.com

If you tell me roughly how many instructors, how many students, and an example revenue split (e.g. "$1,000 course → school 40%, instructor 60%"), I can recommend the exact stack and workflow, including how access, refunds, subscriptions, instructor commissions, and 1099s should work.

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d narrow it to three approaches:

My pick: Teachable

If your model is essentially:

Student buys Course A → Instructor A gets 40% → school keeps 60%

Teachable is probably the simplest choice. It has an actual Author concept: you assign an instructor to courses and set their revenue-share percentage. It also supports product-specific overrides, so you can have different splits for different courses. support.teachable.com

With its BackOffice services enabled, Teachable can automatically pay authors; without it, you have to handle author payments yourself. support.teachable.com

One particularly useful detail: Teachable calculates the author share after payment processing, Teachable fees, and affiliate payouts. support.teachable.com

When I'd choose Stripe Connect instead

If you're building something more like a marketplace for instructors, I'd use:

LMS/course platform + Stripe Connect + accounting system

Stripe Connect is specifically designed to onboard multiple recipients, verify them, split payments, track balances, and automate payouts. It supports daily, weekly, monthly, or manual payout schedules and can generate 1099s in the U.S. stripe.com

That gives you much more flexibility for rules such as:

• Instructor gets 50% of their own courses
• Guest instructor gets 20%
• School gets 30%
• Different splits for subscriptions vs. one-time purchases
• Two instructors sharing one course
• Bonuses or tiered revenue shares
• Refund/chargeback adjustments
• Automatic instructor onboarding and tax information

Stripe Connect can even split a single charge among multiple sellers/recipients. stripe.com

One important distinction

If by "revenue sharing" you mean instructors are the actual creators/owners of courses, I'd favor Teachable for simplicity.

If you mean your school is a platform where dozens/hundreds of independent instructors participate financially, I'd favor Stripe Connect, because you're effectively operating a small marketplace.

Thinkific is worth considering for the LMS side, but its native affiliate system illustrates the limitation: it tracks commissions but requires you to make the actual payouts outside Thinkific. support.thinkific.com

If you tell me roughly how many instructors you expect (e.g. 5, 25, 100+) and whether they are employees, contractors, or independent course creators, I can recommend a specific stack—including LMS, payments, contracts/tax forms, accounting, and the exact revenue-share workflow.