ChatGPT answers, unedited

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.