Why merchants move from Teachable to Shopify
Teachable is a standalone learning platform that hosts your courses, checkout and student accounts on its own site. That works well for a separate teaching brand. But Shopify merchants often want courses inside the store they already run.
Alva Courses is a Shopify app that builds, sells and delivers online courses natively inside your store. Buyers check out in your normal Shopify cart, and every student becomes a Shopify customer — so orders and contact records live in your admin.
Is there a one-click Teachable-to-Shopify importer?
No. There is no automatic tool that copies a Teachable course straight into Shopify, and any guide that promises one is overselling it. Course platforms store content, video and student records in their own formats.
The realistic path with Alva Courses is a structured manual rebuild: recreate your curriculum in the builder, re-host your media, and bring students across by CSV. It is methodical, repeatable, and far quicker than it sounds once you have your exports in hand.
What to export from Teachable first
Before you build anything, pull your material out of Teachable so you are rebuilding from a complete set. Check Teachable's current export options on their site, then gather these three things.
Your curriculum map
Note each course's sections and the lessons inside them, in order. This becomes your blueprint for recreating the same structure as sections and lessons in Alva Courses.
Your media and files
Download your source video files plus any PDFs, worksheets, audio and slides. Keep them named by lesson so re-uploading later is fast and you do not lose track of which asset belongs where.
Your student list
Export your enrolled students to a spreadsheet with each person's email and name. This is the file you will use for the bulk CSV member import that grants access on Shopify.
Step 1 — Install Alva Courses and start the trial
STEP 01
Install Alva Courses from the Shopify App Store and start the 14-day free trial. Choose Unlimited at $9.99/mo, or Unlimited Pro at $14.99/mo if you want the built-in 50 GB of Alva Video Hosting. There is no per-sale transaction fee on either plan.
Step 2 — Rebuild your course structure
STEP 02
Using your curriculum map, recreate each course in the Alva Courses builder. Add sections, then lessons inside them, matching the order students already know. Build lessons from rich-text, image, file, audio, video, quiz, Zoom and button content blocks.
Set lessons to draft while you work, then publish when a course is complete. You can also add drip scheduling to release lessons by day or date, and require-completion gating so lessons unlock in sequence — useful if your Teachable course was structured that way.
Step 3 — Re-host your video and files
STEP 03
Re-upload the video files you downloaded to Alva Video Hosting. The Pro tier's 50 GB handles large lessons well beyond Shopify's roughly 1 GB and 10-minute native file limits, so long modules import without splitting.
Already host video elsewhere? Embed it instead. Lessons support YouTube, Vimeo, Loom and VdoCipher embeds alongside native video. Add your PDFs, ePub, MS Office files and audio as downloadable content blocks in the matching lessons.
Step 4 — Connect each course to a Shopify product
STEP 04
Each course is sold through a Shopify product, so buyers check out in your native cart. Set the price, any discounts, and limited-time or drip access to mirror how the course was sold on Teachable. New buyers are enrolled automatically when the order is paid.
Delivery fires on the Shopify thank-you page, the order status page, and a customizable enrolment email — which you can send from your own domain. The course then appears under "My Courses" in the customer account.
Step 5 — Bring your students over by CSV import
STEP 05
This is how your existing audience moves across without re-buying. Take the student list you exported from Teachable, format it as a CSV with email and name columns, and use the bulk CSV member import in the Members view to enrol the whole cohort into the matching course.
Each row becomes a member with a fresh progress record, and Alva Courses can email every student a branded enrolment notice. The full walkthrough lives in the help article on importing members with CSV.
What transfers vs what you rebuild
| Item | How it moves | In Alva Courses |
|---|---|---|
| Course structure | Rebuild from your curriculum map | Sections + lessons in the builder |
| Video | Re-upload or re-embed | Alva Video Hosting or YouTube/Vimeo/Loom/VdoCipher |
| Students | Bulk CSV member import | Enrolled as Shopify customers |
| Login | Switches to Shopify account | "My Courses" in the customer account |
| Past progress | Does not transfer automatically | Starts at 0%; certificates re-issuable |
Step 6 — Test, then announce the move
STEP 06
Run a test order on each course to confirm enrolment, the thank-you-page delivery and the email all fire. Spot-check the Members list to verify your CSV import enrolled everyone, then preview the storefront course player.
Email your students before you switch. Tell them their login is now their Shopify account, that progress resets to 0%, and where to start. Setting that expectation makes the move feel intentional rather than disruptive.
A fair word on Teachable
Teachable is a mature, full-featured platform with its own site builder, sales pages, affiliate program and coaching products. If your business is a standalone teaching brand off Shopify, it remains a strong fit, and migrating away is not always the right call.
This guide is for merchants who already sell on Shopify and want courses in the same store. For the wider trade-off between a Shopify app and a separate platform, read Shopify courses vs a standalone LMS.
Frequently asked questions
No. There is no automatic one-click importer that copies a Teachable course into Shopify. The realistic path with Alva Courses is a guided manual rebuild: recreate your sections and lessons in the builder, re-upload or re-embed your videos and files, then bring your existing students over in bulk using a CSV member import. It is methodical rather than instant, and most catalogues move in an afternoon.
Export your student list from Teachable to a CSV with each person's email and name, then use the CSV member import in Alva Courses to bulk-enrol them into the matching course. Every row becomes a member with their own progress record, and Alva Courses can send each student a branded enrolment email with a link to start learning inside their Shopify customer account.
No second platform login. With Alva Courses, students sign in with their normal Shopify customer account and find the course under a "My Courses" area in that account. There is no separate course-platform password and no external subdomain. After a CSV import, the enrolment email links them straight to the storefront course player on your own domain.
Yes. Download your source video files from Teachable, then re-upload them to Alva Video Hosting — the Pro tier includes 50 GB and handles large files beyond Shopify's roughly 1 GB native limit. You can also embed video you already host on YouTube, Vimeo, Loom or VdoCipher. Each lesson supports native video plus those embeds in its content blocks.
Alva Courses has two flat monthly plans: Unlimited at $9.99/mo and Unlimited Pro at $14.99/mo, which adds 50 GB of Alva Video Hosting. Both include a 14-day free trial, and the app adds no per-sale transaction fee — sales run through your native Shopify checkout. Confirm Teachable's current pricing on their site, since their tiers and fees change over time.
Per-lesson completion history does not transfer automatically between platforms, so imported students start fresh at 0% progress in Alva Courses. If you offered completion certificates on Teachable, you can recreate a customizable certificate and email in Alva Courses so finishers still receive one. Plan to message your students about the move so the reset and the new login are expected.