No More Surprise Fees, New Revenue Share & Our Credits System

Hi everyone,

This has been a long time coming.

For months, a lot of you have been telling us the same things over and over again:

We heard you. And this update is basically us saying: okay, you’re right — let’s fix it.

So this post is just me walking you through what’s changed, why we did it, and how this new credits / membership thing actually works.

1. Service fee for students: gone.

Let’s start with the biggest pain point.

Before: We used to charge students a 12.5% service fee on tutor transactions. It was added at checkout, and a lot of you told us your students weren’t happy. Honestly, I wouldn’t be either.

Now: We’ve removed the service fee completely.

Whatever price a student sees on TeachX is exactly what they pay. No “oh by the way there’s another 12.5% at the end.”

So if your session is listed as SGD 40, the student pays SGD 40. That’s it.

Clean, simple, and way easier to explain in a WhatsApp chat with a parent or student.

2. Markup: also gone. Simple revenue share instead.

The second big issue was our old markup model.

Before:

So we had this 1.5x markup happening in the background.

A lot of you told us:

Fair point.

So we’ve killed the markup completely and moved to a straightforward revenue share.

New standard share

From now on:

All calculated on what the student actually pays. No extra layer on top.

Example for a tutor:

That’s the base. No trickery, no secret formula.

3. Our share becomes your credits (we don’t just “take”, we convert)

Now here’s where it gets interesting.

I really didn’t like the idea of TeachX just “taking” its share and that’s the end of the story. So we built an internal economy: TeachX Credits.

How credits actually work

Whenever TeachX earns from a transaction, instead of just going “thanks, bye”, we convert our share into credits for you.

So for example:

That means:

The more business you do on TeachX, the more credits you earn automatically.

And credits are not just decoration. You can use them to:

On top of that, you can also buy credits directly:

So you have two ways to get credits:

4. Cashback memberships: lower our cut, increase yours

This part is very simple: we wanted a way for heavy users to pay less per transaction.

So we created Cashback Memberships you pay for in credits, which reduce our percentage.

Default (no membership)

This is what you get out of the box.

Cashback Level 1

Cost: 25 credits/month

Cashback Level 2

Cost: 100 credits/month

Quick table so you don’t have to scroll back:

If you do a decent volume each month, these memberships can easily pay for themselves because you’re keeping more from every single booking.

5. Exposure membership: stay visible in the marketplace

Next: visibility.

By default, we want the marketplace to show active, serious, up-to-date tutors and organizations. So we introduced an Exposure Membership.

Now the important part:

If you don’t have enough credits, here’s what happens:

So it’s basically:

We don’t shut down your business. We just control visibility with credits.

6. What else credits can be used for

Once you get the idea that credits = power inside TeachX, the rest is straightforward.

Here are the other main things you can do with credits:

6.1 Instant approval (skip the queue)

Creating courses, events, memberships is:

But by default, they go into a moderation queue so we can keep quality and safety in check.

If you want something to go live immediately the moment you publish it, you’ll be able to pay a small amount of credits to skip the queue and get instant approval.

6.2 Bump (jump to the top)

We’re also launching Bump:

Perfect for when you want a small push: new course, exam season, end-of-year bootcamps, etc.

(This one isn’t live yet, but it’s coming soon.)

6.3 Homepage banners

You’ll be able to use credits to put up a homepage banner for a month.

6.4 Leads (this one is important)

This is honestly one of the most powerful parts of the system.

On TeachX, you don’t just get “random views.” You get leads — people visiting your profile, viewing your offerings, etc.

To fully unlock a lead:

Once you unlock a lead, you can follow up however you like — WhatsApp, email, whatever suits you — and turn that into a long-term student or client.

6.5 Marketing subsidies (using credits instead of cash) – coming soon

This is another big change we’re rolling out.

Previously, if you wanted to apply for marketing subsidies (where we run performance marketing for you — Instagram ads, Facebook ads, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), you needed real money sitting in your TeachX wallet.

We’re moving that to credits.

That means:

to apply for marketing subsidies.

We then take those credits and convert them into real ad spend to promote you and your offerings.

So even if you’ve withdrawn your cash out of TeachX into your bank account, you can still use credits to trigger marketing campaigns when you need them. No “oh no, I moved my money, now I can’t run ads.”

7. Still free to use (even with memberships off)

Now, very important point:

All of this does not change the fact that TeachX is still free to use.

If you decide to turn off both memberships (Exposure and Cashback), here’s what you still have:

Students can still book you and pay you through those links exactly the same way.

And when those bookings happen:

So even with zero memberships active, you’re still getting:

All of that on a free base.

The memberships and extra credit features are optional power-ups, not “paywalls” to basic usage.

8. What’s not changing

All of this sits on top of what we already had. We’re not ripping anything away from you.

Still the same:

What is changing is:

9. Why we did all this

Short answer: because you told us to.

This isn’t some investor-friendly experiment. This is literally the result of:

We want TeachX to feel like a partner that’s on your side, not a platform that quietly takes a big cut.

So:

That’s the direction we’re going in: fair, transparent, and built with you, not just for you.

If you’ve read this far — thank you. If you have questions, ideas, or think we messed up something, please reach out. We’re still adjusting and we’re very open to tweaking things based on your feedback.

This is your platform as much as it is ours.

Saad Akbar

CEO at TeachX