AceableAgent Alternatives 2026: What to Buy in the 33 States It Does Not Cover

Most articles with this title are written for the two thirds of readers they cannot help. At E-Commerce Paradise I would rather start with the uncomfortable fact. AceableAgent sells real estate pre-licensing in seventeen states and continuing education in five. If you live in one of the other thirty three states, the product does not exist for you, and no amount of feature comparison changes that. This page is not a formality. For most people reading it, it is the only page in the cluster that matters.

I pulled every figure below from the providers’ own pages this session, plus one source almost nobody uses in this category: the Texas Real Estate Commission publishes a regulator verified pass rate for every approved school in the state. That file is the single most useful document in online real estate education, and it tells a very different story from the marketing.

What follows is organised by situation rather than by brand, because the right alternative depends entirely on which problem you have. My state is not covered. I need continuing education, not pre-licensing. I want a published pass rate. I want the cheapest thing that is legal. I already failed the exam once. Five different answers.

The gate: seventeen states for pre-licensing, five for continuing education

AceableAgent’s course index lists sixteen states with a starting price plus Utah, which is seventeen pre-licensing states in total: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington.

The continuing education menu is much shorter. It lists exactly five states: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York and Texas. Post-licensing, the coursework several states require during your first renewal cycle, lists four: Florida, Georgia, Illinois and Texas. So a licensed agent in California or Colorado can buy a pre-licensing course from AceableAgent but cannot buy renewal hours from it, which surprises a lot of people who assume the brand covers a licence for life.

There is one state in motion. A Minnesota page exists on the site and is headed “Coming Soon!” with the line “We’re almost there! Join the list and we’ll send you an update when the Minnesota Pre-licensing course goes live.” Minnesota is therefore not a covered state today, whatever the navigation menu implies. If you are in Minnesota you need an alternative now.

Situation one: my state is not covered

This is the largest group by a distance. Thirty three states plus the District of Columbia have no AceableAgent pre-licensing course at all, so the answer is a national provider. The three worth naming are Colibri, The CE Shop and Kaplan Real Estate Education.

I rank The CE Shop first of those three on evidence. I rank Kaplan last, for a reason that becomes obvious once the Texas regulator data appears further down this page.

I counted each provider’s own pre-licensing menu rather than repeating a marketing claim, and the results are not what the category usually reports. The CE Shop’s Get Your License menu lists forty nine states plus Washington D.C., with Wyoming the only state absent. Colibri’s pre-licensing menu lists forty states plus the District of Columbia. Kaplan’s real estate navigation lists forty states plus Washington D.C.

That matters for a specific group of readers. Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota and West Virginia do not appear in the Colibri pre-licensing menu I pulled. In those ten states The CE Shop was the widest verified option this session. In Wyoming, the one state The CE Shop skips, you need Kaplan or a local school.

One correction that saves confusion. Real Estate Express is not a separate competitor. Visit realestateexpress.com and you land on colibrirealestate.com, because they are one company under the Colibri brand. Any list that ranks them as two different schools is out of date.

Colibri also does not deliver its own course everywhere it appears. In Ohio it partners with Hondros College rather than teaching the hours itself, and it publishes no package price on that page. That is not a criticism given Ohio’s rules, which I come back to below, but you should know whose product you are buying.

Situation two: I need continuing education, not pre-licensing

If you already hold a licence and you are shopping for renewal hours, the AceableAgent list collapses from seventeen states to five. Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York and Texas are covered. Everywhere else you are buying from someone else regardless of how much you liked the pre-licensing course.

This is the cleanest case in the article. A licensed agent in Arizona, California, Colorado, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia or Washington bought pre-licensing from AceableAgent and then has to leave the brand at renewal time. The CE Shop and Colibri both list continuing education state by state across most of the country, and either can pick up the renewal cycle.

The practical advice is unglamorous. Renewal requirements are set by your state commission, they include mandatory topics that change, and the only list that binds you is the one your regulator publishes. Buy the hours from a provider your own commission has approved, check the topic breakdown against the current renewal rules, and do not assume last cycle’s package still satisfies this cycle’s requirement.

Situation three: I want a published pass rate

Here is the part of this category that is quietly dishonest, and I want to be precise about it because a lot of competing pages get it wrong.

AceableAgent publishes no pass rate. What it publishes, on state page after state page, is this: “Based on the PrepAgent proprietary exam readiness assessment of over 2000+ students from hundreds of pre-license providers, AceableAgent students scored an average of 74%, while other real estate school students scored an average of 64%.” That is a readiness assessment run by PrepAgent, which is an Aceable brand, scored before anyone sits a state exam. It is not a pass rate, it is not verified by any regulator, and any article that reports 74 percent as a pass rate has made an error. AceableAgent’s pass rate is Not published.

The CE Shop is the only one of these providers that publishes state level first time pass rates against state averages. Its national summary this session reads Combined Exams 65 percent for The CE Shop against a 57 percent state average, National Portion 67 percent against 50 percent, and State Portion 58 percent against 50 percent.

What makes it credible is that it publishes the losses too. On the Iowa salesperson exam the state portion shows The CE Shop at 53 percent against a state average of 61 percent, which is a clear miss. Missouri salesperson shows 35 percent against 35 percent, and Mississippi salesperson shows 60 percent against 60 percent, both flat. Texas salesperson shows 56 percent against 56 percent, also flat. A marketing department that only wanted to look good would not print those rows.

The CE Shop attaches a disclaimer I think is the correct one for the category: “Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Accordingly, The CE Shop LLC. does not guarantee specific licensing exam results.” Nobody should be promising you an outcome here, and the provider with the best data is the one making the smallest promise.

Now the source almost nobody cites. If you are in Texas, you do not need any school’s self report, because the Texas Real Estate Commission publishes provider level exam passage rates itself, covering 12/1/2023 to 11/30/2025. The overall sales agent pass rate across all Texas providers is 56.12 percent, on 29,980 exams. Here is how the four schools in this article performed on that regulator file.

Two things fall out of that table. First, The CE Shop’s self reported Texas figure of 1,077 exams and 608 passes matches the regulator file exactly, which is a strong signal that its published numbers are honest rather than curated. Second, AceableAgent came out well ahead of the Texas field on the regulator’s own data despite publishing no pass rate itself, and Kaplan came out below the state average. The benchmark distinction matters when you read any school’s marketing: the minimum performance rate in the TREC file is 44.94 percent, well under the 56.12 percent field average, so a provider can clear the state minimum comfortably and still sit below the average school.

The obvious limitation: this is Texas only. No other state in this comparison publishes a per provider file like it. If you want the fuller version of the pass rate argument I have written it up in my AceableAgent versus The CE Shop comparison.

Situation four: I want the cheapest thing that is legal

Cheapest is a state question, not a brand question, and the spread inside a single brand proves it. AceableAgent’s own entry tier runs from $149 in Virginia for 60 required hours to $949 in Ohio for 100 required hours. That is 6.4 times the price for 1.67 times the hours, so hours are not the explanation.

The explanation is Ohio law. Ohio Revised Code section 4735.09 requires a salesperson applicant to have “successfully completed at an institution of higher education all of the following eligible courses”, being forty hours of real estate practice, forty hours covering Ohio real estate law and civil rights law, ten hours of appraisal and ten hours of finance. Section 4735.01 defines institution of higher education to include a school holding a certificate of registration from the state board of career colleges and schools that is approved to offer degree or certificate programs. That is why AceableAgent’s Ohio page is badged “100-Hour Course Approved by OH SBCCS” rather than by the real estate division, and it is why Ohio costs what it costs.

You can see the same effect in every competitor. The CE Shop prices Ohio salesperson pre-licensing at $1099, $1299, $1499 and $1799 across its four packages while pricing the California salesperson course, which requires 135 hours rather than 100, at $139, $239, $315 and $435. Kaplan prices its Ohio Complete Licensing Package with Exam Prep at $799 and its Career Launcher at $1199, and those are the only two Ohio salesperson packages it lists, so $799 to $1199 is the full Kaplan range. A separate figure on the same page estimates the total cost of licensure rather than the course: an Ohio licence “can cost anywhere from $1,200” to “$1,550”, which Kaplan says depends on where you complete the 100 hours and comes before the fingerprinting, criminal records check and application fees. Colibri declines to sell Ohio directly at all.

Ohio is the one state in this cluster where AceableAgent is not the cheapest entry point, and by a margin of $150 against Kaplan. If you are in Ohio, price all three and read the Ohio Division of Real Estate and Professional Licensing requirements before you spend anything.

One more caution on price. AceableAgent’s course index and its individual state pages do not always agree. The index shows Colorado “Starting at $799” while the Colorado state page shows $349 for the 168 hour course. The index shows Illinois “Starting at $199” while the Illinois state page publishes no package price at all. In every case I treat the state page as authoritative, and I would suggest you do the same. My full pricing breakdown works through all seventeen states package by package.

Situation five: I already failed the exam once

If you have sat the exam and missed, you are not shopping for a pre-licensing course any more. You are shopping for exam prep, and in most states you can buy that separately from whoever taught you the hours.

AceableAgent bundles exam prep into its Deluxe and Premium tiers through PrepAgent, and attaches an Ace or Don’t Pay Guarantee whose own wording is “we guarantee if you don’t pass the licensing exam after three attempts, we will refund your money. Additional terms and conditions do apply. State laws and regulations may prohibit some students from qualifying.” Read that last sentence twice before you rely on it, because guarantees in this category are routinely void in some states by law.

Colibri answers with a Pass or Don’t Pay Guarantee described on its Texas page as requiring you to “Score at least 80% on three simulated exams and pass your state licensing exam on your first try within 30 days.” That is a first attempt guarantee, which is precisely the thing a repeat candidate cannot use. The CE Shop takes a different route on its Ohio packages, offering “a reimbursement of the cost of the initial licensing exam in case a retake is required” under a Pass Guarantee valued at $64 on that page.

For a second attempt my honest ranking is: buy standalone exam prep rather than a second full course, check whether your state lets you retake without re-taking the hours, and treat every guarantee as void until you have read the terms for your own state. Nothing here guarantees a pass, and no provider claims to control the exam.

Where the four alternatives actually land

Colibri is the answer for most readers in an uncovered state, because forty states plus the District of Columbia is broad and the tiering is generous, with a printed textbook option and live instructor sessions at the top. Its weakness is that its guarantee is disabled by state law in several places and that its Ohio product is somebody else’s.

The CE Shop is the answer if you care about evidence. Forty nine states plus D.C. is the widest coverage I verified, and it is the only provider in this comparison publishing regulator checkable pass rates including the ones that make it look ordinary. Its Ohio pricing is the highest in the group, so it is not the value pick everywhere.

Kaplan is the answer in Ohio on price and in Wyoming on availability. It is not the answer on evidence, since its Texas pass rate on the regulator file sits below the state field and no Kaplan published pass rate could be verified this session.

AceableAgent remains the best entry price in most of the seventeen states it covers, and the Texas regulator data supports the product rather than the marketing. But it is unavailable to two thirds of the country and unavailable to almost every reader who needs continuing education, and no amount of course quality fixes an availability problem. My full review covers what the course itself is actually like.

Running the business behind the licence

Whichever school you end up buying from, the course is the cheap part. The expensive part is client acquisition, and the agents who solve that fastest tend to be the ones who already think like operators rather than employees.

If you are building something commercial alongside the licence, market selection comes first. My guide to profitable high ticket niches lays out the screen I use before committing to anything.

Then the economics. Read how the high ticket model works so the margin structure makes sense before any money moves.

Supply is where most people stall. My complete supplier sourcing guide is the step by step version of what took me years to work out.

Commission income normally wants a proper entity behind it, and my walkthrough of business formation covers that without the legalese.

My own stack is short. Storefronts run on Shopify. Entity filings and registered agent service go through Bizee.

Liability cover comes from Hiscox, which matters more the moment you hold a professional licence. Bookkeeping runs on QuickBooks, which is how course fees and commission income stay separable at tax time.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best AceableAgent alternative if my state is not covered?

The CE Shop had the widest pre-licensing coverage I verified this session at forty nine states plus Washington D.C., with Wyoming the only gap. Colibri and Kaplan each listed forty states plus D.C. If your state is one of the ten missing from the Colibri pre-licensing menu, including Connecticut, Oregon and West Virginia, The CE Shop is the more reliable starting point. Confirm your state commission approves the provider before you pay.

Does AceableAgent offer continuing education in my state?

Only if you are in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York or Texas. Those are the five states on its continuing education menu. Post-licensing is narrower still at four states, excluding New York. Everywhere else you will need a different provider for renewal hours even if you took your pre-licensing course with AceableAgent.

Is AceableAgent’s 74 percent a pass rate?

No, and this is the most common error in the category. The figure comes from a PrepAgent proprietary exam readiness assessment, PrepAgent is an Aceable brand, and the assessment is taken before any state exam. AceableAgent publishes no pass rate percentage anywhere on its site. For a regulator verified number in Texas, use the TREC provider passage rate file instead.

Which alternative is cheapest?

It depends entirely on the state. In California The CE Shop opened at $139 for 135 hours. In Virginia, Michigan, Florida and Texas AceableAgent had the cheapest entry tier at $149, $169, $179 and $449. In Ohio, Kaplan was cheapest at $799 against AceableAgent’s $949 and The CE Shop’s $1099. Never assume a brand is cheap everywhere.

Why is Ohio so much more expensive than every other state?

Because Ohio Revised Code 4735.09 requires the coursework to be completed at an institution of higher education, and 4735.01 defines that to include schools registered with the state board of career colleges and schools and approved to offer degree or certificate programs. That is a much heavier regulatory burden than an ordinary course approval, and every provider prices it in. It is not about the hours, since Ohio requires 100 against Virginia’s 60.

Do any of these schools guarantee I will get licensed?

No, and none of them claims to. Course completion is one requirement among several that typically include a passing exam score, an application, fingerprinting, a background check and in many states a sponsoring broker. Every guarantee I read carries state law exclusions. Confirm the complete requirement list with your own state real estate commission, because that is the only version that binds you.

Bottom Line

AceableAgent is a good product with a coverage problem, and the coverage problem decides this page for most readers. Seventeen states for pre-licensing and five for continuing education means the majority of people searching for alternatives are not choosing between brands at all. They are choosing between the providers that can legally sell them the hours.

If your state is uncovered, start with The CE Shop on breadth and evidence, and check Colibri and Kaplan on price in your specific state. If you need continuing education outside Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York and Texas, you are leaving AceableAgent whatever you thought of the course. If you want a published pass rate, The CE Shop is the only one of the four that publishes one, and in Texas the regulator publishes better data than any school does.

And if you are in one of the seventeen, AceableAgent’s entry tier was the cheapest I found in Virginia, Michigan, Florida and Texas, and its Texas result on the TREC file was the strongest of the four schools compared here. That is a real endorsement with a real boundary around it. Verify your current hour requirement, fee schedule and approved provider list with your own state real estate commission before buying anything, because finishing a course is not the same as holding a licence and no school controls the part that comes after.

If the business you are building alongside the licence is an online store rather than a brokerage, my team runs a complete done for you high ticket dropshipping business build and launch service covering the storefront, supplier relationships and launch systems.

Related Articles

Best Online Real Estate School: Ranked by State Approval First

How to Get a Real Estate License: The Full Process by State

AceableAgent vs Colibri: Coverage, Price Per Required Hour and Refund Terms

AceableAgent Pricing: All 17 States and the Real Cost of Licensure

Aceable Review: The 8 State Gate and Real Drivers Ed Prices

Trevor Fenner

Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.

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