Why ESLteacher exists, who built it, and what we believe about the ESL job market in 2026.
If you have ever applied for an ESL job, you know the pattern. You upload your CV to one of the big legacy boards. Within 24 hours you have 30 emails from "recruiters" — most of them in countries you didn't apply to, attached to schools they don't actually represent, offering salaries 30% lower than the listing said. They want a 10% commission on your contract. They will not negotiate it on your behalf. They are middlemen, and the only person they help is themselves.
The legacy boards profit from this. They sell your contact information to recruiters. They list jobs without verifying the schools. Salaries are listed as "competitive" or "negotiable" because schools don't have to commit to a real number to be listed.
The result, from a teacher's side: lots of noise, lots of false starts, lots of contracts that aren't what they were advertised. We've all been there.
ESLteacher.com was built around a small set of principles, none of which are revolutionary, all of which the legacy boards refuse to commit to.
Every salary is posted up front, in real numbers, in local currency. If a school refuses to publish a salary range, we don't list the job. There is no "competitive" on this site.
Every school is verified by a working teacher in that country. We're starting small and real rather than large and padded — 7 countries covered directly today, growing one verified market at a time. The schools we have heard bad things about — the chains that don't pay on time, the schools that have safety issues, the recruiters running fake school fronts — we don't list them, even when they offer to pay us double.
Teachers apply directly to the school. No recruiter in the middle taking a cut. Your CV goes to the hiring manager. The relationship — and the negotiation — is yours.
Schools pay; teachers don't. Schools pay $79 to list. Featured listings are $199. We have a volume tier for chains. Teachers pay nothing — ever — and we will never charge a teacher.
Resources are free. The country guides, the salary database, the contract templates, the lesson plans — all free, no email signup required. The ESL world has enough gatekeeping. We don't add to it.
ESLteacher.com is owned by Ploy Cunningham — one of six businesses she's built and run out of Chiang Mai and Surin, alongside ThaiBeef.com, Riverside Dispensary, EnglishTeacher.com, USAEnglish.com, and Logotherapist.com. This one started because she kept hearing the same complaint from teacher friends: bad contracts, hidden recruiter fees, salaries that turned out to be fiction once you signed.
Her husband, Ben, volunteers his time helping run the day-to-day here — answering emails, checking listings, connecting teachers to the country contacts we have on the ground. He doesn't own any part of it; he just believes in doing it right, the same way Ploy runs everything else she's built.
We are still a small team. We pick up our own emails. We answer our own LINE messages. We answer DMs on Twitter. If you write to us about a country and we have a teacher on the ground there, we connect you to them. If we don't, we say so honestly and ask you for the same favor in reverse if you take the job.
Our offices, such as they are, sit on a side road off Tha Phae Road in Chiang Mai. Email is the best way to reach us. We're hello@eslteacher.com.
Real jobs, hand-picked weekly, across 7 countries and growing. Every salary posted up front. Apply directly. No recruiters, no spam, no fees.
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