A few months ago, there were plenty of language schools with online classes for NT$650 an hour. All of those are now $750/hr on up. Plenty that are now NT$900-1200 and only if you buy a 50 class package or 20 classes a week, etc… But those are language training centers. I think they suggestion was to just find a random Taiwanese person.
The problem I have had with that (basically a “language exchange partner”) is that if both sides don’t know what they’re doing, it ends up being a waste of time — at that point you might as well walk up to the clerk at 7 or the breakfast stand or whatever and strike up conversations with these random people. Great practice, absolutely, but very different from a language intensive course where vocabulary and sentence structures are shoved down your throat and you must use them or fail or the course.
Italki is the website I keep bringing up because it’s the one everyone seems to suggest, but there are plenty others. I think Taiwan has a few online platforms for English (mainly) but also Chinese teachers. Full disclosure: I’ve never actually used any of them. But plenty of people have rates set at US$8/hr. That’s NT$240/hr, but I think the platform charges 15%, so the teacher will make about NT$200 (for “community tutors”, aka ppl without a teaching license, this isn’t a bad hourly income) You don’t have to worry about fighting with laobans or being charged insane rates for photocopied textbooks or “new student fees” or any of the other nonsense training centers try to pull here. If you don’t like your online teacher, you need only not sign up for the next class with them and pick someone else. Problem solved!