There are plenty of bloggers who have published round-ups of the best online course platforms, but this is the only one by a 20+ year e-learning industry pro who has actually designed, built, and implemented online course platforms and helped thousands of businesses – from solopreneurs to multi-national organizations – choose the right one for them. If you are (or want to be) an online course creator/seller and want pro guidance, you are in the right place.
Thinkific
LearnWorlds
Talent LMS
LearnDash
Kajabi
I’ve narrowed my picks for online teaching platforms down to the list above because I don’t think it is helpful to provide you with a huge list of the best online course platforms. (It doesn’t really make sense that there would be a long list of the “best,” does it?!) That said, not everyone’s needs are the same, so read on to find out why I like these platforms and other ones you may want to consider across five online learning platform categories.
How We Evaluate and Test Online Course Platforms
Reviews of platforms on the Learning Revolution site are overseen by the site’s founder, Jeff Cobb, an e-learning industry expert with more than 20 years of experience working with online course platforms. All evaluations are conducted by a team of analysts who have extensive experience using, testing, and writing about these types of platforms. We dedicate numerous hours to researching each platform, ensuring each aligns with the needs of online course sellers, and vetting specific areas like core features, usability, pricing, and customer satisfaction. Our reviews are unbiased, and while we will participate in affiliate programs, if available, we do not accept payment for placement in our articles or links to external websites.
I won’t bore you with my background. If you are interested, you can find out more on my bio page. The main thing to stress here is that I have been working with and on online course platforms for more than two decades. I’ve seen a lot come and go, and I draw on my experience with building, researching, writing about, and implementing platforms to make the recommendations you find here.
You can find much of the reasoning behind my choices and – just as importantly – a process you can follow to make your choice – in my free course platform selection guide. I strongly encourage you to download that and use it along with the information you will find on this page.
Online Course Platforms – What to Know
The platforms I cover here are specifically for creating and selling online courses. One of the most important things to know about choosing the best online course platform for these purposes is that most course software out there is not designed to sell online courses. It’s made to deliver internal corporate training or to support academic programs.
That means no e-commerce capabilities, no plug-n-play integration with major marketing tools, and usually very limited abilities to brand it and configure it the way you want to.
And here’s another important fact:
Even platforms that will work for selling online courses come in a lot of different flavors. Pick the wrong one to create and sell online courses and you will have headaches.
To help narrow your field of choices, I’ve organized this post into the following:
Categories of Online Course Platforms
- Standalone Course Platforms (Great for solo edupreneurs, small businesses)
- All-In-One Course Platforms (Run your website and course site together)
- WordPress Course Platform Options (For those who want to keep it all in WordPress)
- Marketplace Course Platforms (Get a pre-made market to sell courses online)
- Small Business-B2B Platforms (For more complex needs, selling business-to-business)
Disclosure: We are supported by our readers, like you. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. You can read our full disclosure here.
It may seem like a no-brainer, but just having a clear idea of which of the categories above you fall in – along with knowing that only a small subset of online course platforms are meant for selling courses – will make your life MUCH easier.
Keep in mind that I think each course platform listed here is a strong choice. If you do some basic work to understand your learning and business objectives, and pick on based on that, you won’t go wrong.
As noted above, all of the online learning platforms listed here are strong choices, but I know it can be helpful for an expert to just say “look at this one, it’s a top choice” if you want to sell courses. So, here’s my all-around top choice: Thinkific.
I like Thinkific because it is feature-rich but still easy to use, and you can tell it was created by people who really understand learning. You can create a free course right away, they are very upfront about how their different plans compare, and most importantly, I hear consistently from readers that they have had a good experience with Thinkific.
Just use the button below to get one month free to create and launch your first product.
Now, let’s move on to the list.
Best Standalone Online Course Platforms
These are hosted online teaching platforms geared toward solo edupreneurs or small businesses that want course creation software along with a turnkey way to create their own branded site to sell online courses. (Also, unlike Udemy, which is discussed below in a different category, they allow you full control over your user data.)
While the feature sets are relatively similar, they can be very different in their “look and feel” as well as in how focused they are on helping course entrepreneurs succeed – i.e., by providing good resources, educational content, strong support. Be sure to check out the free trial options, where available, so that you have a chance to kick the tires before committing.
This is the only category where I have a #1 choice and a very strong runner-up.
1. Thinkific (Top Pick)
Thinkific Highlights
Course Creation: Module based drip courses, live sessions, membership sites
Course Material: Videos, text lessons, PDFs, attachments
Website/Landing Page Builder: Yes, user-friendly drag & drop website & landing page builder
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Classroom environment, mandatory video viewing, comments section with every lesson
Teacher Features: Quizzes, multiple-choice questions, achievement certificates, surveys/polls
Email Marketing: Integrates with other email marketing tools but doesn’t offer native email features.
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: Beginner and intermediate course sellers looking for robust course creation features
Paid Plans Start From: $49/month
Free Plan: Yes
Free Trial: Yes, 30-day free trial with paid plans
Thinkific provides a truly full-featured software solution to help you create, deliver, market and sell online courses.
It is among the most popular online course platforms because of its robust features, beginner-friendly pricing, and excellent user experience.
Using Thinkific, you can create and host world-class online courses without any technical design or coding knowledge.
Its drag & drop website builder provides you with fully customizable and responsive website themes to create eye-catching websites and landing pages for your online course.
Thinkific offers a high-quality online learning experience to your course participants and gives you various tools like surveys, quizzes, assignments, and certificates to evaluate and reward them.
You can use Thinkific to present your content in a clean and clutter-free interface that provides all the necessary information to your students. Here’s an example of a Thinkific course in action.
Here’s a quick list of Thinkific’s salient features.
– A drag & drop course creator
– Membership sites and subscription courses
– Support for video, audio, presentations, and text lessons
– Scheduled lessons and drip courses
– Course website along with several templates
– Landing pages
– Quizzes, surveys, and student certificates
– Integration with hundreds of different marketing and business tools
A big vote of confidence for Thinkific is that my friend Dorie Clark – a bestselling author multiple times over, guest on the Learning Revolution podcast, and generally a brilliant and business-savvy person – has used it for her online courses.
Similarly, CopyHackers by Joanna Wiebe, one of the world’s most sought-after conversion copywriting brands, hosts most of its online courses and membership programs with Thinkific.
You can find many more Thinkific course examples in this article.
Similar to Teachable (below), there is a free plan, but …
… get this …
… Thinkific does not charge transaction fees on any of its plans, paid or free. (You still don’t quite get to sell online courses for free because your payment processor – e.g., PayPal, Stripe – will always charge you a transaction fee.)
I’ll also mention two features that I think really help this online courses platform stand apart from most of its competitors.
The first is the Thinkific App store. With the app store, you’re able to easily integrate a wide range of other platforms to help you create more impactful learning experiences and market your courses much more effectively.
The second is Thinkific Communities, which have recently been upgraded and improved significantly. You can now not only add rich communities to your courses, you can also sell communities as a product, with or without courses.
Thinkific Pricing
The Basic paid plan gets you the essential tools necessary to successfully launch your online learning business and starts at $49 per month ($36 if paid annually). Definitely worth checking out.
To go deeper, here’s our full Thinkific review.
2. LearnWorlds (Runner Up)
LearnWorlds Highlights
Course Creation: Module-based drip courses, live sessions, membership, subscriptions, bundles.
Course Material: Videos, audio, embedded lessons, text lessons, PDFs, attachments
Website/Landing Page Builder: Yes, an advanced feature-rich online school builder to create your course website and landing pages (with dozens of templates and widgets.)
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Classroom environment, automatic video transcripts, in-video actions and CTAs, mandatory video viewing, comments section with every lesson
Teacher Features: Multiple types of quizzes, tests, and assessments, along with graded assignments, surveys, and branded course completion certificates.
Marketing Features: Affiliate management, coupons, promotions, custom domains, and email marketing integration (no native email features.)
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: Beginner and intermediate course sellers looking for an easy-to-use course creation platform with an advanced website builder (but without native email marketing.)
Paid Plans Start From: $29/month
Free Plan: No
Free Trial: Yes, 30-day free trial with paid plans
While I rank Thinkific as my top all-around choice, LearnWorlds is a very close second for the average online course creator – and I also use it for certain offerings. The learning curve is higher, but it pays off with more sophisticated e-learning features – like the ability to support SCORM (the only platform in this category that does.)
LearnWorlds is a much newer online course platform than Thinkific and several other tools in this list. But it already has a strong claim for being the world’s best all-in-one course platform.
The company puts a lot of emphasis on its tools for building sales pages for courses – and these do indeed look impressive.
Its site builder is among the best I’ve seen in the online course industry, with robust website and landing page building features and a highly engaging drag & drop interface.
Here are a couple of examples to give you an idea of the platform’s quality.
Tim Stevenson started School Of Calisthenics using LearnWorlds and grew it to over 40,000 users in one year.
He used LearnWorld’s website builder to create his school’s website comparable to any high-quality online learning website.
It contains multiple courses, embedded videos, HD images, and all the other elements you expect to see on a professional website.
Similarly, Dr. Ampell used LearnWorlds to create a successful online learning business, The Learning Liaisons.
On the course creation side of things, LearnWorlds gives you complete control over your content visibility and how your students can engage with it.
For example, you can enable mandatory video viewing to ensure your students don’t skip lessons. Similarly, you can lock lessons and allow drip courses that follow a fixed schedule or bind access to the completion of previous lessons.
Unlike many companies here, LearnWorlds also offers services for uploading and converting your content, developing courses, and customizing your LearnWorlds school.
And, it is one of the few platforms on this page that supports SCORM. So, all in all, it looks like an excellent option, deserving of the “premium” label.
LearnWorlds Pricing
You can try LearnWorlds free for 30 days (no credit card required), then pricing starts at $29 per month ($24, if billed annually). The company charges $5 per sale on its starter plan, but no additional fees on its other plans.
Use the code TAG50 when checking out at LearnWorlds and you will get 50% off for the first two months of a Pro plan or higher.
To learn more, read our full LearnWorlds Review
Other Good Standalone Options
Naturally, Thinkific and LearnWorlds are not your only options for a standalone online training platform. It’s a crowded market right now and, while there is plenty of junk, there are also some very solid options that, on any given day, could move to the top of the best online course platforms list. These may be worth considering if you are looking for lower costs, a simpler interface, or stronger features in a particular area – like, for example, coaching.
So as to not overwhelm you with options, here are the two I currently think are most worth considering:
Teachable
Teachable Highlights
Course Creation: Module based drip courses, live sessions, membership sites
Course Material: Videos, text lessons, PDFs, attachments
Website/Landing Page Builder: Yes, user-friendly and fully customizable drag & drop website & landing page builder.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Classroom environment,
Teacher Features: Graded quizzes, multiple-choice questions, achievement certificates, student analytics
Marketing Features: A/B testing, coupons, custom domains (nop native email marketing features.)
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: Beginner and Intermediate course sellers looking for a customizable website builder and A-class student experience.
Paid Plans Start From: $59/month
Free Plan: Yes
Free Trial: Yes, 30-day free trial with paid plans
Teachable was one of the first online course platforms to launch in this category and remains one of the most popular.
It enables you to offer online courses “on your website and control your branding, student data, and pricing all from one place.”
In my opinion, Teachable offers one of the cleanest, most straightforward administrative out of any platform on this page.
It comes with robust website and landing building features to help you set up professional courses without any technical and coding skills.
The website builder’s back end consists entirely of drag & drop elements using which you can fully customize your site’s look & feel.
It also offers advanced options such as adding tracking scripts to your page or directly editing the HTML code.
Teachable’s course creation and management features are among the best in the online course industry.
You can create lessons and lectures using different content types that most other course platforms don’t offer. For example, you can add code examples to a lesson for your students.
Similarly, you can add upsells to individual lessons to generate additional sales from your content.
Teachable even offers a dedicated marketplace named Discover, where you can publicly sell your online courses to thousands of students.
You can find numerous examples of Teachable courses and membership programs in all kinds of niches on Discover.
However, despite its solid course creation and student management features, Teachable lacks marketing and sales capabilities which is why it isn’t truly an all-in-one course platform.
But if you are looking to get pretty straightforward, on-demand courses up and running quickly, it’s a great option.
Teachable Pricing
Teachable pricing starts at $59 per month ($39 if paid annually) for its basic plan. With the lowest level paid plan, you still pay a 5% transaction fee on all sales. Transaction fees disappear once you jump up to the next level. All plans include unlimited courses and students. (Here’s my complete Teachable Review.)
Teachable Review: Teachable Review
Teachery
Teachery Highlights
Course Creation: Unlimited Module-based drip courses, memberships, and bundles.
Course Material: Videos, audio, text lessons, PDFs, attachments (not hosted)
Website/Landing Page Builder: Yes, it offers a website and landing page builder with customizable templates.
Online Community: No
Student Engagement Features: Classroom environment, comments with every lesson.
Teacher Features: None.
Marketing Features: Offer email notifications for advanced email marketing, only integrates with Mailchimp and ConvertKit. Offers coupons and affiliate program management.
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: Creators looking for an affordable platform with basic course selling features.
Paid Plans Start From: $49/month.
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: Yes, a 14-day free trial.
Teachery claims to be “the only online course platform that helps you craft the content inside your online course.”
Seems to me most course platforms do that, but I will give Teachery props for making their course creation interface exceptionally user-friendly.
Particularly if you are just getting started out, I’m not sure there is a more straightforward course development platform to use.
Here’s an example of a site created with Teachery.
You can use Teachery to sell digital downloads and video courses. You can also configure drip courses and decide how your audience accesses your content.
For example, you can offer full course access, unlock lessons on a fixed timeline, or only grant access to a new lesson when a student completes its prerequisites.
Basically, Teachery provides you with two rock-solid course templates – a “minimal” template and a sidebar template – and guides you through every step of the process for getting your content into the template and getting set up to sell effectively.
Its website and landing page builder allows you to fully customize the themes according to your brand identity.
You can add new pages to your site or change the structure of a page using content blocks that allow you to add images, audio, video, HTML code, and other content types to your site.
Overall, Teachery is not as feature-rich as some of the other options in this article. But that may be precisely what many course creators need to stop dreaming about having a course and simply get started.
Teachery Pricing
There’s a 14-day free trial (no credit card required), and then the paid plan is either $49 per month or $470 per year. (Complete Teachery review here.)
Best All-In-One Courseware Platforms
This category of online course software provides everything you need not just to create and sell online courses, but also to manage your full web presence and sell other digital products.
In general, their online course creation and management capabilities are not as sophisticated as what you will find in the best standalone online course platforms, but they make up for that in usually having a much stronger web content management system (CMS) along with native (i.e., not plug-in) e-mail marketing and customer relationship management tools (CRM).
My favorite in this category is:
1. Kajabi
Kajabi Highlights
Course Creation: Mini-courses, drip courses, digital downloads, memberships, coaching programs
Course Material: Videos, audio, text lessons, podcasts, PDFs, attachments.
Website/Landing Page Builder: High-quality drag & drop course website and landing builder
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Learning tracks, transcripts, CTAs.
Teacher Features: Student progress reports, quizzes, certificates, surveys, analytics
Marketing Features: Native email marketing, marketing automation, sales funnels, tagging, affiliate management.
Learning Curve: Medium
Best For: Advanced course sellers looking for complete email marketing and automation features along with course selling capabilities.
Paid Plans Start From: $149/month
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: Yes, 14-day trial
Kajabi describes itself as “the one system you need to market, sell, and deliver your knowledge online.”
As it happens, selling online courses is a big part of the equation. Along with courses, you’re able to sell memberships, training portals, file downloads, and pretty much any other digital product you can come up with.
This may be overkill for many people who just want to sell an online course – and who are already set with a website and marketing tools.
Then again, if you don’t have those things or simply want to get everything under one roof, Kajabi may be just the ticket.
Think of it as a complete marketing and sales generation platform for online courses. You can use it to create websites and landing pages for your online course and generate sales by setting up optimized marketing funnels for various business goals.
It allows you to create Pipelines (sales funnels) that cover everything from traffic generation and conversion to lead generations and course sales.
Its email marketing features allows you to create automated email campaigns based on triggers and conditions.
Kajabi Email is Kajabi’s native visual email campaign builder that allows you to fully modify the look and feel of your HTML emails or create plain text emails for your subscribers.
And Kajabi has done a lot in the past year or so to add new features – like a full-fledged e-mail marketing system and the ability to support scheduling coaching sessions.
The company massively upgraded its web page builder capabilities in 2019, making it more potent than ever for creating websites and online courses.
The web page builder and e-mail capabilities are included with every plan.
Here’s an example of a Kajabi powered website with various courses listed on the homepage.
Here’s another example of a more conventional website built with Kajabi.
In short, if you’re looking for the perfect all-in-one online course platform, Kajabi is an excellent choice.
Kajabi Pricing
You can try Kajabi for 30 days for free. Once a paid plan kicks in, Kajabi pricing starts at $149 a month ($119 if paid annually).
For a more in-depth look at Kajabi, read our full Kajabi Review
Other Good All-in-One Platform Choices
If an all in one platform is the right fit for you you, then it’s worth seeing what some of the other major players can do
Podia
Podia Highlights
Course Creation: Digital downloads, drip courses, live training, webinars, memberships, coaching programs
Course Material: Videos, audio, text lessons, PDFs, attachments.
Website/Landing Page Builder: Limited-feature page builder for website and landing pages.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Clean classroom interface, comments/questions on every lesson.
Teacher Features: Quizzes, assignments, and student reports.
Marketing Features: Native email marketing, unlimited subscribers, marketing funnels, triggered sequences, forms, A/B testing.
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: New and mid-tier course sellers looking for reasonable course selling features along with native email marketing capabilities.
[2022] Learning Revolution Rating: 9.2 out of 10
Paid Plans Start From: $39/month
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: Yes, 14-day trial with every paid plan.
Podia started out as “WithCoach,” a platform aimed primarily at coaches. More recently, the company has repositioned itself as a full-featured but easy-to-use course platform for selling courses, memberships, and digital downloads all in one place – and it has been gaining a lot of momentum. Some of its key selling points are:
● no transaction fees (other than whatever you pay to your payment processor – i.e., Paypal or Stripe)
â—Ź no limits on courses or users
â—Ź a strong focus on supporting affiliate marketing of your products
And, Podia still has solid features for coaches. For example, you can easily schedule paid coaching sessions from within the system through pre-established integrations with Calendly, Acuity, and other popular scheduling tools.
Podia’s user-friendliness immediately stands out when you start using it for building your online course. It walks you through the whole process of creating and selling online courses, webinars, digital downloads, and product bundles.
Its course creator supports video, audio, text, PDF, and embedded content. Plus, it offers a student experience comparable with Teachable and Thinkific.
Native email marketing features also make Podia an attractive choice at this price point. It is probably the cheapest all-in-one course platform with unlimited email subscribers in all subscription plans. However, every plan has a separate email sending limit.
Overall, Podia is an excellent choice if you’re looking for a robust course builder with impressive marketing features on a limited budget.
Podia Pricing
With its basic plan starting at $39 per month, Podia seems to be rapidly gaining momentum. (Complete Podia review here.)
Kartra
Kartra Highlights
Course Creation: Digital downloads, drip courses, webinars, memberships, coaching programs
Course Material: Videos, audio, text lessons, podcasts, PDFs, attachments.
Website/Landing Page Builder: World-class drag & drop website and landing page creator with dozens of professionally designed templates.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Learning tracks, transcripts, in-video CTAs.
Teacher Features: Quizzes, surveys, student reports, analytics.
Marketing Features: Advanced email marketing, condition-based automation, sales funnels, opt-in forms, landing pages, affiliate management, marketplace.
Learning Curve: High
Best For: Professional and experienced digital product sellers looking for advanced email marketing, automation, and lead management features.
Paid Plans Start From: $99/month
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: No, but offers a 30-day money-back guarantee
Kartra is an amazingly robust online course platform designed to help marketers create, sell, and scale their online course business.
The platform gives you everything you need to build out a professional-looking, feature-rich website without having to hire a designer or know coding.
It provides you with a long list of templates for various types of websites and landing pages such as squeeze pages, sales pages, thank you pages, and long-form sales pages.
The thing that sets Kartra apart from other course platforms is that all its components are fully integrated and work towards driving sales for your business.
These integrated capabilities include an email platform, memberships, sales funnels, video hosting, management, tracking, lead capture, a help desk platform for your customers, and a calendar capability for booking and managing customer appointments.
This means that you can track your audience activity at all stages of the sales funnel and fully personalize your marketing message based on user behavior.
From a course standpoint, Kartra will work best if your focus is on video content. I say this because it does not have the level of course creation, student management, or assessment capabilities that the more course-focused platforms covered here have.
But if video is your thing, and you want a ton of marketing muscle, Kartra is hard to beat.
It offers in-video CTAs, sign-up forms, and user tagging features that make your videos highly engaging and help you drive more conversions.
You can choose from various pre-designed CTAs like opt-in, banners, buttons, social unlock, etc.
In short, you can think of Kartra as a robust sales and lead generation platform with sufficient course creation capabilities.
Kartra Pricing
Plans start at $99 per month. (Complete Kartra review here.)
New Zenler
New Zenler Highlights
Course Creation: Digital downloads, drip courses, live training, webinars, memberships, coaching programs
Course Material: Videos, audio, text lessons, podcasts, PDFs, attachments.
Website/Landing Page Builder: High-quality page builder for creating your course website and landing pages.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Learning tracks, comments/questions on every lesson.
Teacher Features: Quizzes, surveys, certificates, student reports, analytics.
Marketing Features: Native email marketing, marketing funnels, triggered sequences, forms, A/B testing.
Learning Curve: Medium
Best For: Experienced course creators looking to scale their business by running automated email marketing campaigns.
Paid Plans Start From: $647/year
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: Yes, you can use the platform for free but need to upgrade to start selling.
New Zenler describes itself as “the first-ever online course platform built around sales & marketing.”
That seems like a bit of a stretch, but it is definitely positioned as an alternative to Kajabi at a significantly lower price point.
In other words, you can create courses with it but also run just about every other aspect of your online business – from your website to email campaigns and sales funnels to online communities.
With New Zenler’s sales funnels, you can create unique paths for various marketing and sales goals. For example, a funnel for a lead magnet would be significantly different from a paid video course.
Each funnel contains multiple landing pages and email sequences that address the specific needs of your target audience.
You can use New Zenler to set up multiple drip email campaigns based on different automation rules triggered by your subscriber’s actions.
Its course creation features allow you to create top-quality online courses with audio, video, text, and other content formats. And to top it off, New Zenler has one of the most robust and user-friendly website builders in the online course industry.
This is why despite being a new entrant, New Zenler is competing hard with Kajabi and Kartra for being one of the best course hosting platforms.
New Zenler Pricing
New Zenler offers Pro and Premium plans priced at $67/month and $197/month, respectively. Both plans offer similar features, but the Premium plan comes with higher limits designed for customers running established and growing eLearning businesses.
Zenler Review: Zenler Review
Selling Courses Online with WordPress
If you are wondering how to create an online course with WordPress – and, of course, sell it – there are plenty of WordPress plug-ins and themes available to help you out. These can be a particularly good option if you want to sell online courses from your own website, though keep in mind that you will need more technical skills if you go this route.
My current top choice for a WordPress learning management system (LMS) is:
1. LearnDash
LearnDash Highlights
Course Creation: High-quality video courses, drip content, digital downloads, bundles, memberships.
Course Material: Videos, audio, text lessons, PDFs, presentations attachments.
Website/Landing Page Builder: Feature-rich drag & drop page builder with many themes and advanced capabilities.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Leaderboards, badges, points, discussion forum, comments/questions on every lesson,
Teacher Features: Quizzes, certificates, surveys, graded assignments, individual and group tasks, student reports.
Marketing Features: A/B testing, landing pages, forms, email notifications, bulk access, integration with tons of marketing tools.
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: Mid-advanced course sellers looking for an easy-to-use WordPress learning management system.
Paid Plans Start From: $199/year
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: No, but offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
LearnDash, in my opinion, is pretty much the gold standard for serious WordPress learning management system (LMS) plug-ins and the release of version 3.0 made it even better. It is a very feature rich platform that was clearly developed by people serious about e-learning (and the founder, Justin Ferriman, had a long background in e-learning).
Here are some of its core features comparable with any standalone LMS tool.
â—Ź Eight different types of quizzes
â—Ź Supports videos, audio, text, PDFs, and file attachments
â—Ź Drip courses, mandatory content, linear and open progression.
â—Ź Student badges, leaderboards, completion certificates
â—Ź Graded assignments and evaluations.
â—Ź Automated email notifications on course milestones
â—Ź Additional payment gateways via Woocommerce integration
â—Ź Full, recurring, and subscription payments
â—Ź Fully customizable course themes and templates
â—Ź Works with any WordPress theme
â—Ź Group course access for organizations and teams.
â—Ź Integrates with dozens of business and marketing applications.
Here’s an example of an online course website created with LearnDash.
The best thing about LearnDash is that you don’t need to go outside your WordPress editor or dashboard to use it.
You can create new courses, manage students, upload lessons, and collect payment while staying within your WordPress dashboard.
Another hugely impressive thing about LearnDash is its student assessment and management features.
It offers more quiz types than any other LMS and provides you with detailed student performance reports based on which you can take various administrative actions.
Do you need to be an advanced WordPress user to configure LearnDash? Not really.
Its backend is quite user-friendly, and all the necessary options and features are clearly listed. However, you do need to be familiar with the WordPress backend to use it.
In short, if you’re a WordPress user looking to sell online courses on your site, LearnDash is definitely one of the top contenders you should consider.
LearnDash Pricing
LearnDash pricing starts at $199 annually for the plugin version and tops out at $799 for unlimited sites. Both come with a 15-day refund.
LearnDash has also introduced a cloud version – LearnDash Cloud – that provides for a fully-hosted course website similar to the standalone platforms above, but built entirely on WordPress. You get all the upsides of using WordPress without having to install and maintain the software. Pricing starts at $29 per month or $299 if paid annually.
LearnDash Review: LearnDash Review
I recommend using LearnDash in combination with BuddyBoss to build a powerful online courses and membership/community solution. Full BuddyBoss review here.
Other Good WordPress LMS Choices
Naturally, LearnDash is not the only game in town when it comes to WordPress learning management system capabilities. Here are a couple more to consider.
AccessAlly
AccessAlly Highlights
Course Creation: Online multimedia courses, instant and drip content access, digital products, memberships.
Course Material: Videos, audio, text lessons, PDFs, presentations attachments.
Website/Landing Page Builder: No, but it comes with a standard course theme.
Online Community: No
Student Engagement Features: Gamification & points, lesson comments.
Teacher Features: Graded assignments, reports, progress tracking, quizzes & certificates, team accounts.
Marketing Features: Integrates with popular email marketing and automation tools, coupons, discounts, and affiliate management.
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: WordPress users looking to add a feature-rich eLearning/membership platform to their sites.
Paid Plans Start From: $99/month
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: No, but offers a 60-day money-back guarantee.
If you want to combine the ability to sell online courses with the ability to manage a full-featured membership site – a powerful combination for edupreneurs – then AccessAlly is arguably the best choice there is.
The platform leverages the full capabilities and flexibility of WordPress while also adding in great membership features and a learning management system (LMS) plug-in that includes notable features like the ability for students to submit homework assignments and get private feedback.
You get all of this without having to be a WordPress whiz. It’s plug-n-play, but there is also a comprehensive “done for you” option if you want to get up and running with a course and membership site quickly.
Marc Wayshak’s membership site is an excellent example of what’s possible with AccessAlly.
Powered by AccessAlly, Marc’s Sales Insights Lab is a full-fledged membership program with a professional website and all the necessary backend management tools.
You can’t tell from the outside if it’s built with WordPress or a dedicated course platform like Kajabi or Thinkific.
At the backend, AccessAlly gives you comprehensive student management and engagement features such as private notes, audio bookmarks, completion certificates, quizzes, surveys, progress tracking, objective checklists, leaderboards, graded assignments, and much more.
Its course builder isn’t as robust as some of the other tools in this list but offers sufficient features to help you create full-access and drip courses consisting of multiple modules and lessons.
On the marketing side, it integrates with all the popular email marketing tools and also offers imp[ressive affiliate management capabilities to help you market your courses.
In short, AccessAlly is an excellent tool in a very competitive WordPress LMS industry.
AccessAlly Pricing
The Pro plan is $129 per month / $108 with a yearly subscription. If you are serious about a membership model, this is definitely one to check out. (Complete AccessAlly Review here.)
LifterLMS
LifterLMS Highlights
Course Creation: Online courses, memberships, bundles, and various other digital products.
Course Material: Video, audio, text, PDF, and several other content formats
Website/Landing Page Builder: Yes, it offers an intuitive multi-tier drag & drop course builder
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Course modules and lesson outline, student comments
Teacher Features: Multiple dynamic quiz types, assignments, reports, completion certificates, badges.
Marketing Features: Email notifications, abandoned cart emails, automatic follow-ups, integration with email marketing tools, affiliate management features.
Learning Curve: Low
Best For: WordPress users looking to build a full-scale online course website with marketing and sales features.
Paid Plans Start From: $149/year
Free Plan: No.
Free Trial: It’s free to use, but you need to choose a plan when selling products.
LifterLMS is among the most popular WordPress LMS plugins with thousands of active users worldwide. It is very similar to LearnDash in its features and options.
It is a power-packed plugin that turns your WordPress website into a fully functional learning management system and allows you to sell online courses and membership programs easily.
You can use it to create attractive course pages and design courses with multiple modules and lessons. It supports all the popular content types such as video, audio, PDF, and embedded media.
On the management side, LifterLMS gives you detailed student management options like reporting, analytics, quizzes, assessments, leaderboards, etc.
To get an idea of the scale of sites eLearning programs you can create with LifterLMS, just head over to WP101, one of the biggest WordPress learning resources on the internet.
WP101’s membership program is powered by LifterLMS and has served over 3 million students worldwide. The site sells individual courses, and an all-access membership program with new content added regularly.
Since LifterLMS is based in WordPress, you can use it with any popular WordPress theme and plugins or tools you want.
It also offers integration with popular email marketing and lead generation tools, making it easier to market and grow your business.
Overall, if you’re looking for a reliable WordPress LMS, LifterLMS should definitely be on your list.
LifterLMS Pricing
LifterLMS has the solid selling point of being free for the base version: you can search for and install it using the usual plug-in screen in WordPress.
This means you can quickly try out the system within your WordPress site before deciding whether it is right for you.
You pay only if you decide to use any of the various add-ons available for the system. These range from e-commerce to various marketing tools and integrations.
The Earth Bundle is $149/year and gives you the entire suite of payment add-ons. Or you can purchase a Universal Bundle for $360 that includes all of the standard add-ons. (You can also try out the premium Infinity Bundle (usually $1,200/year for a month for $1.)
Read our LearnDash vs LifterLMS comparison.
One last note for this section: if you are going to go the WordPress route, be sure to check out 11 Best Web Hosting Services for Creators and Experts.
Best Marketplace Online Course Platforms
These are online course platforms that, in addition to providing ways to author/assemble courses, also provide an existing marketplace in which to sell courses online.
You may notice that I don’t mention these up above when I highlight my top picks for best online course platforms. The reason is that I’m not all that fond of them. These sites tend to turn courses into commodities and drive prices way down. That’s great if you are a learner looking for a course, not so great if you want to create online courses that generate a reasonable level of income.
Still, they are popular and they do have their place. (More thoughts here on when the marketplace model may be appropriate.)
If you are going to go this route, the top choice is pretty clear:
1. Udemy
Udemy Highlights
Course Creation: On-demand video courses.
Course Material: Video, text, PowerPoint slides, PDF, and attachments
Website/Landing Page Builder: No, all course pages have the same design. But you can customize the look & feel with your logo and images.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Course modules and lesson outline, student comments
Teacher Features: Surveys, certificates, quizzes, reports.
Marketing Features: Promoted to relevant customers through email and ads.
Learning Curve: Beginner-friendly
Best For: Beginner course sellers looking to gain quick exposure without fully investing in a website or course platform.
The folks at Udemy say, “Our goal is to disrupt and democratize education by enabling anyone to learn from the world’s experts.” From what I can tell, they have been doing a pretty good job at it.
The Udemy platform gives subject matter experts a simple, straightforward way to assemble content like PowerPoint slides, PDF documents, and YouTube videos into a coherent course experience.
Unlike Skillshare, Udemy courses aren’t limited to creative skills only and cover a much wider range of topics. However, creative and technical skills are still the most popular categories on its platform.
You can publish courses in the Udemy marketplace and use various tools to promote your masterpieces.
Since Udemy is a marketplace, its course pages follow the same design template. Similarly, its courses are structured the same way – multiple modules containing bite-sized lessons, assessments, exercises, and study material.
Here’s an example of a Udemy course page.
Udemy is free to get started for instructors – the company makes its money by keeping 50% if it sells your course. If you make the sale, you keep 97% (Udemy takes a 3% transaction fee).
Keep in mind that you are currently required to price your courses in $5 increments between $20 and $200 on Udemy (source) – quite restrictive, in my opinion.
Even so, ThinkTraffic reports that some instructors have been having quite a bit of success.
That’s probably because Udemy gets millions of monthly visitors to its platform and regularly runs promotions to attract students. However, remember that most Udemy courses aren’t full-scale programs. Instead, think of them as short courses with a limited scope.
When you consider these factors, the course pricing limitations make sense.
In short, if you’re looking to start a course business without worrying about anything but content creation, Udemy is the ideal place to start.
Other Online Course Marketplace Options
For other online course marketplace platforms, I encourage you to read 10 True Alternatives to Udemy for Selling Online Courses. Here, however, are a couple of the best other options.
OpenSesame
OpenSesame Highlights
Course Creation: On-demand online courses and educational programs.
Course Material: Video, text, PDF, and several other content formats
Website/Landing Page Builder: No, it follows a standard course page design.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Course modules and lesson outline, student comments
Teacher Features: Surveys, certificates, quizzes, reports.
Marketing Features: Promoted to relevant customers through email and ads.
Learning Curve: High
Best For: Experienced professionals looking to sell courses to corporate clients or manage extensive team training sessions.
OpenSesame is different from the other tools I’ve discussed in this article so far. It is a library of thousands of high-quality online courses delivered by professionals with real-world experience and credentials.
It serves its customers in two ways.
As an instructor, you can create courses for OpenSesame that corporate clients, training firms, educational institutes, and other entities can use in their programs.
On the other hand, if you’re building an independent course on your own LMS, you can integrate it with OpenSesame to add any lessons, courses, videos, or content from their library, making your offer more valuable.
The advantage of using OpenSesame is that it gives you access to some of the world’s most significant enterprise eLearning programs. If your course content aligns with an organization’s needs, it can include it in its internal or public educational programs, giving you exposure and adding credibility to your profile.
OpenSesame Pricing
The company takes 40% of any sales you make through its platform.
Skillshare
Skillshare Highlights
Course Creation: On-demand video courses.
Course Material: Video, text, PDF, and attachments
Website/Landing Page Builder: No, it follows a standard course page design.
Online Community: Yes
Student Engagement Features: Course modules and lesson outline, student comments
Teacher Features: Surveys, certificates, quizzes, reports.
Marketing Features: Promoted to relevant customers through email and ads.
Learning Curve: Beginner-friendly
Best For: Professionals looking to reach a sizable audience without worrying about building a course website or investing in marketing.
Skillshare is one of the world’s most popular eLearning platforms where anyone can register to access its library of thousands of online courses.
You can sign up as a Skillshare Teacher, create and upload your video courses, and earn from course sales.
Skillshare specializes in courses for creators. Some of its most popular courses are illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more. But you can also create courses on other topics like marketing, consumer behavior, psychology, etc.
Skillshare provides instructors with tools to create courses composed of video lessons and a “class project.” (All classes have these two elements.)
Classes are normally 10-25 minutes long, broken down into short videos, and they are all pre-recorded and self-paced.
It doesn’t offer a course builder like dedicated course platforms. Instead, all the course pages follow the same design template. Similarly, every course consists of multiple modules, lessons, and practical exercises.
Here’s an example of how a Skillshare course page looks like.
Once you have enrolled more than 25 learners in a class, you become eligible for participation in Skillshare’s Partner Program. You can earn money through the royalty pool managed by the company – usually $1-2 per enrollment, according to the company.
Unlike Udemy – discussed below – Skillshare sells subscriptions to all of its content rather than individual courses.
Once you are a partner, you’ll also get compensated for new Premium Members ($10 per) you bring to Skillshare through your Teacher Referral link. The Skillshare site reports that “Top teachers make up to $40,000 a year.”
Skillshare gets millions of website visitors every month who search the platform for different courses. So if you create courses on popular topics and optimize them using the right keywords, you have a pretty strong chance of attracting students regularly.
Skillshare also recommends relevant courses via Facebook ads and emails to its users based on their interests. But you all need to promote your courses individually to drive traffic and generate sales.
In short, if you’re a creative professional looking to sell courses without building your own course platform, Skillshare is an ideal option for you.
Best Small Business and B2B Course Platforms
Most of the best online training platforms listed on this page are geared towards solopreneurs or small, start-up businesses. While they can work for larger businesses, I’ve found over time that more established training and education companies may want to jump up to a different level if they:
- Sell business-to-business and may need to set up separate portals for each customer.
- Need to award continuing education credit learners.
- Already have an extensive catalog of courses built out in SCORM or TinCan-based authoring tools like iSpring, isEazy, Articulate, Captivate, or Lectora.
- Plan to build out a catalog of courses and don’t want to be “trapped” by using proprietary LMS tools.
- Need to manage online and classroom-based courses in the same system.
- Need complex assessment capabilities. (creating questions and answer pools, randomizing questions, ability to analyze the performance of individual questions – i.e., item analysis)
Because many course sellers do have these needs, I decided to create a separate “learning management system for small business” page. You can check that out for a range of options, but I’ll note here that my top pick in this catagory is:
1. TalentLMS
I’ve seen TalentLMS emerge rapidly as one of the more visible brands in the “new breed” LMS market in recent years. The company offers a very full-featured system, including a very high level of brandability and wide range of pre-developed integrations via Zapier. You can sell your courses individually or via subscription via PayPal or Stripe.
Perhaps best of all, TalentLMS offers a free option that gives you the ability to kick the tires. After that, the lowest price standard option starts at $89 per month (less with annual payment up front).
TalentLMS Review: TalentLMS Review
Also, if you happen to represent a trade or professional association, be sure to check out the LMS reviews on ReviewMyLMS.
How Do You Choose the “Best Online Course Platform” for You
If you haven’t already, definitely grab the free selection guide for online course platforms. It costs nothing, and it will help you make the right choice faster and smarter.
You may also want to check out the individual reviews of top course platforms that have been published here on Learning Revolution. This also includes comparisons of online course platforms like Teachable vs Thinkific and New Zenler vs Kajabi and Kajabi vs. Thinkific.
The LMS reviews on ReviewMyLMS are also very helpful as these come from actual users.
As you are considering your options, be sure that you are crystal clear about your learning and business objectives and what type of online course business you are. It really does matter when selecting an online course platform.
Next Steps Once You Have a Course Platform
As you probably realize – having a course platform doesn’t do you a lot of good if you don’t know how to create an online course – just follow the link to get my guidance on how to design an online course.
And then, of course, there is the whole issue of how to launch your online course successfully and continue to market it over time.
Be sure to check out the free Learning Revolutionary’s Toolbox. It’s chock full of tools and tips to help edupreneurs with all aspects of creating and growing a successful online course business.
Other Ways to Monetize Your Expertise
Finally, keep in mind that while online courses are very popular right now, they are only one of many ways to help people learn and, in doing that, to monetize your expertise.
I’ve always maintained that you should aim to create a Value Ramp – a portfolio of offerings designed to address the needs of different audience segments at different price points. Here are just a few of the articles you’ll find here on Learning Revolution about different ways to generate income through your expertise-based business:
- The Complete Guide to Building a Successful Membership Site
- The Virtual Conference Business Model
- The Top 7 Ways to Monetize a Podcast
- How to Monetize Your Email Newsletters
- How to Make Money Blogging
- A Guide to Expert-Curated Affiliate Marketing
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are questions I get asked frequently about online course platforms.
What is the best online course platform?
People often want quick answers around what are the best online course platforms, but there is no single best online courses platform - there is only the best platform for you. To find it, make sure you understand which type of online course business you are and get very clear about your critical business objectives and the types of learning outcomes you aim to help your students achieve. This will help you identify the platform features that are truly most important for you and help you narrow your choices dramatically. The spreadsheet I include with my free platform selection guide can then help you go through a clear process to make your choice.
How do I create an online course?
Most online course platforms feature tools that you can use to author online courses. These are usually pretty intuitive and make it possible to use a combination of text, images, and videos to create courses. Most also include the ability to add quizzes and tests, discussion forums, and other interactive features.
If you are going to create a large number of courses or if you really need your courses to follow e-learning standards like SCORM, you may want to be careful about using the tools in an online course platform. Most do not follow e-learning standard, and you may find it very hard later to get your courses out of the platform. So, you may want to consider using an online course authoring tool separate from the platform.
Keep in mind, too, that having the tools is only the starting point. You will need to follow a good process for creating your online course.
ABOUT YOUR HOST
Learning Revolution founder Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.
- Online Course Platforms – What to Know
- Categories of Online Course Platforms
- Best Standalone Online Course Platforms
- Best All-In-One Courseware Platforms
- Other Good All-in-One Platform Choices
- Selling Courses Online with WordPress
- Best Marketplace Online Course Platforms
- Other Online Course Marketplace Options
- Best Small Business and B2B Course Platforms
- How Do You Choose the “Best Online Course Platform” for You
- Next Steps Once You Have a Course Platform
- Frequently Asked Questions
Great list! I’m kind of surprised that you didn’t add CourseFunnels! It’s one of the most budget-friendly software I’ve come across. And also provides lots of free sales-boosting plugins. It is so easy to use. One of a kind, you should have it in here!
Hi. Would you add LinkedIn Learning to this list now? Why or why not? Thanks for the info! Nebosh IGC
It is mentioned in my round-up of alternatives to Udemy: https://www.learningrevolution.net/alternative-to-udemy/. I only mention the ones that I consider the top choices in each category in this post.
Have you looked at Xperiencify for building courses? It’s not an all-in-one platform (yet), but it sure has way more features for a gamified, experiential learning experience for the customer. I am building my course on it, and love the responsiveness of the tech team on their Facebook group. Very responsive to input and suggestions as they continue to add new features left and right. Highly recommend it!
Yes, I like it. We’ve covered in in our post on Teachable alternatives, and I expect we will add it to this page at some point soon. – Jeff
Hello Maureen,
I have taken the free plan at Thinkific. Very recently published my course – Nov 2021.
wingsofcreativity-rozario.thinkific.com
I am all set to market my course. The support I received from Thinkific team is fantastic. Surely will take the paid plan once I start seeing small results.
-Patric Rozario
Hey Jeff! This is a great list, thank you!
I would love to introduce you to our Teachfloor platform (teachfloor.com/). It’s an LMS for cohort-based courses in order to create, manage and monetize an online live academy effortlessly.
Thanks Jeff for this list but what’s up with Skillshare? I just can’t seem to get my courses approved there. They always reply back saying I am putting promotional content inside them even though all I’m mentioning is my line of work. Anyone else having the same issue?
Thanks for sharing that, Kush. I haven’t heard of anyone else having problems, but if anyone reading this has, please comment and share.
Thanks Jeff for the article. Very useful it is. I am new to online teaching. The experience I have learned is just awesome at Thinkific. The other platform one should try is
graphy.com
This is largely for the Indian Subcontinent market – which is mega huge.
Thanks for this detailed and well-written review of popular LMS platforms. I have used LearnDash before but now I have switched to another great one, which I will like to recommend in addition to your list – Tutor LMS by Themeum.
GrassBlade xAPI Companion integrates with LearnDash as well as LifterLMS, LearnPress, and WP Courseware too. It is really an awesome plugin that you do some awesome things on WordPress. I’m a longtime user and support is super helpful.
It allows you to track add xAPI, cmi5, SCORM content support as well as Video Tracking support too.
Late to the party but telligent.com is great for an online community
Have you checked out Udutu? (udutu.com) I have been on and off their site over the years and I like their workflow and they have lots of free storage and use. You can even build your training on their platform and export it all for free (SCORM and other options); they hope to have your business by helping you so much you will use them as the LMS hosting platform.
We’ve had Udutu listed on the Course Creation Tools page for a long time. The focus on this page is platform for selling courses and I think Udutu is a little weak in that are – i.e., it lacks goor catalog/e-commerce/promotion feature.
Hi,
You can also try prodicallearning.com platform if you want to create and sell courses with your branded name at very affordable price.
Thanks
Hey! Just thought I would leave a note about my experience… I’m creating my first online course and decided to try the first 2 you recommended: Thinkific and Learnworlds and I have to say Learnworlds dashboard is horrible! Thinkific is much more intuitive and attractive. Just thought I would throw that in and save someone else the time.
Great article btw
Thanks, Corrine – I appreciate you taking the time to share your experience.
Good Article covering all essential platforms. love this article.
I’m wondering why you didn’t cover YesCourse in this article.
A reasonable question. I think I did have then in there years ago, but can’t remember now why I removed them. I think it was because, when I polled readers, no one seemed to be using them or have much to say about them. Will review and possibly re-list.
I love reading your article and I hope that I will read some more about this stuff, it’s really informative and very entertaining. Recently I tried expertlearn.com and I had a good results.
Thanks for sharing this list with us, I have introduced a platform where you can create your own online Learning Management System where you can create and sell online courses and many more that help you to manage your online Learning or eLearning
Hi Jeff,
Selling online courses as I understand it could be about how a professional training business like say the guys who bring you GTD (VitalSmarts) required a “customer” training LMS to scale the business of learning. They use the Thought Industries platform, which is similar to others like Skilljar, LearnUpon or Docebo? I’m sure each has their areas of expertise, benefits, etc. But curious if there is value in expanding on this post with a quick write up about how platforms like Thought Industries help sell online courses as well? Thank you for your consideration.
Best,
Alex
Hi Alex – I covered this long ago in https://www.learningrevolution.net/learning-management-system-for-small-business/, which is linked to in this post. Thought Industries is covered there.
You didn’t mention learnpress that is the only wordpress plug in that allow to create a marketplace like udemy for free…
I cover Udemy alternatives at https://www.learningrevolution.net/alternative-to-udemy/. To say that LearnPress is one is more than a bit of a stretch.
Hi Bruno, very interesting,
I am busy setting up a LearnPress site and would like for small local colleges/clients to create their own branded section with pre-loaded courses that they can choose from or load their own to sell, similar to Thinkific with a bonus of pre-loaded courses. I have a multivendor site where clients can create their own e-commerce shop and would like to have the same for e-learning. Is this really possible with learnPress and if yes do you know of any documentation/guides on how to set it up?
I would really appreciate your input
I have a WIX site, how would I find information on building a course on a site I already have? …with full control and selling through the WIX site.
Thank you!
I don’t have a great answer for you on that one. You can sell some video content on Wix, but it really just isn’t made for creating courses. You’d be better off using one of the platforms here and linking out to it.
Do you have or will you have a review of Thrive Apprentice? (thrivethemes.com/apprentice/)
I’m a fan of Thrive, in general, but have not yet managed to review Apprentice. I expect to be able to publish a review by end of this year or January 2020 at latest.
Hi, Jeff! Thank U for this great selection. I’m looking for a platform that supports online courses, memberships, and at least 2 languages (English + French). Can U help?
Try LearnWorlds
Thanks for this valuable content.
I’m looking for a platform that performs all-in (as Udemy) , and supports courses in other languages than English.
I’ve designed a course in Arabic and it’s up to recording now. I need a guidance for a better choice, As Selling and Marketing isn’t my preferred area.
I’m afraid I don’t have an answer for this one – at least not in the Udemy model. Your best bet would be to contact each of the companies I list at https://www.learningrevolution.net/alternative-to-udemy/ to see if they support Arabic.
Hi Jeff, thanks for the article. 2 questions for you. Where does Kartra fit in here? I’m social media based craft business looking for a landing spot to direct customers to video tutorials for purchase. I cannot tell what is right for me. I would only be selling 1 large/master course that i would like to have broken down into several chapters. Possibly some subsequent courses as advanced learning to the original mastercourse. I just want them protected and not shared. I like the idea of a login, or a landing page to collect the email but not entirely necessary. I could do the payment processing and send customers a link or have the platform collect the payment- not really particular just a bit lost. Really small business, small budget.
Hi, Ali – Kartra will enable you to sell digital products, and assuming you are using mainly just video, that can include online courses. So, it may work just fine for your needs. It is not really really a full-featured course platform, though. Kartra itself doesn’t list “online course platform” as one of the platforms and services it replaces. Again, that may not matter if you don’t really care about things like tracking course progress, incorporating quizzes and test, awarding credit and certificates, etc.
This list is not comprehensive and needs to be updated. Vonza is the best all-in-one platform in 2019. I have used several others and didnt like it. With Vonza you can Easily Create A Profitable Online Business.
Vonza is an all-in-one platform to create and sell online courses, products, build funnels, design a beautiful website without needing 20 different apps and spending thousands of dollars. Try it out at vonza.com
Thanks, Uyi – It’s not meant to be comprehensive (it’s purposely selective based on my experience and expertise, both of which are extensive) and I update it regularly. Will take a closer look at Vonza. – Jeff
Hey Jeff!
Thanks so much for putting this incredible guide together! Have you also heard of Virtually (vrtlly.me/build)?
It’s the only online courses platform that I’m familiar with that takes place live and requires minimal effort to put together. All the video editing and PDF creation is done on your behalf.
Thanks, Bill – I was not aware of that one, so thanks for alerting me. Seems like there is a new platform every day at this point!
Hi. Would you add LinkedIn Learning to this list now? Why or why not? Thanks for the info!
Hi Denise – I do mention it (well, Lynda.com – basically the same thing) here https://www.learningrevolution.net/alternative-to-udemy/ – which is where I list more marketplace options. Even there, though, it is only a mention because getting accepted to do a LinkedIn/Lynda course is a good bit more difficult than participating in most of the other marketplace platforms.
I just wanted to say thank you!!!
I teach for a large, well known (ahem, orange) online company. Many of my most advanced students (who will run out of content soon) need other options. I do not need to market and attract large numbers of students as I teach 70-90 classes weekly; I simply want to supplement and further their skills (I have three classes to offer that parents and students both ask about regularly) as they progress out of the current curricula. As they are all in China, could you possibly narrow down which of these options will work there? If by chance I can grow my own business, that would be fine, but it is not currently my short-term goal. The option to expand is certainly one I want to keep available as a possible long-term goal. TIA. 🙂
Christie – “which of these options will work there” depends on what you are looking for. Do you mean that all the content will need to be in Mandarin?
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for this article. Have you ever stumbled upon a platform that combines physical and digital sales? We have a course made up of digital videos and a physical book. (For reasons I won’t go into here, the book cannot be digitized and needs to remain physical.) Currently, we provide it only through our wordpress site, which requires us to manually fulfill each order through KDP (the same POD provider used by Amazon) and then grant member-only access to the videos, streamed via Vimeo. Currently low-volume sales, but I’d still love to find a solution that packages both for me.
Chris – There are higher end platforms that would do this. On the lower end, though, WooCommerce would be able to handle this. Since you are using WordPress already, you may want to consider using a WordPress LMS plugin like LearnDash in combination with WooCommerce.
If others reading here use or offer another solution that would help Chris, please comment.
– Jeff
Hey Jeff!
I’ve looked through this list twice and it is absolutely brilliant. It is up-to-date and listed according to its type. I’d love to see you include Plantoost, it is worth a look!
Thanks, Carl – I’ll have a look.
Nice, Article and list. In 2019 USA based startup, Simpliv – simpliv.com is best online teaching and learning platform. It will provide all courses over the world. Compare to other platforms Simpliv is the best at any kind like courses quality, customer support, mainly Price and other areas as well.
Thanks for commenting. I’ll have a look.
Starflow’s plattform is great! 🙂
How does TalentLMS.com measure up to these systems? What is the difference? I work for a mid-size company that wants to start a certification program. We already have a web presence and a marketing group.
Thanks!
TalentLMS is a good platform. It’s just in a different class than these – will give you more capabilities in a number of areas like tracking, reporting, SCORM compliance, multi-tenancy. I cover it and similar platforms here: https://www.learningrevolution.net/learning-management-system-for-small-business/. These platforms are probably a better fit for your needs.
Hey Jeff, thanks for the great article.
If I want to run everything in one ( to simplify things) and less integration. Say creating a course and then having to integrate it into my website to sell or have students use.
I assume the all in one platform would be most useful? If so, Which all in one platform would you suggest? Where one can have a website, charge memberships , email and etc ?
My courses are generally youth education based- in 3 different categories. I’ve done some research(will do more) but curious to know what you would do if you were in that position.
Hi, Arthur – Yes, all in one would be best for this. My top pick in this area is Kajabi, but I’d also suggest taking a close look at Podia.
Do any of these offer a screen sharing option for one-on-one or group training?
Don – None of these are Webinar/virtual meeting platforms, which is what you would need to do what you describe. The exception is Ruzuku, which does have those abilities built in. The rest integrate with common platforms like Zoom and GoToWebinar.
I’ve gone around and around 1st deciding on 3rd party .. then build my own with wp/ LMS and back AGAIN. I really prefer a 3rd party all-in-one solution.. as I am just starting out and it’s just “me” The biggest challenge that I have found is the SEO I am not sure how that works without an independent wp site or how it works with a website you build inside a 3rd party. it seems to be the big elephant in the room that no one wants to talks about. Thanks, Alix
Alix – Once you go outside of a true Web site CMS like WordPress, you are bound to loose a certain amount of control over SEO. WordPress, in particular, is just really strong at that. So, you can either stay with WordPress for your main Web site and link out to a separate course platform. Most of the big ones are going top allow you to style your course site to closely reflect the branding of your main Web site, and some – like Thinkific – have some good widget tools that makes it easier to drop code into your Web site for linking out (not rocket science, but still handy).
Another option is a platform like Academy of Mine, which is built on WordPress and, as a result, retains most of its strong SEO capabilities.
Finally, platforms like LearnDash and LifterLMS enable you to plug the LMS capabilities right into WordPress. There are trade-offs on all of these, of course. It most depends on the degree of control you want (first option has the least, third option the most – Academy of Mine is a nice middle position).
Thanks, Tracy – I’ll check it out.
Just to put cost in some context, when I designed and built one of the very first eLearning platforms for Sun Microsystems in 1996 to train my sales force, I had to hire 23 web page creators and instructional designers to build my site. Sixty hours of on-line training cost me $1.34 million dollars. Of course, at that time, no alternatives existed and Saba, Blackboard and Moodle all came by to see SunTAN (Sun Training Access Network) to see my learner-centric model. I used Java to create custom pages on the fly depending on the audience (salespeople want just the basics and sales engineers wanted everything possible). But within 2 years I was able to show the CEO a >125% ROI (increased sales and getting them trained faster than in the classroom) and I never had any problem keeping my content updated from that point on when execs understood eLearning’s importance. Of course we didn’t call it eLearning then, Cisco’s John Chambers coined that word a year later. Today I am using LearnDash to create a site for my 4000-person active senior community and the cost will be more like $15,000.
Thanks for commenting, Jerry. I have followed a similar path. It is amazing how much things have changed!
Is there a program listed in which you can assign minimum time that the student needs to remain in the course? I provide training that requires the student to complete a minimum amount of hours so I needed training in which the student cannot move to the next section until a certain amount of time has passed.
Thanks for providing resources, Jeff! I just wanted to provide an additional source for people who, once they find the right source for them, can get some tips on actually making the course. I just found it while googling, same way I found this one 🙂
freelancermap.com/freelancer-tips/12434-create-course-sell-freelance-knowledge
Not gonna lie, I had no idea there was so much money in course creation! This is something I’m definitely looking at working on in the future when I can finally have time for personal projects.
Thanks for providing that resource, Maycee.
Is an LMS like “Adobe Captivate Prime” designed and meant to sell online courses? If the answer is “no” (which it seems so), why such LMS is not designed to sell online courses?
Bibhash – The main distinction between Prime and the types of systems listed here is that Prime does not have built in capabilities for e-commerce and marketing. That doesn’t mean you can’t use it for selling courses, it just isn’t really set up to do that out of the box. You would need to integrate it with an external e-commerce system at a minimum.
Hi Jeff,
Very interesting article! I still have a question bugging me though: in your research were you also able to identify if there is any platform that allows to sell courses where the instructor is different than the account owner? I would like to set up a little business where I instruct the Instructors, shoot the course, direct and produce the videoclips, follow any marketing activity around the course. Then, I would get right to use and eploitat the results from them, sharing revenue with them. In this model, I would need to be the Owner-Administrator of the accounts on the platform. I’ve checked Teachable and there seems to be some limit in doing so, in how they define the “instructors”. Any indication from you ? Thanks in advance. Marco.
Marco – At least based on the way you explain it here, Teachable (or Thinkific) should be able to handle that. Can you provide more detail on how it is falling short?
Jeff, thank you for the summary! One question: which platforms do you recommend that allow students to upload completed assignments (content such as docs, scans, photos,…) so they are accessible for review to me as well as accessible to the student? Thank you
Florian – For that type of interaction, you are probably going to best off going with an academically oriented platform like Moodle – to which you could add one of the e-commerce plug-ins I cover in the post.
Hey Jeff.
Amazing post, and pretty useful list for online course creators. Also appreciate the time and effort you put into making people’s lives easier and answering everyone’s comments around here.
Passing by, I wanted to drop here another platform that fits the all-in-one category. It’s kyvio.com and it’s the perfect match for people with a low budget and high expectations. I would highly appreciate it if you could review and maybe add it to your list.
Cheers
Several of these tout the ‘marketing’ background of the founder of the website. But then the platform requires YOU (the teacher) to do the marketing of your course. It seems what they are ‘marketing’ is the platform, which is absolutely worthless to me: I’m a teacher, not a salesman. I don’t have a “web presence”; I don’t have a ‘following’; I have content knowledge and an ability to teach. It would seem that the best venue for someone like me would be one that relieved me of the responsibility and need to do something I can’t do (market/sell).
Liam – These are technology platforms, plain and simple. If you want something that is going to help (at least some) with marketing, then go with Udemy or a similar platform. Even on those platforms, though, you are going to have to put some effort into marketing if you expect to make any real money. Basically, you have two choices: hire or contract with someone to do marketing for you or learn to do it yourself. If you aren’t willing to do one or the other, then you either need to go to work for someone who is, or just accept that being in the course business is not for you.
One of the most exciting developments in the tech world is the number of people who are learning to write code. Simpliv allows students to select their goal/learning objective and then recommends the proper course for that student.
Simpliv works because it makes coding accessible to any interested student, provides practical recommendations for students who want to learn how to code but doesn’t understand how these new skills might apply to their current job.
Thanks for commenting, Ben. I’ve also added Simpliv to my post on alternatives to Udemy at https://www.learningrevolution.net/alternative-to-udemy/
Thank you very much Jeff.
Although only in Spanish classonlive.com is a good all in one option platform for e-leanirng.
I too like many of you am overwhelmed. I have course almost ready to go with supplemental materials (pdf worksheets, audio, short video) has anyone tried Course Craft? I am finding Thinkific a bit complex when trying to choose a theme.I have a website but am not sure how to implement it with the platform. I’m also considering DailyOm since it is of a spiritual/self-help nature. Any help is greatly appreciated.
thank you for sharing such a wonderful information on online courses. IgmGuru is also an online training platforms that offers various courses. You may check their website at igmguru.com
Hi, Jeff, informative review! What do you think about bitdegree.org? They came with the revolutionary idea, where online education is going to be based on blockchain technology – interactive-gamified courses experience, sponsored courses – token utilized to reward students by achievement tracking. BitDegree have cut a fine figure in the ICO, where attracted lots of token holders attention. For a limited time they are offering free lessons, and there’s a demand for teachers who can present a proper content.
I haven’t checked this out yet, Mike, but thanks for mentioning it. I think block chain could have a very natural role to play in certification/credentialing paths – a possibility no one in that industry seems to have tuned into yet.
I also started with Teachable and eventually got into the dilemma of picking between Thinkific vs Teachable.
–
There are so many options available – am I the only one getting overwhelmed?
Still there must be a reason why Thinkific vs Teachable keyword is being searched on Google 800 TIMES every month.
–
These two are heavyweights and I would say in 90% of cases these options will be far better than all the small solutions.
The thing is there is NO BEST online course platform – everything depends on your specific case! And that’s why a lot of people I see in comments have questions.
But please just pick between Thinkific or Teachable and in most cases you’ll be better off in Long Term. Long term solution is what matters.
I have been involved in online course market for years, I would love to help others get unstuck, as I remember how confusing it was when i started.
Just ask, and if curious check out the website by clicking on my name (all site has been dedicated to helping you pick the best Online Course Platform).
Hope that helps!
Dainis – Thanks for commenting. I agree – mostly. Aspiring course entrepreneurs tend to put WAY too much emphasis on the technology. In most cases, simply getting on with it and going with a major, established platform like Teachable or Thinkific is the right move. Still, there can be reasons for going with other options. I get e-mails from people every day asking for advice on platforms, and I am struck by the number of times that they have specific needs for which Teachable or Thinkific are really not the right fit. It pays, I think, to take just a bit of time to think it through, apply a reasonable process, and arrive at a choice you feel confident about (which is the point of my free platform selection guide).
Yeah, true..I also come by cases – where people just have one specific unique need, which you could never imagine..Like translating course platform to Latvian language…
It’s super specific, though still surprised that you found a LOT of cases where these two options are not a good fit.
Can you make one common example, Jeff – please?
A LOT may be over stating it, but an easy example is just around issuing and managing continuing education credit – i.e., if you want to associated a certain amount of credit with a course and then award that amount of credit upon successful completion of the course. Neither of these platforms handle that.
Hi Jeff: Great article. Do you offer consultation? I’d like to share our course requirements and would like your recommendation of the best product. Thanks so much.
Hi Jeff and everyone!
I am developing learning materials directed to patient education (ie drugs side effects, appropriate use etc). So, I expect a high heterogeneity of learning materials and many learners who will likely pick very different course choices. Course bundles would apply, such as “diabetes learning bundle” or “breast cancer learning bundle” etc, but also with a huge variety.
The question is: in your opinion, would any of the platforms or plugins be better than others for such purpose?
Thanks a lot!
Hi Alice. Have you considered LMScheckout? I usually don’t use these forums to self-promote, but I came across this post, and I noticed that we provide the same service you are asking for to several organizations that are marketing to similar types audiences with varying learning interests. We have an anesthesiologist selling certification for nurses though LMscheckout and many other organizations who want to create customer specific training to a wide variety of users. We use a similar concept to course bundling and have a means to promote recommended and related course through your custom e-commerce site. If you are interested, we are running a series of webinars to introduce our e-commerce solutions for selling and marketing courses online.
Hi, Jacqueline and Jeff,
Thanks for sharing your comment about LearnWorlds and similar tools. We were planning to use a full-blown LMS (quite costly) to deliver courses for professional development. Per your suggestion, I checked out LearnWorlds and was quite impressed. Do you have any updates on how it’s going? Have you used the drip marketing? –Kathie-Jo
How do I find your site?
Great…
Looking for fitness/gym video online course platform with socialising.
Looking into Uscreen and Muvi… but I might be wrong.
Any thoughts/directions on this please?
Thanks
Hey Jose,
You may consider SubscribeStar.com as a standalone platform for your subscription-based (or donation based) courses business. We have transparent pricing, flexible business flow, customizable page layout and friendly staff. Please, drop me a line and I will help you with anything in regard to your online course platform.
Hi thanks for the very useful post. The big issue we are having is to reduce password sharing. None of the LMS’s seem to address this adequately. Are you aware of any that have in built 2FA or forced social login with Facebook. It may not stop it completely but would definitely reduce the amount of password sharing and loss of revenue. Thanks Ivar
Ivar – I haven’t come across any that do this, but if anyone else here has, please chime in.
This is an amazing resource. We’ve actually been researching all the different platforms ourselves since we create online courses for clients. Great starting point although we did locate some other ones. LearnUpon and lightspeed for example. One is more an enterprise model and the other used by some celebrities. For now we’ve stuck with teachable but time will tell.
wecreateonlinecourses.com
Thanks or sharing your experience, Jacqueline. I am sure other readers here will find it helpful. I will note, though, that in my experience whether the learning is “recreational” or not has a lot more to do with the instructional quality of the content and how the platform is used than the platform itself (or the topic). And, the amount of support that individual course producers get, even from the same platform company, can vary pretty widely. Just additional points for readers here to keep in mind.
Jody, our agency just completed a client project that used a similar plugin:
flyplugins.com/wp-courseware/
I wasn’t the lead on that project, but the developer who was evaluated several of the WordPress LMS options and it came down to LearnDash and WP Courseware. I believe the pricing model may be similar though. You may want to contact them.
Hi, Jeff. I just wanted to say thanks for this post. I want to create my first online program with videos and power point presentations and PDF files. I’m doing my research now and found your post. It is by far the most helpful one I have read! Thank you so much!
So glad you found it helpful, Tina!
Hi Jeff,
Good comprehensive list, and hats off for your effort.
I want to create a technical course ( having mostly PPTs and screen-cast videos).
I thought of creating the same in Udemy because they will market the courses.
Do other sites do market sellers content? Or Is it seller to market by themselves?
Thanks
siva
Hi Jeff,
Your Learning Revolution is so informative. Thank you. I’m wanting to create a website for Enrolled Agents to earn their annual CPE credits. The material is going to be a self-study course using a downloaded written course to their computer. After they have studied the material, they go back to my website and take a test, it they pass with 70% I submit the credits to the IRS and then I send the student a certificate of completion that they can download and keep in their file. The students need 72 credits every 3 years so the site needs to keep their information so when they come back and open their profile the completed courses with be there. I will also need for the site to accept credit card payments and be able for the student to go online and take a test and receive an instant percentage grade so they will know if they need to take the test again something like “congratulations, you passed’! There will not be any videos or webinars and anything live just a list of all the courses available, a cart for them to pay and a student profile for the course to be downloaded to their computer. (they can study off-line that way) What do I need to buy to get this started? I’m so excited about doing this and your site it so informative I’m so glad to have met you. Please let me know when you get a chance, Thank you again, Take care, Linda.
Hi Linda – What you describe will require a more sophisticated solution than anything covered in this post. I will e-mail you to discuss.
Hi Jeff
Thank you for a comprehensive post. There is so much choice out there, the more you read the more confusing things become. I am hoping you can simplfy and point me in the right direction.
I am setting up an education website, where I will primarily sell recorded webinars. I have a wordpress site and purchased webinar ignition (WI) under the assumption that I could record webinars and offer them through WI. I have just found out that this isn’t the case. So now I am looking for software that I can integrate into my website and allow me to sell recorded webinars multiple times to different people. I hope this information makes send! Could you tell me the top 3 platforms you would recommend.
Thank you.
Lisa – A recorded Webinar is just a video and pretty much all of the platforms listed here will enable you to set up a video as a course and selling as many times as you want to whoever you want. Just to help you narrow the choices, I would recommend starting with Teachable or Thinkific (both listed above)
Can you recommend a reputable company that creates scorm compliant elearning videos for LMS platforms?
Ugh! Still confused as ever…I’m not sure if I need a website, a platform, or both. I’m very leery of the “simple drag/drop features”, etc. as they always seem to be anything but easy unless you’re tech savvy. I have books to sell, as well. I also teach LIVE seminars. I’m basically needing to offer online classes to companies so they can have their employees watch them, and I simply charge the employer either a flat fee or a per-employee fee. They also will want some type of monthly or weekly “tip” that can be sent as a video, email or possibly text. Any other suggestions you might have? Thank you!
Bob – It sounds like you probably do need a platform (and I always recommend having a Web site in addition to whatever platform you use) You might be better off with one of the companies I cover at the following link (LearningCart, in particular, could be a good choice, based on the little bit I know about your situation – https://www.learningrevolution.net/learning-management-system-for-small-business/
The fees quoted for LearnDash are not a once-only fee – they are for a one-year subscription. Renewable price = half the original price.
Barbara – Thanks for noting that. Note, also, that you don’t actually lose use of the software if you don’t review – you just don’t get upgrades and support. In any event, I’ve updated the entry to reflect this.
I work with a non-profit arts and crafts group. We want to create courses for our members. We have multiple instructors who will create the content, but our group will actually present the courses. All of these platforms seem to be focused on a direct relationship between course and instructor. I need something that will allow (for lack of a better term) a middle-man to manage the process. All the classes are pre-build, on-demand. Some might have a weekly live broadcast. All courses are 4-6 lessons, and are presented over the course of a month.
Bob – I would nee to know a bit more about the content and process you have in mind – i.e., when you say “create,” would the instructors be providing finished course pages, or just documents/slides that you would convert into course pages. Does there need to be any sort of approval/review process?
I have read all of the posts but continue to have questions regarding my desire to create training modules, with testing and online completion for businesses. I want to sell customized courses to businesses, perferbaly small businesses. My idea is to find their training needs and create the module based on their business. What type of platform, and what LMS should I purchase that allows me to create the course and then allow my client to purchase and/or use it for their access. I am assuming it will need to be cloud based. I am a retired technology and business instructor and looking to fulfill my creative outlet and make some extra money if possible. I have used educational platforms but not the current offerings that are overwhelming me when trying to make this decision. I want to be sure I am not overlooking valuable information. Any suggestions? Thanks and great posts and information!
Marjory – I can’t really answer this without more information. Any of the platforms here could, in theory, do what you describe. It will depend on how you need the purchase and access to happen. Will the clients always come to your site, for example, or do some need to be able to run the courses on their own platforms? Do you want to provide clients with their own, branded entrance into purchasing your courses? How much control do you want to provide clients for enrolling and managing their own learners? If you need to jump up to any of the more sophisticated scenarios suggested here, consider the platforms listed in this post: https://www.learningrevolution.net/learning-management-system-for-small-business/
See https://www.learningrevolution.net/help-creating-online-courses/
Hi nice job with this comprehensive write-up,
I tried still cannot really figure the difference between LMS and authoring tools.
Is authoring tool a part of an LMS ?
I actually thought authoring tools are just platforms used to link texts, pictures, videos and audios to form a flow in a presentation… so not so sure how that was independently used for elearning in the past
Thanks very much
F.Mike
Mike – Good question. This has become a somewhat confusing area as more and more LMSes have added/improved their authoring capabilities. In the “old days” an LMS was mostly just a database that handled enrolling learners into courses, presenting a “menu” to enable them to launch/access the courses, and tracking their progress through the course based on communication between the course and the LMS. Eventually, though, LMSes started including tools to do just what you describe – i.e., link texts, pictures, video, etc together into a flow. The main issue with this is that every LMS does it a bit different, So, if you build your courses in the LMS, you will almost certainly have to re-build them when you move to a new LMS. Authoring tools are LMS-independent. You build your course in the authoring tool and then can import it into any LMS. There are standards that have been developed to support this – SCORM being the main one historically. For some additional info on all of this see:
https://www.learningrevolution.net/move-my-online-course/
https://www.learningrevolution.net/does-scorm-matter-selling-online-courses/
I also discuss authoring tools more at:
https://www.learningrevolution.net/tools/create-an-online-course/
Am I able to use any one of these platforms to:
Sell courses AND individual lessons?
IE. 50 videos…
50$ for entire course. 1$ Per video lesson.
Hi Jeff,
I was looking for some useful Online Courses online and suddenly found your post. You have shared very useful information about the online course platforms which will surely make the process of choosing easier for everyone.
Each platform is described in detail and I also appreciate that you’ve encouraged everyone to share their online platforms at your blog post. This way, people looking for online training can get an excellent and wide selection of the latest platforms that provide online courses. Also, big thanks for keeping this useful list updated.
Here, I want to share a platform which provides useful business, computer, safety, banking, management, leadership and several other useful courses.
The link for the website is knowledgecity.com
Hope you check it out!
This is a wonder post and has truly crystallized everything for me. I will be creating some video based courses and just need a “no frills” platform that enables me to enter this territory without breaking the bank. I was originally thinking of setting up everything through WordPress but am now gravitating towards Thinkific. My question is this…
Let’s say I start with Thinkific but a year from now ultimately decide to shift over to another platform like WordPress / Learndash or Kajabi. What are the potential risks and repercussions of doing this? Is it not that big of a deal or is it not advisable? My thoughts are this. As long as you can export the customer list from the old system (with their passwords) and then import it into the new system you are fine. But I am not sure if most systems support this. Any input is appreciated.
Lindsey – I actually just published a post related to your question: https://www.learningrevolution.net/move-my-online-course/
Really, it comes down to the nature of your content and how much you rely on the tools contained within any specific platform to create your courses. If you rely on those tools heavily, then you will have to redo quite a bit when you go to a new platform. Maybe not a big deal if you don’t have a lot of courses and the courses you have aren’t all that large. But it could be a big deal if that is not the case.
As far as dat goes, with most platforms you will be able to export the names and e-mail addresses of your customers, but there is a very good chance you would not be able to simply export passwords and import them into your new system. This would require a more complex level of migration (unless you have the tech skills) will probably require some help. That said, it is often possible to import the names and e-mails and then have people reset their passwords to simply establish a new password in the new system.
Re: All-in-one platforms
(eg Rainmaker, Academy Mine…)
After taking a subscription of any type of these platforms – what will happen to the website, domain and contents upon cancellation? Are they easily transferable?
E.g. because I’ve learnt to make my own website and features and can do so without paying expensive subscription fees? Or I find cheaper prices else where?
Thanks
Ally – The domain remains in your control always. You would just point it to your new site. Content is a bigger question. The ones that are WordPress-based would technically have an export functionality for all of the content and you should be able to get a copy of the database – all of which would you allow to set most if it back up in another WordPress installation. But there is definitely a lot of devil in the details – so, be sure to ask about this up front and make sure you feel confident you will be able to get your content out in a usable form. (Keep in mind that, when you build courses in a proprietary delivery platform, as opposed to in a separate authoring tool, you are almost always going to have to do some re-constructing when you switch to a new site.)
Very glad to have found this post! I am an Apple consultant and instructor for legal professionals and I teach tech courses for which the students/viewers receive CLE credits for completing. My courses are pre-recorded videos, 1 – 4 hours in length and ready to upload. I have been scouring around trying to find a good platform that can do a few things I need:
1: Collect payment at registration
2: Provide on-demand viewing 24/7
3: Confirm the course was completed prior to delivering a closing email or certificate with accreditation number
4: Integrate with my existing website (optional but desired)
Does anyone know of anything that might be a good fit? I have sold on Udemy before for consumer level, non-credentialed courses and I have been tinkering with Thinkific which I like very much, but they do no limit the ability for the viewer to simply skip to the end of the video as pretend they completed it. Otherwise, Thinkific might be ideal but without that sort of control over content consumption, it’s a deal breaker for me.
Hi Terry
Did you get a response to your post. Your situation is very similar to mine and I would be interested in the answer.
I think they have added that feature this year, if I remember correctly.
I wanted to set up all our courses with Academy Mine a couple of years ago. We have one large 12 part course and 15 smaller (4 part) courses and over 200 students. I paid someone else to set it all up and learn how to use it as I just didnt have the time myself. It took 6 months of paying this person a wage of $500 per week (around 2 grand a month) and around $200 a month for the platform. Six months and over $13,000 spent setting it up , on the day we launched the whole platform crashed as it turned out out courses and resources were just too big. Now I use online classrooms I create myself using web pages and downloadable PDF content. Students email their course work submissions to me. It works and costs nothing but I often wish for a more streamlined way to complete assessments.
Hi, looking for advice on which site to list a Personal Development course – we sell the course via our website and its all set up and ready to go so we don’t need Course Creation tools like quite a few of the sites seem to want you to use. So we are looking for new places to sell our ready made course online to gain a wider audience and sales. Any recommendations and wise words for us?
Many thanks in advance!
K
Kay – I don’t know of any place where you can simply list a course that is for sale, and I’m not sure how effective that would actually be. It sounds like what you really need are good ways to drive traffic to a sales page for your course on your Web site. The best way, by far, is through your own e-mail list. To the extent that you don’t have that, or in addition to that, consider the suggestions at https://www.learningrevolution.net/best-way-to-market-online-courses/ as well as https://www.learningrevolution.net/build-an-audience-for-selling-courses/
Thanks for chiming in with the update info – Udemy changes often enough that it can be hard to keep up. The post has been updated to reflect this info.
I am brand new to this. I did not even know there were such platforms. I have looked at some of the reviews here, but no idea which to try. There are a lot of them. The one that jumped out at me is called Teachable. mainly because of their pricing structure. Since I am just starting out, I have no idea how many classes I might sell, so I cant afford to pay a monthly and they just take a percentage of my sells. What I am looking for though are suggestions and recommendations. I dont want to invest lots of time and money into developing classes on Teachable, if its not a good platform.