Posted by Learn how to choose the best online course platforms, the Criteria for selecting the best online platform, and the features to consider.
Over the past decade, many people have moved swiftly from physical learning to taking courses online. It has gone from “I’ve not heard of that” to “Yeah, my teen girl is taking one currently, likewise myself.” Most companies, colleges, and universities are joining the train of onboarding their team, students, and employees into this revolution.
Online courses are now everywhere, and we all are used to it — making it an excellent opportunity for teachers and creators to start putting their content online. This will give you access to a passive stream of income but also to a large audience that you can turn into a community.
You are probably considering creating an online course, which seems complicated. Okay, calm down; let’s walk through this together. Creating an online course is ridiculously easy and relaxed!
That is because many people are looking to upskill, get a degree, or master something significant to them. That is where you come in as a creator, helping those people achieve their aims by creating or building a course using an online platform. Creating an online course is one of the best ways to expand and grow your business online using digital products like eBooks, live videos, pre-recorded classes, etc.
Choosing the best platform to host your courses can be challenging, so we’re here to help. We will show you the best platforms to host your class, their unique features, how to know which is best for you, and the criteria to look out for.
In this article….
- What are online course platforms?
- Importance of choosing the best online course platforms
- Criteria for Selecting the Best Online Course Platforms
Check out this link for expert tips to help you stand out and succeed online.
7 best online course platforms
- Udemy
- Podia
- Teachable
- Skillshare
- Thinkific
- LearnDash
- Kajabi
What are online course platforms?
Online course platforms are programmed software that allows you to create and manage courses online. It could be in the form of a learning management system (LMS). These platforms allow course creators to create and deliver digital courses through videos, audio files, PDFs, live streaming, quizzes, polls, etc. It also allows digital creators to market their products differently while building a community. Online course platforms can be a course marketplace or a course creation platform.
Most online course platforms are Synchronous (allows a creator to host a live teaching program like a cohort) or Asynchronous (allows a creator to host and deliver teaching programs through pre-recorded audio and videos). However, some platforms allow their users to host both.
Importance of choosing the best online course platforms
As a digital creator, you will prefer to avoid problems like the platforms you hosted your courses crashing due to too much traffic or web errors. You will like to agree with me that the pressure you are going to face will be much — having to deal with students questioning you and encouraging your communities to keep calm, that everything will be sorted out soon.
What if it didn’t? You will lose a lot of money and investment.
This is why it is essential to take as much time as you need to know which platform is best for you and ensure that there is a means for you to drive traffic from that platform to your site, which can be an automated email list or a newsletter.
Criteria for Choosing the Best Online Course Platforms:
Before choosing an online platform to host your course, you must consider the following
- Who is your target audience?
- Where do they usually take courses?
- If you have created a persona for the audience you want, are you looking to build a community or grow an audience?
- Are you looking for a cheaper platform that is easy to use, or are you more concerned about the platform pricing?
After considering the above, you may notice that no online course platform is perfect, but you can always find one that best fits the information you’ve gathered. Let us show you the criteria to look out for as a creator when choosing your online course platforms
Course variety and marketing quality
The number of courses uploaded to the platform and the quality of information those courses deliver will determine the traffic the site is getting. That is to say that the promotion and success of your course depend heavily on how great the platform is.
You should also consider the quality of videos, images, and audio posted on the site, how organized their course lessons are, and the type of feedback the platform is getting.
A great platform will give you all the necessary access to deliver a well-organized product.
Affordability and pricing options
The best course platform will give you multiple ways to monetize your course since every creator’s dream is to teach and earn from what they do. The platforms will enable them to charge and get paid by their customers seamlessly.
You’ve probably heard a lot of complaints about how a particular course platform is quite pricey and not affordable. That is why looking for a platform where you can upsell your courses and build communities without having to move them from one platform to another or pay for new automation is always good.
Instructor expertise and credibility
Nobody wants to learn from a novice who knows nothing about what they are talking about. Knowing the expertise of the people teaching most courses in the platform you want to register for is always good.
Are they certified professionals or well-experienced and vast in their field? Knowing this will help you position yourself and get the experience and certificate you need as an expert. If people find out that you have no experience while positioning yourself as an expert, they will give you a bad review, which will affect your credibility.
Top 7 Online Courses Platforms
If you are a perfectionist looking for the perfect online platform to host your course, I am sorry to tell you there is no ideal platform. Knowing the most important thing to you and your student is best.
Looking back, we’ve discussed many things to consider when choosing an online course platform. Let’s quickly dive into the top platforms and what makes them the best so far.
Udemy — Best for Generating Creator’s Revenue
Udemy is an online marketplace that allows digital creators to build courses and list them online for sale. The platform consists of both paid and free classes. If you want to list your courses on the marketplace as paid classes, you must submit descriptions of your course and what it entails (your offer) for review. If the course is accepted, you can now build and launch it on the marketplace for sale.
One of its Unique features and advantages is that it is best for testing course creation and learning the process of creating and selling a course without having to move from one channel to another. Although, they don’t allow access to those that buy your courses through their platform.
Udemy allows creators to charge $0 — $199.99 and gives you multiple-choice options for adding details to your course, Q&As, quizzes, etc. The platform has many review features that users can use to indicate if they liked your course.
The major weakness of this platform is that you can’t access the contact information of the people who buy your course, can’t build a community around your brand, or add much of your branding, and they get to keep 63% of your earnings from each course sale. If they approve your course, Udemy might be the best place to sell your first course and generate creator revenue if you are a beginner. It has an accessible and flexible app that is straightforward to you, and the company always helps out with the course creation process if you are new to it.
Podia — Best for Membership
Podia is an all-in-one online course platform that offers membership options and the ability to create an online community around your course. It allows you to interact with your students, run your affiliate program, provide multiple bundles for different groups, link other platforms like Facebook and Slack, and offer a tiered plan.
With Podia, you have unlimited video hosting — you won’t have to stress uploading videos on third-party platforms, access to all your affiliate interfaces, and a commission system and insightful reports. The platform allows you to presell courses before launching them and also has a feature that enables you to bundle different courses and materials into one package for sale.
The pricing option starts from $0 to $199/month, and the payment structure is very flexible because creators can receive payment for any purchased courses through Stripe, PayPal, etc.
Teachable — Best for Beginners
Teachable has similar features to Thinkific in pricing, but they charge extra fees for each sale you make through Teachable and give creators access to affiliate programs and customizable certificates. The affiliate program allows course creators to reward people who help advertise or promote their courses through a unique link to their audience while earning a certain percentage per course sale.
Their pricing structure ranges from $0 to $249. Teachable is not well advanced like other online course platforms I listed before because it only has a general mobile app for users, except those using IOS devices. Android users can’t access their mobile app, and it has no community option.
With Teachable’s $100/month plan, if you use Teachable gateway, they will automatically handle taxes from European buyers and deduct affiliate commissions. Teachable also gets to keep all your earnings for a month or 30 days before giving you access to it.
Skillshare — Best for Creator’s Exposure
Skillshare is an online course marketplace for creatives who want to host their courses, gain more exposure as a teacher, and build their brand. The platform has a lot of well-known professional teaching on it, many users, and a search function that helps people trying to find courses every time. Skillshare is a professional marketplace for creatives in technical skills, art and design, crafts, etc
Although it is an excellent place of value for students, creators don’t earn much because Skillshare always shares 30% of its monthly revenue generated by the platform among creators based on the hours students spend watching their videos. This means the competition is very high, and you will have to create unique videos that stand out among the large numbers of other videos on the platform. Your video should hook people till the end if you want to earn some dollars monthly.
The strength of Skillshare lies in its ability to support creative projects and give feedback for assessment while at the same time giving users opportunities to show their work, learn, and practice by giving and receiving instructions and information from their course teacher. Their system allows users to rate their course competency and know if it is difficult or easy to learn.
You can’t earn money from Skillshare until you have 25 students that enroll for your course or class; after that, you begin to reach $1 to $2 per enrollment. If you want to make a good amount of money from the platform at the end of the month, you will need a good number of enrollees, and you won’t get access to build an email list with those who enlist for your class.
Thinkific — Best Overall
Thinkific is not an all-in-one platform, as you will still have to use Convertkit to build your email list or send out emails to your list. Aside from being cheaper than other online course platforms, Thinkific offers a complete and high-quality course experience for course creators and students. This platform allows you to create customized course websites and design an optimized sales page.
You can let your students access the entire course simultaneously or drip it out over time. You can use free Wistia video hosting for your videos and other files. Thinkific allows creators to provide customized course certificates for their students. What is even more fascinating is that you can start your creator journey on Thinkific for free but paid plans start from $49 to $499. The free plan has many limitations, so I suggest you start with the basic plan if you intend to use this platform as a creator.
Despite all of these, Thinkific has no community option, weak sales marketing features, and a faulty checkout method. It is a no-code required website builder with easy-to-create sales pages. Their support team is accommodating and always available to help when you encounter any problem or blockage. All course payment through Thinkific goes directly to your Stripe or Paypal account immediately after purchasing a course.
LearnDash — Best WordPress Plugin
LearnDash is best for creators with a WordPress site or blog and want to start selling their courses. This online course platform is a WordPress plugin that gives you everything to offer courses on your WordPress website.
LearnDash provides a full-featured course builder that works with their email drip campaigns. It works differently than every other online course platform I’ve mentioned so far because you must have a WordPress website where learnDash will function as a plugin.
The pricing rate is quite different as you must pay per year. Their rate is between $159 to $329. There might be some management challenges if you need more technical skills because LearnDash is a WordPress plugin that works on top of your website. If you are not tech-savvy, you might have to hire someone to set this up for you, and it will cost you some extra cash.
You don’t have to worry about any fee per sale using your WordPress website. Another WordPress plugin you can use is LifterLMS or Memberpress. They are flexible and can be used on any WordPress website.
Kajabi — Best All-in-One
Kajabi is quite different from all other course platforms on the list because it expands what other platforms are doing. It is a very popular platform among course creators and business owners because it’s a single tool where you can create your website, sell your courses, build a blog, have a podcast RSS feed, send emails, etc.
Kajabi allows you to do a lot of things with their website and it is the best fit for someone who loves using one tool and values simplicity when it comes to customization. Its greatest strength is the fact that it is an all-in-one tool, which is also its greatest drawback for people that want to do advanced email automation, and Kajabi does not support that.
For people who are tech-savvy and well-experienced with building websites, landing pages, and sale funnels, Kajabi is the best all-in-one tool that could be the best fit for you. The Kajabi user interface is not user-friendly to students like other course platforms where you can create a series of blocks that show students what to do and you also get to do whatever you like. The pricing is more expensive than other platforms as it starts from $149 upward.
Summary
Udemy — Marketplace
Unique features
- Access to longer class formats.
- Presence of mobile apps.
- Helps with promotion and lead generation.
Best for
- Promotion and lead generation
- Making and selling a course without having to move between multi-channel platforms.
- Generating Creators revenue.
Podia-Hosted
Unique features
- Courses can be shortened or sold as complete standalone courses.
- Allows users to pre-sell courses before the launch date.
- Flexible payment option.
Best for
- Affiliate Program.
- Email marketing and social media integration.
Teachable-Hosted
Unique features
- It gives creators access to add multiple content to their courses, e.g., certificates, videos, and quizzes, and also gives you a good design course player.
Best for
- Affiliate Program.
Skillshare-Marketplace
Unique features
- Allows students to show their work, practice, and learn from giving and receiving feedback as much as they want from your instruction alone.
- Access to short class format.
- Presence of a mobile app.
- Helps with promotion and lead generation.
Best for
- Creators that are just starting.
- Featuring Short video content of 10–25 minutes.
- Creator exposure.
Thinkific-Hosted
Unique features
- Easy to set up
- Optional access to Thinkific branding
- Well-detailed Analytics.
- Access to members-only site.
Best for
- Membership site.
- Online communities.
LearnDash-Hosted
Unique features
- Offers a full-featured course builder.
Best for
- Tech savvy with technical skills in WordPress.
Kajabi-Hosted
Unique features
- Access to the platform’s native mobile app.
- Multiple features you would want from any hosted online course platform.
Best for
- Savvy Marketers.
- People who understand complex marketing features like sales funnels and pages.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Can I create a customized certificate for my users?
Some online course platforms like Teachable give you access to create a customizable for your students and this certificate can be added to their CV to boost or increase their chances of getting a job. Teachable is also the best platform to use as a creator who is just starting as a beginner.
How much do online course platforms cost?
Most online course platforms cost a hefty sum, especially when you want a customizable certificate for your students. Websites like LearnDash and Thinkific operate on a plan or subscription fee. The subscription can be monthly or yearly, but you can access all their features once you subscribe.
Are there free online course platforms available?
Platforms like Udemy and Thinkfic give course creators access to host and launch their courses on their platforms. You can check them out.