The creation of online courses and e-learning is a market that is growing day by day globally. Hence a lot of people want to have their own fair share. That is why they look for the best online course platforms.
Provided you have skills, knowledge, experience you want to share with others, then this is for you. This Industry is growing at a geometric rate and is expected to hit $325 billion by 2025.
This is an opportunity for you to tap into this multi-billion dollar industry by identifying the best platforms to create and sell online courses. There are a lot, of course selling platforms out there competing for your attention. The ability to identify the best platform to create online courses should be your goal.
In this ultimate guide, we’ll look at the 10 best online course platforms you can use as a beginner. Our focus will be on key features, pros, cons, pricing plans, etc.
What Do These Online Course Platforms Let You Do?
Market the courses you have created to a target audience that needs it.
Develop an online course website or better still integrate it into a website you already own.
Upload videos, quizzes, assignments, interact and engage your students.
Set a price tag for your course be it monthly or yearly.
Create your own membership community. Before we go into the 10 best online course creation and sell platforms for beginners, let’s define online course platforms. Also what you should look for in the best online course creation platforms.
What Are Online Course Platforms?
Online course platforms are different kinds of learning management systems that give users access to virtual learning. They’re not totally different from offline classes except that all activities are done virtually.
It makes learning resources available in the form of Videos, Audio, PDFs, text, and images. Students follow up with the LSM by taking notes, completing tasks to test their level of understanding.
What Is The Best Online Course Platform?
The best online course platform is the one that gives you all the tools you need to teach your students and at the same time automate your sales. The success you will get with any online course platform depends on your ability to create, organize, and deliver content that will solve the problem of your students.
Your choice of an online course platform should tally with your need. For Instance, if you want to start a blog and sell your own courses, you need features like a paid membership, e-commerce support, and WordPress Integration.
Below Are My 10 Online Course Creation And Sell Platforms For Beginners
1.LearnWorlds (Ecommerce Enabled)
LearnWorlds is one of the top online course platforms. It offers you the opportunity to monetize your skill and knowledge by creating and selling your online course. Creating your online course with Learn World is easy even if you’re not tech-savvy.
An intuitive drag and drop block-based editor is there for you. It affords you different beautiful themes both free and paid. It is e-commerce enabled so you can build your online business easily. Learn World has a powerful sales engine that is optimized to help you capture leads and selling courses.
Key Features
Magic Beauty: With Magic Beauty, you write your content once and it is converted automatically to different designs for you to select anyone that suits your purpose.
Marketing Funnel: It allows you to set up an effective marketing funnel that will grow your Return On Investment in your e-commerce business.
Customizable Course Player: A course template is already available for you to use. All you need to do is to customize it to suit the need of your students.
Design Your Online School: You can decide to create your own online school. All the tools you need are available. You don’t need any coding experience to do this.
Re-Imagine Learning With Video: Transcribe your video with just a click of a button. Add titles, questions, and images to them.
Connect Your Video To Your School: Learn World host all your video. Even you have hosted your video elsewhere, you can still connect to your school on Learn World. It works with all the major video providers.
For all the digital products you have created, you can sell membership, bundles, or subscriptions.
Pros
- Pages load speedily
- Offers free trial
- The User Interface makes it easy for you to create online courses in different languages.
- Responds perfectly on any kind of device
- Pages are SEO friendly
- You can use a custom domain name for your brand.
- 24/7 support from the technical team
Cons
Pricing Plan
- Learn World has the following pricing plan:
- Starter( Newbie Course Creators) – $24/months
- Pro Trainer ( For Professional Trainers) – $79/months
- Learning Centre ( Popular Plan) – $247/months
2.Podia ( Sell Your Online Courses, Membership And Other Digital Products)
Since 2014 when it came on board, Podia has been the most friendly online course platform. 25,000 + entrepreneurs trust Podia for the sale of their digital products. Podia is a platform where every creator can create their online courses irrespective of their expertise.
In just five steps, Podia offers you all the need to sell online courses, memberships, and other digital products. You have the option of 11 languages and 22 currencies on which you will sell your course. It offers you the tools you need to design your storefront or customize the available ones to suit your brand.
Key Features
Webinars: You can host webinars with Podia. If you’re a small business, this online course platform offers you the opportunity to host online events
Email Marketing: When it comes to selling your online courses, email marketing is an effective way to get there. Podia allows you to build an email list. This will allow you to build relationships with your students, gain their trust, and convert them to sales.
Podia Editor: This is a website builder designed to help you build your beautiful website in minutes. It allows you to add any page you want.
Connect Your Funnel: Podia allows you to connect your email marketing, customer list, sales funnel in a single place. This makes it easy to access them anytime.
All In One Sell Of Digital Download: All the tools you need to sell your digital download are available in one place. With the payment of a flat fee, you’ve access to hosting, storefront, sales page, email capture, complete sales funnel, live chat, custom pages, etc.
Pros
- Has affordable price plans
- A support team is available to help you 24/7
- All your data are in one place allowing you to easily make a marketing decision
- Unlimited email subscribers, support, digital products, sales
- Integrates perfectly with Mailchimp, Convert Kit, Active Campaign
- Access to awesome built-in themes
- Easy to customize and use
- No transaction fees
- Offers 14 days free trial
Cons
- No multilingual option
Pricing Plan
Podia has the following price plans
- Mover – $39/month
- Shaker – $79/month
3.Teachable
From its days as Fodera to now Teachable, this online course platform has been the favorite for many course creators.
In 2020, 100,000+ course creators have joined the platform and transformed their skills and knowledge into $500 million earning. Teachable has all it takes for you to create an online course or coaching business in an all-in-one platform.
Key Features
Global Payment: You can sell your online course to many countries around the world. Teachable accepts international payments in 130+ currencies. PayPal and mobile pay are also available to you.
Customization Using Power Editor: The power editor allows you to create multimedia lectures, coaching sessions, and videos. You don’t need to be tech-savvy. All you need is to drag and drop.
Schedule And Host: Integration with Zoom and Calendly allows us to take clients from booking to scheduling and learning.
Create Success Story: Teachable allows you to create a success story for your online courses, coaching programs, etc. All you need to do is to engage your students in a quiz to ascertain how your course was helpful to them.
Wide Range Of Integration: You can freely integrate any tool you think will be beneficial to your online course or coaching program. Teachable integrates with a lot of tools.
Pros
- Teachable takes care of European Union taxes when you sell your online courses
- Link your existing website to Teachable using a custom domain
- Beginner-friendly
- Maximum security to prevent fraudulent activities.
- Offer customer support
- Easy to use
Cons
- No live chat or phone support
- Billing is annually
Pricing Plans
Teachable has the following pricing plans:
- Basic – $29/month
- Pro – $99/month
- Business – $249/month
Note that these price plans are billed annually.
4. Ruzuku
Ruzuku is of the best online course platforms that are gradually becoming the choice of many people. It focuses on providing all the features you need to create that online course that will engage your students. Since 2007, Razuku has helped a lot of creators develop online courses that benefited their students.
With its well-organized platform, you can create your online course in 5 simple steps. All the tools you need to turn your idea into a successful online course is available for you. Its interface is clean and friendly for all irrespective of the level of expertise.
Key Features
- Daily Backups to keep your data safe
- Receive payment through Pay Pal, Stripe and any payment method of your choice
- Allows you to host and stream video and audio content.
- Email notification to your students when your course goes live
- Allows you to host a teleconference with presentation slides, group chat, and also record automatically.
- The flexible subscription allows you to decide how the way your students pay to access your content.
- Create your course with videos, audios, text, and images in fun and style
- A back end set up that makes it easy for you to launch your course fast
Pros
- Offers you a 14 days free trial
- Helps to compress your video, audio files so that they can load fast and smoothly.
- Access to quality images from Image maven
- Allows your student to track their progress and the achievement they have made in one place.
- Offers customer support via email
Cons
- No live chat or phone support
Pricing Plan
Razuku has 3 pricing plan which is paid yearly:
- Bootstrapper – $74.75/month
- Up and Comer – $83.03/ month
- University – $125/month
5.Thinkific
Thinkific is a global brand when it comes to helping entrepreneurs create, sell, and deliver their own online courses. It is of the platforms for hosting online courses with the vision of bringing a great change in the way people learn and earn through online courses.
With 100 dedicated employees it is determined to continue to create an impact in the information sharing industry. It offers you a lot of amazing features that allow you to create and customize courses to suit your brand.
Key Features
Full Video Hosting: Thinkific allows you to host any kind of video on the platform without any technical hassles.
Create Your Course With Any Kind Of Content: Thinkific supports you to create courses with audio, video, PDF, Text, HTML, surveys, voice-over presentations. You can even create your online course with third parties like Google Docs, MS Word, etc.
Launch A Membership Site: Thinkific allows you to create a membership site for your online courses for your student. You can even offer them a free trial
Compatible with WordPress, Squarespace, Weebly, Wix: You can easily add your online courses to your websites hosted on WordPress, Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace
Rich Student Environment: Create a friendly environment for your students to have control of your course once they have paid to access it. It could be an unlimited playback for video courses, learning progress indicator.
Monitoring Dashboard: Track new enrolment into your courses, student progress, and level of sales made.
Pros
- Inbuilt SSL certificate to guarantee your potential students that your course is safe and secured
- Automatic updates to give you access to new features
- 99.9% uptime to make sure that your site is always available and works optimally for your students
- Responds perfectly on any kind of device
- Create your course in any language with a single click
- Multiple payment options in 130+ currencies. You also have an option t use Paypal check out for countries where Stripe is not supported
- Allows you to make use of CSS and HTML options to change the look of your site.
- Enroll an unlimited number of students to your course or coaching program.
- Create and sell an unlimited number of courses.
- Offers a free plan
Cons
Pricing Plans
Thinkific offers 3 pricing plan:
- Basic plan – $39/month
- Pro plan – $79/month
- Premier plan – $ 399/month
6. Uscreen ( Best Platform To Monetize Your Video Courses)
Since 2015 when it came on board, it has focused mainly on helping creators monetize their videos online. Uscreen is a robust platform where you can sell your videos to your audience that needs it.
As one of the leading video course platforms, it has helped 11,000+ make money from their videos. Uscreen is available in 195 countries and has benefited over 2.3 million video end users. As a fully hosted video platform, it provides you with all the tools you need to monetize your videos.
Key Features
Integration: It allows you to integrate other Apps on the platform through webhooks and APIs. E.g PayPal, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, etc.
Security and Privacy: Your videos and other sensitive data are safe on Uscreen. It guarantees you a higher level of security
Video Content Management System: Uscreen has its own video content management system which allows you to upload, organize and distribute your videos.
PPV Live Streaming: This feature allows you to stream your videos on Uscreen smoothly.
HTML5 Online Video: This feature is to ensure that your videos playback super fast in HD. It also makes sure that your videos play in full HD on any device without any hitches.
Other features include:
- Already made video templates and themes. All you need to do is to select any that suits you and customize to your choice.
- There is a turn-key video monetization platform built for you to decide how much people will pay to watch your videos.
Pros
- Offers you a 14-day free trial
- Provides email and phone call support
- There is a demo for you to watch
- Beginner-friendly
- You don’t need to be tech-savvy
Cons
- No live chat
- No multilingual option
Pricing Plan
Uscreen has the following price plan:
- Basic – $49/month
- Amplify – $299/month
- Enterprise – Contact them for talks
7. Udemy
Udemy is a global leader when it comes to connecting online Instructors and Learners together. So far it has 57K instructors, 150K courses, 295M course enrolment, 33M minutes of videos. It operates in 65 different languages, above all by 80% of the Fortune 100 companies.
Udemy is one of the popular platforms to create online courses for someone who wants to share his/her knowledge with others and make money from it. Once you are approved as a creator on the platform, you have access to every tool you need to create your online course.
Pros
- Instructors set their prices for any course. They get 100% for any new user that signs up for their course and 50% for existing users.
- There is a healthy competition among creators on the platform. Everyone wants to deliver.
- 30 days money-back guarantee for students who weren’t satisfied with a course
- Its interface is very easy to navigate
- Different kinds of courses. You must surely see one that you need
- No technical issues
Cons
- Sometimes it’s difficult to ascertain if a course worth it or not before signing up for it.
- Feedback for complaints may take a longer time.
- It is difficult to outrank other course creators if you’re new to the platform. This is so because you appearing top at their website for a particular course depends on their own algorithm which tends to favor older instructors.
8.Course Cat
Course Cat is one of the online course platforms that works perfectly with WordPress. It allows you to create as many online courses as you want. It allows you to build a blog, create a landing page, and grow your email list.
Course Cat is designed to give both the admin and users a beautiful experience. Its support team is always available to help you out at every step if you’re stuck. It offers you different themes and templates to help you sell your course.
It also offers you a 14-day free trial which you can cancel at any time. Course Cat doesn’t charge you any transaction fee. It provides you a step-by-step tutorial of what to do at any step.
Pricing plan
It has two pricing plans:
- Most popular – $59/month
- Best deal – $497/year
9. Kajabi
Kajabi has become one of the leading companies when it comes to online business. Since 2010, it has helped 50,000+ Instructors create online courses that have served 60M students globally. Generating over $1.5 billion in sales.
Kajabi believes that every valuable content you have can be turned into an online course that can make you money. Not only online courses but any digital product you didn’t will benefit others.
Key Features
One Central Hub: Everything you need to create your online course or carry out any other online business is one place.
Customizable Templates: Kajabi already has awesome themes and templates you can use to along with the integrated website builder
Custom Domain: Customize your domain with any domain name you want especially as it relates to your business. This will help you build authority and be found online.
Analytics And Reports: Kajabi ensures that any activity on your site is tracked, organized into reports which will help you make better decisions.
Mobile App: It has a mobile app that helps users access your products while on the go.
Other features include:
- It supports PayPal and Stripe for easy and fast payment
- With the Kajabi’s visual editor, you can create and customize catchy emails that integrate countdown timer, videos, emojis, etc.
- Automated marketing funnels to help you scale your online business.
Pros
- No need for integration or plugins. All you need are in one place.
- 24/7 support any day anytime
- A vibrant community for you to connect with and share your experience with others.
- A lot of video tutorial that will help you understand how the platform works.
Cons
- Doesn’t support multiple languages
Pricing Plan
It has 3 pricing plans that also allow for a free trial:
- Growth – $159/month
- Basic – $119/month
- Pro – $319/month
Please note that is price plans are billed annually.
10. Learndash
Learndash is one of the popular online course platforms which has an advanced learning method infused with WordPress. It offers step by step guide for individuals and organizations that want to create online courses.
Courses created on this platform offer the best one could get in e-learning. It offers you the latest course builder which makes it easy for you to create any kind of course even if you’re not tech-savvy.
Key Features
Badges And Certificates: Learn Dash allows you to customize and issue badges and certificates to your students. This will make them value the course more and brag about the knowledge they have derived from it.
Powerful Course Builder: You shouldn’t fear if you don’t know where to start when it comes to creating your online course. Provided you have a valuable skill you want to share, the course builder will guide you.
One Time Purchase And Subscription: You can decide to set a one-time purchase price for your course or a subscription. Learn Dash supports Shopping Cart to help you achieve this.
Course Licenses: If you’re interested in creating a marketplace like Udemy, Learn Dash supports you.
Manage Your Courses And Learners: Learn Dash empowers you to place your users into groups, trigger automatic emails. You can also create a profile for each of them so that they can track their progress.
Pros
- Responds perfectly on mobile devices if the theme you used is mobile responsive
- You can insert adobe files, videos, audios, and images
- Wide range of WordPress themes for you to choose from.
- 30 days money-back guarantee
Cons
- No phone call or live chat support
- Multilingual not supported
Pricing Plan
Learn Dash has 3 pricing plans:
- Basic – $159/month
- Plus package – $189/month
- Pro Package – $329/month
Summing It Up
The online course industry is one that is booming and you can take such an opportunity to make money online. Provided you have valuable knowledge or skill you want to share with others, you are good to go. The above-mentioned online course creation and sell platforms are worth giving a trial.
Before settling for any of them, check for their features, time restrictions, monthly subscription plans, and above all the marketing features available. You can easily upload videos, offer training to your students, and make sales.
But your success in this game depends on you. The platform is just the stepping stone. But you’ve to do the walking yourself. Ensure that your contents are of the best quality and deliver it in a manner that your students will find helpful.
There are a lot of courses you can offer to millions of students on these platforms. Only go for topics you have the passion, skill, and expertise in. That way you can be sure of getting it right.
