13 best online course platforms for creators
Discover the most effective online courses platforms that can help you create exciting e-learning courses and expand your business online.
There's an idea you have for an online course that is awe-inspiring. You're just looking for an area to create the course.
Through an online platform for courses You can create your own course, include multimedia such as videos and pictures as well as include interactive elements like quizzes and certificate of completion for your course. It is also possible to create sales pages, accept paymentsand track your students all in all in one location.
In this article will discuss the things you should look for in choosing the best course software, and we'll also review 13 of the most popular online courses platforms that are ideal for makers, small business owners, and entrepreneurs.
The prices are accurate as of the date of publication but dependent on changes over time.
Things to consider when choosing an online course platform
Before we begin this topic, we'll look at a few things to consider when choosing the right online training tool for your organization.
UnlimitedBusinesses change over time and this is a positive aspect. Utilizing platforms that allow you to create unlimited courses ensures that you won't have to worry about outgrowing your e-learning software when your offerings evolve.
Multiple types of files: You shouldn't be limited by the type of content you're able to include within your class. Look for platforms that make it possible to add video, audio texts, embedded modules.
Creator support:Don't go it alone. Consider online educational platforms first. easy customer support as well as resources such as chat rooms, live chat, knowledge bases, and video tutorials to help you in your quest.
Price:Most creators have a restricted budget, therefore selecting a low-cost platform is essential. It is not necessary to shell out for the highest-priced product available when budget-friendly options can accomplish the task.
With these factors in mind With these considerations in mind, here are 13 useful tools to help you build and sell your class.
13 top online learning platforms for creators and entrepreneurs
#1
Building a course on is a breeze. It is possible to add texts, videos or audio files, questions or coaching sessions as well as the ability to download files for your lessons and modules.
With , you can also embed elements from 1900+ sources like YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Spotify, Google Slides, TikTok, Instagram, GitHub, and Google Forms.
After adding your material to your course, make use of 's beginner-friendly page builder to design a course website or sales page for the course you're offering. If you're in need of help we provide top-of-the-line chat and help via email throughout every day of.
According to expert bladesmith Ben Abbot , "I've always had a dream of creating online classes that aid bladesmiths at all skill levels to improve their skill. This has been made possible with their simple and effective platform."
What are 's features?
Unlimited customers
Payment integrations that work with Stripe and PayPal
Coupons, payment plans, and subscriptions
pros: has a free plan to develop your site and set up an online community, and create the online course you want to offer before spending your money. The paid plans offer unlimited content hosting and courses. The courses can be launched in advance or offered as bundles and it is possible to format your content into a cohort, drip or self-paced programme.
Scores 90.91 out of 100 in the Creator Friendliness Index . Creator-friendly platforms offer resources as well as pricing structure, along with policies that empower creators -- giving you more control over the way you manage your company. Does not charge transaction fees for the paid plans.
negatives: is a turnkey solution, so if you want to create your website and course by hand with the assistance of a developer, it isn't the right choice for you.
How much does cost?
Free (8 percent transaction fee)
Mover: $39/month
Shaker: $89/month
Earthquaker: $199/month
#2 Kajabi
Kajabi includes templates for self-study, drip courses, as well as membership classes. You can add the number of lessons and modules as you like with videos and assessments, audio files, text, and downloadable content. If you're stuck you can reach Kajabi support through live chat or email.
What are Kajabi's features?
Unlimited website and content hosting
Coupons, upsells, subscriptions as well as payment plans
Recovery of abandoned carts
Course insights and analytics
Email broadcasts, campaigns pipelines, automatizations and sequences
Payment gateways: Stripe and PayPal
Creator friendliness score: 68.83/100
Kajabi pros: Kajabi has a pipeline software that lets the creation of advanced sales funnels. You can also download templates for your website you can use to jumpstart your imagination. Kajabi does not charge any transaction fee for all of their plans that are paid.
Kajabi negatives: Kajabi is one of the more expensive online courses platforms that allow creators to create, and there's no plan that is free. Additionally, there are strict limitations in the amount of content you are able to create, as well as how many active users you can add to your plans.
Kajabi's products and limits for customers:
Basic: 3 products, 3 funnels, 1,000 active members
Growth: 15 products, 15 funnels, 10,000 active members
Pro: 100 products, 100 funnels, 20,000 active members
How much does Kajabi cost?
Basic: $149/month
Growth: $199/month
Pro: $399/month
#3 Thinkific
In the course builder, Thinkific creators are able to add online content, quizzes and surveys, and voice-over powerpoints. Higher-tier plans let you enable pre-requisite lessons, and also require students to finish courses in the right sequence.
Thinkific also has a no-cost plan where you can develop three courses and establish your site. This plan is free of charges for transactions as well as all plans have unlimited students. Should you need help, Thinkific offers phone and email assistance.
What are Thinkific's features?
Offer bundles, courses, and memberships
Unlimited video and content hosting with all plans
Students are able to leave their course critiques
Exam Integrations into higher-level plans
Instruments to ensure compliance with course requirements
Score for creator friendliness: 87.01/100
Thinkific benefits:With Thinkific, you can sell unlimited courses and host unlimited content on all plans that are paid. It is possible to connect the tools available on the Thinkific application store to add more features if you require more options.
Thinkific negatives:Thinkific is a popular online course option, but it's difficult to sell other digital products including ebooks, downloads and even coaching sessions. Additionally, certain popular features, such as community memberships, basic members, product bundles payments plans, and subscriptions can only be found with the Pro plan or higher.
What is the price Thinkific price?
No cost (No charges for transactions)
Basic: $49/month
Pro: $99/month
Pro+Growth add-on: $149/month
Premier: $499/month
#4 Teachable
Teachable's free plan includes one course , and unlimited students. Paid plans come with unlimited self-paced classes, cohort courses, coaching products, and video bandwidth. Course design templates are available for you to get going, and you can add questions, videos, audio texts, as well as custom CSS within the course module.
Help with teaching is provided via email on all plans. Support via chat live is available on the professional plan and higher.
What is Teachable's feature?
Unlimited training and coaching are included on the paid plan
Course completion certificates, quizzes as well as lecture notes
Free trials, subscriptions as well as memberships and installment plans
Design a unique storefront as well as sale pages to promote your course
Affiliate center, with automated payouts
Email marketing basics
Score for creator friendliness: 77.92/100
Teachable benefits:Teachable offers course compliance tools like lesson order enforcement to make sure students are able to move through your material in the correct way. Additionally, there are integrated with affiliate tools as well as a student recommendation feature.
Teachable cons: Teachable doesn't come with an integrated community function. If you're interested in a community for your learners, you'll need to use third-party software to join at an additional cost. Teachable also charges steep charges for transactions on its Basic and Free plans.
How much does Teachable cost?
Plan for free: ($1 + 10% transaction cost on products purchased)
The basic rate is $39/month (5% transaction fee)
Pro: $199/month
Business: $299/month
#5 LearnWorlds
Creators are able to incorporate video transcripts with overlay buttons as well as links. Students are able to highlight and make notes in the course viewer. Additionally, instructors may add assessment, random tests as well as certificates of completion for courses. Support for LearnWorlds is accessible via telephone, email and ticketing systems and live chat.
What are LearnWorlds's features?
Sell courses, memberships, subscriptions, and product bundles
Create your own site
Tools for video editing integrated into the system and transcripts
Marketing via affiliate
Mobile application (for an additional charge)
Unlimited SCORMs / HTML5
Score for creator friendliness: 76.62/100
LearnWorlds benefits: LearnWorlds users can manage affiliates, establish members, and organize promotions on their courses. Additionally, you can develop a white-label iOS or Android app for an additional fee.
LearnWorlds pros: LearnWorlds is heavily designed for course creators therefore it might not be the right choice for you if you offer webinars, digital downloads, coaching, or communities.
If you're on the LearnWorlds Starter plan, you cannot offer courses that are paid (no free courses) in addition, LearnWorlds charge a fee of $5 per course sale. The plan allows you to build a minimal website, however you're limited to 3 pages. The cost of $99 per month Pro Trainer plan to get additional options.
How much does LearnWorlds cost?
Starter: $29/month (+$5 fee per course sale)
Pro Trainer: $99/month
Learning Center 299$/month
Corporate: Custom pricing
#6 LearnDash
With LearnDash, you can create courses that include prerequisites, drip content, subscriptions, and memberships. You can also send automated notifications to students, enable forum discussions for students and present certificate to the most successful students.
Courses can be subscription-based, memberships, or one-time purchase. If you need to get with us, get in touch with LearnDash customer support Monday through Friday.
What is LearnDash's feature?
WordPress LMS plugin
Students can be enrolled in unlimited courses and can also offer unlimited courses
It works with the majority of WordPress themes
Subscriptions, one-time purchases memberships, course bundles, and bulk licenses
Student incentives, quizzes, certifications, and evaluations
Students should be informed.
LearnDash benefits:LearnDash offers student engagement features like quizzes, leaderboards, gamification, and assignments. LearnDash doesn't take any transaction fees, and you can integrate the plugin into the majority of WordPress themes, which makes it very flexible.
How much does LearnDash cost?
Basic: $199/year
Plus package: $229/year
Pro package: $369/year
Costs for hosting your WordPress website as well as Domain registration
#7 Uscreen
Uscreen is video membership software with course creation features and community tools. Uscreen is ideal for those who have an a vast library of video content they want to keep in one spot.
Every one of Uscreen customers get high-quality video player, a website and unlimited streaming bandwidth. For creating classes, you can label your videos by topic and arrange them in catalogs. The possibilities include one-time purchase as well as tiered subscriptions, trial periods for free, as well as rentals across all plans.
Uscreen users are able to access assistance via email.
What is Uscreen's feature?
Make a website for membership for your video content
Make your own site as well as an app
Livestreamed events
Uscreen cons: Uscreen is on the pricey side, and there's no free plan. It's only a good fit to video-based classes, and should you provide other offerings like downloads, live coaching or interconnected communities, you'll want to choose a different software.
How much will Uscreen cost?
Basis: $79/month + $0.50 per subscription
The growth rate is $159 per month plus $0.50 per subscriber
Uscreen Plus Pricing is custom (This package includes white label mobile application and the TV streaming application)
#8 Mighty Networks
Alongside courses, Mighty Networks has advanced community tools like live streams personal feeds, customized feeds, member profiles, direct messaging virtual events and calendar capabilities. Mighty Networks customers can access support through a ticketing system as well as the "Host Help" button.
What Are the Mighty Network's capabilities?
Create unlimited courses on the Business plan and all the way up
Communities can be populated by unlimitless members and moderators
Chat messaging for private and group chats
Creator support community
Program for referring members
Creator friendliness score: 59.74/100
Mighty Networks pros:With Mighty Networks, you can develop courses that include the inclusion of a community component. Mighty Networks supports video courses drip courses, drip classes, as well as livestreaming, and you can create unlimited instructors and moderators.
Mighty Networks cons: Mighty Networks is first the most important thing, it's a social platform. It doesn't have a built-in method to market services such as the coaching program or downloading digital files. Storage limitations exist on both the Community and Business plans and transactions fees for all plans.
Also, you can only export a list of your members and their email addresses for the Business plan, making it hard to move away from Mighty Networks to a new platform.
How much does Mighty Networks cost?
Community plan: $39/month (3 3%) transaction cost)
Business plan 119 USD per month (2% transaction fee)
Mighty Pro: Pricing that is custom
#9 Academy of Mine
All-in-one solutions for online training, Academy of Mine is an application that allows you to create, sell, and market your online course using the white label platform of your choice. This is a great option if you're in the B2B space and require the ability to sell large licenses to one customer.
As per their site, Academy of Mine is frequently used to:
Continuing education
Safety training
Employee development
Certifications and professional training for the profession.
Training for compliance
Employee onboarding
Assistance for Academy of Mine users is provided via email as well as the ticketing system.
What do you think of some of the Academy of Mine features?
Create self-paced course with questions, surveys, and assessments
Create sales and marketing pages
Website builder and custom branding
Export and import features for bulk goods
Ecommerce analytics and reports that are flexible and adaptable
Integrations from third parties
Academy of Mine pros:Academy of Mine works great for creating corporate or team business courses for training. It is possible to create self-paced or live courses and create your own website.
Academy of Mine cons: Academy of Mine is a costly option that was designed for big businesses, not individual creators. It also has limitations in storage capacity and the number of monthly active users.
What is the cost of Academy of Mine cost?
Essentials: $599/month
Professional: $899/month
Enterprise: Custom pricing
#10 Teachery
Teachery is a simple, but powerful software made for course creators, by course creators. It's not packed with a lot of bells and whistles but it's a good choice when you just want to create an online course company.
Teachery includes a course creator using two template templates. For your courses and modules include audio and video as well as slide presentations. You can create unlimited payment, sales, and emails capture pages for promoting your class. You can reach the Teachery help desk via email.
What are Teachery's features?
Unlimited classes, lessons and students
Sell memberships and bundle products
Integrations that work with Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and Zapier
Affiliate program
Recurring, non-recurring, and free payment
Teachery's prosTeachery is a white label course platform which you can modify according to your brand and design. They have two straightforward payments plans that cover every feature of the platform.
Teachery cons:Teachery is not optimized for the sale of digital downloads, or other services. There's no community features that they offer, nor do they provide video or audio hosting, which means you'll need to insert videos hosted by third party providers such as YouTube and Vimeo.
How much will Teachery costs?
Monthly plan Cost: $49 per month
Annual plan $470/year
#11 Ruzuku
Ruzuku is a system for managing learning that allows you to build an engaging online course with student forums and questions and answers areas. With Ruzuku it is possible to teach either live, evergreen or self-directed online classes with an interactive student dashboard.
What are the Ruzuku's capabilities?
Participants can have social profiles, bios, and photos in the course community
Copy a previous course to run it multiple times
An email announcement is sent to participants of the course.
One-time or subscription payments
Course completion data
FAQ forum area and student discussions
Ruzuku pros: Ruzuku gets good reviews from customers for their support, and they have comprehensive instructional courses, tutorials and assistance documents, as well as an online group on Facebook. Ruzuku allows Ruzuku to build unlimited courses, and all plans come with video and audio hosting.
Ruzuku negatives: Ruzuku is not the best choice if you are offering communities, downloads and digital downloads or even coaching and consulting. Even though sending emails to announce events can be done, there are no advanced email marketing features. It also does not have a fully-featured web-based creator.
How much does Ruzuku cost?
Bootstrapper: $99/month
Up and Comer 149$/month
University: $199/month
#12 Udemy
Features:
A user-friendly, easy-to-use course creator and uploader
Learners can leave course reviews
Built-in marketing tools
Instructors may be included in website-wide promotions to encourage the number of students
Score for creator friendliness: 52.78/100
Udemy advantages: Udemy promotes your courses on its platform, making your marketing less hands-on. Udemy is also an established site with name recognition and an extensive user base, which makes it easy for students to discover you organically.
Udemy Cons:On Udemy, you are less in control of your content, branding, and earnings. You don't own your audience as well as you aren't able to transfer your students' lists off the platform at a later date. You can't also offer live courses or membership classes.
How much does Udemy cost?
You can join for free Udemy to create content, but you'll be an affiliate of the revenue-sharing program offered by Udemy.
Revenue sharing plan:
The instructor gets 97% of the time when a student is referred by their instructor's referral code
The instructor is paid 37% if the referral code does not get used.
#13 Skillshare
The students pay monthly cost for unrestricted access to all classes on the platform, and teachers earn money according to the amount of time students spend watching their video. Teachers earn their money through referring students to Skillshare. Creators can access support via emails.
What are the Skillshare features?
Earn money through royalties or by participating in the Skillshare affiliate program.
Creators can be discovered by students who already use the platform.
Upload one class every 7 days
Make video lessons
Creator-friendliness Score: 44.78/100
Skillshare pros:Because Skillshare is an online library for learning, there's less marketing required for you to do. Skillshare already has a built-in public, which could mean more eyes on your courses. Also, it's free for creators to get started.
Skillshare Cons: When students watch your teaching via Skillshare it doesn't mean you own your target audience. There is no way to build an email list of students you teach, and neither can you contact them again at a later time.
Each lesson must adhere to the Skillshare guidelines. This means that you aren't in control of the creative process in your course. There isn't a community feature that you are able to offer digital downloads as well as live-cohort courses and memberships. You can also sell other formats beyond videos of lectures.
What is the cost of HTML0? Skillshare price?
Free for creators
For choosing the right online training platform for your entrepreneurial venture
Making online-based courses is the ideal way to increase the scope of your company as well as spread information. If you are looking for the most effective online education platform, you should ask yourself the following questions:
Does the platform come with all-in-one features so that I can handle my company in one place?
Is the platform limiting the amount of products I'm able to create?
Are there easy ways to reach support if I need help?
Does my course allow videos, audio, texts or other forms of content?
Does the cost seem reasonable at this stage in my business?
Your skills and experiences are highly valuable. By creating an online course, you'll be on your way to sharing your passion with others. Have fun teaching!