Automatically add your students to your marketing campaign, enroll new purchasers in your course, and more with one of these pre-made workflows: See more ways to automate Podia with Podia's Zapier integrations. This can work, but you're often at the mercy of algorithmic changes and the rules of the platform you choose. ), offer payment plans, quizzes, drip content, upsells and more. Here's a neat trick to collect them on Thinkific: Turn on student reviews for your course and add the ones you like directly to your landing page. To this end, the platform offers entirely free online courses that integrate instructional videos, practice exercises, and a personalized learning dashboard. Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced the launch of a new online training platform which will enable unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers weathering the COVID-19 pandemic to learn new skills, earn certificates, and advance their careers at no cost. “There’s no greater success on the Udemy marketplace than hearing that you’ve helped a student achieve their goals. If you'd like to keep in touch with students after they've completed your course, add them to your email list with Teachable's integrations. Here are three ways you can automate your online course registration and follow-up. Explore online courses from Harvard University. To accomplish this, we needed several customizations, which AOM quickly completed.” Chitra Patel – Owner, Health, Wellness & Fitness. They are literally the perfect product. If you already have a website of your own and would like to use a WordPress plugin to host courses directly on your own website, this section is for you. In addition, the technology has made it really easy for you to create and sell online courses and so, the barrier to teaching online has come down significantly.. Two of the most popular online course platforms would have to be Teachable and Thinkific. (Psst. If you're struggling to make your first few sales, Udemy's tailor-made marketing programs will offer support. Farheen Gani is a freelance writer and marketer for hire. Thrive. You can also choose what to do with the emails you collect. Give video, image, or text hints to students, Users can review questions and answers on-site. “I love Skillshare for its variety of video classes they offer. Finally, the community portion of a class allows students to post their work. “We were in need of an LMS to create a program that would function differently than a traditional online course. My monthly fee is down 50% of what I was paying, having different platforms, and now I know that all my automation runs smoothly.” Gabriela L. – Coach E-Learning. Fantastic presets but most importantly their customer service is amazing and that’s what makes a good small business! Skillshare is an e-course selling platform that offers instructors help to customize their online classes. The best online learning platforms make it easy for you to create a text or video course, get subscriptions right from your website, and interact with your students. Ruzuku Price: From $99/month for the Bootstrapper plan for a single instructor, unlimited courses and students, payment gateway, and coupons. Hands down, always reliable and always responsive to our needs. I can’t wait to start transferring our students over to AOM! Online course platforms offer all these tools and more, so you can focus on what matters: building a professional course for your students. “The Best Online Course & Website Platform Out There. Kajabi gives marketing superpowers to busy course creators. The software allows you to build a fully-fledged website so you can host and market your digital training from one convenient place. Plus, they also don’t have transaction fees, which is always positive. Automatically add your students to your marketing campaign, track them in a Google Sheet, and more with one of these pre-made workflows: See more ways to automate Teachable with Teachable's Zapier integrations. As a course creator, you don’t have to build your own audience. Most discussion forums focus on reviewing course-related material, but Learnworlds' communities are designed for social interaction. They provide a neat framework that simplifies these processes so that you don’t have to start from scratch and can devote more attention to the actual content of your courses, rather than the technical stuff. You can do more with Teachable when you connect it to your favorite apps through Zapier's automated workflows. This makes the platform ideal for tutors, professors, and even remote companies who wish to train employees, along with individual course creators. Teachery is one of the newest platforms on my comparison and it’s definitely worth including. Because the platform offers loads of support for creating and marketing a course. It’s also easy to share your expertise and knowledge with your students. It means that users can choose a monthly or annual membership rate to be able to access over 10000 online courses. The best online course platform for teaching creative skills (FREE). Course creators have it easier than ever now that there are a number of platforms dedicated to allowing people like you and me to create our own online courses. “Makes running an online biz a breeze. Coursera is an incredible marketplace that allows course creators to teach content that’s then featured at institutions like the University of Illinois, Duke, Google, IBM, University of Michigan, Stanford, and more. And the team does a great job of maintaining high-quality content from the instructors and their presentations.” – Amanda D. Custom-built solutions for different needs, Easy integration with other marketing tools, Gamification for higher student engagement. It integrates with countless plugins, and no technical skills are needed to get everything done. Systeme.io is an all-in-one marketing software that has everything an entrepreneur needs to start and run their online business or sell courses. Best High-End Online Course Platform for Professionals ($119/month) Kajabi is a high-powered course builder for in-depth courses. Instead of favoring final outcomes, Skillshare encourages students to share their progress, garner feedback, and tweak their work accordingly—which is perfect for the creative topics you'll be teaching. You can do more with Thinkific when you connect it to your favorite apps through Zapier's automated workflows. In the past year alone, online courses made over 46 billion dollars. If you have additional resources to supplement your course—cheat sheets, eBooks, videos, audio, text, checklists—sell them as a digital download; you can also bundle and sell the two together. Are you creating a course to engage your existing audience? This software is undoubtedly among the best ways for businesses and educators to market their online courses. The best online learning platforms provide an easy way for students to access and use course materials through the internet, while making it simple for teachers and trainers to manage the course. The sales pages and payment process are all optimized to get you high conversions and increase sales. It also allows you to launch self-paced courses for your students. And all courses, memberships, and digital downloads have a separate landing page. Looking to sell online courses, but confused by the huge number of online course platforms? Great blogging and video streaming features. I just wanted to say thank you!” Karen Baynes – Manager, 1st Choice Real Estate School. Read the Zapier blog for tips on productivity, automation, and growing your business. An online course platform is a type of learning management system (LMS) that online instructors can use to create, host, deliver and sell online courses. All In One. Udemy is an online learning and teaching marketplace with over 130,000 courses and 35 million students. Its marketing blueprints, called Pipelines, help you connect landing pages—for course launches, special offers, and more—to checkout pages, with just a few clicks. 1. It features powerful course site themes, robust email marketing automation, upsells and digital products, a customizable checkout, and blogging functionality. Thinkific's website builder is one of the easiest to use. Skillshare pays instructors $10 for premium membership referrals and royalties for minutes watched in a premium class each month. The platform offers a membership plan for students that gives them access to all of its 22,000+ premium courses. Kajabi Price: From $149/month for the Basic plan for one site, three products, three pipelines, and unlimited marketing emails. Select a Pipeline, add your content, and your marketing machine is all set. Free online courses with certificates. Create and sell online courses and coaching services with the best online business platform used by the entrepreneurs to sell $500m+ to over 18 million students worldwide. While earnings are typically low, this is a nice compliment to other platforms. Then you'll want a tool with robust marketing features. The major advantage: Course marketplaces provide you with an existing student base, so if you don't have much of an online presence yet, you might want to dabble with these first. Here's an example: The promotional offer pipeline consists of three pages. A popular web-based tool best for marketing courses on autopilot ($119/month). The world’s largest online course marketplace with the largest selection of courses (FREE). They have over 100,000 instructors on the platform and have helped people just like you and me earn over $500 million dollars. Advance your career with degrees, certificates, Specializations, & MOOCs in data science, computer science, business, and dozens of other topics. How many lessons should you include? Pricing: As one of the best online course platform options around, LearnWorlds makes it cheap and easy to access everything from teaching to gamification tools for a pricing starting at only $29 per month. Thanks to the different levels of features, this tool is perfect for both beginners and advanced users, alike. You can get started on Academy of Mine for $499 per month. Learnworlds' course builder has a number of unique tools. Everything can easily be set up via the dashboard, including payments, sales pages, and your affiliate center. Though one dollar is a bit of an annoyance, this platform is well worth it just for the trial. The easiest online course platform for beginners (FREE Trial or $39/month). Learn online and earn valuable credentials from top universities like Yale, Michigan, Stanford, and leading companies like Google and IBM. If you decide this is the platform for you, plans start at $29 per month. Podia is an easy-to-use software that has everything a digital publisher needs to create and sell online courses. Finally, Udemy's marketplace insights help you select the perfect course topic and see how it stacks up against other courses on the platform—which is important because of the size of the marketplace you're competing with. Add them to an email sequence, remind them about your special offer, or send them a thank-you note after they purchase. Other factors to take into consideration when picking the best online course platform for you or your organization may include: Integration with other systems. An online course platform is a tool that helps you to put together your course, host it, launch it, and market it to your customers. The 9 Best Platforms to Create and Sell Online Courses. Anyone can easily create a course on this platform, thanks to the simple drag-and-drop editor. Kartra is best for individuals looking to create a community around their course and have advanced functionality in the future to grow their business. Formerly Lynda.com, Linkedin Learning is an online course marketplace that’s been integrated into the wildly popular professional social media network. Teachery plans start at $49 per month and include unlimited uploads and courses. Udemy (Web, Android, iOS) for launching your first course, Skillshare (Web, Android, iOS) for teaching creative skills, Teachable (Web, iOS) for marketing your course, Podia (Web) for putting up a digital storefront, Thinkific (Web) for building a course from scratch, Kajabi (Web) for marketing a course on autopilot, WizIQ (Web, Android, iOS) for setting up a virtual classroom, Learnworlds (Web, Android, iOS) for creating an online school. From $119+/mo. Even the platforms that cost money have free trials – so don’t let the cost stop you. The online training platform has courses in the categories “Create, Build and Thrive”, but actually they are divided into four course categories. If you're an entrepreneur, designer, writer, photographer, or blogger looking to teach your craft online, Skillshare is great for teaching creative skills. The next section of my online course platform comparisons is focused on learning management systems. They have a 25% discount if you pay for an annual plan and although they don’t have a free plan, they do have a 14-day trial available for $1. Plans come with numerous features like drip-feeding courses and you can easily upgrade as your business grows. Webinar Plan – $47. WizIQ Price: Contact the WizIQ sales team for pricing information. Automatically track new course purchases in a Google Sheet, send an email when a course is completed, and more with one of these pre-made workflows: See more ways to automate LearnWorlds with LearnWorlds' Zapier integrations. The best thing about their tool is that it provides multiple classrooms at a single session, which is very helpful to conduct tests and exams.” Hudha I. The easiest online course platform for beginners (FREE Trial or $39/month). I feel that this platform is benficial for those that are not simply looking to create courses, but want to grow a business beyond the simplicity of a course platform. Putting together your first online course can be daunting. Open multiple whiteboards to explain concepts and illustrate diagrams. Plans start at $39 per month for the Basic package, and the Pro plan is $79 per month while premier is $399/month. Learn more. Use Ruzuku's built-in teleconferencing service or an external service such as Ustream or Livestream. This includes Teachable, Thinkific, Learnworlds, and Teachery. The ‘Shaker’ option is $79 per month and it allows you to scale your online course business. Here are 31 platforms that facilitate online course creation and sales. It contains numerous site themes for building in-depth courses. The pro plan is well worth the money.” Kim Werker – Make it Mighty Ugly. Share updates with your community, notify them about new products, and watch your business grow. While students are free to post questions about coursework, the idea is to foster engagement and exchange of ideas. Zippy Courses is a complete set of tools that are designed with features to help you create, launch, teach, and sell your online course quickly. You can learn anything from knitting to cooking, writing, logo design, analytics, photography, and so on. Categories Digital Marketing Career Development Data and Tech . I went from working 60+ hour weeks to set my own hours and schedule.” Colt Steele – Developer and Bootcamp Instructor. “Wonderful Tutoring Experience. Where should you add assignments and quizzes? Online Courses Platform Kartra. In this post I draw on my two decades of e-learning industry experience to highlight the best online learning platforms and help you narrow your list. Ever dreamt of starting your own school? Online courses. Students can access courses on any device and from any location. For bigger businesses, this plan allows 5 custom domains, unlimited membership sites and you can run unlimited evergreen webinars. When you're done with your webinar, you'll find its recording available and ready to share. Founded by Harvard and MIT, edX is home to more than 20 million learners, the majority of top-ranked universities in the world and industry-leading companies. For an added fee, you can even get a branded app for your school. While the terms are often used interchangeably, LMSs are generally used either in a school setting or to help companies train their customers and employees. These include Academy of Mine and Wiz IQ. All-in-one online course platforms are ideal for anyone who doesn’t have the ability to create a stand-alone platform for themselves. You can create branded landing pages, choose from multiple content formats when building your course, and get the necessary tools to market your course. This includes coaches and businesses in education, healthcare, law, safety training, and more. “Great option for e-learning and automation. Unsurprisingly, there's no one-size-fits-all solution for creating a profitable course. It includes one site license and unlimited online courses and users. Discover a range of free learning content designed to help your business or in your career. They have a two-week trial you can take for free prior to making any payments. Udemy charges 3% revenue share on course sales made by instructor coupons, 50% revenue share on courses found through organic search on Udemy or through a Udemy promotion, and 75% revenue share on course sales through Udemy's paid user acquisition channels. Podia lets you build an online store for your digital content. If you’re short on time, here’s my list of the best online course platforms: While “online course platform” is an all-encompassing term, it’s important to understand that there are many different options for those that are looking to start teaching online. She frequently writes about software, business, and marketing on websites such as Tech in Asia, Foundr, BuildFire, Appcues, and more. You can have 3 membership sites on it. Now you can. These include Podia, Systeme.io, Kartra, and Kajabi. Plans for the different platforms range from a free plan to about $499 per month, and are generally based on the level of features like the number of courses, students, storage space, and so on. We are officially launching in one week, and I couldn’t have done it without you.” – Will M. “There is SUCH a wide array of skills and topics covered in some form or another. With Kartra, you have so much functionality at your fingertips including checkouts, the ability to create a membership site, and you can even host your own affiliate program. Academy of Mine allows you to create your very own customized e-learning platform. “I am in love with this platform and I would never change it for another. There are two parts to creating a course on Thinkific: course material and landing page. The tool is easy to use so you don’t have to be a tech enthusiast to be able to use it. An online course platform is designed to provide content, training, or instruction on a specific subject. If we had only started using Thinkific one or two years earlier, we’d have gotten to where we need to be so much faster.” Ryan Chynces – Hootsuite. (Note: Revenue share does not include processing fees charged by PayPal or Payoneer, or mobile platform fees for mobile course sales.). Similar to Coursera, Linkedin Learning is very selective about the instructors that they allow to join their platform and while they pay the instructors well, it’s not easy to be selected. Learn programming, marketing, data science and more. Manage multiple teams with advanced administrative controls in Zapier. Kajabi’s pricing options start at $119 per month for the Basic plan. Their biggest differentiation from other platforms is they are extremely beginner-friendly and help novice course creators get something up to sell to their audience. Virtual course platforms allow instructors to provide students with an engaging and organized learning experience through text, interactive video content, audio, image, and PDF files. Udemy (Web, Android, iOS) for launching your first course. Enterprise LMS Platforms: These are the types of platforms that would be used to help businesses roll out training materials to their staff and are less focused on individual small course creators. We’re so happy to host our course and membership on Kajabi and will stay with them for years to come. From my understanding, course creators get 15% of the revenue that the courses generate, but the courses are free to MOST students on the platform. Needless to say, the time for online course creation is upon us and e-learning continues to grow with each passing day. Teaching on Udemy has brought me new relationships from wonderful and insatiably curious students.” Stephen Grider – Engineering Architect. I think Teachery is a great choice for beginners because they purposely limit some of the confusion design and function aspects to give people exactly what they need. It’s ideal for professional development, continuing education, and certifications, as well as B2B training. I had a few issues and questions and they were so quick to respond and helped me in every way possible. Templates can be handy, but if you want to create your own automations, Kajabi offers a number of if-then scenarios to choose from. All-in-One platform, everything works together, Less stress and less tech, a great solution to keep things simple, Can scale as your course demand and community grows, 100% in the cloud, no need to worry about your work being deleted, Cheaper than all platforms combined to achieve the same functionality, “I love Kartra’s advanced features for creating email sequences, tags, funnels, etc. Join Coursera for free and transform your career with degrees, certificates, Specializations, & MOOCs in data science, computer science, … An online course platform is a type of learning management system (LMS) that online instructors can use to create, host, deliver and sell online courses. Online course platforms are a form of learning management systems (LMS) designed to offer easy access to digital products and classes to help you sell online courses. This tool helps you to create your own online customize course with ease. You can also earn $10 per membership referral as well. Write. Ruzuku fills this gap with its native video streaming option. Launched in 2018, it has steadily grown to 5000+ users who depend on its multiple features to run their online businesses smoothly. Once you've validated your course topic and content, only then proceed to launch your own course website. Online Course Marketplaces: In a course marketplace, the course you create becomes part of a catalog and you get an existing student base to sell online courses to. Thinkific is my favorite free online course platform by far to sell courses. But keep in mind, that you can use all of the platforms mentioned above by linking directly to landing pages that they provide. Not all platforms are made equal, and if you’re going to pick the best one to suit your needs, you’ll need to understand what features to look out for: As you’ve gathered from our list above, there are dozens of great options available for you to choose from, each of which offers a unique set of features. Dedicated Course Platforms: These are platforms that are solely dedicated to helping you create online courses and your own e-learning school. Pursue your passion. An affordable, easy to use LMS and virtual classroom software ($20/month). In this guide, we will show you how to easily create an online course in WordPress. I think the overall concept and model is very good and useful for online teaching and virtual classes.” Gautam P. – CEO & Principal Consultant, Education Management. “It took me a long time to find a great platform for my online schools. They’re scalable, fun to make, and you help a lot of people. The online training platform has courses in the categories “Create, Build and Thrive”, but actually they are divided into four course categories. Your commitment to your customers is awesome and inspiring. No matter what you do best—marketing, writing, coding, hand-lettering, or anything in between—you'll find scores of professionals and enthusiasts eager to learn from you. Updated on March 25, 2020 to remove discontinued platforms and update all pricing. The costs can begin low and if you want to upgrade when you’re making a little money, the option is there. Systems that mimic tried-and-true educational methods through online recreation of classes, assignments and teacher/student interaction will likely prove the most effective for these institutions. 2. Creating and selling an online course is a great way to leverage your knowledge and skills and you can use this guide to help you choose the best platform to suit your needs. Dozens of online course platforms exist, and each one can offer you something different. LearnDash is the most popular LMS WordPress plugin on the market right now. Virtual course platforms allow instructors to provide students with an engaging and organized learning experience through text, interactive video content, audio, image, and PDF files. 5 Best Online Course Platform in 2020. All of these programs are optional, and depending on the promotional channel you choose, Udemy takes a share of course sales. To get started, choose from the following templates: mini-course, flagship course, digital download, membership bundle, and webinar replay. This plan is perfect for someone just starting and offers everything you’ll need to run your business. Try our flagship Primavera P6 online course. Startup Plan – $27. This is actually where I started as an online course creator and I migrated away from these platforms once I realized how little I was being paid for the hours of course creation I did. Ability to create infographics and complex quizzes. Granted, their free plan has it’s limitations, but it’s a great place to begin if you don’t want to buy anything just yet. To create a paid course on Udemy, you first have to apply to become a premium instructor. It’s also one of the few course platforms that don’t offer unlimited students. With this standalone course building platform, you have the ability to simplify the entire process of building and marketing your online course. “ Udemy has given me the opportunity to reach a global audience for my classes that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.” Jean Lurssen – Watercolorist. Note that live chat content is not available once the call is complete. 7 tips for hosting a webinar that engages and converts, How a solopreneur automates her work to focus on her students, How to Simplify Content for a Better Reader Experience. As your business grows, you can upgrade to the Pro package which costs $329 per month. Add live classes to your self-paced courses to help students understand the material better. Udemy allows you to easily create and publish courses on a wide variety of topics, such as marketing, business, entrepreneurship, web design, and much more. LearnWorlds is a robust platform that is very easy to use and setup and it is also affordable for those that are just getting started.” D’Andrea – Bolden Ministries. Kajabi is a popular course creation software with powerful features like automation to help you create and sell your online courses more effectively. “Launching my first course on Udemy allowed me to quit my full-time job and start my own company. Whether you're a photographer who wants to put your in-person workshops online or a painter looking to help others elevate their skills, there's a place for everyone. This is (statistically) the largest online course platform on the market. The 9 Best Platforms to Create and Sell Online Courses. For this piece, we only considered platforms for building and selling an online course, which means we did not consider learning management systems (LMS). Skillshare lets you start learning for free. And for tutorials on planning a course, filming your first video, and related topics, Udemy offers the Teach Hub with tips and tricks.