Best Online course platforms will make you money or lose your money If you don’t choose them wisely. This pandemic made boosting online e-learning providers sales skyrocket high enough that some made millions out of it.
You need the best online course provider tools to maximize your sales, so today, I have ranked and reviewed the best online training platforms.
In fact, the E-learning market will grow to 370 billion by 2026, according to Business Wire.
Accelerate your online training platform and get your feet wet in to see some massive growth with your knowledge.
Let’s start by tapping into this market and selling online courses.
Create, market, and sell your expertise with a single platform that gives you total control of your brand and business.
Everything you need in one place to create and sell online courses, webinars, downloads, and community.
Best Online Course Creation Platform For Professionals, Kajabi course creation makes it easy to create course…
Best online course creation platform for beginners, teachable is used by companies like Shopify, New York Times…
Best online teaching platform for lms on wordpress with this plugin you can create and sell online courses in minutes.
1. Thinkific
Best Online Course Platform For Everyone
Best Overall Online Course Platform (Free or $49/mo)
Thinkific is one of the best course creation platforms with no limits.
Thinkific is trusted by the 16 million students and 36000-course creators and is used by some big companies like Fiverr, Samsung, Shopify, Lewis Howes (from the School of Greatness) Hootsuite.
Thinkific: Build your business with a ready-to-go ecommerce site, a customizable website builder, including 3rd party sales tools, and 24/7 amazing customer support.
With a thinkific online training platform, you can teach live lessons to upload unlimited videos, student communities, assessments, surveys, quizzes, exams, Issue certificates, and more.
For monthly subscription-based businesses, thinkific also has a recurring revenue feature with Memberships.
Thinkific has 0% transaction fees, with customizable options to design your website with no permission required; start today building your online course with thinkific and receive payments in 100 + different countries.
With Thinkific, seamlessly integrate with 3rd party tools, or you can also connect your existing domain, newsletter, and more.
Thinkific is the best online courses platform where you can set up your price and giveaway coupons, launch a membership-based business, and have flexibility where you can sell your online courses, bundles, digital downloads.
Thinkific best and most popular Pro Plan offers a one-month free trial to get started.
Pros of Thinkific
- Marketing automation and 3rd Party Integration.
- Sell in 41 Languages.
- Fully edit the code of your course website.
- Issue certificates and conduct exams.
- Custom domains and 100+ Templates.
- 24/7 Customer Support and Affiliate Revenue Model.
Here’s what people are saying about Thinkific
- “I seriously can’t be more impressed with your customer support team. They are the perfect blend of efficient and personable. It’s like having my very own IT department.” – Kim Garnett.
Thinkific Pricing
- Basic ($49/month): Unlimited courses, unlimited students, email integrations, drip (scheduled) content, custom domain, and coupons.
- Pro ($99/month): Basic features, live lessons via Zoom,
- Plus memberships and bundles, assignments, private courses, certificates, advanced HTML and CSS editing, and priority support.
- Premier ($499/month): Pro features, plus 50-course admins and unlimited growth package, are best for the big teams.
My overall recommendation: Thinkific platform is my number one top choice for entrepreneurs and course creators who are serious about creating, selling, and marketing their course content.
Below is the link which will save you 20% Off Annually, but if you are on my email list, you can receive 30% off, so drop your email address to receive this best offer.
Now Accomplish your goals faster and grow your online business with thinkific.
With my link below, you can start today with a One-Month Free Trial of the Thinkific Pro Plan.
Thinkific – Online Course Platform
+ 40+ Languages Supported
+ Instant Access to funds
+ SSL Supported with 24/7 Customer Support
+ Receive payments in multiple currencies
2. Podia
Best Online Course Platform For Bang For The Buck at $39/Month
Podia is a great and less expensive online training platform with 50,000 + creators who are already selling online courses at a fraction of the cost.
With podia, you can host your courses on your domain or one of the custom podia subdomains.
Podia’s both plans offer (Shaker and Earthquaker plans) one of its best features to get paid while you are on your youtube live stream or on zoom meeting, your audience will be able to register, pay you and get access to your course content.
Podia offers to sell your online courses, sell webinars to your audience, landing pages, launch affiliate programs, and helpful selling features like coupons, payment plans, and upsells.
You can also get live world-class customer service support for just a $39/month plan.
Podia online course platform offers schedule and sell in advance feature, and it also saves the content automatically for you to replay or give access to the content for your new customers.
On podia, you can host webinars, sell digital products, PDFs, cheat sheets, checklists, Sell eBooks, quizzes, host video files, text, audio files, or any content you want.
You can track sales in podia and also segment your email newsletter based on what your customers purchase and what they have bought from you and send automated campaigns.
For the lead magnet, you can also offer free stuff and collect emails from the podia online training platform.
You can integrate podia with your favorite apps like Spotify, stripe, google analytics, GitHub, and with more than 1,000 apps.
Drive sales and traffic to your online class platform with advertising from social media sites like Facebook, Pinterest, google ads, and others.
Podia’s modern site builder helps you build stunning sales pages up running in an hour without zero technical knowledge.
Invest your time on the most important thing of your business and start running your business on Podia’s online teaching platform with a 14-day free trial.
Podia doesn’t charge a fee on any transactions and has zero limits on student registration, content hosting, emails, and earnings.
Engage in your online community with your customers at the same place with full control over privacy and like, post, comment, or organize stuff all based on members, plans, and various topics.
For the live coaching sessions, podia integrate with popular scheduling apps like calendly, savvy call, and others; If you don’t use the scheduling apps, you can create your own custom link.
With the no-coding mobile-friendly website, they also offer a live chat feature for those who are browsing your website so you can help them with your products, interact with them and turn visitors into customers.
Podia Pricing
- Mover ($39/month) – Unlimited everything, zero transaction fees, sell courses, digital downloads, and 5k emails sent per month.
- Shaker ($89/month) – Everything in Mover, plus the ability to create membership communities, add affiliates, and 15k community members and 15k emails sent per month.
- Earthquaker ($199/month) – Everything in Shaker, plus dedicated account manager, personalized onboarding, 100k community members, and 50k emails sent per month.
Overall, if you’re looking for affordable and strong free or paid membership functionality and the ability to increase your sales with the help of live streams and affiliates, Podia is a unique and the best online course platform to try out.
You can sign up and give it a test run with a free 14-day trial.
Podia – Online Course Platform
+ Live Webinar Selling on youtube and zoom
+ 0 % transaction fee
+ Live 24/7 Customer Support
+ Receive payments in multiple currencies
3. Kajabi
Best Online Course Creation Platform For Professionals
You can easily create and sell online courses with Kajabi.
With kajabi, you can create Products, coaching programs, membership sites, podcasts, email, communities, newsletters, websites, landing pages, payments, analytics, marketing automation, and more.
Kajabi offers templates and web page builders that make it easy for you to design a site set up and run it in no time.
Kajabi course creation makes it easy to create the course with its course builder tools. It also has a mobile app to connect and engage with your students, no matter wherever you are.
Kajabi has built-in CRM and supports other sales, marketing, and integrations.
Kajabi makes it easy for your customers to pay. It offers a one-time payment option, one-click upsells, subscription-based payments, trials, and installments.
Build your email list and customize landing pages that convert your visitors from leads subscribers to paying customers.
Kajabi offers a world-class email marketing system to grow your business exponentially with:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) feature
- email campaign templates
- Automatic validation of your subject lines
- Email automation for drip campaigns
- Intuitive visual editor for emails to customize easily
It integrates with MailChimp, AWeber, Infusionsoft, and Constant Contact for email marketing.
You can set up email automation when your customers take specific actions, such as completing assessments or canceling subscriptions, making it easier for you to create, market, and sell your online courses with kajabi.
Kajabi Pros
- 0% Transaction Fee
- monthly recurring subscriptions, trials, and installment-based.
- Webinars & Events
- Ready to Use Templates
- Assessments (Quizzes & Surveys)
- 1 Customer Success Activation Call and 24/7 Chat Support
- Advanced Automations
- Affiliate Program
- Code Editor
- Landing pages and website builder
- Payment integration with Stripe and PayPal.
- Big names use Kajabi, including Amy Porterfield.
Kajabi offers 24/7 customer support around-the-clock technically through chat, email, and phone.
Kajabi gives you more power and offers all the marketing tools under one roof.
Kajabi Pricing
Kajabi pricing is primarily based on the number of courses and active members you have:
- Basic ($119/month): Unlimited landing pages, Unlimited marketing emails, one website, one admin, three products, three pipelines, 10,000 contacts, and 1,000 active members.
- Growth ($159/month): 1 website, 10 admins, 25,000 contacts, 10,000 active members, 15 products, and 15 pipelines.
- Pro ($319/month): 3 websites, 100,000 contacts, 25 admins, 20,000 active members, 100 products and 100 pipelines.
Kajabi Coupon
If you’re ready to create an online course today, try kajabi free for 14 days.
If you’re serious about building and growing a real course creation business, Kajabi is the one you need.
Kajabi – Best For Professionals
+ Mobile App & built in CRM
+ Marketing Automation Tools
+ Live 24/7 Technical Customer Support
+ Monthly recurring subscriptions & installments
4. Teachable
One of the best online course creation platform for beginners at $0 – $249/Month
Teachable is a professional course selling platform with 100,000 creators. It launched 183,744 new courses in 2020 and made $500million+ in sales to over 18 million students worldwide.
Create and sell your online courses and coaching services with the best online business platform used by entrepreneurs worldwide.
Teachable is a simple all-in-one platform with advanced features designed to scale your business from scratch.
Teachable is used by some famous entrepreneurs like Pat Flynn (Smart Passive Income) and companies like Shopify, The New York Times, Intuit, Penn Law, and many more.
It’s simple, affordable, and easy to use online course builder, so even for a non-tech person, it saves a lot of time to build your course creation online with a good amount of functionality.
This online course creation platform and coaching platform helps you bring money solutions that make your life easier.
You can offer coupons to your students and advanced pricing options, including subscriptions, memberships, one-time payments, bundles, and more.
It has a one-on-one live function for webinars, group coaching calls, and live streams.
You can also schedule and host your clients and book your clients with the app calendly.
You can design with their flexible page editor, Create quizzes, PPTs, PDFs, host multimedia videos, lectures, emails, course completion issue certificates, and more.
It has the features like custom domain, student management, course compliance, course certification, community to engage with your customers, unlimited video hosting, adding custom code to your online teaching platform, and more.
Since 2013, Teachable has enabled subscription payments to provide the complete payments infrastructure that has allowed creators to earn more than $1 billion to date; with teachable, you can collect payment in 130+ currencies.
To give the next level of customer support, you can integrate with apps like Olark, Intercom, zapier, Zendesk, and others.
Teachable Features
- Clean design and premade course design templates
- Daily Instant payout
- Offers customized coding options
- Sales funnel capabilities.
- Live Zoom courses on their pro plan.
- Reporting and analytics
- Comprehensive knowledge base
- Student engagement tools available
- course completion certificates
- 100+ third-party app integrations
- Drip content is available.
- Can bundle and cross-sell courses
- The blog feature is available.
- Support is available via email & live chat.
- Affiliate program available
- Offers a 14-day no-credit card trial period
I recommend their most popular Pro Plan at $99/month cause it comes with zero transaction fees.
Teachable Pricing
- Basic ($29/month): 5% transaction fees, two admin users, drip content, course builder, members-only community.
- Pro ($99/month): Basic features, plus no transaction fees, five admin users, advanced reports, and course certificates.
- Business ($249/month): Pro features, advanced coding customizations, 20 admins, bulk student enrollments, and group coaching calls.
If you want a solid foundation and the best platform for online courses, then teachable is the one for you.
This online course platform makes the customization painless and allows you to focus on its easy-to-use features with fewer tech headaches.
I recommend Teachable for you if you are at the startup stage in your business.
Teachable – Best For Beginners
+ Daily Instant payout
+ Offers customized coding options
+ Live Zoom courses on their pro plan
+ Blog feature is available
5. LearnDash
Best online teaching platform for lms on wordpress $16/month
Learndash is trusted by big entrepreneurs like tony robbins and Universities and Companies Like Yoast and Keap.
LMS on WordPress with a plugin like learndash makes creating and selling online courses in minutes easier.
Learningdash is a platform for online courses designed by e-learning experts.
One of Learndash’s dope features is their “Focus Mode,” which blocks all distractions when students run through a course.
Learndash offers drag-and-drop course builders, advanced quizzing, dynamic content delivery likes, videos, drip-feed lessons, certification, and badges.
You can give grades to your students based on quizzes & homework assignments and quickly run reports on enrollment, progress, and performance with their grade book add, which takes your LMS to another level.
With learndash, you can give award points on course completion, leaderboards, badges, Issue official certificates, and more.
It Automatically sends a notification to students based on the action they did or videos they watched, or If they have not completed assignments.
Have a conversation and engage with your students by creating a course discussion forum.
Award your students based on their scores and unlock the new content when submitting the required assignment.
For marketing and sales, learndash integrates with apps like woocommerce, Mailchimp, zapier, PayPal, and more.
You can set your price and sell subscription-based courses, membership, or offer course bundles, all with a one-time purchase.
Learndash works with any theme with WordPress; you can use Gutenberg to customize the online lessons like logo, fonts, and adding media images videos without coding.
You can also use learndash on multiple WordPress sites and control the learning management system.
Learndash is the best LMS plugin If you’re a teacher looking for grading systems that compete with features found in college curriculums.
Learndash Features
- Focus mode
- Drag & Drop Course builder
- Advanced Quizzing
- Shopping Cart
- Group Management
- Detailed Reporting
- Assignment management
- Manual Grading system
- Multisite WordPress Enabled
Learndash Pricing
- Basic ($16/month) – Unlimited Courses,Unlimited Users,Course Content Protection,Drip-Feed Lessons,Advanced Quizzing,Certificates & Badges,Course Forums,Email Notifications,Free Integrations,1-Year Support & Updates.
- Plus ($19/month) – Up to 10 Site Licenses,Includes ProPanel,Unlimited Courses,Unlimited Users,Course Content Protection,Drip-Feed Lessons,Advanced Quizzing,Certificates & Badges,Course Forums,Email Notifications,Free Integrations,1-Year Support & Updates
- Pro ($30/month) – Up to 25 Site Licenses,Includes ProPanel,Unlimited Courses,Unlimited Users,Course Content Protection,Drip-Feed Lessons,Advanced Quizzing,Certificates & Badges,Course Forums,Email Notifications,Free Integrations,1-Year Support & Updates
Learndash coupon
- Save 20% off on Learndash basic plan billed annually.
- Save 15% off on the Learndash Plus plan billed annually.
- Save 11% off on the Learndash Pro plan billed annually.
You can get started today with a $40 discount and a full 30-day money-back guarantee on their annual plans.
+ 1-Year Support & Updates
+ Certificates & Badges
+ Unlimited Courses
+ Unlimited Users
What Are Best Platform For Online Courses?
The best Platform for online courses is learning management systems (LMS) that provide users access to digital classes.
These online courses are similar to offline course classes in a lot of ways: an instructor provides engaging educational content through video, webinars, Live streams, Quizzes, Assignments, images, text, audio, and PDF files.
Students follow the curriculum given by the instructors along with the LMS software, take notes, receive certificates perform exercises, and complete exams to test their knowledge.
Tools like Thinkific, Podia, Kajabi, Teachable, and Learndash have robust features set for online course creation platforms.
Online Course software includes features like a fully responsive website builder, Drip Campaigns, easy content uploading, the ability to edit the look and feel of the eLearning class, marketing, and sales features, course completion certificates, a sales funnel, and more.
Basically, they give you everything you need to sell an online course.
Course creators choose an online course creation platform and then charge their students a set fee to access their courses.
How Do I Create and Sell Online Courses?
Starting with the end in mind and working backward is the first step to selling online courses.
In what ways will your course transform the lives of your students once they have completed it?
Plan the transformation you want your students to achieve before beginning your course.
Look at the top questions students ask in forums related to your topic to learn what they want to learn. An excellent resource for this is Quora.
Once you have discovered how to solve their problems, develop a clearly defined learning path that guides them to their predetermined goal. Be clear about the outcomes at each stage of the course journey.
When you create a learning path and clearly define the end goal, your students will stay engaged and active.
Here are the top 10 ways to create and sell online courses.
1. Find out how much it will cost you to develop your online course.
It will cost you a lot of money to develop your learning platform, including the depth of your content, research costs, and marketing expenses.
The cost of producing a professional online course is estimated as being between $5,850 and $15,600.
That’s a pretty high estimate, considering the costs of professional video development, hiring a subject matter expert to teach the course, market research, email automation, and promoting the course.
It is much cheaper to create a course yourself if you’re just starting.
By using video editing programs and webcams, screen sharing tools, and microphones, you can create and sell an online course for under $200.
Time is your most significant investment.
Costs increase with each additional effort you make.
The higher the cost will be as you devote more time and effort to analyzing your audience, conducting market research, creating an outline, and producing professional media with an engaging instructor.
2. Use the best equipment and software.
Adding a webinar to a website isn’t the same as creating a course. The course has to be made first!
High-quality content requires software and equipment. A virtual course replaces an in-class experience, so the design must look professional.
You won’t need fancy, high-end equipment to get started, but you will need a few essential items.
1. Microphones
The microphone is an essential part of any recording. You need a good microphone for your course to sound excellent and poor audio is much easier to detect than shaky video.
Make sure you have the best microphone you can afford.
A USB microphone is better than a standard receiver, lavaliere mics, or headset.
For even better audio quality, acquire some microphone accessories. When recording in a small space, you’ll need acoustic panels, foam balls, and shock mounts.
2. Headphones
During the editing process, noise-canceling headphones can be extremely helpful. In addition to recording interviews, they come in handy when conducting interviews.
3. Screen recording software
You will need to demonstrate your work if you’re teaching a class using a piece of software or computer program. Screencast-o-matic is one of my favorites when it comes to screen recording software.
4. USB Webcam
Virtually all online courses use live webinars or video recordings of instructors for a more personal classroom experience.
You can record with anything from your iPhone to a webcam, all the way up to a professional DSLR camcorder. The most important factor is your budget.
5. Audio and video editing software
After you have shot your course, the real magic comes from editing.
Apple’s Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro are my favorite options.
If you want to spice up your animations, try Adobe After Effects.
6. Lights and accessories
For your instructor to shine (pun intended), you need quality three-point lighting. You can purchase a complete studio lighting set or just a few accessories for the iPhone.
To look professional, you will need to research interview lighting techniques.
Create quality content.
It’s a no-brainer. Learn what your ideal students want to learn and how to attract them.
Do they wish to learn a new skill and earn an online certificate? Is it their goal to grow their own business?
Understanding your audience’s pain points can help you create a vision for your course.
Create compelling video courses.
Video is an effective way to engage students in your class combined with interactive worksheets, PDFs, quizzes, and other elements.
Remember to condense learning into shorter sentences – nobody wants to read a long paragraph.
Differentiate Your Website.
Identify your niche and provide the best content that highlights your unique value proposition (UVP). If you don’t want to become the next EdX, you should specialize and be the best in a focused niche.
Create a unique hook statement that will differentiate your course’s UVP right from the start. Ask yourself: Is my course different from others?
You should not create a “Graphic Design for Beginners” course if your niche is graphic design because it’s too broad.
“Adobe InDesign for Ebook Publishers” class is more focused, easier, and natural to market.
Avoid focusing on too many different things at once. You should have a central focus for your online course and not stray from it or go off-topic.
After you have some initial success with your teaching, you should expand into other topics.
Invest time in marketing your business.
You are just starting your job after spending all your time creating your course. The next step is to market it.
You need your website. An online presence helps people find you and see you as an expert.
You should start blogging on your website that contains content relevant to your niche. The content should be optimized for search engines.
Establish a presence on social media. Create a Facebook Business Page where you can engage with your community. Use Twitter and Instagram to share your latest updates.
Building a community around your brand will be easier if you post regularly and provide engaging social media content.
6. Have control over your brand image.
You should have complete control over your brand.
Pricing and policies should be customizable, your logo should be incorporated, and the experience should be consistent with your business.
Developing your brand means being the face of the course and showcasing your personality in the online class design.
7. Deliver a unique learning experience.
Platforms should provide great learning experiences.
Include various content types, such as audio, text, and documents. A few other features to look for are creating quizzes and sending completion certificates, forums, and a way to distribute courses over time.
8. Integrate with 3rd party Tools.
Make sure the platform you choose integrates well with other 3rd party tools.
A learning platform will need to integrate with other tools, such as email marketing services, analytics solutions, and more.
Find out if the tool integrates with MailChimp, Google Analytics, WordPress, and other popular tools.
You need to choose a platform that can integrate easily with your existing website, for example, if you’re running a blog and selling courses on a WordPress site.
WordPress has a plugin directory that can help you find the right plugins if your goal is to create an online course business:
9. Align your sales strategy with your budget.
Choose a platform that fits your budget and offers flexible pricing options.
If you want to sell online courses, you need to spend money.
However, by looking at pricing information first, you get a better idea of your potential return on investment.
Also, check if any platforms charge a hidden transaction fee on your course sales.
You can avoid heavy transaction fees when creating your online course with the most paid plans.
10.Leverage Customer Support if Needed.
Online Course Platforms should provide excellent training and customer support.
Many of these online course training services you choose should provide you with free resources and training, a dedicated account manager, and a supportive community of instructors that can help you succeed.
Do not be afraid to ask for help if you get stuck – use those resources.
Summary and Top Picks
When choosing between the best online course platforms, remember to do your research: consider the student experience, marketing features, and pricing.
The truth is, all of the best online course platforms let you easily upload your content, provide training for your students, and generate course sales.
All offer course creation tools and features for online teaching.
Ultimately, the critical factor is you.
The success of your course and ability to sell courses online is based on both the quality of your content and how well you can market yourself.
A platform is just that, a platform.
Yes, it’s a branded, engaging, interactive piece of media with your insights and experience, but it still needs planning, market research, development, and, most importantly, marketing.
Here are my final top picks:
- Thinkific: Best Overall Online Course Platform
- Kajabi: Best for High-End Information Businesses
- Learndash: Best for Interactive Learning
- Teachable: Best for Beginners
With all of the high-end features you need at the most affordable price, Thinkific is the clear overall winner.
With endless topics to teach and millions of students ready to learn from you, why not get started today?
If you’re ready to start creating and selling online courses, I recommend going with Thinkific.
Are you ready to start running your business the right way? 😍
