Best Online Course Platforms

Online learning or e-learning is growing rapidly even before the pandemic where students and learners have to opt for online learning.

By 2025, the market share of online learning will be worth $325 billion. This is a massive leap and it only shows the exponential growth of online learning.

Many businesses and instructors are looking to leverage the era of digital learning. There are already enough platforms available for any type of course creator to start selling their course online.

However, it takes to research and a lot of marketing of the brand to establish a successful course providing business. Whether you are an individual or a large enterprise looking for the best online course platform, you should read this article thoroughly.

You will learn about the best online course platforms and what platform you should choose to start selling your courses online. So start taking notes if you can and begin the journey of creating an excellent course for your students on the internet.

What Are the Best Online Course Platforms?

There are many options to choose from when it comes to online course platforms. Here is our curated list of the best online course platforms.

1. Thinkific

Thinkific is an excellent online course platform with exceptionally optimized web pages and affordable prices. It is the first choice for many people including experts.

There is a tremendous amount of customization features to customize and tweak webpages exactly the way you want. It allows you have a distinctive website.

You can also create custom sales pages without any complications. Thinkific has a good sort our sales page for every type including yearly, monthly, and subscription-based etc.

The dashboard allows Thinkfic users to add images, videos, documents and other files for better efficiency. Your customers can also download those files easily.

Thinkific unique feature which is not present in other platforms is that Wistia Video hosting is freely available in Thinkific.

If you want a fully optimized online course platform with minimum compromises then Thinkific is the best bet for you. This is also great for developers who want to edit the HTML and CSS of their website.

Thinkific starts at just $49/month for the cheapest plan. The pro and premier plan starts at $99/month and 499/month respectively.

2. LearnWorlds

Learnworld is a unique online learning platform.

There is definitely an audience out there who would prefer this over anything else. The interactive learning experience that Learnworlds offers is a stand out feature.

Students learn more properly when the learning content includes interactive elements. It may not be as optimized as Thinkific but the interactive experience is definitely on par with another premium online course creator platforms.

There are games, ebooks, quizzes, personal interactions and chats for solving issues in real-time. You can easily download files and attachments with just one click.

You can also create a custom domain name and offer white labelled content with Learnworlds.

Membership websites can also be created within this platform where only members can get exclusive content.

Learnworlds has all the essential features needed in an online learning platform.

Starter plan, pro trainer plan and learning centre are its paid plan options. You can get Starter Plan for just $24/month which needs to be paid annually. Pro Trainer and Learning Center can be paid monthly at $79/month and $249/month respectively.

3. Kajabi

Kajabi is a great online learning course platform for professionals. Kajabi can create a high-end platform for you.

Kajabi caters for large business organizations and does not quite suit the needs of small content creators.

The automation process needed in pre-sale, drip course, pre-webinar and upsell emails is some things where Kajabi excels. Professionals highly recommend Kajabi for its best services on email marketing automation.

You can create fully automated marketing campaigns and funnels with Kajabi. This feature is known as “pipelines” and it is used for the objective of lead generation and conversions.

There are powerful themes to create unique looking websites. You can sell digital products and a custom checkout page. It also has adequate blogging functionality.

Kajabi has three paid plans known as Basic, Growth and Pro. The basic plan is the cheapest plan which cost $199/month. The growth plan cost $159/month and the Pro plan $319/month.

Kajabi has the best built-in tools and features for information businesses.

4. Teachable

Teachable is an inexpensive course creator platform and it is one of the easiest course builders.

This is a perfect suit for beginners who are just stepping into the realm of creating courses on an online course platform.

Teachable is user friendly and people with no experience can easily get used to it in a short time.

You can create unlimited courses with unlimited bandwidth. No matter how many students will enrol on your course, there will be no chance of crashes or uncalled errors.

Teachable has live zoom courses for interactive sessions and a well-optimized sales page. There are over 130+ currencies supported as international payment.

Students who complete courses also get certifications that are highly customizable.

Course builder has many customization features and themes to make a unique looking website. You can also assign up to 5 admins in a single account on Teachable’s pro plan which cost $99/month.

The basic plan has a limit of 2 users for one account and it cost $29/month. Lastly, the business plan which is for high authority businesses costs $249/month.

5. Podia

Podia is an excellent choice for course sellers whose content is suitable for memberships.

Podia offers an optimized membership service that includes important features needed to provide a great experience. It is basically an all-in-one online learning course platform with a little extra edge on memberships.

There are standalone courses made from the combinations of videos, images, PDFs and audio files etc. The same can be sold as a cohort-based course and drip course.

Podia also offers the ability to opt for pre-sell courses where you can start getting paid before the official launch.

Course provider can create a separate membership site for exclusive content and gives coupons etc. This feature allows the course creator to establish a community who will be loyal to your future courses as well.

Webinars and other live interactive videos are also present in Podia. The platform also has good 24/7 customer support.

There is no extra fee and you can easily launch your website with three easy steps.

With just $39/month on the Mover plan, you can start selling courses on Podia. If you are expanding your business to a larger foundation then you can also check out Shaker ($79/month) and Earthquaker ($179/month).

6. LearnDash

LearnDash is an amazing learning management system for WordPress users.

Why WordPress? Because LearnDash is a native WordPress plugin. This plugin is an independent platform for course creators for selling courses.

Many big companies like Infusionsoft, WP Elevation and The University of Michigan are using this WordPress LMS plugin.

This course building and selling platform are purely complimented by the email drip campaign. Create a compelling course selling content and the email drop campaign will send emails to your students periodically.

You can schedule emails to your students whenever there a course or a part of the course comes out. This way, students will stay focused. There is also a feature called “focus mode” which eliminates all the distractions in the UI.

Students can be automatically graded with Gradebook technology. Teachers can use this feature to evaluate students’ performance based on their grades collected from quizzes and homework scores.

The annual plan of LearnDash is currently at $159 which is after a $40 discount. You will also get a 30-day money-back guarantee with all LearnDash plans which are basic ($159), Plus Package ($189) and Pro Package ($329).

7. Ruzuku

Ruzuku is an easy online course setup platform where you can create the course in no time.

You use the learning platform of Ruzuku to make a step by step online course in the form of PDFs and texts. This takes no time to set up and generate sales.

Create Course outlines that are instructive and informative. This allows your students to understand what is inside the course and gives them a goal to achieve. For example, a student can decide which chapter he wants to cover for any given amount of time with the help of course outlines.

Infusionsoft, MailChimp, Stripe and PayPal are some tools integrated into Ruzuku for seamless payments. These payments do not even include a transaction fee.

Ruzuku has an active community that always helps students to learn and guide them about anything related to Ruzuku. So if you are getting a teaching tool on Ruzuku, you are also becoming a part of an amazing community.

Rizuku has various price points for different types of services they provide. You will also get 14 days free trial and on top of that 30-day money-back guarantee.

8. Academy of Mine

Academy of Mine is a full customization e-learning platform for enterprises that are looking to sell their courses.

It is a high-end platform that works flawlessly when customization right according to your needs. If you have a very distinctive looking platform where you will sell courses then Academy of Mind can deliver that.

Academy of Mine caters for many business niches by providing its standard features for free.

It is truly a magnificent LMS for all types of business that wants to do professional development, education, certification programs and B2B training.

The free services of development hours allow its users to create and launch their integration of the course easily.

Marketing tools and analytics dashboards are effective tools to promote and advertise your course to a potential audience. These features are built-in in my Academy mine.

This means that apart from customization tools, the Academy of Mind also provide tools to help you gain more sales through advertisements.

You can personalize any course according to your type.

Whether you are running a healthcare company or an insurance company, you can make an appropriate course for that.

You might have already gotten the gist of the purpose of Academy of mine. Small to medium sizes enterprises will feel like this is exactly what they are looking for. Individual users may not find this platform suitable for them.

9. Udemy

Udemy is one of the most popular online learning platforms with over 24 million students enrolled in this giant courses marketplace.

There are 35k instructors and over 80,000 courses in Udemy.

The wide variety of compelling courses available on Udemy is great for students but a new course can dissolve in the clouds of thousands of courses.

The course provider must come with a marketing strategy to make their course stand out. Their course should have an attractive pitch so that it is more visible to potential customers/students.

100% of the tuition fee will be received for the revenue new users and 50% for old users. This is a great opportunity for beginners who are looking to sell their courses with exceptional commission rates.

Udemy runs promotions now and then. You can participate in it and generate leads and sales for your course through promotions.

With great customer support and a vast variety of tools for course creators, Udemy should be your preference.

Whether you are an instructor or a large business, Udemy offers different sets of plans for all types of course creators.

What is an Online Course Platform?

Online Course platform is simply a digital platform where students learn about things. The curriculum infrastructure of many online course platforms is based on offline learnings.

It is a learning management system where instructor or course providers teaches students by giving them videos, audio files, PDFs and text. It is a fully online experience where there are options to give exams and home works through the intuitive LMS framework.

Many platforms like Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia and Ruzuku are using a type of LMS to provide compelling and interactive courses to their students.

These online course platforms also include a fully functional website that is highly customizable to make it distinctive. Other features include marketing tools, certification programs, sales funnel and editing the look and feel of classes.

How to Choose an Online Course Platform?

Every course platform has different sets of features and revenue plans for different types of course creators. There is no one solid answer which can be given here. One great online course platform for you can be the second-best option for someone else.

But let’s try to break it down for easier understanding about choosing the right online course platform for you.

If you are a beginner who is looking to launch your first course then Teachable is a great option for you. The whole platform caters for beginners. It should serve the purpose for beginners.

For big enterprises, Thinkific and Academy of Mine are great choices. Now it is up to your budget and what set of tools you like more than what other is offering.

There is plenty of great online course platform so it is better to know what you want and what type of future you see with the course you are selling. With a little bit more research about online course platforms, you can choose an online course platform for yourself.

Online Course Platform FAQs

Check out these FAQs if you have any common doubts: