Last Updated on December 23, 2023 by Kundan Sharma
In 2022, Everybody knows that the online course industry is growing. All thanks to technology so education is not limited up to the classrooms.
People are more likely to take part in Digital courses than ever before, so the demand for online coaching businesses is at an all-time high.
If you believe you have valuable knowledge that helps people to grow then definitely you can make a lot of money by sharing your knowledge.
You need a course creation platform to do the job, there are a lot of online course platforms in the market.
So, it’s a little confusing to figure out the right platform.
In this article, I have shared some of the best online course creation platforms and also guided how you can choose the right platform for online course business.
How to Select the Best Online Course Creator?
Beginners always make mistakes when it comes to choosing a course creation platform. They overlook the common things that are most required for running a successful online course-selling business.
Below, I have mentioned some of the things you should look at on a course platform before getting it.
Customization Option
Well, most of the platform does all come with customizable options that allow course creators to build a beautiful and smooth running course website.
You should look for drag-and-drop element page builder and pre-made templates. And, make sure a platform gives you full control over customization.
Although, you don’t need to worry about it. Here in this article, all course platforms offered full customization options.
Budget
Maybe the budget is not an issue for you, but for some of them, It’s very important before come to select a course platform.
If you are a beginner or starting out then you can’t put money into a platform that costs $200 a month. It does not make any sense unless you are very confident about your success.
I recommend you first pick a basic plan enough to get started and then later you can upgrade the plan as you grow. Almost, every course creation platform has to offer a basic plan for beginners.
Third-Party Integration
This is the most important criteria that is overlooked by many beginners. You should consider the course platform you are going to choose has decent integration options.
Does the platform integrate with popular 3rd party platforms?
For Example, Let’s say you want to add your course subscribers automatically to your email list, So you can send offers and deals.
Then, your online course creation platform should be integrated with email marketing software like MailChimp, Convertkit, Aweber, and many more.
There are a lot of other integrations options that you should look for in a course platform such as Landing Page Builder, Analytics Tools, Payment Gateways, and more.
Customer Support
You should select a course creator platform that has top-notch customer support, so whenever you have an issue, get expert support that gives answers to your questions and make sure to help you with any issue.
Customer support becomes very important when things go beyond your control. That time you have only one day of hope.
Although, you can join the course creator group to hang out with like-minded people. Most platforms have a group where you can join and discuss issues for help.
6 Best Course Selling Platforms to Start an Online Business
1. Thinkific
Thinkific is my favorite course creating and selling platform. It’s a powerful all-in-one platform that allows you to create, market, and sell online courses just from their platform.
Let’s look at their customer starts, Over 40,000+ course creators in 164 countries and they earned over $200+ million on Thinkific.
They offer everything on their platform you need to build a successful education business under one roof.
You can build your course using an easy drag and drop builder, no coding skill is required that allows you to build engagement with your students by adding elements in your course pages like Videos, Text, Quizzes, Surveys, Downloads, Typeform and etc.
It allows you to create course sites around your domain name that build more trust in your audience.
Thinkific easily integrates with your favorite email marketing tools, eCommerce, automation tools, analytics, and growth tools.
You will get high-class customer support by phone and email, so in case you need any help their staff make sure to resolve issues. Join their over 12,000 members Facebook group of course creators.
Here are the features of Thinkific:
★ Drag and Drop course builder
★ Student notifications
★ Full eCommerce compatible
★ Upsell offers
★ Create a new course website
★ Content dripping & Instant access to funds
★ Forum where you can discuss things
★ Multiple languages to choose from
★ Built-in SSL certificate for course website
★ Seamless integration with 3rd party tools and Software
★ Support on Phone and Email
Pricing: Thinkific has 3 types of plans Basic, Pro, and Premier. You can try its key features for free. Get Thikific Discount 20% OFF.
Basic: $39/mo when billed annually for unlimited courses and students including features such as Coupons, Content Drip, Affiliate Reporting, Custom Domain, Email Integration, and Manual Enrollment, etc.
Pro: $79/Mo again billed annually, including all features of the basic plan and 2 Site Admin Accounts, 5 Course Admin Authors, Private & Hide Courses, Advance Pricing, Advance Customization, Priority Support, and More.
Premier: $399/Month to build an advanced course selling platform including all features such as Unlimited Courses & Students, 5 Site Admin, 15 Group Analytics, 50 Course Admin, Onboarding Package and etc.
2. LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is another good create and sell online course platform. You can build awesome courses and be able to add lots of learning activities such as video, ebook, audio, certificate, exam, and more.
We all know videos are the new way of teaching and LearnWorlds has little focus on video courses. You can add questions, overlay images, titles, pointers, links, and many more elements on the course of your video.
The best thing is they also host your videos, so you won’t need any cloud hosting.
Well, there are very useful features that allow you to schedule deliveries of your online courses with drip-feed.
It has built-in marketing tools integration with your favorite tools such as Zapier, Mailchimp, Active Campaign, Convertkit, Freshdesk, and more.
If you want to know about the payment gateways that support LearnWorlds then there 5 payment options available PayPal, Stripe, 2checkout, Shopify, and also accept multiple currencies.
You will get expert support that assists you in every situation. If you are stuck and need help then take the help of 24/7 customer support.
Here are the features of LearnWorlds:
★ Unlimited courses
★ 5 payment gateways and multiple currencies
★ Unlimited landing pages
★ Fully customizable course player
★ 5 admin
★ Customize checkout page
★ Content dripping for better content delivery
★ Premium integrations
★ 24/7 customer support
Pricing: LearnWorlds has 3 different plans that suit all course creators. All plans come with a 30 days money-back guarantee. Get 20% OFF On LearnWorlds.
Starter: Cost is $24/Mo with limited features such as 5 course sales, 1 admin, page build up to 3, 4 payment gateway, coupon, basic integration, and more.
If you want more features then check out Pro Trainer($79/Mo) and Learning Centre($249/Mo), Still not sure about this platform, don’t worry try 30 day free trial of LearnWorlds, no credit card required.
3. Teachable
Teachable is one of the best and most popular course creation platforms that allow you to create courses for a coaching business.
It has been joined by more than 100,000 course creators and generated over $500 million in revenue from the online course-selling business.
Unlike Thinkific teachable mainly focused on its Core features to create and sell online courses. You will get fewer customizable options in teachable compared to Thinkific and the lack of premade templates.
Teachable has to offer very flexible pricing options to students such as Coupon, Advance Pricing, Membership, Recurring, and One Time Payment.
It also allows course creators to integrate multiple payment options PayPal and Authorize.net including over 130+ international currencies.
Here are some features of Teachable:
★ Unlimited students
★ No transaction fees
★ Course and coaching products
★ Instant payout
★ Coupon codes & Unbranded website
★ Priority product support
★ Drip content & Advanced report
★ Integrated email marketing
★ Course completion certificate
Pricing: Teachable comes with 3 plans Basic, Pro, and Business, all plans give unlimited access to students and courses.
Basic: $29/mo when billed annually. In this plan, you can create your first online course including important features like 5% transaction, member-only, 2 admin-level, course creator to training.
Pro: $99/mo including features like no transaction fees, 5 admin users, priority support, an unbranded website, course completion certificate, and more.
Business: This is the most expensive plan that costs $249/Mo with all features of basic and pro plan. Discover Teachable to know more about it.
4. Podia
Podia is a new course hosting plan in the market that lets you create and sell digital courses, even more than that. It’s not just a simple course creation platform. You can also host digital downloads, membership sites, and webinars.
If you need these tools then you should invest in podia instead of others.
Its drip campaign option enables you to send automatic emails to subscribers to get courses timely.
Podia editor enables you to create and customize high converting sales pages to generate more leads for your course business.
It also makes sure to easily get paid from selling courses. You can connect your Stripe and PayPal accounts to receive payments with zero transaction fees.
If you already have selling courses through a platform but don’t like their service. Now thinking of taking your course on another platform, then podia is the best choice for you.
It offers free migration and can move all of your products and courses on podia in no time.
Here are the features of Podia:
★ Do work of 5 tools course creator, membership, downloads, email marketing, and webinar
★ Content dripping to timely delivery of contents
★ Zero transaction fees
★ Unlimited courses and students
★ 7 days a week support
★ Free course migration
Pricing: Podia does the work of 5 tools but still pricing is very affordable compared to their competitors Teachable and Thinkific. Here are the two pricing plans offered by podia.
Mover: Plan starts at $39/Mo when paid annually which is suitable for beginners who are going to launch their first course. You will get features like an online course, digital downloads, zero transaction fees, 7 days a week support, free course migration, email marketing, and more.
Shaker: This is the best-recommended plan of podia $89/Mo that comes with features of the Mover plan including membership, blog, off site buy button, affiliate marketing, and third-party code.
Earthquaker: This is the most expensive plan of Podia, costs you $199/mo. The plan is stable for professionals and educational institute that runs online courses for a large number of students.
5. LearnDash
LearnDash is the most trusted WordPress LMS platform, It’s the choice of major universities to teach students online.
LearnDash handles everything from creating courses to selling. It allows you to create courses easily using drag and drop features simply create the course, set the price and publish it.
You can schedule your content to automatically deliver to the enrolled members.
Once you complete the course creation then you can set pricing options one time sales, membership, bundle, subscription, and more.
They support some common payment gateways unlike other platforms such as PayPal, stripe, 2 checkout, and more.
You will be able to get a starting guide and documentation that show you step by step how to create an online course.
In case, if you need an assistant then there’s contact support available.
Here are the features of LearnDash:
★ Unlimited courses
★ Unlimited users
★ Drip feed lessons
★ Advanced quizzing
★ Email notification
★ Free integrations
★ 1 year support & updates
Pricing: LearnDash offers 3 plans Basic, Plus, and Pro packages with a 30 days money-back guarantee.
Basic plan costs you $159 including features support 1 website, unlimited courses & users, course content protection, content drip, certificates & badges, free integrations, and more. Get Learndash coupon code and save 50% off.
6. Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one powerful course creating and selling platform that has everything, you need to run an online coaching business.
It has been working for 9 years and helping over 20,000 customers worldwide.
Kajabi allows you to build a beautiful course-selling site and host videos. When it comes to payment integrations they make it best simple for creators by getting paid through Stripe and PayPal.
As I mentioned earlier, Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, so they replaced popular marketing tools by adding their own easy-to-use substitutes.
For example: Let’s you want to reach your subscribers with email then you have to use an email marketing tool like MailChimp, Convertkit, and Aweber.
But, Kajabi replaces them by adding a new email visual builder that lets you easily create and send emails to your audience.
Here are some features of Kajabi:
★ All in one business platform
★ 0% transaction fee
★ Ready to use templates
★ Quizzes, surveys, and coupons
★ Advanced automation
★ 24/7 customer support
Pricing: Kajabi has 3 pricing plans that come with different features too. Here are the plans Kajabi offers.
Basic: $115/Mo for 1 Website when billed annually. In this plan, get 3 products and pipelines, unlimited landing pages, and marketing anywhere.
Grow: $159/Mo again when you pay for 1 year in advance including features like 1 website, 15 products and pipelines, 25,000 contacts, 10 admin, and more.
Pro: $319/Mo for 3 websites including 100 products & pipelines, 200,000 active members, 3 websites, and 25 admin users.
Read Also:
- Thinkific Free Trial: Get 30 Days Access to Pro Plan
- Livestorm Free Trial 2023: Start Your First Webinar for Free
- Top 10 Best Webinar Hosting Platform for 2023
- 10 Best Podcast Hosting Platforms & Services
Conclusion
Above, you know about the 6 best platforms for creating and selling online courses.
Well, you can pick any one of these platforms depending on features and pricing.
If you want to give it a try before buying a course creating platform, then go with Thinkific and LearnWorlds. They give a free limited trial to new users.
You can also check out the best membership plugins to build a membership site around WordPress.
I hope this article helped you to choose the best course creation and selling platform. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.