Create, market, and sell your expertise with a single platform that offers full control over your brand and business.
Kajabi
Design courses that command high prices and offer coaching programs, memberships, podcasts, and more.
Teachable
Teachable’s simple online platform makes it easy to turn your expertise into a successful global business from anywhere, offering online courses with ease.
Learnworlds
Engage learners with interactive videos, ebooks, assessments, certificates, SCORMs, surveys, and much more.
Podia
Podia is a platform that helps you create a community of learners while delivering your online courses in a smooth and accessible way.
As online learning speeds up due to social distancing, launching a coaching business that offers training through online platforms has become incredibly popular. The e-learning industry is projected to reach a value of $325 billion by 2025. If you’re ready to jump into this lucrative market and learn how to sell online courses, choosing the right platform is crucial. The key is selecting a system that provides your students with a professional, customized learning experience so seamless that they’ll forget they’re using software at all. I speak from experience, having built a course business called Step Through The Portal that generates nearly $3 million annually, testing all the platforms I review here. Online education is evolving rapidly, and picking the right tools is one of the most important first steps — good job for starting this process.
It’s important to understand that these browser-based platforms enable you to create a full online course website or integrate courses into an existing site, develop sales funnels, set course pricing and accept payments either as one-time fees or installment plans, upload videos, create quizzes and assignments, craft interactive content, build membership communities, and host live webinars. While online education offers many benefits and some challenges, the best platforms ensure both instructors and students gain the most value from the experience. After our honest testing, we’ve prepared a video showcasing our top 3 online course platforms, including a quick look at their dashboards, so you can see their features in action.
Video created by StepThroughThePortal.com and Codeless.
Let’s begin!
What Are the Top Online Course Platforms?
Here are my favorite choices for this year’s best online course platforms:
Best Overall Online Course Platform (Free or $49/month)
Expert’s Advice
I highly recommend Thinkific as the top choice for online course platforms, whether you’re starting out or looking to expand your existing business. They offer an intuitive interface and exceptional support. I personally use it for my own online course, Step Through The Portal. It provides an excellent learner experience and seamless integrations with payment processors like Stripe, making it straightforward to handle transactions. Their customer support team is incredibly helpful, making the overall experience smooth and stress-free. I fully endorse Thinkific as the best option for selling online courses.
Discover the features and benefits of our service, designed to fit a variety of needs. Whether you’re an individual or part of a team, there’s an option that works for you. Our plans are flexible, affordable, and tailored to help you succeed.
With a range of pricing options, you can choose what best suits your budget and goals. Take advantage of promotional offers, including a free trial period to experience the service firsthand before committing long-term. Stay informed about discounts and special deals to maximize your investment.
Thinkific is regarded as one of the top platforms for selling online courses, offering a comprehensive solution for creators.
My top pick because its pricing aligns with other affordable options, yet it still provides a professional and polished course experience. From customizable website themes that look entirely unique, to beautifully designed sales pages, Thinkific ensures your course stands out. Students enjoy easy-to-navigate dashboards that you can personalize with videos, text, and downloadable files, all on the same page. You also have the flexibility to release your content all at once or drip it out over periods, and enjoy the added benefit of free Wistia video hosting, which offers significant value. Basically, these features are enough to build a highly optimized online course platform without additional tools.
Even though Thinkific plans start at just $49 per month, you might be surprised to learn that major brands like Fiverr use Thinkific for their online courses. I didn’t realize that Fiverr’s extensive learning platform was built on Thinkific until their team shared it with me.
Their most popular Pro Plan includes a one-month free trial, enabling you to explore all the features and start building your courses risk-free. This plan allows for unlimited courses, offers options for memberships and bundles, advanced pricing settings, landing pages, certificates, and marketing tools.
Here’s a quick overview of the course creation process with Thinkific. It starts with a simple drag-and-drop editor, allowing you to design and customize your course easily. After that, you upload your content and select from a range of professional website templates to give your course a polished look.
Next, you upload your course content and choose from various website templates to create a professional and attractive site. This straightforward process makes launching your online course quick and manageable.
Finally, you can choose your preferred payment methods and accept payments in more than 100 different currencies, making it easy to sell your courses globally.
There are also numerous customization options available. If you prefer a fully tailored website, their onboarding team will collaborate with you to bring your unique vision to life, transforming your ideas into a professional online platform.
What Customers Say About Thinkific:
“You should definitely consider using Thinkific. The team is innovative, dependable, and provides exceptional support. They ensure every detail is handled, which is invaluable for my business.” – Lewis Howes.
“Our growth has been incredible thanks to online training that teaches our audience how to expand their business. We couldn’t have achieved this without Thinkific.” – John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs on Fire.
“Your customer support team is outstanding. They strike the perfect balance between efficiency and friendliness, making me feel like I have my own IT department.” – Kim Garnett.
Key Features:
Live classes and cohort sessions let you deliver your content in real-time to students anywhere in the world, making your lessons more engaging.
Personalize your courses extensively to match your brand, including look, feel, and structure.
Themed websites enable you to quickly establish a professional online presence without any coding or design experience.
Community features and memberships allow students to connect, collaborate, and learn together.
Progress monitoring tools provide insights into how well your students are doing and highlight areas where they might need extra help.
Evaluation tools and certification options help students demonstrate their understanding and earn official recognition of their achievements.
Interface Overview:
Customizing your course landing page is a key advantage of using Thinkific.
Their built-in landing page editor allows you to easily adjust the design and style of your page—no coding experience needed!
Additionally, there are many course templates available to match your course’s branding and style.
Thinkific supports everything from pre-launch marketing to creating mini-courses, hosting webinars, and more. It provides tools for a full range of online course business needs.
Thinkific Pricing:
Free ($0/month): Ideal for testing features and exploring the platform.
Basic ($36/month): Allows unlimited courses and students, includes one admin, scheduled content, custom domain, email integrations, and coupons.
Start ($74/month): Includes all Basic features plus memberships, bundles, private courses, certificates, advanced HTML/CSS editing, assignments, live Zoom lessons, and priority support.
Grow ($149/month): Adds pro features, support for three admins, onboarding services, and unlimited growth options suitable for larger teams.
Expand ($374/month): Offers all pro features with five admins, onboarding, and unlimited growth packages, best for extensive teams.
What I Like and Dislike About Thinkific
**Pros:**
Built-in marketing automation and email tools.
A free plan that’s easy to get started with.
Fully customizable course website with HTML editing capabilities.
Personalized certificates for course completion.
Custom domain support for branding.
Affiliate marketing features with reporting tools.
**Cons:**
There is a learning curve when setting up your courses.
Integrations with social media networks and CRM platforms could be improved.
Product Updates
Thinkific Payments provides a streamlined checkout experience, helping you reduce cart abandonment and keep more revenue. Faster processing means happier customers and higher conversions!
Built-in order bump features allow you to boost your average order size by offering small supplementary products during checkout, increasing your sales potential.
Overall, I highly recommend the Thinkific platform as my top pick for course creators and entrepreneurs who are committed to designing, marketing, and selling their own online courses. It offers powerful tools to help you grow your educational business effectively.
With my link below, you can start today with a free one-month trial of their Pro Plan, giving you full access to premium features to kickstart your journey.
Kajabi is a top-tier platform tailored for professionals aiming to expand their online business. Its extensive feature set allows for full customization of your online training environment, whether you want to send email newsletters, host podcasts, or create membership sites. This flexibility makes Kajabi a versatile tool that adapts to various business models and growth strategies.
Kajabi is a premium course platform specifically designed for educational businesses rather than small creators.
It excels in email marketing automation, which is essential for pre-sales, webinars, drip courses, and upsells. Kajabi’s automation features lead to seamless marketing flows and follow-ups.
Their “Pipelines” feature allows you to set up fully automated marketing funnels and campaigns. These pre-designed frameworks help attract leads with optimized, persuasive copy, making promotion easier and more effective.
In addition, Kajabi offers attractive course site themes, digital product sales capabilities, customizable checkout pages, and integrated blogging tools. It’s the most comprehensive high-end platform on the market, with a wide range of built-in features, though it comes at a higher price point than many others.
Main Features:
Clear insights into student progress, helping you understand how your learners are doing
Share unlimited videos, allowing you to create as many courses as you wish
Create and publish your courses quickly with a few simple clicks—no coding needed!
Optimized for search engines, so your courses appear higher in search results
Offers unlimited hosting for your courses and promotional content
Secure platform that ensures your data remains protected at all times
Marketing automation with one-click sequences to promote your courses effortlessly
Build a professional website easily with the built-in site creator—no design or coding experience required
User Experience:
First-time users will find Kajabi quite intuitive, as the platform clearly guides where to click and what to do. You can follow straightforward instructions to create small courses, evergreen training programs, build your community, set up membership sites, and more. This ease of onboarding helps new users quickly familiarize themselves with the platform’s capabilities. However, the interface may feel a bit overwhelming initially due to the many options and features available, which could take some time to master. I appreciate that the settings are organized into distinct groups, making it easier to locate and adjust specific options when needed. This thoughtful grouping aids in navigating the platform efficiently and reduces confusion.
Pricing Options:
Kajabi’s pricing significantly depends on the number of courses and active members you have. The plans are:
Basic ($119/month): Includes 1 website, 1 administrator, 3 courses, 3 sales funnels, up to 10,000 contacts, and 1,000 active members.
Growth ($159/month): Offers 1 website, 10 admins, 15 courses, 15 funnels, up to 25,000 contacts, and 10,000 active members.
Pro ($319/month): Supports up to 3 websites, 25 admins, 100 courses, 100 funnels, 100,000 contacts, and 20,000 active members.
Pros and Cons:
I appreciate Kajabi’s robust features and ease of use, though its interface can be somewhat overwhelming for beginners. The platform’s organization into grouped settings simplifies navigation, and creating a website or course is straightforward and quick. Its pricing is on the higher end, particularly for those just starting out, but the comprehensive tools and integrations can make it a worthwhile investment for growing businesses.
Favorites:
An all-in-one platform ideal for comprehensive info-based businesses.
Wistia provides top-notch video hosting services.
Focused heavily on marketing and sales features.
Offers more built-in tools compared to other platforms.
Supports monthly subscription payments.
Integrates seamlessly with Stripe and PayPal.
Popular entrepreneurs like Amy Porterfield use Kajabi.
Dislikes:
Email automation sequences could be more varied.
The landing page builder could benefit from some improvements.
Latest Product Enhancements:
The introduction of carousel modules in Kajabi’s website builder makes creating a responsive, mobile-friendly website quick and easy.
Kajabi University has been redesigned for a more intuitive learning experience, simplifying how you learn and use Kajabi.
The payments system was overhauled to make accepting payments and managing finances more straightforward than ever.
Kajabi truly shines with its marketing automation capabilities.
It allows you to segment your audience, trigger personalized email sequences, and send professional-branded messages, making it ideal for businesses looking to automate marketing efforts effectively.
If you are an established company seeking a more advanced and feature-rich platform, Kajabi is a highly recommended option.
Sign up today for your free 14-day trial of Kajabi.
Top Online Course Platform for Beginners ($0-$249/month)
Expert’s Advice
Seeking a platform to sell digital products online? Podia is worth considering. It enables creators to sell courses, digital downloads, host webinars, and build communities, offering flexibility to adapt to your needs as your business grows.
Teachable offers a quick and straightforward way to create online courses with its user-friendly platform.
It’s an excellent choice for beginners looking to dip their toes into online course creation, as it’s affordable and simple to navigate.
You can start with their free plan, which charges $1 plus $0.10 for each transaction, or choose from three paid plans ranging from $29 to $299 per month.
I suggest trying their most popular Pro Plan at $99 per month, as it’s the first tier that has no transaction fees.
Additionally, Teachable has provided a limited-time promo code (only 200 available):
Enter PROSOCIATE1MFREE at checkout to receive one month free on their Pro Plan.
Key Benefits:
Teachable empowers anyone to become an instructor by helping you create engaging content for your courses, making it accessible for new course creators to share their expertise with the world.
Design attractive sales pages that boost your ability to sell courses. Teachable simplifies the process of creating persuasive pages that convert visitors into buyers.
Take advantage of secure payment options compliant with PCI level-1 standards, ensuring your customer data remains protected. Teachable handles the technical details so you can focus on teaching your students.
Use your own domain or connect via Teachable’s built-in URLs to establish your online presence seamlessly.
Interact with your students in real time through live conversations or webinars scheduled directly from your Teachable account. This new level of engagement enriches the learning experience.
Create flexible online courses that fit your busy schedule. Teachable makes it easy to find convenient times to teach and connect with your students.
User Experience:
The platform provides an intuitive user experience, making it straightforward to set up and manage your courses. You can easily select your goals, whether that’s creating a new course, choosing a topic, or building a dedicated audience. This structured method simplifies your workflow and helps ensure your course creation process is smooth and organized. Customization options are also quick to implement, allowing you to change the look and feel of your courses with just a few clicks. Additionally, there are numerous tutorials available that demonstrate how to utilize various theme features, helping you to maximize your site’s potential.
