The platform offers a membership plan for students that gives them access to all of its 22,000+ premium courses. This tool helps you to create your own online customize course with ease. Convert presentations and other content into a PDF and add them to your call. “I love Skillshare for its variety of video classes they offer. Like other platforms, WizIQ helps you create and sell self-study courses and mock tests, but its flagship feature is the ability to host live classes. An online course platform is a type of Learning Management System (LMS) that works a bit like a digital classroom where you host the sharing of your expertise in a certain area. Automatically add your students to your marketing campaign, get an SMS message when a course is purchased, and more with one of these pre-made workflows: See more ways to automate Thinkific with Thinkific's Zapier integrations. You can do more with Podia when you connect it to your favorite apps through Zapier's automated workflows. Now you can. Here are three ways you can automate your online course registration and follow-up. 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. E-Learning WordPress Plugins or Themes: Online course WordPress platforms are ideal options for anyone who wants to keep all of their course content within WordPress and these are for folks who likely already have a website. Thanks to the different levels of features, this tool is perfect for both beginners and advanced users, alike. Thinkific My favorite free platform to create a course, or a fleet of courses, from scratch (FREE or $39/month). This tool is an all-in-one solution that is extremely easy to navigate, even for complete beginners. The Raise Hand feature and live chat options allow students to ask questions, while you can start a poll to get feedback in real-time. Udemy Price: Free for selling a premium course. They boast 51,000 course creators and have helped people earn $340 million. When adding content to your course, upload videos from your computer or Vimeo. While all of the options above are purely online course platforms, the next section of our list is all-in-one platforms. A highly regarded online course marketplace, but very difficult to get approved for. The 8 best free email marketing apps in 2021. The 9 Best Platforms to Create and Sell Online Courses. “When I found Thinkific I knew I had found my perfect solution. You can learn by selecting individual modules, or dive right in and take an entire course … This plan offers the best value and you’re able to have 2 custom domains, run 3 evergreen webinars and you can have 5 membership sites on it. Online course platforms are especially useful for schools providing distance learning, whether it's for a particular program or for every course offered, in the case of online universities. 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. Most discussion forums focus on reviewing course-related material, but Learnworlds' communities are designed for social interaction. “I made $169,000 from the launch of my first two online courses. From the research, here are some of the best online course platforms. These usually charge a fixed monthly fee, and some platforms also charge a transaction fee. You can also see the number of existing courses for a topic, top earning courses in the category, monthly revenue earned, and best promotion channels (Udemy discovery, Udemy search, external sources, paid ads). A single virtual classroom can accommodate more than 200 attendees. While WordPress plugins are great for integration, keep in mind you’ll need to have a way for your students to view all of your video lessons and a server that’s powerful enough to serve the content. Online course platforms are types of LMS (Learning Management Systems) that enables you to create and manage learning program with ease. Advance your career with degrees, certificates, Specializations, & MOOCs in data science, computer science, business, and dozens of other topics. LearnDash is the most popular LMS WordPress plugin on the market right now. Michael Ohl-December 23, 2020. Two of the most popular online course platforms would have to be Teachable and Thinkific. “I am in love with this platform and I would never change it for another. LearnWorlds is a robust online course creation tool that is designed to help you sell courses with numerous interactive features. Ruzuku fills this gap with its native video streaming option. Basic ($49/mo, or $39/mo if paying annually) – The Basic plan comes with several important features that the free plan lacks. Free or premium, Skillshare classes have three major moving parts: video lessons, a project, and community discussion. Users can enjoy and benefit from networking with a community of over two million students and teachers. Keep learning. Copyright 2020 OneHourProfessor.com, All rights reserved. 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. Discover a range of free learning content designed to help your business or in your career. Thinkific is my favorite free online course platform by far to sell courses. My experience has blown me away. Fee-Free platform that allows for unlimited courses (FREE TRIAL or $49/month). They don’t offer a free version, but you can try out the software with a free 14-day trial. LMS (Learning Management Systems) are meant to host your learning program and allow students to enroll and engage with it. This plan is perfect for someone just starting and offers everything you’ll need to run your business. While earnings are typically low, this is a nice compliment to other platforms. We’ll email you 1/wk, and never share your information. I had a few issues and questions and they were so quick to respond and helped me in every way possible. To build a sales team for your course, use the platform's built-in affiliate marketing option: Simply add affiliates and they will get a percentage of course sales; no third-party integration required. The online training platform has courses in the categories “Create, Build and Thrive”, but actually they are divided into four course categories. With this self-hosted tool, you will be able to set up and run your online courses quickly and have full control over the creation and customization process. 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. You can get started on LearnWorlds with their free plan. Host unlimited files (including video! ), offer payment plans, quizzes, drip content, upsells and more. When you start selling courses, a revenue share goes to Udemy for the service they provide in connecting you to their massive marketplace. Udemy also has an active Facebook group, StudioU, where you can interact with instructors and bounce course ideas off each other. Formerly Lynda.com, Linkedin Learning is an online course marketplace that’s been integrated into the wildly popular professional social media network. This is (statistically) the largest online course platform on the market. There's flexibility when pricing your course too: Offer courses on their own or in bundles, and choose between a one-time fee, a payment plan, or a subscription. Similar to Google Analytics, this feature tells you how popular a topic is on Udemy, its search volume, and related keywords. I can’t wait to start transferring our students over to AOM! 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. I wasn’t able to find out how much income instructors make, but one can assume it’s a lucrative venture given the popularity of Linkedin as a whole. You get a custom domain and unlimited paid courses for the Starter plan, plus coupons, a payment gateway and more. The potential in eLearning industry is huge. Share and collaborate on work with your team in Zapier. Thanks to the drag-and-drop feature, you’ll be able to get your customized digital courses up and running without the need for any special design skills. Skillshare (Web, … 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. Lynda.com charges a fee per course. A popular web-based tool best for marketing courses on autopilot ($119/month). November 18, 2020 by samir. All Podia storefronts have a similar template, which is helpful if you find too many options overwhelming. In the search for the best platforms offering online courses, it’s an undisputed fact that you need a platform that’s easy to use for both the trainers and the trainee. If you decide this is the platform for you, plans start at $29 per month. 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. It integrates with countless plugins, and no technical skills are needed to get everything done. 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. Skillshare Price: Free for creating a premium class. The cloud-based software also lets you manage your clients, payments, course materials, integrations, and much more from the user-friendly dashboard. Explore our catalog of online degrees, certificates, Specializations, & MOOCs in data science, computer science, business, health, and dozens of other topics. This section of my comparison is focused on online course marketplaces. Putting together your first online course can be daunting. Read the Zapier blog for tips on productivity, automation, and growing your business. Then a course creator with interactive tools would work well. Where should you add assignments and quizzes? Thinkific Price: Free for 3 courses and unlimited students, course upsells, payment gateway, and no transaction fees; from $49/month for the Basicplan for coupons and promotions, marketing and email integrations via Zapier, and drip content. Teachable helps savvy course creators grow and nurture an online audience. Kajabi. Kajabi gives marketing superpowers to busy course creators. 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. It's a great companion to my free platform selection guide. Since there is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to creating great online courses, knowing what to look for will help remove the confusion and frustration from making the right choice. Podia is an easy-to-use software that has everything a digital publisher needs to create and sell online courses. The first lets you collect emails in exchange for a free downloadable such as an eBook or cheatsheet. The easiest online course platform for beginners (FREE Trial or $39/month). 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. On the dashboard, you can find the funnel builder, email marketing tool, automation rules, and much more. You can also customize your course material and sales pages to match your branding. WizIQ pricing options are based on rooms, attendees, and registered users. “Ninety-five percent of my income comes from online courses. As a WordPress plugin, it’s hard to top the functionality that LearnDash has to offer. It’s ideal for professional development, continuing education, and certifications, as well as B2B training. It also allows you to launch self-paced courses for your students. Many of the resources below are free, with accreditation certificates available for a small upgrade. Online content creators often try to nurture an online community on platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. There are zero transaction fees, and you also get a 30-day money-back guarantee. No prior experience is needed. Frankly, this isn’t a great place to try to teach if you’re new to the online teaching world. In today’s post, I’m going to explain what the best online course platforms are based on my decade of experience as a college professor and online entrepreneur. Get productivity tips delivered straight to your inbox. Unsurprisingly, there's no one-size-fits-all solution for creating a profitable course. Teachable Vs Thinkific: Comparing These Online Course Platforms. Does teaching and engaging with students excite you? 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. Select a Pipeline, add your content, and your marketing machine is all set. Easy to scale and grow online course business, No technical skills needed to get started. While every platform has its own unique selling point, the platforms we've covered below meet certain criteria: Each marketplace and course creation software solution supports video, audio, PDFs, and images. Once you've decided on the app you'll use, you can do even more with Zapier. Please log in again. The platform also helps you collect student feedback and uncover insights about your course using Google Forms and surveys. Though one dollar is a bit of an annoyance, this platform is well worth it just for the trial. Fantastic presets but most importantly their customer service is amazing and that’s what makes a good small business! All-in-One Course Platforms: These are online business platforms that go beyond simple course creation functionality. Teachable made it incredibly easy to create high-quality products from scratch.” Pat Flynn – Smart Passive Income. Creative topics: This forms the biggest part of the training platform and ranges from Music lessons to graphic design, cooking, etc. 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. 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. NASSCOM, at present, is offering several free online courses on artificial intelligence on its newly launched FutureSkills Prime Platform. It makes it so easy to target your audience’s interests and give each subscriber a customized experience.”, “They truly care about their people and it shows; it’s like a family.”, “I liked that I could see who had purchased tickets for a wellness summit that I was an affiliate for recently. “I wish we found you guys years ago! Skillshare is an e-course selling platform that offers instructors help to customize their online classes. Apart from video lessons, the templates are pre-populated with sample quizzes, downloads, surveys, and instructor messages, at regular intervals throughout the course. I have come up with a list of the 10 best platforms for online courses to help you take charge of your learning. The pro plan is well worth the money.” Kim Werker – Make it Mighty Ugly. 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. Thinkific offers a free test drive that lets you try out all the software’s core features without investing any money upfront. You can also share files, presentations, or videos from your library. Free migration from other platforms is offered as long as a paid plan is taken up. Once approved, you'll see a series of easy-to-follow steps to help you create your first course. And that's it. I went from working 60+ hour weeks to set my own hours and schedule.” Colt Steele – Developer and Bootcamp Instructor. The platform is a complete cloud-based system and has multiple customizable site themes that you can use to create beautiful and unique courses for online learning. If you're simply testing the waters, start with a course marketplace. 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. The website even offers free lessons on how to go about this. Learnworlds' course builder has a number of unique tools. While there are many different options, one of these is the perfect solution for exactly what you’re looking to accomplish as an online course creator. 4. How many lessons should you include? Are you creating a course to engage your existing audience? Teachable a cloud-hosted solution that offers a user-friendly course builder interface and has been built with beginners in mind. Skillshare pays instructors $10 for premium membership referrals and royalties for minutes watched in a premium class each month. Most platforms support this, whether for free or for an added fee. Online Courses Platform Kartra. “I use Thinkific because it’s the best online learning platform. Key Considerations. It starts at $20 per month for the basic plan. Teachable's course builder accepts files from Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive, among other content formats. As a course creator, you don’t have to build your own audience. – Capterra. Also, while you can add your logo and brand color, don’t expect to create a full-fledged course website. Podia lets you build an online store for your digital content.