If anyone had mentioned e-Learning two or three decades ago, the idea would have been absurd. Today, online course platforms are springing up like plants on a fertile turf. Studies reveal that by 2025, this new industry will be worth around $325 billion. No wonder many online course platforms are currently springing up!

The best online course platforms are giving us new ways of learning and impact knowledge. This means that while students enjoy the benefit of studying from home, instructors enjoy making money in their homes too.

Technology has not only broken the teaching barrier, but it has also made it easy to create courses and sell them.

There are so many online course platforms. It is difficult to pick out the best of the lot. To save you from the stress, we will discuss some of the top online course platforms in 2020.

We will also show you how to create your courses and where to host them.

What are Online Course Platforms?

Understanding this concept is the key to unlocking the knowledge in this post. An online course platform is a type of learning management system (LMS). It allows users to gain knowledge from digital classes.

Virtual courses share so many similarities with offline courses. One such similarity is the fact that there is an instructor that provides the user with an engaging experience. Such experience can come in the form of image, audio, video, text, or PDF files.

As students study via the LMS software, they take notes, complete exercises, and write exams to evaluate assimilation. Can you see how offline and online courses are similar?

There are so many tools that come with robust features for instructors or course creators. Examples of these tools include Ruzuku, Thinkific, Podia, Kajabi, and Teachable.

Each software comes with a fully-responsive website; seamless content uploads, marketing features, and sales funnel. They also give you the luxury of editing how your class looks and feels as well as completion certificates. Amazing, right?

How does all of this work? The basic idea revolves around the instructor choosing a platform. After this, they set a specific charge for the courses. Students make payments and gain access to begin the course.

What Are the Best Online Course Platforms?

If you are an instructor, then you probably have this question on your mind. Many instructors like you ask the same question.

The truth is that with the best online course platforms you enjoy the freedom to teach students and automate sales.

After much research, the best platforms include Thinkific, Learnworlds, Teachable, LearnDash, Kajabi, Ruzuku, and Podia.

We advise that when choosing a platform, you should consider e-commerce along with the membership capabilities. What brings you success as an instructor? Efficient course creation, organization, and delivery. These ingredients are very important.

If you want to learn how you can sell courses online, you should seek features that meet your needs. There are several advanced features. Some of these include setting up members-only access for students, live training sessions, and virtual classrooms.

Another very important feature is accepting card payments to sell courses. All of these features should be in one location, on one software.

After considering these criteria, we have put together a list of the best course platforms online. Check them out below:

Thinkific – Top Pick (Free or $49 per month)

Thinkific has become quite popular among online course creators in recent times. This platform has one mission, power up your educational empire. No wonder it is one of the best online course platforms. One of the first things you’ll notice with this platform is the number of user-friendly features it comes with.

From tools for email marketing to integrating a membership site with lessons, and top-notch customer support. Why do we think they are number 1?

The first reason is that all you need to create an online course and sell it is available on this platform. This platform allows you to sign-up for the most popular plan known as Pro Plan. When you do, you get a month free trial. With this plan, you can create an unlimited number of courses from the start to generate more sales.

You also have access to landing pages, advanced pricing options, certificates, marketing tools, and membership bundles. It almost seems like the creators of this platform have it all put together.

There is a “drag-and-drop” editor that allows you to create your course and customize it with ease. The platform also gives you access to templates to help you build a custom course site. Each template is well-designed and of very high quality.

Last but not least, there are several advanced tools to help you market your course. But that’s not the best news. The best news is that you can link Thinkific with more than 1,500 apps with the help of Zapier. You don’t even need a WordPress Plugin for this. It is possible to set up targeted campaigns and send them via email to your target audience.

Let’s talk about pricing on Thinkific for a moment. You have access to the core features on this platform at no cost. However, the Basic Plan costs only $49 a month and the Pro Plan costs $99 a month.

The interesting part is that you don’t incur any extra transaction fees on the different plans. This makes Thinkific the most reasonable online course platform in terms of pricing.

Pros

• Efficient page builder and multiple themes for course sites.
• Inbuilt support making it easy to set up advanced assignments and quizzes.
• Provides the ability to set up an independent community for learners.
• Course compliance features are flexible and powerful.
• Allows the user to sell courses in bulk and manage students easily.
• Pricing is friendly to beginners and all plans come with zero transaction costs.

Cons

• No mobile app.
• A two-step checkout procedure isn’t ideal for conversions.
• Doesn’t accept PayPal for non-USD pricing or recurring payments.
• No live chat support.
• No handling of EU VAT.

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Kajabi

This platform presents you with an all-in-one option for setting up your online courses. No doubt, it is one of the best online course platforms and we will show you why. Kajabi allows you to host any kind of content, market the courses, deliver content professionally, and engage students.

You have to give Kajabi kudos for the work put into student engagement and course delivery. They did an excellent job. The course player on this platform comes with very attractive options. It is probably the best on this list in terms of design. What you get for your courses is a premium feel and look.

Asides the key features for course creation, Kajabi offers you more. Examples include assessments in the form of assignments and quizzes, Android/iOS mobile apps, and automation. You also have access to learning paths and many other features that will facilitate a better learning experience for students.

This platform also offers you a lot concerning building your educational site. There are more than 10 site themes to choose from. You can customize these and further build on the themes using its powerful and user-friendly page builder. By the way, it is possible to run a complete blog on this platform.

We cannot end the discussion about Kajabi without mentioning the marketing and sales features. This platform presents you with a tool known as the “sales pipeline builder.” With this tool, you can create complete workflows such as landing pages, webinars, launch products, and make sales.

It also presents you with an email marketing option to help you follow-up leads and send automated emails. Kajabi is a little costly with pricing starting at $149 a month. The most popular plan goes for $199 a month.

Just like Thinkific, there are no transaction charges on Kajabi. If you are on a budget, you might need another option. But the number of features on this platform presents you with a juicy offer.

Pros

• All-in-one platform so you don’t need to learn or patch multiple tools.
• More than 10 well-designed themes with lots of customization options.
• Mobile app for both Android and iOS is available.
• Efficient engagement tools such as learning paths and assessments.
• Allows the user to run a whole blog or website.
• Marketing automation tools and sales pipeline builder.
• Customer support is top-notch.

Cons

• No option to create your certificates natively.
• No handling of EU VAT.
• Does not support advanced elements for quizzes like randomization and question banks.
• Quite pricey.

Teachable

Teachable is one of the best online course platforms because of the robust solutions it brings to the table. It shares so many similarities to Thinkific when you consider its capabilities and features.

This platform, like Thinkific, focuses on the core features that make online course creation and sale possible. So you don’t have access to email automation of sales funnel builder like in Kajabi.

However, Teachable gives you the opportunity of using several methods for course delivery. This means that you can add different content types and quizzes as well as create your certificates natively. You can also drip course content and ensure course-compliance. Teachable ensures that your students enjoy the learning experience with its attractive course player.

Just like Kajabi and Thinkific, Teachable has a range of marketing features. These include coupons, 1-click upsells, 1-step checkout, and EU VAT handling. It also provides you with a collection of services that make it easy to manage paperwork and finances.

One of the major challenges with Teachable is the limitation you’ll experience with building your site. There are no themes to use as templates. Also, the page builder only presents you with very few editing options. As a result, you’ll find it difficult to customize the feel and look of your website.

Pricing on this platform is reasonable. The Basic Plan goes for $39 a month plus 5% in transaction fees. The Pro Plan costs $119 a month without transaction fees and it presents you more features. There is a Free Plan on Teachable but it limits you to just 10 students. This is only great for a startup instructor.

Based on our study of this platform, Teachable is great if you are starting. But if you have a huge audience already, you should look elsewhere.

Pros

• Easy to set up and use.
• The course player design looks very professional.
• Lots of learning tools such as content dripping, graded quizzes, course compliance, certificates, etc.
• the iOS app is available.
• Course analytics and reporting tools are powerful.
• An efficient array of marketing and sales features.
• Handles EU VAT for digital goods.

Cons

• Lots of limitations with site-building.
• No support for complicated quiz features.
• Doesn’t support community forum.
• Recurring subscriptions come with limited payment and pricing options.
• You can only integrate it with a few third-party tools.

In case you need help making a choice among the top 3 best online course software, read this Thinkific vs Teachable vs Kajabi review.

That said, let’s now proceed to review the other top-notch online course software.

Podia

There are several reasons why Podia makes it to our list of best online course platforms. This platform is relatively new compared to the other platforms above. However, it allows you to create courses and sell them along with other important digital products. Such products include e-Books and membership subscriptions.

Podia also ensures that you can deliver content in a variety of ways such as audio, video, text, and PDF. It has a beautiful course player that serves your students a wonderful educational experience.

One of the most pronounced features on this platform is the ability it gives to create membership sites. What does this imply? It allows you to create individual posts for one-off content separate from your course bundles.

There are still a few challenges with Podia and this is understandable considering it is still new to the market. One such challenge is that you can’t create certificates, graded quizzes, or use content locking. All these essential features are important when setting up an online course.

Another challenge is that you can only build sales pages. This platform doesn’t give you the luxury of building a website or any extra pages. Sad, right?

There are a few marketing and sales features that you will like. These include bundles, payment processing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, and coupons. The problem is that you cannot create landing pages or sales funnels.

Podia gives you two pricing plans, both of which have reasonable prices and charge nothing for transactions. The first is the Mover Plan costing $39 a month. It allows you to create courses and sell them along with digital downloads. However, there are no memberships except on the second plan known as Shaker which costs $79 a month.

There is no free plan on Podia but you have a free trial for 14 days. This period allows you to evaluate the platform and decide whether you want it or not.

Pros

• User-friendly.
• Clean and modern design for the backend and frontend.
• Allows you to set up individual posts.
• Handles EU VAT tax on digital goods.
• Migration to Podia is free.
• Customer support is friendly.

Cons

• The course builder is not flexible and doesn’t offer support for cloud import.
• Lacks essential features like course compliance, graded quizzes, and certificates.
• No mobile app.
• Doesn’t allow you to build a complete website.
• Pricing options are not flexible.
• No standalone community area.

LearnWorlds

This online learning platform is very popular and it focuses on providing students with interactive user experience. LearnWorlds is regarded as one of the best online course platforms because of the many features it possesses.

Some of these features include interactive e-Book reader and video player, and social community builder. Also, you get advanced capabilities for exams and quizzes and copyright protection.

LearnWorlds also provides the instructor with several features to make course creation easy. The page builder is efficient and powerful allowing you to set up several pages including sales pages.

This online course is one of the most budget-friendly you’ll come across. The Basic Plan goes for just $29 a month along with a $5 transaction fee on each sale. To avoid paying such fees, you should upgrade to the $99 a month plan that also gives you more features.

The most popular LearnWorlds Plan is known as the “Learning Center Plan” that goes for $299 a month. This plan is quite expensive so you should check to see that you need it before paying for it.

Pros

• Supports several learning tools including course compliance and quizzes.
• Backend and frontend designs are modern and attractive.
• You can edit videos and add several interactive elements on the fly.
• The community builder is very powerful.
• There is a copyright protection feature.
• Allows you to build your blog natively.

Cons

• The course builder is not as flexible as it should be and doesn’t allow bulk uploads.
• No mobile app.
• Course reporting tools are too basic.
• No site themes.
• You cannot pay using PayPal or your cards.
• No handling for EU VAT.
• Lack of optimization for check out conversions.

Academy of Mine

Though this platform isn’t so popular among instructors for creating or selling courses, it has its advantages. Firstly, the Academy of Mine platform allows you to build a whole website. You can host your courses here and use the platform to sell as well.

There are so many features that should entice one to this platform. However, one that catches the eye is the LMS feature. It comes with inbuilt support for gamification, GradeBook, Certificates, Discussion Forums, etc. Each of these features plays a key role in ensuring student engagement.

Pricing for this platform begins at $199 a month. However, to share revenue with co-tutors or sell subscriptions, you need to upgrade to the $299 a month plan.

Pros

• LMS features are great for student engagement.
• Allows you to build a whole website.
• Gives you the opportunity of sharing revenue with co-tutors.

Cons

• Pricing is quite high and stiff.

LearnDash

Several reasons put LearnDash in the class of the best online course platforms. Frankly, this software is impressive because of its ability to integrate with WordPress. Many websites use this platform such as WP Elevation, the University of Michigan, Infusionsoft, and Yoast.

This platform has a very helpful feature known as “Focus Mode.” It helps you block out distractions that affect students while running your course.

The platform also mixes the email drip campaigns seamlessly with the course builder. With this, it is easy to build a good course while matching your content with a corresponding email drip schedule. The result of this is that you automatically send lessons to students based on the program design.

Another important feature of LearnDash is Gradebook Technology. This feature provides grades to students based on assignment and quiz scores. Instructors find this helpful as well because they can review the weighted average of each student.

Also, it awards points for prescribed actions and gives certificates and badges for milestones. If you need an LMS that gives you the grading system closest to the college curriculum, choose LearnDash. Pricing begins at $13.25 a month, making it the most affordable on this list so far.

Pros

• Very affordable.
• The platform is user-friendly.
• Focus mode feature that helps students concentrate during the study.
• Merges with WordPress very easily.
• Makes it easy to market your courses.
• The grading system is well-developed and is similar to the regular college curriculum.

Cons

• None at the moment.

Ruzuku

This is one of the easiest online course platforms for anyone to use. With Ruzuku, you can set up step-by-step learning courses, text, and PDFs. All of these within a few minutes.

It also allows you to put together course outlines, reorder, and edit steps without stress. Launching your course and generating sales is a piece of cake on this platform as well.

Ruzuku can integrate with several tools to make life easy for the instructor and the students. Some of these tools include PayPal, Stripe, MailChimp, and Infusionsoft. Guess what, there are no transaction fees.

One of the major selling points of Ruzuku is the community platform. With this app, you are bringing yourself into a helpful community rather than purchasing a teaching tool.

This platform is dubbed by many as the “ridiculously easy course creator.” It stands true to this reputation with its many features. Each of the paid plans gives you access to produce unlimited courses for unlimited students. It begins at $74.75 a month with a 30-day money-back guarantee and a 14-day free trial.

Pros

• Very easy to use.
• Integrates a plethora of helpful tools.
• Money-back guarantee and free trial.
• Desirably helpful community.

Cons

• A little too pricey.

WizIQ

Why is WizIQ on our list of the best online course platforms? Here are a few reasons. First, educators and teachers find it very easy to create virtual classrooms on this platform.

These classrooms make it easy to run interactive classes online live.

More than 400,000 instructors are using this platform to impart knowledge to more than 4 million students. These virtual classes are scattered across over 200 countries.

On WizIQ, you have the latest tools that make live training easy. Several options include video streaming, assessments, analytics, mobile options, and discussion boards.

The pricing is quite reasonable beginning at only $27 a month. You have access to a 14-day free trial to help you decide.

What Are the Best Online Learning Platforms?

An online learning platform makes it possible for teachers and students to connect from their homes. The idea is that students can simply pay for courses and then gain access to watch and learn.

Basically, these platforms provide both infrastructure and marketing to run your courses. The norm is to offer a percentage of each sale to the platform. These are the best online learning platforms:

Udemy

This platform is pretty popular and is probably the largest marketplace for online courses. Course creators and instructors have the luxury of listing out courses here.

One of the biggest advantages of using Udemy is the guidance it provides on course creation and marketing. Udemy allows free usage to create a simple course and market it to your audience.

Selling directly gets you a 97% profit. However, if you sell via Udemy, you only get 50% and Udemy gets the remaining half.

SkillShare

Skillshare is a platform that works well for newbies. It allows you to create courses, add videos and class projects too. These courses are split into short segments usually around 10 to 25 minutes.

There is only one challenge. You need to have up to 25 students to enroll for your course before you can earn. After this, you make about $1 or $2 for each student. This is part of SkillShare’s Partner Program.

You also get a referral link that allows you to earn from premium members. This platform is uncomplicated. You can begin working by putting in some hard work.

OpenSesame

Do you create training programs for companies and businesses? You can consider using OpenSesame.

Get started by creating a profile and then you can upload your courses. Once you do this, OpenSeasame puts the courses on its marketplace for marketing.

What’s the best part? This platform offers your courses to the best online course platforms. So if you know companies that need your content but use different LMSs, this is a helpful option.

Registration is free on this platform. However, you split the proceeds from each sale halfway with OpenSesame as payment.

LinkedIn Learning

It used to be known as Lynda.

This platform is great for delivering business courses. Currently, there are over a thousand business-related courses on LinkedIn Learning covering several topics.

This platform is great for working and business professionals to keep building their skills. Each course comes with certifications that the student may add to their LinkedIn profiles. Membership costs around $29.99 a month.

Treehouse

Treehouse is one of the newest platforms for online learning. It has an ideology that supports democratizing education.

As such, it makes education available to students of all genders, races, socioeconomic backgrounds, and sexual orientations.

Treehouse offers more than 300 technical courses covering development and coding topics. This platform has partnerships with several big companies including Google Developers, Amazon Alexa, IBM Watson, and Microsoft.

There is a 7-day free trial before you can choose any of the three payment plans. The pricing ranges from $25 to $199 each month.

Coursera

Coursera is one of the most popular platforms for professional online study. It gives students access to virtual classes from top institutions like the Universities of Duke, Michigan, and Stanford.

Courses here are long and could take between 4 to 6 weeks for completion. This platform allows instructors to add videos, assignments, and community discussions to their courses.

Joining Coursera is free but to check the different costs, you have to log in.

How Do I Create and Sell Online Courses?

Now that you know the best online course platforms, let’s get you to your goal. How do you create courses? The idea is to find a way to transform the lives of your students with your knowledge.

Of course, the first thing to figure out is what you want to teach. How will your course transform the lives of your students? If you can solve their problems, then it is easy to draw up a defined learning path.

Here is a list of the top 10 things to do when creating courses to sell online:

1. Find out the cost of developing the course.
2. Make use of the best equipment and software. Some of this equipment includes microphones, headphones, screen recording software, USB webcam, and editing software.
3. Put together valuable content.
4. Make your website stand out.
5. Market your business.
6. Have complete control over your educational brand.
7. Make sure the learning experience you offer is exceptional.
8. Integrate your courses with many other tools.
9. Always aligns sales with budgeting.
10. Make use of customer support when necessary.

What Are the Best Most Popular Online Courses?

When you have access to the most popular courses people need, it helps you streamline your content. In case you’ve been battling with course ideas, here are the most popular courses to help you make a decision.

1. Science of Everyday Thinking on EdX.
2. Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 on Udemy.
3. SEO Beginners: How I Get 1,000 Visitors a Day with SEO also on Udemy.
4. An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python on Coursera.
5. JavaScript Basics on Treehouse.

You can see that students prefer impactful and informative education. Use these courses as a template for yours and success is not too far away.

Wrap-Up

The best online course platforms are giving us new ways of learning and impact knowledge. This means that while students enjoy the benefit of studying from home, instructors enjoy making money in their homes too. Technology has not only broken the teaching barrier, but it has also made it easy to create courses and sell them.

There are so many online course platforms. It is difficult to pick out the best of the lot. To save you from the stress, we have just discussed some of the top online course platforms in 2020. You have also learned how to create your courses and where to host them.

You can double your hustle as an instructor by putting your courses on the best online course platforms. We have shown you a few in this post and our top pick is Thinkific. Also, we have given you tips on creating your courses and a list of the top courses online today.

The first reason is that all you need to create an online course and sell it is available on this platform. This platform allows you to sign-up for the most popular plan known as Pro Plan. When you do, you get a month free trial. With this plan, you can create an unlimited number of courses from the start to generate more sales.

You also have access to landing pages, advanced pricing options, certificates, marketing tools, and membership bundles. It almost seems like the creators of this platform have it all put together.

There is a “drag-and-drop” editor that allows you to create your course and customize it with ease. The platform also gives you access to templates to help you build a custom course site. Each template is well-designed and of very high quality.

Last but not least, there are several advanced tools to help you market your course. But that’s not the best news. The best news is that you can link Thinkific with more than 1,500 apps with the help of Zapier. You don’t even need a WordPress Plugin for this. It is possible to set up targeted campaigns and send them via email to your target audience.

Let’s talk about pricing on Thinkific for a moment. You have access to the core features on this platform at no cost. However, the Basic Plan costs only $49 a month and the Pro Plan costs $99 a month.

The interesting part is that you don’t incur any extra transaction fees on the different plans. This makes Thinkific the most reasonable online course platform in terms of pricing.

Pros

• Efficient page builder and multiple themes for course sites.
• Inbuilt support making it easy to set up advanced assignments and quizzes.
• Provides the ability to set up an independent community for learners.
• Course compliance features are flexible and powerful.
• Allows the user to sell courses in bulk and manage students easily.
• Pricing is friendly to beginners and all plans come with zero transaction costs.

Check out Thinkific>>

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