Key Takeaways
- Wide Range of Course Creation Tools: From platforms like EdisonOS with advanced customization to Thinkific's ease of use, these tools cater to various content types and educational needs.
- Robust Marketing & Sales Features: Top platforms offer integrated marketing tools, such as email campaigns, sales pages, and affiliate support, to maximize course visibility and revenue.
- Flexible Pricing for All Budgets: Options vary from free plans to premium packages, accommodating small-scale educators and large organizations alike.
- Enhanced Learning Experience: Key features like adaptive testing, white-label branding, and gamification ensure an engaging, tailored learning experience for students.
15 Best Online Course Creation Software to Create & Sell Courses Online
The world is moving towards the “connected world” or “remote work” mode of work and education because of the sheer advantages of these sudden changes in work ethics. This ensures constant training and development dissemination irrespective of location and company culture.
Considering the current scenario, online learning platforms have become the need of the hour to create and sell online courses in companies. Creation tools enable course creators to produce high-quality, structured digital content, which is crucial amid the pandemic as the best online course platform appeared and resumed disturbed working scenarios. In this phase, the small and medium-scale businesses faced disappointing results regarding learning quality, but gradually, they adopted the online course platform to stay strong.
Today, organizations are mature enough to cope with all the flaws of online learning platforms, but organizations always rely on seamless learning management systems so that employees don’t face any challenges while accessing their functions. Today, many employees have adopted a remote work culture, and the need for the best online course platform has become apparent because it is less practical to visit cubicles to get things done.
So, without delay, let’s dive into our top online learning platforms that can put your organization on the right path.
15 Best Online Course Platforms for 2023 (Features, Pricing and More)
So, selecting the best online course platform for your needs and business is critical to build your online website.
Since creating a website isn’t something you do only sometimes, in that scenario, picking the ideal online platform for your courses is comparable to choosing a brick-and-mortar store for your house.
Thankfully, many online course platforms can assist you in quickly launching an online course business, even if you don’t know how to code.
However, which online course platform is the most suitable to create and sell online courses? Most online course software includes e-learning authoring tools and learning management systems, which are typically used for corporate training rather than course sales or marketing.
Don’t worry. We’ll discuss all the tools in details below.
1. EdisonOS
The Master of DSAT and Learning Management Systems
EdisonOS is one of the best online course platforms for anyone searching for a user-friendly and feature-rich solution for creating, delivering, and promoting courses. One of the best things about EdisonOS is that the online course platform gives you total control over your digital downloads. EdisonOS provides a variety of online course creation tools to help users develop and manage their courses effectively.
Whether you want to create your website, integrate marketing tools, or want to host your domain, EdisonOS has covered all. The platform provides you with the tools and techniques you need to sell courses, and then it gets out of the way. From delivering seamless user experience to customer support to features and functionalities, Edison OS leaves no stone untouched.
EdisonOS is an excellent choice for organizations, educational institutions, government agencies, and other course creators who want to earn passive income with online courses.
Key Features
- User-friendly experience: The dashboard is clean appealing, and offers quick access to valuable features and tools. Users can access everything with a click, from the homepage to building tests to student assessments.
- White - label Platform: Elevate your brand experience with our white-labeled solution. Put your logo, color's, and themes and customize them as per your brand’s persona. Impress your students with a streamlined and branded mock test environment that reflects your brand identity and upscale your educational activities with personalized content.
- Adaptive Testing: Tailored to each student’s learning progress, EdisonOS believes in adaptability, which means the user can adjust the difficulty based on the student's performance. Say goodbye to “one solution for all” and welcome a dynamic testing environment that fosters learning engagement and delivers a unique experience to students.
- Assessment Engine: Build unique and different quizzes effortlessly to evaluate each student’s skills. Create questions, set specific parameters and evaluate results swiftly. Enrich your teaching game and offer personalized assessments that help students thrive in the actual exams.
- Prebuilt-mock Tests: Get instant access to diverse readymade practice exams covering featured topics, saving time and effort. Get rid of creating tests from scratch and explore pre-built mock tests with just a single click.
- Analytics for data: EdisonOS provides you with complete access to all student data. Subsequently, you can utilize this data to acquire insights that will aid in developing better courses and formulating better marketing strategies.
Pros
- Fully-featured platform
- Ability to measure learner's activity in real-time
- Full customization
- Feature-rich platform
- Customer support
- Email marketing
- Offers free plan
Cons
Lack of webinar capabilities
Pricing: EdisonOS offers a free plan to users with certain features and courses, and there are two paid plans starting at $85 per month. Moreover, the platform charges zero transaction fees across all their plans. That's more interesting.
2. Teachable
Are you a content creator and searching for exciting ways to earn decent passive income? If yes, get started with Teachable, one of the best online course platforms that simplify the course creation process and allow numerous business owners to design and sell engaging high-quality courses.
If you are a content creator and want to share your knowledge with the world, Teachable seems to be a “cool kid” in online teaching because its interface fits best with your requirements and offers a free trial and 30-day money-back guarantee. Teachable is a popular course hosting platform and offers almost everything a user needs to get started as an online course creator.
From marketing tools to creating sales pages to customization and branding to email marketing tools and exclusive feature sets, Teachable is an ideal option for new course creators who are just starting out, as well as experienced course creators.
Get registered free of cost, and you can immediately start customizing your courses. Business owners, especially marketing professionals, create and sell online courses with this platform. Its user-friendliness and appealing interface, similar to WordPress, attract everyone.
Teachable lectures can be downloaded as PDFs, audio files, videos, or any other format you choose. The website’s overall design, as well as the course materials, can be altered to adhere to your brand’s standards.
The platform also provides in-depth features like vouchers to help you appropriately market your courses. Teachable is a platform that makes developing and selling online courses more accessible for people with and without technical experience. It offers a pleasant learning environment for students and a variety of features and customization options to fulfill the needs of course makers.
Key Features
- Course Creation: Creating courses is quite simple with Teachable. Everything is easily accessible with only a click on the dashboard. When the users first started creating Teachable courses, they felt excited because the platform was not technical.
- Drip Information: Teachable lets you provide users with content gradually. This entails determining a content distribution timetable, often determined by counting the days after a user enrolls. For instance, set the drip feed to start seven days after membership if you want a new user to be able to access specific content a week after enrolling so they have time to process the first batch of films.
- Pages for Courses: Teachable provides a straightforward landing page builder with a few pre-made course templates.
- Analytics And Reporting: Teachable offers a comprehensive analytics and reporting feature, allowing course creators to track their performance and student engagement.
Pros
- Easy course creation
- Professional and appealing designs
- Well-organized learning experience
- Simple payment processing
- User-friendly customer support
Cons
One of the most annoying things about Teachable is that the platform charges transaction fees on the free and basic plan.
Pricing: There are several price tiers for teachable courses:
- With the Free plan, you can take courses for free, but every sale will incur a $1 + 10% transaction fee.
- The transaction fee is reduced to 5% with the Basic plan, which costs $39 per month (or $468 invoiced annually).
- The Pro plan costs $119 a month (or $1,428 invoiced annually) and does away with transaction fees.
- The Business plan offers limitless courses, coaching items, and digital downloads for $499 monthly (or $5,988 invoiced annually).
3. LearnDash
LearnDash is another well-known cloud-based online course platform that many educational institutions, tutors, and entrepreneurs use to create and sell online courses and course material. LearnDash is a well-liked LMS plugin that attracts a lot of tutors because of its user-friendly drag-and-drop interface and valuable features.
With LearnDash, you have total control over the whole process of creating and marketing your online course. If you need to be more tech-savvy, there is a slight learning curve to get used to, but WordPress is generally relatively easy to use once you get the hang of it. LearnDash provides essential features and functionality that allow creators to focus on course content while handling the technical aspects and marketing needs effectively, leading to a successful online course.
With just a couple of clicks, users can create, publish, and deliver unlimited courses, track user progress, give course completion certificates, build a community, and so much more. Recently, LearnDash introduced its LearnDash cloud platform, a powerful hostel version of the leading platform.
It is a fully-showed WordPress website that boasts powerful pre-built templates, plugins, and much more that help beginners create and sell courses while leveraging the platform’s customization capabilities.
The platform also provides certificates, gamification features, quizzes, and assignments to boost learning outcomes. The platform seamlessly integrates with various appealing themes and page builders without compromising site features. It is approved by well-known figures in the field and was created by e-learning specialists, especially for teachers.
LearnDash is a complete, user-friendly online course development and management solution with lovely, customizable themes that complement your brand.
Key Features
LearnDash offers a tonne of options to enhance your virtual courses. We'll examine some of the significant and distinctive features the plugin provides in this part.
- Drag-and-Drop Builder: This functionality is particularly noteworthy. This tool lets you quickly and easily construct your course plan by dragging and dropping components.
- Video Progression Feature: Learners may quickly proceed through video-based information with Learndash's video progression function, which improves their comprehension and engagement.
- Quiz Builder: You may create interactive tests using LearnDash's quiz builder to assess your students' understanding and recall of material.
- Assignment Management: By enabling you to mark, discuss, and even provide points for completed assignments, you may encourage people to participate more actively in your course.
- One-time Setup: Set a price for all your courses and sell them individually without glitches.
Pros
- Professionalism, appealing interface, course management features, and more attract users to try this platform.
- When it comes to constructing custom pages, there are a plethora of shortcode pongs to select from.
- Works well with a wide range of other WordPress-based applications. This platform provides excellent virtual education.
- Affordable as compared to other solutions.
- No technical or coding knowledge is required.
- Fantastic customer support and also offers tutorials and well-documented guides.
Cons
- The complex learning curve for non-technical users.
- Users have to integrate LearnDash with either PayPal or Strip to collect payments on courses.
Pricing: In terms of pricing, LearnDash offers a demo edition, essentially a free trial, for individuals still determining if they want to make the purchase right away. This learning management system offers a 12-day money-back guarantee if you later think better tools exist.
The most straightforward approach for newcomers to use LearnDash is to sign up for a cloud subscription. With this, you may launch your website immediately and customize the platform's templates to fit your desired brand identity.
4. Kajabi
Course creators must be more skeptical when choosing the best learning management system for their online business. There are many platforms available, but Kajabi is a humble “all-in-one platform” with powerful features, allowing course creators to start selling online courses and get paid for their courses without switching to other apps or software.
PayPal and Stripe payment interfaces are available through Kajabi. Additionally, users can use email marketing tools to promote their courses. With fully-automated marketing campaigns, user-friendly landing pages, and funnels, businesses can also optimize and scale their online course sales. Moreover, Kajabi gives consumers access to integrated analytics tools to monitor their development and keep expanding.
Users may also establish their private membership website with Kajabi, where they can keep their courses and other pertinent data. Creating a website is streamlined by a collection of pre-made themes. Users can even design their personalized domain to ensure their courses are quickly and readily found.
Although marketing is given much attention on the site, Kajabi provides many tools for creating courses from scratch. A course design tool that allows you to create classes, videos, and other types of digital instructional content is included with every Kajabi plan. To help you run a more successful course-selling business, Kajabi also provides webinar funnels through its “Blueprints” feature and tools for lead generation and product launches. This effectively automates your marketing campaigns, eliminating guessing.
Since we haven’t even discussed the networking and mobile aspects, it’s reasonable to assume that Kajabi doesn’t lack any features; therefore, their promise that you can find “everything you need” under one roof is true. Kajabi offers a free trial, making it an accessible and affordable free online course platform for course creators.
Key Features
- Online Course Builder: As stated above, Kajabi is well-known for being an LMS. The remaining features support the online course. Naturally, their LMS is the first element we should examine.
- Community Builder: When students purchase online courses, communities are frequently an added bonus. Traditionally, it's been simple to establish a community on websites like Facebook. Kajabi has released its community function as an alternative. You can provide your users a community as an extra or a stand-alone item.
- Website Builder: The website builder on Kajabi is another well-liked tool. Building a website can be frightening, particularly if you need more technical know-how. You can create a website using several blocks with Kajabi's website builder. To build your website, these different blocks stack on top of each other like Legos.
- Sales Landing Pages: You must create a sales funnel to draw people to your online course to enroll some pupils. Your sales page enters the picture now.
- Real-time Analytics: Google Analytics and your website can be integrated with Kajabi. Analytics is an excellent tool for monitoring website traffic and tracking user behavior. It also enables you to gain fresh perspectives on your intended market.
- Streamlined Procedures for Payment: The PayPal and Stripe interfaces offered by Kajabi make getting paid for your laborious efforts simple. Additionally, to handle more intricate automation connected to compensation, you can install third-party programs like Zapier.
Pros
- Built-in comprehensive email marketing tools that enable users to eliminate third-party email integrations.
- In-built sales funnel software that allows the creation of certain types of channels to grow the customer base.
- Marketing automation that lets users trigger emails or course-related activities.
- Unlimited customization features that align with your business identity.
- Course creators can choose from a large set of appealing and customizable themes.
Cons
- The platform doesn't offer a free option, and paid plans are slightly higher than other platforms.
- The Kajabi course marketplace is relatively small and lacks search functions for students.
Pricing: No free-tier plan is available; the Basic plan costs $149 per month. The Pro plan, which has monthly fees of $399, is the most costly. Fortunately, many options are available, even with the most basic pricing plan.
The price plan scales most plans, although they all offer the same fundamental features. A 20% discount is available from Kajabi for customers who select annual billing. Moreover, Kajabi frequently holds sales and promotions like the Black Friday deal.
A yearly paying option raises the Basic plan's monthly cost from $149 to $119.
At a minimum, Kajabi offers a respectable length of free trial time—they offer a 14-day trial option, and occasionally they run extended free trial specials.
5. Podia
If you are a beginner or scaling your digital product venture, you need an online course platform like Podia to help you design, deliver, and sell courses without glitches. Whether you are hunting for a learning management system, a membership site, a community-based platform, or something that allows you to build a website to sell any course, Podia has everything covered.
Podia is an adaptable program that lets customers design, market, and host digital downloads, webinars, and courses. Through its community feature, Podia may also be used as an engagement tool and to build a membership platform. It is an appropriate solution for any budget and degree of experience due to its versatility, fair pricing, ease of use, and many integrations.
Most bloggers and online entrepreneurs consider Podia the best platform to monetize their digital products. It's ideal for everybody:
- Wishing to build engagement via a strong community
- Who needs strong technical knowledge? It's super easy to create your Podia website.
That requires no complex sales funnels, only basic features like launches, upsells, and coupons. On Podia, actual goods can also be sold by low-volume sellers. You can gather your customers' physical addresses in Podia settings to mail them their products. Given all of these alternatives, Podia ought to be a strong challenger for bloggers and solopreneurs looking to advance their careers more quickly.
Key Features
- Online Courses: With Podia, you can design and market online courses that learners can buy and complete at their speed. To enable students to work through the course material simultaneously, Podia also lets you set cohort-based courses with a start date. Because everyone is "on the same page," you can almost replicate a classroom environment and maintain high student involvement in both the community and membership sections.
- Alluring Pricing Options: Podia is a platform for more than just online education. For this reason, Podia pricing allows you to provide bundled products to members who have subscribed. You can also offer coaching as an upsell, stand-alone, or course component.
- Digital Downloads: Working with various formats of eBooks, audio files, videos, and music is a typical task for creators. You may host all of these different file formats using the digital downloads option, and you can use them as lead magnets to draw in new clients or sell them for a one-time or recurring fee.
- Webinars: Podia shows itself to be a formidable force in the webinar industry with its capacity to add webinar content, determine price, suggest upsells, manage notifications, integrate with autoresponders, control availability, and hold live video sessions via Zoom and YouTube Live. Through your Podia website, your audience may sign up, attend, and purchase your webinar.
- Community: Customers do not need to sign up for your subscriptions to use your products. You can limit the availability of some of your products to your community, though, if you'd like to make them exclusive. Customers who pay a membership fee to join a community will get access to every course in your community bundle.
Pros
Many good things about Podia includes the following:
- Podia is one of the best online teaching platforms because it allows users to store everything in the platform itself; it means users don't need to link to a third-party extension such as Google Drive or Dropbox to keep everything organized.
- You can sell numerous types of content, such as digital downloads, memberships, and much more.
- Get started with an affiliate marketing program and promote your digital products to sell more courses and boost your business.
- Manages payments via PayPal, Stripe, Google Pay, and Apple Pay. Users can pay monthly to Podia as they don't charge any transaction fees on sale.
- At checkout, there are upsell opportunities that you may personalize with your messaging.
- You don't need to use a third party like Vimeo or YouTube; you have unlimited file storage.
Cons
The only drawback of using Podia is its price.
Pricing: The two pricing tiers for Podia are $39 and $79. Both plans come with quizzes, integrated email marketing, infinite courses, and the option to utilize a custom domain. Of all the comparable mid-budget plans, the Shaker plan is the least expensive and includes affiliate capabilities to help you boost sales and create recurring revenue through memberships.
6. Thinkific
With online learning and teaching becoming the new normal since the pandemic hit the world, many online learning platforms have gained immense popularity in their respective regions, and Thinkific is one of them. Thinkific is an all-in-one online course software for creating, marketing and selling your courses online.
It is a powerful solution for creating, managing, delivering, and selling your courses with efficient marketing tools. And the most exciting part is that you don't need that much coding knowledge, skills, or experience to get started with this platform. With the help of Thinkific's drag-and-drop course features, users don't need to worry about anything except creating quality digital content.
Moreover, users don't need to worry about storage because it is a cloud-based software that manages all the digital files within your device, such as audio, videos, PDFs, and much more. It offers website hosting services as well. Therefore, getting started is affordable if you are a beginner! To get started, you must create an account on Thinkific!
Its free tier is more than just a way to test the capabilities; it's a fully functional option for individuals who only wish to provide one course. Although the built-in functionality might only be partially helpful in growing into a more expansive organization, it offers robust integrations that give you access to many capabilities related to marketing and content.
Key Features
- Easy-to-use Course Builder: Even without prior course-building knowledge, creating a course only takes a few minutes.
- Use a drag-and-drop web page builder to create a landing page for your courses by editing pre-made templates.
- Marketing and promotions: Coupons, sales widgets, and affiliate and email marketing are integrated.
- Adaptable methods of payment: Decide how much to charge your users: One-time payment, regular installments, or subscriptions.
- Reporting: Thinkific keeps tabs on orders, enrollments, and income. To keep you informed about business performance, it also examines student participation.
- Communities and support for students: Give students access to an online discussion forum to share knowledge. Provide tests and distribute electronic certifications.
- Resources to help teach the trainer: Get all the information you need to create and market online courses. Quickly catch up with free classes and an extensive online knowledge base through the "find an expert" feature.
Thinkific App Store: Purchase specialized applications from the Thinkific App Store to advance your online education. A unique marketplace that links developers and authors of courses.
Pros
- Good combination of user-friendliness and modern features
- Simple community feature
- An unlimited number of students or participants
- A solid free trial option without entering credit card details
- Get paid via popular payment methods such as Stripe, PayPal, and more
- The platform's third-party integrations make it extremely feasible to expand course and marketing functionality
- No added transaction fees
Cons
- Lack of mobile app
- Limited onboarding and training for basic package subscribers
- Lacking accessibility feature
Pricing: There are four price tiers for Thinkific. You can always switch to a premium subscription later on if necessary, or you can start for free. Do Thinkific plans offer good financial value?
There are zero transaction costs associated with purchased courses from Thinkific. Keep this in mind when comparing Thinkific's costs to those of other online course platforms. A commission may be charged by other course sites, which might get quite expensive!
A fantastic way to try out the service is with the Free plan. An online education platform gives you complete control over your experience. You can take courses, market courses, and develop a website to market courses, all for free.
7. LearnWorlds
Undoubtedly, there are a plethora of online course platforms available. Still, LearnWorlds is the best online course platform that lets solopreneurs, content creators, educators, and educational institutions create online courses with appealing marketing tools.
Along with creating high-quality course content, LearnWorlds also makes it possible to promote it as it allows users to build sales pages along with a powerful suite of third-party marketing tools. The best part is that the platform offers many exciting ways to interact and engage with learners.
Therefore, if the course creator wants to establish a holistic learning experience, LearnWorlds is the answer. Upon a comprehensive evaluation of this online course creation platform, we must concede that LearnWorlds is among the top offerings.
Why?
Because it gives a course creator an end-to-end business solution that lets them design, promote, host, evaluate, and sell online courses. Naturally, LearnWorlds demonstrated its worth. The website, mobile app builder, and course creation are perfect. It's not expected to find making a mobile app so simple. It's simpler than making a PowerPoint presentation to give you an idea.
We cherished the ability to design interactive elements for our online courses, such as statistics boards and quizzes. Monitoring conversions and student engagement is simple and uncomplicated. When developing a sales and marketing plan, features for sales promotion, such as course bundles, coupons, and upsells, are helpful.
Another noteworthy feature is the interactive video editor in LearnWorlds LMS, which provides automatically created transcripts and subtitles. With this online course platform, you can build top courses like a pro. Instead of just making another online course with LearnWorlds, you'll establish a networked community of learners.
Key Features
- Create Advanced Courses: A course platform must enable course creation. And LearnWorlds excels at doing just that.
- Make an impression with interactive video: The concept allows students to click buttons within the video player. As an alternative to the conventional method of finding a button next to or below the video player.
- Make your eBooks: You can create an ebook inside LearnWorlds if you choose not to utilize Canva, Google Slides, or other comparable programs. You can assemble your pages one at a time using an easy-to-use interface.
- Mobile App: LearnWorlds offers bespoke apps, so you're covered there. You can launch your own software on both iOS and Android with a monthly subscription fee.
- Powerful Admin Panel: Most of your time was spent in the Admin module. When you build webpages, manage students, make courses, and examine your analytics. Therefore, it's critical that the Admin feels like a place you enjoy being. We refer to it as a good user experience.
- Third-party Integrations: LearnWorlds has several software integrations. they include email services, video solutions, analytics tools, and affiliate programs. With the help of all these connectors, LearnWorlds may share data with the applications you now use. Many learning systems include essential integrations.
- Control your Partners: An affiliate program is a terrific way to encourage people in your network or students to promote your course. It enables you to design unique tracking links that link course sales to the original link-sharer.
- Link up your email service provider: LearnWorlds does not have an email feature. Instead, they merged with a few of the biggest platforms available. MailChimp. AWeber, and ActiveCampaign. As you can see, the Admin now has a different appearance because proper email provider integration is more complicated.
Pros
- Extensive range of attractive features
- Top-notch customer support
- Regular updates and upgrades of its features
- Cost-effective option
- The interactive content is engaging.
- Video library access
- A library of readymade templates that are responsive and mobile-ready
- Language customization options
- Branding options
- Course creators can create unlimited courses.
- LearnWorlds offers a 30-day free trial to users.
Cons
- If you opt for a basic plan without access to round-the-clock customer support, you won't get an instant solution.
- Some users encounter a few glitches in certain features of the website builder.
Pricing:
- The Starter Plan has a monthly starting price of $24 (paid annually) or $29 (billed monthly). Additionally, there is a $5 fee for each course sold.
- Pro Trainer Plan: The monthly cost is $79 when billed annually or $99 when billed monthly.
- Learning Centre Plan: At $249 per month (paid annually) or $299 per month (billed monthly), LearnWorlds' most extensive plan is the Learning Centre Plan.
All of the Pro Trainer plan's capabilities are also included in the Learning Centre plan, along with extras like interactive videos, full white labeling, auto-transcripts and subtitles, API connection, and first-rate onboarding from their customer support staff. A 30-day free trial is available for all programs, and a customized plan for business and high-volume users is also open.
8. Gumroad
Gumroad is an award-winning and best online course platform that reduces the burden of creating and selling online courses. It best fits digital creators, authors, game developers, and educational institutions who want to earn passive income by spreading their knowledge.
You have two options for setting up your store: immediately integrate it on your current website or use its versatile page editor. Create an account, add your content, choose your prices, begin selling, get paid, and keep making money. You may start subscriptions, create basic memberships, and even let customers decide how much to spend with Gumroad. Using email broadcasts and effective automated workflows to identify and cultivate consumer relationships also aids in growing your audience.
Key Features
Ease of Use: The platform is perfect for novices and experienced searching for a no-frill platform to create unlimited courses and sell the same. All you need to do is integrate the platform on your website or create a landing page on Gumroad itself that allows visitors to browse your products and buy if they are interested. Moreover, the landing pages are simple to generate because all the features and integrations are mentioned on its dashboard.
Sell Everything: You can sell various products in any category on Gumroad. Gumroad supports artisans, woodworkers, graphic designers, and other creative types in their efforts to sell both digital and tangible goods.
Automatic Updates: Gumroad provides resources to inform visitors and followers. Its Workflows function allows you to send automated emails. Customers and guests will receive emails you may schedule and prepare once it is set up. It facilitates reaching prospective clients.
Marketing Tools to Boost Sales: A handful of the items you purchase on Gumroad effectively increase sales. This involves making promo codes that you may share on Gumroad through posts, distribute via email, and highlight on your website and blog, among other platforms. In addition to creating discounts on each product, you may generate several coupons for the same products.
Checkout for Payment: Adding products to Gumroad is easy because of the apparent functions and settings. One-line definitions are attached to several of the options. PayPal and other credit cards are accepted as payment methods on Gumroad.
Pros
- It accepts various payment options, including credit cards, PayPal, and Stripe.
- The platform also comes with a free plan policy
- Enable users to create discounts and offers
- Supports HD and SD streaming
- It comes with an automated Email marketing tool
- User-friendly checkout pages
Cons
- Lack of trial capabilities
- If you are using other payment processors, such as Apple Pay, then the platform won't support it
- Lack of customer support system
- Only keep on Email queries, lack of live chat and Facebook Group
Pricing: For new users and those who like to test out the online cart platform before committing to its Pro plan, Gumroad provides a free tier. First off, there is no monthly cost for the Free Plan, of course. On Gumroad, you may add infinite products and receive real-time analytics.
Options for SD streaming, customer management, and adding a restricted number of posts and workflows are also included. Additionally, it charges a 5% plus charge fee (i.e., 3.5% + 30 cents) on purchases.
9. Ruzuku
The 2023 is about to end, and people's quest for knowledge and learning has been increasing. This is perhaps why demand for a scalable and robust online course platform is growing. No, the objective is not here to make money, but how well are folks into your course content?
There are many platforms, and it has become easy to create courses, but it is also challenging for course creators to create classes that people get obsessed with. And Ruzuku is the platform that helps users create and sell online courses in minutes.
Ruzuku is a robust platform that offers all the tools related to online course creation to educators and also boats a plethora of marketing features that make it easy for users to create and manage their online courses under one roof. Appealing interface, course management tools, course completion certificates, etc., attract users to get started with Ruzuku.
You will also discover that the platform provides users with a cozy area to share their knowledge and an appropriate means of marketing their courses.
Key Features
- Getting Started: Ruzuku is designed to give beginning educators flexible resources for freely developing their courses (creation software), charging for online access, and organizing and personalizing them as needed.
- Course Creation Process: Thankfully, using the platform's course creator is free. With a free trial membership, you can get started right away. It's important to remember that the trial period is limited to 14 days.
- Management of Courses: Ruzuku's "Manage Courses" section allows you to customize the look and feel of your course. You may customize things like price and set up events, promotions, notifications, etc.
- Ruzuku offers a variety of good design alternatives, for instance, if you want to give your courses a new look. As a result, you can now modify your courses' color schemes, typefaces, and other layout elements.
- Payment for Courses: A customizable approach for charging your online students is provided by Ruzuku. The three primary techniques are as follows:
- Single Payments: With this option, payments are made only once, and Stripe or PayPal handles the processing.
- Payment Plan: This lets you bill your users in installments, spaced out over a specific time. Unfortunately, only Stripe is compatible with this approach.
- Subscription: If you choose this option, payments to your students will be sent regularly. Additionally, subscription payments can only be handled through Stripe, much like the payment plan structure.
- Webinars and Phone Conversations: It turns out that prerecording your course material is only sometimes necessary. Everyone would find things more engaging if the regular programming occasionally included live webinars or teleconferences.
Pros
- The platform offers a free trial without asking for card details.
- Design, create, and sell
- If users are unsatisfied with the platform, a money-back guarantee is offered.
- Dedicated customer support
- Simple and easy to navigate
Cons
- It's a little bit expensive compared to other platforms.
- You're doing something good if you can get 100 people to join your webinar, but at those pricing points, you will need more than the Ruzuku plans to host them all simultaneously in one session. Additionally, there is no method to raise the limit.
Pricing: Like many LMS systems, Ruzuku is divided into three tiers.
- Paying $99 a month for the Bootstrapper tier through the yearlong plan totals $897 ($74.75 per month). It's straightforward, limited to one instructor, and caps the number of webinars, tests, and student subscription options you can provide.
- The Up-and-Comer package comes next, costing $149 a month or $996.96 ($83.08 per month) if you pay annually.
Last but not least, the annual plan for the University Plan costs $1,500 ($125 per month) at a rate of $199 each month.
10. Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is the best online course platform. It emphasizes community building and comes with all the flaws of the course creation process. It is the ultimate all-in-one platform with emerging features for creating engaging online courses and memberships. Moreover, it also comes with community-driven features that help you build a community-based online business.
Robust community features like places, events, online courses, rich media uploads, and customized activity feeds are available. In addition, there are facilities for moderation, message services, and live streaming.
The platform enables a range of community-led business models, such as paid masterminds, live cohort courses, and membership sites, in addition to community-building tools. You can charge for access to your community and courses.
It's intended to enable you to create an online community that you own, control, and monetize in any way you see fit, unlike Facebook Groups.
Key Features
- Community Organization: By creating an account on Mighty Networks, you automatically establish a network, or community, for yourself. You can then start inviting members by completing a few more stages, including building the structure, customizing a few settings, and adding your branding.
- Sales Pages: Mighty Networks offers free SSL certificates and website hosting to start with the essentials. Although you can use a custom subdomain if you'd like, your website comes with a free one. However, since the platform doesn't create full-featured websites, most Mighty Networks producers host their websites instead.
- Analytics and Reporting: You may gain insights into your members and their actions using Mighty Networks' comprehensive reporting and analytics feature, Mighty Insights. Several dashboards offer information and analysis on many facets of your virtual community.
- Integrations with Third Parties: Mighty Networks is somewhat restricted regarding supported integrations. You can merely integrate Google Analytics using tracking codes. Instead, there is no option in your admin panel to add a Facebook Pixel or any other tracking code; instead, you must contact support to add them.
- Customer Support: Mighty Networks features a devoted support staff, as one should anticipate from any top-notch web platform. It provides email support and a chat widget within your admin area for all plans. You can click the chat widget to submit your questions.
Pros
- Modern features and clutter-free design make this online course platform easy to use and develop courses.
- For students and course creators, everything is seamless to use. Information and course material are simple to browse, and overall, users have an appealing experience on the platform.
- Of course, this is the main idea, but charging for access to your services is accomplished here efficiently and at a minimal cost to the user.
- Notify students when you add new courses, change the course material, or respond to their messages through social media. They can alter it to suit their preferences, preventing annoyance or disregard.
Cons
- Missing high-end features
- Lack of native video hosting
- Does not support PayPal
- It comes with limited design options
Pricing: You can register for their Free Plan, which is free but has certain restrictions. This is a fantastic place to start so you can familiarize yourself with everything and explore the website before purchasing. In a way, this functions as a free trial.
One option is the Community Plan, which costs $28 a month and offers nearly all of the capabilities, including the capacity to charge for a membership site, your domain, and an infinite number of moderators.
The Business Plan is $98 a month and comes with more than 2,000 Zapier integrations—beneficial when managing things independently—and premium analytics that is typically restricted.
11. EasyGenerator
EasyGenerator is a cloud-based online course platform that enables users to design, develop, and sell courses for education and training. The platform is intended for startups, educational institutions, NGOs, and governments. Moreover, EasyGenerator offers a WYSIWYG interface, which means users only need to drag and drop elements to design courses without having strong coding skills.
Many templates are available from Easygenerator for usage in graphical and instructional design. It is simple to alter the templates to establish a functionality, feel, and appearance that will uphold and implement corporate identity.
Thanks to the software, a large variety of media, including audio, video, and image files, can be embedded into eLearning courses. Using interactive Flash or HTML multimedia shortens learning times and increases learner enjoyment.
With Easygenerator, students may create goals and take tests. Through assessment analysis, learners can monitor their progress in learning. An easily navigable interface also enables users to develop courses without programming or scripting.
Key Features
- Course management: With this tool, you can ensure that the correct students receive the suitable materials at the right time. Learning resources include films, PDFs, e-learning courses, and in-person instruction.
- Facilities for assessment and tracking: These let an institution monitor students' progress and outcomes while documenting their actions.
- Reporting: Learner reports, which frequently include possibilities to interface with an outside HR system, provide information on a learner's involvement and their results.
- Supporting standards: In education, SCORM, AICC, LTI, and xAPI are examples of standards. These guidelines enable the operation of a course and allow for the monitoring of outcomes.
- Learning path: A learning path is a series of educational tasks a student must finish to meet a predetermined objective.
Gamification: Adding aspects of a game can push students to take more fantastic initiative. For example, leaderboards encourage a competitive, gaming-like experience.
Pros
- Friendly customer support assists users via live chat and ticket option
- Appealing interface
- Built-in accessibility toggle- advanced feature
- The platform offers separate development areas for resources
- There is a plethora of publishing and sharing options
Cons
- It does not offer free trial registration with Gmail
- If you get started with the free plan, the storage space of only 250 MB is available
- Development seems quite sluggish
Pricing: There are three price tiers for Easy Generator:
- Pro: $1 writer, ten courses, 100 students for $96 a month
- Team: $479 per month (5 writers, infinite courses, infinite students)
- Enterprise: For customized pricing (unlimited writers, unlimited courses, and unlimited learners), contact EasyGenerator.
12. Skool
Numerous online teaching platforms have been available since digitalization occurred in the education sector. But are you looking for the ultimate online course software that allows you to navigate the learning experience and fulfill all your requirements? Opt for Skool.
Yes, Skool is one of the best online course platforms that aims to redefine education and foster community engagement with modern features and designs. Skool ensures a seamless learning experience and becomes a go-to choice for course creators.
It combines the structured methodology of a learning management system (LMS) with the community-building capabilities of Facebook Groups and other platforms. This makes access and engagement easier for course developers since they can house their student communities and content in one easily accessible location.
However, Skool is more than just a host. It adds gamification to the mix, ensuring that education is entertaining and educational.
Key Features
- Online Course: This comprises static content like downloads, films, photos, and the like and is typically the primary curriculum for your programs. With a straightforward back-end menu to add your content and arrange your course in several categories ("Sets") and modules, Skool simplifies the entire process.
- Community: This is the platform's centrepiece and has undoubtedly been the company's primary focus on developing new features. Skool's Community feature and related page have a striking resemblance to your Facebook group feed.
- Event Calendar: Group events may be organized and viewed with Skool's calendar. It attempts to improve event attendance with automated time zone changes and email reminders.
- Gamification: Make your group more enjoyable by utilizing Skool's gamification capabilities. You can customize the points, levels, and awards. You can also unlock courses at higher levels to encourage involvement.
- Notifications & Chat: Communicate with other users via chat, follow interesting postings, set up personalized settings, and get email and in-app notifications. Skool provides a single profile for every group membership.
Pros
- Robust community features
- Appealing classroom layout
- Calendar integration
- Amazing gamification
- Direct user messaging
- Dedicated mobile app
- Insightful reports and analytics
Cons
- Lack of native video hosting of courses
- No quizzes and resource uploading features
- A funnel builder needs to be included, hence having to depend on external website hosting for sales-boosting activities.
Pricing: Skool has a straightforward pricing structure, with just one plan accessible for $99 per group each month.
This package allows members, communities, classrooms, and full calendar access inside that single group. It will cost an extra $99 per group per month if you need to create more. Our simple pricing structure makes it easy to understand and afford for individuals interested in utilizing Skool for course design and learning.
13. Linkedin Learning
LinkedIn Learning is an online platform that provides more than 21,000 learning pathways and courses on technology, business, and the arts. Its courses range from short videos to lengthy classes, and the instructors are experts with practical teaching expertise.
The platform provides a self-paced, adaptable learning environment accessible anytime, anywhere, on any device. LinkedIn Learning is intended to assist users in growing their careers and acquiring new skills.
You can quickly acquire professional skills by selecting individual courses from the platform or going deeper with 34 certification courses. More than 27 million individuals use LinkedIn Learning to advance in their careers. Additionally, 78 Fortune 100 companies grant their employees access to the platform.
Key Features
- Analysis of Skill Gaps: 105 LinkedIn Learning reviews served as the basis, which the G2 Product R&D team verified. Offer features for a skill gap analysis to pinpoint the precise skills that require improvement.
- Evaluation of Skills: 107 LinkedIn Learning reviews served as the basis, which the G2 Product R&D team verified. Include a pre-course questionnaire for every course on skill development.
Tasks: Based on 100 reviews of LinkedIn Learning, which the G2 Product R&D team confirmed. Assign projects to users so they can showcase their acquisition of technical skills.
Pros
- A monthly free trial makes assessment easy
- Wide selection of video and other individual courses
- Learning paths help to overcome significant career challenges
- Instructors are highly educated and credible
- It comes with a free LinkedIn subscription
Cons
- A personal landing page is essential and lacks some important features
- Sometimes, auto-playing videos can be annoying
- Some content is not fresh and seems outdated
Pricing: You can access LinkedIn Learning if you currently pay for LinkedIn Premium. You can still receive the first month free if you still need to. You have two options after the trial period: pay for individual courses or buy a subscription.
A monthly subscription currently costs $29.99. The monthly cost of an annual subscription is $19.99. Additionally, individual classes range in price from $20 to $40 (tax included).
You can also claim your subscription fees and receive a refund, depending on the perks your present employer offers.
14. Udemy
With over 130,000 courses and thousands of learners, Udemy has undoubtedly made its way into the world of the best online course platforms. But if you are new to Udemy, here's a summary of important information about the Udemy online course platform.
Ensure Udemy is an all-in-one course marketplace, not a learning management system. Courses on Udemy are organized into modules and lessons that may include written notes, videos, and assessments.
On Udemy, anyone may design and sell courses. The largest online learning portal, Udemy, offers more than 210k reasonably priced online courses for consumers to pick up new skills or hone their current ones.
Users have many options because of its extensive range of categories and subcategories, including Business, Design, Personal Development, and much more. Students can pay for each course on Udemy with a one-time payment or by subscribing to a subscription service. The courses are conceived, created, and published by independent teachers.
Key Features
- Courses Features: The audio and video recordings are of excellent quality. The transcript part is beneficial when following instructors with heavy accents because many courses are given by individuals who speak other languages. To improve listening to the teachers, Udemy also provides the ability to adjust the video's pace.
- Platform Availability: When you learn with Udemy, you can access your paid courses on various platforms, such as a desktop or laptop, an iOS app, and an Android app. Additionally, on the iOS and Android apps, you can download a whole course to view offline. Apple and Android users both have a 4.6-star rating for the Udemy app.
- Certifications: A certificate of completion will be sent to you when you finish a course on Udemy. But remember that because people make the courses, Udemy is not affiliated with universities or organizations. As a result, formal accreditation cannot be obtained using the certificate.
- No Cost Courses: Indeed, Udemy provides just over 500 free courses, many of which are introductory courses to more expensive ones.
Course Structure: Courses on Udemy are structured as lectures with extra resources such as text, slides, videos, and other materials. The teacher can also add quizzes, practice exams, and assignments to aid the student in understanding the material.
Pros
- The platform is an adaptable and convenient online learning platform for accessing Udemy.
- Because business specialists expertly design Udemy's courses, they are more dependable and have greater insight into industry-related information, improving learners' understanding of what they are learning.
- The platform's user interface makes it simple to navigate and monitor progress. Additionally, downloading the app allows you to work on the courses without an internet connection, a convenient and practical feature.
- The courses can be downloaded to the device.
Cons
The courses are only sometimes the most recent ones, so your time will be wasted by registering for a course that might be too old and not worth much in the market.
Pricing: There is a significant disparity in the cost of the courses; some start at $11.99, and others go up to $199.99. All of Udemy's courses require a one-time payment at the time of purchase, and lifelong access is granted, so you can revisit the course as much as you'd like, even after finishing it.
15. Simplero
Having been founded in 2009, Simplero is an all-in-one platform for courses and memberships operating longer than most major brands. It should be listed more frequently among the best all-in-one platforms available, but it doesn't!
Its ability to sell physical and digital goods—one software program to manage PDF downloads, audio files, online courses, and printed books—makes it stand out from the competition. Additionally, you have a great deal of flexibility to personalize most functions.
Teachers, trainers, and life coaches from various fields, including business, wellness, nutrition, health, fitness, and spirituality, are among their clientele. Simplero supports your three main objectives: customer attraction, engagement, and education.
Key Features
- Builder for Sites and Pages: Your Simplero website has two distinct sides, which may seem complicated from the back end at first glance. You can construct your sales pages by creating pages using the Marketing tab.
- Website Functionality: Simplero is more than just a page builder; it's an all-in-one solution that can replace WordPress for web entrepreneurs.
- Upsell, Downsell, and Order Bump Features: Strategic sales features like Order Bump, Downsell, and Upsell can help you increase sales and enhance customer satisfaction.
- You may program upsells and downsells to show up automatically once a customer completes their original purchase. An upsell/downsell sequence with customized pages suited to your coaching brand can be as intricate as you like.
- Link Exchange: One of Simplero's best features is its integrated affiliate system, which will appeal to anyone interested in passive income. Even when they refer to other affiliates who close a deal, affiliates might split the commission. Additionally, for significant launches or events, you may activate a scoreboard function enabling you to reward your top-performing affiliates.
Pros
- It can be accessed for both manual and digital products.
- Modern set of features like landing pages, affiliate marketing, appealing templates, and more
- Customization capabilities
- It comes with a 14-day free trial
- Integration with 120+gateways
Cons
- The pricing structure is confusing.
- Costing increases as the number of users grows
- Lack of integration with a few popular tools, such as Mailchimp, Zapier, and Slack
Pricing: There are three price tiers for the plans:
- Starter: $70.80 a month, with 500 contracts required.
- The monthly scale is $178.80 for 1,000 contracts.
- Skyrocket: $298.80 a month for contracts starting at five thousand
The main distinction is that with Scale and Skyrocket, you can market and sell unlimited items, courses, and membership sites, whereas with Starter, you can only do so with up to five. Additionally, the last two choices have greater functionality.
It's crucial to note that the more contracts you sign with clients, the higher your membership price will be. The primary number of contracts is referenced in the mentioned pricing.
What is an Online Course Creation Platform?
Online course platforms provide an easy-to-go framework for managing every step of the learning process and are developed to offer a centralized location for resources. A well-defined online course software provides various features to fulfil multiple purposes but shares a common objective to enhance the efficiency of overall learning resources.
According to one of the trusted resources, the eLearning market is not booming but exploding and is set to hit $350 billion by next year. Therefore, the demand for online course creator platforms has been increasing because these platforms' common goal is to deliver a fantastic experience at all levels and boost learning efficiency.
Individuals can customize the platform based on their preferences. Every course creation platform has certain features, a recipe for the entire platform that helps organizations get the desired result.
Unlike conventional learning methods, online teaching platforms are accessible to all, promoting teamwork and collaboration. It is a scalable and robust way for employees to work together and make modern technology accessible to everyone without any glitches.
Future of Organization: Is It a Right Online Course Platform?
We all have heard the common phrase "change is the only constant," and the business sector faces a massive change in training, development, and learning. Being physically present in an office is no longer one of many learning options- not with the constant rise of implementing all-in-one platforms.
These days, employees have access to quality training and development whenever and whatever they want, as long as they can come online. We are entering an emerging era- the revolution of online school.
A well-structured online learning platform encompasses workshops and learning initiatives developed to hone employees' capabilities in evolving business scenarios. Check out the statistics mentioned below, as they depict how organizations create and sell online courses to get certain competitive advantages.
LinkedIn's 2018 Workplace Learning Report states that ninety percent of American organizations prefer digital course creation.
Furthermore, 72% of businesses think having the best online course platform gives them a competitive edge.
Statistics support this sentiment:
- An annual expenditure of $1,500 in employee training can result in a 24% improvement in profit margins.
- A $680 investment in employee training yields a 6% improvement in shareholder return. Organizations can gain $30 in increased productivity for every $1 invested in online education.
- Additional business advantages include a 25%–60% improvement in knowledge retention, a 40%–60% reduction in training time, and a 218% gain in revenue per employee through the acceleration of employee training.
Hence, more and more entrepreneurs want to create online courses because their benefits go beyond profitability. Online courses allow the workforce to learn more digital material for every hour of training compared with typical face-to-face training. Moreover, selling online courses also decreases energy consumption by 90% and carbon dioxide emissions by 85%.
These collective advantages have spurred entrepreneurs and startups to spend more on online course builder platforms and other digital course materials.
Are Online Courses Offering Attractive Yield?
The global industry for selling original courses on online learning platforms is expanding. The market for e-learning courses is expected to grow by USD 109.05 billion between 2021 and 2026, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.75%.
The market is highly profitable and rewarding. People in the post-pandemic environment are still getting used to being unemployed, and they must improve their skill sets. Online courses are a great approach to make up for lost information, particularly in this day and age where digital learning is practically required.
It makes things easier and allows people to learn at their own pace without following a rigid schedule or dealing with the hassle of traveling to and from in-person classes.
Some things to think about that could impact your future income are:
- The course idea and the presentation for the same
- The cost of your courses
- Your ideal audience
- Marketing and promotional activities
- Freebies
You're passing up a sizable opportunity to make money without selling online courses. You may make a few hundred dollars a year to six or seven figures as a course creator.
Fundamental Features Every Course Creation Platforms Must Have
Living in a competitive world, we are always left with too many options, but there are no better options.
Multiple choices more often lead to analysis paralysis- the fear of taking a step because you are skeptical about choosing the one to fulfill your objectives.
Well, course creators know this feeling. Whenever they search in Google for "Best online course platforms," they can see dozens of options listed, all slightly different.
- Are you looking for a single course creation platform or a gamified course?
- Are you okay with getting paid a transaction fee, or do you prefer getting paid a commission for selling unlimited courses?
- Do you need an entire course platform or a drag-and-drop platform to sell courses?
And what not? Hence, we are guiding you in looking for features your course creation platform should have for seamless course sales.
How easy would it be if we told you to "Start selling your online course" with the XYZ platform and make the most out of that to fulfill your learning objectives? But this seems quite imaginative as each platform has features, and each organization's requirements differ.
You could bypass reading lists of learning management systems and have a demo of each before finalizing the one. But course creation platforms won't work that way.
Each online teaching platforms has various features; some even consist of different revenue models. Moreover, along with the current requirements, you must choose an online course creation software that satisfies your future goals.
Indeed, the central principle of any online course platform is delivering a great learning experience for your audience. But a great experience depends on the audience and how you plan to promote it. A perfect online course platform that allows course creators to upload video lessons, create landing pages, and brand their courses with emerging marketing tools.
Experienced course creators often need a platform with many features that automate specific tasks while keeping their workforce accountable for completing the course content.
No matter which course platform you choose, throw some light on the following points,
- Create a personalized experience ( For instance, fonts, themes, colors, and templates)
- Upload multiple videos
- Insight into real-time statistics behind your course ( like how many people registered last month?)
- A course landing page that shows who your course caters to and what they will learn
For you to choose which bells and whistles are most appropriate for the course, you are building and the target audience, we will go over the top online course platforms that all satisfy these requirements, but before that, let's look at types.
Common Types of Online Course Platforms
Classification of most online course platforms depends on specific similarities and differences that will be considered. Modern platforms that are alternatives to conventional learning methods imply individual learning with wide use of online courses and other course modules.
All existing course creation platforms are categorized on free trial and commercial use. Free platforms can fulfill specific requirements for those organizations that want to create courses with simple features. But to make commercial digital downloads, one needs a customizable platform to create unlimited courses for long-term use.
Let's break down the top types of online course platforms that will help you boost your knowledge and improve your skills.
Synchronous Online Learning
Synchronous means "simultaneously," indicating that a group of employees communicate with the mentor in real time via the mentor's Web site.
Through chat, video, and audio conferencing, the employees communicate with mentors and one another. Additionally, students can ask mentors questions and receive prompt responses. It's interesting to note that the students can replay the lesson by recording it.
The rapid advancement of online learning technologies has made community-driven online learning feasible.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
This kind of course is often developed similarly to an academy or university offering completion certificates. Although it doesn't grant academic credit, it can help upskill those who would instead study remotely because it allows them more flexibility. Certificates of completion, interactive tests, discussion boards, and video lectures are frequently included. Well-known MOOC providers are Udacity and Coursera.
Learning Management Systems
Learning management systems are software that allows entrepreneurs to create unlimited courses for learning and training purposes. All LMSs vary from each other. Instead, an LMS serves as a gateway via which employers provide employees access to information.
An LMS can be purchased or freely available and can be found online or as installed software. A handful of the most widely used learning management systems in use today are described below:
- EdisonOS: EdisonOS is a top LMS that serves all grade levels and allows instructors to build and share course materials seamlessly. The provider has native app solutions for course creators as well.
- Moodle: This robust online course platform ultimately comes free of cost. It is one of the best software for those with technical knowledge and experience with the daily tasks involved in setting up an ideal LMS.
- Thinkific: Considered to be among the top platforms for online learning is Thinkific. It provides instructors with all the required resources to teach and administer paid or free online courses.
Content Management Systems
You may create, edit, share, and manage digital information with the help of a content management system. This is a suitable choice if you need a more extensive technical understanding of web development. However, the design of your website won't be handled automatically by CMS software. Thus, you must make a template identical to the CMS template design if you have seen one you like.
You can share everything you want using CMS software, but managing it requires persistence and patience. If you are driven and prepared to put in the effort, managing learning resources is very doable, even if they were not initially intended for use in online courses.
Destination Sites for Learning
This is a different kind of e-learning platform. The destination site includes checking tools, video content, instructions, and articles. The goal of this combination is to make learning new things comfortable for people worldwide. These websites can aid in learning a new direction or honing professional skills through literate approaches.
As long as businesses and institutions need to meet their training and learning objectives, remote learning is becoming the real deal. Regardless of online free packages, you will need to pay for a high-quality online course platform.
Online Course Platforms Serves to Multiple Domains
The best online course platforms come with modern features and functionalities and can be used by a wide range of employers, including:
- K–12 schools and school districts: To deliver online courses, enhance in-person instruction, and monitor student achievement, LMSs are being utilized more often in elementary and secondary schools.
- Non-profit groups: Many non-profit groups utilize online course platforms to provide their members and the general public with training and educational programs.
- Professional associations: To provide its members with certification programs and continuing education courses, professional associations employ LMSs.
- Tutors and independent educators: To administer their classes and keep track of their pupils, tutors and independent educators also utilize LMSs.
- Colleges and universities that provide online courses utilize online course software to handle student enrolment, monitor student progress, and deliver online courses.
- Corporate and business organizations: Corporations frequently use the best online learning platforms to provide staff training and development programs.
- Government organizations: Government agencies use an online learning platform to provide training and professional development opportunities for their staff.
Creating online courses is gaining popularity to provide instruction and training for a broad spectrum of learners in various contexts.
Helpful Tips to Skyrocket Your Course Sales
With the online learning market still expanding, providing online courses is a flexible and helpful approach to generating income online.
Starting such a business doesn't have to cost much money up front. There are many things to teach, from basic knowledge like handling personal money to specialized knowledge like building websites and programming.
Selling online courses as an entrepreneur can help you expand your clientele, establish authority, and raise brand awareness. In the above section, we have seen many course creation platforms available, but traffic is essential. So what to do? Don't worry; here, we will give you some profit tips you can follow to sell your digital downloads profitably.
Identify Your Audience
Ascertain as much as you can about the demographics of your target market.
- What knowledge do they seek?
- Why must they get it?
- Is it to become compliant in their sector, acquire a necessary skill to enhance their prospects, or obtain a certification to further their careers?
- What degree of education do the learners you are targeting have? What prior understanding of the field are they likely to possess?
- This knowledge will enable you to design suitable courses—not too complex or simple.
People are willing to pay for such kinds of course material. They see value in it since it aids in their goal-achieving. Spend time in the forums frequented by your intended audience.
Learn about their preferences, needs, and complaints. Learn about the difficulties they encounter. This will assist you in shaping your course offer so that it more directly addresses their underlying motives and adds genuine value. Speak with a few of them; you might learn a lot, and it won't harm to ask. Make a suitable pitch for your content.
Choose Your Niche
Selecting a viable concept for an online course is the first step.
Courses are available on almost any topic. Many business owners have sold courses on various issues, including animation and job development for immigrants.
The truth is that going with what's popular is only sometimes the ideal method to choose a concept. A course on just about anything may be a success. You can make an online course that is profitable if there is a market for the course material.
Your training should focus on an area in which you have already succeeded. These outcomes may be your own or ones you've assisted others in achieving.
Build an Online Course Platform
To sell your course online across the web, you must choose a scalable and robust platform with emerging features that help you generate attractive investment yields.
Which course platform is right for you? Here are the basic steps you need to perform before picking up the best:
- Conduct market research
- Know your audience
- Focus on features and functionalities
- Evaluate each platform
- Go through its costing structure
- Choose a well-versed course platform
But if you are looking for an all-eggs-in-one-basket kind of platform to build courses, EdisonOS is the ultimate solution as the platform satisfies all the levels of features available on popular platforms, especially at the competitive pricing structure.
Harness the Power of Social Media, YouTube, and Facebook to Drive Traffic
When combined with Google, Facebook, and YouTube, YouTube might be an excellent platform to start your campaign. You can utilize YouTube, the second-largest search engine in the world with millions of views, to display your work so that others can have a look.
Producing and uploading promotional videos on YouTube can draw in viewers who were previously looking for videos of a similar nature. While discussing word-of-mouth marketing, Facebook ads and Google Adwords are also relevant in the modern era. People have enough time to improve their abilities because of the current dubious circumstances. Many people use social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram as their favorite pastimes.
One option to consider is promoting websites with comparable internet presence using Google Adwords. When using this strategy, remember that it can only be used on websites that are more well-known than your own. This will pique the interest of not only the more well-known website's potential audience but also that of its current user base.
Set up an Appealing Landing Page
The easiest way to get the right people to sign up for your course content is to establish an appealing landing page. This landing page can provide an overview of your course that explains what visitors can expect to learn from it.
This Wordstream course landing page is an excellent example of one:
Ensuring that as many people are on your course landing page as possible is crucial to ensuring it works for you rather than against you. To improve your landing page creation and raise your conversion rate, consider the following points:
- Use high-quality graphics like images and videos
- Keep it minimalistic and to the point
- Use social proof, if possible
- Make the most out of your copywriting skills
- Use a strong CTA (most important)
You can also integrate the checkout page within the landing page or link it to a separate page. In short, make the checkout process simple and swift.
Use Discounted Techniques
Once a substantial library of online courses has been established, giving bundle discounts can be an excellent way to upsell current customers while attracting new ones by highlighting the value proposition. Although the target market already trusts the brand, bundles can help attract new clients because they offer more material at a lower cost.
Depending on the holiday season, other discounting strategies may be employed. Look for deals like those on Black Friday or special discount coupons around Diwali or Christmas.
Leverage Influencer Marketing
One effective strategy for increasing interest in your online course is influencer marketing.
You can work with influencers with a sizable social media following to market your online course offerings to their intended audience.
You can contact an influencer to promote your online course on various social media channels. This will help you expand your company's reach, increase brand awareness, and create new leads because people are likelier to believe expert suggestions.
Strategies to Price Your Online Course
Selecting a price strategy for an online course might be difficult. If you overcharge for the course, you risk alienating potential clients. If you set the price too low, you might need to make more money to pay for the course's creation.
It's important to carefully examine how much to charge for your online course so that you can make a profit and still give your students something of value.
This section will discuss the top pricing techniques and vital information.
Research Your Close Competition
Investigate competitor's courses in your target market as a valuable pricing strategy. You must determine:
- What fees do other rivals of courses charge?
- What kinds of exercises and content are included in the course?
- How might your course differ?
We're not saying that you should set the price of your course according to what other people are charging. You are the boss of your course. You might introduce more involvement (community, one-on-one coaching, etc.), or your solution might offer a better way to help your customers solve their problems than currently available.
Because of your following, knowledge, and influence, you are more successful in your market than a rival. You can defend a higher course cost due to the combined impact of all these variables. Nonetheless, knowing who your competitors are is still a crucial step in the process. It will help you price your course in a distinctive way and give you a better knowledge of how other individuals in your industry are addressing pricing.
Market Demand
It's crucial to research and evaluate your course's demand before determining pricing. Examine the costs of comparable courses in your area of expertise. You can perform keyword research to learn what people are searching for regarding your course. Survey them or perform market research to determine how much your target audience would be ready to pay for a similar course.
Based on your findings, you can decide whether to charge more for your course or provide it for less to entice more students. Remember that while a lower price point might attract a more general audience, a higher one might draw a more specialized one.
Calculate the Time and Money Your Users will Save from Your Course.
Your students will gain from your excellent course in various ways, including time and money savings. As a marketer, you should emphasize this perceived value and quantify it to support the cost of your online course if you can.
Using the knowledge they have learned in your course, how much money could they earn or save? How much time would they save by enrolling in your course and avoiding the need to conduct independent research?
When you factor in each of these advantages, the cost of your course may become more reasonable. To draw in prospective students, emphasize these savings in your marketing materials.
The Idea of Premium
People pay for and actively seek out premium experiences. People are spending money on opulent vacations, fancy cars, and high-end goods everywhere you look. Not so with your online course. You can charge more if you package it to look like a high-end experience.
You can employ several techniques to convey the superiority and great worth of your course. These include having small cohorts or learning groups, having excellent production quality, designing and branding websites, offering product add-ons, networking features, and more.
Nevertheless, sustaining this premium notion with transformation, support, and high-quality content is critical.
Setting an online course's price may be difficult and involves considering several variables, including perceived value, market demand, competition, and the cost of developing the course.
Choosing how much to charge for your online course and when to start it requires careful planning, market analysis, and trial and error. Course creators can boost their chances of success and give their students value by exploring these elements and techniques thoroughly.
Primary Considerations When Choosing an Online Course Platform
Selecting an online learning platform might take a lot of work. The foundation of your eLearning platform is the LMS. It affects how your courses are delivered, how well they work for users, and how effective they are overall. Your users will have an effective learning aid if you select the appropriate platform.
Let's dive into the significant considerations to be taken into account before choosing the online course software.
Features and Functionalities
Before committing, confirming that an online course platform meets your current requirements is essential. Evaluate the course functionality first.
- Can you post every course that your students will be studying?
- Will you require an online community to carry on the course's learning discussion?
- You can ensure that your students have a seamless learning experience from beginning to end by offering flexible course delivery options.
Scalability is the final important feature of online course platforms to take into account. Depending on your business needs, you can stick with small cohorts or go for larger student bodies and try to enroll as many people as possible.
Hidden Expenses Associated with the Platform
You must consider the platform fee when developing your online course. Some platforms charge per user, whereas most provide monthly and discounted annual pricing. Consider these pricing factors before making your choice so that you may set the appropriate price for your online course.
Your time investment is another expense to take into account. You will spend less time learning a platform and creating your online courses the easier it is to utilize. Even if the financial charges can appear more important, you want to take the chance of working on the online course for a short time when concentrating on expanding your business.
Value Addition
The platform's ease of use should be one of your top priorities. Is it simple for students to use the course's user interface? For instance, older students may need help accessing the course's burdensome technology requirements, which are more complex. Make sure your online course platform can sufficiently simplify technology so that users can easily traverse it by consulting the research on your target audience.
Consider if the online course platform supports a variety of learning styles. A range of learning resources, including podcasts, reading materials, videos, live calls, and community involvement, are required for students.
Students will use various devices to access these materials; some may require offline learning to complete their coursework at their own pace. Select the platform that accommodates most aspects while keeping in mind the demands of your users.
Why is EdisonOS the best Online Course Creation Platform to Create & Sell Courses Online?
EdisonOS stands out as the premier choice for educators and entrepreneurs looking to create and sell online courses due to its comprehensive features, user-friendly interface, and robust support system. Whether you're a solo course creator or a large educational institution, EdisonOS offers unparalleled flexibility and customization options, enabling you to tailor your platform to meet your specific needs. With advanced analytics, adaptive testing, and white-label capabilities, EdisonOS ensures that you can provide a personalized and engaging learning experience while effectively managing and scaling your online education business.
Winding Up
The future's textbooks are found on eLearning platforms. It is worthwhile to devote your effort to this if your expertise closes a crucial gap.
The best platforms for online courses are those that provide all the features you require at a price that won't break the bank. They should provide resources that simplify the process of marketing, selling, and building brand awareness for courses.
And above all, what matters most?
Using the top online course systems, you can provide your learners with exciting and dynamic content.
Want to see how the online course platform works? Choose EdisonOS to design your online courses and experience how the platform lays the foundation for your winning online business.
Frequently Asked Questions on Online Courses Platform
Which is the best platform for creating online courses?
There are only so many platforms that work for all online course creators. Naturally, it varies on the kind you're making, your available funds, and the features you require. One of the most significant platforms available today for helping course developers grow their educational businesses as quickly and efficiently as possible is EdisonOS.
EdisonOS also emphasizes cohort-based learning, which experts have shown to be one of the best ways to change students' lives and produce a superior learning environment.
How can I promote my online course?
To create and market your online courses, get started with various marketing and promotional activities and spread the word about your courses.
What is an online course marketplace?
An online course marketplace is a digital platform where creators can design, host, and sell their online courses. Most markets offer an already-existing audience, allowing course creators to showcase their digital goods to a broad audience. Specific platforms include paid incentives, such as vouchers for sponsored advertisements, rewards for referrals, and more, to lure educators and entrepreneurs into joining their creator base.
Coursera, Skillshare, and Udemy are a few well-known markets.
What Features Are Included in Online Learning Platforms?
Most online platforms have some video component, with audio and video lectures as the primary teaching materials. Discussion boards, additional readings, tests, quizzes, and practical projects are possible features.
Which online course marketing approach is most effective?
The ideal place to start is if you already have a database of email addresses. Make sure the course you're promoting is relevant to your client's needs, contact them by name, and send regular emails promoting new courses from your email account instead of a marketing one.
How much should an online course cost?
Set the pricing of your course according to the worth of the available content and the profitability of your business. Don't lower the price of your course to compete with those that are free or inexpensive.
Which online courses should I sell?
It's important to know who your target market is when deciding which course to provide online. Instead of attempting to please everyone, identify your expertise and provide services only to that group. A learning designer can help you create client personas, conduct discovery sessions to better understand your market, and create learning courses that will help you reach your goals