Whether you are teaching on digital marketing, software engineering, investing, nutrition, business management, finance, fashion, software testing, math, science, English, blogging, etc. you will need the right platform.
Selecting the wrong platform can limit how much money that you make and it can also affect the full potential of what your students can be getting.
Today I will help you to find the best online course platforms to help you to succeed.
Create and sell online courses
Many people don’t know that you can make money selling online courses. There are some people who making hundreds of thousands of dollars and some even millions with their online courses. In 2014 alone John Azzi and Eliot Arntz made over $1 million dollars on their app development course. The best time to start making money with your course is always today!
Teachable
Teachable exploded on the scene in 2013. The company was founded by Ankur Nagpal and Conrad Wadowski. Since the start of their creation Teachable has made a huge impact in the course creation industry. Teachable is by far the most popular eLearning platform today. The company boasts over $15 million students uploaded and over 154,000 active courses. Some of the biggest names in the blogging world support Teachable.com which says a lot about the Teachable brand.
Bloggers such as Pat Flynn, Carrie-Anne Moss, Melyssa Griffen, and Peter Nowell are all using Teachable for their online courses. Patt Flynn made almost $170,000 on his first two courses with Teachable.
Teachable allows you to sell online courses from your own website. Their prices start at $29 a month when you purchase yearly. They also have $79 plans and $499 plans depending on your needs. When you compare plans, you will notice that all plans offer unlimited video, unlimited courses, unlimited students, unlimited hosting, integrated payment processing, student management, discussion forums, and basic quizzes.
Teachable is easily the easiest platform to use due to their easy website customization features, integrated affiliate marketing, integrated email marketing, coupon codes, etc. Is Teachable worth it? Yes! I encourage you to take advantage of their many awesome features today. You will be given a 30-day refund policy guarantee which is similar to a free trial.
Thinkific
When you compare Teachable and Thinkific you will notice that although Thinkific is a great platform. Teachable is slightly better in price and features. Thinkific was founded over 11 years ago by Greg Smith. It is one of the most popular online course services in the world. Today the company has 70 dedicated employees and 15 countries represented. Thinkific costs more than Teachable. However, with Thinkific there will be no transaction fees with their Basic plan. Their annual plan costs $39 to $399 a month.
Thinkific also offers month to month pricing which is going to cost slightly more every month. Thinkific’s core features includes instant access to your funds, full e-Commerce, student notifications, upsell offers, secure cloud hosting, and more. Thinkific allows you to easily build your courses.
Whether you need help with a membership site, professional development, software and technology, health & fitness, etc. you will not have any problems with the Thinkific platform. Customization can easily align perfectly with your brand. Dragging and dropping on Thinkific is easy. Is Thinkific better than Teachable? No! Teachable offers more features for their instructors that you do not have to pay for. With that said Thinkific is a great option for instructors.
Podia
Podia is a fairly young company that was founded by Spencer Fry in 2014. Today the company has over 15,000 creators. Podia offers simple and straightforward pricing. They even offer a free 14-day trial with no credit card required. You can start using their platform for $39 a month. Their Mover plan which is their Basic plan comes with all the features that you would expect such as digital downloads and 24/7 support.
With Podia no third-party plugins will be required. All plans offer unlimited everything such as unlimited products, customers, emails, and more. When you pay annually you will receive two months free. Their Shaker plan is pricier, but it comes with more features. Along with features found in their basic package such as online courses, digital downloads, and marketing tools, this plan offers a plethora of other features. The Shaker plan which starts at $79 allows you to build a sales team through affiliate marketing.
You set the prices on how much you would like to pay your affiliates. If you want the ability to add third-party codes, then the Shaker plan is perfect for you. You will easily be able to Facebook Pixel, Sumo, and more codes. The last feature that this plan offers is free migration, which is perfect for moving your content. Podia excels at support. You can get in touch with Podia representatives through live chat, email, Facebook, and Twitter. You can also learn more about their platform by watching their informative YouTube videos.
Kajabi
Kajabi was founded in 2010 by Travis Rosser and Kenny Rueter. When you compare Kajabi and Teachable we notice huge discrepancies in their prices. Teachable’s yearly plans start at $29 a month which is a steal of a price.
However, Kajabi on the other hand starts at $119 for their basic plan. This costs more than Teachable and Thinkific combined. Kajabi’s most popular plan is their Growth plan which costs $159 a month. Their most expensive plan that comes with the most features is their Pro Plan. The Pro Plan costs $319 a month and allows you to have 100 products, 100 pipelines, unlimited landing pages, 2,000,000 marketing emails, and 20,000 active members.
Similar to Teachable Kajabi comes with a built-in blog which is perfect for establishing your brand and building awareness. With Kajabi front users have an easy to use platform with awesome features. Another awesome plus of Kajabi is that they have great customer service and an awesome help center. You can easily learn more about using your own domain, changing your plan, web hosting, and more. Kajabi is more recommended if you content that is ready to go. Although they are a good platform I believe that you can get a better platform elsewhere.
Udemy
Eren Bali founded Udemy in 2010. Everyone knows about Udemy. The company has been discussed in many large brands such as The New York Times, Fast Company, TechCrunch, Mashable, and Forbes. Today Udemy has over 20,000 instructs and over 12 million students.
Udemy is not only a great platform for teachers but it’s also a great platform for online learning. Similar to Coursera, Udemy offers thousands of courses for students to take advantage of at an affordable price. Udemy focuses on short courses, but offers courses of all types. Whether you are offering a free or paid course Udemy doesn’t cost anything.
However, you will be charged 50% of your revenue and there are restrictions while using this platform. Their recently changed pricing structure has made it harder for instructors. Platforms such as Teachable and Thinkific are far more profitable and offer more features that instructors can take advantage of such as no course pricing restrictions.
Ruzuku
Ruzuku was founded in 2012 by Abe Crystal and Rick Cecil. With Ruzuku you will have no transaction fees, unlimited students, and courses. Their basic plan is not as affordable as some of the other plans on this list, but there are some things to love such as unlimited video, audio, and data hosting. Their basic Bootstrapper plan costs $74.75 /mo. Their Up-and-Comer plan will cost you $83.08 /mo. This plan offers unlimited webinars, polls and quizzes, and subscriptions & payment plans.
Their University plan costs $125/mo. The great thing about this plan is that instead of having a single instructor, you will be able to have multiple instructors and multiple site managers. If you plan on selling courses all around the world, then you will love Ruzuku because their servers are extremely fast and they offer a global CDN.
A content delivery network speeds up the delivery of your content which makes for happier students. Some features that Ruzuku offers that you will love is integration with Mailchimp, customized coupons, email announcements, teleconference hosting, Q&A and forum, and more. Ruzuku is a decent platform that offers a 14-day free trial. However, for the price I believe that you can get a better platform.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is in innovative course building platform that was founded in 2014 by Panos Siozos. LearnWorlds received 4 out of 5 stars from TrustPilot. LearnWorlds offers unique features to instructors such as language creation and the ability to select different languages. If you desire to modify your course you can easily get under the hood with advanced CSS & Javascript editing.
If you need an interactive e-book, then you will be glad to know that LearnWorlds offers various ways to add annotations. Their Starter plan is for beginner course creators and will cost you $24 a month. For every course that you sell you will have to pay a $5 fee. This plan allows for a custom domain, 4 payment gateways including PayPal, Stripe, 2Checkout, and Shopify. This plan even comes with a free SSL certificate and drip feed courses.
If you need a little more to work with, then you can select their Pro Trainer plan which costs $74 /mo. This plan removes all transaction fees and allows you to have 5 admins/instructors instead of one. This plan also gives you premium integrations, question banks, and onboarding call. Their most popular platform is their Learning Center plan which costs $224/mo. This plan allows for bulk student upload, full white-label options, integrations with API, and more. If you need something more than their Learning Center plan, then you can call LearnWorlds and discuss more about their High-Volume plan.
Teachery
Teachery was founded in 2014 by Gerlando Piro and Jason Zook. Teachery is similar to Teachable in many ways. However, Teachery does not allow you to offer quizzes. Having no ability to offer quizzes is a drawback for any instructor. Another area that Teachery falls short in that Teachable doesn’t is with course bundles.
Teachery does not allow you to bundle and give deals to your students. Teachery costs $49 a month. If you select their annual plan you will be able to save 20%. Their annual plan is going to cost you $470 a year. With both plans you will not have to worry about any fees.
With both Teachery plans you will receive unlimited courses, unlimited students, unlimited landings, custom domains, custom HTML support, promo codes, and more. Teachery does offer a few good features but there are better companies on this list for you to choose from.
Kartra
Kartra was founded in 2011 by Andy Jenkins & Mike Filsaime. With Kartra you will be able to create magnificent high converting pages. Kartra has four plans that you are able to choose from. Their Starter plan is going to cost you $89 per month. Their Silver plan is going to cost you $199 per month. For an extra $100 you can sign up with their Gold plan at $299 a month. Their Platinum plan is their largest plan and will cost you $499 a month. With Kartra you will be able to receive a 14-day trial for $1. Kartra is a good platform, but it is more for building funnels.
Click4Course
Click4Course.com allows you to make training courses online. All Click4Course plans will come with free custom branding. The Unlimited Learners will cost you $79 a month. Every course on this plan that is sold will result in a 10% transaction fee. This is among the highest transaction fees in the industry. If you need more perks, then you can sign up for corporate training, which is going to either cost you $99, $199, or $499 a month depending on your business needs. All plans come with pre-requisite courses, video and PowerPoint support, bulk upload / enroll learners, require passing score, automated learner notifications, export learners, registration fields, and more. All Click4Course plans come with a 30-day refund guarantee.
CourseCraft
CourseCraft was founded in 2012. It’s not as big as some of the other names on this list. However, CoueseCraft gets the job done. CourseCraft gives you everything that you need to build the perfect online courses without having to be a techie.
With CourseCraft website customization is simple. All that you will need to do is choose a color scheme, upload a few things, write a landing page, and you are ready to go. If you run into any trouble while building your course their knowledgeable team will walk you through the process step-by-step.
CourseCraft is cheap compared to some of the companies on this list. They do have a free plan that comes with instant payouts, drip lesson scheduling, and mailing list integrations, but their free plan has an undesirable 9% transaction fee. Their Club plan costs $23 per month when billed annually and comes with all free features.
This plan has a 5% transaction fee, unlimited participants, auto participant geolocation, custom branding, and more. Their largest plan is their Society plan. With this plan you will not have to worry about any transaction fees and you will be able to work with collaborators. The Society plan is going to cost you $47 per month when billed annually. CourseCraft also offers month to month pricing if don’t want to pay yearly.
WizIQ
WizIQ is one of the oldest educational platforms on this list. WizIQ was founded in 2007 by Harman Singh and they have been featured on TechCrunch, Edsurge, Mashable, and The Journal. With WizIQ you will be given a virtual classroom, which is great for live online classes. Student can attend live classes on their smartphones and tablets. You will even be able to record live classes. WizIQ prices range anywhere from $20 to $1058. With WizIQ you are able to customize plans depending on your needs. You will receive LMS eCommerce and eLearning Analytics. Other features that you will love include iOS and Android learner apps. You will also be given plugin & module integrations such as Drupal, Moodle, Joomla, and WordPress plugins.
My recommendation
There are many awesome companies on this list. However, I strongly recommend choosing Teachable which is the most popular platform on this list. Teachable offers an affordable price with an abundance of features to increase sales and keep your students engaged that you will not have to worry about paying for. I encourage you to sign up today and build your course.