For creators, creating and selling courses is one of the most lucrative ways of generating recurring revenue with just a single piece of content. Although creating, editing, and polishing a premium course is simple and straightforward, the most important part of selling courses online is still selecting the best online platforms to sell your premium courses.
Some of these platforms have some features that you might like while there are a few new contenders that offer a lot more for a lot lesser price.
In this blog post, I share with you 15+ best online platforms that you can use to sell your premium courses easily. Just a heads up, most of these platforms are premium offerings and there might be free options in the market but I haven’t listed them here because of the nature of business in context. Free platforms do come with a lot of limitations and shady business practices.
If you are in a hurry, you can select any platform from the highlighted box below.
TL;DR:
- Teachable:- Obviously the first choice of every online tutorial and coach. Checks all boxes when it comes to ease of running a course-selling business online. After the initial setup, you wouldn’t need to spend time tweaking things.
- Udemy:- A great platform to sell to hundreds of thousands of interested customers. Literally one of the most popular platforms out there. Many tutorials make 6-figure monthly selling courses here.
- Skillshare:- A great option if you don’t want to spend time setting up things. Everything is already set up and ready to go. Skillshare is heavily promoted on social media. So you will never have to search for the target audience.
- Podia:- It’s a free platform that lets you do many things for free. When you are ready, you can easily upgrade to a premium account and unlock a lot more powerful features.
- Kajabi:- Another great platform to get started with your content creator business. Suitable for any given niche and super-easy to get started.
Teachable (One of The Most Reliable Platforms To Sell Courses)
Without a doubt, Teachable is the most well-known and talked about course-selling platform out there. Go ahead and type in “Best place to sell your courses online” and you will see Teachable as the number #1 search result. That’s how popular and reliable Teachable is.
I have used Teachable to sell an affiliate course for my client and I can vouch for the hassle-free operation and setup process. Without a doubt, Teachable is one of the very best the market has to offer.
Yes, it is a premium platform and you will have to sign up with a premium account and get started.
Teachable Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Basic Plan | $39/mo OR $29/mo ($348/year) |
| Pro Plan | $119/mo OR $99/mo ($1,188/year) |
| Advanced | You need to contact the sales. |
Who is it suitable for?
It is particularly well-suited for educators, trainers, and subject matter experts who want to create and sell courses to a wider audience. Teachable provides a range of features and tools to help course creators design, market, and sell their courses, including customizable landing pages, payment processing, and integrations with popular email marketing platforms.
It is a good choice for anyone who is looking for an easy-to-use platform to create and sell online courses.
So, if you are someone who loves to teach but doesn’t want to spend time micro-managing all the processes in the back end, Teachable is the right choice for you.
Udemy
I am not aware of a single friend of mine who hasn’t heard of Udemy. It is — hands down — the most popular website to purchase affordable video courses on a wide range of subjects.
From Intraday Trading to Complete Python courses, you can find a course on just about any given topic.
But that’s not the reason why I recommend Udemy.
Udemy has been around for a while and it’s now synonymous with online courses. It shows up on the top spot of search engine results whenever you search for a premium online course.
This helps Udemy in attracting hundreds of thousands of customers to its portal each month.
Top-selling courses usually have more than 100K reviews. This means that the tutor could easily make more than a million dollars in a year. That’s just sensational.
Udemy’s algorithm will recommend your courses to people who may be interested in the topic and have already spent money on a closely related topic. This way, you get a lot of revenue as compared to hosting the course yourself and marketing it to potential customers.
But there are pros and cons of using Udemy and I will talk about them in a bit.
Pricing:
Pricing is the reason why many people shy away from using Udemy as their course-selling platform. Udemy doesn’t charge any fixed instructor fee. This means you can upload your course for free and get started with this platform.
So what’s the downside?
Well, there are two revenue-sharing modules that Udemy offers its instructors:
Sales occurring through instructor promotions: If you share an affiliate code or an affiliate link with your target audience and they signup for your course, you get 97% of the revenue generated through that particular sale.
Sales that do not occur through instructor promotions: If the sale is generated without any affiliate link or course coupon code, you will get only get 37% of the revenue.
Now that’s a sharp cut, don’t you think?
Unless you already have a strong presence online, you would most likely not be able to drive sales using your affiliate codes and links. So, you will most likely only make 37% of each sale.
If you are okay with such a share, Udemy is one of the best platforms to start selling your course if you don’t have any social media presence or a blog website with loyal followers.
SkillShare
When compared with Udemy and Teachable, Skillshare is a new platform. Skillshare is somewhat similar to Udemy as it hosts hundreds of creators. The platform itself is a pretty solid place to host your courses online. That said, I would recommend creators with some loyal fan following to upload their courses to this portal. If you don’t have any followers or any presence, you will not be able to make that much money on SkillShare.
SkillShare Pricing:
SkillShare is a membership portal. This means users cannot just purchase a single course or subscribe to a particular creator.
So the revenue is shared amongst all the creators but they do say that 50% of their revenue si given to the creators. Most of the courses hosted on this platform are basic and doesn’t go in-depth into any topic. So, it is safe to say that if you want to make money sharing surface level knowledge and experience, SkillShare is a good place to start with.
Furthermore, SkillShare usually pays a lot of sponsorship money to bring people to the platform.
Podia
Podia is somewhat similar to Teachable. It is widely touted as the number #1 teachable alternative.
Some of the features include website builder that lets to launch a customized webpage that could also act like a landing page for selling your courses, digital downloads, webinars, email marketing and countless platform integrations.
Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Free | FREE |
| Mover | $39/mo OR $33/mo(Yearly) |
| Shaker | $89/mo OR $75/mo(Yearly) |
| Earthquaker | $199/mo OR $166/mo(Yearly) |
If you are also tired of the steep pricing offered by Teachable, you should definitely check Podia.
Kajabi
Podia is a platform that you migrate from Teachable but what if you wanted to upgrade to a much more powerful platform than Teachable? You’d go to Kajabi. Kajabi is powerful yet easy-to-use and on top of that, it is also the most highly rated online course-selling platform.
Upgrading to a much more powerful platform will cost you more than what you are paying right now. But if you look at all the features and marketing capabilities, you’ll find Kajabi to be a value for money offering.
Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Basic | $149/mo OR $119/mo(Yearly) |
| Growth | $199/mo OR $159/mo(Yearly) |
| Pro | $399/mo OR $319/mo(Yearly) |
This platform is definitely not for people who are just getting started as online tutors. We’ve already been telling courses for a while and you have a lot of recurring revenue coming in, using Kajabi or upgrading to it makes good sense. That said, if you already use teachable, I don’t believe there is any need to upgrade to Kajabi if you have all of your marketing already set up. The reason why I recommend Kajabi is that it comes with a lot of marketing tools that help to keep everything related to ko selling under a single roof.
That said, you’ll still need to learn how to operate this platform and migrate all of your marketing-related processes manually to this platform. So I leave the decision-making over to you.
To conclude, I would say that Punjabi is an amazing platform for people who want a very powerful platform to sell their online courses. Managing countless marketing and user behavior tracking platforms is a Nightmare for some people and for those people, Kajabi is a great option in the market.
WordPress + LearnDash
As you know WordPress is one of the most popular blog content management systems out there. It is safe to say that it might be the most used blogging platform on this planet right now.
The data suggests that most of the blogs today are actually using wordpress as their content management system. Not just that, many of these websites are not actually blogs. There are eCommerce stores, education websites, online portfolios, membership portals, and the list goes on.
So it is quite of these that many people will actually want to host the blogs along with their online courses. Fortunately, with WordPress, you always have a solution to a problem.
If you are a wordpress enthusiast who also wants to run a business or sell your course on a membership platform, LearnDash is a WordPress plug-in that solves the problem for you.
Since it uses WordPress as a CMS, you can do just about anything with LearnDash. You can use your branding and customize it to align with your brand identity. There’s a drag and drop course builder, you can add quizzes after chapters/classes, create conditions such as a requirement to completely watch a video to proceed to the next chapter, set courses or classes or quizzes as prerequisites and much more.
LearnDash Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| 1 Site | $199/year |
| 10 Site | $399/year |
| Unlimited Sites | $799/year |
No matter how you put it, when you compare LearnDash with Teachable and all its alternatives, you’ll find LearnDash to be a more affordable and sensible investment.
But you should keep in mind that you will be responsible for the server hosting and server level troubleshooting. So, I would recommend LearnDash to people who already have a solid SysAdmin team at their disposal and just want a Learning Management System to take care of their online tutoring business.
LearnPress
LearnPress is a LMS plugin developed and maintained by Thimpress. Although it’s a free plugin to download and install on your WordPress website, you may have to purchase a few premium addons to unlock advanced features that you’d find in any course hosting platform such as Teachable and Kajabi.
Some of the pro Add-ons include WooCommerce integration, Live courses, Certificates, Gradebook, WPML, Paid Membership Pro, Stripe, 2-Checkout, Assignments and more.
LearnPress Pricing:
It’s a variable pricing module. You only pay for premium add-ons. On average, these modules could cost you somewhere around $15 – $50. They do have a pro-bundle that cost $299 and a semi-pro-bundle that cost $149.
With the free download version of this plugin, you get very basic functionality and a few options to customize the platform. I reckon you’d give it a test-drive with the free version and when you are ready, you can make a list of features that you want and purchase those particular add-ons.
This type of payment module is a double-edged sword.
On one hand, you get to choose features that you need and only spend money for them which keeps your website fast and zippy and on the other hand, you may have to invest a lot of money upfront if your website needs a lot of features.
For example, they are selling Stripe integration add-on, 2-Checkout integration add-on and Authorize.net add-on separately. If you want to add all of these checkout methods, you will have to purchase all three of these add-ons.
If all you want is a simple course-hosting platform that works well with your existing WordPress website and you want to only enable features that you need, LearnPress is the solution you are looking for.
TalentLMS
Let’s see that you are not a blogger or an influencer who is trying to make some money online. Let’s say that you are a corporate entity that’s looking for a platform to provide training to its new employees or existing ones. In this case, you would want to spend a lot of money on a platform that is targeted toward online creators. You will need something that has a lot of tools and options targeted toward corporate clients.
TalentLMS is one such platform.
There is virtually no setup that needs technical expertise and you also get options to customize the look and feel of the platform to suit your branding.
Many companies such as eBay and Duolingo have been using this platform to offer training to their customers and their teams.
This Speaks a lot about the overall performance of this platform as a learning management system.
Its intuitive training interface makes it really easy for a learner to go through the course and the ease of setup helps instructors to roll out a course within a few hours.
TalentLMS targeted towards corporate clients, the pricing structure is going to be a bit expensive.
You do get a free plan in which you have the ability to upload up to 10 courses and offer these courses to up to 5 users. So if you are somebody who has a small team, you can easily make it work with just the free plan.
TalentLMS Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Free | FREE |
| Starter | $89/mo OR $69/mo (Yearly) |
| Basic | $189/mo OR $149/mo (Yearly) |
| Plus | $369/mo OR $279/mo (Yearly) |
| Premium | $569/mo OR $459/mo (Yearly) |
TalentLMS is not suitable for content creators who want sell to hundreds of thousands of people. It is specifically designed for businesses that want to offer some level of training via a course to team members.
Furthermore, there’s an ACTIVE Plans section in the pricing table that I have not included in this listing as it for specific use case scenario.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds inherits a lot of features from Teachable and some of its alternatives. Unlike teachable, you can easily customize the look and feel of the entire platform using drag & drop builder and various other tools that are offered on LearnWorlds.
Some of the features include flexible courses, a website builder, video marketing tools, a mobile app builder, checkout and payment gateways, live sessions, a pop-up builder, and much more.
You can easily use this website to sell courses to your followers or your students. It is a flexible platform that is suitable for any given purpose.
LearnWorlds Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Starter | $29 or $24 |
| Pro Trainer | $99 or $79 |
| Learning Center | $299 or $249 |
| High volume & Corporate | Contact Their Sales |
The pricing is on the more affordable side and you’ll see that you get a lot more features for the money you spend.
FreshLearn
FreshLearn is specifically built for online creators to sell courses to their followers. So it is obvious that it will come back with a lot of features that influences can use to create intuitive courses.
Some of the features include a website builder coma on-demand courses coma blogs, sales page builder, page builder, an interesting feature that lets you turn your course into a game-like experience, and more.
FreshLearn Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Free | FREE |
| Pro | $29/mo OR $25/mo |
| No Brainer | $59/mo OR $41/mo |
FreshLearn is one of the most affordable learning management platforms that are available today. For search affordable prices you get a lot of features and options that you don’t even get with the self-hosted LMS platform.
Without a doubt, FreshLearn is great for people who are looking to sell to their followers and want a no-nonsense platform that could help them achieve that goal.
Thinkific
With Thinkific, you can create courses and even create learning communities depending on your needs. Thinkific is also targeted toward influencers who are searching for a platform that’s suitable for hosting their courses online.
Thinkific is used by Shopify and Later.com which adds a lot of credibility to their business. One interesting feature that I like about Thinkific is that you also get an option to select between membership and one-time sale options when it comes to selling courses.
Some of the features include custom web themes and domains, drips sequence and scheduling, live sessions and events, quizzes and assignments, community spaces, and cross-selling.
Thinkific Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Free | FREE |
| Basic | $99 OR $36 |
| Start | $99 OR $74 |
| Grow | $199 OR $149 |
Since it is also targeted toward influencers, the pricing structure is more affordable and you also get a free plan to get started.
With so many platforms to compete with, it is obvious that they have to give at least one plan as a free option to challenge the existing players in the game.
If you are somebody who is an online creator that wants to start selling courses online and create a membership portal, Thinkific is the best choice you will get at this price point.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks offers a platform suitable for community building, training, course hosting, podcasts and similiar profiles.
It’s a hybrid platform that helps in getting everything under a single roof.
Some of the features include Chat community, feed community, event or event series, cohort-only course, cohort-based courses, discorvery, web pages and more.
Mighty Networks Pricing:
| Plans | Price |
|---|---|
| The Community Plan | $39/mo OR $33/mo |
| The Business Plan | $119/mo OR $99/mo |
| Might Pro | Contact the team |
The unique value proposition would be the ability to launch your very own mobile apps without signing up for a new service.
Thrive Apprentice
Thrive Apprentice is a WordPress plugin that helps in converting your regular blog into a Learning Management System. It’s also the #1 rated WordPress membership plugin in the market.
Some of the features include drag & drop course builder which helps in adding just the right features to your course dashboard, course organization, wide range of media support, add course content on the fly and visual editor.
Thrive Apprentice Pricing:
| Plan | Price |
|---|---|
| Thrive Suite | $299/Year |
| Thrive Apprentice | $147/Year |
When you consider the features and customization tools, these price tags make sense a lot.
The Thrive Suite will unlock a lot of other products from ThriveThemes such as:
- Thrive Apprentice
- Automator
- Architect
- Leads
- Quiz Builder
- Ultimatum and more
You can check out all the features right on the product page.
Teachery
Teachery is a simple and straightforward platform to sell courses online. It does one thing brilliantly and that’s provide you with a platform to sell your courses.
You don’t get marketing tools or any other bells & whistles that you may or may not need. There’s one pricing option that unlocks everything.
To be honest, it is a complete platform for people who are looking for a place to sell their courses. The simple dashboard and easy-to-setup process helps in establishing a course portal within a few hours.
Teachery Pricing:
Teachery comes with a single pricing plan. You can sign up for the monthly plan for just $49/mo. If you prefer to sign up for the yearly plan, you can get the same plan for just $470/Year.
Signin up to either of the above-mentioned plans will unlock all the features that they have.
I strongly recommend Teachery to teachers, influencers and bloggers.
YouTube
WOAH! You can use YouTube to sell courses? WHAT??
Yes and no.
You can use YouTube to offer premium content to specific users who’ve signed for your premium channel membership but you cannot sell a course on the channel.
Instead of that, you could use content restriction freature that YouTube offers. You can now decide if a specific video is only available for your paid members.
You don’t have to spend money but YouTube will take a small cut from the paid membership revenue. For that cut, you will get a solid platform and hassle-free payments management.
FAQs:
What features should you look for in a platform to sell courses?
I usually look for a couple of features in a platform that I can use to sell my courses online. These features are:
– Simple setup process.
– In-depth documentation.
– Great customer support.
– Fast page loading speed.
– Payment gateway integration.
– Membership options.
– Landing page designing options.
What is a Learning Management System?
A learning management system is just a content management system that has a lot of features specifically designed to host teaching and learning processes. In almost any learning management system, you’ll find the ability to upload videos, create membership plans and integrate a payment gateway system.
Since it is a learning management system, you will have certain unique features that you would find in a content management system like WordPress right out of the box.
Is WordPress good enough to sell courses?
You wouldn’t want to use WordPress right out of the box to sell courses online because it does not come back with any learning management system features by default.
That said, you can easily extend wordpress using plugins. Some of these plugins have already been mentioned in this article. With such plugins, you can easily convert your regular wordpress into a learning management system with all the bells and whistles that you need.
Self-hosted platforms Vs. Cloud hosted platforms?
If you are somebody with no technical skills, I would strongly recommend you go with a cloud-hosted learning management platform. You will not have to deal with server-side issues and maintenance.
If something goes wrong you can easily get in touch with the customer support provided by that particular platform.
What’s the best video resolution for online courses?
Today, if you don’t offer full HD videos in your courses, most users will find it odd. Full HD videos are pretty standard these days.
Fortunately, you don’t actually need a DSLR how to create search videos. You can easily use your smartphone to Recorder Full HD video.
Who should spend money on an yearly plan?
If you are pretty sure that you are going to be selling a lot of copies of your courses and you don’t want to deal with the monthly plans, you can go for the yearly plan. I would recommend you not sign up for a yearly plan if this is the first time you are selling a course online.
If you don’t get any traction, you’ll be wasting a lot more money on subscriptions.
Final Thought: Best platforms to sell courses online.
Every single platform that I have mentioned in this article is selected based on its features and the target audience. So no matter what type of user you are, you will find at least one of these platforms to be useful.
Most of these are cloud-hosted platforms which means that you don’t have to purchase server resources separately, while some of these platforms are powered by WordPress. I’ve included these platforms because I wanted to give options to people who want control over their learning management system.
Although cloud-hosted LMS’ offer a lot of helpful features and tools, they do not give you a lot of control. Some LMS platforms don’t even let you customize the branding and this becomes a problem if you are offering a high-ticket product. Anything that is powered by WordPress will let you customize the branding and even if they don’t let you customize the branding, you can simply hire a WordPress developer to get that done.
So select the best platform to sell your courses online from this list and get started with teaching online and making a lot of money.