20 Best Online Course Platforms: Reviewed & Compared

Are you a teacher who wants to communicate ideas and inspire young minds? Or are you an authority with specialized knowledge in any domain who wants to share it with others? Now you can translate your dream into a reality.

The best online course platforms can help you easily create and sell online courses. This is significant because, in the U.S. alone, millions of people pursue online education. 

Growing trends like remote training and distance learning have only increased the demand for online courses as they let participants learn from the comfort of their homes.

To help you make the right software choices and ensure that you don’t choose a subpar solution, here is an updated list of the 20 best online course platforms you can consider.

Watch: What is an eLearning Course Authoring Tool?

A Quick Comparison Table of the Best Online Course Platforms

20 Best Online Course Platforms	Why Is It Best?	Pricing
ProProfs Training Maker	Course Creation Quizzes & Surveys Discussion & Collaboration Learning Reports & Analytics White-Labeling eCommerce	Forever free for up to 10 learners. Paid plan starts at $1.99/active learner/month for large teams.
Teachable	Course Authoring Tests & Quizzes eCommerce Course Backup Offline Access	Starts at $0. (Limited to 1 course)
Podia	Creating Courses Digital Downloads Quizzes Storefront Email Marketing	Starts at $33/month.
Udemy	Course Creation Resources Course Catalog Video Content Course Marketing Tools for Instructors	Get in touch with the company for a quote.
Thinkific	Custom Course Creation Course Website Data Security Multilingual Support Drip Release Content	Starts at $0. (Limited to 1 course)
LearnWorlds	Building Awesome Courses Marketing & Selling Courses School Website Powerful Testing Engine Excellent Support Team	Starts at $24/month.
Kajabi	Website Building Marketing Campaigns Selling Courses Video Hosting Quizzes & Assessments	Starts at $119.
LearnDash	Course Builder Advanced Quizzing Multimedia Support Expert Consulting Selling Courses	Starts at $24/month.
WizIQ	Online Course Creation Tests & Assessments Mobile Learning Reports & Analytics LMS eCommerce	Get in touch with the company for a quote.
Ruzuku	Course Creation Course Management Webinars & Teleconferences Marketing & Sales Seamless Payment	Starts at $0. (Limited to 5 learners)
Kartra	Drag & Drop Interface Beautiful Templates Upload files, audio & videos Drip Feeding Progress Tracking	Starts at $99/month.
Academy of Mine	Sales Page Builder Landing Page Course Categories & Filters Integrated Dashboard Award-Winning Support	Starts at $599/month.
Systeme.io	Course Site Course Marketing & Selling Fully Integrated Sales Funnel Builder Marketing Automation	Starts at $0. (Limited to 1 course)
TrainerCentral	Course Builder Drip Scheduler Website Builder Learner Portal Course Certificates	Starts at $0. (Up to 3 courses only)
TalentLMS	Drag & Drop Course Builder Task Automation Custom Reports Course Catalog & Subscription Offers Stripe and PayPal platforms	Starts at $69/month
Teachmore	Simple Course Builder High-Converting Website Unlimited Sales Pages Mobile Apps Multiple Currencies	Starts at ₹2,500.
Pathwright	Lesson Path Builder Course Customization Access Control Subscription Plans Discount Codes	Starts at $89/month.
Simplero	Website Builder Course Builder Affiliate Program Email Marketing & Automation Subscriptions & Payments	Starts at $59/month.
OpenSesame	Course Bundles Seller Account Course Validation Course Marketing Tracking Sales	Get in touch with the company for a quote.
iSpring Suite	Fast Toolkit Video Studio PowerPoint Integration Ready Templates & Assets Course Marketplace	Starts at $620/year.

Before we get down to the nitty-gritty of these online course platforms, let’s understand the following:

What Is an Online Course Platform?

An online course platform is a cloud or web-based platform to create, manage, and sell courses online. The courses can be for business professionals or students. Some of these platforms also offer ready-made courses for free or paid.

You can sell courses on these platforms individually or as bundles. Business websites, membership sites, subscription plans, affiliate programs, landing pages, and payment processors are some of the features that these online course building platforms support.

Watch: How to Create Online Training Courses

How to Choose the Right Online Course Platform

Since online course builders are basically designed to assist users in creating and sharing or selling courses, they should fulfill these needs for software buyers.

Consider the following characteristics that an ideal online course platform should possess:

• Intuitive nature so that you can start using it right away, increasing the adoption rate
• Offering all the essential tools in one place to remove the need to consider additional solutions
• Support for course creation in different formats without requiring any coding experience
• Customization, marketing, selling, and payment processing
• Engaging and sustainable learning experiences
• It should let you build a website that grows with your course business
• The platform should be accessible anytime, anywhere, and on any device
• A dedicated online community should support and add value to your efforts
• Membership, subscriptions, and affiliates are other elements to consider

Watch: How to Choose the Best LMS Software for Employee Training

How to Create an Online Course in 10 Easy Steps

Here are some best practices you should follow to create impactful online courses easily and quickly.

1. Know the Market Demand

Before you launch a course online, it’s necessary to gauge the market demand for it. The idea is to verify people are looking for such courses before you invest time and money.

You can create a minimum viable product (MVP), such as a mini-course, with just enough features to validate your course ideas. 

2. Understand Your Ideal Audience

This is another consideration to make in the early stages. You should know your ideal customer profile (ICP) before you think up a topic and start creating a course.

Identify your potential customers’ pain points and the solutions they are expecting. Your customers should be able to overcome their challenges through your course.

3. Choose a Topic for Your Course

Always choose a course topic that you’re knowledgeable and passionate about. When you’ve the expertise and interest in the topic you choose, you will be able to do justice to it. People will also find your course credible.

4. Outline Your Course Content

Whether it is an online course or an assessment, the presentation matters a lot. Come up with a clear course outline that shows your audience what they can learn in your course.

You can create modules consisting of chapters. Each chapter can be made up of text, videos, presentations, PDF files, audio, recorded webinars, images, etc.

5. Select a Course Format

With online courses, there are two possible formats – fully online and blended or hybrid.

Whichever format you choose, it should be based on your learners’ preference. Factor in their learning styles and convenience.

6. Pre-Sell Your Course

It is a good idea to share the course topic and outline with your target audience before you launch your full-fledged course. This will give them an idea of what they will learn in the course.

It also provides an opportunity for pre-orders before the actual rollout, which lets you know how many people are willing to buy your course.

7. Set a Price

The price of your course will depend on the niche, topic, and audience type. For example, a course on advanced programming will cost more than a course on how to learn blog writing.

Your authority on the subject and marketing cost are other factors that should be reflected in the final pricing.

To avoid unrealistic pricing, conduct market research on how your competitors are setting the prices of their products.

8. Choose the Right Course Platform

The platform you choose will have a huge impact on how you create, manage, and sell courses. Many of these solutions share similar features, which makes it challenging to pick one among them.

That said, there are some criteria for selecting the best online course platform. It should be user-friendly and customizable. Editable and ready-to-use courses for quick course development, a virtual classroom for easy course sharing, and a report & analytics dashboard for advanced sales data are also a must.

Support for eCommerce, marketing, and secure payment gateways are other considerations. In short, the platform should provide integrated solutions to meet all your needs.

Watch: How to Choose the Best Corporate Training Platform

9. Launch and Promote Your Course

Now you’ve come to a key stage of the entire process – launching the course. This step runs concurrently with marketing.

To improve your sales, make sure you advertise your product through multiple channels. You can use email marketing, social media, paid ads, and search engine optimization.

Once these strategies bring in customers, you can sell your course to them and start earning steadily.

10. Collect Feedback

Feedback from satisfied customers is a great way to boost your online course business. Their testimonials can convince prospective customers of your course’s value.

For this, you can deploy course feedback surveys,  which are easy, fast, and engaging. Frame the right questions to elicit clear and specific responses from your audience. Such feedback will enable you to improve your course content or delivery method and provide better learning experiences in the future.

Now that these questions are out of the way, let’s return to our main topic and look closely at each of these 20 online course platforms. This will give you a fair idea of why they are the best on the market.

20 Best Online Course Platforms

1. ProProfs Training Maker

ProProfs Training Maker is an all-in-one solution that enables users to create, design, and sell online courses. It is one of the best online course creation platforms. You can use it to develop delightful courses, lessons, and tests. The best part is that ProProfs Training Maker is super easy to use.

You can create an online course from scratch using existing materials. Or else, you can leverage a library of 100+ customizable courses and templates on harassment, HR, leadership & management, employee skills, and more.

Add quizzes, images, videos, presentations, surveys, and other engaging elements to your courses. Make your course videos interactive by adding questions to them. This also ensures learners are paying attention to video lessons.

The white-label feature lets you promote your work under your brand.

As the best platform to create and sell online courses, ProProfs Training Maker lets you monetize courses easily by listing them on ProProfs Store or your website. Use our secure payment gateway or your Stripe account. You can also add coupons and other promotional strategies.

Features

Course Builder

Create any type of course using powerful online course builder software and deliver a world-class learning experience. Add custom designs for better engagement.

Quizzes & Surveys

Boost learners’ motivation and help them recall what they learned with engaging quizzes. Gather feedback with surveys and improve course effectiveness.

Discussion & Collaboration

Facilitate peer-to-peer learning by enabling collaboration and discussion. Provide a Q&A-based and learning-focused online community.

Learning Reports & Analytics

View advanced sales reports such as items sold, dates, and buyer’s details. Find out the total number of transactions and earnings, weekly or monthly. Download buyers’ data for marketing purposes.

White-Labeling

In addition to 100+ customization options, ProProfs Training Maker supports white-label to let you promote and sell courses under your logo and brand messaging.

eCommerce

Create and sell online courses, exams, and tests. Reach out to millions of potential buyers around the world. Multiple currencies supported.

Watch: How to Sell Your Quizzes and Courses Online

Pros

Easy to use

Templates to build any course

English, Spanish & 70+ other languages

Pricing: Forever free plan (up to 10 learners). Paid plan starts at $1.99/learner/month for large teams. No hidden charges. 15-day money-back guarantee.

 

Watch: How to Choose the Best SaaS LMS Software

2. Teachable

As one of the best LMS platforms, Teachable provides a unique solution to create a course, video lesson, or quiz and develop a brand identity around it. It lets you build and launch courses easily while it takes care of all the technical aspects. Individual course creators and coaching businesses rely on Teachable to create and sell courses on different subjects.

Teachable makes it easy for everyone to use it – with or without technical skills. It offers painless customization options so that users can create courses and teach learners how they want. Depending on your needs, you can choose from different plans, namely basic, professional, and business.

Features

Course Authoring

Easily set up your school and start creating courses right away. Add lessons and modules to the curriculum. Give your course a name and category and insert the author bio and other details.

Tests & Quizzes

Keep your learners engaged throughout a course by adding quizzes and tests. Provide simple, multiple-choice quizzes and make them graded or ungraded.

Offline Access

Offer a better learning experience to your learners by enabling offline viewing of online content. Teachable’s iOS app enables learners to download course content for offline access later. 

Content Drip

Schedule the release of your online content on specific days or dates through dripping. Release content, for example, after learners complete their enrollment or incrementally module after m

odule.

Sales Page

Sell courses using an auto-generated sales page. Use the sales page to collect email addresses from your traffic and engage with them after you launch your courses.

Pros

Unlimited courses

Various plans to choose from

Great customer service

Pricing: Starts at $0. Unlimited learners.

3. Podia

Online course platform Podia offers intriguing features for hosting an unlimited number of courses, including video content. There’s no need to pay different prices for multiple platforms such as online course creation, memberships, and email marketing. Podia treats it as one platform, one price.

As a full-featured online storefront, Podia enables you to create, house, and sell online courses easily. It does all the heavy lifting for you to maximize your audience’s learning experience.

A 24×7 help center ensures that you get the answers to all your questions so that you can kick-start your online course journey with the platform minus all the headaches.

Features

Course Authoring

Showcase your knowledge by creating courses for people who want to learn. Set a price for your courses. Offer upsells to increase your revenue.

Digital Downloads

Podia supports downloadable digital products, including text, images, audio files, and PSDs. Use them as the initial step to acquire new customers and grow them over time.

Quizzes

Reinforce what your learners learn from your course. Create multiple-choice quizzes to assess the learners better. Identify knowledge gaps and improve the effectiveness of your course.

Storefront

Create digital storefronts and display all your products. Add your logo and custom colors to the storefront for branding purposes. No technical know-how or third-party plugins needed.

Email Marketing

Send any type of business email to your customers. Set up automatic emails to respond to signups, purchases, and unsubscribing. Use professional-looking email templates.

Pros

It’s an easy-to-use platform

Integrated email marketing

Fairly priced

Pricing: Starts at $33/month. Unlimited courses.

4. Udemy

Udemy is considered the largest eLearning platform, boasting more than 30 million learners enrolled in 100,000 courses. It is a teaching and learning platform that you can use to share your knowledge with a global audience. You can simply create a profile as an instructor and upload courses to this platform.

Being one of the best online course delivery platforms, it offers wonderful resources for instructors, for example trending course topics that it updates regularly. Udemy provides over a dozen topics – from professional skills to lifestyle and hobbies. The video player comes with numerous controls, such as subtitles in multiple languages and auto-scroll transcripts.

Features

Course Creation Resources

Leverage one of the largest online course marketplaces with a huge course catalog. Connect with learners around the world by creating and offering them courses. Easily make money online.

Video Content

Give your learners the best learning experiences with quality video content. Let them watch, pause, and replay the videos for self-paced learning.

Course Marketing

Maximize learner enrollment and course sales through the platform’s effective course marketing functionality. Use email campaigns, retargeting ads, external partner promotions, and more.

Tools for Instructors

Get all the necessary tools and insights to create the right course for the right audience. Find out the average and top incomes for instructors on different course topics.

Course Quality Checklist

Follow course quality guidelines to produce ideal courses. Make sure you present your courses to engage learners at the maximum level. Let your courses stand out in the crowd.

Pros

Lifetime access to courses

Content customization

Low cost

No accredited certificates

Pricing: Get in touch with the company for a quote.

5. Thinkific

Thinkific is among the best online course platforms to create, market, and sell online courses. It has everything you need to run an educational business, scale it, and grow your audience. Build a course, add quizzes, upload videos, set a price, and schedule lessons to optimize the learning experience.

This online course software is easy to set up. You can customize hundreds of features to suit your course business. Everything from the landing page to the learning environment was designed to facilitate an exceptional learning experience and sustainability. Accomplish your goal of course creation and sales faster with Thinkific.

Features

Custom Course Creation

Easily create custom courses that speak of your brand. Keep your learners engaged with rich multimedia content. Come up with an awesome and in-demand curriculum.

Course Website

Build a stunning website to sell your courses. Use different design elements, such as professionally designed themes. Organize and rearrange the web pages effortlessly.

Data Security

Keep your course data safe. Leverage secure cloud hosting with 99.9% uptime and daily backups. Win the trust of your audience with built-in SSL certificates.

Multilingual Support

Either set a default website language or let learners choose a preferred language. This means all the menus and buttons will appear in the chosen language. Give your learners the best user experience.

Drip Release Content

Drip schedule your course content. Control what your learners have access to and when. This feature is available in all paid Thinkific plans.

Pros

Fast course delivery

Large number of plans

Clean UI

Pricing: Starts at $0. 1 admin account & unlimited learners.

6. LearnWorlds

Besides being one of the best software for online training, LearnWorlds offers a complete solution for creating, marketing, and selling online courses. Whether you’re an individual instructor looking to capitalize on your knowledge by selling courses, or a business that needs to train employees and partners, the platform has got you covered.

You can build a school website, create courses, market them, sell them, and get any help you need in the process. Provide various learning activities ranging from quizzes to videos, eBooks, SoundCloud, and SlideShare. LearnWorlds can help you create comprehensive, creative, and future-proof learning experiences.

Features

Authoring Tool

Build amazing courses that capture learners’ attention. Maximize engagement and learning efficiency. Add video content and provide automatic transcripts.

School Website

Design and develop a high-converting school website. Choose the look and feel to suit your and your audience’s needs. Use one of the hundreds of eye-catching design templates.

Course Marketing & Selling

LearnWorlds offers a complete eCommerce solution featuring built-in marketing and sales tools. Use them to grow your customer base and increase your revenue. Connect these tools with other third-party marketing tools.

Powerful Testing Engine

Use a sophisticated testing & assessment engine to deploy various tests and measure different learning needs. You can access question banks and formal & informal and graded & ungraded question types.

Stellar Support Team

Get the benefit of a 24×7 customer support team that is always ready to help you and become a partner in your success. Securely grow your online course platform with help at every step of the process.

Pros

Intuitive & stable

No cap on courses

Quick to respond

Pricing: Starts at $24/month. 1 admin.

7. Kajabi

Kajabi has everything you need in one place to grow your online course business by selling the best courses online. Build a professional and SEO-optimized website to sell your products. Integration with top payment systems makes transactions easy and fast.

Automated marketing makes it easy to grow your subscribers’ list. Kajabi scores high in ease of use, creating engaging content, marketing & sales, and customer support.

You can also run a blog using this platform. Complete control over policies, learners’ data, and course pricing is another significant aspect of Kajabi.

Features

Website Builder

Use simple drag-and-drop tools to build beautiful online course websites. Upload all your files in a safe and secure place. Grow your brand and make it discoverable with a custom domain.

Marketing Campaigns

Send personalized and automated emails to prospects. Increase the chances of conversion by connecting with the right people at the right time. Build marketing pipelines and increase sales.

Course Sales

Sell your courses with the help of built-in features. Offer free trials to learners and turn them into paying customers. Accept payment in any currency without any hassle.

Video Hosting

Upload and host an unlimited number of videos with Wistia. No need to worry about bandwidth or storage. Charges for access to Wistia are already included in the fee you pay to Kajabi.

Quizzes & Assessments

Create and share standardized tests & assessments such as quizzes. Add them effortlessly after each lesson. Get immediate results after every assessment you make of your learners.

Pros

Course creation & subscriptions

Text & video content

Funnel building

Pricing: Starts at $119/admin/month.

8. LearnDash

LearnDash Dashboard is your go-to platform for creating online courses on education and professional training programs. Easily create courses, sell them, manage users, view reports, and issue certificates. It is an eLearning platform that follows industry trends and one that you can bank on at any time.

Put yourself in the driver’s seat and take control of the administration of all your content with ease. LearnDash is easy to set up and you can get all the community support you need. Its major clients include Fortune 500 companies, top universities, and professional training institutes.

Features

Course Builder

Build engaging, multi-layer, and dynamic content easily. Drip feed your content, add quizzes, award points for completing courses, and more. Reuse your existing content with modifications.

Advanced Quizzing

Select from eight question types and customize them to suit your specific testing needs. Display personalized messages based on the performance of each learner. Add, edit, and delete quizzes super-easily.

Multimedia Support

Use any media in your course content and deliver a rich online learning experience. Let your learners gain a deeper understanding of a topic or concept. Build a successful learning model through the smart use of multimedia.

Expert Consulting

Get support from industry experts who boast the experience of providing services to corporates and governments. Get all your questions answered and seek recommendations on the best ways to achieve your goals.

eCommerce

Sell your courses individually or as course bundles. It’s just a few clicks away. Offer discounts to learners for bulk purchases. Enroll them automatically in all of the courses.

Pros

Drag & drop course builder

Front-end experience

Marketplace for plugins & extensions

Pricing: Starts at $24/month. Unlimited courses & users.

9. WizIQ

WizIQ is a cloud-based platform for educational services, including creating and selling unlimited online courses. Create MOOCs and enable learning on the go using beautifully designed portals. Upload content in any format and enable self-paced learning.

Its rich features make it the ultimate platform for end-to-end eLearning delivery. Let learners access content from their mobile devices seamlessly. You can assess the performance of your course and learners using a variety of tests.

Features

Online Course Creation

Set up an online learning portal and create interactive eLearning content using the course builder module. Upload content in any format. There’s no storage limit for courses.

Tests & Assessments

Assess the performance of your learners with multimedia tests. Create tests in nine different formats using the online exam builder. Customize tests with rules and guidelines.

Mobile Learning

Let your learners learn on the go with WizIQ’s mobile apps. They can access course content and attend live classes right on their smartphones. No need to become desk-bound during learning.

Reports & Analytics

Derive insights from learning data to improve course effectiveness and learning efficiency. Identify challenges or knowledge gaps and take remedial actions.

LMS eCommerce

Use an easy and secure eCommerce platform to sell your courses. Receive speedy and hassle-free payments through Stripe. No commission charges. Easily download your transaction-related data.

Pros

Synchronous & asynchronous courses

Supports different content formats

Quick program launch

Pricing: Get in touch with the company for a quote.

10. Ruzuku

As an online course platform, Ruzuku makes it “ridiculously easy to teach online.” You can sculpt online courses, serve a tribe of learners anywhere in the world, and scale your business rapidly. Get everything you need in one place, simple and well-organized.

In terms of ease of use and customizability, Ruzuku does relatively well. You can get your courses up and running within hours. It also offers the flexibility to publish content in any format you want. Video content, quizzes, discussion forums, and certifications are some of the main features of this platform.

Features

Course Creation

Create and launch your courses without any fuss. Follow a simple step-by-step process to add text, videos, presentations, and other files. Host streaming audio and videos.

Course Management

Manage the look and feel of your courses. Do the settings for notifications and coupons. Make pricing adjustments. Rework the design elements any time you want. Schedule course start and finish dates.

Webinars & Teleconferences

Make learning more engaging by blending regular courses with webinars and teleconferences. You can display slides alongside a video and share downloadable documents easily.

Marketing & Sales

For each course, you can get an overview page in your account. Direct potential learners to this page so that they can purchase a course. Ruzuku doesn’t charge any transaction fees on your course proceeds.

Seamless Payment

Accept payment via PayPal or Stripe. Choose either single payments or a subscription model. Customize your coupons for each type of payment.

Pros

Unlimited number of courses to create

Flexible course delivery

Partnership with affiliates

Pricing: Starts at $0.

11. Kartra

Kartra is driven by its objective of empowering entrepreneurs and small business owners to turn their passion into profits. For this, it provides affordable and easy-to-use sales and marketing automation software and a world-class customer experience.

Kartra brings together a compelling list of features in one place that simplifies the online course business. These features are woven together to communicate with each other seamlessly. You can easily create sales pages, checkout pages, webinar pages, and many more by using the platform.

You can deliver online courses with a professionally designed, drag-and-drop membership portal builder. Convert visitors into leads and leads into recurrent customers with its sales funnels.

Features

Pages

This feature lets you build stunning and high-converting pages, such as lead capture and sales pages, in minutes. It offers 100+ beautiful full-page templates.

Funnels & Campaigns

Easily design and launch automated sales funnels in a matter of minutes. Kartra replaces some of the top sales tools by providing a place where your marketing ideas can flourish.

Memberships

This feature lets you give a premium experience to your customers. It is a feature-packed portal to organize and share content with a customer base. It enables you to ensure the user experience is intuitive and hassle-free.

Affiliate Management System

Communicate, manage, incentivize, and pay your affiliates easily. You can build custom landing pages for your affiliates, review and approve affiliates, and control how they get paid.

Marketplace

Explore industry professionals available for hire. You can also advertise your expertise, become a community member, and earn an income.

Pros

Easy and complete solution

Provides real-time actionable data

Premade templates

Pricing: Starts at $99/month. 2 membership sites.

12. Academy of Mine

Since 2014, AOM has been helping organizations meet their training and development needs. You can use the platform to scale your online courses with unlimited users and transparent pricing. Non-LMS members can easily access your courses online through custom landing pages.

Categorize different courses by industry and types of training so that customers can easily identify them. Use a dynamic sales page to offer your products on a subscription basis. You can create branded portals to enroll thousands of users into your courses at a time and manage their training programs.

Features

Self-Paced Online Courses

Build courses using text, audio, video, PDF, quizzes, live streaming, SCORM, and more. Motivate your learners to participate and complete courses by facilitating self-paced learning.

Customer Portal

Create portals for each of your customers to onboard and train them easily. Deliver and manage training programs, and get reports for the same.

Course Marketing Pages

Promote your training courses online by creating a separate eCommerce site. Use AOM’s simple yet effective page builder to organize your courses and present them just as you want.

Course Selling

Monetize your training courses online by selling them using beautiful pages built in AOM or by integrating your LMS with a third-party storefront.

Branding & White-Labeling

Personalize your content by adding a logo, unique colors, a footer, and company information. Use your own custom domain or URL.

Pros

You can build creative & customizable content

Multilingual support

Responsive customer service

Pricing: Starts at $599/month. Custom domain.

13. Systeme.io

Systeme.io offers all the tools you need to grow your online course business. Whether you’re a course creator, freelancer, consultant, or small business owner, the platform has got you covered. It is a simple and affordable all-in-one solution that replaces different tools people use for different segments of their business, which is why the tool made it to the list of the best platforms to create an online course.

You can use it to build your own courses, manage marketing campaigns, sell products, and create sales funnels and affiliate programs. The platform is designed to help users set up their businesses to best suit their needs, including websites, landing pages, and membership sites.

Features

Online Courses

Create online courses and manage your learners. It just takes minutes to build a course site. No technical know-how or developers needed. Easily manage your membership sites and provide timed access to learners.

Sales Funnels

A fast and easy funnel builder lets you build sales funnels. Use training templates to accelerate the process.

Website Builder

Easily build your business website using standardized templates and go live in minutes. Use a simple drag-and-drop editor. Integrate your email list, online courses, and payment systems.

Marketing

Automate all your marketing efforts. Capture leads automatically with integrated emailing and funnels. Send an unlimited number of emails and create email campaigns.

Sell Products

Sell your own products or become a dropshipper. Manage affiliates to sell courses or any digital products on your behalf. All you need to do is set up an account, build a sales funnel and an order form, and configure your payment systems.

Pros

Easy to set up and integrate into the workflow

Drag-and-drop page builder

Superior customer service

Pricing: Starts at $0. Unlimited emails. 3 sales funnels.

14. TrainerCentral

Turn your passion into a rewarding profession with TrainerCentral – one of the best platforms for creating online courses. Using it, you can create and sell online courses in a few minutes. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a teacher, a yoga guru, a makeup artist, or a leadership coach; the platform empowers you to take your knowledge and skills far and wide.

Build and nurture an online learning community founded on trust. TrainerCentral provides all the tools you need to sustain your profession. They include an intuitive course builder, website builder, custom branding, and payments & subscriptions.

Features

Course Builder

Build courses that reflect your expertise. Schedule and drip feed your course content. You can also host live classes and broadcast your training videos.

Content Marketing

Propel your online course business by promoting and scaling it. For this, you can design a fully branded website, use your own domain, and set up a storefront. Smart sales pages can help with your digital marketing.

Learner Engagement

Offer your learners a unique online learning experience with a learner portal, live interactions, and a discussion forum. Issue course certificates to build an engaged community of learners.

Robust Data

Gather insightful data to convert casual visitors into paying customers. Deliver impact content every time using these analytics. View data on the admin console and dashboard.

Test & Quizzes

Evaluate your learners through assessments such as quizzes. Gamify learning through scores and grades. Energize the learning process.

Pros

Easy and fast 

Useful integrations

User-friendly templates

Pricing: Starts at $0. Unlimited learners. Up to 3 free courses.

15. TalentLMS

As a web-based training platform, TalentLMS is one of the best solutions for creating and selling courses online. It is easy to set up. You can skip the months-long setup time, create courses in a few clicks, and go live by the end of the day. The tool comes with an intuitive interface, a WYSIWYG content editor, and single-page forms.

Course creators who want to take the commercial route can select payment processors, subscriptions, discounts, and special pricing, to get started quickly. TalentLMS is one of the top online course platforms with a team of experts to help you achieve your goals and increase your chances of success.

Features

Drag & Drop Course Builder

Drag and drop docs, videos, presentations, and other media files to add them to your courses. You can build courses either from scratch or simply reuse your existing content. The solution supports SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5 files. 

Customization & Branding

Build a custom training homepage and add your logo and unique color schemes. You can set up the platform to cater to different time zones and linguistic regions.

Sub-Accounts

Create unlimited sub-accounts according to your organization’s structure and needs. Manage the sub-accounts from one place. You can create a sub-account for each team, department, and audience type. 

Stripe and PayPal

Choosing a payment gateway is easy with the platform. Select from the available options such as Stripe and PayPal, enter your API keys, set your course prices, and you’re all set. 

Integrations

You can create and sell your courses from TalentLMS or integrate it with your website, where customers often come looking for your products. This platform connects with Magento, WooCommerce, and other sites.

Pros

Easy and powerful 

Ease of course design 

Outstanding customer support

Pricing: Starts at $69/month.

16. Teachmore

Teachmore enables users to create and sell online courses with a branded website and mobile apps to register increased sales. A simple course builder lets you build courses and sell them in bundles. A high-converting website and mobile apps for android and iOS offer an amazing learning experience.

You can create an unlimited number of pages, whether a sales page or any other page. Push notifications, emails, and coupon codes are other highlights of the platform. Set your own prices for courses and accept payments in 130+ currencies.

Features

Course Builder

Leverage a simple course builder to build not only courses but also live classes and quizzes. Optimize content for an awesome learning experience. Nurture your online business ideas and create an impact across the world.

Page Maker

Create unlimited sales pages or any other pages and make them look just the way you like. You can make changes to web pages and apps in a short amount of time.

Website & Mobile Apps

Make use of a website designed for conversion. Teachmore also offers fully-featured and native android & iOS mobile apps for a wonderful learning experience. 

Coupon Codes

Incentivize enrollments in your online courses by creating coupons. Filter orders based on how your customers place them – through a payment gateway or through coupon code.

Payments

With Teachmore, you can integrate your payment gateway, set your own course prices, and accept payments in 130+ international currencies.

Pros

Mobile apps and website 

Drip content

No coding

Pricing: Starts at ₹2,500. 1 admin user. Unlimited courses & users.

17. Pathwright 

Pathwright is on a mission to help multiply the impact teachers make in the field of learning by being an education software partner. Towards this end, it works closely with teachers.

You can design beautiful courses using the platform by transforming your ideas and training materials into actionable steps. Design creative and engaging learning experiences by mixing interactive text, images, and blocks.

You can start selling your courses at any price in minutes. Set prices for them and provide previews using a beautiful and built-in storefront.

Features

Path Designer

Create and update any part of a course from any device. Customize courses with cover art and backgrounds. You can also create quizzes, tests, and study guide-style assessments.

Management

The platform lets you manage only the critical aspects of an online course business, like controlling who has access to your courses and who has access to your whole school. The rest runs itself.

Commerce

Price your online courses your way and build a sustainable livelihood. You can offer trials, sell subscription plans, and collect payments via Stripe.

Previews

Offer access to your courses for previews. Set a part of your course in preview mode so that site visitors get a sample of it before they commit.

Reports

View downloadable reports providing data on learners, registrations, members, performance, discount code use, and more.

Pros

Paths to present courses and track learning

Ease of learning experience design

Easy to set up

Pricing: Starts at $89/month. Up to 1,000 members.

18. Simplero

Simplero provides all the necessary tools to build and grow an online education business in one place, not all over the place. You can connect with your audience and give them offers without switching tools.

An intuitive website builder lets you build and update your website super-easily. Similarly, automation and triggers let you create simple flows and advanced custom journeys based on your customers’ interactions with your site and content.

You can sell access to virtually anything – videos, audio files, ebooks, online events, offline events, and any other content.

Features

Websites

Build a dynamic website and fully integrate your customers’ journey into it. The same platform will handle your emails, content delivery, and sales.

Landing Pages

Avoid the stress and time wastage of building a landing page in one system and trying to sync it with your email provider or payment processor in another. Simply use one of the templates and add your content.

Affiliate Management

Easily run your affiliate program with a built-in system consisting of two tiers – upstream and downstream affiliates. Communicate with your affiliates from inside the platform.

Email Marketing & Automations

Make sure your emails get read. Identify audiences who are most interested in your offerings and follow up with them. Start an automated re-engagement campaign with those who aren’t fully engaged.

Payments & Subscriptions

Get paid every penny for the sales you make. Simplero doesn’t charge you any transaction fee. Simplero integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and 120+ other payment gateways.

Pros

Great website designer

Integrated software for memberships 

Well-designed features for exceptional user experience

Pricing: Starts at $59/month. 1 membership site. Unlimited landing pages.

19. OpenSesame

OpenSesame provides courses for employees and businesses. As a platform to create online courses, it aims to provide everyone easy access to the training they need to advance their purpose. As soon as you create an account with it, you can upload courses. The platform supports SCORM, AICC, and video files.

Before you publish your courses, you can validate their responsiveness on different browsers and operating systems. You can add, update, or remove courses from the OpenSesame site itself. In addition to selling courses individually, you can create course bundles to make it easier for buyers looking for bulk purchases.

Features

25,000+ Courses

It offers over 25,000 course content in 15 languages from award-winning publishers. They can help you realize the full potential of your learners.

Course Reviews

OpenSesame supports easy-to-use course reviewing features where you can ask your existing customers to write course reviews in the OpenSesame marketplace. This provides information to potential course buyers about your courses and improves SEO.

Course Seller Partners

The platform features course seller partners through featured sellers and courses, interviews, and social media mentions. It also welcomes guest blog posts from buyers and sellers to benefit its elearning community.

Customization

You can upload your logo, add a company description, and provide links to your website and social media profiles. OpenSesame encourages sellers to offer a preview of their courses so that buyers can learn about them. 

Certificate Courses

OpenSesame offers a wide range of certificate courses from leading online course providers. Choose from 22,000+ courses covering different in-demand topics.

Pros

Large choices of courses

New courses added monthly

Great support

Pricing: Get in touch with the company for a quote.

20. iSpring Suite

As one of the best online course platforms, iSpring Suite provides a powerful and fast toolkit to create courses and a marketplace to sell them. Even if you’re a first-timer, you can easily create beautiful courses.

The platform integrates its toolkit with PowerPoint so that you can create courses like a pro in a familiar environment minus the learning curve. Apart from quizzes, you can create video lectures and tutorials with a video studio.

Easily create a marketplace, sell your courses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and get paid immediately. No hidden fees. Grow your online course business.

Features

PPT to Course Conversion

Convert your PowerPoint presentations into online training courses in a few clicks. The final product will preserve all the PPT effects.

Video Studio

No video editing skills? No problem. You can now easily create video lectures, screencasts, and software tutorials quickly. Editing the videos is also easy. You can cut clips, merge them, add titles, background music, and more.

eLearning Assets

Save your time and energy by taking advantage of the platform’s 89,000+ eLearning assets. They include course templates, characters, background images, and icons.

Marketplace

Setting up an online marketplace is easy. Create an account, upload your courses, add a description, and set the prices. After that, you can track results in terms of traffic, purchases, and learners’ progress.

Certificates

You can automatically send completion certificates to learners as soon as they complete a course with a default or custom design.

Pros

PowerPoint to course conversion

Numerous templates

Fast & reliable customer service

Pricing: Starts at $620/year. 5 authors.

Online Course Platform FAQs

Online course platforms vs online learning platforms: Which one should I use?

It depends on your requirements. Online course platforms are basically designed for online course business. They enable you to create, market, and sell courses online. Some online learning platforms, such as an LMS, with authoring and eCommerce capabilities, also support all this. But they go further and allow you to teach or train learner groups in a virtual environment by sharing courses and tests.

How do I create my own online course?

Creating online courses is easy. All you need is a cloud LMS with a course authoring tool. This is helpful when you want to create courses from scratch. Some of the LMS software also provide a course library. You can use these resources as-is or customize them with your existing materials, such as docs, videos, recorded webinars, audio files, and company policies. Here’s a quick video guide on How to Create an Online Course.

How long should an online course be?

The duration of a course depends on the syllabus consisting of topics and sub-topics or modules. If it is a mini-course, it usually takes 1-2 hours for learners to complete. A full-day course will take 6-8 hours while a multi-day course takes several days. Masterclasses are more extensive and sold to professionals and can take weeks or months to complete.

How do I promote my course?

You can promote your course on your own website or social media. You can also engage in affiliate marketing, paid ads, podcasts, and webinars to pitch your courses based on your expertise, and generate leads.

Choose the Best Online Course Platforms

Whether you are an independent instructor or a company looking to create and sell courses, adopting the right e-course platform is the first essential step. Such tools can help you streamline and take charge of the creation and sales of educational as well as business courses online while helping you market your products effectively.

The platforms we discussed above can act as a one-stop solution for your online course business as they replace multiple tools that people use separately. The course hosting platform you’ll finally choose will be based on your specific requirements – your technical skills, audience type, marketing plans, and the volume of the courses you need to create and sell.