There is so much choice when it comes to building courses. It’s difficult to decide which one is best for you and your budget—whether you want to build the course yourself or outsource it to an expert.
Also known as Learning Management Systems (LMS), the most popular and excellent platforms offer a wide range of options. Your ideal course creation platform will be unique to you and the needs of your clients or students.
Is having an online course essential to your income? If it is, you’ll need a platform that reaches the maximum number of students. Do you love teaching and engaging with students? Then, you’ll probably want a course creator with interactive tools that would work well. Do you want to create a course to engage your existing audience? You’ll want a tool with excellent marketing features.
Give some thought to some of the following key factors that will help you decide what would be best for you and your business:
Your audience: who are your potential students, and what platform are they most likely to use or trust? Do you know your audience well? Consider user experience.
Content delivery: how do you want to present your course material? Some platforms specialise in interactive elements, such as PDFs and audio or video content.
Course Type and Content: different platforms may better suit different types of courses or content.
Technical Skills: some platforms require more technical expertise than others.
Long-term goals: are you looking to scale up? Some platforms are better suited for growth in terms of features, integration, and support.
Aftercare: What can your students expect from you in terms of post-course aftercare? How hands-on do you intend to be?
Budget: assess upfront and ongoing costs versus potential revenue. Are the courses realistically affordable for small and medium businesses?
Marketing and Sales: Evaluate how much marketing and sales support you need before you sign up potential students. Also, consider payment features.
Control and Customisation: Consider how much control you want over your courses and student interactions. What are the editing and customisation features? Is there support for assessments, such as quizzes, exams, certifications, etc?
Web, iOS, and Android: What operating systems are they compatible with? Think again about the end-user experience (and check apps on mobiles).
This overview serves as a starting point for anyone navigating the diverse landscape of course-building platforms. Each platform has unique strengths and limitations, so choosing the right one depends on your needs, audience, and business goals.
Platforms and their pros and cons
Teachable is great for more astute course creators who want to build and grow their audiences online. It offers different options for customising your course, including the capability to bring in your personal brand colours. Drag-and-drop features make it easy to use.
Plans: online courses, coaching, digital downloads, and a community that people can tap into (in the beta stage).
Pricing: free plan option (with $1 + 10% transaction fee – no credit card required) with one published product access. Then $39 per month basic (with a 5% transaction fee) – this goes up to $119 per month (Pro) and $199 per month (Pro +).
Features: drag-and-drop course builder, sales tools (with buy now, pay later options for clients), sales and marketing to grow and support leads, creator support (for when you need it), and AI support with content (in the beta stage).
Integrations: Zapier – which links to Zoom, Google analytics, and other widespread integration apps, is available.
Pros: it is an easy-to-use course builder with a custom-made course editor. It is student-friendly, with the option to build exclusive member-only content incentives and great marketing features. It accepts files from Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. It offers flexibility with pricing your courses.
Cons: only 3 templates available on the free plan, pricing structure may be limiting for some and less scalable.
Other thoughts: It has great free resources such as courses, a blog, podcast, and newsletter, as well as some great ‘how to’ guides and training available on the website.
Thinkific takes the guesswork out of course building with simple, ready-to-use templates. Unlike other platforms, you can choose from various templates—pre-sell, mini-course, flagship course, membership resource library, and webinar replay. Their templates help by providing hints and tips to build valuable courses for students.
Plans: include custom web themes and domains, quizzes, community spaces, a mobile app for courses and communities, scheduling, bundles, coupons, and cross-selling.
Pricing: free plan option (one course, one community, two spaces per community, 0% transaction, unlimited students, email for 30 days), then Basic at £31 per month, then Start (£63 a month), then Grow (£127 a month) with free access to their accelerator programme.
Features: include course creation (drag-and-drop features), building websites to market your business, selling digital products, community engagement, fully integrated e-commerce, and ownership of 100% of the content.
Integrations: Zapier – which links to Zoom, Google analytics, and other widespread integration apps, is available.
Pros: great templates, affordable pricing, support for assessments.
Cons: limiting free plan.
Other thoughts: It also offers excellent free resources such as courses, a blog, podcast, newsletter, and some great ‘how-to’ guides and training available on the website. It’s a reasonable price for what it has to offer.
New Zenler boasts an all-in-one course creator, delivery and marketing platform.
Plans: online courses, marketing funnels, automation, quizzes and surveys, memberships and community spaces.
Pricing: Pro – $647 a year, Premium $1,447 yearly (monthly plans also available). 0% transaction fees.
Features: check each payment option to find out more details. It also has a video library.
Integrations: Zapier – which again links to other popular integration apps.
Pros: great templates, affordable pricing, and support for assessments.
Cons: limiting free plan. Quite an expensive annual plan. There is less information on the website (compared to others), so more research may be required.
Other thoughts: live classes and webinar options there, popular with lots of course creators for that reason.
It is one of the most popular platforms for so many things, and it is not just an online course-building platform. A ‘superpower’ for busy course creators. Its marketing blueprints, known as funnels, enable you to build a complete marketing funnel—from the landing page and sign-ups to emails and course checkout—in just a few clicks.
Plans: online courses, coaching, podcasts, memberships, and communities. It’s all in one system manages payments, contacts and analytics.
Pricing: Basic is $119 a month (0% transaction fees, three products, three funnels, landing pages, email marketing, and more), then $159 a month for growth and $319 a month for Pro. Check each payment option for more details.
Features: websites, landing pages, emails, ready-made funnels, mobile app and creator studio.
Integrations: many options for integrations with your favourite apps.
Pros: lots of built-in marketing features, decent AI option, native email system (inbuilt).
Cons: expensive.
Other thoughts: it’s a great all-in-one system, but for those of you with small-medium businesses, it may not be the best option at the price it offers.
Udemy took online course learning possible early on. Today, the platform has over 65 million students enrolled on its courses and over 75,000 instructors.
Plans: be a premium instructor or be a student.
Pricing: no fee for becoming a premium instructor, no transaction fees. They make their income by keeping a percentage of each sale, dependent on the transaction.
Features: Plan your curriculum, record your videos, and launch your course (each course needs 30 minutes of video and five lectures).
Integrations: integrates with ToDoist
Pros: guided course creation, built-in Udemy audience, minimal design or editing needed
The cons are the steep revenue structure, the need for video, and the requirement that you apply for and be accepted before you can be an instructor.
Other thoughts: It’s a great course platform for first-time course builders. However, it won’t suit those who wish to build their course in another way for a particular audience or an audience already nurtured over time, even though it will market your course to that ready-made audience.
What to think about when choosing.
If you want a robust platform to build courses for your students, think about the priorities for students and your business:
🐾Who are your target audience?
🐾What are your course objectives?
🐾What will the course content be?
🐾What are the timelines and length of modules for each module?
🐾What do you want the learning experience to be? Will this include videos?
🐾Think about the end users’ experience as well as the design.
🐾What is your pricing going to be?
🐾What is your marketing strategy?
Of course, there are other platforms out there, but these are some of the best ones to choose from.
If you’re struggling to decide which platform might be the right one for you, get in touch for a no-obligation 15 / 30 min call where you can talk about your requirements, your target audience and your budget so you can decide which one may be the right fit for your business – right now and for the future.
If you want to discuss in more depth and get help planning and mapping out your course then booking a Get what you need call with me would be the perfect way to get you started. Calls cost just £240.
Further reading:
https://thecanineva.co.uk/services/course-setup/
https://zapier.com/blog/online-course-platforms/
Some more comprehensive reviews you can read here:
https://influencermarketinghub.com/online-learning-software/