9+ Best Online Course Creation Platforms (Ranked and Reviewed)

One of our key philosophies here at Three Month Millionaire is “Make it once, sell it a million times.“

And one of our favorite ways to do that is with online course creation platforms.

Unfortunately, the world of making your own online course has gotten very complicated over the last few years. There are dozens of online course creation platforms to choose from and each has its own strengths and weaknesses.

That’s why we put together this post. Here is our list of the top online course creation platforms, ranked and rated. 

Here, you will find everything you need to know so you can pick the right online course creation platform for your situation.

But first, a little background info…

What are Online Course Creation Platforms?

Online course creation platforms are learning management systems that you can use to create and publish educational content. 

These platforms are then accessed by students who wish to sharpen their knowledge or learn a new skill online. The nature of the skills you have to share will determine the best course creation system for you.

Most online course creation platforms offer a host of services in addition to offering guidance on creating and publishing courses online. The best of them include educational materials on marketing, selling digital and physical course products, and much more. 

While most of them charge you a fee for providing these services, some platforms such as Udemy and Skillshare offer these for free and utilize a revenue-sharing model instead.

If you are a small business owner or solopreneur looking to monetize your specialized knowledge and skills online, a course creation platform is an excellent way to make and market those assets. 

What are the best Online Course Creation Platforms and Tools?

Here are the best online course creation platforms, ranked and rated. 

Remember, we are making general recommendations here and the best choice for you might be different. 

That’s why we laid out everything you need to know to make the best choice for your situation. 

Thinkific (Best Overall, best for passive automation)

Thinkific is a cloud-based platform that allows you to create course content and manage, distribute and market your course online. 

There are also tools that you can use to connect with learners, sell and upsell courses, and control how your courses are distributed. 

The best part is, you don’t need any coding or web development skills to build your course content on Thinkific.

Thinkific Price

Free trial: Yes!

You can try out the platform for free with the 30-day basic plan free trial offer. 

Features included in the free trial:

• Powerpoint presentations with voice-over 
• SSL certificate, 24 x 7 monitoring
• Unlimited enrollment
• Student progress tracking
• Assessments
• Course catalog
• SEO
• Multiple payment options

Basic plan: 

$39 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$49 if paying for one month at a time

In addition to the features offered in free plan, the basic plan also offers:

• Unlimited courses
• Unlimited students
• Manual student enrollment
• Data export
• Custom domains 
• Drip content (content you can schedule to go out automatically)
• Marketing analytics integrations 
• Coupons and promotions
• MailChimp, Convertkit, Aweber integrations

Pro Plan: 

$79 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$99 per month (if you pay for a month at a time).

In addition to the basic plan features, the pro plan offers:

• Priority customer service and support
• The option to create private courses
• Course completion certificates 
• Advanced HTML and CSS editing tools
• Advanced pricing options (so you can tailor what you charge)

Premier Plan:

$399 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$499 per month (if you pay for a month at a time).

This for advanced online course creators who want to scale up their business. 

In addition to features of Pro package, the premium plan offers:

• Onboarding call 
• Bulk student emailer
• Bulk student enrollments 
• Advanced student segmentation 
• Remove Thinkific branding
• 5 site administrator and 50 course administrator accounts 
• Brillium exams integration
• And unlimited access to their Growth Package (a ton of extra features geared at accelerating the growth of your content)

Alright, with all the pricing and subscription info out of the way, let’s look at the pros and cons for thinkific and see if its the right fit for you.

Thinkific Pros

• Drag and drop: The course building process is entirely graphical and you just have to drag and drop your files to start building the content. It is easy to rearrange, delete or add sections on your course pages. 
• All-in-one site builder: You can use the editing tools on Thinkific to build your website from scratch. If you already have a website, you can integrate it easily with the course platform. If you don’t have a website, you can use Thinkific’s subdomain and save yourself the step of making a website.  As an all-in-one platform, you can easily manage content, market, distribute, engage students and handle payments on Thinkific.
• Easy customization: There are a lot of pre designed web themes which saves you the hassle of having to create a theme. You can easily customize the colors, layout, text, web pages and media.
• No transaction fees: You don’t need to pay transaction fees to Thinkific on payments your learners make to access course content.  

Thinkific Cons

• There is no ready audience for you to promote and market your courses. You will have to develop your own marketing strategy.  
• The platform does not have its own email marketing tool, but third-party integrations are available.  
• While email customer support is available, there are no quick options such as live chat.
• The basic price is high for beginners.

Think thinkific might be right for you? Click here for more info.

Teachable (Best online course creation platform for beginners)

Teachable Price

Free Trial: NO

We consider this to be one of the biggest drawbacks to teachable (and one of the biggest reasons they don’t get top spot in this list).

Basic Plan:

$29 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$39 per month (if you pay for a month at a time).

The basic plan offers:

• Unlimited video
• Unlimited course products
• Unlimited students
• Unlimited hosting
• Coaching
• Custom domain support
• Integrated email marketing
• Coupon codes
• Basic quizzes
• Drip (automated) content
• Course creator training
• Members only community
• ***You will also have to pay a 5% fee on all transactions at the level***

Professional Plan:

$99 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$119 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

The Professional Plan includes everything from the basic plan, plus:

• Priority support
• Graded Quizzes
• Advanced reports
• The option to remove Teachable branding
• Course completion certificates
• Integrated affiliate marketing
• ***The removal of those 5% transaction fees***

Business Plan:

$249 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$299 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

In addition to above features, the business plan offers:

• Up to 20 admin-level users (perfect if you are planning to delegate your course creation)
• Bulk student enrollments
• Advanced Theme customization
• Group coaching calls

Teachable Pros

• Customization tools: Some of the most glowing reviews we’ve seen for teachable talk about its content and multimedia options. There is also a user-friendly dashboard that allows you to monitor student retention, sales and customize permissions to other members of your tutorial team.
• Integrations: Easy integration with a host of apps and tools such as Zoom, Calendly, MailChimp, Zapier, Olark, ConvertKit, Webhooks and Vizia.
• Monetization: The monetization capabilities of Teachable are phenomenal. Apart from offering subscriptions, memberships, coupons and bundles, you can accept payment in over 130 global currencies through PayPal and mobile payment methods. 
• Support: On Pro and Business plans, you can get live chat and email support, course creator training as well as a members-only community.

Teachable Cons

• While you can send emails to learners, Teachable does not offer the automated emails.  It does not offer a scheduling feature nor can you save the emails you write as draft.
• In the basic plan, you will have to pay a 5% transaction fee, although the premium plans have no such charges.
• No option to do live courses/workshops
• Can be expensive with added upgrades 

Overall, we like Teachable. We think it’s a great online course creation platform…

BUT

We are frustrated by that 5% transaction fee. And the absence of a free plan.

We feel it sends a bit of a mixed message. Teachable’s software and ease of use definitely gives it a competitive edge among users new to the world of online course creation. 

It feels like Teachable wants to be the go-to platform for newbies. 

But then that 5% fee and the absence of a free plan feels like a bait and switch.

Yes you can get into the basic plan cheaper than you can on Thinkific, but then it’s almost like Teachable is punishing you for doing so. You can feel nickel-and-dimed until you finally give up and switch to the Pro Plan. 

That might not bother you as much as it does us (in fact, it probably won’t) but we want to be as honest as possible with our experience here.

Think Teachable might be right for you? Click here for more info!

Alright, Thinkific and Teachable are the two big names in this space. They tend to get most of the market share.

But, there are other names out there. Thinkific and Teachable are both trying to be all things to all people.

These next few are a bit more focused. And depending on your niche, focus might be exactly what you want.

Skillshare (Best for creative skills)

Skillshare helps creative professionals such as photographers, designers, chefs or freelancers earn a profit by creating courses and publishing them on Skillshare. It pays educators when their content is viewed by students. 

Skillshare Price 

Free! 

You as a creator and publisher pay nothing to post to Skillshare.

Students are charged a monthly fee of $19 or an annual fee of $99. 

Skillshare Pros

• No “selling”: With Skillshare, you pre-record lessons and publish them on Skillshare. Skillshare already has an audience of people interested in learning new skills. You can promote your classes using helpful tips that the platform offers. Multiple teacher resources are available to help you create effective lessons.
• Therefore this online platform is ideally suited for creative workers such as artists, photographers, chefs, freelancers, graphic designers, and entrepreneurs. Anything where an actual demonstration is the best way to teach and learn. 
• Royalties: You as a creator earn income on a royalty system. You earn money based on how many minutes learners watched your classes. Skillshare is effectively sharing their revenue with you.
• Referrals: You can also earn a referral bonus of $10 for each student that you refer to Skillshare who signs up for premium membership. 

Skillshare Cons

• Support is lacking: They only have email support is on offer we have seen several complaints about turnaround and response times 
• Limbo: Your course can get stuck in a limbo if it has a limited fanbase. The more the engagement with your course, the higher your course visibility. 
• Smaller units: People tend to look for skills on Skillshare. That might sound obvious, but it can limit you to small teachable ‘chunks’ of information. A course on Thinkific or Teachable might contain many such ‘skills’.
• No option to conduct one-on-one coaching. 

Learnworlds (Best for interactive)

Learnworlds Price

Free Trial: You can try Leanworld for free for 30 days

Starter Plan: 

$24 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$29 per month (if you pay for a month at a time).

This plan includes:

• Custom Domain
• Page builder
• Unlimited Paid Courses 
• Built-In Community
• Basic Integrations 
• Drip Feed Courses
• EMail Support 24 x 5
• ***There is a $5 fee charged on each course you sell***
• ***You cannot offer free courses on this plan***

Pro Trainer Plan: 

$79  per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$99  per month (if you pay for a month at a time).

In addition to the features above in this plan includes:

• Unlimited courses (Free courses are now allowed)
• Up to five admins/instructors
• Complete Website Builder along with blog
• Customizable course player
• Live classes via Zoom and Webex
• Affiliate management
• Email Support 24 x 7 
• Free access to LearnWorld Academy (resources for you as a course seller)
• ***You no longer have to pay the $5 fee per sale***

Learning Center Plan:

$249  per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$299  per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

In addition to the features above in this plan includes:

• 20 admins/instructors
• Bulk student import
• White label options
• Interactive video, subtitles, and transcripts
• Progress and course insights reports

Learnworlds Pros

• Advanced learning platform that makes it easy for educators and learners to interact with each other using unlimited multimedia channels. 
• Option to set custom schedules for students to match their pace of learning and individual monitoring.
• Comprehensive support and online assistance from specialized experts
• Multiple course creation tools for building the course, creating a website and marketing. 
• Over 300 templates and high definition videos
• Streamlined affiliate management – you can design and publish affiliate pages as per your convenience at any time.
• Multilanguage and localization support

Learnworlds Cons

• The control panel has multiple options that can be confusing to an educator who has no knowledge of marketing and web design.
• The ‘cancelled sales’ pages can be difficult to work with. The idea behind this page is to show the educator how many drop-outs there have been but it doesn’t show when the dropout happened. So its limited in its usefulness
• Support for creating sales funnels is limited which again makes Learnworlds tricky for new users.
• Marketing analytics can be too complex for beginners to understand
• There is just a general learning curve to using Learnworlds. It is not the most new-user friendly option. BUT if your material thrives on interaction, Learnworlds is the best course creation platform for you!

Kajabi (Best for high-end professionals)

Kajabi Price

Free Trial: Yes!

Your free trial lasts for 14 days and grants you full access to the Basic Plan.

BasicPlan:

$119 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$149 per month (if you pay for a month at a time).

The Basic plan includes:

• Unlimited marketing emails
• Unlimited landing pages
• 3 pipelines
• 3 products
• 10,000 Contacts
• 1000 Active Members
• Quizzes and Surveys (Course assessments)
• 1 Website
• 1 Active User
• Chat Support

The Growth Plan:

$159 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$199 per month (if you pay for a month at a time).

The Growth Plan includes (in addition to everything above): 

• 15 products
• 15 pipelines 
• 25,000 Contacts
• 10,000 Active Members
• 10 Admin Users
• 24/7 chat support
• Advanced automations
• Removal of Kajabi Branding
• Affiliate Program

The Pro Plan:

$319 per month (if you pay for a year at a time).

$399 per month (if you pay for a month at a time). 

The Pro Plan includes (in addition to everything above)

• 100 Products
• 100 Pipelines
• 100,000 Contacts
• 20,000 Active Members
• 3 Websites
• 25 Admin Users
• Code Editor

Kajabi Pros

• All-in-one platform for professional course creators
• User-friendly and optimized integration with a range of basic tools
• Valuable customizable themes
• 24 x 7 customer service (at Growth and Pro levels)
• A host of marketing tools including email marketing tools, opt-ins, and complex customer flows
• Affiliate programs
• Third-party collaboration with MailChimp, PayPal and so on
• Tutorial help for beginners on course building
• Apart from online courses, you can create a membership platform, evergreen training, a coaching program or a community.

Kajabi Cons

• There is no option to create certificates
• Limited assessment customization 
• Expensive for beginners
• Coding skills are needed to upload and edit photos in your blog

LearnDash (Best for WordPress Integrations)

LearnDash Price

Free Trial: None (but there is a 30-day refund policy).

The Basic Plan:

$199 per year (you buy a license that is good for one year).

The Basic Plan includes:

• 1 site license
• Unlimited courses
• Unlimited users
• Course Content Protection
• Drip-Feed Lessons
• Advanced Quizzing
• Certificates & Badges
• Course Forums
• Email Notifications
• Free Integrations
• 1-Year Support & Updates

The Plus Plan:

$199 per year (you buy a license that is good for one year).

In addition to everything above, the Plus Plan includes:

• 10 site licenses
• Access to ProPanel (a dashboard that lets you monitor activity)

The Pro Plan: 

$369 per year (you buy a license that is good for one year).

In addition to everything above, the Pro Plan Includes:

• 25 site licenses

Pro tip: because you build this all within your wordpress (LearnDash is plugin), you might be able to go on using it after your license expires (if you’re looking to save a few bucks). 

You won’t get support or updates and there is no longer a guarantee that your course will work if WordPress does a major update, but you might be able to save a few dollars this way.

As of this writing this trick seems to work.

LearnDash Pros

• LearnDash is a WordPress plugin, so it lets you build very slick educational material inside the WordPress you (probably) already know.
• It was designed for drag and drop course building. It’s very intuitive.
• The Visual Course Builder helps you visualize your course layout .
• It’s easy to add topics, lessons and quizzes from the course builder
• Convenient drip content option
• Video progression feature allows you to embed externally hosted or self-hosted videos
• Helpful ‘engagement triggers’ for email automation

LearnDash Cons

• You may need third party plugins for accepting payment or for membership functionality
• No setup tutorial. So beginners will struggle to use the platform at first
• You will have to do all the marketing yourself
• No live training or webinar feature
• No free trials (but 30-day refund policy)

Podia (Best for Digital downloads and Webinars)

Podia offers a unique digital download feature not found in most other learning platforms. With this feature, you can sell downloadable digital products such as cheat sheets, e-books, audio, video, PDFs, music, checklists and guides.

Podia Price

Free Trial: Yes! Podia offers a 14-day free trial.

The Mover plan:

$39 per month (or $390 per year)

• Unlimited Products
• Unlimited Courses
• Unlimited Customers
• Unlimited # of files hosted
• Digital downloads
• Online courses
• Webinars
• Messaging and email marketing
• Zero transaction fees
• 24 x 7 support
• 5k email recipients per month
• ***Adding additional teammates (like an assistant or business partner) will cost you $20/mo each***

The Shaker plan: 

$79 per month (or $790 per year)

The Shaker Plan includes all of the above, plus:

• You can sell memberships
• Course certificates
• embeddable checkout buttons (so you sell your Podia products anywhere)
• Affiliate marketing
• 15k email recipients per month

The Earthquaker Plan:

$179 per month (or $1,790 per year)

The Earthquaker Plan includes all of the above, plus:

• 5 additional teammates at no charge
• Removal of Podia branding
• Dedicated account manager
• Personalized Onboarding Call
• Monthly Group Creator Call
• 5 Team Seats

Podia Pros

• All-in-one platform for hosting digital downloads, products, courses and membership
• Easy to set up with drag and drop functionality
• Custom domains
• Embeddable opt-in templates for collecting emails from website
• Customized color and branding
• Hosting for paid or free courses
• Instant payouts 
• Product bundling with customer service and support for digital downloads
• Progress tracking 
• Unlimited courses, bandwidth, students, sales and file size

Podia Cons

• Limited design and customization options
• The email system is not as comprehensive as other providers
• Fewer payment gateways

Think Podia might be a good fit for you? Click here to learn more!

Ruzuku (Absolute easiest online course creation platform to use)

Ruzuku Price

Free Trial: Yes! There is a 14 day free trial and access to lots of educational materials.

The Bootstrapper Plan:

$74.75 per month (If you buy a year at a time).

$99 per month (if you buy a month at a time).

The Bootstrapper plan includes:

• One Instructor
• Unlimited courses
• Unlimited students
• Unlimited data hosting
• 0% transaction fees
• Direct pay (from your customers to you)
• PayPal and Stripe integrations
• Coupons
• Comprehensive support

The Up-and-Comer Plan:

$83.08 per month (If you buy a year at a time).

$149 per month (If you buy a month at a time).

The Up-and-comer Plan includes everything in the Bootstrapper Plan, plus:

• Unlimited webinars
• Polls and quizzes
• Subscriptions and payment plans

The University Plan:

$125 per month (If you buy a year at a time).

$199 per month (If you buy a month at a time).

The University Plan includes everything in the Bootstrapper and Up-an-comer plans, plus:

• You get your own domain
• Multiple instructors
• Multiple site managers
• A dedicated account manager

Ruzuku Pros

• You can duplicate your courses to create split tests.  
• Flexible options for charging your students with single payment, subscription and payment plans 
• Flexible course delivery system with the option of giving access to all the content at once or drip content over time.  
• Responsive email support
• Easy progress tracking
• Affiliate marketing
• Individual and group analytics
• Discussion forums
• No transaction fees 
• Webinars and teleconferences on Ruzuku can host up to 1500 participants and 200 students respectively.
• Unlimited students and courses
• ***The number one comment we see about Ruzuku praises its ease of use and approachability***

Ruzuku Cons

• Ruzuku supports only PayPal and Stripe payment processors.  
• Customization options are limited.  
• The only customer support channel is email.  

Academy of Mine (Personalized, Customized, When Bespoke content is required)

This high-end enterprise learning platform offers all the features you need to build your website and course apart from marketing it.

Academy of Mine Price

Free Trial: There is a free trial, but you need to call or fill out a form for details.

The Essentials Plan

$599 per month.

• Custom domain
• 250 Monthly Active Users
• 500 GB storage
• Quizzes, Assignments, Surveys and Evaluations
• Integrated eCommerce solutions
• Advanced reporting for courses and eCommerce sales
• Webpage Builder
• Translation to non-English Languages

The Professional Plan

$899 per month.

The Professional Plan includes everything in the Essentials Plan plus:

• 1,000 monthly active users
• 1 TB storage
• Single Sign-On
• The ability to request custom features
• API and Developer Access

Custom Pricing is also available if you need more than 1,000 monthly users.

Academy of Mine Pros

• All-in-one platform for course building, marketing, and e-commerce
• 100% white label, excellent customization of learning environment and website branding
• Detailed progress tracking
• Great customer service support
• Easy to create self-paced courses in multiple formats – HTML, PDF, audio, video, PowerPoint, TinCan, SCORM and much more.
• Enhance learner engagement with live chat, video conferencing, presentations and collaborative whiteboard

Academy of Mine Cons

• Expensive!
• Working with the platform can be a challenge for beginners with limited video tutorials
• Testing tools and learner engagement with assignments need improvement

WizIQ (For live virtual classrooms)

WizIQ Price

Free Trial: Yes! WizIQ Offers a 14-day free trial.

You’ll have to contact WizIQ directly for the pricing information for all of their products.

WizIQ has 2 different ‘versions’. Live Classroom and Learning Management System. Each has different features.

Live Classroom Features Include:

*You need to contact them to get pricing information* (yes really)

The Pay-Per-Use option (you pay by the minute)

You can create individual classes up to 300 minutes each that will work on any device. You are allowed up to 300 attendees per class. 

Professional Plan (Best WizIQ option for individual teachers)

You can create individual classes up to 120 minutes in duration that will work on any device. You can have up to 50 students per class.

The Enterprise Plan (is meant for colleges and universities)

It’s basically the same as the Pay-Per-Use plan but with a limit of 100 students.

Learning Management System features include:

The Elite Plan:

• Create and run full online courses
• Assignments and tests with multiple choice questions 
• Certificate of completion
• 25 GB of storage

The Infinite Plan:

• Everything in the Elite Plan, plus:
• Custom domain
• Removal of WizIQ Branding
• Dedicated success Manager
• 50 GB storage (instead of 25 GB)

WizIQ Pros

• Best-in-class live virtual classroom platform – Live Classes feature supports communication through live chat, video and audio chat with the virtual classroom. Students can record the previous live classes for reviewing the lessons at any time.
• Notification alerts when a student enrolls or for pending tasks, deadlines and completion status
• E-commerce capability is built-in that enables educators to monetize their services.
• User friendly interface that makes it easy to build courses, engage learners and track student progress.
• Option to create online assignments in courses.
• Option to add co-instructor
• Cloud based repository of courses

WizIQ Cons

• Occasional hiccups with the platform going offline
• Storage restrictions
• Reports could do with some improvement
• Lack of transparent pricing! (Seriously, what year is this?)

Udemy (Biggest audience, most competitive)

Udemy Price

You can create and host your course on Udemy for free. 

Udemy works a bit differently than the other options on this list. You create and host your course on Udemy for free. You then charge your audience when they access the course.

You keep 97% of the fee if you sell your course using your link, coupons, or specials. The remaining 3 percent is the administration fee that Udemy deducts. 

You get 37% of the fee if Udemy sells your course for you to someone in their existing user base.

Basically if you do the work, you get 97% of the sale. 

If Udemy does the work, you get 37%

Udemy Pros

• There is no charge for creating and uploading your course on Udemy. Tutorials on how to set up and use the platform are also available free of charge. 
• Course marketing functionality is outstanding on Udemy. It allows you to promote your courses while marketing your personal brand to your target audience. 
• Multiple ways of promoting your course – email campaigns, retargeting ads, external partner promotions, search and discovery. 
• Udemy’s ties with many Daily deal sites including LivingSocial and Groupon helps you maximize course promotion.
• Course quality checklist helps you ensure your course meets the quality criteria and is professional, marketable and offers an innovative learning experience.
• Step-by-step guidance on building a course, assuring quality, publishing and managing the content.

Udemy Cons

• While Udemy has the largest user base, it also increases competition for new educators. 
• The 30-day refund policy benefits the students but is a big risk for tutors as learners may complete the course within 30 days and still ask for a refund.
• Promotional programs are limited and you will have to rely on your own marketing efforts to generate higher income

What Makes a Great Online Course Creation Platform?

One of the first things that you may be looking at when choosing an online platform is the pricing. While your budget is a priority, it is important to look at the return on your investment. 

Basically, this is one of those times when value is more important than cost.

Here are a few of the most valuable features that online course creation platforms can have.  

Individual and group coaching

A common model of teaching that adds value to the learner is to provide three to five pre-recorded content modules, a private community that is preferably segmented based on course categories/learner group and a weekly question and answer chat session.

Look for the flexibility to hold both individual and group sessions. Doing so goes a long way in establishing your credibility as an instructor. 

Seamless communication and interaction

These are crucial to the successful learning process. 

A platform that offers multiple ways of interacting with your students such as discussion forums, chats, video conferencing, email or social media integration is worth its weight in gold. 

Besides encouraging discussions between the educator and the students, communication tools promote problem-solving sessions as well between fellow students.

In short, the easier it is for everyone (students and educators alike) to communicate, the more successful your course will be.

Unlimited courses and students

Give yourself room to grow. You might be surprised by how many students buy your course. 

In fact, some of the online course creation platforms are counting on it. That way you have to upgrade.

It’s better to be prepared for success from the start.

Rich marketing features

You want as much marketing power as you can get. Course creation is really just the first step in the process.

After that, you’ve got to get your new course in front of eyeballs. You might already have channels in place to market your course, but I can guarantee this:

It isn’t enough. 

It never is. 

Every marketing channel equals more dollars in your pocket. 

Rich payment features

You not only want a diversity of payment methods but a diversity of payment currencies. It is all too common for new course creators to underestimate (or outright ignore) audiences from other countries. 

Your audience is already comfortable with a set number of payment methods. Whatever they might be, you want to offer it.

Customer support

Ideally you want a course creation platform that offers 24 x 7 support through multiple modes (email, chat, and phone) – the more, the merrier. 

Sites that offer only email support or are known for their delayed response can significantly increase your downtime, impacting your revenue.

I wish I could say otherwise but…

Something will go wrong. The faster you get it fixed, the less money you lose. 

User friendly tools

People are often willing to put up with difficult tools in order to save a buck. 

Please don’t

You have enough stress in your life. Go whatever is the easiest to get the job done, even if it’s a bit more expensive. 

Site builders, course builders, marketing management; the top online course platforms ensure all functions are user friendly. 

Look for drag and drop functionality. Look for integrations with Google Drive and Dropbox.

There should also be step-by-step tutorials on how to use the platform. 

If you are not familiar with website design, coding and other technicalities, make sure you choose an online platform that handles all the technicalities. 

All-in-one platforms

An ideal online course platform is one that offers all the features and functions you need without you having to purchase third party tools. 

The best all in one platform include ecommerce, email marketing, integration with all other online tools, website builder apart from course creation.

You want to pick the option that gets you as close to a one-stop shop as possible.

What is the Best Standalone Course Creation Platform? (Best for Small Business and Solopreneurs) 

Thinkific

Our top pick for small businesses and solopreneurs is Thinkific.

Thinkific has a wide range of customers that includes small businesses and solopreneurs such as coaches, authors, speakers, freelancers, artists and subject matter experts. 

Thinkific also checks many of the boxes listed above. Its all-round great option.

What makes Thinkific the best Standalone Platform?

• Reasonable pricing A free plan that lets you test drive the online course platform with unlimited students, content hosting, quizzes and surveys. Paid plans start at $49 per month and there are no transaction fees. 
• Build a custom website Setting up an attractive home page and creating additional custom pages is easy with the streamlined site builder. You can choose the font style, color and upload any image or media type that you want. This is a big win for beginners who don’t have a website already. 
• Custom domain name You can get a custom URL with the paid plans or go with the default address that Thinkific provides. 
• White labelling With the Pro and Growth plans, you get the benefit of white-labelling and showcasing your own brand.
• Build your course with ease. The course builder makes it easy to create and publish your content. You can add, delete or modify any of the content in your course sections. You can leverage the ‘smart coaching tips’ that Thinkific offers throughout the process. 
• Multiple content formats Create rich content by integrating multiple formats including text lessons, PDF, audio lessons, assignments, video lessons, multimedia lessons. You can integrate webinars, presentations, Google Docs, surveys, even appointment booking with Calendly) 
• Comprehensive assessment and certification features It’s dead simple to create multiple-choice questions with Thinkific. You can (and should!) give feedback on incorrect questions. The Pro and Growth plans have the added feature where you can require the learner to pass the quiz before progressing to the next lesson. You can offer sophisticated assessments by leveraging Thinkific’s integration with Brillium. Brillium has a host of question choices that include filling the blanks, ability to branch questions (where the next question is determined based on how the learner answers the current one). This is a great feature if you are looking to offer a certification based on in-depth testing. An added bonus is the completion certificate with Accredible integration.  This feature is available in the Pro and Enterprise plans.
• E-commerce integration Fully integrated ecommerce capability accepts payment and enables you to sell your courses.
• An array of marketing features With marketing tools integration, marketing and selling your courses is easy. Most of the marketing features are found under the ‘Market and Sell’ section of the administrative panel. There are other valuable marketing tools in the other sections too, such as a design feature that lets you streamline your content, making it more user-friendly. 

There are other marketing features that will help you optimize the promotion of your courses such as:

• For each course, you can customize the completion page and promote related courses. 
• Entice learners to pay for the courses by offering a section of it for free. You can specify on Thinkific which sections of a course are part of the free trial offer. 
• You have the option of bundling your courses and selling it as a single product under the paid plans

• If you plan to use multiple instructors or subject matter experts, you can share the revenue from Thinkific on Enterprise or Pro plans.
• Each course can be priced differently with different payment models on Thinkific to optimize your earnings. You can either charge a one-time fee for content access or specify enrollment duration to restrict access to the content for that particular time frame. You can charge a monthly fee or offer a membership or subscription plan for providing access to all of the content with the paid plans.  
• Coupons can be set up to promote your courses with the paid plans
• Adding affiliates is also easy on Thinkific which will then track the bundles or courses the affiliate sells.
• Email marketing integration with MailChimp, ConvertKit, AWeber and Active Campaign lets you optimize email marketing campaigns

In addition to all of this, you can interact and engage with your students by enabling discussions and responding to questions. A new functionality of ‘Communities’ added in 2019 by Thinkific lets you create communities and groups on Thinkific and offer personalized products or courses to each group. 

What is the Best All-in-One Online Course Creation Platform? (Run your website AND Your Course in one place)

Kajabi

Kajabi eliminates the need for you to use multiple platforms for running your online business. Some course creation platforms focus on just that course creation, and that’s fine.

But when you are running a business, it can be a major relief to have everything in one place.

What do I mean by ‘everything’? 

Well for a successful online business that uses successful online courses, you would need…

• a site builder
• an ecommerce platform
• a landing page builder
• email marketing software
• lead tracking and analytics software

…to name just a few.  

As an all-in-one learning management platform, Kajabi aims to help solopreneurs and educators:

• build a website
• sell physical and digital products
• reach more customers 
• market your offerings
• and of course create and manage your courses

What makes Kajabi the best All-in-One Course Creation Platform?

Kajabi has all the features that Thinkific has, but goes beyond Thinkific in terms of creation and marketing of digital products. Here are some of the great features of Kajabi that makes it the best all-in-one platform:

Custom domain 

Establish branding power with a domain name that is 100% you.

Unlimited hosting

Kajabi also offers unlimited hosting for any type of file including photos, videos and other digital files. You never feel limited. You can really go over the top and make your courses stand out.

Website builder

The drag-and-drop website builder and editor is easy to use and helps you customize your site. 

Rich marketing features:  Kajabi has some of the best-in-class marketing features that help you elevate your online business:

• Kajabi sites have in-built SEO optimization while there are additional tools you can use for more SEO configuration. The auto-scaling technology featured in Kajabi allows any number of users or visitors. 
• Customizable sales pipelines can be used to generate marketing sequences with just one click. 
• You can also leverage a host of other marketing features in Kajabi such as building your client list using the landing pages and opt-in forms. 
• Track and follow up on your leads with built-in segmentation. Basically, its easy to keep you customers organized into ‘buckets’ so you can tailor to their specific needs and wants
• Select from a collection of mobile-ready beautiful landing page templates that meet all your marketing needs. These templates include download pages, webinar pages, upsell pages, opt-in and sales pages.
  • With Kajabi, educators can also automate and personalize their email campaigns with ease. While you can send out email broadcasts to your entire list of subscribers or segmented users, you can add call-to-action (CTA) buttons and images to make your emails more effective.  
  • Offer add-on services and upsell products such as membership or coaching services with just one click.
  • Run promotions with coupons for your products
  • You don’t need any plugins on Kajabi to send emails. The platform lets you send beautifully designed, personalized email broadcasters to your subscribers. With more than fifteen themed email templates and twelve preset sections, you can add new content, images, video previews and countdown timers quickly. There are also options of desktop layout and mobile friendly layout to optimize your email marketing campaigns. You can also send personalized emails to cart abandoners to entice them to buy your products.

With the excellent email marketing features, Kajabi gives you a great opportunity to stay on top of your target customers’ minds. 

Streamlined course building 

• You can create educational content using multiple file formats such as text, PDFs, audio, videos, digital downloads and much more by importing them directly from Google Drive or Dropbox. 
• There are tools that allow you to create drip content on a specified schedule. Creating quizzes and assessments is easy while you can get insights on your students’ progress.
• A plus point of Kajabi is that you create subcategories for a content-heavy course to streamline and organize it better. 
• Unlike some online learning platforms, Kajabi offers flexibility in the design of assessments and quizzes. You can design multiple choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks, images as questions as well as open-ended questions. Students can also easily upload images, PDFs, audio files, word documents and videos in their answers. 
• You can host virtual conferences, live video training on Zoom and engage seamlessly with your audience.  Kajabi also offers the option to run automated, evergreen webinars with a set schedule. 

So if we love Kajabi so much, why isn’t it our top pick?

Price is a big factor. Don’t get me wrong, Kajabi is 100% worth the price, but Thinkific’s pricing makes it more suitable for someone just starting out or trying to keep their overhead low.

Social Proof. Thinkific has a larger market share. That means there are just more people using Thinkific than Kajabi. And that means that if you are struggling to do something, your chances of finding someone else who struggled the same way.

All-in-all, Thinkific is great for newbies. If, on the other hand, you have a bit of online course creation experience and your monthly cash flow is enough to cover Kajabi’s cost, then Kajabi is the way to go.

What is the best WordPress Plugin or Theme? (If you want to keep it all within WordPress)

LearnDash

LearnDash is a flexible, light-weight learning management system built on WordPress. 

But don’t be fooled by that ‘lightweight’ phrase. 

I have seen (and used) some seriously effective courses that were made with LearnDash.

LearnDash boasts an impressive clientele as well. Best-selling authors, universities, Fortune 500 companies, not to mention solopreneurs and small business owners. 

LearnDash also seamlessly integrates with most tools that you may be using already including WooCommerce, MailChimp, Easy Digital Downloads, PayPal, BuddyPress, Stripe, GravityForms and much more. 

What makes LearnDash the best Course Creation Plugin?

Advanced course building features

LearnDash is easily the best online course creation platform that plugs directly into WordPress. Here’s why:

• Drag and drop feature for course building
• Dynamic content delivery with drip fed lessons
• Both open-ended and linear course progression 
• You can set the criteria for giving access to lessons, quizzes and courses
• Advanced quizzing with custom messages, question banks and eight different question types. 
• You can randomly display questions and answers, allow learners to skip questions, set time limits, provide hints and upload audio, images and video to questions and answer choices.

Sophisticated sales and marketing functions

• Provide a shopping cart experience easily thanks to LearnDash’s integration with WordPress shopping cart (WooCommerce/Easy Digital Downloads). 
• This makes it easy for you to accept any payment gateway or adding discount codes, coupons, course bundles, sales, custom receipts and tax rules. 
• Create a one-time purchase or a bundle for a recurring price or set subscription for individual courses. You can also leverage LearnDash’s membership capability to create memberships to provide access to specific or all the courses.
• Automatically trigger marketing emails that are based on student actions. These actions include enrolling in a course, completing a lesson, passing or failing a quiz, uploading an assignment, or even when a student has not logged in to LearnDash for a long time.

Engage and empower your learners

• Create course-specific forums to encourage conversation between learners.
• Award points and display leaderboards to motivate learners 
• Require learners to submit assignments before accessing subsequent lessons.
• Award levels and certificates to those who successfully pass courses or levels.

What is the best option if I want to sell my courses on an established marketplace?

Udemy (Best, but very competitive)

Udemy is a well-known online learning platform with a huge user database. Founded in 2010, the platform has grown rapidly to become a preferred one for both educators and learners. 

These figures give an indication of how popular Udemy is: According to data posted on the Udemy community site, more than 40 million students across the world access over 30 million minutes of course content published on Udemy. 

As of 2019, more than 200 million enrollments had occurred from across 190 plus countries. Apart from individual learners, Udemy is also used by Fortune 100 companies and enterprise customers for their employee upskilling programs.

As you can see, Udemy is the best option when you are looking to sell your courses in an already established marketplace. In addition, you don’t need to pay any membership fee to create and post your courses on Udemy. You can earn 97 percent of the revenue when a student clicks on your referral link to sign up for your course or uses the coupon code you offer. 

Potentially, your course can be accessed by millions of learners across the world. Using Udemy’s existing marketplace will enable you to earn 50 percent of the revenue as the platform handles the entire promotion and upselling. 

This also ensures you can focus only on creating and managing your course content with no hassles of learning how to use various marketing tools or buying third-party marketing tools.

The only downside with Udemy is competition.

Beginners face stiff competition from thousands of instructors who are already established in the same domain. 

With courses being taught in over sixty languages, not integrating translation and localization functions in your course content can put you at greater disadvantage. 

However, Udemy offers great support on creating and publishing your content while you can also submit your course for a ‘quality check.’  The ease of use and access to an established database make Udemy a great choice for new educators. 

To make the most of the opportunity that Udemy provides, it is important to keep producing high-quality content and put in some effort and time in marketing your courses. 

It will also help greatly to do your research before you create your content. Look into the course subject and the competition (whether it is a niche topic or a generic one that already is being taught by experts), the price you can charge, your existing audience or student network (such as social media followers, LinkedIn connections and email list) and how much time and money you can dedicate to marketing your course.

Skillshare (The shared subscription model makes profiting easier with Skillshare)

The other platform where you can sell your courses to an established marketplace is Skillshare. The elearning platform is best suited for you if you are a creative freelancer or workers such as a chef, photographer, graphic designer, artist or an entrepreneur.

Just like Udemy, Skillshare also does not charge anything for creating and publishing content. It offers a convenient revenue option where teachers are paid based on minutes of their course watched by the students on the platform every month. 

Skillshare has a royalty pool for educators and between 30 to 50 percent of the premium membership revenue that the platform earns (from its students) goes to this pool.

Teachers are paid out based on their share of the minutes watched by Premium students across the platform each month. For instance, if 10 percent of the total minutes the students watched on Skillshare happened in your course or class in June, you will be paid 10 percent of the total allocation for the royalty pool in that month. 

Skillshare has over seven million students who are enrolled as premium members. This provides a wide database of learners and the shared subscription model does make it easier for you to profit on this platform.

What if I want to create an online course for free?

Open.edu (Best for Community projects or to give away free information)

Maybe you’re on a very tight budget. 

Or maybe you want to create a test-case course. That is, a experimental course to see if anyone would be interested in what you have to teach.

Open.edu might be your best option.

BUT, I want to be very transparent here: We have not used and have no experience with this one.

AND (more transparency here) the reviews of Open.edu aren’t that great. 

We like the idea of Open.edu, and its parent company OpenLearn. They are part of the Open Educational Resources Project and work to create educational materials free of charge.

There is a bit of a negative air around Open.edu (that is largely unjustified). It has a reputation that the courses on it are not ‘real’ because they are open to everyone. 

Unfortunately, that negative reputation will extend to your course. 

This is nothing more than social gatekeeping and we disagree with the notion entirely, but it is what it is. You need to be aware of it.

So we recommend that if you do opt for the free route, use it as a testing ground.

But if your goal is to create an asset for your business, use a paid version above. 

Closing thoughts about online course creation platforms

There you have it, everyone. You should have enough info now to go out and get started creating your online course. 

Like this post? You might also like:

• Our Ultimate Guide to Building a Home-Based Business
• Our Ultimate Guide to Investing
• Our favorite Side Hustles that can make you a millionaire
• Our shortlist of all-time best books (check out the ones that have made us the most money)

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for taking the time to read our post.

We hope this has been helpful to you in choosing your perfect online course creation platform. Our goal here is to give you the most comprehensive, honest reviews anywhere so you, too, can become a Three Month Millionaire!