Top 13+ Best Online Course Platforms Review

Best Online Course PlatformsEveryone has, at one point in their life, have an idea they can share or a skill they can teach. The ideas range from farming to cooking to matters related to business and more. There are several best online course platforms that you can learn from or share your course. In this post, we share with you the best online course platforms that we have researched and used before and we would like to recommend them to our readers.

The truth is every day presents opportunities for you to share your knowledge with the rest of the world.

In recent years, especially after arise of the Covid-19 pandemic, online learning has drastically taken an upward trend and changed the face of modern education.

Why online courses? Online learning is way cheaper, more effective, and consumes less of your time compared to traditional education. It allows you to take control of your academic life and learning at your own pace.

What is the Best Platform for Online Courses

Online course platforms are learning management systems (LMS) that offer users access to digital classes. Just like in offline classes, an instructor provides an engaging educational experience through video, image, text, audio, and PDF files.

The best online course platforms have features that allow a fully responsive website experience, easy content uploading, the ability to edit the look and feel of the class, marketing features, course completion certificates, a sales funnel, and more.

Top 13 Best Online Course Platforms Review

1.     Thinkific

the best online course platformThis is the best platform to sell online courses. It not only offers affordable pricing options but also delivers a high-end course experience. Thinkific allows customization of course websites and sales pages. The student dashboards look nice and are also customizable, allowing you to even add videos, text, and any downloadable file type to the same page. It also allows free Wistia video hosting which is a great plus.

Thinkific plans start at just $49/month and give you the ability to create unlimited courses. This plan also features memberships and bundles, advanced pricing options, landing pages, certificates, and marketing tools.

Thinkific offers marketing automation and email features, full edit of the code of your course site, customizable course certificates, custom domains, and affiliate marketing help and reporting.

2.     Learnworlds

the best online course platformLearnworlds is a platform most ideal for course creators who want to interact in unique ways with their students. It allows the addition of quizzes, gamification, interactive videos, and more. Although with a less thrilling experience than the Thinkific course, Learnworlds uniquely offers students more interactive eLearning content by engaging them with video interactions, note-taking, interactive eBooks, self-assessment, certificates, SCORM, and much more.

The platform also offers beautiful themes for your course player and flexibility for paid, private, drip-fed, or curated course pathways. What’s more, is that you can even offer free courses. It allows you to effortlessly convert your videos into exceptional experiences with automatically extracted transcripts, quizzes, and tables of contents.

3.     Kajabi

the best online course platformKajabi is a high-end course builder designed mostly for information business, not tiny course creators. It is especially suitable for email marketing automation, which is a crucial component of pre-sale, pre-webinar, drip course, and upsell emails. It not only allows you to create fully automated marketing campaigns and funnels but also features pre-built frameworks for lead generation, with pre-written copy optimized for conversions.

Kajabi has powerful course site themes, the ability to sell digital products, a customizable checkout, and blogging functionality. Compared to other course platforms, it comes with more built-in tools and features, but costs a little more. You will be able to segment users in your list, send emails at certain times based on advanced triggers, and send professionally branded messages.

4.     Teachable

the best online course platformIf you are looking for a fast and easy course builder, then Teachable is your go-to option. It offers website theme customization and is most suitable for beginners because it offers some of the cheapest options and is easy to use. It also allows unlimited bandwidth, students, courses, and coaching services. Teachable allows uses to have graded quizzes as well as custom course completion certificates.

You will get to choose between the free plan (with $1 + $0.10 for all transactions) and the other three plans ranging from just $29/month to $299/month. The most popular of them is the Pro Plan, which costs $99/month with zero transaction fees and allows live zoom courses. This plan also allows 5 user accounts.

5.     Podia

the best online course platformThis is an all-in-one online course platform with over 50,000 members. It is the ideal choice for digital downloads, memberships, and webinars. It acts as a webinar platform that allows the hosting of either live or on-demand webinars. You will be able to host unlimited files and videos, offer payment plans, upsells, quizzes, drip content, and student comments. You can also sell one-off downloads like eBooks, audiobooks, PDFs, cheat sheets, checklists, and presets.

Another advantage of Podia is that it gives you the ability to run your affiliate program on the inside. This way, you will be able to view all of your affiliates in one place, view helpful reporting, and make payouts based on your customized commission structure.

The main types of courses in Podia include;

  • Cohort-based courses with a future start date.
  • Standalone courses with images, video and audio files, MP3x, PDFs, and quizzes.
  • Pre-sell your course by taking payments before launch.
  • The ability to add coupons and memberships.
  • Drip courses deliver your course in a section-by-section format.

6.     LearnDash

best online course creation platformsThis WordPress LMS plugin is the one platform you need to sell courses with a WordPress site. Some of the big websites using LearnDash include Yoast, Infusionsoft, the University of Michigan, and WP Elevation. The plugin comes with numerous features including the “Focus Mode,” which blocks out all distractions when students run through a course.

LearnDash’s course builder meshes well with their email drip campaigns. This allows you to build a great online course on your website and match your content with an email drip schedule to send lessons according to a program. The Gradebook technology takes LMS to another level by giving students an overall grade based on quiz and homework scores, creating a weighted average for teachers to review.

7.     Ruzuku

Best Online Course Platforms      Ruzuku allows you to quickly create a step-by-step online course with their learning platform, PDFs, and text. It allows you to quickly create course outlines, edit and reorder your steps with ease and generate sales in no time. It offers ways to customize your course to fit your brand giving you the best chance to connect with your students.

The platform integrates with tools like MailChimp, Infusionsoft, and payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal to accept payments with no transaction fees.

8.     Academy of Mine

Best Online Course PlatformsThis is a high-end eLearning platform founded on personalized customer success and philosophy of customization. The learning management system works best in different business niches but is perfect for small to medium-sized businesses in need of a robust training system for their employees or clients. You will be able to include slides, documents, and course content, and have discussions with your students right there next to the content. You can also hold live virtual training and webinars.

Academy of Mine offers plans that have completely free development hours to help set up and launch your course with customized integrations. It allows you to build a fully custom LMS without writing a single line of code. Your students will be free to use a desktop, tablet, or smartphone to take part in the various online and self-paced courses entailing raw content from video, audio, PDF, PowerPoint, HTML, SCORM, TinCan, quizzes, assignments, and discussions.

9.     WizIQ

Best Online Course PlatformsWizIQ offers any form of educator an easy way to set up virtual classrooms for live interactive online classes. It is equipped with a high-definition virtual classroom, a cloud-based course builder with unlimited course creation and content uploading capacity. It runs on WebRTC and comes with an intuitive and user-friendly interface for better navigation and ease of use.

With WizIQ, you can provide live learning with HD video conferencing, an online whiteboard, and real-time messaging with unlimited participants. The tool offers the latest tools for live training such as discussion boards, video streaming, mobile options, assessments, and analytics. It allows you to create multimedia tests and assessments online in 9 different formats

10. Udemy

Best Online Course PlatformsUdemy is one of the best online course platforms, used by over 24 million students, 35,000 instructors, and 80,000+ courses. Udemy is free to use and charges a 3% rev share for sales through instructor coupons, 50% for students who found your course through organic search (SEO), and 75% for transactions made through paid search marketing efforts.

It provides a substantial revenue share for tuition fees with instructors receiving 100% revenue of the tuition fee for new users and 50% for existing users. It also allows you to participate in their marketing promotions. Every so often, they run promotions that can help you reach a larger audience on their platform. The marketing promotions are opt-in giving you the choice of participating.

11. Shaw Academy

Best Online Course PlatformsThis is a platform that gives its students access to professional, accredited online courses. Students only need to sign up and they’ll have access to all long-form courses. Shaw Academy offers courses in three distinct categories: hobbyists, professionals, and entrepreneurs.

The professionals’ category offers a globally recognized Digital Marketing Course which includes 32 videos and takes an average of 16 weeks to complete. The classes include digital marketing, project management, web development, Photoshop, and Microsoft Excel. Entrepreneurs access helpful classes on social media marketing, viral marketing, wedding, photography, and more.

12. Skillshare

Best Online Course Platforms    Skillshare is a large marketplace focused on creative education. The topics on Skillshare range from anything related to graphic design and music production to fine art and cooking. There are also have classes on more technical topics such as data science, analytics, and e-commerce.

Each of the classes on Skillshare is 20-60 minutes broken down into shorter lessons, plus projects and a community discussion forum to connect with other students. This tool is ideal for anyone offering content that would be suited for a creative audience, such as entrepreneurs and creatives. You can include courses on web design, building your email list, photography, painting, personal branding, and creative topics.

13. Treehouse

best online course creation platformsAnother well-known online course platform is Treehouse. This is a relatively new marketplace that believes in the democratization of education. The platform is committed to making education accessible to students of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds. Some of the big websites that use Treehouse include Microsoft, IBM Watson, Amazon Alexa, and Google Developers.

With Treehouse, three different plans are available, ranging from $25 to $199 per month. With the basic plan, you can provide on-demand courses, interactive practice sessions, and access to the online community, while the pro plan allows bonuses, beta features, and downloadable content.

Conclusion

You may have an idea or lesson you would wish to educate or train masses on. You can also be a teacher or educator at any level with so much to offer millions of learners worldwide who are looking to gain some useful skills online. The best online course platforms offer you the space to interact with these students in a friendly yet professional way.

The platforms are designed to make work easier for both you and the learners, with a ton of features to ensure ease of use. In some, you will also be able to include quizzes and ask questions live, and even go through your students’ work.

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