It is an outstanding tool to build an online class platform for bringing real-time teaching and learning experience through the internet. The best part is that when you use it to build an online teaching platform, it allows us to create a virtual classroom in which we can team up with our students and teachers and offer real-time online education.
1. Thinkific.
Best Overall Online Course Platform (Free or $49/mo)
Thinkific is the best overall platform to sell online courses.
It’s my #1 choice because the pricing is exactly in line with other affordable options on this list and it can deliver a high-end course experience.
- Course websites can be customized and you’d never guess they were Thinkific.
- Sales pages are highly optimized and look great.
- Student dashboards look nice and are customizable (you can add videos, text, and any downloadable file type to the same page).
- You can either send your entire course at once or drip it out over time.
- Free Wistia video hosting (a huge value).
That’s honestly all that you need for an optimized course website.
In fact, even though Thinkific plans start at just $49/month, huge brands like Fiverr use Thinkific to sell online courses.
I would have never guessed that this massive learning database was a Thinkific site until their team told me:
Their best (and most popular) Pro Plan offers a one-month free trial to get started.
First, this plan gives you the ability to create unlimited courses. It also features memberships and bundles, advanced pricing options, landing pages, certificates, and marketing tools.
Here’s a little preview of the experience creating a Thinkific course.
All that you do is create and customize your course with their drag and drop editor:
Next, you upload your content and choose one of their website templates:
Lastly, you set up payment methods (you can collect payments in over 100 currencies):
There are also a ton of customization options. If you want to build a completely custom site, their onboarding team takes your vision and helps you turn it into a reality.
Pros of Thinkific:
- Marketing automation and email features.
- Simple free plan to get started.
- Can fully edit the code of your course site.
- Customizable course certificates.
- Custom domains.
- Affiliate marketing help and reporting.
Here’s what people are saying about Thinkific:
- “You need to get on Thinkific. The team is creative, reliable, and offers unbeatable support. They always make sure all my bases are covered and, as a business owner, that’s invaluable.” – Lewis Howes
- “By teaching our audience how to scale and grow their business through online training, we’ve grown ours. We couldn’t have done it without Thinkific.” – John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs on Fire
- “I seriously can’t be more impressed with your customer support team. They are the perfect blend of efficient and personable. It’s like having my very own IT department.” – Kim Garnett
Thinkific Pricing:
- Basic ($49/month): Unlimited courses and students, drip (scheduled) content, custom domain, email integrations, and coupons.
- Pro ($99/month): Basic features, plus memberships and bundles, private courses, certificates, advanced HTML and CSS editing, assignments, live lessons via Zoom, and priority support.
- Premier ($499/month): Pro features, plus 50 course admins, onboarding package, and unlimited growth package (best for big teams).
Overall, I recommend the Thinkific platform as my #1 choice for course creators and entrepreneurs who are serious about creating, marketing, and selling their own course content.
You can get started today with a One-Month Free Trial of their Pro Plan with my link below.Try Thinkific
2. Learnworlds.
Best Course Creation Software for Interactive Learning ($24/month)
Learnworlds is a platform that’s best for course creators looking to interact in unique ways with their students.
Think quizzes, gamification, interactive videos, etc.
While the student experience isn’t as nice looking as a Thinkific course, it’s unique in that it offers students more interactive eLearning content.
Pros of Learnworlds:
- Interactive videos, e-books, gamification, and downloadable attachments.
- You can offer free courses.
- Can extract transcripts from your courses.
- A custom domain name and white-labeled content.
- Students can take notes and highlight important points.
- Certificates of completion.
- Custom mobile app on iOS for course.
- The ability to create coupons and discounts.
- Social media integrations.
- A new analytics platform to optimize your sales.
- The ability to create membership sites.
- A strong knowledge base.
- 24/7 support.
Pricing:
- Starter ($24/month paid annually): one admin, $5 fee per course sale, custom domain, unlimited courses, page builder tool, 4 payment gateways, coupons, and drip feed courses.
- Pro Trainer ($79/month): Starter features, plus no transaction fees, 5 admin accounts, subscriptions and memberships, custom checkout pages, live classes via Zoom and Webex, assignments, and affiliate management.
- Learning Center ($249/month): Pro Trainer features, plus a branded corporate academy, premium cloud servers, flexible invoicing, premium support, and premium account manager.
Get a free 30-day trial of Learnworlds with my link below and start building your interactive online community.Try Learnworlds
3. Kajabi.
Best High-End Online Course Platform for Professionals ($119/month)
Kajabi is the best high-end course builder tailored toward information business, not tiny course creators.
It’s best when it comes to email marketing automation. Automation is a crucial component of pre-sale, pre-webinar, drip course, and upsell emails – and Kajabi does it best.
Their “Pipelines” feature lets you create fully-automated marketing campaigns and funnels. These are pre-built frameworks for lead generation, with pre-written copy optimized for conversions.
It also features powerful course site themes, the ability to sell digital products, a customizable checkout, and blogging functionality.
Overall, it’s the best high-end course platform with more built-in tools and features, but it costs a little more than others on the list.
Kajabi Pros:
- Best all-in-one software for a true information business.
- Wistia video hosting is excellent.
- Major focus on sales and marketing tools.
- More built-in tools than other platforms.
- Can offer monthly recurring subscriptions.
- Integrated with Stripe and PayPal.
- Big names use Kajabi, including Amy Porterfield.
Kajabi Pricing:
Kajabi pricing is mainly based on the number of courses and active members you have:
- Basic ($119/month): 1 website, 1 admin, 3 products, 3 pipelines, 10,000 contacts, and 1,000 active members.
- Growth ($119/month): 1 website, 10 admins, 15 products, 15 pipelines, 25,000 contacts, 10,000 active members.
- Pro ($319/month): 3 websites, 25 admins, 100 products, 100 pipelines, 100,000 contacts, and 20,000 active members.
Where Kajabi really excels is its marketing automation tools. You can segment users in your list, send emails at certain times based on advanced triggers, and send professionally branded messages.
If you’re an established business and want to try one of the more advanced platforms on the market, Kajabi is a solid choice.
Start your free 14-day trial of Kajabi today.Try Kajabi
4. Teachable.
Best Online Course Platform for Beginners ($29 – $249/mo and One Month Free)
Teachable is an option if you want a fast and easy course builder.
I consider it the best for beginners getting their feet wet in the course world as it’s one of the cheapest options and easy to use.
You can choose to use their free plan (with $1 + $0.10 for all transactions) or select one of their three plans ranging from just $29/month to $299/month.
I recommend their most popular Pro Plan at $99/month as it’s the first plan with zero transaction fees.
Teachable also gave me a unique and limited-time promo code (200 left):
Use PROSOCIATE1MFREE at checkout to get one month of their Pro Plan for free.
Teachable Pros:
- Very easy setup.
- Unlimited everything – bandwidth, students, courses, and coaching services.
- One-click checkout.
- Optimized storefront and sales pages.
- Live Zoom courses on their pro plan.
- International payment plans in 130+ currencies.
- Graded quizzes.
- Custom course completion certificates.
- Website theme customization.
- Can have 5 user accounts on their pro plan.
Teachable Pricing:
- Basic ($29/month): 5% transaction fees, 2 admin users, drip content, course builder, members-only community.
- Pro ($99/month): Basic features, plus no transaction fees, 5 admin users, advanced reports, and course certificates.
- Business ($249/month): Pro features, plus advanced coding customizations, 20 admins, bulk student enrollments, and group coaching calls.
Get started with your Teachable Pro Plan and use my promo code PROSOCIATE1MFREE at checkout to get one month free.Try Teachable
5. Podia.
Best All-In-One Online Course Platform for Webinars, Downloads, and Memberships ($39/month)
Podia is an all-in-one online course platform with over 50,000 members that is great for digital downloads, webinars, and memberships.
Its main types of courses include:
- Standalone courses that include images, video and audio files, MP3x, PDFs, quizzes, and more.
- Pre-sell your course by taking payments before launch.
- Cohort-based courses with a future start date.
- Drip courses deliver your course in a section-by-section format.
- The ability to add coupons and memberships.
They truly excel with their membership options. You can grow your own online community by interacting with members, bundling products for specific groups, offering tiered plans, and connecting with Facebook Groups and Slack.
Podia also acts as a webinar platform to host either live or on-demand webinars.
Another awesome feature is the ability to run your own affiliate program inside of Podia. You can view all of your affiliates in one place, view helpful reporting, and make payouts based on your own customized commission structure.
There is 24/7 support, no transaction fees, and a simple three-step process to get your course website up quickly.
Although they don’t charge fees, their payment processors have transaction fees of 2.9% + 30¢.
Pricing:
- Mover ($39/month) – Unlimited everything, zero transaction fees, sell courses, digital downloads, and 5k emails sent per month.
- Shaker ($79/month) – Everything in Mover, plus the ability to create membership communities, add affiliates, and 15k emails sent per month.
- Earthquaker ($179/month) – Everything in Shaker, plus dedicated account manager, personalized onboarding, and 50k emails sent per month.
Overall, if you’re looking for strong membership functionality and the ability to increase your sales with the help of affiliates, Podia is a unique and worthwhile course builder to try out.
You can sign up and give it a test run with a free 14-day trial.Try Podia
Best online course creator for gamifying your online courses
Online courses have a notoriously low completion rate across the board, with many learners abandoning the course long before they finish. That’s what Xperiencify aims to remedy. By allowing instructors to gamify courses and turn learning into a more engaging experience, the app promises to boost your completion rates by as much as 10-30%.
For each module students complete, they earn experience points (called XPs). Instructors can set the XP value of each module and elements within it during the course creation process.
In addition to points, instructors can design their own celebrations marking key milestones in each course. A new beta feature also lets instructors automate course experience flows with event-triggered emails, SMS, and more.
While video content is Xperiencify’s bread and butter, you can also add supporting resources to your lessons, which can include everything from PDFs to slides to MP3 files and more. And you can do even more with Xperiencify by connecting it with your favorite software using Zapier.
Xperiencify pricing: Launch plan is $49/month for unlimited courses and students, 4.9% transaction fee, and Zapier integration.
Ready, set, teach
Whether you’re passionate about teaching, want to grow your audience, or are just looking to earn an income from your courses, there’s a platform to help you achieve your goals.
When picking a tool to launch your course, consider your budget, time constraints, current online following, and earning potential. If you’re simply testing the waters, start with a course marketplace. Once you’ve validated your course topic and content, only then proceed to launch your own course website. Don’t worry about migrating content from one platform to another. Most platforms support this, whether for free or for an added fee.
Conclusion
Learning a new skill or taking a class is something that most ambitious people do as part of their personal development. I’ve been taking classes through the internet since 2003, and have always been surprised by the number of platforms available to choose from. I have a lot of experience with online classes, so here are my top three picks for the best online class platforms.