In today’s computer-based society, it is becoming more and more important to have an effective training program for your employees. If you run a business or are part of a large organization, it is also important for you to have technology-driven courses, rather than traditional courses. The number of online training platforms has increased dramatically in the past few years. It is therefore becoming difficult for businesses to select the best learning platform.
So, let’s look at some of these online learning platforms for businesses.
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
Pluralsight
Pluralsight is a technology-focused e-learning platform that helps your team upskill across design, development, security, and cloud.
✅ Pros:
- High-quality and highly specialized expert-authored courses across a variety of technology topics
- The ability to track employee’s progress across their learning paths
⛔️ Cons:
- No certified courses
edX
edX is one of the most prominent global nonprofit online learning platforms, it was founded by Harvard and MIT. Through its collaboration with top universities and institutions around the world, edX, seeks to remove the barriers of cost, location and access, from traditional education while providing high-quality content.
Most of edX’s courses are free, however, there is a fee for getting a verified certificate upon completion of a course.
Coursera
As one of the top providers of massive open online courses, Coursera partners with universities and organizations around the world to provide a wide range of in-depth courses, both paid and unpaid to learners across the world.
Coursera has one of the largest numbers of university partners, courses, specializations and degree programmes available.
With nearly a thousand courses free, Coursera courses include recorded video lectures by experts from top colleges and organizations. Most of these courses provide a certificate of completion at the end of the course.
LinkedIn Learning
LinkedIn Learning offers a wide variety of expert-led online learning courses for teams and organizations. Unlike many other e-learning platforms, the business plan allows you to bring custom content into the platform and that way make courses more applicable to your organization.
✅ Pros:
- A huge library of learning materials spanning several different areas
- The ability to customize content based on your organization’s needs
⛔️ Cons:
- Many of the courses are only available in English
- Most materials are only delivered in video format
Udacity
Udacity is one of the online learnng platforms with a strong focus on technology, offering free courses in programming, data science and web development.
This platform offers online courses and credentials that teach students the skills that are currently in demand by industry employers. Udacity provides a nanodegree programme for learners who want to master a skill set or start a career in tech. These courses include real-world projects and are taught by experts who provide feedback on tasks completed.
Udemy
Udemy is among the most popular online learning platforms and offers courses in various professional fields as well as specific skill development courses taught by expert instructors. These online courses are a combination of free and paid content.
The paid courses on Udemy range from $13 to $500, with frequent discounts and class specials, depending on the level of specialization.
Udemy adopts a concept similar to Coursera for their free courses and also allows learners on the platform to build custom courses from lessons. Experts in various fields can create and launch their courses on Udemy for learners on the platform’s massive user base.
Alison
Alison offers free online courses in education and skill training created by experts in various fields. The platform provides resources designed to suit the needs of students, job seekers, and other types of learners. It targets all kinds of learners, from professionals and managers to teachers and freelancers. Alison also allows you to track all your courses to observe your learning progress.
There are so many online learning platforms offering courses across various disciplines. These sites offer courses to complete a degree, earn a certificate, learn some skills to advance in a career or gain knowledge in an entirely different field. Online courses are a perfect way for people to learn at their own pace with access to endless resources.
Skillsoft
Skillsoft is a corporate e-learning platform that offers perhaps the most comprehensive set of learning materials to companies. Including tactical courses like how to use Microsoft Excel to highly specialized expert-led courses on digital transformation, Skillsoft serves a variety of different learning needs.
✅ Pros:
- Perhaps the industry’s widest selection of courses
- Convenient mobile app
⛔️ Cons:
- Occasional issues with a long loading time
- Reporting features could be improved
uQualio
uQualio is a video-based e-learning platform that comes with handy practice quizzes and gamification features. Unlike many of the more traditional e-learning platforms, it favors shorter, bite-sized content and interaction between the participants.
✅ Pros:
- The ability to build your own courses
- Packed with quizzes and other interactive features
- Support for bite-sized content that can be consumed on-the-go
⛔️ Cons:
- Launched in 2017 and a lot of the features are still being developed.
Mind Tools
Mind Tools is a management and leadership training platform that offers a catalog of learning resources.
✅ Pros:
- Clear focus on management, leadership, and business related content
- Materials available for all knowledge levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced
⛔️ Cons:
- Most of the content is in article format, and not available offline.
Cornerstone
Cornerstone is an e-learning content subscription service that allows you to order tailored content for your organization’s LMS.
✅ Pros:
- Customizable platform, where you can set different access levels to different users and create custom welcome messages to each group
⛔️ Cons:
- Limited reporting functionalities
- Limited customer support
OpenSesame
OpenSesame is an e-learning solution that helps you curate the right content for your learning program.
✅ Pros:
- A wide variety of courses
- Helpful customer service with short response times
⛔️ Cons:
- The courses leading up to a certification can be pricey
- Limited localization to different languages
Grovo
Grovo is a microlearning platform that offers corporate customers bite-sized mixed-media lessons on the go.
✅ Pros:
- Mixed-media lessons, e.g. short videos that are supplemented with quizzes
- Gamification features that allow organizing internal learning competitions
⛔️ Cons:
- Some of the videos use cheesy stock images to illustrate serious concepts
- At times, the quizzes are too easy, and can therefore be construed as disengaging.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to do an online course, or even if you’re not but would like to learn a new skill that may come in handy for your business, then this article is going to be very useful. I’ve reviewed a few of the most popular online learning platforms and have concluded which I think offer the best value for money.