26.07.2022
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Top 8 Online Course Platforms and How to Choose Best in 2022

Sarthak Goriya
SEO Growth Strategist at jeenam infotech
Reading time: ~10 min

The E-learning industry is booming today. Online course platforms are a great method to monetize your audience. And help students for learning, there are some platforms described here like podia, Kajabi, Thinkific, teachable, and LearnDash.

Content:
1. Introduction
2. 8 best online course platforms
3. SendPulse EDU
4. Podia
5. Kajabi
6. Thinkific
7. Teachable
8. LearnDash
9. FreshLearn
10. Systeme.io
11. How to choose the best online course platforms?
12. Conclusion

***

Introduction 

Online course platforms are helping to improve your e-learning business and support your customer. choosing the right, and best online learning platforms is mandatory if you want to multiply your sales.

You can find lots of the best online learning platforms, but many are not designed for selling online courses. And if that software is selling courses, they have different parameters. You need to find the best platform according to your business.

The benefit of online course platforms is they provide you existing student base, so you can start your business without a small customer base. 

Now we are reviewing the top 5 best online course platforms, and also, we are looking at some important parameters to choose the best online course platforms for your business.

8 best online course platforms

#1. SendPulse EDU

For those who want to share their knowledge and monetize it, SendPulse offers an online course creation platform. In SendPulse EDU, you can create courses and training programs for a wide audience or for employees of your own company, for example, orientation and onboarding programs. The SendPulse platform is well suited for both confident professionals and beginners who are just starting to try themselves in the field of education.

On the SendPulse educational platform you can create professional courses, conduct mid-stage and final exams, and issue course completion certificates. The visual designer allows you to shape your knowledge into a convenient digital product that will be highly appreciated by your target consumer.

Best Online Course Platforms | SendPulse EDU


When creating a course, you can choose the language and format of training, access to all lessons at once or sequentially, price, criteria for passing the training, etc. SendPulse provides a convenient constructor for creating a certificate. You can choose its design, specify the name of the instructors and other necessary information.

On the platform, you can keep in touch with your students and see their questions, as well as manage your files.

#2. Podia

It is the most relevant and best online course platform that can allow you to create any kind of educational content. And you can create multiple courses in one place. And you can also build digital downloads for these courses.

You can build the sites for separate membership, And you can host them all in one place.

Best Online Course Platforms | Podia


Podia handles VAT, video hosting, and many other features which you need most, and you handle all features in this platform. Podia offers good-looking and customizable templates which help to improve the conversation.

Podia offers separate landing pages for each of your courses and membership option to you. For a membership plan, you can build your private membership sites and make connections with your customer. The landing page includes the following : 

  • Overview of your course.
  • Information about what is included in the course.
  • A content section.
  • Creators bio.
  • FAQs 

The multiple landing pages for different courses attract people and improve your conversion rate and customers. It's offering you to set up a teaser of content that helps you in the pre-launching event, which gives you some pre-orders, of course.

It provides email marketing tools for sending advertising emails and newsletters to your consumers. Podia also provide a live chat option that improves engagement and trust with your customers.

About pricing:

  • The basic plan is $39/month.
  • Growth plan $79/month.

#3. Kajabi

Kajabi is a great platform for your online education business, and you can manage everything in one place.

Some features of Kajabi : 

  • You can build your website.
  • You can create and manage your content.
  • You can see analytics of everything.
  • Provide email-marketing campaigns.
  • Easily communicate with your consumers.
  • Easy payment methods and processes.
  • You can write blogs to increase the reach of an audience through SEO & content marketing.

The unique feature of Kajabi is the automation tool and pipeline features. You can use pipelines to connect your other landing page together with your checkout page that making the process easy for the customer. It helps you to increase your sales and gives more conversion rate.

Best Online Course Platforms | Kajabi


And also, you set up automation to trigger specific email events when students or customers take some action like completing assessments or canceling subscriptions.

About pricing:

  • Basic plan - $119/month.
  • Growth plan - $159/month.
  • Pro plan - $319/month.

#4. Thinkific

Thinkific is a great all-in-one online platform for learning that makes the process easy of creating course content and selling that. And this platform is capable of supporting millions of students.

The templates of Thinkific are well designed to sell educational content courses. And it is highly customizable. If you want advance customization, you can drop code in your Thinkific website by widget tool.

These platforms can provide multiple files like : 

  • Quizzes.
  • Surveys.
  • PDFs.
  • Audiofiles.
  • Text.
  • Videos.

You can use all these file types for your content and easily import it from the content importer. 

Best Online Course Platforms | Thinkific


Thinkific provides the following e-commerce features : 

  • Marketing stacks.
  • Many payment options.
  • Robust tracking tools.

It is also integrated with other marketing tools like Mixpanel, MailChimp, and segment.io.

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The best feature is that Thincific doesn't charge any transaction fees. The only charge applicable which taken by payment processors ( Paypal ). The basic plan is sufficient for starting your business.

About pricing:

  • Basic plan - $49/month.
  • Growth plan - $99/month.
  • Premium plan - $499/month.

#5. Teachable

Teachable also provides you to make good valuable content, courses, quizzes, and landing pages.

Teachable provides all features like other learning platforms like Thinkific and Kajabi, but the unique feature is the custom completion certificate.

If you provide your own course completion certificate to your student base, it gives an amazing experience to your students and increases conversion. It also provides many marketing tools which help to make promotional offers and coupons for your course. And set different pricing options and your own affiliate program.

Best Online Course Platforms | Teachable


The templates of teachable are good and user-friendly it attracting the customer to buy a course. It is also integrated with some support tools like - Olark, Zendesk, and intercom. And these are totally free.

About pricing:

  • Basic plan - $39/month.

            (with a 5% additional transaction fee.)

  • Pro plan - $119/month.

            (zero transaction fee.)

#6. LearnDash

LearnDash is a platform that is different from other platforms. It is not helping you to create your website or course. It is a WordPress LMS plugin you are using if you have existing WordPress websites.

LearnDash requires a WordPress account. If you have an account, then you can easily use this platform and start creating and selling your courses. You can also deliver quizzes, manage student enrollment, give out student certificates, manage student reports, and all you need to run your online learning business.

Best Online Course Platforms | LearnDash


This is a great choice for universities, training organizations, and institutes that have an existing WordPress account. 

You can use these sites to set up drip courses and build grade book technology to give and calculate your students grades on their performance.

About pricing:

  • Basic plan - $159 (for 1 site)
  • Plus plan - $189 (for 10 sites)
  • Pro plan - $329 (for 25 sites)

#7. FreshLearn

FreshLearn is an all-in-one creators’ platform to create, market and sell digital products online directly to your fans on your branded website. . Be it recorded on demand courses, live cohorts based courses, digital downloads like ebooks or bundling the products and selling as memberships, you can do it all in FreshLearn with zero coding knowledge. 

Interesting features like blogging CMS help you boost engagement by planning and publishing your own blogs through content marketing. Similarly, the drag and drop landing page builder lets you create your learning website’s unique landing page effortlessly. You can also customize your brand’s signature logo, theme, and email notifications to set your business narrative right.

Best Online Course Platforms | FreshLearn


Some other notable features that FreshLearn offers are as follows:

  • Connect all your digital products to your own domain and build your own brand. 
  • Gamify the whole course journey to keep the members excited while taking courses online. 
  • Set up assessments with a scoring mechanism to help your students gauge their progress.
  • Customize the certificates you can reward your students with upon course completion.
  • Connect your Paypal/Stripe/Razorpay wallet with FreshLearn to streamline payments.
  •  Set up your own affiliate marketing program to earn those extra bucks.

The most exciting part is that FreshLearn is also available in the form of mobile apps for both Android and iOS. Additionally, the platform is extremely quick when it comes to adding new features and updates, thus keeping you ahead of the race.

Plus, you can always reach out to FreshLearn’s customer support if you ever feel stuck or confused when trying your hands at the numerous features of this platform. They typically respond within seconds and are available round the clock on live chat, calls and emails

About Pricing:

  • Free plan - $0/year
  • Pro plan - $25/month
  • No Brainer plan - $41/month

#8. Systeme.io

Systeme.io is an all-in-one online course platform and is the perfect solution to create, launch, and market your online course — all in one place!

Best Online Course Platforms | Systeme.io


Systeme.io allows course creators to:

  • Create, launch, and sell online courses, digital products, membership sites, and webinars all from the same platform
  • Build professional-looking landing pages for online courses (no plugins required)
  • Give timed access to students via the drip feature
  • Create module quizzes to assess students

And that is just a glimpse of what systeme.io puts in your hands. Here are some other noteworthy features that systeme.io offers:

  • Email marketing: Grow your student base with unlimited emails and an automated tagging system to increase sales
  • Affiliate marketing: Promote your courses through students who automatically become your affiliates when they sign up for your course
  • Website builder: Easily sell your courses by building a website with no coding experience and a free custom domain

About pricing:

  • Free plan - $0/month for 1 online course
  • Startup plan - $27/month for 5 courses
  • Webinar plan - $47/month for 20 courses
  • Unlimited plan - $97/month for unlimited courses and students

How to choose the best online course platforms?

We are providing some parameters which you need to rule out according to your business, and you can choose the perfect online platform for learning.

  1. Customization options 
  2. Marketing tools and features.
  3. Pricing structures.
  4. Payment processing.
  5. Interactivity.
  6. Support media.
  7. Advance features.

Conclusion 

So as you see, the online course platforms are essential for your online learning and selling businesses help in every process. We are comparing eight platforms here and also give some tips to choose the best platform.

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