Online courses, as well as online course platforms, have grown in popularity.
There are now dozens of options, which can make selecting the right platform confusing and frustrating and that is what brings me to the topic of this article.
What are the Best Online Course Software/platforms?
In this post, I’ll reveal some of the best online course software, analyze its advantages and disadvantages, and assist you in selecting the ideal one for your business.
Without further ado, let’s get to it.
Best Online Course Software
1. Thinkific
Thinkific is one of the best online course software for many reasons. This software is affordable and has many amazing features to help you sell your course online more accessible and faster.
Thinkific enables you to create interesting online courses with a variety of content types, such as videos, text, PDFs, quizzes, surveys, and so on.
Thinkific also helps to deliver your information professionally via the inbuilt course player. You can also hold live courses, assign homework, drip course content, create a community section, issue certifications, and create learning paths.
Thinkific offers you SSL certification, secure payment options, open API, and automation tools. With this platform, you can track your student’s progress, teach live or on-demand lessons, sell and market your courses, integrate platforms, and much more.
Unlike other course builders, Thinkific templates provide helpful clues and tips to help you create a valuable course. Aside from video lessons, the templates are pre-populated at regular intervals throughout the course with examples of quizzes, downloads, surveys, and instructor notes.
Features
- Easy to use, drag-and-drop course-building tools.
- Conduct live lessons, give completion certificates to the students, and get API access.
- Pre-built templates and themes.
- Tools for giving live lessons, conducting quizzes, giving certificates, and more.
- Integration with many platforms.
- A custom domain with all paid plans.
Pricing
- Free plan: $0.00 per month
- Basic plan: $36 per month
- Starter plan: $74 per month
- Grow plan: $149 per month
2. Teachable
Teachable is another good online course software and the most recommended for newbie course creators that have little or no knowledge of how to get things done.
Teachable allows you to effortlessly create courses, add videos or audio files as course content, and sell your course through a simple checkout process.
Teachable is easy to use, and the subscription plans are also affordable. With Teachable, you’ll get a subdomain (free) or a custom domain (paid) to host your course, and you can control the structure, branding, pricing, and engagement tools.
More importantly, you’ll get access to your student’s information. When students enroll with their email addresses, you can contact and market to them further off the platform.
Teachable is one of the best online course platforms, with over 100,000 course creators from all around the world using it.
Features
- It helps you to create engaging multimedia lectures that include video, text, PDF (ebook), and audio files.
- You can import content from Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox.
- Comprehensive dashboards to get insights about course sales and students.
- This LMS site offers page editors to easily draft, customize, and launch a new course.
- You can create quiz questions.
- Enables you to issue certificates after completing a specific course.
- You can integrate teachable with Google Forms to collect feedback from students.
- Teachable accepts payments in more than 130 currencies.
Pricing
- Free plan: $0
- Basic plan: $29 per month (Billed annually) $348/year
- Pro plan: $99 per month (Billed annually) $1,188/year
- Advanced plan: Negotiable on the site
3. Learndash For WordPress
LearnDash is one of the best online course platforms for creating visually appealing online courses, receiving automated notifications, creating and sharing certificates and badges, integrating with your favorite applications, and running detailed reports on students’ enrollment, progress, and performance, among other things.
When it comes to e-commerce, LearnDash includes built-in shopping cart capability and payment systems like Stripe, PayPal, or 2Checkout. While the shopping cart functionality is simple, LearnDash includes direct interfaces with major cart systems such as SamCart, WooCommerce, and Easy Digital Downloads.
Also, the pricing plans for LearnDash are pretty affordable for the features it offers
Features
- Easy to use drag-and-drop tools for building courses.
- Allows you to schedule classes and set start dates.
- Integration with PayPal, Stripe, WooCommerce, 2checkout, Mailchimp, Slack, Zapier, and many other highly useful platforms.
- Reporting tools for tracking progress, performance, and enrollments.
- Supports images, videos, audio, SWF files, HTML5, SCORM, xAPI, and more.
Pricing
- Basic plan: $119.40 per year(1 site)
- Plus plan: $239.40 per year (10 sites)
- Pro plan: $479.40 per year (unlimited sites)
4. Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one online course creator that lets you create a beautiful course website, host all forms of content, including videos, sell online courses, deliver information professionally and engages your students.
Kajabi, unlike Thinkific, isn’t just concerned with providing basic functionality for producing and selling courses and memberships. Rather, it contains the capacity to create marketing funnels and conduct email marketing.
Kajabi is the most effective all-in-one online course platform and Kajabi performs brilliantly in terms of course delivery and student engagement.
Aside from all of the necessary course development features, it also includes powerful features like as an iOS/Android mobile app, a community, quizzes and assignments, Automations, learning paths, and so on.
This software will definitely assist you in providing an excellent learning experience for your customers.
Features
- It helps you to build a website without writing any code.
- This LMS site offers 24/7 support.
- Kajabi provides easy to use custom domain or subdomain.
- You can create as many pages as you like for creating a static site.
- It enables you to upload your video content.
- You can drag and drop images and videos to the working area.
Pricing
- Free plan: $0.00 per month
- Basic plan: $119 per month (billed annually)
- Growth plan: $159 per month (billed annually)
- Pro plan: $319 per month (billed annually)
5. Podia
Podia is a simple online course platform that allows you to build and sell online courses and other digital items from your own website. In terms of content production, the platform enables you to develop compelling multimedia lectures using videos, audio, text, PDFs, certificates, and so on, which are then distributed via the wonderfully designed course player.
With Podia, you can create Community and Coaching services in addition to online courses. This is useful if you’re seeking more ways to monetize.
When it comes to website building, Podia makes it simple to create sales pages for your products and I n terms of sales and marketing, the platform contains vital functions such as payment processing, bundles, coupons, affiliate marketing, and email marketing.
Features
- Online courses
- Digital downloads
- Webinars & workshops
- Coaching & consultations
- Affiliate marketing
- Email marketing
- Integrations
Pricing
- Free plan: $0.00
- Basic plan (Mover): $33.00 per month (billed annually)
- Pro plan (Shaker): $75.00 per month (billed annually)
- Enterprise plan (Earthquaker): $166 per month (billed annually)
6. Ispring suite
iSpring Suite is an all-in-one writing software that allows you to create professional online courses such as video lessons, interactive courses, quizzes, role-play simulations, SCORM-compliant e-books, and interactions.
At the same time, it’s a simple tool with little learning curve – just what you need when you’re on a tight deadline. iSpring Suite also includes a large library of eLearning assets and templates for even faster course creation, as well as an online place where you can save content, collaborate on it with your team, and share it with stakeholders for assessment and approval.
iSpring Suite courses can be converted to HTML5 for optimal viewing on any device, or published to any of today’s eLearning standards – SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, AICC, cmi5, and xAPI (Tin Can) — making them 100% compatible with any LMS.
The toolkit has a variety of customization options, allowing you to simply design courses that are suited to your business. It also has pre-built player themes that allow you to create professional-looking courses in minutes.
Features
- Provides users with a pre-built library of usable content or questions.
- Enables instructors to develop assessments with a variety of question types, such as multiple-choice and short answer.
- Displays real-time student responses to questions an instructor asks during a live class or event.
- Provides tools to create training materials for instructor-led and self-led courses.
- Provides pre-created content (Courseware) on standard topics that can be used as part of a curriculum.
- Is accessible from a mobile device and by users on the go.
- Allows users to implement their own branding throughout the platform.
- Provides detailed reports centered around student performance.
Pricing
- iSpring Suite: $770 per year (1 author)
- iSpring Suite Max: $970 per year (1 author)
View full pricing list here: iSpring Suite Pricing
7. LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is yet another well-known online course creator on the market. It places a major focus on providing an engaging learning experience.
The software includes tools for designing, selling, and marketing courses, as well as capabilities for reporting and analysis.
Some of the features that set it apart from the competition include an interactive movie player, interactive eBook reader, advanced quiz and exam capabilities, online community builder, and copyright protection. LearnWorlds offers a powerful page builder in addition to course building features that allows you to create beautiful sales pages and other pages for your course website.
Features
- Mobile App Builder
- Learning community
- Interactive video
- Live sessions
- Assessment builder
- Survey builder
- Website builder
Pricing
- Starter plan: $24.00 per month (billed annually)
- Pro trainer plan: $79.00 per month (billed annually)
- Learning center plan: $194.35 per monthly (billed annually)
- Learning Center & mobile apps plan: $363.35 per month (billed annually)
8. Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is the final piece of software on this list. Mighty Networks is an online course software developed in 2017.
Currently, the site serves over 100 million users from all around the world. Mighty Networks gives you the ability to create and manage your online course, membership site, or professional network all in one place.
It can also power your podcast, blog, or even physical event space. Mighty Networks makes it simple to construct and grow a healthy community around your course content, regardless of the type of online course you wish to produce.
You can also utilize your social media followers to expand your Mighty Network and reach out to a whole new group of prospective students.
Features
- Mobile applications for Android and iOS users.
- Allows unlimited hosts and members with each plan.
- Tools for group messaging and one-on-one messaging.
- Collaboration tools include online events, Zoom integration, and more.
- API integrations and custom domains.
Pricing
- Community plan: $33.00 per month (billed annually)
- Business plan: $99.00 per month (billed annually)
- Mighty pro: Contact customer service for pricing
FAQs
What is Online Course Software?
Online course software are course marketplaces where content creators can upload and sell their courses to an existing audience.
While these platforms require less marketing effort, they charge a large revenue share and impose additional company restrictions.
Which is the Best Online Course Platform?
There are tons of online course platforms but here is our pick for the top 8:
- Thinkific
- Teachable
- Learndash
- kajabi
- Podia
- Ispring suite
- LearnWorlds
- Mighty Networks
Which online course is in most demand?
Below are the top trending online courses:
- Data Science.
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.
- Business Intelligence.
- Cloud Computing.
- Project Management.
- Software Development.
- Full-stack development.
Conclusion
That sums it up guys! Whether you’re passionate about teaching, want to expand your audience, or just want to earn money from your courses, there’s a platform to help you get there.
Also, consider your budget, time limits, present online following, and income possibilities when selecting software to begin your course.
