Our team of researchers has spent hundreds of hours using the different course platforms and trialing them with our own content to find which are the best and the worst on the market right now.
In this guide, I’m going to walk you through 7+ best online course platforms, based on real-world experience.
Who am I and why should you trust these reviews?
My name is Adam Enfroy, and I run Blog Growth Engine, a course that makes about $3 million a year. My course business has over 20 employees from all types of marketing, tech, and software backgrounds.
And, honestly, my income would be a lot lower if it wasn’t for one of these tools.
Online education is the future and if you want to make money selling your own knowledge, you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s get started.
What Are the Best Online Course Platforms?
Here are my top picks for the best online course platforms this year.
1. Thinkific.
Best Overall Online Course Platform (Free or $49/mo)
Adam’s Take
I love Thinkific and used it for my online business, selling my course Blog Growth Engine. They provide an excellent student experience, easy integrations with Stripe and checkout providers to make collecting payments easy, and they have an expert support team that’s been super helpful. Overall, I recommend Thinkific wholeheartedly as my #1 recommendation for selling online courses.
Thinkific is the best overall platform to sell online courses. It’s my #1 choice because the pricing is precisely 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 send your entire course at once or drip it out over time.
Free Wistia video hosting (an immense value).
Here’s another take.
“Thinkific literally has everything you need right out of the box, and the trial experience is probably the easiest I’ve come across,” said Andrew McGuire, President of Income Growth Engine and Former VP of Pipeline at Armorblox. “I was able to upload about five course videos within a few minutes of launching my trial, which is really helpful.”
Now, even though Thinkific plans start at just $49/month, even 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:
Source: Learn from Fiverr
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 of 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.
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.
“We’ve grown ours by teaching our audience how to scale and grow their business through online training. 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.
Key Features:
Live Lessons & Cohorts allow you to deliver your course content live, in real-time, to students worldwide.
Advanced customizations mean making your courses look and feel precisely how you want them to.
Website themes help you quickly and easily create a professional-looking website without any design or coding experience.
Communities & Memberships allow your students to connect and learn in collaboration.
Progress Tracking lets you see how your students are doing and identify any areas they may need help with.
Assessments & Certificates allow your students to demonstrate their understanding and progress.
User Interface:
Configuring your course landing page is one of the many benefits of using Thinkific.
You can use their built-in landing page editor to easily customize the look and feel of your page without having to know any code!
There’s also a wide range of course templates that you can choose from, so you can find one that fits the style of your course.
From pre-selling your course to creating a mini-course, hosting a webinar reply, and more, Thinkific has you covered.
Thinkific Pricing:
Free ($0/month): Great to test out the features and get a feel for the interface.
Basic ($36/month): Unlimited courses and students, 1 administrator, drip (scheduled) content, custom domain, email integrations, and coupons.
Start ($74/month): Basic features, 1 administrator, plus memberships and bundles, private courses, certificates, advanced HTML and CSS editing, assignments, live lessons via Zoom, and priority support.
Grow ($149/month): Pro features, plus 3 administrators, onboarding package, and unlimited growth package (best for big teams).
Expand ($374/month): Pro features, plus 5 administrators, onboarding package, and unlimited growth package (best for big teams).
What I Like/Dislike About Thinkific:
Like:
Marketing automation and email features.
Simple free plan to get started.
You can fully edit the code of your course site.
Customizable course certificates.
Custom domains.
Affiliate marketing help and reporting.
Dislike:
There’s a slight learning curve to the setup.
Integration with social media networks and CRMs would be a nice touch.
Product Updates:
Thinkific Payments allows you to have a faster performance checkout page, reducing the dropoff rate. This means that you can keep more of your hard-earned money!
Integrated order bumps functionality means that the average order value on your Thinkific site can be increased by offering a small add-on product at checkout.
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.
With my link below, you can get started today with a one-month free trial of their Pro Plan.
2. Kajabi.
Best High-End Online Course Platform for Professionals ($119/month)
Adam’s Take
Kajabi is one of the best platforms for professionals wanting to scale their businesses. With so many features in their plans, you can develop your online training just as you want and build as many features within your platform as needed. Whether you want to send newsletters, host podcasts, or build membership sites, Kajabi can work for your needs.
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.
Key Features:
Course insights that give you a clear picture of how your students are doing
Unlimited video hosting so you can create as many courses as you want
Publish quickly to your website with just a few clicks – no need to learn to code!
SEO-optimized so your courses show up high in search engine results
Unlimited hosting for your classes and marketing materials
Safe and secure, so your data is always protected
One-click marketing sequences make it easy to promote your courses
Website builder lets you create a professional website in minutes without any design or coding experience required
User Experience:
Regarding the user experience of using the platform for the first time, Kajabi is quite intuitive with where you have to click.
You can follow the instructions to create mini-courses and evergreen training, build your community, set up your membership site, and much more.
This makes it easy for new users to get started with the platform.
However, one downside is that the interface can be a bit overwhelming with all the available options and features.
This might take some time to get used to if you are new to using Kajabi.
I also like that the settings are grouped in various groups, allowing easy access to just the right options when you need to change something.
Kajabi Pricing:
Basic ($119/month): 1 website, 1 admin, 3 products, 3 pipelines, 10,000 contacts, and 1,000 active members.
Growth ($159/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.
What I Like/Dislike About Kajabi:
Like:
Best all-in-one software for a proper information business.
Wistia video hosting is excellent.
Primary 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.
Dislike:
Email sequences can be more varied.
Some improvement on the landing page builder would be welcomed.
Product Updates:
Carousel modules in the Kajabi website builder mean you can quickly and easily create a responsive website on any device.
Kajabi University got a new look and feel, so it’s even easier to learn and use Kajabi.
The user experience of Kajabi payments was revamped, making it super simple to accept payments and manage your finances.
Where Kajabi excels is in its marketing automation tools. You can segment users in your list, send emails at specific 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.
3. Teachable.
Best Online Course Platform for Beginners ($0-$249/mo)
Adam’s Take
Want to sell any of your digital work online? Teachable is a platform to consider. With the ability to sell online courses, and digital downloads, host webinars, and even build a community, Teachable is a platform that can adapt based on your needs.
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 and easy to use. You can 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 with zero transaction fees. Teachable also gave me a unique and limited-time promo code (200 left): Use PROSOCIATE1MFREE at checkout to get free one month of their Pro Plan.
Key Features:
Bring on the authors that will help you create content for your courses. With Teachable, anyone can become an instructor and share their knowledge with the world.
Create gorgeous, money-making sales pages that will help you sell your courses. Teachable makes it easy to design a page to convert browsers into buyers.
Use payment providers that are PCI level-1 compliant, so you can rest assured that your data is always safe and secure. Teachable takes care of all the behind-the-scenes work so you can focus on what’s important: teaching your students.
Use their domain to connect to your own, or use Teachable’s built-in domain immediately.
Talk to your students live, and schedule and host webinars from your Teachable account. Engage with your learners in a whole new way.
Schedule and host online courses that work with your busy lifestyle. Teachable makes it easy to find the time to teach.
User Experience:
Customization is a great component of Teachable.
As soon as you start creating your course, you realize that the templates that are in place are easy to follow and you can quickly edit them to match your branding or the look of your website.
There’s also a focus on SEO, allowing you to optimize your courses for search engines so people can easily find them.
While it took some time to find a way to add media to specific lessons, once that was figured out it was a smooth process.
Teachable Pricing:
Free ($0/month)
Basic ($39/month): 5% transaction fees, 2 admin users, drip content, course builder, members-only community.
Pro ($119/month): Basic features, plus no transaction fees, 5 admin users, advanced reports, and course certificates.
What I Like/Dislike About Teachable:
Like:
Straightforward setup.
Unlimited everything – as a coaching platform, it offers unlimited 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.
They can have 5 user accounts on their pro plan.
Dislike:
Support for individual cases is not dealt with in the same way as general platform issues.
Website navigation is difficult to get used to at the start.
Product Updates:
Course templates called ‘Simple’ and ‘Colossal’ were added to help you