11 BEST Online Course Platforms (2025)
Seraphina Nova
Online course platforms are types of LMS (Learning Management Systems) that enables you to create and manage learning program with ease. These platforms help you create engaging multimedia lectures, including video, text, PDF, and audio files.
With over 100 hours of research, I have carefully reviewed 40+ BEST Online Course Platforms, analyzing free and paid tools. My trusted guide dives into their features, pros and cons, and pricing. This insightful and well-researched content offers professional advice to help you choose the perfect platform. Don’t miss the full article for must-see recommendations. Read more…
Thinkific is an all-in-one platform that helps you to create, sell, and delivers online courses. It enables you to showcase your themes designed for selling education. You can set the expiry to the course.
Top Platforms to Create and Sell Online Courses
1) Thinkific
Thinkific is an all-in-one platform that helps you create, sell, and deliver online courses. I analyzed it to ensure it helps you easily create and customize courses that fit your brand. Thinkific, launched in 2012, is the ultimate online course platform that works well with Zapier, Keap, Shopify, and Zoom.
Also handles a range of file formats and provides custom web themes & domains, quizzes & assignments, drip scheduling, community spaces, notifications, and bundles. Its user-friendly interface features drag-and-drop editing tools, live previews, customizable branding, and course migration capabilities.
Deployment Type: Cloud-Hosted Open API
Supported Browser: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari
Free Trial: 14 Days Free Trial
Features:
- Content Creation: You can create a variety of educational materials such as videos, quizzes, surveys, and downloadable tutorials to enhance your course offerings.
- Theme Customization: It enables you to showcase your personalized themes designed specifically for effectively selling educational content to your audience.
- Course Management: I can set the expiry date for my courses, ensuring timely access and maintaining the relevance of the educational material.
- Content Organization: Thinkific helps you organize web content effortlessly with its intuitive drag and drop feature, making site management straightforward and efficient.
- Customization Options: This platform provides full access to CSS and HTML, allowing for extensive customization to match your brand’s unique style and requirements.
- Marketing Integrations: Supports Google AdWords, Facebook, and more, enabling effective marketing campaigns and broadening your course’s reach to potential learners.
- Platform Compatibility: Supported on both Windows and Mac, ensuring that you and your users can access the platform seamlessly regardless of your operating system.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $49 a month. 25% Discount on Yearly Payments.
- Free Trial: 14-Days Free Trial
14-Days Free Trial
2) LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is a site that helps you to create and sell online courses. I reviewed it to ensure it provides responsive templates and styles to build your course. Founded in 2014, LearnWorlds is an inclusive digital learning platform trusted by companies such as Kaspersky and LG.
In addition, the platform features intuitive drag-and-drop editing tools that make content creation effortless. Users can customize branding to reflect their unique identity and easily migrate existing courses from other systems. Emphasizing security, it incorporates two-factor authentication and robust encryption. Additionally, it supports a wide range of file formats, ensuring flexibility and compatibility for all user needs.
Deployment Type: Cloud-based (SaaS) or hosted
Supported Browser: Chrome, Firefox
Free Trial: 30 Days Free Trial
Features:
- Brand Customization: I can customize the logo, style, and theme to perfectly align with my brand’s unique identity and aesthetic.
- Responsive Course Building: It enables you to build courses on a responsive website, ensuring optimal viewing experiences across all devices.
- Custom Notifications: Notifications can be customized as per your needs, enhancing communication and engagement with your students.
- Advanced Page Editing: You can use CSS and JavaScript to edit course pages, allowing extensive customization and functionality enhancements.
- Pre-Ready Course Catalog: Learnworlds provides a pre-ready course catalog, which is a great option to quickly populate your site with quality content.
- Quick Site Launch: You can launch your site in less amount of time, which is essential for getting your courses to market swiftly.
- Unlimited Course Creation: It allows you to create unlimited courses, providing flexibility to expand your educational offerings without restrictions.
- Free Course Offering: Offering free courses to students is possible, which is a great way to attract and engage a wider audience.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $29 a month. 20% Discount on Yearly Payments.
- Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial
30-Days Free Trial
3) Teachable
Teachable is a website that helps you to create and sell online courses. I recommend it because it provides a user-friendly interface for building courses. This site helps you to set up a complete course with just a few mouse clicks, making it easy for anyone to launch and manage their own online education programs effectively.
The GDPR and CCPA-compliant platform ensures security with AES, DES, and 2FA encryption. It handles formats like CSV, HTML, XLS, and PDF and offers features such as unlimited students, an integrated website builder, custom domain, public API, advanced theme, and course migration with user-friendly drag-and-drop tools.
Features:
- Multimedia Lectures: It helps me create engaging multimedia lectures, including videos, text, PDFs, and audio files to enhance my course content.
- Content Import: You can import content seamlessly from Google Drive, OneDrive, or Dropbox, simplifying the content management process.
- Course Customization: This LMS site allows page editors to easily draft, customize, and launch new courses with user-friendly tools.
- Quiz Creation: You can create quiz questions to assess student understanding and reinforce learning objectives effectively.
- Certificate Issuance: It enables you to issue certificates upon completing specific courses, providing formal recognition to your learners.
- Feedback Integration: You can integrate Teachable with Google Forms to collect valuable feedback from your students for course improvement.
- Multi-Currency Payments: Teachable accepts payments in over 130 currencies, catering to a global audience and simplifying transactions.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $39 a month.
- Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial
Link: https://teachable.com/
4) Podia
Podia is an easy-to-use e-learning platform that helps you to create, host, and sell your lessons. During my research, I found that it supports messaging for live chat, enabling real-time communication with your students. This platform helps you to manage students with ease, ensuring smooth course delivery and efficient administration for your online education business.
Podia supports GDPR compliance and offers diverse course templates, 2FA encryption, and various file format options. Notably, it offers features like digital downloads, coaching, email marketing, customizable branding, and a drag-and-drop editing tool, enhancing the overall learning experience.
Features:
- Course Content Creation: I can create online courses incorporating audio files, links, PDFs, videos, and images, ensuring diverse and engaging content for my students.
- Course Consolidation: It enables you to combine similar courses, streamlining your offerings and enhancing the learning experience for your students.
- Customization Options: You can customize your website pages and control website elements the way you like, allowing you to tailor the appearance and functionality to match your brand’s unique style.
- Live Previews: Podia provides live previews, making it easy to visualize changes in real-time before publishing your courses.
- Multi-Device Access: Courses can be accessed from tablets, mobiles, desktops, and more, ensuring flexibility and convenience for all your learners.
- Access Control: You can grant or remove content access for specific users, managing permissions effectively to maintain course integrity.
- Student Management: It helps you manage students with ease, simplifying enrollment, tracking progress, and maintaining effective communication.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $33 a month.
- Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial
Link: https://www.podia.com/
5) Learndash
Learndash is a course platform integrated with WordPress. I evaluated it to ensure it supports numerous plugins. This app helps you to set up courses online, making it one of the best solutions for your e-learning needs. With seamless integration and extensive plugin support, Learndash offers a flexible environment for creating and managing engaging online courses effectively.
Additionally, LearnDash provides comprehensive analytics and reporting tools that enable instructors to monitor learner progress and performance effectively. The platform supports gamification features such as badges and certificates to boost engagement. It is highly scalable, accommodating both small businesses and large enterprises, and ensures reliable performance even during high traffic periods.
Features:
- Quiz Variety and Customization: I am able to create eight types of questions, custom messages, and more, offering a versatile approach to engaging quizzes for my courses.
- Course Sequencing: You can arrange courses according to course order, ensuring a structured and logical progression for your students’ learning journey.
- Interactive Hints: You can provide users with hints in text, video, and images, enhancing their learning experience and supporting their understanding of course material.
- Quiz Rewards: It enables you to award certificates or badges to anyone who successfully passes the quiz, recognizing their achievements and motivating continued learning.
- Review Functionality: This site allows users to review questions and answers, promoting better retention and understanding of the course content.
- Customer Support: It provides customer support via Contact Form, ensuring that users can easily reach out for assistance when needed.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $29 a month.
- Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial
Link: https://www.learndash.com/
6) Talentlms
TalentLMS is a cloud-based learning management system. I particularly appreciate how it helps users simplify online seminars, training programs, and courses. You do not require technical skills to use it, providing an excellent platform for creating effective learning experiences. With its intuitive interface and robust features, TalentLMS supports seamless course management and student engagement.
Features:
- Assessment Management: I can support multiple question types and effortlessly collect and analyze survey responses, enhancing your evaluation processes.
- Collaborative Editing: TalentLMS helps you share files seamlessly and offers drag-and-drop editing with customizable branding for an enhanced collaborative experience.
- Data Reporting: It provides comprehensive reports and offers printable infographics, presenting data insights clearly to support informed and strategic decision-making.
- Certification Design: You can design your own certifications, enabling personalized recognition of achievements that align perfectly with your organization’s standards.
- User Management: It allows you to efficiently manage user roles and permissions, ensuring each team member has appropriate access levels for their responsibilities.
- Course Customization: You can customize course content and structure to meet your organization’s specific training needs, providing a personalized learning experience for all learners.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $119 a month.
- Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial
Link: https://www.talentlms.com/
7) iSpring Learn
iSpring Learn is an easy-to-use cloud-based learning management system bundled with a powerful authoring tool. I found it enables the creation of interactive courses, quizzes, role-plays, and video lectures. You can deliver them to learners and track their progress in real time, offering a perfect solution for online education.
Features:
- Content Creation: You can create engaging eLearning content both online and offline, offering a flexible solution to cater to diverse learning environments.
- Unlimited Storage: It allows you to store unlimited materials, ensuring all your training resources are readily available whenever needed.
- Training Automation: I can automate most training management processes, streamlining administration to save time and reduce manual tasks.
- Learning Pathways: You can create customized learning tracks, providing structured pathways that align with specific training objectives and employee development.
- Reporting Tools: It offers comprehensive content and learner reports, helping you analyze training effectiveness and make data-driven improvements.
- Mobile Training: Train employees using the mobile app, enabling convenient access to learning materials and courses anytime, anywhere.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $470 a year.
- Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial
Link: https://www.ispringsolutions.com/
8) Passion
Passion.io is a software application that lets you build your e-learning apps. I recommend it because it allows you to create a customized e-learning app using various templates for the Android Play Store and iOS App Store. This site is a top choice for developing versatile online learning tools well.
Features:
- Content Accessibility: It offer downloadable and fully protected content available anytime, even without network coverage, ensuring flexibility for all learners.
- Community Engagement: It allows you to create group-based challenges, fostering community involvement and promoting collaborative learning within your platform.
- Audio Content Creation: You can create audio-based content your customers can listen to anytime, anywhere, providing versatile learning options to suit diverse preferences.
- Customer Segmentation: Helps you identify customer segments to deliver exactly what they want, enabling targeted and personalized learning experiences.
- Progress Tracking: I provide comprehensive progress tracking, enabling both learners and instructors to monitor development and ensure training objectives are achieved.
- Interactive Assessments: It offers interactive assessments to evaluate learner understanding, enhancing the overall educational experience and ensuring knowledge retention.
- Customizable Learning Paths: You can design personalized learning paths tailored to individual needs, promoting a more engaging and effective learning journey.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plans start at $119 a month.
- Free Trial: 14-Days Free Trial
Link: https://passion.io/
9) TrainerCentral
TrainerCentral is a platform that lets you easily manage and run your training business. I particularly appreciate how it provides collaborative learning in virtual classrooms with polls, Q&A, screen sharing, and more. This tool lets you shortlist attendees with no hassle, making it an excellent choice for training professionals.
Features:
- Data Visualization: Analyze your results using intuitive graphs, providing clear and visual insights to better understand performance metrics and trends.
- Easy Invitations: It offers me the ability to invite individuals with just one mouse click, streamlining the process and saving valuable time during session management.
- Multi-Trainer Support: Enables you to add multiple trainers to your sessions, facilitating collaborative instruction and enhancing the learning experience for participants.
- Session Recording: You can record the entire training session, ensuring that all content is captured for future reference and review by learners.
- Interactive Dashboards: It features interactive dashboards that allow you to monitor key metrics in real-time, helping you make informed decisions quickly.
- Automated Scheduling: You can automate the scheduling of training sessions, reducing administrative tasks and ensuring timely organization of events.
- Secure Data Storage: It provides secure data storage solutions, protecting your training materials and user information with top-notch security measures.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Lifetime Free Basic Plan
- Free Trial: 15-Days Free Trial
Link: https://www.trainercentral.com/virtual-classroom.html
10) Kajabi
Kajabi is an online course platform. I reviewed it to confirm it ranks among the best platforms for online courses, enabling you to effortlessly create your own customized courses. This site stands out as a great option for developing versatile online learning tools, offering comprehensive features for effective e-learning management.
Features:
- Website Creation: This feature allows you to build a website without writing any code, making it one of the easiest ways to create online platforms.
- Custom Domains: Kajabi provides easy-to-use custom domains or subdomains, allowing you to personalize your website and establish a professional online presence.
- Static Site Creation: You can create as many pages as you like for a static site, which is great for displaying essential information in a simple format.
- Video Content Upload: It enables you to upload video content effortlessly, making it the perfect tool for sharing tutorials, lectures, or multimedia resources.
- 24/7 Support: The LMS platform offers 24/7 support, ensuring round-the-clock assistance whenever needed, which is a great option for continuous help.
- Course Analytics: It allows you to track learner progress and engagement metrics, which is helpful to refine course materials and improve effectiveness.
- Flexible Pricing Options: I like how it offers flexible pricing structures, which are great for tailoring packages to meet diverse learner and business needs.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plan start at $55 a month
- Free Trial: 14-Days Free Trial
Link: https://kajabi.com/
11) Alison
Alison is a free e-learning platform offering various categories like IT, language, health, and science. I evaluated it to ensure it provides a new way to access learning sites for courses. This site is a great option for learners seeking diverse educational resources, supporting effective online learning across multiple subjects.
Features:
- Global Accessibility: Alison is accessible worldwide, allowing learners from various countries to benefit from its resources, making it one of the best platforms globally.
- Diverse Course Offerings: This site offers a wide variety of course types, including certificate and diploma courses, which are perfect for professional and personal development.
- Job-Specific Learning: It allows you to find a wide range of courses tailored to specific jobs, which is a great way to upskill for career advancement.
- Personalized Learning Paths: You can customize your learning experience to align with your specific career goals, offering personalization for more effective skill-building.
- Free Certification Courses: Alison provides free certification courses, which are a great option for learners looking to enhance their resumes without financial constraints.
- Community Support: The platform fosters a global community of learners, allowing me to connect with others, share personalized insights, and receive valuable feedback.
Pros
Cons
Pricing:
- Price: Plan start at $7.99 a month
- Free Trial: 30-Days Free Trial
Link: https://alison.com/
How to create an Online Course?
Here is the step-by-step process on how to create an online course:
- Step 1) First, you need to select the subject matter on which you want to make the course.
- Step 2) Test and analyze your idea from people before making the course
- Step 3) Deeply research the subject matter
- Step 4) Make the course outline like Name, Topics, etc.
- Step 5) Create detailed course content with an in-depth explanation, videos, media, etc.
- Step 6) Launch your course once ready on either your own channel, on course platforms, or directly sell or rent to the people.
- Step 7) Build and cultivate your course community and provide support for their queries.
How Did We Choose BEST Online Course Platforms?
Check out below important factors. At Guru99, our dedication to credibility ensures accurate, relevant, and objective information through rigorous content creation and review. With over 100 hours of research, we have analyzed 40+ online course platforms, both free and paid, covering features, pros and cons, and pricing. Selecting the best platform requires careful consideration of features, usability, and affordability to meet diverse teaching and learning requirements. Our trusted insights aim to help educators and learners make informed decisions effectively.
- Platform Features: Aim to select platforms that allow you to create, manage, and deliver content easily.
- User Experience: Pay attention to intuitive interfaces, which are essential for both instructors and learners.
- Affordability: It is important to consider pricing plans that fit your budget while offering essential tools.
- Flexibility: Platforms with customization options are great for tailoring learning experiences.
- Support System: Make sure you choose one with reliable customer support and helpful resources.
- Scalability: Consider platforms that are great options for growing your audience or content library.
How to Sell an Online Course?
Here are the ways on how you can sell an online course:
- Make your own channel (Website or Blog) for your course and optimize it to get organic traffic
- Reach your target prospects by Email Marketing
- Reach your audience on Social Media
- Make a sales funnel and leverage your network
- Run offers and discounts on your course
- Run paid ads with offers to attract your audience
- Use referral and affiliate programs to increase sales
- Run podcasts and public speaking to promote your course
- Join events and networks to promote your course
- Sell your course on third-party course platforms like Udemy, Skillshare, Coursera, etc.
Verdict:
In this review, I explored some of the greatest online course platforms. Each offers unique benefits to suit different needs. Here is my verdict:
- Thinkific: A comprehensive solution offering customizable branding, drag-and-drop editing tools, and excellent integration options like Zoom and Shopify. It ensures secure transactions and is highly user-friendly.
- LearnWorlds: Known for its responsive templates and multilingual support, this platform excels in creating dynamic courses with a focus on security and design.
- Teachable: It simplifies course creation with multimedia features and built-in payment processing, making it a remarkable choice for creators worldwide.
» Check here our list of the Best Online Courses & Test Prep Classes from Top Institutions
Thinkific is an all-in-one platform that helps you to create, sell, and delivers online courses. It enables you to showcase your themes designed for selling education. You can set the expiry to the course.
