Best Platforms for Online Courses in 2023

To support your eLearning business, are you looking for the best platforms for online courses? You’re in the proper location!

We combed the industry to identify the top web-based tools for creating, promoting, and selling online courses. Then, to make this particular comparison post, we tried each of them personally.

All you need to know about our top recommendations, including their salient characteristics, advantages and disadvantages, and price structures, are below.

Additionally, we’ve divided this piece into two parts to make it simpler for you to consider your options:

The finest platforms for creating and selling online courses through your own website will be discussed in the first portion of this article.

Online learning systems will be discussed in the second section. You can reach a wider audience by listing your course on these marketplaces with those from other sellers.

Keep reading to the conclusion, and we’ll also show you how to promote your online course, price your practice, and other things to look for in a course platform.

Comparing the top online course delivery systems

Let’s start by examining the top online course delivery systems. These systems allow you to design your own landing and sales pages, develop the course material, and sell course access through your website.

Compared to offering your courses on a course marketplace, this allows you a lot more control over your online business. Additionally, you will often keep all of your earnings.

Thinkific

Most course developers will find Thinkific the ideal option because it is one of the most widely used online course platforms. It has many cutting-edge features, like live lessons and community-building tools, that can elevate your online courses.

Thinkific course creation may be more complex. First, choose a template. Themes for mini-courses, flagship courses, webinars, pre-sell pages, and everything in between look great.

The course templates are fully configurable and pre-loaded with various valuable elements, including quizzes, downloadable files, surveys, etc. Until everything is set up how you want it, you can add/remove content and adjust the design using the drag-and-drop editor.

Your courses may contain a variety of file formats, such as audio, video, text, and graphics, as well as interactive features like tests and polls.

But the Communities option on Thinkific is our favorite part. You can use it to enhance your online course by providing members-only access to unique content.

You may create virtual spaces to debate various subjects and engage with your pupils. Students can make their learner profiles, connect, start threads, and reply to remarks using the @ mentions feature. This fosters a collaborative learning environment where students benefit from the teacher and one another.

Thinkific comes with course design, community-building, and e-commerce tools to run your online business. This consists of a website builder, integrated marketing tools, a payment processor, accounting tools, analytics for managing students, and much more.

And if that’s not enough, you may add integrations from the Thinkific App Store to further increase its capability. Third-party apps can convert leads, offer product bundles, create coupons, automate email campaigns, and more.

Last but not least, Thinkific provides the best customer service we’ve encountered. You may find all the answers to your queries in the Creator Community forum, an extensive knowledge base, and round-the-clock online and phone support.

• key attributes

Course builder with drag and drop. Online courses can be made using templates and a no-code interface.

Google Play. Utilize 80+ third-party apps that are native Thinkific integrations to increase the functionality of your online course website.
Live classes By streaming educational content to your students, you may increase engagement.

Assessing capabilities. Add quizzes, assignments, and examinations to assess student progress and reward excellence.
Multimedia assistance. Include interactive content, photos, PDFs, videos, and other formats in your content.

Website creator. Please create your storefront using themes already made and use them to advertise your online course.
Communities. Create your community with member-only content and student forums.

Ecommerce capabilities. The payment processor, checkout, one-click upsells, tax and bookkeeping tools, etc.

Podia

Podia is the best “all-in-one” course platform. You can build your website and offer online courses, webinars, subscriptions, digital downloads, and more from one online storefront.

It is easy to see why more than 150,000 producers use Podia to power their online courses. With an intuitive layout and some cutting-edge features, it’s one of the most powerful online course systems available.

The course designer is logical. One of Podia’s templates can be used as a starting point before being customized. You can add images, videos, audio files, links, PDFs, quizzes, and more to Podia’s support for just about any form of media to enhance your courses.

And unlike most course management systems, Podia includes unlimited video hosting. Instead of embedding videos from elsewhere, you can directly contribute your content to the platform.

This implies that you can maintain complete control and ownership of your video content without relying on third-party websites like YouTube or Vimeo.

You may design unique landing pages for each online course you develop. Then, you can sell them as drip courses or solo courses.

With drip courses, you can hold students’ attention and entice them to continue paying for your course membership program by distributing content to their section by section at predetermined intervals.

LearnWorlds

Another excellent online course platform is LearnWorlds, which caters to severe developers interested in education, academic institutions, and in-house training. It is distinctive for its emphasis on involvement and superb choice of online learning tools. Interactive videos, unique user roles, and support for SCORM courses are a few of its standout features.

LearnWorlds provides all the tools you need to build courses and sell them online, including course development tools, marketing tools, analytics, and configurable templates, just like the other platforms we’ve looked at.

But there are a few features that distinguish LearnWorlds from its rivals. For instance, LearnWorlds is SCORM compatible, unlike most other platforms, giving you more freedom to migrate between platforms if you choose.

It’s also one of the few platforms enabling you to develop custom iOS and Android mobile learning apps for students. It allows in-app purchases and pushes notifications and is entirely white label.

But LearnWorlds’ level of interactivity is what we appreciate most. The platform is the only one we’ve come across with a fully interactive video player. To encourage student interaction with films, you can include hotspots, quizzes, links, overlay graphics, tables of content, and more.

Additionally, as they read the material, students can highlight specific passages and annotate them with their notes for subsequent reference.