The 7 best platforms to create and sell online courses
Thinkific* Best overall option for scalable courses
Gnowbe for mobile app courses
Udemy for growing a global audience
Teachable for building a course for free
Kajabi for marketing to an existing large audience
Squarespace for Squarespace platform users
Podia for solopreneurs selling a variety of digital products
Thinkific
Thinkific is my platform of choice, and where I recommend you start out if you are building a course (yes, I’m an affiliate). Thinkific offers a flexible, scalable platform that can grow with you from one course to an online course platform with multiple course authors and topics. Some of the reasons I like Thinkific:
Easy, intuitive interface for both users and authors
Offers a variety of lesson types, including SCORM
App + AI course builder
Gnowbe
Gnowbe is a fairly new platform that I came across in my search for microlearning. The platform focuses on microlearning courses that are also accessible via desktop browsers. It’s a flexible option for users that want to build for a mobile-first or app-centric audience. Simply download the free Gnowbe app and users can log into and access your school.
Try Gnowbe’s microlearning instructional design certification for a fun introduction to app-based learning
Udemy
Udemy is the first place I started selling online courses, and I went from a small audience of the students I taught to thousands of students from over 100 countries in just a couple of years. It’s a great place to build an audience if you are looking to start afresh, but bring your A-game. While the option is mostly to sell courses, due to various marketing deals and promotions, you’re unlikely to make a long-term living on your courses unless you sell to 10K learners.
Udemy is a great place to launch a lead course to your own online course platform
Teachable
Teachable is currently the most affordable platform for launching a new course on your own platform. The course builder is not as advanced as other platforms, but perfect for videos + quizzes + text. It also has a robust set up to manage affiliate marketing, so if you’re working with others to promote your course - it’s a great option!
Kajabi
Kajabi is a marketing platform for course creators. It’s a place to generate and promote new content to your loyal audience. In addition to courses, you can share your other services and keep your audience engaged through automated and segmented marketing funnels. It’s ideal if you want to dedicate time to building your offerings and let it run on autopilot. It’s also highly effective if you already have a dedicated audience that you’d like to sell to.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a great place to start building your course if you already have a Squarespace website. You can offer a single course, bundle of courses, or a video library, which is perfect for repeatable skills-building courses like Yoga. The aesthetics are beautiful and seamless integration with the Squarespace platform and ability to bundle with other digital products makes it ideal for Squarespace users.
Podia
Podia is designed as an all-in-one digital sales platform for your community. Indeed, the focus on Podia is building and selling to your community in a variety of modalities from audio lessons to courses, digital downloads and one of the first platforms to offer coaching sessions, in addition to digital courses.
*This post contains affiliate links to Thinkific