10 Online Learning Platforms for Launching Successful Courses

So you want to launch and sell online courses?

With a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 20% through 2027, becoming a publisher of online education resources is definitely worth the double-take you just did there.

While it feels like “everyone” is launching a course or membership site, there is still room for course creators to carve out a nice (and highly passive) income stream by teaching new skills to eager online learners — if the course is professionally-created, well-reviewed, and properly marketed.

In this post, I’ll show you some of the best online learning platforms for your next big course. Let’s do it!

1. Gurucan

Key Features

• All-in-one platform to run and start a digital knowledge business. From no limit content upload to building converting pipelines, including emails and push-notifications
• Wrap all your digital products (online courses, memberships, digital downloads, podcasts, blogs, workouts, meal plans, chats) in the best bundle of mobile app and browser version
• Mobile LMS allows managing all types of digital products from any browser — desktop & mobile
• It’s all about your brand. The self-managed customizable color appearance of the interface comes with all pricing plans
• No coding required

Best For: Content creators looking for a simple, modern, and friendly all-in-one platform to run a digital business

Price: Starts at $26 per month

2. Heights Platform

Key Features

• Courses and communities integrated in a fully white-label program designed for the modern creator to monetize their knowledge
• Create unlimited courses, digital products, communities, projects, and bundles on any pricing plan
• An all-in-one solution that provides everything needed to build a successful knowledge business. Every plan includes a blogging feature and affiliate program feature to help creators promote their content.
• Flexible options to accept payments from students. Mix and match any combination of one-time, installment, and subscription payment plans for your content. Create discounts and coupon code URLs, making it easy to list your products on AppSumo.

Best for: Experts and coaches who view themselves more as creators than they do digital markers, and want to provide a comprehensive blend of courses and community features to their learners.

Price: Starts at $39/month.

3. Thinkific

Key Features

• Engage students with videos, quizzes, text, surveys, automated check-ins, Google docs, discussions, and more
• Create prerequisite lessons, drip schedule content, add multiple instructors, create course cohorts and even build a membership site around your course
• Drag-and-drop site builder with education-focused themes to choose from
• Set up free trials, affiliate programs, upsells, payment plans, coupons, or a lower cost for the first month

Best for: Non-technical course creators looking for a comprehensive solution like a Shopify for hosting their course

Price: Paid plans start at $39/month. Thinkific has a free version.

4. Udemy

Key Features

• Udemy hosts over 100K courses on a wide variety of subjects
• Anyone can become an instructor on Udemy. But if you want to monetize your online courses, you have to apply to become a Premium Instructor
• Courses live on the Udemy marketplace, available from $10-$199 per course or subscribers to Udemy for Business

Best for: Instructors who want to create a course without managing the marketing, hosting, or need to design a site

Price: It’s free to create a course

5. LearnDash

Key Features

• Create advanced quizzes including 8 different answer types like multiple choice, sorting, matching, fill-in-the-blank, essay questions, and more — plus questions and answers support any type of media.
• Award certificates, download reports, drip content, automatically engage with learners based on trigger actions and reuse content across different courses
• Create forums for your course participants and add gamification to the experience with course completion points

Best for: Professional course creators in higher ed and professional training who need a really robust LMS feature set for WordPress

Price: Starts at $159 for a 1 site license with updates and support for a year.

6. Teachable

Key Features

• Teachable is broken up into “Teachable Schools,” essentially the website where your courses live, and Courses which is the educational content you sell.
• Offer live courses for group coaching, give students course completion certificates, and host your videos right in Teachable
• Setup payments the way you want: offer coupons, subscriptions, memberships, bundles, and more

Best for: Coaches and subject-matter experts who want to launch a hosted website for their course(s)

Price: Plans start at $29 per month

7. Kajabi

Key Features

• Kajabi is positioned as an all-in-one online learning platform: it gives you the website for housing your courses and digital products, plus:
• Email marketing, automation-based campaigns, built-in discussion forums, analytics, and more.
• It’s really positioned as a replacement to all the plugins and integrations many in eLearning have used forever

Best for: Course creators who need an out of the box solution for creating, hosting, marketing, and tracking their course revenue

Price: Starts at $119 per month

8. LearnWorlds

Key Features

• Build a website (called a “school”), offer coupons, promotions, and set up one-click funnels
• Show interactive transcripts during courses, add easy interactions into videos, track student progress, and create question banks for randomized tests
• Package learning materials as ebooks that allow students to take notes and annotate text online
• Integrated community and membership site features, and give certificates for completion

Best for: Serious course creators and educators needing a high-quality online learning platform for a whole catalog of courses

Price: Starts at $29 per month

9. TalentLMS

Key Features

• Build a white-label website, easily reuse course content, view course analytics
• Host virtual learning sessions to offer blended learning experiences, run assessments, collect survey responses, gamification elements for learners, and issue certificates upon completion

Best for: Course creators looking for a versatile learning management system (LMS) for creating training resources for internal use

Price: Plans start at $59 per month. TalentLMS has a free plan.

10. Koantic

Key Features

• WYSIWYG course editor, automatic video subtitle tool, pre-made templates
• Build interactive assessments with 9 different question types
• Collaborate on course creation with team authoring tools
• Publish to your site/LMS or to the Koantic LMS cloud

Best for: Non-technical course creators wanting to create courses with flexible publishing options

Price: Plans start at $39 per month. Koantic has a free plan.

Pick Your Favorite Online Learning Platforms

Of course, there are so many online course platforms around today.

If you’re a learner, other online platforms you may want to check out include Edx (and their massive open online courses, MOOC), WizIQ, Skillshare, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Docebo, the Harvard Open Learning Initiative, Stanford Online, and Udacity.

Good luck, Sumo-lings! Class dismissed.