Online courses are becoming truly reliable content that highlights your brand, shares know-how, and earns you additional revenue. Many freelance professionals, online businesses, digital marketing agencies, and knowledge-based niche brands are launching online courses these days.

Apart from earning, they aim to create a community and network of digital content consumers. Besides the content, you need to take care of course-related technical matters. Online learning platforms help you develop and manage every aspect of your course. Let’s learn the best options for creating and selling online courses in 2021.

1. Pathwright

Image showing online courses creation interface of Pathwright

Pathwright is the all-in-one platform that offers cloud-based design, teaching, and learning services. The platforms brands learning content as Paths. There are many creator-focused features in Pathwright. Some of the notable features of Pathwright are:

  1. Path designers can collect images, videos, papers, and other submissions as student work for evaluation.
  2. Course creators can edit and update learning materials from anywhere on any device.
  3. The drag and drop design system of the Path Builder tool makes course designing and creation effortless.
  4. The platform allows creators to make assessments for their students.
  5. Make your brand engaging and unique through customizable logos, images, colors, etc.

There are three pricing levels in Pathwright. The Starter plan costs $99/month or $89/month (paid annually). The core services that you get are Design & Build, Teach, Manage Profile, and Commerce. You can sell courses, attend free course design sessions, and teach up to 1000 learners.

2. Teachery

The course creation pathway image of Teachery

Teachery is one of the best online course hosting platforms to earn a living by capitalizing on your talent. The platform provides real-time content creation inside the online course while teaching or presenting. Teachery offers simplified content creation technology with everything unlimited policy. Some of its best features of Teachery are:

  1. Course designing and creation is easy in Teachery with ready-made templates, namely the Minimal Template, and the Sidebar Template.
  2. For those who don’t want to maintain websites, they can use course landing pages from Teachery. You can create up to 254 landing pages.
  3. Update your courses on the go using the live editor and never lose any content ideas.
  4. Embed content from platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Canva, Google Slides, Prezi, etc., and enrich your courses with versatile knowledge.

Teachery has only one subscription plan that is $49/month. However, you can pay $470/ year and save 20%. There are no extra charges for unlimited courses, learners, sales pages, analytics, recurring payments, etc.

3. Teachable

Visualization of online course management in Teachable

One of the most popular online course creation and distribution platforms is Teachable. At present, more than 100,000 happy creators make a living using the Teachable platform. Few features of this platform that with mentioning are:

  1. Effortless customization of online learning business through features like custom domain, power editor, and integration.
  2. Use Teachable’s flexible sales page editor to create landing pages that boost sales.
  3. Creators get unlimited courses, students, video, and coaching services on all plans.
  4. Teaching schedules, one-on-one sessions, milestones, sales dashboards, assessments, and certificates are the value additions to your paid plan.
  5. You can sell your courses to global learners and offer content in the form of memberships, subscriptions, one-time charges, coupons, bundles, etc.

Teachable offers three pricing tiers. You can start your online learning business for as low as $29/month if you get annual billing. It’s the Basic plan which offers course products, coaching products, two admin accounts, etc. There is a five percent transaction fee on all sales only for the Basic plan.

4. Thinkific

Visual showing course creation pathway in Thiinkfic

Thinkific offers a modern and high-tech platform for amazing learning experiences for your students who learn online. You’re in control of pricing, publishing, and promoting your content, whereas Thinkific provides advanced technology and marketing strategy.

  1. Thinkific course builder support drag and drop editing and many design elements like stylish texts, video, images, etc.
  2. You can also use this platform to design and build a webpage to showcase and sell digital courses.
  3. Thinkific has the most elaborate marketing tools to take your online learning business to the global learners and sell more.
  4. Advanced cloud infrastructure with built-in SSL certificates protects your sales pages, courses, and student data.

Subscription-wise, Thinkific is unique as it offers basic services for free with limited courses and unlimited students. You can also begin with a $39/month Basic plan, billed annually. The Basic plan offers value-added features like unlimited students and courses, coupons, scheduled content, custom domain, etc.

5. Kajabi

Visualization of the course content screen of Kajabi

Kajabi empowers you to monetize your knowledge and skills in a truly intuitive way. You can earn handsomely on Kajabi through online learning content like video coaching, digitized courses, podcasts, memberships, and newsletters. The platform also enables you to establish large networks of learners’ communities.

Related: What Are Online Learning Platforms and How Has the Pandemic Shaped Them?

Kajabi promotes its brand as one solution to many tasks for managing any online learning business. You can access all the tools you need to run and grow your business such as marketing, product, website, community, analytics, dashboard, and more. A number of the best features of Kajabi are:

  1. One Kajabi dashboard to design, create, market, and sell online educational content.
  2. The Product Blueprints feature of Kajabi helps you transform knowledge into polished course materials for online distribution.
  3. You and your students can access learning content from a mobile app.
  4. You have the option to integrate your Kajabi account with business websites, emails, CRM, marketing campaigns, etc.
  5. Kajabi offers you an advanced analytics dashboard filled with crucial metrics, goals, and sales data.

You can get started with the 14-day free trial for practical know-how. There are three subscription options, and among them, the Basic plan costs $119/month, billed annually. You get services like three products, three pipelines, unlimited landing pages, unlimited marketing emails, 1000 students, etc.

6. LearnWorlds

Image showing course content creation in LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is another trending cloud-based platform to design, create, promote, and sell online learning materials. You can create interactive, unique, and social learning experiences for your online school or academy through LearnWorlds.

Related: Google Classroom Tips to Shake Up Your Teaching

The platform offers everything that you might need to run an online learning business. You can create quality content on LearnWorlds at affordable prices. You also get complimentary marketing tools for your brand. Some amazing features of this platform are:

  1. Creators don’t need to go through any technical or marketing know-how learning curve.
  2. LearnWorlds has a built-in course designing and creation tool.
  3. You get complimentary access to an advanced website builder.
  4. LearnWorlds supports SCORM and HTML5. Hence, you can import learning content from other platforms.
  5. Creators also get access to many assessment engines and learning tools.

LearnWorlds have four tiers of pricing. The Starter plan costs $24/month if you go for annual billing. However, you’ll have to shell out a flat $5 fee per course when it sells. The Starter plan includes one admin user, custom domain, unlimited paid courses, Site Builder (up to three pages), Popup Builder (up to two popups), coupons, etc.

Start Creating Quality Courses Online

The above-mentioned online platforms will help you in getting started on your course creation and selling journey. However, it’d help if you tried a few platforms from this list before deciding which one suits your style and needs. While you’re at it, try the Timeboxing technique to boost your content creation productivity.