The Best Online Course Platforms: Top 10 Compared (2024)

Ease of Use

Thinkific is pretty easy to use, even for beginners. The user interface is clean, and the individual tools are smartly divided into different sections, making it easier to find them. It can get accustomed to the platform and start creating your courses in no time.

Building a course is also straightforward. You can create your curriculum quickly using the drag-and-drop course builder and set a price, and the platform will take care of the rest.

A walkthrough of Thinkific’s user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: Thinkific supports multiple content types, including videos, PDFs, quizzes, and text. Plus, the drag-and-drop interface makes it upload and structure your course content.
• Learning and Engagement: It comes with features like content dripping, quizzes, assignments, certificates, live classes, and communities.
• Content Delivery: The default course player is well-designed, with an easy-to-use navigation bar on the left and the content on the right. The platform also offers free and branded mobile apps.
• Website Builder: Thinkific has predesigned site themes and a drag-and-drop page builder, so you can create your course website and landing pages.
• eCommerce Tools: The platform supports flexible pricing options (including bundles and subscriptions), a well-designed checkout page, sales tax handling, and affiliate marketing.
• Student Administration: Thinkific offers detailed reports to track revenue, enrollments, and student progress. You can create student groups, manage profiles and enrollments, and email them directly from the platform. It also supports various admin roles.
• App Store: Thinkific has a dedicated app store where you can find 90+ third-party apps and integrations to extend the platform’s functionality.

Thinkific Pricing

Thinkific’s paid plans start from $49/month and support unlimited courses and students. The most popular plan among course creators costs $99/month, while the most expensive plan costs $499/month, which is more suitable for bigger businesses and organizations.

Thinkific also has a free plan where you can create one course and one community. You also get access to the eCommerce tools and the website builder.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

Kajabi has a clean and well-organized interface. All the tools are drag-and-drop and user-friendly, ensuring ease of use even for non-tech-savvy users. Additionally, the tighter integration between the individual tools eliminates the need to juggle between different tabs or windows.

However, since the platform has so much to offer, it may take some time to get familiar with all the features and use them effectively.

A quick walkthrough of Kajabi’s user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: Kajabi’s drag-and-drop course builder allows you to create courses with different types of content, such as videos, quizzes, and PDFs.
• Learning and Engagement: The platform offers several engagement tools, such as quizzes, native live classes, coaching, content dripping, and prerequisite lessons. It also features a robust community builder that rivals standalone platforms.
• Content Delivery: Kajabi has several course player themes, and they stand out for their attractive design. Additionally, the platform offers free and branded mobile apps for both iOS and Android devices.
• Website Builder: Kajabi has a full-fledged website builder with a library of site themes and a flexible page builder. You can also create a blog and host podcasts on the platform.
• eCommerce Tools: The platform includes all the necessary tools to sell your products, including flexible pricing options, customizable checkout pages, 1-click upsells, coupons, and affiliate marketing.
• Marketing Tools: Kajabi includes a robust email marketing tool that allows you to manage your email list, create email sequences, and automate your campaigns. It also features landing pages and sales funnels.
• Student Administration: The platform has built-in tagging and CRM features that let you manage students and their purchases. It also provides reporting tools to track course revenue, subscriptions, and student progress.

Kajabi Pricing

Kajabi offers four pricing plans: Kickstarter, Basic, Growth, and Pro. The Kickstarter plan costs $69 per month, while the Basic and Growth plans cost $149 and $199 per month.

There’s no transaction fee on any of the plans, and they don’t differ much regarding features. However, the Kickstarter plan limits you to one product and 50 active members, while the Basic and Growth plans have higher limits.

Kajabi’s pricing is steep compared to other course platforms, but it’s worth it for the all-in-one nature of the platform.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

New Zenler’s interface is well-organized, making it easy to navigate and find the tools you need. The individual tools are user-friendly and intuitive, so you can quickly start creating your courses.

However, the user interface has aesthetic issues related to smaller font size and color contrast, making it challenging to use sometimes.

A quick walkthrough of New Zenler’s user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: New Zenler has a drag-and-drop course builder that supports videos, quizzes, PDFs, text, etc., and provides the flexibility to use multiple content types in the same lesson.
• Learning and Engagement: The platform provides various learning and engagement tools, including content dripping, quizzes, certificates, live classes, and communities.
• Content Delivery: New Zenler’s course player has a simple interface with the content area positioned on the right and navigation on the left, even though it doesn’t look polished. It also provides free mobile apps for end-users.
• Website Builder: New Zenler has one default site theme, but you can use the flexible page builder to customize your website and create beautiful sales pages fully. You can also add a blog to your website.
• eCommerce Tools:  The platform supports multiple payment gateways and allows you to create different pricing options. It also supports features like coupons, bundles, upsells, and affiliate marketing.
• Marketing Tools: New Zenler has email marketing, sales funnels, live webinars, and automation features built-in. However, these are basic and not as robust as standalone marketing tools.
• Student Management: The platform provides detailed course analytics, progress tracking, and the ability to manage student profiles and enrollments. You can also create different user roles, such as instructors and assistants.

New Zenler Pricing

New Zenler offers two paid plans: Pro and Premium. The Pro plan costs $67/month while providing all the important features, unlimited courses and students, and zero transaction fees.

The Premium plan costs $197/month and supports API access and increased limits on the number of sites and contacts. However, most creators would find the Pro plan sufficient.

Additionally, New Zenler has a limited free plan that charges a 10% transaction fee and is good for beginners and those who want to try out the platform before investing in a paid plan.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

Teachable’s admin interface is straightforward to navigate. The option to create new products is available right on the dashboard. Creating a new course is simple, thanks to the user-friendly course builder.

The platform has smartly placed all the related features under the individual course. So you can manage everything from the curriculum to pricing and pages in one place.

A quick walkthrough of Teachable’s user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: Teachable’s course builder is super easy to use. It supports videos, text, quizzes, and more and lets you add multiple content formats within a single lesson. It has also incorporated several AI tools to speed up course creation.
• Learning and Engagement: Teachable has a range of tools for learning and engagement, including content dripping, quizzes, assignments, certificates, live classes, and community. However, the community feature needs improvement.
• Content Delivery: Teachable’s course player is well-designed from a user experience point of view. It has unique features, like allowing students to take private notes in the video player. Regarding mobile apps, it just has an iOS app.
• Website Builder: Teachable has one default site template. The page builder is easy to use, even though it doesn’t offer many options for customizing the site design. Moreover, some pages (e.g., checkout page) can’t use a custom domain.
• eCommerce Tools: The platform supports flexible pricing options, including product bundles products and multiple tiers. It also supports coupons, upsells, abandoned carts, and affiliate and referral marketing.
• Student Administration: The platform offers analytics for course completion and student performance. It includes user tagging and profile management features. Additionally, you can add admin users to your site.

Teachable Pricing

Teachable has four paid plans. The Basic plan costs $59/month with a 5% transaction fee, while the Pro plan and Pro+ plan cost $159/month and $249/month with a 0% fee.

Apart from features, the plans vary in the number of courses. The Basic plan lets you create five courses, while the Pro plan allows 50 courses. There’s no limit on the number of students on any plan.

Additionally, Teachable has a free plan ($1 + 10% fee) that lets you create one course with up to ten students. So, it’s good only to try out the platform.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

Podia has a clean and organized user interface, with all features accessible from the top navigation menu. The platform takes a layered navigation approach to reduce the learning curve, offering top-level options upfront while progressively leading to specific features.

Creating courses is also straightforward, thanks to the drag-and-drop course builder. All other tools, including the page builder and email marketing, are also user-friendly.

A quick walkthrough of Podia’s user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: Podia has a drag-and-drop course builder that lets you create structured courses with videos, PDFs, quizzes, and text. However, adding multiple content types in the same lesson isn’t very flexible.
• Learning and Engagement: It includes features like content dripping, basic quizzes, certificates, and communities. It doesn’t support graded quizzes, assignments, live classes, or prerequisite lessons.
• Content Delivery: Podia’s course player looks elegant and is user-friendly, with the content area on the right and the table of contents on the left. While the design is mobile responsive, it doesn’t provide mobile apps for end users.
• Website Builder: Podia doesn’t have any site themes, but it has an easy-to-use page builder that you can use to customize your website and sales pages. It also has built-in blogging tools.
• Sales and Marketing: The platform supports flexible pricing options and supports essential selling tools like checkout pages, coupons, and affiliate marketing. It also has built-in email marketing tools, even though they are quite basic.
• Student Administration: Podia provides the essential features for managing students in your online school. It doesn’t have any detailed reports for tracking student progress and course sales. You get only basic analytics in different sections.

Podia Pricing

Podia’s paid plans start at $9/month and let you create a website and a community in your own domain. To create online courses, you’ll need the Mover plan, which costs $39/month + 5% fee, or the Shaker plan, which costs $89/month with no transaction fee.

Podia also has a free plan (10% transaction fee) where you can create products in the draft mode. Apart from this, there’s an additional cost for using its email feature and adding team members.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

TrainerCentral is user-friendly, making it easy for even beginners to create and deliver courses. The interface is clean and intuitive, so there’s a little learning curve.

Individual tools like the course builder are also easy to use, with drag-and-drop functionalities. While there is room for improvements, the platform overall is easy to work with.

A quick walkthrough of TrainerCentral’s user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: The course builder is drag-and-drop and supports multiple content types, such as videos, text, PDFs, etc. The lesson editor is also quite flexible. However, you can’t bulk upload lessons.
• Learning and Engagement: It provides various learning tools, including quizzes, assignments, certificates, and course compliance. It also supports live lessons in courses and standalone live workshops. However, it doesn’t include a native community feature.
• Content Delivery: TrainerCentral’s course player is well-designed. The platform also provides free and branded mobile apps for students to access your courses and live workshops.
• Website Builder: It has several site themes and an easy-to-use page builder. However, the page builder isn’t very flexible and offers limited customization options.
• eCommerce Tools: TrainerCentral supports multiple pricing options and payment gateways. However, the checkout process isn’t optimized for conversions. Also, important features like 1-click upsells and affiliate marketing are missing.
• Student Administration: The platform offers essential administration tools, such as student management, course progress tracking, and admin roles.

TrainerCentral Pricing

TrainerCentral offers a free plan with limited features and up to three courses, though you can’t create paid courses.

The Starter plan, priced at $20/month, lets you create and sell unlimited courses. It supports unlimited students, and there’s no transaction fee, but it doesn’t support custom domains.

The Professional plan, priced at $50/month, comes with all the platform’s features, making it the most affordable top tier for any course platform.

Additional Info

• Read our in-depth TrainerCentral review to learn more about the platform.

Ease of Use

LearnWorlds’ user interface is quite cluttered. You’ll see too many elements and options on the screen, and it’s not always clear what they do.

Individual tools aren’t user-friendly as well. Take the course builder, for example. Adding content to your lessons isn’t as easy as other platforms on this list. Creating a video lesson requires multiple steps, as you can’t simply upload a video directly to a lesson.

The same is true for other tools, such as the page builder. All in all, LearnWorlds’ interface could use some improvements to make it more intuitive and easier to use.

A quick walkthrough of LearnWorlds’ user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: LearnWorlds supports adding videos, PDFs, quizzes, and SCORM/HTML to your courses, even though you can’t add multiple content types in the same lesson. Moreover, it doesn’t support bulk uploading.
• Learning and Engagement Tools: It includes features like dripping, quizzes, assignments, certificates, live classes, and communities. Additionally, it offers unique features like interactive videos and eBooks.
• Content Delivery: The course player has an optimal layout, even though the design isn’t polished. There are multiple course player skins; you can show/hide elements. LearnWorlds also lets you create branded mobile apps.
• Website Builder: LearnWorlds has an extensive library of site themes and a flexible page builder, allowing you to create a full-fledged website. It also lets you add a blog to your website.
• Marketing and Sales: The platform provides essential eCommerce tools for pricing courses and processing payments. Additionally, it comes with powerful marketing tools like sales funnels, landing pages, and popups.
• Student Administration: LearnWorlds has useful reporting tools for tracking sales, enrollments, and course progress. You can also add user tags for segmenting and targeted communication.

LearnWorlds Pricing

LearnWorlds pricing is suitable for different needs and budgets. The Basic plan ($29/month + $5 per sale) is great for those just starting, while the Pro Trainer ($99/month) offers the best value for money.

Its most popular plan is the Learning Center plan ($299/month), which includes the platforms’ unique features like interactive videos and copyright protection.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

Xperiencify’s user interface is clean and intuitive. The course builder is drag-and-drop, and the course creation process is straightforward.

However, the platform has a bit of a learning curve because you need to familiarize yourself with new concepts like experience points and training actions. There are some user experience issues as well that can make navigation and setup confusing.

A quick walkthrough of Xperiencify’s user interface

Key Features

• Course Builder: Xperiencify’s course builder is easy to use. It supports video as the primary content type, with options to add text and files. You can also add training actions and assign points to them. However, it doesn’t support bulk lesson upload.
• Engagement Tools: The platform supports various gamification features, including points, badges, leaderboards, and on-screen celebrations. It also has a community feature to encourage social and collaborative learning.
• Experience Engine: It’s a powerful automation tool that lets you set up customized experiences based on student behavior and progress. For instance, you can send students an email, SMS, or push notification when they complete a module or don’t log in for a set time.
• Content Delivery: The platform skips a traditional course player for a streamlined layout with the video displayed at the top and training actions and comments below. Students scroll to the bottom to view the curriculum, allowing them to focus on the current material.
• Website Builder: Xperiencify doesn’t have site themes or allow site-level customization. You can only customize your site’s pages using the flexible page builder.
• eCommerce Tools: The platform offers flexible pricing options, multiple payment methods, and well-designed checkout pages. However, it lacks features like sales taxes, upsells, and affiliate marketing.
• Student Administration: The platform lacks detailed reporting and analytics tools. You can manage students on an individual or bulk basis. It also supports useful features like user tagging and custom fields. You can add admin users as well.

Xperiencify Pricing

Xperiencify’s pricing is on the higher side. There are three pricing plans with no transaction fees and most features included. However, the plans differ in the number of students and courses allowed.

The Growth plan costs $99/month and supports ten published courses and 1,000 active monthly students, while the Pro plan costs $199/month and allows 20 published courses and 5,000 active students.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

Circle offers an intuitive admin interface with easy navigation and essential actions readily accessible. The platform doesn’t require technical skills; you can get your community up and running in minutes.

Additionally, Circle’s course builder is drag-and-drop, making it easy to create sections and lessons and add content.

Key Features

• Course Builder: Circle’s course builder lets you easily upload and organize course content, including videos and files. It also supports content dripping and locking, even though it doesn’t provide features like quizzes and certificates.
• Community Tools: The platform offers robust community features such as rich discussions, polls, events, livestreaming, and member chats to engage your audience.
• User Experience: Circle communities are visually appealing and easy to navigate. The course player also offers a clean and intuitive design. Moreover, it offers free and branded mobile app options for your community members.
• eCommerce Tools: Circle’s Paywall feature makes charging for courses and community easy. It integrates with Stripe for payment processing, offers flexible pricing options, and boasts a well-designed checkout page.
• Administration: Circle offers essential admin features like member management, analytics, and personalized notifications. It also includes a powerful Workflows feature for creating automations and bulk actions for your courses and community.

Circle Pricing

While Circle pricing starts at $49/month, you’ll need the Professional plan ($99/month) to access the course feature. On top of the monthly plan, there’s a 2% transaction fee.

The higher tiers, Business and Enterprise, cost $219/month and $399/month, respectively. However, the Professional plan provides all the essential features course creators need.

Additional Info

Ease of Use

First, setting up a course on WordPress has a steep learning curve. Second, LearnDash has lots of features and options, so you’ll take some time to get familiar with everything.

The course builder is straightforward to use, and you can easily add and rearrange sections and lessons. However, the user interface looks outdated and could use an improvement. Plus, it relies on the Gutenberg editor for adding lesson content, which can be unintuitive for some users.

Similarly, some other features, such as the certificate builder are also Gutenberg-based, which isn’t the best suited for this type of task.

Key Features

• Course Builder: LearnDash has a drag-and-drop course builder, and you can add content with the flexible Gutenberg editor. But you’ll need to host videos on a service like Vimeo and embed them into your lessons.
• Learning and Engagement: It offers a variety of learning tools, including dripping, quizzes, prerequisites, certificates, student notes, and gamification features. It doesn’t have a native community feature.
• Content Delivery: It has a streamlined course player with the content area on the right and a table of contents on the left. You can also create custom course player layouts using a page builder like Elementor. However, LearnDash doesn’t offer mobile apps for students.
• eCommerce Tools: It offers basic monetization tools for Stripe and PayPal payments. However, there are no checkout pages, and the checkout process isn’t streamlined. You’ll likely need another solution like WooCommerce or SamCart to sell courses.
• Student Administration: It has detailed reporting and analytics to track student progress, quiz scores, and course revenue. It also includes features for creating groups, managing students, and emailing them.
• Third-Party Integrations: LearnDash has a huge library of third-party integrations and add-ons that allow you to extend its functionality. You can use BuddyBoss to add a community, Weglot for multilingual websites, and more.

LearnDash Pricing

LearnDash has a couple of pricing options. The core LMS plugin costs $199/year for a 1-site license and $399/year for a 10-site license. It also offers paid add-ons for features such as notes, groups, and reports, ranging from $49 to $120 per year for each add-on.

It also offers LearnDash Cloud, starting at $29/month for 1,000 active learners and $49/month for up to 5,000. This includes the LMS plugin and also hosting for your site.