21 Best Online Course Platforms of March 2023 (Top 7 Picks)

What Are Online Course Platforms?

Online course platforms are learning management systems (LMS) that give users access to digital classes. These virtual courses are similar to offline classes: an instructor provides an engaging educational experience through video, image, text, audio, and PDF files.
Students follow along with the LMS software, take notes, perform exercises, and complete exams to test their knowledge.
Tools like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia, and Ruzuku all feature a robust feature set for course creators.
Course software includes features like a fully responsive website experience, easy content uploading, the ability to edit the look and feel of the class, marketing features, course completion certificates, a sales funnel, and more.
They give you everything you need to sell an online course. Some even allow you to build your course for free.
If you’re an educational institution looking to replace your on-premise classes with online learning, it’s essential to understand the current best learning management systems (LMS).
Course creators choose a platform to use, then charge their students a set fee to access their courses.

What Are the Best Online Learning Platforms?

Now for the student’s point of view.
With social distancing becoming the norm and many colleges moving to online classes, there are plenty of ways to educate yourself from home.
Often called massive open online courses (MOOCs), they differ slightly from paid platforms. Instead of hosting files yourself, courses are in a marketplace where students pay for them directly or via a subscription.
The benefit for course creators is that you can leverage these websites to reach a new audience. The downside is you won’t earn as much money per sale, and there is stiffer competition in the market.
Ultimately, I recommend using one of the providers above to sell courses.

If you want to sign up for a platform to learn new things, here are my picks for the best online learning platforms.

1. Udemy.

Udemy is one of the best online course platform marketplaces with over 24 million students, 35,000 instructors, and unbelievable 80,000+ courses.
The first step to creating a course is signing up as a premium instructor.
Once your account is approved, it’s effortless to start creating your courses. When creating your video content, keep in mind the material has to be at least 30 minutes long and contain five lectures.
Another benefit to adding your course on Udemy is that you can easily promote your class inside their platform.
You can use their marketing features to be included in site-wide discounts, be placed in their marketing emails, or join their affiliate program with tiered commission rates.

What does Udemy cost?

It is free to use.
They charge a 3% rev share for sales through instructor coupons, 50% for students who found your course through organic search (SEO), and 75% for transactions made through paid search marketing efforts.

Advantages

Udemy is one of the best online course platforms for professionals.
The first advantage is that you get access to a large user base. Udemy’s 40 million users are all potential students who will pay for your course.
But just because you’re on their platform doesn’t mean you’ll start raking in sales immediately.
You must develop a strong marketing and sales strategy, like a new e-commerce company, author, or real estate agent. It’s all about getting your name out there.
They provide a substantial revenue share for tuition fees.
Instructors set their course prices and receive revenue at 100% of the tuition fee for new users and 50% for existing users.
That’s a substantial commission on sales and a massive benefit to using their platform.
You can participate in their marketing promotions. Every so often, they run promotions that can help you reach a larger audience on their platform.
These marketing promotions are opt-in, so instructors can choose to participate.
They have reliable technology and support. They offer free 24/7 support, and they also have a vast library of helpful articles.

Disadvantages

There is intense competition with other courses.
Instructors are at the mercy of the placement and appearance on the Udemy website, which is controlled by their proprietary algorithms.
If you’re new to the platform, it can be difficult to outrank other instructors on particular topics.
There is also stiff competition with other course publishers. Udemy isn’t the only course marketplace ranking on search engines for your course topics.
Other marketplaces like iSpring Learn, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and Skillshare can compete with Udemy in organic search, which can disadvantage instructors.
They have lenient return policies.
Refunds are guaranteed to all students within 30 days for any reason.
Because of this, students could take a course, complete it within 30 days, and get a guaranteed refund – decreasing their sales.

Udemy Review: Final Verdict

First, they’re one of the most well-known, widely used, and professional online course marketplaces out there.
With a robust rev share model, a vast audience to tap into, 24/7 support, and marketing offerings, you can’t go wrong with their platform.
Although there is healthy competition with other course creators and platforms, the company will likely maintain its lead in the market.
Get started with Udemy for free today.

2. Shaw Academy.

Shaw Academy is a platform that gives its students access to professional, accredited online courses. Students sign up for Shaw Academy and get access to all of their long-form courses.
They offer courses in three distinct categories: for hobbyists, professionals, and entrepreneurs.
For example, their “For Professionals” category offers a globally-recognized Digital Marketing Course. This course includes 32 videos and takes an average of 16 weeks to complete.

What Does Shaw Academy Cost?

Courses are offered for free for the first four weeks.
You can then continue learning by paying for a monthly plan.
The cost then ranges from $49.99 to $60 per month.

Shaw Academy Pros

Their courses are all globally recognized and offer certifications to help your career. If you’re a working professional, their classes on digital marketing, project management, web development, Photoshop, and Microsoft Excel are very in-depth.
Entrepreneurs can also access helpful classes on social media marketing, viral marketing, wedding, photography, etc.
Their courses are all flexible, and you can complete them based on your schedule.
They also offer helpful support and the ability to download class recordings to watch them offline.
The four-week free plan is also a great bonus too.

Shaw Academy Cons

Although they offer many good courses, you may not find the right one depending on your industry.
They also don’t have the same volume of hobby classes as platforms like Skillshare.

Shaw Academy Review: Final Verdict.

If you’re a professional looking for flexible, accredited courses that you can start entirely free for four weeks, this platform is a great choice.
Try Shaw Academy

3. Skillshare.

Skillshare is a large marketplace focused on creative education. Topics include anything from graphic design and music production to fine art and cooking.
They also have classes on more technical topics like data science, analytics, and e-commerce. Skillshare has over 5 million users and has paid over $5 million to teachers.
Each class is 20-60 minutes broken down into shorter lessons, plus projects and a community discussion forum to connect with other students.
The open discussion is very beneficial for their creative topics, as students can share their progress and get feedback from others.
They also can help premium members with production and course planning and can even help with online course creation at their studio in New York.

What does Skillshare cost?

It is free for creating a premium course experience. They pay instructors $10 for paid membership referrals and monthly royalties for each minute of content watched.

Advantages

They have a large user base of creators and entrepreneurs.
If you offer content that suits a creative audience, Skillshare is a great platform to get noticed.
Lessons on web design, building your email list, photography, painting, personal branding, and creative topics are the most popular.
The quality of the classes is reliable.
They pride themselves on professional, high-quality courses. They can help outline your course based on the needs of their audience and can also assist with production.

Disadvantages

Earnings run through a royalty system. Each month, between 30 and 50% of Skillshare’s premium subscription revenue goes to a royalty pool for teachers.
The remaining funds go to marketing and promoting classes, supporting the platform, and running day-to-day operations. This royalty system works for well-established teachers, as the more minutes watched, the more revenue share you receive.
However, this makes it difficult for new instructors to receive much compensation when they’re just starting. Plus, students who watch at 2x speed only count as half the minutes toward the royalty pool.
Another disadvantage is they only offer email support. Although they have helped support articles, the only option to contact them is via email.

Skillshare Review: Final Verdict

Skillshare is an up-and-coming online course marketplace with over 4 million students. With a large user base of creators and entrepreneurs, it is an excellent option for instructors in creative fields.
Their classes are all high quality, and they can help ensure that your class will best match the needs of their audience for maximum impact.
However, based on the royalty system for earnings, and no live support, you may be able to make many more sales with a marketplace.
If you’re a creative course creator and want to reach a new audience, their online courses are worth a try.
Sign up with Skillshare and get two months of free classes.
Try Skillshare

4. LinkedIn Learning.

LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda) is another online course marketplace tailored to business professionals.
With over 1,000 business courses on project management, web development, and digital marketing, they’re an excellent platform for working professionals looking to keep their skills up-to-date.
They also offer certifications that you can add to your LinkedIn profile, showcasing your expertise and improving your online resume.
What does LinkedIn Learning cost?
Monthly fees tie to a premium LinkedIn membership, which is $29.99/month or $24.00/month if you pay annually.
Try LinkedIn Learning today and get one month free.
Try LinkedIn Learning

5. Treehouse.

Treehouse is a relatively new marketplace that believes in the democratization of education.
Their platform is “committed to making education accessible to students of all races, genders, sexual orientations, and socio-economic backgrounds.”
They feature 300+ technical courses on coding and development, over 50,000 students, and over 27,545 minutes of video (and counting).
Treehouse partners with big names, including Microsoft, IBM Watson, Amazon Alexa, and Google Developers.

What does Treehouse cost?

Treehouse offers a 7-day free trial. Then you can choose from three monthly plans ranging from $25 to $199.
Their basic plan features on-demand courses, interactive practice sessions, and access to their online community.
The pro plan gives you access to bonuses, beta features, and downloadable content.
And if you’re looking to create a real portfolio and get job-ready skills, their Techdegree plan gives you personalized feedback, real-time support, and a custom curriculum.
Try Treehouse today.
Try Treehouse

6. Coursera.

Coursera is a professional online course marketplace with virtual classes from some of the world’s best companies and universities, like the University of Michigan, Duke, and Stanford.
Instructors teach Coursera courses at some of the world’s top universities, which take about 4-6 weeks to complete, and include video lectures, peer-reviewed assignments, and community discussion forums.

What does Coursera cost?

Coursera is free to join, and you must be logged in to see pricing information on individual courses. There are three tiers of class offerings at Coursera.
• Main courses cost $29-99/month. These take the standard 4-6 weeks to complete, and you receive an electronic course certificate upon completion.
• Specialization courses are for mastering a specific career skill and cost between $39-79 per month. In these online courses, you tackle real business challenges with hands-on projects and more rigorous coursework.
• Online degree programs. If you’re looking for more advanced education, you can even participate in university-recognized online degree programs. These take 1-3 years to complete and cost anywhere from $15 to $25,000.
Give Coursera a try.
Try Coursera

Other top platforms to take courses include ALISON and General Assembly.

How Do I Create and Sell Online Courses?

The first step to selling online courses is to start with your end goal in mind and work backward.
How will you transform your students’ lives, and how will they be different once they’ve completed your course?
You should start your course by planning the transformation your students will achieve.
To understand what your students want to learn, hang out in forums related to your topic, and look at the top questions people are asking. Quora is an excellent place for this.
Once you understand how to solve your student’s problems, create a clearly defined learning path to guide them to a predetermined goal.
During each stage of the course journey, make their outcomes clear.
By setting a learning path and clearly defined end goal, your students will stay more engaged and active with your content.

Here are the top 10 ways to create and sell online courses.

1. Figure Out the Cost of Developing Your Online Course.

The cost to develop your learning platform depends on many factors, including depth of content development, research and analytics expenses, and marketing. Studies estimate that a professional online course can cost between $5,850 and $15,600 to produce.
However, that’s a pretty high estimate, including professional video development, paying a subject matter expert (SME) to teach the course, market research, email automation or webinar software, and promoting the course. Source: racoongang.com
It can be much cheaper if you’re starting and want to create a course yourself.
For example, if you have a quality webcam, a microphone, screen-sharing tools, and video editing software, you can create a course for under $200.
Your most significant investment is time.
Keep in mind that costs rise with your effort. The more effort you put into analyzing your audience, market research, creating an outline, and shooting professional media with an engaging instructor, the higher the cost.

2. Use the Best Software and Equipment.

Creating a course isn’t as simple as adding a webinar to a website. You need to produce the course first!
Software and equipment are required to create high-quality content.
Remember, you’re replacing an in-classroom experience with a virtual course, so it needs to look professional.
However, you don’t need the most expensive, high-end equipment to get started – but you will need a few essential items.

1. Microphones

Microphones are crucial. Bad audio is much easier to detect than shaky video, and you need a quality microphone for your course to sound excellent.
Use the best microphone you can afford. You can use a standard receiver, lavaliere mics, or a headset, but I recommend a USB microphone.
One of my favorites is the Blue Yeti. And don’t forget to get some microphone accessories to improve your audio quality further. Pop filters, foam balls, shock mounts, and acoustic panels are critical if you’re recording in a small room.

2. Headphones

A good set of noise-canceling headphones will help tremendously during the editing process. They also come in handy when conducting interviews and recording someone.

3. Screen recording program

If you’re creating a class on a software or computer program, you’ll have to show the screen to highlight your work. There are many options for screen recording software, but one of my favorites is Screencast-o-matic.

4. USB Webcam

Mostly all online courses will require live webinars or videos of an instructor for a personal classroom feel.
Recording equipment can include something as simple as your iPhone, a webcam, or a run-up to professional DSLR camcorders.
The most significant factor is your budget.

5. Audio and video editing software

Once you’re done shooting your course, the real magic happens with editing.
My favorite options include Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro.
If you’re looking to spruce up your animations, try Adobe After Effects.

6. Lighting and accessories

Quality three-point lighting is crucial to ensure your instructor shines (pun intended).
You can purchase a complete studio light set or only some accessories for your iPhone.
Either way, you’ll want to research interview lighting techniques to certify you look professional.

3. Create Valuable Content.

This one is a no-brainer and is a common denominator when comparing online vs. classroom learning.
You need a detailed vision of who your ideal students are and what they are interested in learning.
Do they want to develop a new skill and earn an online certificate? Do they want to help grow their own business?
Understanding your audience’s pain points can create a vision for your course.
Create compelling video courses.
Use video plus interactive worksheets, PDFs, quizzes, and other elements to engage with your students on a deeper level.
Also, make sure to condense learning into shorter sentences – no one wants to read long paragraphs.

4. Differentiate Your Website.

Focus on your niche and provide the absolute best content with a focus on your unique value proposition (UVP). Unless you want to become the next EdX, you must specialize and be the best at an exceptionally focused niche.
Offer an exclusive hook statement and differentiate your course’s UVP out of the gate.
Ask yourself: What makes my course different than the rest?
For example, if your niche is graphic design, don’t create a course called “Graphic Design for Beginners.” That’s too broad.
A class called “Adobe InDesign for Ebook Publishers” is more focused and more natural to market.
Don’t focus on too many different areas.
Your online course should have one focal point and not stray away from it or go off-topic. You diversify into other topics after you see some initial success with your teachings.

5. Take Time to Market Your Business.

After pouring all of your hard work into creating your course, your job is just getting started. Now you need to market it.
You need a dedicated website.
You need a professional web presence to help people find you and view you as an expert in your field.
Your website should have an active blog with content related to your niche, which is search engine optimization (SEO) optimized.
Build a social media following.
Create your own Facebook Business page to engage with your community. Share your latest updates on Twitter and Instagram.
Having a regular post schedule and providing engaging social media content will help build a community behind your brand.

6. Have Control Over Your Brand.

Branding an online course platform is essential for any organization looking to offer courses and other educational content.
By branding the platform, your organization can create a unique identity that will help differentiate it from competing platforms, as well as attract potential customers.
The first step in branding an online course platform is to create a clear mission statement and vision.
This should define the course’s purpose, what topics are covered, why those topics are essential for learners, and who the target audience is.
The mission should be more than just a slogan; it needs to provide direction and purpose for the platform to communicate its value proposition effectively.
Once you have established your mission statement, it’s time to design the look of your platform.
This includes visuals such as logos, colors, fonts, images, and videos that will help create an attractive visual brand for your online courses.
Designing with these elements in mind will ensure that anyone accessing your courses has a positive experience from start to finish.
It’s also essential to consider how users interact with your platform when they access their courses or search for new ones.
Simplifying navigation can make it easier for learners to find what they need quickly and seamlessly move between coursework sections.
Additionally, establishing user guidelines and policies can help set expectations around privacy and security issues related to using the platform.
Finally, you’ll want to look into marketing options that can help promote your online course platform.
This could include creating promotional materials such as flyers or posters or investing in digital campaigns like pay-per-click advertising or targeted email campaigns.

7. Deliver an Exceptional Learning Experience.

The platform should deliver a great learning experience.
You should include multiple content types like audio, text, documents, and more.
Other features to look for include creating quizzes and sending completion certificates, forums, and “drip” courses sent to students over time.

8. Integrate with Other Tools.

Choose a platform that integrates well with other solutions.
You will want to ensure your learning platform can work with other tools like email marketing services, analytics solutions, and more.
Check for popular integrations with tools like MailChimp, Google Analytics, WordPress, and more.
For example, if you started a blog and are selling courses with a WordPress site, you need to choose a platform that can easily integrate into your current website.
If you do want to create an online course business with WordPress, you can search their plugin directory for a list of the right plugins:

9. Align Sales with Your Budget in Mind.

The platform should fit your budget and offer flexible pricing options. To make money selling online courses, you need to spend money.
But by looking into pricing information first, you better understand your potential return on investment.
You should also be on the lookout to see if any platforms charge a hidden transaction fee on your course sales.
When creating your online course and choosing an online learning platform, most paid plans remove heavy transaction fees.

10. Leverage Customer Support if You Need It.

The platform should offer excellent customer support and training.
Many services offer free resources and training, a dedicated account manager, and a helpful instructor community that can help you succeed.
Use those resources if you’re stuck – don’t be afraid to ask for help.
What Are the Most Popular Online Courses?
Whether you want to sell online courses from your website or use another platform, it’s crucial to understand the most popular classes this year.
It’s challenging to come up with great ideas to engage students.
The Online Course Report recently came out with its list of the 80 highest-rated on-demand courses.
Their catalog includes some of the most popular and highly-rated online courses:
1. EdX: The Science of Everyday Thinking
2. Udemy: The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0
3. Udemy: SEO Beginners: How I Get 1,000 Visitors a Day with SEO
4. Coursera: An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python
5. Treehouse: JavaScript Basics
This is the most popular developer class.
As you can see from this list, students are looking for highly informative, impactful education. Now you don’t need to top the list to be successful.
But you need to create classes that are not only high quality but also train your students on topics they love.

Summary and Top Picks

When choosing between the best online course platforms, remember to do your research: consider the student experience, marketing features, and pricing.
The best online course platforms let you easily upload your content, provide training for your students, and generate course sales.
All offer course creation tools and features for online teaching.
Ultimately, the critical factor is you.
The success of your course and the ability to sell courses online is based on the quality of your content and how well you can market yourself.
A platform is just that, a platform.
Yes, it’s a branded, engaging, interactive piece of media with your insights and experience, but it still needs planning, market research, development, and, most importantly, marketing.
Here are my final top picks:
• Thinkific: Best Overall Online Course Platform.
• Kajabi: Best for Professionals
• Teachable: Best For Beginners
With all of the high-end features you need at the most affordable price, Thinkific is the clear overall winner.
Ultimately, with endless topics to teach and millions of students ready to learn from you, why not get started today?
If you’re ready to start creating and selling online courses, I recommend you go with Thinkific.
To go deeper before choosing your platform, check out my complete online course comparisons:
• Thinkific vs. Teachable
• Kajabi vs. Teachable
• Thinkific vs. Kajabi
• Thinkific vs. Podia
• Thinkific Review
• Kajabi Review
Disclosure: I may receive affiliate compensation for some of the links below at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. You can read our affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy. This site is not intending to provide financial advice. This is for entertainment only.