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What is an online course platform?

Online course platforms are cloud-based tools that help trainers and educators create, promote, and sell online courses based on their unique knowledge and experience.

It’s important to note that online course platforms are different from online course marketplaces. Marketplaces like Udemy and Skillshare collect a multitude of courses created by a multitude of trainers and list them all in one place from where learners can enroll in these courses. You can easily get lost in the intense competition. Additionally, these marketplaces charge significant commissions for selling your courses.

On the other hand, online course platforms help creators build their own training brand, allowing them to list and manage courses under their control—without any commissions.

However, you may wonder why you should subscribe to a course platform when you can create videos on YouTube or conduct live one-on-one sessions on video calls for free. While these platforms satisfy the most basic needs of online teaching, they have limitations that can hinder your online teaching career.

For starters, platforms like Google Meet or Zoom have a duration limit for video meetings. On platforms like YouTube, you have to comply with their monetization requirements, and you can't create on-demand courses.

How do you choose the best online course platform?

The objective of using an online course platform is to establish your own training brand, create your training website without writing any code, promote your courses easily, and provide learners with an effective learning experience. In addition to needing features to meet these goals, you must consider your budget and any platform's pricing when choosing an online course platform.

Key factors to consider when choosing an online course platform

While each online course platform is unique, there are certain key features that make the course creation process a lot simpler, including:

  • The capability to build a full-fledged training website without writing any code.
  • A freemium plan, so you can try the platform without paying up front.
  • The ability to add course materials in multiple formats so you can keep your learners engaged and deliver a more effective learning experience.
  • The flexibility to price your courses in multiple currencies and with different pricing structures so that prices are dynamic with respect to learners' countries and needs.
  • Built-in tools like virtual classrooms, quizzes, and other engagement features so you don't have to worry about buying and integrating third-party applications.
  • Built-in marketing tools for SEO, email automation, social media integration, and more.
  • No transaction fees for selling your courses through the platform.

In this article, we compare 10 online course platforms based on factors such as the ease of course creation, the ability to deliver an immersive learning experience, and the ability to promote your courses efficiently. This will help you choose the best platform based on your needs and budget.

  • Features
  • Pricing (when billed monthly)
  • Free version
  • Website builder
  • Assignments
  • Graded quiz
  • Course compliance
  • Drip course content
  • In-built live classroom
  • Country wise pricing
  • White labeling
  • Form custom fields
  • Customized mobile app
  • SCORM compliant
  • Course certifications
  • Email automation
  • Transaction commissions
  • Discussion forums
  • Part payments
  • TrainerCentral
  • $50/month
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  • Website and email
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  • Teachable
  • $249/month
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  • Thinkific
  • $199/month
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  • Website and email
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  • Kajabi
  • $399/month
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  • Podia
  • $89/month
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  • LearnWorlds
  • $299/month
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  • Website and email
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  • Knorish
  • $350/month
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  • Ruzuku
  • $199/month
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  • Yes (basic)
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  • Website
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  • WizIQ
  • $18/teacher/month
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  • Website
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  • Teachery
  • $49/month
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Note: While many of these platforms offer different editions, we're comparing the highest tier plan each product offers.


Disclaimer: All names and marks mentioned here remain the property of their original owners. The pricing details are as published by the named competitors on their website(s) on 10/03/2024 and are subject to change without notice. The details provided on this page are for general purposes only and cannot be considered as authorized information from the respective competitors. TrainerCentral disclaims any liability for possible errors, omissions, or consequential losses based on the details here.

  •  TrainerCentral
  •  Learnworlds
  •  Teachable
  •  Thinkific
  •  Kajabi
  •  Podia
  •  Knorish
  •  Ruzuku
  •  WizIQ
  •  Teachery

1. TrainerCentral

TrainerCentralhero-shapehero-shape

TrainerCentral is Zoho’s unified online course platform that caters to solopreneurs, edupreneurs, and anyone who wants to turn their passion into a rewarding profession. You can be a guitar virtuoso, a professional speaker, or a stage artist—if you have the passion to share your expertise with the world, TrainerCentral has all of the tools you need already built in.

Online courses with a built-in virtual classroom

With TrainerCentral, you can create engaging online courses by adding multi-format course materials like videos, images, PDFs, presentations, or embedded external links. The platform also supports course compliance and drip-scheduling features to help you control the learners’ pace through your course. With TrainerCentral, you can add assignments to your course to boost your learners' real-world knowledge and analytical skills.

The platform has a built-in assessment builder available in all paid plans. TrainerCentral quizzes support questions in multiple formats, including single choice, multiple choice, fill-in-the-blanks, and even essay questions. Users also have options to shuffle the questions and choices, add negative marks, and configure the passing grade. You can make the test more engaging by adding image-based questions. TrainerCentral also supports timed tests, which may be preferred by many coaching institutes.

TrainerCentral also has a built-in virtual classroom, which means you don't need to purchase or integrate additional webinar tools like Zoom or Google Meet. TrainerCentral has other engagement options too, like breakout rooms to conduct group activities, a whiteboard to explain complex concepts easily, and even instant live polls and quizzes.

Creating a collaborative learning ecosystem

With TrainerCentral, your learners get a secure portal to manage their courses and track their progress. You can easily collect feedback from your learners to refine your teaching methodology.

TrainerCentral encourages and builds a collaborative learning ecosystem with its discussion forum. Here, learners can interact and brainstorm with trainers and other learners. This makes learners feel that they’re not taking an online course alone, but instead are part of a learning community.

TrainerCentral offers many templates for course completion certificates, which you can customize and share with your learners when they complete your course successfully. Learners can easily share these certificates across their social media profiles, such as LinkedIn.

TrainerCentral also has a mobile learning app with which learners can access course materials, participate in live sessions, submit assignments, and even take tests right from their mobile devices.

Monetizing your courses with zero commissions

With TrainerCentral's no-code website builder, you can build a fully branded training website. You can build attractive sales pages with a simple drag-and-drop interface and promote specific courses.

You can personalize your website with your own domain and even add your official email address for communication with your learners and prospects. TrainerCentral has a built-in payment system that supports payments in multiple currencies and through multiple methods. Also, the platform supports flexible options to price your courses, including free, one-time payment, subscription-based, installments, and partial payments.

You can configure the pricing for your course in multiple currencies so that learners from different parts of the world can pay for your course in their native currency. You can also integrate custom payment gateways of your choice with Zapier or Zoho Flow.

TrainerCentral offers built-in marketing tools for SEO and email automation. It doesn't charge any transaction fees for the courses you sell. You can track your enrollment rate, course completion rate, and learner engagement statistics with the comprehensive dashboard.

TrainerCentral Pricing

TrainerCentral offers the following annual plans

FREE/month
STARTER/month
PROFESSIONAL/month

Also, there's a dedicated pricing plan for trainers who only want to conduct live workshops and live training. The pricing for the live workshop plan starts at $12.50/month.

TrainerCentral Pros:

  • Built-in virtual classrooms
  • Custom forms
  • Assignments feature
  • Fully branded mobile app
  • Multiple quiz formats
  • Zero transaction fees
  • Affordable pricing

TrainerCentral Cons:

  • Limited website themes
  • Affiliate marketing is not available
  • Not SCORM-compliant
  • Doesn't offer membership sites

2. LearnWorlds

LearnWorldshero-shapehero-shape

LearnWorlds is a Cyprus-based course creation platform that enables educators and content creators to create, promote, and sell online courses. Founded in 2014 by Cypriot founders Panos Siozos and Fanis Despotakis, LearnWorlds is one of the early entrants in the e-training industry.

Streamlined course creation

LearnWorlds offers a simplified interface for trainers to build courses. Course content can be presented in multiple media formats, including videos, PDFs, ebooks, and embedded third-party videos. The platform supports drip learning, which allows trainers to control course access based on the date and enrollment days. It also supports a course compliance option, which helps in sequential-learning courses.

After course completion, you can configure graded quizzes for learners and submit assignments to ensure optimal learning.

LearnWorlds does not have a built-in live workshop tool and depends on third-party integration. You can subscribe to third-party tools and then embed live workshops into your courses. Because live workshops are hosted on a third-party platform, automatic learner notifications, such as session reminders, will not be triggered, requiring trainers to manually send notifications every time.

An optimal learning experience

You can launch your own customized mobile application with LearnWorlds’ app builder module, which will cost an additional $199 (billed annually) for both Android and iOS. Using the certificate builder tool, you can create certificates and automatically issue them to learners as they complete your courses.

LearnWorlds supports discussion forums for individual courses. You can also create a common community page for your entire academy, where learners subscribed to your academy can share their ideas.

Fully equipped marketing tools

With LearnWorlds, you can create email workflows and set automated event-based triggers. For marketing, you can generate time and quantity-based promotion coupons. You can also add and track affiliate performance, and create sales commission structures.

The platform offers an intuitive drag-and-drop website builder with an option to add third-party tracking snippets. It also supports customizing the website domain and communication email address.

LearnWorlds supports custom form builder tools for course enrollments and course feedback. To collect data, you can create custom forms during the learner enrollment stages.

The platform supports popular gateways to collect payments, but a major setback is that you can't configure country-specific pricing options. You can set a base currency and the same currency will be shown for all users regardless of their location. This is a major issue when you’re looking to expand to different markets.

In their starter pack, $5 per sale is charged as commission. This can be a deal-breaker, as the starter pack is mostly preferred by budding trainers.

LearnWorld Pricing

LearnWorlds offers the following annual plans

Starter$24/month
Pro Trainer$79/month
Learning Center$249/month

LearnWorld Pros:

  • Website builder tools
  • Native content hosting
  • Marketing tools (custom forms, discounts, and affiliate tracking)
  • Customized app
  • Performance dashboard and reports

LearnWorld Cons:

  • No built-in live workshops
  • No free plan
  • No country specific pricing option
  • No option to record live classes and repurpose content
  • Only Paypal and Stripe
  • 5% transaction fees in starter pack

3. Teachable

Teachablehero-shapehero-shape

Founded in 2013 by Ankur Nagpal, Teachable has established itself as a strong platform for teachers and educators to set up their online training business. More than 100,000 course creators currently use Teachable for creating and selling their online courses.

Compare Teachable with TrainerCentral →

Flexible course builder with limited evaluation tools

With Teachable, you can create online courses easily by adding materials in multiple formats. You can also configure course compliance, so your learners have to complete certain actions before advancing through your course. This will help you control the pace of your learners.

You can also evaluate your learners' understanding of your course by adding quizzes to your lectures. However, in order to add graded quizzes, you must upgrade to Teachable's Pro plan. This could be a deal-breaker for someone who’s just beginning their online training business. Additionally, you can only add quizzes as a multiple-choice question. The flexibility to add quizzes in other formats (e.g., true or false, fill in the blank, or essay) is missing in Teachable.

To conduct live workshops or one-on-one sessions with your learners, you need to integrate Teachable with a third-party tool like YouTube, Zoom, or Google Meet. This may add complexity to structuring your course in terms of ease of use and additional subscription cost.

Learner-friendly tools

Teachable offers learners a portal where they can manage their subscriptions, add their profile information, and change their payment details. Teachable's learner UI is neat and user-friendly.

Teachable has a comments feature that lets students and trainers interact with each other. Students can brainstorm and clarify questions in comments. You can also reward your learners with a certificate of completion once they complete your course. However, certificates are only available with the Pro plan.

Attractive website building with transaction fees

Teachable offers an easy-to-use website builder that lets you create an attractive website without writing any code. It lets you customize your website to the most minute detail with a simple drag-and-drop interface. You can also integrate your custom domain with your Teachable account.

With Teachable, you can price your courses in multiple currencies and choose from the four pricing options it supports. You can also configure coupon codes for your courses to offer them at a discounted price. However, Teachable lacks a partial payment option, which trainers can use to collect variable amounts in installments from their learners.

One of the major deal-breakers in Teachable is the transaction fee collected even in their paid plan. Teachable charges a transaction fee of 5% of every course you sell. This might be frowned upon by solopreneurs or smaller coaching institutes. It also has a limitation on the number of published courses under each plan. For example, in the basic plan, you can have only five published courses.

Teachable Pricing

Teachable offers the following annual plans

Free$0/month
Basic$39/month
Pro$119/month
Pro+$199/month

Teachable Pros:

  • Simple and powerful website builder
  • Can add blogs to your website
  • Robust marketing tools
  • Monetize courses even on free plan ($1+10% transaction fee)
  • Unlimited courses

Teachable Cons:

  • Lack of options in quizzes
  • Graded quiz available only from Pro plan
  • Doesn't have assignments feature
  • Lack of built-in virtual classroom
  • Transaction fee even in paid plan
  • Can't add custom fields to forms
  • Email white-labelling is not available

4. Thinkific

Thinkifichero-shapehero-shape

Thinkific was established in 2012 and helps entrepreneurs create, promote, and sell their online courses. Founded by brothers Greg and Matt Smith, Thinkific has been part of the e-learning industry for the last decade.

Compare Thinkific with TrainerCentral →

Rigid course-building capabilities

Thinkific supports uploading course materials in multiple formats, but it doesn't allow trainers to add multiple materials under a single lesson. If you want to add a video and supporting PDF for the same lesson, it won't be possible here. You can only add the video in one lesson and must create a new lesson to include the PDF.

You can add graded quizzes in Thinkific, even in the free plan. However, the quiz format is limited to single-choice and multiple-choice questions. To add quizzes in other formats such as fill in the blanks, true or false, or descriptive type, you need to subscribe and integrate with third-party tools like Brillum. Thinkific has powerful tools, but the user interface and integrations can be overwhelming at times for a first-time course creator.

Thinkific doesn't have a native live workshop feature. Trainers need to subscribe to a webinar tool separately to host live sessions. Due to this external integration, features like breakout rooms and polls aren’t available within the platform. You need to switch between apps and open your meeting via third-party tools to access these features.

A cohesive learning experience

With Thinkific, your learners get a dedicated portal to manage subscriptions, edit their profiles, and update their payment details. Your learners can sign up to your school with their LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google account, making the signup process a lot simpler.

Thinkific also has a discussion feature that allows interaction among students and trainers. Rewarding your students with course completion certificates is available only from Thinkific's Pro plan.

Flexible website builder

Thinkific offers you a simple drag-and-drop interface to design and customize your training website. You can modify site elements, change fonts and colors, and add custom logos.

With Thinkific, you can price your courses under the four usual payment options (i.e., free, one-time payment, subscription, and payment plan). The partial payment option, which allows you to set variable installment amounts, isn’t available in Thinkific. You can also configure multiple pricing options for the same course. However, this feature is only available in the Pro plan. You can use the coupons code feature and sell your course at a discounted price.

Thinkific doesn't charge any transaction fees on the course sales that you make. This was one of the major deal breakers for products like Teachable.

One feature that makes Thinkific stand out from the rest of the platforms is the Thinkific App Store, which provides trainers like you with app integrations for learner experience, marketing, and data and analytics.

For example, under data and analytics, you'll find many apps to integrate with your Thinkific account, including Google Analytics. This way, you can easily track your academy's performance. Though Google Analytics is free to use, you have to pay the regular subscription fee to integrate other apps.

Thinkific Pricing

Thinkific offers the following annual plans:

Free$0/month
Basic$36/month
Start$74/month
Grow$149/month

Thinkific Pros:

  • Robust website builder
  • Zero transaction fee
  • Assignments feature
  • Unlimited courses
  • Graded quizzes on all plans
  • Several third party integrations (but requires additional subscription fees)

Thinkific Cons:

  • Limited quiz formats
  • Lack of built-in virtual classroom
  • No partial payment option
  • Lack of chat support
  • UI is difficult to navigate
  • Additional pricing for features

5. Kajabi

Kajabihero-shapehero-shape

US-based Kajabi was founded in 2010 by Kenny Rueter and Travis Rosser. Kajabi was created to be a comprehensive online course platform and has now pivoted towards a bundle-style platform in which users can purchase multiple add-ons and integrate them.

Compare Kajabi with TrainerCentral →

Comprehensive course builder

Kajabi offers robust content hosting and publishing modules, as well as comprehensive course builder tools with options to add multiple media types. While you can add images, videos, PDFs, and downloadable handouts, it doesn’t have an option to add assignments to the course curriculum.

Kajabi supports drip scheduling and course compliance settings to control students’ learning pace. It offers a unique automation builder tool that enables you to create ''if this happens, then that should happen'' workflows, adding efficiency in operations.

Optimized learner engagement

Kajabi excels in the learner experience and allows learners to access courses even when they’re on the go through their mobile app. It offers a useful email communications module to notify learners about new activities and customized announcements. However, their email system is a separate module and has to be purchased as an add-on.

The platform offers a comprehensive "community add-on," which can be integrated into your website. You can customize the community portal design to align with your brand and add community rules and workflows, creating an interactive learner community.

Robust marketing tools

Kajabi offers an intuitive website builder to build a responsive course website with customizable widgets. You can use custom domains for your website, but there's no white-labeling option for email communication. Kajabi offers a fully automated marketing tool that you can use to build sales pages, offer promo codes, create workflows, and automate the entire customer sales cycle. This is a separate add-on and requires additional customization.

The platform offers a "payments add-on" which only supports PayPal and Stripe as built-in gateways, and requires manual integration for other gateways. This might make the initial setup and integration process tedious. Their latest feature, Kajabi pay, makes it easy to collect custom payments from Google pay, Apple pay, etc.

Kajabi charges only subscription charges, not sales commissions, which is a huge thumbs-up. The subscription prices for the Pro plan are in the range of $319/month (billed annually) and can go higher if you subscribe to more add-ons.

Overall, Kajabi is a powerful platform, but their add-on style integrations can be complex and the setup can be overwhelming because it requires numerous customizations.

Kajabi pricing

Kajabi offers the following annual plans

Basic$119/month
Growth$159/month
Pro$319/month

Kajabi Pros:

  • Powerful website builder
  • Automated marketing engine
  • Email template designer
  • Workflow automation builder
  • Gamification features

Kajabi Cons:

  • No option to add assignments
  • No course compliance settings
  • Add-on integration complexity
  • No freemium model
  • No email white labeling

6. Podia

Podiahero-shapehero-shape

In addition to selling online courses, you can sell digital content and memberships with Podia. It was founded in 2014 by Spencer Fry and offers advanced tools for creators to sell courses or create membership sites.

Simplified course creation

Podia, like other platforms, lets you create online courses by adding materials in multiple formats. However, like Thinkific, you can't add multiple materials to the same lesson in Podia.

Podia lets you create quizzes with single and multiple-choice questions. However, like most of the other platforms, you can't add quiz questions in other formats (such as fill in the blank, true or false, or essay). Another major drawback in Podia: you can't add graded quizzes, even in the paid plans. This means you can't configure a minimum passing grade as a prerequisite for your learners to proceed to the next lesson or chapter. Podia doesn’t offer any course compliance controls, either.

With Podia, you can include live classes in your course curriculum. You can even sell live workshops as a separate product. But again, you'll need a Zoom license to host them. This integration will add to your costs.

Strong community-building tools

When someone visits your website, they can chat with you in real time before signing up to your academy. In these anonymous chats, learners can clarify any questions they have about your course without the hassle of receiving multiple emails.

Podia has an advanced community feature, where you can categorize your discussions. You can even post videos in the discussions if you subscribe to a higher plan, and course completion certificates are available (only in the Shaker plan).

Limited pricing options

Podia has a useful site builder that helps you create your coaching website from scratch without writing any code. Podia is integrated with Unsplash, so you can easily add attractive stock images to your website.

The options to price your courses in Podia are fairly limited. You can sell your courses either by configuring a one-time payment or by offering them as monthly subscriptions. However, the flexibility of accepting payments in installments is missing in Podia. Coupons are supported to help you offer your courses at a discount.

There's no transaction fee to sell your courses in Podia's paid plans. You can also sell your courses in the free plan, which has a transaction fee of 8%. Podia has several marketing tools, such as upselling, pre-selling, etc. to attract more learners to your course.

Podia Pricing

Podia has 4 plans (annual) including a freemium.

Free$0/month
Starter$4/month
Mover$33/month
Shaker$59/month

Podia Pros:

  • Advanced site builder
  • Powerful marketing tools
  • Membership sites
  • Monetize courses even on free plan (with 8% transaction fee)
  • Unsplash integration

Podia Cons:

  • No course compliance settings
  • Graded quizzes not available
  • Limited quiz formats
  • Lack of built-in virtual classroom
  • No installment payment option

7. Knorish

Knorishhero-shapehero-shape

Knorish was launched in 2016 by Kinner N. Sacchdev. They call their product the "Shopify for Online Courses" and help entrepreneurs, artists, hobbyists, and people seeking to work from home take their business online and create online courses based on their expertise.

Simple course builder

Knorish has a neat interface, with features and settings well-categorized for easy navigation. Creating a course is easy, and you can add chapters in various formats, including a page builder, where you can customize a webpage and add it as reference material in your course. You can add a drip scheduler to your course, so that chapters are released only on pre-defined dates.

There are no course compliance settings available in Knorish. You can't mandate lesson completion based on sequence or any other criteria. You can add graded tests with Knorish, which supports questions only in multiple choice and essay formats. In quizzes, you can add questions and options in image and video (through embedded YouTube link) formats.

There is no built-in virtual classroom in Knorish. However, it offers a free Zoom Enterprise plan for all of its paid plan users. With this, you don't need to purchase a separate Zoom license to host your live classes.

Secure learner portal

Knorish offers learners a secure portal where they can upload their images, add a short bio, change passwords, and even set up multifactor authentication. Learners can even download an invoice of their purchases easily from their dashboard.

The chat feature in Knorish allows learners to start a discussion for a particular chapter. The platform has just four templates for course certificates, out of which trainers can choose one and customize it to reward their learners.

Attractive website templates

Knorish offers a ton of beautiful templates and pre-loaded sections, which can be customized to the most minute details. They have a website template for every category, from which trainers can choose one, add courses, and publish their e-schools instantly.

The course pricing strategy in Knorish is similar to WizIQ. You can price your courses only in USD and INR. You can offer your courses for free, or charge a one-time payment. You can also create coupon codes that learners can use to purchase your courses on discount.

You can remove the "Powered by Knorish" message from your website's footer and white-label your site by purchasing the professional plan. There are many marketing tools offered for search engine optimization, building sales funnels, detailed site visitor analytics, and lead generation. Knorish also has a built-in referral plan, where you can refer someone to the platform and earn commission when they purchase a paid plan.

Knorish Pricing

Knorish offers four pricing plans, including a free trial. However, you can only access the free trial for 14 days. The annual paid plan starts at $29/month.

Startup$29/month
Professional$60/month
Power$299/month

Knorish Pros:

  • Advanced website builder
  • Free Zoom Enterprise account
  • Powerful marketing tools

Knorish Cons:

  • No course compliance settings
  • Limited quiz formats
  • No free plan
  • Limited course pricing options

8. Ruzuku

Ruzukuhero-shapehero-shape

Ruzuku is an online teaching platform created by Abe Crystal in 2010. Based in North Carolina, Ruzuku has a fair presence in the United States, Canada, and Switzerland. In addition to online course creation, the platform supports basic authoring tools, making it an interesting mix of online course platform and LMS.

Course building and management

Ruzuku offers a basic online course builder tool that supports uploading course content in the form of images, videos, and polls. While it satisfies the basic course needs, you don’t have options to add assignments, handouts, and more. Ruzuku allows trainers to configure content access based on the enrollment days. However, there are no course compliance options available, which is required for courses that require sequential content consumption.

Ruzuku supports live webinar sessions in which you can broadcast presentations and pre-recorded videos. It doesn’t have a built-in live workshop tool, but it does offer a livestream link embedding option. You need to subscribe to another platform to host live classes and embed the session links manually every single time. Overall, the content builder module is designed to accommodate the needs of a new trainer but lacks the core features offered by other competitors.

Web-only learning platform

Ruzuku is an exclusively web-based platform; it doesn’t offer the convenience of mobile learning. It supports a flexible notifications and announcements tool to notify students on new school activities. You can also configure automated email communications based on learner actions. However, you don't have an option to provide certifications or any gamification feature to motivate and engage learners.

One of the major setbacks of using Ruzuku is that it doesn’t offer interaction tools like chats and discussion forums, which many online educators consider an absolute necessity. In addition to this, you also won’t be able to provide course certifications to learners.

Limited website design and customization

Ruzuku supports flexible discounts and sales page customizations to help streamline the sales process. However, it doesn’t offer an attractive website builder tool or white-labeling options like other platforms listed here.

According to the course pricing structure, Ruzuku facilitates flexible course pricing models such as one-time, partial payments, and subscriptions.The platform heavily depends on Stripe and PayPal for payments. This rigidity in gateways can be a worrisome factor when reaching out to learners across geographies, who may prefer other payment gateways.

Compared to other competitors, Ruzuku charges $166/month (billed annually), which is on the higher end considering the lack of built-in live workshops.

Ruzuku Pricing

Ruzuku offers the following annual plans:

Free$0/month
Core$83/month
Pro$166/month

Ruzuku Pros:

  • Flexible pricing models
  • Marketing coupons
  • Customized notifications and announcements
  • No transaction charges

Ruzuku Cons:

  • No course compliance settings
  • No built-in live workshops
  • Lackluster website builder tools
  • No email white-labeling
  • Limited payment gateway options
  • No certifications or gamification
  • No mobile app
  • No discussion forums

9. WizIQ

WizIQhero-shapehero-shape

Launched in 2007, WizIQ is now used by more than 400,000 educators worldwide. According to its website, more than 70,000 courses and a monthly count of 100,000 live classes have been hosted through WizIQ so far.

Course creation and delivery

When creating your academy, WizIQ's user-interface isn’t the most responsive, but creating a course is easy. You can create a self-paced course or host a cohort course. You can add course materials in every format except for images. Adding images as course materials isn't supported.

The course compliances options are limited, but it does offer key options such as sequencing and mandating content to manage your learners' pace. WizIQ also offers an advanced graded tests option, and you can even import a test from a CSV file, clone an existing test, or create a new stand-alone test. It has an option to add sections in tests, with which you can categorize your questions. The available test formats include: single choice, multiple choice, and choice matrix table.

Like TrainerCentral, WizIQ has a built-in virtual classroom. You can host live workshops with this, but there's no option to include a live lesson within a self-paced or cohort course. The capability to host a live session without any integrations helps WizIQ stand out from its competitors.

Learner interface and communication

WizIQ doesn't have a dedicated portal for learners to track their course subscriptions. They can view all of the courses available in an academy and enroll in the one they like. The progress of the course can be tracked on the same screen.

WizIQ supports discussion in lessons where learners can engage and collaborate with peers and trainers. Learners can view the email address of their instructors in a single click. We're not sure how many trainers will be comfortable in making their email addresses public. When learners complete a course, a completion certificate is automatically generated by WizIQ.

Modest website builder

WizIQ has a basic website builder that's only robust enough to create a simple website. There are no themes or pre-defined templates available. You can set the primary and secondary colors of your website by typing in the hex code. You can upload a banner image for your website, but you can't change its position or add any overlay designs.

You can price your courses only in USD. For learners in the United States and all other countries, your prices will be displayed in USD, while for Indian learners the prices will be converted to INR. There are only two methods to price your courses in WizIQ: a free plan or a one-time purchase.

The white-label option lets you remove the WizIQ logo from your website, giving it a more customized look. However, there are no marketing tools for SEO and email marketing. WizIQ doesn't charge any commission for the courses you sell through the platform.

WizIQ Pricing

With WizIQ, you can conduct live lessons alone or create an entire digital academy by subscribing to the LMS plan. They charge around $1/trainer/ month for their LMS plan and $18/trainer/month for their Virtual classroom plan. However, we were unable to get the exact pricing for each plan from their website.

WizIQ Pros:

  • Advanced test builder
  • Built-in virtual classroom
  • Dedicated live workshop plan
  • Zero transaction fee
  • White-labelling
  • Cohort courses

WizIQ Cons:

  • Limited course compliance settings
  • Limited quiz formats
  • Unintuitive user interface
  • Basic website builder
  • Basic marketing tools
  • JPEG files can't be added as course materials

10. Teachery

Teacheryhero-shapehero-shape

Teachery was founded in 2014 by content creators Gerlando Piro and Jason Zook. The duo used their personal insights into the content creator community to develop a platform to empower the content creation community.

Complicated course creation

Teachery is a unique platform that focuses primarily on content publishing and marketing. You can upload course content in the form of images and texts directly. To add video to your course, you have to upload the videos to YouTube or other third-party websites and then embed the link to the course page.

The platform supports basic drip learning. You can schedule content access based on the learner's enrollment days, but it doesn't support a specific schedule. Teachery doesn't offer any course compliance controls. For live workshops, you can create rooms on third-party websites and then embed the links on your course page.

Integration-dependent communication tools

Teachery is a web-based platform that doesn’t support mobile learning. You can automate notification emails, but you’ll need to integrate with Mailchimp or ConverKit, which can be complex.

You can add a comments section to course pages by integrating Disqus to your Teachery accounts. There are no exclusive course or community discussion forums.

Website building and marketing

Teachery offers a helpful website builder tool with options to customize sections and buttons. You can create landing pages, course pages, and lead generation forms using the drag-and-drop builder. There are also options to add Google Analytics snippets to analyze website traffic and provisions to add meta tags and meta descriptions.

In terms of marketing, you have a promo code builder and affiliate tracker tool that covers the basic aspects. If needed, you can use Zapier and integrate third-party tools for marketing automations.

You can sell courses in three payment models: one-time payments, partial payments, and subscriptions. Only the Stripe payment gateway is integrated.

Overall, Teachery is a decent pick for content creators if you don’t update content frequently and rely instead on static courses. However, trainers who require flexibility and complete control of their training business in one place may find this platform a bit hard to scale.

Teachery Pricing

Yearly$470/month

Teachery Pros:

  • Vibrant course landing pages
  • Simple setup
  • Course link generators

Teachery Cons:

  • No content hosting
  • No course compliance
  • No in-built live workshops
  • No freemium access
  • No graded quiz/assignments
  • No certifications
  • No discussion forums
  • Payment gateway limitations (only Stripe)
  • No email communications module

Conclusion

All things considered, teaching online should be effortless and not require spending too much time learning the platform or integrating multiple tools. A great online course platform should have all of the required tools, like an intuitive site builder, graded quizzes, and virtual classrooms built in. It should be a balanced mix of personalization, automation, and centralization.

When it comes to a truly all-in-one online training platform, TrainerCentral is definitely the most affordable and versatile choice, because it offers the widest variety of core features for both trainers and learners in a unified architecture. However, while choosing an online course platform, we suggest that you to test out trial versions of a few platforms to choose the one that fits your needs and budget.

If you're interested in TrainerCentral, we can help you by scheduling a personalized demo. Alternatively, you can get a 15-day free trial by signing up here or writing to us at: support@trainercentral.com.