What Are the Best Platforms to Sell Your Online Training?
You’re a course creator and you’re looking for the best platform to sell your online course. You’ve probably heard of Teachable, Kajabi, Podia, Udemy or Skillshare. If you never did, these are part of a long list of the many e-learning platforms available out there.
One component of your marketing strategy is to look for an online course platform that will offer you high quality features.
This step is crucial as it can save you a lot of time, and money. Each website has different features, so how do you navigate this jungle of possibility?
To help you make your choice, we selected what we think are the 3 best platforms to sell your online course in 2022.
What an online course platform does for you
Also called an e-learning platform, an online course platform provides course creators with all the tools needed to build, host, and deliver an online training.
Some of them are also course marketplaces, which means users can look for a specific content and take it directly from the platform.
Here are some of the many benefits of using a digital platform to sell your online course :
- Most of them give you the tools to build your online course easily: you don’t have to know anything about web design or coding.
- The technical aspects of the setup are taken care of.
- The students can directly access their course without any complicated payment gateway setup.
- Some platforms come with features that will help you build a strong marketing strategy.
The alternative to an online course platform, would be to have your own website to sell and promote your content.
That would mean procedures like transforming your WordPress into an LMS (Learning Management System) thanks to plugins like LearnDash.
But that won’t be enough. You would also need to have an effective marketing strategy to build a community around your business in order to scale it.
As experts, we want to help course creators choose the right platform knowing the pros and cons of what you’re getting into.
Formator.io: a simple, cheap and intuitive solution
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One of the best platforms that we can recommend to sell your online course at the moment is Formator.io. Made in France, the creators of this platform wanted to provide an intuitive solution for online course support at super affordable pricing.
Fortunately, Formator.io succeeded in doing just that, offering a clean and efficient SaaS software. It provides new and established creators a sleek, low-cost platform from which to sell and host their content.
Main benefits
The first thing you’ll notice about this software is how simple it is to use. Everything is optimized to get straight to the point!
The website offers students rich and diversified training courses, accessible in a few clicks. The settings are practical and the platform offers tons of easy-to-navigate features. It includes a super responsive after-sales service for your learners. In short, there are many pros and nothing to complain about.
Formator.io is more than just a platform to sell courses. You can work on your global marketing strategy thanks to valuable tools to use within the website. Here is what you can do:
- Run a blog (hosting, analytics).
- Create email campaigns (automation, segmented lists, statistics).
- Capture leads.
Pricing
In addition to this overall very positive note, Formator.io offers one of the cheapest deals on the market.
Starting at only $19 per month for the limited version called Starter, you still get all the features you need to start and establish your course, without necessarily having to upgrade to a higher version.
ClickFunnels: the best online course platform to boost conversions
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ClickFunnels is a well-known platform for online training. Since 2014 this marketing software allows anyone to sell their course subscriptions using Clickfunnels’ membership area.
What’s really great though, is that it allows you to optimize your conversion funnel thanks to its funnel builder. You can also submit additional products and services to your students. This can make a huge difference in your marketing approach.
Main benefits
The site offers real added value, but suffers from a bad reputation as a course hosting platform due to the often poor use of this added value. Conversion work requires prior efforts on the value proposition, marketing and communication.
Not everyone is able to use ClickFunnels to full effect.
However, ClickFunnels presents serious advantages for those who take the time to learn everything it has to offer. It’s a funnel builder that can really help boost sales through conversion optimization.
In fact most people who have substantial experience selling their courses online know this quite well. They have established their own sales funnels using web builders like ClickFunnels to often double and triple their sales.
Here is a list of the most interesting features ClickFunnels has to offer:
- Prebuilt sales funnel templates.
- A/B Testing: for example, you can build 2 landing pages and see which one converts best.
- Membership areas: to improve your customer care.
- Payment Gateways: your users won’t be directed to a third party. It supports PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Android Pay.
- SSL Certification: you don’t have to worry about securing your website.
- Email Marketing Automation: ClickFunnels has its autoresponder but it supports some other integrations as well if you already have your own.
- Performance tracking.
- Check-out forms.
Pricing
As for the pricing, the software is considered rather expensive: the basic version is $97 per month. It certainly requires a slightly bigger budget, but someone who takes full advantage of the software will be laughing all the way to the bank.
Create your course in a few clicks with Thinkific
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Thinkific is a platform that allows you to create and sell your courses online.
Easy to use, it comes with a certain freedom in terms of options, design, marketing and sales but not as much as Clickfunnels.
Thinkific is an e-learning hosting website that introduces training courses in all fields.
You can create your course in a few clicks without any coding knowledge, and then distribute it directly on the platform.
Main benefits
Unlike ClickFunnels, prospective students can browse Thinkific and discover your course.
In other words it allows you to take advantage of Thinkific’s brand authority and organic traffic to generate sales in a way that ClickFunnels cannot.
Just like Formator.io and ClickFunnels, Thinkific is not just an online course platform. It offers:
- Email automation features
- Integration of your website with Thinkific
- Possibility to add an upsell to your main course
- Manage your learners and connect with them
- Deliver course certificates to your students.
Pricing
As for the price, Thinkific offers a free version that will allow you to try the platform and get familiar with it. If it seems to suit you, you can then switch to a basic package at $39 a month.
For such a complete tool it’s a rather interesting price, especially considering the possible organic traffic and conversions that it can generate.
Things to consider before choosing your online course platform
Keep in mind that most if not all of these solutions offer some kind of super inexpensive and often free trial version.
This way, you can quickly try and decide for yourself which is right for your specific needs. The important thing is that you’ve now narrowed down your options.
You can now start making decisions, and before you know it, selling courses.
There are many platforms out there. But choosing which is the best platform to sell an online course requires a serious review based on your market.
Many websites start to appear in the big ocean of opportunities, which is why it is not easy to find the best one for you, and to determine what are the pros and the cons of each option.
Take into consideration that many of these platforms have been growing with the demand, time, SEO, and engagement.
The benefits that come with using an online course platform are significant. You still need to analyze the pros and the cons.
Don’t forget that you’ll have to compete with other course creators in your field. That means your offer must be valuable enough to stand out.
The most difficult part of choosing an online training platform is to pick the best one for you, among those available on the market. Once you do that, everything becomes easier and you’ll be able to take your course business to another level. However, I must draw your attention to the fact that to scale a course, several elements must come together. Creating, building, offering a course, won’t necessarily result in getting tons of sales. Only a highly effective marketing strategy will. Nothing must be left to chance. If you want to talk about scaling your course business to experts, book your call today.
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