There’s never been a better time to earn an income by creating and selling online courses. More people than ever before are going online to learn new skills and using online courses to explore new hobbies, diversify their skill sets, and even explore entirely new career paths.
However, if you’re a creative thinking about putting together your very first online course, the first decision you have to make is which tool to use. Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools and platforms designed to make creating and selling online courses easy—but how do you know which tools are worth your time?
In this post, we’ll be taking a look at the five best online course creation tools on the web. We’ll be exploring the features that make each tool unique so you can choose the online course creation tool that best meets your needs. Let’s get started!
Podia
First up on our list of the five best online course creation tools on the web is Podia.
Formerly known as Coach, Podia was designed by creatives, for creatives. Podia makes creating and selling online courses practically effortless. Podia gives creatives everything they need to create and sell online courses and membership sites. Unlike other course creation tools, Podia can help you manage every aspect of creating and selling your online course, from outlining and planning tools to email marketing campaigns and ecommerce functionality.
Podia’s all-in-one platform means that you don’t have to rely on multiple tools or services to create and sell your content. Everything you need to start earning an income by selling online courses is accessible from Podia’s intuitive, user-friendly dashboard. This means you can spend less time worrying about how to promote and sell your course and more time actually creating content.
To see how easy content creation can be, sign up for a completely free, no-obligation trial of Podia today and start earning an income teaching other people how to do what you love.
Ruzuku
Next up in our round-up of course creation tools is Ruzuku.
Like Podia, Ruzuku emphasizes it makes creating and selling online courses as easy and accessible as possible. In addition to the broad range of creation and marketing tools that Ruzuku offers, the service also provides users with a series of engaging tutorials on how to create and sell online content effectively. Ruzuku also offers complimentary consultation sessions for creatives, providing valuable, actionable feedback on everything from branding to messaging.
One aspect of Ruzuku I really love is the fact that it supports a wide range of payment integrations, including Stripe, PayPal, and Infusionsoft. Ruzuku also offers a wide range of real-time metrics that course creators can use to track student progress, including activity completion rates available on a per-lesson and per-course basis. This lets you see exactly how students are engaging with your content, which can be immensely valuable when creating future learning modules.
Try a free trial of Ruzuku and see how easy it can be to start selling your content.
Pathwright
For some creatives, actually structuring their course material can be a real challenge. This is particularly true for creators teaching complex or highly nuanced topics that aren’t as accessible as other courses. If this sounds familiar, it might be worth your while to check out Pathwright.
Pathwright is a course creation tool that allows content creators to break down their course material into various learning pathways. Pathwright’s unique modular outlining tools allow you to create flexible outlines that can be rearranged, expanded, and integrated with specific learning outcomes, offering course creators a robust set of tools that make creating even complex courses easy.
Pathwright’s community tools are also top-notch. Similarly to social aggregators like Reddit, Pathwright users can allow students to “upvote” questions and comments they find the most valuable, which drives engagement and helps students get more out of their learning experience. Pathwright also offers a variety of lesson formats, from flipped classroom-style environments to live, webinar-style demonstrations.
There are a lot of course creation tools out there, but Pathwright does a fantastic job of genuinely differentiating itself in a crowded space. If you want to build a thriving community around your content, try a free trial of Pathwright.
Kajabi
Kajabi is a relatively new course creation platform aimed squarely at entrepreneurs.
The folks behind Kajabi know that creating great educational content is only half the battle—even the best instructional content won’t do much if nobody buys it. That’s why sales and marketing are central to the Kajabi platform.
Kajabi is awesome for creatives with some sales and marketing experience. In addition to offering the content creation and management tools you’d expect from an all-in-one course creation platform, Kajabi also offers a great deal of flexibility when it comes to payment options, such as customizable checkouts, unique upsell opportunities, a range of pricing structures, and a remarkably robust set of marketing automation tools. Kajabi also allows you to create highly customizable flows for students at various stages of product ownership, such as automated special offers and nurture pathways.
It’s worth noting that Kajabi isn’t for everyone. If all you need is a place to create and sell your online course, Kajabi’s extensive range of ecommerce tools might feel a bit much. For serious entrepreneurs, however, Kajabi is a valuable platform that offers a lot of functionality that other services cannot. To see if Kajabi is right for you, you can sign up for a free trial here (credit card required).
DigitalChalk
The final entry in our round-up of course creation platforms is DigitalChalk, a unique service aimed at creatives who specialize in educational content for real-world applications in the workplace.
Workplace-based instructional content is big business right now, which makes DigitalChalk worth a look if you’re thinking of branching out into instructional content for working professionals. DigitalChalk offers users everything they need to start creating and selling corporate training solutions, from integrated assessment tools to track student learning outcomes to deep analytics support and custom reporting.
One of the things I love the most about DigitalChalk is the platform’s gamification functionality. It’s been proven that gamification can significantly enhance learning outcomes, and DigitalChalk allows you to create your own unique badges, points, leaderboards, and certificates to reinforce key points and boost student engagement.
DigitalChalk does offer “standard” online course creation tools, but its unique approach to corporate training really sets it apart in an otherwise crowded space. If you’re considering getting into workplace-based training or skills-based instruction, DigitalChalk could be well worth your time. Unfortunately, DigitalChalk doesn’t offer free trials, but you can schedule a demonstration of the platform here.
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