5 Top Online Course Platforms to Consider in 2025 (with Examples)

An online course platform enables you to create online courses that can be sold directly and used to build your online community, or they can be offered to team members and stakeholders to improve their skills.

When considering an online course platform, you want to ensure the platform is affordable, easy to use, and it should easily enable you to create high quality courses that share your expertise and knowledge with the world.

Below, we look at 5 of the best online course platforms available that enable you to start selling online courses.

• Best for: Digital marketers and entrepreneurs. WordPress users
• Price: From $199/year

OptimizeMentor, from OptimizePress, is a WordPress LMS plugin that enables users to create courses using a drag-and-drop course platform.

Nearly half of all websites are built using WordPress, and if your site is one of them, you can benefit from OptimizeMentor’s simple interface. A drag-and-drop editor and WordPress integration means you don’t need any coding or other technical skills to use the platform.

There are no limits to the amount or type of content you can add to online courses so you can add videos, audio files, and text. You can also create an unlimited number of courses and add them to your site.

OptimizeMentor offers a flexible content release structure and membership plans. Users are allowed unlimited members with no restrictions on the number of students that can sign up.

You can drip course content gradually, either by membership or by course specifics. And, with custom membership statuses, this means that you can offer accelerated learning or you could drip course content according to the payment schedule of different membership levels.

To gain access to OptimizeMentor, you will need to pay for the OptimizePress suite with prices starting at $199 per year for one site. Access to OptimizePress means you can set up sales funnels, build landing pages to help promote your course content, and you can set up lead capture forms on your pages to increase conversion rates.

OptimizeCheckouts is also included, enabling you to take payments and subscriptions via your Stripe account.

OptimizePress has some really powerful tools. OptimizeMentor’s integration with the rest of the suite’s tools and plugins is useful for WordPress site owners who want an all-in-one platform to deal with payments, marketing, and administration, as well as selling online courses.

• Best for: Creators. Marketers who want to combine online course building and community on a complete membership site.
• Price: In pre-release pricing.

Currently in closed private access, Kourses is a course-building platform with a strong onus on community development. 

It has been developed to help creators and online marketers build secure, content focused membership sites with a focus on community and engagement.

It enables users to create learning spaces that can incorporate video, audio, and text files. The membership portals can be branded to your business, giving a professional appearance.

Every member of your learning portal can be assigned to different access levels and content is assigned to each level. You can offer basic content to beginners and more advanced lessons to your higher-paying subscribers. 

All content can be scheduled for release, too, and Kourses provides a raft of community interaction tools.

By getting members more involved, for example, by posing questions and asking for feedback, they become more invested in the portal so they will be more likely to remain a member or upgrade their membership.

Add welcome videos, set courses to auto-play so members can progress through lessons automatically, and add digital downloads of PDF files and other attachments. 

• Best for: Beginners who want a simple course and don't mind transaction fees.
• Price: Free plan available (limited + 10% fees). Premium plans from $468/year (paid annually) + 5% transaction fee

Teachable was one of the earlier platforms to offer hosted online course building features. Their platform is still popular today, if a little dated in terms of functionality, design and feature set.

Templates streamline the design process and if the drag-and-drop editor doesn’t facilitate the changes you want to make, you can edit source code using Teachable.

For the online courses themselves, the number you can create depends on your membership level and ranges from a single course for free members, to 200 courses on the Pro+ plan.

One useful feature of the platform is you can set prerequisites for course access, so advanced courses can be limited only to those who have completed the basic courses, for example: a good way to generate multiple sales from a single student.

Payment integration is another beneficial feature of Teachable. You can accept PayPal and Stripe, as well as Google Pay and Apple Pay. You can accept payments in 130 different currencies and Teachable will collect taxes for you, too.

Student subscription levels, and course access, can be customized, and you can add discounts, trial offers, and other payment offers.

Teachable also has the usual array of marketing tools. You can start an email marketing campaign, manage your list, and offer coupons. You can also set up an affiliate program so that your members and other websites can sell course access for you.

Teachable has a number of plans.

• The Free plan has no monthly cost, but you do pay a fee and a percentage per transaction.
• The Basic plan costs $39 per month and still charges a 5% fee on every transaction.
• The Pro plan costs $119 per month and the Pro+ plan is $199 per month.

Teachable is expensive, even on the Free plan but it does offer powerful features.

• Best for: Community builders who need a mobile app.
• Price: Business plan from $1,188/year (paid annually) 

As the name suggests, Mighty Networks is geared towards creating your own "network" or community site.

Once you have developed an online course, you can then build a community around that course.

Community actions include direct messaging and you can host events, meetings, and other content in real-time to keep that community engaged and active. Every member can also customize their profile, similar to social media websites.

It is the platform’s Mighty Effect feature that really stands out, though. This customizes the content that every individual community member sees according to their profile details and their specific activity.

Mighty Networks is somewhat lacking in marketing tools compared to other platforms, however. 

There is the ambassador program, which means community members can earn for referrals so is similar to an affiliate program but more restricted. And there aren’t any sales page or email marketing tools. You will need to develop your own marketing strategy to drive visitors and course sales.

• Best for: Community owners not interested in building courses
• Price: From $1,068/year (Paid annually)

Circle.so is primarily a community building tool, but it has recently added online course building features for the Professional plan and above.

Circle's platform is based around "spaces" which are similar to pages and allow you to create sections of your community for discussion or content sharing around different topic areas. 

You might have a "welcome" community and then you might have a 101 training course, each in their own space.

Depending on the plan you choose, you will be limited on the total spaces you can create. This limitation applies across community and course spaces:

•  Professional Plan ($1,068/year) - 20 spaces
• Business plan ($2,388/year) - 30 spaces
• Enterprise plan ($4,320/year) - 100 spaces 

It isn’t one of the most advanced learning management systems, but if you are looking to start or grow a community and use some basic courses as a means of continuing that growth, Circle.so might be suitable for you.

The platform is also very easy to use, and you can set up a new community in just a couple of hours. There are some advanced community settings, but you don’t need to get involved in these just to get set up.

Circle isn’t really set up with the tools to create a powerful online course website and there are better online learning platforms for that purpose. It lacks certificates, assessments, quizzes, or even video analytics, for example. 

Community development features are where circle shows its strength, so if selling online courses will be a sideline or a means of encouraging users to join your community, it is a powerful platform.

Below are some of the features that you should be looking for when comparing learning management systems. Before you start comparing services, though, determine what features are important to you.

If you’re selling online courses as a sideline or primarily as a means to build an online community for another business, you may not need the most advanced course-building features. If you have sales funnels established, or an extensive email list, you may not need email marketing features.

Ideally, an online course platform should offer drag-and-drop editing. This makes course design quick and easy, and it also enables you to see how the course content will look to your visitors.

You don’t need any coding or technical knowledge, but if you are skilled in HTML and CSS, you can choose a platform that offers access to the code so you can make precise changes.

Make sure the platform you use includes the features you will need. For example, not all platforms allow live streaming.

Whether you sell online course access individually or want a paid subscription-type service, you will need to accept payments. Stripe is the most common payment gateway that allows you to take payment by credit or debit card, but some potential users might want to pay using PayPal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay.

Third-party integration means you can add other apps and services to further expand the functions of your course website. For example, you can install calendar apps to better manage the release and creation of courses. Or you could add list management features to improve your email marketing campaigns.

As well as a drag-and-drop editor, all the features and functions of a platform should be easy to find and intuitive to use. If it takes too much digging to find essential features and settings, you’ll struggle to get the most out of the platform.

The top online course platforms not only offer all the features you need, but they come with support from the companies that publish them. Good support means that your questions are answered quickly and via the communication method you prefer, whether it’s web chat, email, or phone. Customer support should be responsive, reliable, and accurate.

Some people learn better by watching videos, while others do better with text-based learning. Audio files are also useful because they can be listened to in the car or on headphones. You might also want to offer PDF files and other digital downloads to enhance your students’ experience using your site.

An engaged community is one that is more likely to make purchases and pay for subscriptions. Engagement features, such as quizzes, questionnaires, and even assessments and examinations are very effective at keeping students on your site.

Common marketing features include custom sales page template creation, email marketing and list management, and the setting up of affiliate programs. If you’re setting your course website up from scratch, some of these marketing features can be beneficial.

The price of the platforms varies greatly from free plans to those that cost thousands of dollars a year. When looking at free plans, check whether there is a transaction fee. If you only have a few users, a transaction fee will work out cheaper than a monthly fee, but once your community grows, it will become expensive.

When looking at cost, consider how many courses and users you will need and whether the platform can grow with you.

Selling online courses is a great way to showcase your expert knowledge and build a new revenue stream. With so many different online course builder platforms available however, it can be difficult to choose the right one for you and your business.

You should begin by identifying your primary needs and technical expertise, along with your budget.

The above top 5 online course platforms will make it easy to set up courses and manage and maintain a database of students. If you are still unsure about which online course platform to choose, here are our final suggestions.

OptimizeMentor is ideal for users with a WordPress website who want to integrate online courses and membership sites. With everything you need to build landing pages, sales funnels as well as courses and memberships, you'll be ready to go.

Kourses is suited to those who are looking to build communities around their courses. Without the need for your WordPress website, this is perfect if you're looking to get setup fast and don't want to worry about customizing every detail of your course or membership.

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