 The online course platform tier list today I'm going to be talking about the various different online course platforms and I'm going to be ranking them from S tier which is the best to F tier which is the worst and I am going to be talking about these online platforms from the perspective of someone who's thinking of making a course but I will also mention them from a perspective of someone who might be thinking of taking a course as well so the viewer's perspective too and I thought I would make this video because I've used a ton of these platforms I also have friends that have used these platforms and I just recently came out with a course and I used a particular platform that I thought was amazing and I've used this platform both from the perspective of a course creator as well as a viewer but there are other platforms out there that may be better for you depending on what you need so the first platform I want to talk about on this list is going to be school and this is a platform that was started by a person named Sam ovens now Sam ovens is well known for creating the consulting accelerator which is a super famous course probably like tens of thousands of people took including myself and it is a fantastic course and he basically got people a ton of results then I guess he got tired of selling courses and he decided to start a SaaS product and that's what he did he started school and school is basically if the show the office had a love child with a TED talk that is the realm of enlightenment that we're about to dive into when we're talking about this product now of course you can host a course on school just like any other product on this list but what makes school so special is three different things first it's simplicity second the fact that it is group focused and three the fact that it gamifies the process of having a group that actually interacts with the program and I'm going to break down each of these things first of all school is incredibly simple you basically don't even have to have instructions to use it it's ridiculously simple the school team is truly a master of user interface and user design because a lot of the hosting platforms are ridiculously complex and you have to constantly call customer support and you have to constantly look up their FAQ but with school I haven't had to do it a single time and it's simple from the perspective of the creator and also very simple from the perspective of the viewer second it is group focused so one thing that anyone who is experienced in the creator economy will tell you especially people who have been selling courses is people get much much better results if the course has a group attached to it the problem with all the other software on this list is you usually have to use multiple different software in order to do this so you have the course hosted on one platform and then you have the group hosted on a different platform so there's a huge disconnect on school they're both hosted in the same place and three school gamifies interaction so you can actually reward people with tiers for interacting with each other and helping each other out so basically you have these different tiers where people can unlock different rewards and you can set those rewards to be anything that you want for instance maybe there's some free templates or maybe some kind of masterclass that you did a year ago that's just been sitting there doing nothing or if they get to a high enough level maybe they get a one-on-one or a group call from you and having an engaged group is not only going to increase your customer satisfaction but it's also going to decrease the amount of people who request a refund and it's going to increase the amount of people who buy your other product so if you have like an upsell on top of your basic product it's going to increase that massively and on top of it it makes managing your community so much easier because you don't really have to have a bunch of people hired to interact in the groups because people just answer everyone else's question so that saves you a massive amount of time effort and money and to be honest with you I think one of the most valuable things anyone can buy is access to a big group of people who are trying to do the same exact thing as you are and just an example of this is everybody knows how to get fit right literally everybody you can watch a few youtube videos and you know how to lose weight or to get fit but lots of people hire personal trainers lots of people spend tons of money on different group fitness sessions and the reason for that is because it's so much easier to do something or to learn something if you're doing it with a bunch of other people because human beings are social animals and on top of that you get to network with people you get more accountability you can teach people who are newer you can get mentored by people who are a little bit above you and you can even compete a little bit with people who are on your level so it really adds a social aspect to taking a course or a coaching program that really is just going to increase the results that your clients get and over the last year or so I have seen countless creators switch from all of the other platforms and like save tons of money because they were probably spending like a thousand dollars a month on all these different types of software and then just switch everything to school and here's a bunch of different examples of people who have been talking about the results they're getting from school and it's absolutely ridiculous so yeah absolutely love school you know when I was launching my newest course remote job accelerator I was looking at a bunch of different platforms I tried a bunch of different ones out and school was the clear winner so I have to put this one into s tier and if you're interested in school I'll put it down in the description as well as the pinned comment below I believe starting a group is $99 a month and it's honestly worth every penny because like I said if you used all the different software it would probably cost you like 500 to a thousand dollars a month to get the same effect and it actually wouldn't even be as good because it's much better if everything is hosted on the same platform now the second one on the list I want to talk about is teachable so this is a really common one and one of the things I really like about teachable is for some reason it has kind of a good vibe to it like it doesn't have a internet marketer type vibe whereas something like click funnels for instance definitely does so it has more of a legit feel to it and so people feel more comfortable buying courses from it for whatever reason and the price varies from zero to $199 per month depending on what features you want now this is another platform that I have personally used I actually use this to host my first ever course that was the college 101 course I don't even talk about it on the channel anymore but it was my first attempt at making a legit online course and it did pretty well I don't really talk about it that much anymore because I kind of just give away all the secrets for free on the channel anyways but overall it was a pretty good experience using teachable it is relatively simple although nowhere near as simple as school but it's definitely a lot simpler than something like click funnels or kajabi for some reason I had a lot of trouble when it comes to making multiple accounts because I had some accounts where I actually bought other people's stuff on teachable and then I have an account where of course I am the course creator myself and for some reason there's a lot of glitches whenever I switch back and forth and I'm not really sure why but it's mostly just a minor annoyance I just have to use different you know browsers for that but yeah teachable is pretty good I'll go ahead and put it into a tier the next one on the list I'm going to talk about is udemy and this is a platform that's kind of known for lower prices so you're probably not going to be selling like a thousand or a two thousand dollar course on udemy typically the courses range from like 19 to 100 dollars they also often run promos on different courses on udemy and you get a percentage of the cut when somebody buys a course the fact that you don't have much control over pricing really limits your freedom and flexibility now there's still people that absolutely crush it on udemy usually these are the types of people who make tons and tons of courses because making just one course chances are you're not going to be absolutely crushing it on here now one of the upsides of using udemy is they do a lot of marketing for you so customers will log on to udemy and it'll actually show them a bunch of different courses and if your course rates really well you might end up on the home page and they can do a lot of marketing for you also if people search certain things your course might show up and again they do the marketing for you so this might be a good option for you if you have absolutely zero following or you don't have a very good marketing strategy in place but it is a pretty bad option for the course creator when it comes to scaling your business but with that being said a lot of people do get started on udemy when they're selling a course and it does tend to be pretty good for the viewer because viewers are able to get access to high quality courses at a lower price now you don't have a lot of the other options that you'd have with something like school where you have kind of a group and also you have like a calendar directly on school where people can see where the next call is it doesn't have a lot of the options like that and it really just limits you in terms of what you can do so this is truly purely just a course platform right you're not going to be able to do anything else and that limits the value that you can give the viewer so overall i'm going to put udemy into c tier next on the list is going to be kajabi now one of the great things about kajabi is it is another one that's kind of like an all-in-one type platform so it's kind of like a swiss army knife for online course creators and it starts at $149 a month and goes up to $399 a month so it does take care of a lot of the problems that you might have now a few years ago kajabi was kind of marketed as a cheaper version of click funnels because click funnels did get pretty expensive but now kajabi kind of costs around the same as click funnels so it no longer has that as a competitive advantage and it's also relatively difficult and complicated to use but overall i do know a lot of creators that still use kajabi to host their online course and so i'll put this one into a tier next let's talk about skill share now skill share is something that i really like as a viewer i really like you know viewing different courses on skill share i found a lot of value from it and one thing that's cool about skill share is it's actually paid by the month and sometimes they'll have promos where you can get it for like 10 bucks a month but i think typically it's 32 dollars a month or 168 dollars a year but make sure you look that up but yeah like i said as a viewer i really love skill share because i take all kinds of different random classes on there and i've had a subscription on there for like two years but as a course creator i don't really like it as much for one skill share recently announced that they're cutting a lot of the revenue from course creators so it's not as lucrative to do sponsorships and affiliate deals or host a course on skill share as it was before and two it never really was all that profitable in the first place because you're basically paid per minute that people watch so it's always going to be more profitable to create like a higher ticket course or even a higher ticket coaching program because instead of having to get thousands of customers you only have to get dozens or hundreds so overall i'm going to give skill share a c tier ranking the next one on the list is going to be think if it now think if it is pretty good you can actually start for free and it goes up to $149 a month and for a lot of beginner course creators this tends to be a pretty good one in fact i know a guy who teaches other people how to create courses and think if it is the platform that he recommends at least he did like you know six months ago i'll have to ask him what he thinks of school so overall think if it is pretty good i'll put it into a tier next is going to be learn dash now the interesting thing about this one is you can actually integrate it into your website so you can actually host your course on your website without having to be like a software development genius then learn dash basically ranges from about 199 to 799 dollars per year that is a massive range now i've honestly heard kind of mixed reviews from friends that have used this one a lot of people who host their courses on their website just go ahead and hire a professional developer but if you don't have the money to do that this could be a good option for you so therefore i'm going to put this one into b tier the next on the list is going to be podia now this is another one that is kind of like a swiss army knife and to be honest with you this one is schools closest competitor and they also focus on communities which is a very smart thing to do in my opinion and this one ranges from free to 75 dollars per month now the big difference between podia and school in my opinion is two different things for one it's definitely not easy to use and for two they don't really incorporate gamification in the same way that school does so overall i'm going to have to give this one a c tier ranking next on the list is going to be learn worlds now this one is similar to podia as well as school but they do incorporate gamification with that being said it's a lot more difficult to use than school like there's a serious learning curve for beginners there's tons of different features that you can use and i think that things like that honestly just get away from the important things when it comes to hosting an online course and those important things are of course just delivering results to your students so if it's difficult for you to use and difficult potentially for your students to use that's going to get in the way of you delivering them results so for that reason i'll put this one into c tier the next one on the list is going to be thrive cart and this is another one that kind of integrates almost everything however it is quite expensive so it's 495 dollars or 690 dollars for the pro plan so that's a lot of money to commit up front now one thing that thrive bump really kind of like prides themselves on is one click order bumps and that is basically where you have like a you know product and then on the same page you can just click a single button and that will upsell them to a different product and for some reason a lot of the other platforms either don't have this or you have to install some sort of other thing in order to do it or you can do it but it's just really janky and i'm not really sure why that is because one click order bumps are awesome but with that being said this one is very complicated to use there's a ton of different features it also has a very high initial investment so for that reason i'm going to put it into b tier and this one is basically exactly what it sounds like it's more of a group or membership type platform and again i think that's pretty smart because i do think that is where the like online course online coaching ecosystem is heading towards because you just get way more value out of a product if it has a group attached to it but it's much more difficult to use and it does have a limited amount of customization but with that being said it's about 99 dollars per month so overall i'm going to put this one into c tier next let's talk about one of my favorites which is kartra so kartra i've used as a student so as a viewer i've used it as an affiliate and i looked into it as a course platform and i almost ended up using it to host my most recent course now i really like kartra because it combines all the features and it does it in a really good way so you can do email marketing on kartra you can do landing pages you can host your course platform there's a lot of things that you can do and some of my friends use kartra and they absolutely swear by it but with that being said it does have a pretty big learning curve so it's not the easiest to use now the price ranges from 99 to 429 dollars per month if you go for the yearly plan and if you go with monthly it's 119 to 549 dollars per month now they do have an extensive library of templates that you can use and different funnel mapping tools they also have really good personalized automation they have a responsive customer journey they also have an affiliate feature that you can very easily use and that's something that i was actually looking for when i was trying to choose these different platforms i wanted one where i can easily give other people affiliate links and i also wanted one where i can easily get affiliate links from other people in case there's a course that i want to promote and kartra system is really good for that so overall i would put this one into a tier and i would probably put it as the second best one on the list behind school so yeah i did a ton of research on these different platforms when i was choosing which one i wanted to host my course on so i just thought i would kind of give you guys all of that research for free of course these different platforms might be right for you depending on your particular situation but with that being said i think school is phenomenal and they're just getting better and better every day because they're the newest platform out of all of these and people are absolutely crushing it with their results on school there's people who like double their revenue just by going to school and i think one of the big reasons is because of the simplicity as well as the gamification features so yeah check out school if you want i'll put a link down in the description as well as the pinned comment below if you haven't checked it out already i did a video about seven side hustles that almost nobody knows about and you can check that out by clicking right here