Best eLearning Website & Course Builders

Our expert ninjas spent hours testing some of the best online course platforms to help you decide on which eLearning platform is best for you. Read our expert reviews to find the right course builder to start your online school and begin generating income from your expertise.
Updated: August 2020 Advertiser Disclosure
Most Popular
Thinkific
User ranking
  • Website & course builder
  • Third-party extensions
  • Responsive designs
  • 60+ million students
9.3
Total Ninja Ranking

Ideal For

  • Entrepreneurs
  • Podcasters
  • Sports coaches
  • Marketing experts
  • Health and wellness gurus
  • Personal trainers
  • Yoga instructors
  • Musicians
  • Teachers & tutors
  • Photography experts

Highlight Features

Flexible payment options give your customers multiple ways to acquire your content, including one-time payments, subscriptions, payment plans, free courses, and additional course prices.

No transaction fees – unlike lots of its competitors, Thinkific doesn’t take a cut of the money you make from sales to your students.

Thinkific’s generous free plan is more like an entry-level paid plan, you can create up to three courses, sell them to an unlimited number of students, and much more!

Live lessons with Zoom allows you to add webinars, meetings, and one-to-one lessons to your course content, boosting the overall student experience and quality of content.

Ninja Ranking

  • Beginner Friendly
    8.9
  • Design Capabilities
    8.9
  • Variety of Features
    9.6
  • Value for Money
    9.8
Read Our Expert Review
Teachable
User ranking
  • Course & website builder
  • Unlimited courses, students & hosting
  • Third-party integrations
  • Instant payouts
9.1
Total Ninja Ranking

Ideal For

  • Online coaches
  • Teachers
  • Tutors
  • Language specialists
  • Sports experts
  • Chefs & bakers
  • Business gurus
  • Martial artists
  • Industry professionals
  • Artists

Highlight Features

Affiliate marketing tools enable you to partner with affiliates to drive traffic to your site and automate all payments to them, creating a hands-off process that generates more income for your business.

Live coaching sessions are available with third-party integrations so you can offer your students one-to-one coaching sessions and live webinars.

Power editor allows anyone on a premium plan to edit the code of their website and online course to change the look and feel of the design for a unique online school.

Flexible pricing options give you more than one way to collect payments from your students, these include subscriptions, memberships, one-time payments, bundles, payment plans, and more.

Ninja Ranking

  • Beginner Friendly
    9.2
  • Design Capabilities
    9.3
  • Variety of Features
    8.9
  • Value for Money
    8.9
Read Our Expert Review
LearnWorlds
User ranking
  • Website & course builder
  • Mobile responsive designs
  • Code editor & third-party extensions
  • Custom checkout pages
9.0
Total Ninja Ranking

Ideal For

  • Online coaches
  • Teachers
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Fitness trainers
  • Professional chefs
  • Businesses & enterprises
  • Industry experts
  • Sports professionals
  • Photographers
  • Musicians

Highlight Features

Verifying your students’ knowledge with advanced testing features –  You can offer graded or ungraded, formal or informal, and closed or open type questionnaires.

Branded Certificates can be created to award your students on course completion. This allows them to showcase their competencies and promote your school.

Multilingual UI – create a global school by translating your courses and website into a growing set of supported languages.

Code Editing gives you the flexibility to customize any aspect of your courses and website pages through custom JavaScript and CSS. You can also add code snippets to include third-party tools and integrations.

Ninja Ranking

  • Beginner Friendly
    9.4
  • Design Capabilities
    8.4
  • Variety of Features
    8.8
  • Value for Money
    9.2
Read Our Expert Review
Coursecats
User ranking
  • WordPress based
  • Website & course builder
  • Third-party plugins
  • Responsive web design
8.5
Total Ninja Ranking

Ideal For

  • Teachers & tutors
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Online coaches
  • Musicians
  • Chefs
  • Photographers
  • Authors
  • Industry experts
  • Fitness professionals
  • Bloggers & podcasters

Highlight Features

WordPress plugin directory has thousands of third-party plugins that you can use to add additional features to your website and automate some of the processes needed to run an eLearning business.

Coursecats WordPress theme takes the stress out of setting up a WordPress website. Use the concierge service and the support team will load a demo site to get you started.

Code editing allows you to edit and adapt everything on the Coursecats theme with JavaScript, CSS, and HTML.

Upload multiple file formats to add extra content like MP4’s, images, PowerPoint slides, PDFs, and much more to your video lessons.

Ninja Ranking

  • Beginner Friendly
    6.5
  • Design Capabilities
    9.5
  • Variety of Features
    9.9
  • Value for Money
    8.2
Read Our Expert Review
Simplero
User ranking
  • Course & website builder
  • Membership sites
  • Built-in marketing software
  • 8 million students
8.0
Total Ninja Ranking

Ideal For

  • Online coaches
  • Industry experts
  • Sports professionals
  • Entrepreneurs
  • Teachers & tutors

Highlight Features

Create a variety of products – you can sell online courses, ebooks, coaching programs, videos, audio files and membership sites through the Simplero platform.

Grow your audience with advanced email marketing tools like email broadcasts, email triggers & automation, and customer behavior analytics.

Free site migrations are available with all premium annual plans. Migrating sites can be stressful, so why not leave it to the experts?

Innovative onboarding process not only gives you advice on how to succeed on the platform but also teaches you the fundamentals of how to run a successful online business.

Ninja Ranking

  • Beginner Friendly
    7.8
  • Design Capabilities
    7.5
  • Variety of Features
    9.2
  • Value for Money
    7.6
Read Our Expert Review

Frequently Asked Questions View All Questions

What is an online eLearning platform?

An online learning platform provides teachers, trainers, and entrepreneurs with all the tools and features they need to create and sell online courses. Users will get access to a course builder to create professional online courses and a website builder that they can use to create a website, list their courses as products to sell, and promote their content to students interested in their topic. Most platforms will also come with built in business management tools to make it possible to run an online education business all from one platform. From the learners perspective, eLearning platforms offer the opportunity to access high-quality educational content from anywhere, at any time. It provides a flexible learning resource for students looking to upskill for almost any profession and niche industry.

What do I need to consider when choosing an online course builder?

1. Beginner friendliness and speed of setup is important so that you can create your online course content quickly and without the need for any technical web development skills.
2. Monthly subscription prices and any additional fees should fall within your budget to ensure a profitable business. Only pay for what you need and watch out for hidden transaction fees that are sometimes found in cheaper subscription plans.
3. Great customer support includes multiple ways to get in touch, a responsive support team, and quality additional resources to help you get started on the platform. Look out for an eLearning platform with all of this.

What types of content can I include in my lessons?

Every course builder will vary with what type of content it supports. So, make sure you check that the builder you’re thinking of using allows you to upload the types of content you need to make your online courses. Most course builder platforms will support content such as videos, audio, images, PDFs, presentations, text, assignments, and graded quizzes. Some also support live lessons, webinars and one-on-one coaching sessions with integrated third-party applications like Zoom.