LearnWorlds is a leading cloud-based e-Learning platform that helps course creators build online educational content and to sell and promote that content through their own custom website. It’s one of a number of brands answering to the trend of online education by giving individual educators the chance to publish and sell content online. LearnWorlds launched in 2014 and since then has gone on to help some instructors to earn millions through the platform.

With a course builder, website builder, marketing tools, 24/7 support and lot’s more unique features, Learnworlds appears to have a lot to offer. We put it to the test to find out if it could really be an industry-leading platform that will help educators generate lots of sales. This review will go over all of the important strengths and weaknesses to help you decide if this could be the right e-learning platform to help grow your business.

If you don’t feel like reading the full review right now, no worries. You can save some time by skipping ahead to the bottom line to find out if LearnWorlds is the right platform for you.

Who is it for? 

LearnWorlds is for anyone with enough knowledge to create a valuable online course that helps people learn about a particular industry, profession, skill, or lifestyle. The platform empowers professionals to build educational content that they can sell to keen students. If you’ve ever dreamed of running an online school or thought of selling one or two online courses to earn a few extra bucks, then LearnWorlds can help you to do it. 

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

Beginner Friendly

Drag & Drop Editing

There are some drag and drop capabilities within the platform, but it is very limited. Learnworlds mostly has a point-and-click style editor which we will go into more detail on a bit later in the article. The drag and drop feature is found in the course builder. You can drag course activities to rearrange the order they appear in. This makes it really simple to create a new layout of activities for each of your course sections.

Unfortunately, there are no drag and drop capabilities within the Learnworlds’ site builder which limits the amount of creative freedom you have over the design templates. However, you can still edit pretty much everything, so creating a unique page is definitely possible. It’s just you won’t be able to drag elements around the page freely to create a new layout for your website. 

  • Drag and drop capabilities within the course builder makes it easy to rearrange course activities.
  • There are no drag and drop capabilities within the site builder which limits the creative freedom of users when it comes to editing the template designs.

Video Tutorials & Onboarding Animations

During the simple onboarding process, you’ll give your school a name, choose one of the two design templates, pick a color scheme and select the language, time zone and currency of your online school. 

The first thing you’ll see after creating your account will be the ‘welcome screen’. This is where you’ll find a number of useful onboarding videos that help you to get started on the platform. They tell you how to create your first course, how to build your landing page and what you can find on the LeanWorlds platform. You can skip it if you want to and come back to it any time by clicking the ‘view welcome screen’ button in the top navigation bar. 

At the bottom of the welcome screen, there are also a few links to the most popular and most useful articles from the support center. These include titles like ‘How can I create a certificate template?’, ‘How do I create interactive videos’, and ‘Available payment gateways’.

We were impressed at the level of support in LearnWorlds onboarding process, quite often platforms will keep everything hidden within the support center. So, to have all of this available from the main dashboard is really valuable for beginner users. 

Design Capabilities

The Editor

You can build courses and websites with the LearnWorlds platform so we’ll go into detail on the editing capabilities of both of these main features. The theme you choose will affect how your course and website look so it’s important to bear that in mind when you’re choosing. There are only two themes on offer, Modern and Stylish. If I’m being honest I couldn’t notice much difference between the two and any differences are subtle. 

At this point, some of you may be thinking it’s going to be hard to create a unique website with only two themes… however, the theme explorer enables you to customize A LOT of elements within the theme. You can choose a new color palette or create your own and match it to your brand colors with the HEXA & RGBA color editor. You can choose a new font pairing and edit the size of all text elements like H1, H2, H3, H4 and large, medium and small paragraph text to get the exact look you want for text on your website and courses. There is also an option to edit the font size, padding, border-spacing and other properties of various buttons. Finally, you can also change the padding size for each of your content sections. So, there’s plenty of room to make your website unique. The only thing you can’t change is the arrangement of elements within a content block. 

The Website Builder Editor 

The LearnWorlds website builder editor has been designed in a point-and-click style. You simply click on what you want to edit and the sidebar editor is where you make your changes. Most of the hard work has already been done for you with the Learnworld templates and even if you want to you can’t change the layout of the content blocks. So, all there is to do is edit the images and text elements across your site and add in any additional content blocks. There are 18 different types of content blocks that range from heading banners, testimonial blocks and simple text sections. 

There are HTML headings H1-H4 which you can use to make some text more prominent on your pages and also to optimize your content for SEO.  Just above the text box in the sidebar, you’ll see a good variety of format options for your on-page copy. You can make standard changes like bolding or italicizing the text as well as changing the color, making a bullet point list or adding icons. 

You can bring your web page to life and make it memorable by adding in scroll effects. You can find the scroll effects under the actions tab in the sidebar. Find entrance animations and choose one of the 14 effects from the drop-down menu.

It’s possible to create a page title, meta description and input three keywords that you want your page to focus on to help your site with search engine optimization (SEO).

Finally, there is also a page custom code editor that allows you to add Javascript and CSS code snippets to customize the page exactly how you need it. This won’t be of much use to beginner web developers but those of you with some budget can work with a professional to make any edits to the code you need.

Overall, the website builder editor makes it easy for beginners to create a good looking website with everything they need to sell online educational content already built into the templates. Some users may get frustrated with the lack of flexibility when it comes to the template design. However, the code editor brings flexibility back to those who know how to code or can afford to pay somebody that does. 

The Course Builder

The Learnworlds course builder is really simple to use and will help you to create an online course that you can generate revenue from in no time. You click to add a section or a new activity for the course. For each section, you can decide whether it will be free for all users or only available for paying members. There is also an option to mark sections as drafts or coming soon to keep it hidden from active students while you’re adding and planning new course content.

There are 17 different course activities that range from multimedia activities like videos, PDFs, and Ebooks, as well as questionnaires, certificates and live sessions with Zoom. There’s also an option to embed code to include third-party widgets if you need to. Once you’ve added all of your activities the drag and drop feature makes it easy to rearrange the order that they will appear in each course section.

Within the top navigation bar, there is a pricing tab where you can easily set the price for your course which will be added to any listings pages on your website. You can also add a discount price to encourage your students to buy while it’s cheap and create promotion discount coupons. Finally, there is an option to create a course bundle to upsell your customers and generate more revenue for your business.

The last thing we want to mention is the course player editor which allows you to change how the screen will look to your students, as well as changing the color of the course player skin, you can also change what appears in the sidebar as the students work through your course content. 

  • Both the website builder and course builder are simple to use, making this a great platform for beginners to create professional online courses and a great looking website.
  • It’s not possible to rearrange the layout of a content block in the website editor.
  • Mobile responsive designs
  • Theme editor
  • Content blocks
  • A variety of learning activities
  • HEXA & RGBA color editing
  • Image editor
  • Icon library
  • On-page SEO
  • Code editor
  • Preview in different screen sizes

LearnWorlds Example Websites

Links to Example Websites Built With LearnWorlds:

classroom.schoolofcalisthenics.com
thejarmethod.learnworlds.com
www.virtualkenpo.com/pages/home
pauseplatform.com
thelearningliaisons.com

Main Features & Tools

The LearnWorlds platform offers more than just a course and website builder. They also offer a large variety of tools (both in-built and third-party integrations) to help you sell, promote and manage your online school. 

There are over 15 third-party integrations to add functionality to your website which include Zapier, Zoom, Mailchimp, Google Analytics, SumoMe, Facebook pixel and many more. The ReferralCandy and Refersion integrations give you the capability to set up affiliate links. This could be very beneficial to your business as it allows you to outsource lead generation and conversion for a percentage of your total sales.

Another stand-out feature we wanted to highlight was the automatic video transcript that is created whenever you upload a video to one of your courses. This is great because it gives learners who prefer to read their educational content an option without any additional work required from course creators like you. It also provides a set of revision notes for other students too.

Learnworlds could improve their offering by developing a mobile app to allow students to log in to their courses while on the go. This would benefit students because of the flexibility it would offer and benefit course creators who could use it as a USP to promote their online courses.

  • Automatic video transcripts save time and add value to your students.
  • No mobile app to enable students to learn on the go.
  • Automatic transcript
  • Interactive videos
  • Free ebooks & checklists
  • Create affiliate programs
  • User analytics
  • Multiple instructors
  • Customer service
  • Email marketing
  • Zapier integration
  • Teleconferencing with Zoom

Marketing Capabilities

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is important for any online business, so it’s important to understand if the e-learning platform you choose to build your business with, can support good SEO performance. We conduct our own SEO audits for every brand we review on Website Builder Ninja so that you know how well you can optimize your site for SEO. LearnWorlds missed a few important SEO features, however looking at the big picture, we would still recommend Learnworlds as one of the better e-learning platforms for SEO.

They scored a pretty average Google page speed test and ranked somewhere in the middle when compared to all of the website builders we have tested. So, not bad but also not great for page speed. 

What they missed was automatic image optimization, the ability to merge JS & CSS scripts, minifield code and redirects. All of these are important to the overall SEO of your website, however, they shouldn’t impact your ability to rank too much.

The platform does support automatic sitemaps, caching, a code editor, canonical tags, friendly URLs, and HTTPS certificates which are all important in boosting the ability of your web pages to rank well on the search engine ranking pages (SERP).

eCommerce, Bookings & Other Plugins

Store Options

The LearnWorld website template comes with an online store already built in to make it easy to start selling. With LearnWorlds you can sell unlimited courses in multiple currencies which enables you to create a truly global online school.

It’s possible to sell memberships, subscriptions and course bundles as well as giving away free course sections to entice new customers in. You also can upsell and cross-sell to your students with coupons and sale prices.

Unfortunately, sometimes a sale is lost at the checkout page. The Learnworlds platform allows you to create custom checkout pages to help you achieve a higher conversion rate and generate higher revenue. The downside to LearnWorld checkout pages is that it’s a two-step checkout process where users have to create an account before they make a payment. This slows down the buyer’s journey and can affect conversion rates.

Bookings & Reservations

You can add bookings and reservations functionality to your LearnWorlds website by using the SetMore integration. It’s an online appointments software that allows you to manage your bookings and reservations from any device. If you want to find out how to install it, head over to the how-to schedule your appointments using SetMore article that we found in the support center.

Payment Options

There are a number of payment gateways supported by the platform which gives you the flexibility to choose the one that supports your business the best. The brands supported are Stripe, 2Checkout, PayPal, Shopify, and PagSeguro (for Brazilian members).

It’s important to note that selling your course via subscriptions or installments is only supported by Stripe. 

Value For Money & Support

Free Trial & Features

LearnWorlds offers a 30-day free trial for every one of their price plans which gives you the chance to test out the website and course builder features before you commit any money of your own. You’ll be able to test out advanced features like interactive videos and the auto transcripts, and you set up all of your courses. The only things you can’t do are sell the courses and connect a custom domain to your website.

Pricing Plans

There are three main pricing plans for LearnWorlds customers plus the option to create a bespoke package for high volume or corporate customers. These include Starter, Pro Trainer and Learning Center. The entry-level plan starts off at $29 and offers unlimited courses, a custom domain name, coupons, a free SSL certificate, 1 admin login, and much more.

The biggest downside to the entry-level plan is that LearnWorlds charge $5 for every course sale. For the more premium plans, there are no transaction fees which is good news… unless you were planning to use the entry-level plan of course!

  • A variety of subscription plans to suit your needs.
  • $5 charge for every course sale applies to customers using the Starter plan.

Support 

If you want to get in touch with the LearnWorlds support team you can via email, phone and also the live chatbot. The number for US calls is +1 855 8999555 and if you want to get in touch via email then send your email to [email protected]

There is also a LearnWorlds academy that hosts a range of free courses that help you to make the most out of the platform and teach you how to create great educational content, grow your audience, and boost your sales as well. The knowledge base has lots of useful step-by-step articles that walk you through various processes and finally, there is a very comprehensive FAQ page.

The Bottom Line

LearnWorlds is a great solution for educators, professionals, and small to medium businesses wanting to educate people online. The course builder and website builder is suitable for beginners and even if you’ve never built a website or online course before, you’ll have no trouble creating a professional-looking website with great courses on offer. A downside is that Learnworlds only offer two design templates which means that all courses and websites made with Learnworlds run the risk of looking similar. However, the code editor allows more advanced users to customize all of their courses and website features, so it is possible to create a truly unique online school. The automatic video transcripts and interactive videos are two standout features that course creators can use to make their courses really engaging. Finally, despite missing a couple of core features we feel that websites built with the LearnWorlds platform can perform well in terms of SEO.

Head over to the LearnWorlds site now to start your 30-day free trial.

  • Beginner Friendly
    9.4
  • Design Capabilities
    8.4
  • Variety of Features
    8.8
  • Value for Money
    9.2
9.0
Ninja Ranking
4.2
Based on 134 user reviews

Quick Company Profile

  • Starting Price:$29
  • No. of Users:1000+
  • No. of Templates:2
  • Founded:2014
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