Most of us already have a website built using WordPress right?
Therefore it becomes a very natural option for us to use WordPress for hosting our courses.
But is it that easy to use WordPress for hosting our courses or is it the right option for us if we are not technical?
In this article, we are going to explore whether hosting your courses on a WordPress site is the right option for you.
First, we’ll see the reasons why you should not choose WordPress and then we will move on to the reasons why you should choose.
Reasons why you shouldn’t choose WordPress
Highly technical
WordPress is fairly technical to use you should be able to install themes and plugins required to make your website host courses.
For that, you need to install plugins like Learndash, LlifterLMS or other such plugins.
You should be very comfortable in updating those plugins, setting them up and making sure those plugins are not incompatible with each other.
Additionally, you should be able to update WordPress whenever the new update comes while making sure the course hosting plugin you are using is compatible with the version of WordPress
Backups
Your WordPress site whether it is hosting courses or not requires frequent backups.
Some of the hosting providers provide automatic backups at a certain frequency.
But if you are using shared hosting like Bluehost or Hostgator they do not provide automatic backups.
So, either you have to purchase their backup service or take the backups manually using plugins like Updraftplus.
Since you are storing the data of your students, their progress in the course, and their billing details, it is highly essential that you take backup.
Losing the data of your student is disastrous.
When you are using course hosting platforms like New Zenler, or Teachable, Thinkific or any such other tool, the backups are not your headache.
Their system takes automated backups and you are completely shielded from that responsibility
Security
Every website whether it’s a course hosting platform for your static website is prone to malware attacks and hackers.
And since we are storing the data of students it is our responsibility to make sure that it is safe and secure.
Not just the data of the students, but if hackers get control of your website then things could get bad very quickly.
So when you are using WordPress to host your courses you should be taking up the responsibility of security.
Yes, the hosting does provide things like firewall and malware scanning yet you need to make sure that you are using safe and trusted themes and plugins.
By chance, if you are using a sub-standard theme or a plugin then you are opening your site to two different kinds of vulnerabilities.
Now, this responsibility is not on your shoulders when you are using a third-party course hosting platform.
Scalability
This is one of the major factor that is often ignored. a WordPress hosting or any hosting for that matter has its upper limit.
So, let’s say you have a shared hosting used for hosting your WordPress based course platform then it can handle up to 500 students.
Now, this number is just a random number and I don’t know exactly which hosting you are using and how capable it is.
But it has some upper cap
Therefore To handle more students you need to upgrade your hosting.
Otherwise, the performance of your course hosting WordPress site will be hampered and the students will not get a seamless performance.
You are courses on WordPress site If you are using a very cheap WordPress hosting. you need decent hosting like cloudways or Siteground which you can scale up very easily.
So if you think, you don’t want to take responsibility for the above things then hosting your course on WordPress is not the right option.
Now let’s look at the reasons why you should choose WordPress
Reasons why you should choose WordPress
Cost control
With WordPress, you have control over everything, right from which hosting to use, which plugins to select and everything else.
Except for changing the course hosting plugin, you can change almost everything. You can change the course hosting plugin also but that will involve super hard work and it’s not advisable to do so.
But with other tools such as Kajabi, Thinkific, and more, you cannot control the costs. Kajabi costs $149 per month, but what if they increase the cost to $500 per month?
You don’t have many options but to shift yourself to a different platform.
This way, it’s easy for you to control your costs and keep a check on your finances.
Customizable
WordPress by its nature is highly customizable. If you hire a WordPress developer, then you can do anything and everything with WordPress.
You have access to all the source code, which you can change to make it suitable for your requirements.
That’s simply not possible with other tools.
The core difference between WordPress and other tools is that WordPress is open source.
Open source means you are allowed to change the source code.
My take
Even though I’m a WordPress developer, I rarely suggest, to host your courses on WordPress.
There are too many moving parts, too many failure points and a lack of peace of mind.
Unless you are a tech-savvy person willing to dip your hands in tech, plugins, themes and hosting; I will suggest not to go the WordPress to host your courses and stick to third-party tools.
My suggestion
If you want to build your course hosting platform for FREE, then you can sign up for Systeme.
Systeme is free to use service to build not just your courses but you can create sales funnels, do email marketing, create automation and workflows etc.
I have been using Systeme for my new venture and I couldn’t be happier. If you want to read why Systeme is better than ClickFunnels, click here.
You can sign up for Systeme for free by clicking the button below.
