We course creators have a plethora of options for hosting our courses. That’s a good thing because the course hosting companies are always on their toes and want to give us better tools for us.
The bad thing is that the new course creators don’t know which one to choose from the different tools available.
This problem has caused a lot of problems for new course creators. They are stuck so much in the tech-loop, that they don’t select one tool and run with it.
Instead, they spend hours and hours reviewing different tools.
So, in this article, we will talk about seven popular course hosting platforms and we will arrange them by the ease of their usage.
Podia (Ease of use rating 9/10)
This is the first, course hosting platform I have used. And I was so happy with it. The only reason I switched from Podia was that it didn’t integrate with the payment gateway I wanted.
I hosted more than 2000 students on Podia and both me and my students were very satisfied using it.
The biggest advantage of Podia is, it’s minimalistic.
And when you’re just starting with your online course business, you want something minimalistic.
Having too many options will drive you to use them and lose your focus.
Having very few options to choose from makes Podia one of the best course hosting platforms for the new course creators.
But does that mean Podia cannot scale with your business or it looks very basic?
No, on the other hand, Podia looks sophisticated and modern.
Features of Podia
Course hosting
Video hosting
Membership sites
Sales pages
Checkout
Integration with PayPal and Stripe
Webinars
Email marketing
Podia costs $37 per month on its basic plan.
New Zenler (Ease of use rating 8/10)
This is my current course hosting platform. I was sceptical about moving from Podia which was working very well for me.
But, New Zenler turned out to be one of the best course hosting platforms, I have used.
New Zenler is comparable to Kajabi in its features. However, they have a very simple workflow and an easy-to-use dashboard.
I have used Kajabi for a very short duration but whatever I found in it was confusing.
New Zenler has an easy-to-use dashboard. You can quickly find out different options.
The biggest ease of use with New Zenler is everything related to the course is available inside the settings of that course.
Pricing, curriculum, sales page and all the things related to a particular course are inside one single screen.
The page builder provided by New Zenler is easy to use for a beginner and there are a lot of templates available which you can use.
If you want a full-featured course hosting platform at a low monthly price then New Zenler is the way to go.
Features of New Zenler
Course hosting
Video hosting
Membership sites
Sales pages
Checkout
Integration with PayPal and Stripe
Webinars
Communities
Email marketing
Email automation
Marketing funnels
If you want to have a system that has more features than Podia, then New Zenler is the way to go.
Also if you’re a course creator from India then, you get Razorpay integration out of the box which will save you hundreds of dollars on Zapier.
This was the sole reason for my shift from Podia to New Zenler.
Currently, New Zenler is available at a monthly price of $67.
Thinkific (Ease of use rating 7.5/10)
Thinkific is one of the best-looking tools out there it’s cost-effective and it provides a free plan as well.
If you look at the screenshot above you can see that all the options are laid out in a very easy-to-understand manner. , Thinkific is used by many of the popular and successful course creators.
However Thinkific has Limited features on its $49 a month plan, and if you want more features you need to upgrade your account to either a $99 plan or a $499 plan.
If you want to use Zapier actions and triggers then you need to use the $99 plan, whereas in the case of both Podia and New Zenler Zapier actions and triggers are available on all plans starting from their basic plan.
You will need Zapier as your online course business grows, therefore having support for both actions and triggers on the basic plan is very important.
But that’s about the commercial part of Thinkific.
Since we are talking about the ease of use Thinkific is easy to figure out for a beginner.
The page builder they have provided for building sales pages and other static pages like the home page is very easy to use.
It’s bug-free minimalistic and at the same time modern and sophisticated.
Teachable (Ease of use rating 6/10)
Teachable is probably the first option that many of the course creators look at. it’s very popular and used by very successful online course creators like Pat Flynn, and Melyssa Griffin.
Teachable is probably the cheapest of all hosting platforms to start with available at just $29 per month if you pay annually.
When it comes to user-friendliness Teachables page builder is not very sophisticated and pretty basic.
When I started building the page using Teachable, there were very few options available.
Somehow the landing pages for the sales pages built with Teachable look a little old. And if you compare it with Aodia or Thinkific you will see a drastic difference.
However, the process of creating the course and managing your students is very easy in teachable.
Creating your curriculum and laying out your lessons is also very intuitive and easy.
Similar to Thinkific, Teachable’s cost increases rapidly with higher plans.
And it treats Zapier similarly to Thinkific.
Kajabi (Ease of use rating 4/10)
Kajabi is a full-featured course hosting platform available at a premium price of $149 per month.
Most of the highest-grossing course creators are using Kajabi to run their online course business.
So, if you look at their community it’s filled with high-achieving course creators.
However, when we are talking about ease of use Kajabi is probably one of the most difficult course hosting platforms to use particularly for beginners.
Creating a course and attaching a landing page to it involves multiple steps.
You need to create a pipeline attach it with your course and then you are done, but if you look at New Zenler everything is in one place.
But that’s not the case with Kajabi.
To create a simple course on Kajabi I had to spend almost a day which was achieved in just a couple of hours on Podia.
If you are a new course creator I will suggest you go with either Podia or New Zenler.
Kajabi is available at dollar 149 per month on its basic plan
My take on course hosting platforms
I will suggest you pick New Zenler and start building your course.
Because news handler is both easy to use and cost-effective.
