The online course industry is growing at bazillion dollars per year…blah blah blah
We all know that…
There’s nothing new with it…
But Not everyone has the budget to set up the systems required to host and sell your online courses.
Not everybody wants to invest $149 per month on Kajabi or even $39 per month on Teachable.
It’s very easy to say that you should invest whatever you have and go all out etc etc.
But people have problems, they have kids, they debt, they have N number of problems that we cannot even think of.
So, asking people to go all out is kind of stupid.
In fact, there are only a handful of course creators who earn a decent amount through online courses.
The rest are banished into oblivion.
Their courses never take off the ground and they shelve the idea of earning passive income through courses for good.
But, does it mean you should never venture and build an online course?
No, absolutely not. You should definitely build your online course.
But, you don’t require software and tools that cost hundreds of dollars per month.
In fact, you can host your online courses for free.
So, let’s go ahead and look at the different options available for hosting your online courses.
Facebook Group
Yes, you heard it right.
You can use a Facebook group to host your online courses.
There are different types of the Facebook group offered.
Public group
Private group
Secret group
The third type is your ideal group type.
This type of group is not searchable inside Facebook and only the people with links to the group and access it.
Moreover, you can ask certain questions before an individual can request you to join the group.
You can ask them the email address using which they purchased the course.
You can ask them for the receipt number, so on and so forth.
And depending on the answers they give you can accept them in your group or reject them.
Additionally, you can set up the purpose of your Facebook group.
Following are the different purposes of groups.
Here, you want to select Social learning.
In the social learning type, you can create Units and add different Videos to them.
Your group members can even comment on the videos and ask you questions.
Another benefit of using Facebook group is that everyone is used to Facebook, you don’t have to teach them how to use it.
So, if you don’t want to spend anything on the course hosting platform then Facebook Groups is a good option.
However, one drawback is that your students can easily wander away from your group and start watching cat videos.
Systeme.io (Recommonded course hosting platform)
Systeme.io is an all-in-one system for course creators.
You can
Create sales funnels
Host courses
Create memberships
Do email marketing
And much more
Interestingly, this is available for free.
Systeme.io is far better than the Facebook group if you are willing to spend some time building your course on it.
It’s anyway free to use, all you need is time and will.
The free plan offered by Systeme.io is very generous and once you start getting sales and the free version is inadequate for further growth then you can think of upgrading to the paid plan.
They also provide a custom domain on the free plan which really unheard of.
The good thing is, all the features you require to run your online course business are there in this tool.
You don’t have to learn multiple tools.
Now, you may be asking; don’t popular course hosting platforms like Teachable, Thinkific and others also provide a free plan? So, why Systeme.io?
Good question! The thing is the free plan provided by Teachable and Thinkific are very limited. The restrictions on the features make them impossible to use in a real-life scenario.
Therefore, I will suggest you should go with Systeme.io
You can sign up for their free plan by clicking the following link.
New Zenler
This is another freemium course hosting platform using which you can host your courses.
Their free plan can accommodate 100 students but once you have more than a hundred customers then you have to upgrade to the paid plan.
The free plan provided by New Zenler is not as limited as Teachable and Thinkific.
Instead, you can easily test out your ideas on their free plan and then upgrade only when you really want to.
I’m using New Zenler for a long and have more than 2000 students on it and I can vouch for its quality.
There was hardly any instance of the site going down or students not being able to use it.
You can sign up for their free plan by clicking the following link.
My opinion
You won’t go wrong either with Systeme.io or New Zenler.
Both of these tools are easy to use and of course free.
However, if I had to choose one, I will choose, Systeme.io simply because it offers much more at zero cost.
Their Facebook group for support is very helpful and respond to queries in a timely manner.
So, go ahead and sign up for either tool and start building your online course.
You don’t need thousands of dollars to invest in course hosting platforms to start your online course.
