The best online course platforms in 2025

05 May, 2025

With so many options to consider… which are some of the best online course platforms in 2025?

Let’s talk about choosing the best fit platform as it often is the biggest challenge when it comes to creating online courses. Not only because there are so many different ones to choose from, but also because it’s important to find something that fits your specific needs and also you just enjoy using… So what are some of the best course platforms to consider?

You can also listen to this post in a podcast episode –

It’s important that the platform you choose is a good fit overall. This time around, I want to take you on a journey of my personal favorites for several different categories and explore the best course platforms in 2025.

I’ve been working with online courses for a decade already, and I have had my fair share of platform insights and back end experiences.

First of all, I always insist that there isn’t one perfect fit, and if someone is trying to convince you to use a specific platform without actually knowing what you need, what are your preferences and what is your current business setup – RUN.

It’s important that you evaluate what are the things that you specifically will need in the platform and what are your overall preferences before you make this decision.

If you want to explore more and learn how to choose the best fit platform for you, make sure to get my free platform guide.

Now let’s dive in.

The best online course platforms in 2025

Keep in mind before choosing the platform for your course

I have to say that many first time course creators make the mistake of overthinking the platform itself and thinking that the choice of the platform is going to be the deciding factor in whether or not you can make the money.

That is not true.

Here’s the thing, most of the platforms, most of the backend setups, especially for the course spaces, will be pretty much the same for all of the platforms, for all of the price ranges.

The differences are so small, and yes, some platforms offer you several more features you can do more customization in the back end but ultimately that will not change whether or not your course is going to make money.

It’s important to acknowledge that even the simplest, cheapest platform can bring you sales, because it’s not the platform that is making the sales.

Platform is just the tool that you use to set up your course. Don’t rely on it too much.

Don’t think that you must invest thousands of dollars or hundreds per month just to have the best platform. That is not true.

Several of my clients that have made the highest sales have made them with some of the simplest platforms.

The best course platforms for getting started

Payhip – budget-friendly course platform

My personal favorite on this list is Payhip.

Honestly, I don’t know why this platform is not as popular because it does have pretty much everything one might need, plus you can get started for free.

And by getting started, I don’t mean like a 14-day trial. I mean you can use it for free, forever, if you choose to.

So this platform gives you a chance to create your own digital product store, set up and sell products like courses, memberships, ebooks, audio, downloads and beyond.

In fact, it also has the option to sell physical product.

The key pros for Payhip:

It’s very versatile: you can set up and sell various digital products.
It’s rather easy to use and it will be quick to learn, the backend setup is very straightforward.
On the other side, you will get all of the key features you need to set up and sell your product.
You can use it for FREE. The only expense here is that you pay 5% of the transaction fee from any sales made. But other than that, you don’t have to invest anything before you actually start making sales.

The only other investment you have to consider when it comes to this platform is video hosting. They actually have built in video hosting available for $5/monthly. And yes, $5/monthly is a ridiculously low price. I would definitely go for it. And if you pay for a year upfront, it’s going to be like only $50.

You can go without it, or you can also host your videos elsewhere, for example, on YouTube, Vimeo or Bunny.net. But overall, the fee really is so low that for convenience, I would just go for it.

This platform also qualifies as my favorite for starters, for many different reasons, and one of them is the simplicity of the platform.

Despite having all the must have features, the overall back end setup is rather simple and straightforward. You can learn it in one evening. It gives you an option to set up all you need before investing anything. And I think it’s always a winning idea.

Thinkific – the best fit course platform for combining courses with community space

When it comes to course-specific platforms, Thinkific is one of the OG’s out there, it has been around for a solid while and have always been on top of the LMS lists.

On Thinkific, you will be able to:

Set up and sell courses, coaching sessions and digital products
Have landing pages and checkouts
Have all of your student spaces
They also have native video hosting included in the plans

Compared to Payhip, it is a bit more sleek in its user experience plus it has an easy-to-use community space available.

An important thing to note: as you get started, you may choose their lowest plan but it’s important to check out the features provided within each of the plans. Their lowest tier DOES NOT support things like subscription payments or payment plans.

The best all-in-one platforms for courses

Now let’s dive into all in one platforms.

Having an all in one platform gives you an opportunity to not only host and sell your online courses, but also it provides many other business specific features that you might need.

If you already have a website, you may NOT need an all-in-one platform as your website can handle various features of your user experience. The same goes if you already have an email marketing software you’re using.

Getting started with offer focused platforms – like Payhip or Thinkific – can be faster and simpler if you don’t need all the pizzaz of all-in-one options.

Kajabi – an industry leader for coaches and course creators

Kajabi definitely is an industry leader and a favorite for many, especially when it comes to all in one platforms.

On a platform like Kajabi, you can

build your website and blog
build the mailing list and set up all of the back end funnels
set up and sell many different types of products, including coaching offers

However, Kajabi can be harder to start with, the initial investment is higher and it can take longer to manager on day-to-day basis.

Many creators opt-in for Kajabi but don’t really use most of its features, thefore overpaying for it a ton.

But if you’re considering this platform for yourself – make sure to avoid making these Kajabi mistakes!

What are some other all-in-one platform alternatives?

FGFunnels have recently made a name out of them as well. It’s very female-entrepreneur focused.
Simplero is a fun alternative if you want an all-in-one platform but would prefer to stay away from Kajabi.
System e is a free all-in-one platform to get started with but their user experience is a lot simpler than many other platforms.

If there is ONE platform in this category that I’d stay away from – it’d be Kartra. The investment in the platform does not provide up-to-date user experience. And while you’ll see Kartra being a suggestion here and there, that’s the one platform I really would suggest to NOT use.

The best community-focused platforms

And last but not least, we have community focused platforms. When creating a community is the main focus, you may want to consider community-focused platforms.

Two of my favorites in this category are Circle and Skool.

Circle – whitelabel community platform opportunity

Circle is specifically designed as a community/forum space. And their setup actually is the OG setup of how all of the other community spaces are being organized.

This platform is really amazing if community itself is going to be your focus.

It’s the perfect fit if:

You want to have a group space where your audience can gather to chat, they can ask you questions, you can share insights or feedback or live videos.
You want to move your community away from Facebook and/or you want to make it paid, Circle is your answer.

In Circle, you can also upload and sell courses, but it’s not specifically designed for that, so they do have a course space for the $99 plan.

If you want to do a course with a community, I would go for Thinkific instead. But if you want to do a community where sometimes you might want to add in a course, or you might want to add in some master classes, you will want to consider Circle.

They offer all the key features but the experience will be different from any product focused platform. On Circle, you get the checkout and they do have payment plans you can do and the student management, but they do not have sales pages.

So unless you want to sell just through a checkout page, which will also be very, very simple, you will need to consider where you’re gonna be building sales pages.

Where to build a sales page for Circle space?

Your website. If you already have your own website or you plan to get started, you can always build your sales page there. Most of my sales pages are based on my website.
Your email marketing platform. Most email marketing platforms will support simple landing page design. For example, this can be done on Mailerlite or Kit (these days you can sell your offers directly on Kit as well!)
Canva landing pages are increasing in their popularity and while they will NOT be the best long-term solution, you can always quickly make one happen to start selling
Page builders focused on landing pages, for example, Leadpages.

Skool – interactive and easy-to-use community experience

Skool is definitely gaining popularity these days.

And the difference between Skool and Circle is that on Circle, you can white label your community. This means that you can add your domain name, you can add your colors. You can have your vibe completely.

While on Skool they do not have white labeling.

This means that your community domain will be skool.com/yourname. For me, this was a big, big downside, and especially if you are building a community with the vision of it becoming a big thing.

Benefits of considering Skool:

One simple plan of only $99/m, including community and courses
Simple-to-use community space, similar to Facebook in its layout
Various fun gamification opportunities: give your audience a chance to unlock new content by participating in your community

Which one to go for? Circle vs Skool

Platform-wise, I prefer Circle – I absolutely love it. It’s a really clean space. It’s really fun. There are many different options for how you can organize it, and I feel like the offer for the price is really good as well. So the lower priced offer is $49 but you don’t get courses. You don’t have the live option either.

For $99 you get courses as well as live. So you can actually go live within the community, depending on what are your needs.

On Circle, even without the course space, you can still upload the videos, so you can still have your courses in there, even without that course like setup. There are many different pros and cons, but I personally love Circle.

I have thought about using Skool and have tried it for some experiments – it can be really fun and if a simple, quick start is what you seek, it might be the best option to go for, just for that gamification element.

But I realized that it’s not really a good fit for me, as white labeling is very important.

Choose the best product platform for you

And to wrap this up, I want to remind you to check out the free Platform Guide.

It goes through not only several different platforms and their pros and cons, but also how to actually choose the best fit for you. What are some of the things to keep in mind?

To learn more and stay connected: