Baidhurya Mani
Updated on
Choosing the right course platform is essential to building a successful online course business. That’s why we take our research process very seriously.
Unlike our competitors, we’re a team of real experts with a combined experience of 30+ years in the course creation space.
More importantly, we subject each platform to an elaborate research and testing process, where we evaluate the platform on 60+ key features and aspects to provide accurate, unbiased reviews.
We have grouped these parameters into six key areas:
Firstly, we use a combination of publicly available data and firsthand accounts from our research team to get an accurate picture of the platform and assign an initial score to each key area.
In the next step, our tool testers deep dive into the platform and go through the entire process of building a course website. This way, we can evaluate the platform’s performance in real-world scenarios and assign a score to each key area.
We then combine the two scores, come up with a final rating for each area, and finally calculate a weighted average of the individual ratings to determine the platform’s overall score.
Following this process ensures that the final rating is based on an objective, comprehensive evaluation of the platform. Every single course builder on SellCoursesOnline is assessed using this methodology, which makes our rankings fair and accurate.
Moreover, to ensure that our research is credible and up-to-date, we frequently review the course platforms for updates and new features and adjust our rankings accordingly.
Before diving into the six key areas mentioned above and understanding what they entail, we’ll share our ethics policy with you.
When evaluating course platforms, ease of use is the first criterion we assess. We evaluate each platform based on how intuitive it is and how easy it is to learn and use. We generally look at the following factors:
When our tool testers build a course website on a platform, they evaluate the whole process for ease of use, and their varying degrees of technical know-how enable us to evaluate the platform from different perspectives.
Course creation and engagement are the primary functions of any online course builder. As such, they count the most in our testing and ratings.
When assessing this area, the three main things we look at are:
This area covers a platform’s ability to let you design and customize a branded website for your online course business, and we use it to assess how easy it is to build a well-designed website and how much you can customize it. We evaluate the following elements:
Apart from these, we also consider additional features such as the blog or podcast creation tools that some platforms offer.
Most modern online course platforms come with built-in selling tools, and that’s what we focus on in this area. We look at the following:
In addition, we look at marketing tools like funnel builder and email marketing automation since all-in-one online course platforms (e.g., Kajabi) support these.
Customer support is a critical factor for any online business. To ensure that the platform we’re covering delivers in this area, we spend a lot of time researching the available support options and their response times.
We also consider things like service quality, which we determine on the basis of our personal experience and interactions with real platform users (our readers).
Finally, after considering the platform’s pricing plans and the value for money they offer, we look at the features included in each of them and compare them with those of the competitors.
Some of the questions we use to evaluate the pricing plans are:
As you can see, there’s a lot of thought and effort going into our rankings and research process. We take pride in providing the most unbiased and in-depth reviews of online course platforms you can find.
If you’d like to compare our findings on the top online course platforms, check out our interactive comparison tool. Here you can see our research and testing findings and compare different course platforms based on 60+ parameters.
If you have any questions or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us! We’d love to hear from you. Thank you!
Hey there! I'm Baidhurya, the brains behind SellCoursesOnline. I used to run a digital agency, where I helped course businesses launch their eLearning platforms. I also led the tech and marketing teams at StationX, helping it grow to 500K+ students. In addition, I created the popular supply chain network design course. With 8+ years of experience, I'm here to share my expertise and insights on course creation and platforms with you.
SellCoursesOnline is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn affiliate commissions. However, this doesn’t influence our reviews or product listings. All opinions are based on our tests and personal experience with a product/service.
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Hey there! I’m Baidhurya, the brains behind SellCoursesOnline. I used to run a digital agency, where I helped course businesses launch their eLearning platforms. I also led the tech and marketing teams at StationX, helping it grow to 500K+ students. In addition, I created the popular supply chain network design course. With 8+ years of experience, I’m here to share my expertise and insights on course creation and platforms with you.
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