Question 1

What is the best online course platform?

Accepted Answer

It depends on whether you are selling courses, a community with courses inside it, or downloads. Kajabi, Thinkific and Teachable are course platforms; Skool, Circle and Mighty Networks are communities first; Payhip, Gumroad and Whop are storefronts that take a cut instead of a subscription; LearnDash and Tutor LMS run inside your own WordPress. The quiz asks what you sell first, then compares.

Question 2

How much does a course platform cost?

Accepted Answer

Anything from nothing with a cut of each sale (Payhip, Gumroad, Whop) to $29 to $499 a month. The figure to watch is the platform's own cut on its cheaper plans: Teachable Starter takes 7.5% of sales, Skool Hobby 10%, Podia Mover 5%, on top of card processing. At $2,000 a month of sales that cut is bigger than the subscription, so the quiz asks how much you sell and adds it.

Question 3

Which platforms take a cut of my sales?

Accepted Answer

Gumroad (10% plus 50 cents), Payhip (5% on its free plan, 2% at $29, none at $99), Skool (10% on Hobby, 2.9% on Pro), Teachable (7.5% on Starter, none above), Podia (5% on Mover, none above), Circle and Mighty Networks (2% down to 0.5% by plan). Kajabi, Thinkific, Teachery, Heights, LearnDash and Tutor LMS take nothing beyond card processing. Every one of them still pays the card processor, about 2.9% plus 30 cents.

Question 4

Can I run courses on a WordPress site I already have?

Accepted Answer

Yes. LearnDash and Tutor LMS are WordPress plugins licensed by the year (Tutor LMS has a free core), with no per-student fee. You run the hosting, the theme and the payment plugin, which is cheaper and more work than a hosted platform.

Question 5

Do these platforms offer a free trial?

Accepted Answer

Thinkific, LearnWorlds and Heights Platform give you 30 days, in most cases with no card required. Kajabi, Teachable, Podia, Teachery, Circle, Mighty Networks, LearnDash and GoHighLevel give you 14. Payhip, Gumroad, Whop, Tutor LMS and Systeme.io also run a permanently free tier, so a short trial is less of a constraint there. The rest are demo-led with neither, which is worth knowing before you get attached to one.

Question 6

Are these affiliate links?

Accepted Answer

Some of them, and it is marked clearly on every recommendation. It does not change what the quiz returns. Where two platforms score within a few points of each other the cheaper one wins, and several of the platforms recommended here pay nothing at all.

Question 7

Who is behind this?

Accepted Answer

Dave Crawford. He builds operations and automation systems for small service businesses, which means he has spent a lot of time inside tools like these with real clients rather than reading their marketing pages. The prices here are checked against each company's own pricing page and rechecked weekly.

Build your shortlist