Explore the 7 best online course platforms in 2025, comparing Teachable, Thinkific, Kartra, Podia, and LearnWorlds to help you choose the right one. There are plenty of changes occurring in the global education sector and a key indicator that captures these changes is the affirmation that the year 2025 will serve as a key milestone for online education. With increased internet penetration, millions of people across the globe are using the online medium to learn various purposes. The rise in diversifying education needs has propelled teachers, entrepreneurs, and professionals to design and sell various courses. Despite the potential opportunities, one challenge lies in selecting an appropriate platform for hosting your course since the number of options available are overwhelming.
In this review, we will analyze the seven best online course platforms of 2025, examining their feasibility alongside other platforms such as Teachable, Thinkific, Kartra, Podia, and LearnWorlds.
1. Teachable: The Best for Beginners and Scalability
Teachable is widely regarded as one of the most popular online course platforms for creators since it is easy to use and comes with great features. Regardless of whether you are a beginner or trying to expand your online course business, Teachable offers a complete solution for course creators at any level.
Key Features:
This platform is easy to use: With Teachable, there is no need to possess any specialized training or knowledge. It enables you to construct and tailor your course with ease. Its intuitive course creation tools and drag and drop editor facilitates effortless content uploading.
Monetization: With their powerful monetization tools, Teachable offers support for different payment gateways. You may tutor students on a one on one basis, offer memberships, or even sell courses.
Customization: With Teachable’s branding and theming options, users are given the option to customize the appearance and overall feel of the course site.
Analytics & Reporting: The highlights of the platform is that they have in depth analytic reporting that monitors the course sales and the progress of the students.
Pros:
- Improved usability which reduces the need for former coding experience or knowledge.
- Different pricing ranges cater for varying types of course creators.
- Active and responsive customer service, great community of users.
Cons:
- Like most platforms, there isn’t an abundance of marketing tools in the comparison between Kartra and other platforms.
Lower tier plans have increased charges.
Ideal for: Those that are just commencing and want an uncomplicated course build up platform that is functional.
2. Thinkific: Best for Professional Course Creators
Thinkific is a wonderful platform for course creators who need more freedom when it comes to core content structure and learning paths and wish to monetize in different formats. Thinkific is focused toward users that are more experienced while also being welcoming for beginners.
Key Features:
Course Customization: With the increase in demands for engagement with students, Thinkific provides more ways of structuring courses like multi-day classes, certifications, and quizzes.
Revenue Streams: Your courses can be sold at once, through subscriptions, or with payment installment options. Memberships are also a possibility, which is a good option for content creators seeking continous income.
Comprehensive Analytics: You can analyze learner activity, level of engagement, and even sales with the use of your own reporting system using Thinkific.
Marketing & Integration: it has integrations to tools such as Zapier, Mailchimp, and Stripe and advanced marketing tools like coupons, affiliate marketing, and even email campaigns.
Pros:
- Great level of flexibility and customization
- Extensive student monitoring toolkit
- Great free plan for beginners
Cons:
- More sophisticated features may take longer for those who are not experienced to learn.
- Less room for design alterations unless on higher-tier plans.
Ideal for: Professional tutors, trainers, and companies with complex marketing and course building strategies.
3. Kartra: The All-in-One Solution
Kartra’s appeal to the market comes from it being a complete platform because you can create and sell courses, Marketing automation, email marketing, landing page designing, and membership systems can also be managed using the same accounts. This is a great option for businessmen who want to run their entire business online from a single account.
Key Features:
- Marketing Automation: Email sequence, funnels for selling, and automated workflows are easy to set up thanks to Kartra’s email marketing automation features. This is the most powerful inheritance of Kartra.
- You can create courses with video and text content, charge subscribers, and sell memberships with `Course Creation & Sales.’ One time payments and other flexible pricing can also be arranged.
- Promote your Courses for a Commission, and Kartra’s Built-in Affiliate Program gets you onboarded with an affiliate system that allows like-minded individuals to earn money while promoting your courses.
- Customizable Landing Pages also utilize your resources in marketing and kids by having templates for sales pages, and course capture pages.
Pros:
- This service is a complete package for marketing and selling needs.
- Automation features allow for a quick starting boost to your course business.
- Also includes email and affiliate marketing.
Cons:
- Pricing may be on the higher side when compared to beginners’ expectations.
- With so many features, the learning curve can be challenging.
Ideal: People starting businesses and entrepreneurs aspiring to market courses with one subscription.
4. Podia These creators also focus on selling memberships and other digital products.
We would recommend Podia, an easy to use platform that enables users to quickly setup and sell online courses, digital downloads, and memberships. As it is user friendly it is one of the best solutions for creators.
Most of Podia’s features like course making and membership creation are easy to use even for those less adept in tech. Podia allows to upload video content as well as written content making it more versatile..
If you need support with actual course content, you can reach out to Podia for assistance as they offer live assistance. For most platforms, this is a rarity and isn’t common. Magic Marketer is designed to seamlessly take your marketing to the next level with its specialized email marketing features geared towards almost all aspects of running online classes. Automate your communication when attempting to reach students, promote your courses, and take your sales to the next level easily. Podia has seen a major drawback with most other online learning platforms. They do not charge transaction fees when selling courses which many other platforms do charge.
Shop Now:
100+ DeepSeek Carefully Curated Prompts Download
Having live chat on customer support is an excellent addon by Live Chat and Pos should be proud. This, coupled with no transaction fees on sales fees allows a multitude of businesses to reach for Podia without any fears.
Podia does not come with as many advanced features other platforms have which include marketing funnels and advanced analytics features. Because of this, the level of customization for course pages is also often limited.
The ideal use case for Podia is for creators wishing to not pay any sort of transaction fee while being able to sell online classes or member pages with ease.
Learnworlds, on the other hand, does cater more towards businesses than content creators and is packed with great features intended for modern day interactivity. With Learnworlds, you gain access to nice engaging analytics and self service motivation which are wonderful changes to the newer generations of online learners.
Key Features:
Interactive Videos: Learn worlds allows embedding video links, links, and quizzes in videos through which students can remain engaged with the content. Now you can also create engaging videos with Learn Worlds!
Customizable Branding: You can add colors, themes, and anything of your liking which allows unprecedented control over how your courses and site will appear.
Drip Content & Gamification: You can now create sip courses within Learn Worlds and use gamification to help motivate students into continuing their learning progression.
Advanced Analytics: Learn Worlds lets you monitor engagement, performance, and even the progress of your students in your course which gives you all the data needed to make your course better.
Pros:
- Engaging and interactive course creation features.
- End branding can have strong customization options.
- Perfect for professional instructors looking to develop advanced courses.
Cons:
- Due to so many features, beginners might find a steep learning curve.
- Other platforms have a wide array of prices so their pricing is also high when compared.
- Ideal for: Instructors of courses willing to create interactive courses packed with videos and multimedia.
6. Kajabi: Builders for People Who Like it All In One Place.
Kajabi is not forever known as an ‘all-on-one’ platform for course builders for nothing. This platform combines marketing, constructing courses, crafting emails, and even developing the website in one tool.
Key Features:
All-in-one Solution: From tools and marketing to developing websites and even email services and sales funnels, all of which are included in Kajabi.
Course builder: With this app, you can design and compile courses that can include multimedia and assessments like quizzes.
Marketing and Sales Tools: This software helps its users with marketing since it has features such as email marketing, sales funnels, and landing page designers.
Mobile App: Similarly, Kajabi has a student mobile application to help students access their courses from anywhere.
Pros:
- A complete solution for course creators
- Marketing and selling tools are efficient.
- The user interface is straightforward, just like their customer service.
Cons:
- A steep price that new course creators may find challenging.
- For users like those using Thinkific, there are fewer customization possibilities.
- Ideal for: Content creators looking to escape the pain of juggling several programs and seeking a complete solution in one place.
7. Ruzuku: Top for Ease of Use and Customer Service
Ruzuku is a straightforward platform that is recommended for teachers whose need is to use the software freely. This platform is for teachers who want to build and sell courses without spending a lot of time on the technical side of things.
Key Features:
Course Creation Made Easy: You can now build your course outline and content base on Ruzuku software without spending too much time doing it.
Live Webinars: Another huge plus for teachers who plan to give out live information and content to students. Ruzuku supports this idea and enhances its functionality.
Superb Support – Ruzuku customer service is really good and they are able to quickly address the issues creators encounter and offer helpful assistance.
Pros:
1. Super user-friendly as no technical skills are needed.
2. Effective customer service.
3. Reasonable pricing.
Cons:
1. Limited ability to modify.
2. Absence of some sophistication like gamification and interactive videos.
Best suited for: Teachers and mentors who need the platform to be straightforward while also having good customer support.
To sum up
Ruzuku is a good fit for the educators wanting a straightforward and easy-to-use platform with great customer service. And as for the rest, the choice of the online service depends on the personal requirements such as skill set or budget.
For a shift from simplicity with no transaction fees to a robust multi-system solution, Try Podia and Kartra, respectively. LearnWorlds will provide you with excellent interactive courses while Teachable is the most reliable option for beginners.
Finally, if you are looking for strong course creation tools along with heavy marketing, sign up for Kajabi.
Set goals and choose accordingly and you will develop a brilliant online course business.
