11 Best Platforms to Create and Sell Online Courses in 2026

Updated September 2026: added Learnomy as the WordPress-native complete learning platform and reworked every entry to focus on structure and ownership rather than sticker prices, which shift too often to keep accurate on a static page.

Every one of the platforms below solves the same core problem, hosting video, quizzes, and payments so you do not have to stitch that together yourself, but they solve it with very different tradeoffs around cost, ownership, and audience reach. A marketplace like Udemy hands you built-in traffic and takes a large cut in return. A hosted platform like Kajabi or Thinkific charges a monthly fee but leaves pricing and branding entirely in your hands. A self-hosted WordPress option skips the monthly fee and the revenue cut entirely, at the cost of managing your own hosting.

None of those tradeoffs is universally right. The best fit depends on whether you already have an audience, how much you value owning your student data outright, and how much time you want to spend on the technical side versus actually teaching. The rundown below covers eleven platforms worth comparing in 2026, led by a WordPress-native option that skips the recurring platform fee entirely, with pricing described by structure rather than a sticker figure that a provider can change the week after this page publishes.

What to weigh before committing to a course platform

• Who owns the student relationship. Marketplace platforms like Udemy and Skillshare own the customer account. Hosted and self-hosted platforms let you own the email list and the direct relationship, which matters a lot if you plan to sell additional products later.
• Total cost at your actual course volume. A flat monthly fee beats a revenue share once your sales pass a certain volume, and a revenue share beats a monthly fee when you are just starting out with uncertain sales. Do the math for your specific numbers rather than assuming one model is always cheaper.
• Migration difficulty later. Check how easy it is to export your content and student data if you switch platforms down the line. Some platforms make this straightforward; others make it deliberately painful.
• Payment processor fees on top of the platform fee. Almost every platform below charges its own subscription fee plus separate card processing fees. Budget for both, not just the headline platform price.
• Who actually owns the infrastructure. A hosted platform can change its terms, raise its cut, or shut down its service, and your course catalog goes with it. A self-hosted option keeps your content and student records in a database you control, independent of any single vendor’s decisions.

11 Best Platforms to Create and Sell Online Courses in 2026

1. Learnomy

Learnomy is a complete learning platform for WordPress: courses, quizzes with an anti-cheat tab-switch tracker, cryptographically signed certificates that anyone can verify through a public QR-linked page, and direct Stripe and PayPal checkout with no platform fee taken from a sale. Everything runs on your own WordPress install rather than a vendor’s servers, so your course catalog, your student roster, and your payment history stay in a database you control instead of an account you rent. A WooCommerce adapter is available for sellers who already run a store, memberships come with trials and an automatic pricing page, and once a school grows past one instructor, built-in revenue sharing splits payouts the way a marketplace would for its own instructors. If you’re migrating an existing catalog, a built-in wizard imports directly from LearnDash, Tutor LMS, or LifterLMS.

Video delivery is worth planning for specifically on a self-hosted setup: serving lesson video directly from your own web host works for a small catalog but gets slow once dozens of students stream simultaneously, so most serious self-hosted schools route video through a dedicated streaming service rather than uploading raw files to their own server.

The platform doesn’t stop at course delivery either: a learning community can grow around your school, discussion boards and Q&A sit alongside your courses, gamified learning adds points, badges, and streaks, and a job board covers your graduates once they finish, all from the same team, with a full design layer so the finished school reflects your brand rather than a template with your logo swapped in. For a creator weighing a hosted platform’s recurring subscription and revenue cut against owning the entire stack outright, this is the one entry on this list built on infrastructure you actually control.

2. Teachable

Teachable remains one of the more approachable hosted platforms, with a genuinely simple course-building interface and solid built-in marketing tools including coupons, email campaigns, and an affiliate program. Current plans scale from an entry tier carrying a 7.5 percent transaction fee on every sale, through a mid tier that drops that fee entirely, up to a higher tier built for larger catalogs, plus a custom Enterprise option above that for bigger operations.

The transaction fee on the entry tier is the thing to watch closely: if you are just starting out on the cheapest plan, that 7.5 percent adds up fast once sales volume grows, and it is worth budgeting to move up a tier once revenue justifies it.

3. Udemy

Udemy trades control for reach. Publishing a course costs nothing upfront, and the platform’s existing user base gives new instructors a shot at discovery they would not get building an audience from zero. The tradeoff is real: Udemy takes a significant share of revenue on sales it drives through its own marketing and search, and instructors keep considerably more on sales they bring themselves through referral links. Udemy revised its instructor revenue share downward in 2024 as part of a broader shift in how it compensates course creators, so check the current instructor revenue share terms directly on Udemy’s site before publishing, since the exact split has changed more than once in recent years.

For someone testing whether a course topic has demand before investing in a dedicated platform, Udemy’s zero upfront cost still makes it a reasonable low-risk starting point.

Udemy also owns the pricing conversation entirely: frequent sitewide discounts are part of how the marketplace drives volume, which pushes the price a student actually pays well below what an instructor sets as a baseline. That works in your favor for volume and discovery; it also means Udemy, not you, decides how your course is positioned against thousands of others in the same category.

4. Thinkific

Thinkific pairs a genuinely easy drag-and-drop course builder with strong customization options for your course site’s design and branding. Pricing climbs from an entry tier through a popular middle tier up to a higher tier built for larger catalogs, with a custom Plus option for bigger operations. Using Thinkific’s own payment processor keeps transaction costs to a standard card-processing fee rather than an additional platform cut, a meaningfully better deal than Teachable’s entry-tier transaction fee.

The tradeoff is that some of the more advanced features sit behind the higher tiers, so map your actual feature needs against the plan before assuming the cheapest option covers everything you want to build.

Thinkific also leans harder into course design than most of this list, with a genuinely flexible page builder for the course landing page itself rather than a fixed template, which matters if branding and presentation are a bigger part of your sales pitch than the course content alone.

5. Kajabi

Kajabi goes beyond course hosting into a full business-in-a-box: marketing automation, website building, email campaigns, and sales funnels alongside course delivery. Pricing sits meaningfully higher than most of this list across its Basic, Growth, and Pro tiers, a bracket that reflects the marketing automation and funnel tooling bundled in rather than course hosting on its own.

That price only makes sense if you are actually using the marketing automation and funnel-building tools, not just the course hosting. If course delivery is the only feature you need, a cheaper platform like Thinkific or a self-hosted WordPress option will save real money without losing anything you would actually use.

Kajabi is also one of the few platforms on this list built around a single login covering course delivery, email marketing, and a website builder at once, which appeals specifically to a business that would otherwise be paying for three separate tools and manually connecting them.

6. Podia

Podia keeps things simpler than Kajabi while still covering courses, digital downloads, memberships, and coaching under one roof. Its entry tier carries a 5 percent transaction fee, its middle tier removes that fee entirely, and its top tier adds unlimited resources on top of a fee-free structure.

Like Teachable, the entry tier’s transaction fee is worth planning around. Podia is a solid fit for a creator who wants to bundle a few different product types, courses plus downloads plus a community space, without managing separate tools for each.

The tradeoff for that bundling is depth: a creator who needs an advanced quiz engine or granular certificate design specifically will find Podia’s course tools noticeably lighter than a dedicated course platform, even though the storefront and email tools around it are genuinely capable.

7. LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds leans into interactivity: quizzes embedded directly in video, detailed engagement analytics, and strong branding customization. Its Starter tier carries a flat per-enrollment fee, its Pro Trainer tier removes that fee entirely alongside unlimited courses, its Learning Center tier adds full white-label branding, and a custom Corporate tier covers multi-school operations.

The per-enrollment fee on the Starter tier functions similarly to the transaction fees on Teachable and Podia’s entry plans, worth factoring into your real cost once sales pick up rather than judging purely off the sticker price.

The interactive video layer is worth calling out specifically: embedding a quiz or a clickable prompt directly inside a video, rather than after it, is a genuine differentiator for a course built around active practice rather than passive watching, and few competitors on this list match that specific feature depth.

8. Ruzuku

Ruzuku is a smaller, simpler platform, and its structure reflects a shift toward transparency: a genuinely capped free tier works for up to five students with unlimited courses and no credit card required, a Core tier removes that student cap entirely, and a Pro tier adds white-label branding, multiple instructor accounts, and 4K video streaming. Neither paid tier charges a transaction fee on top of the subscription.

The free tier makes Ruzuku worth testing before committing anywhere else, particularly for a first course where you genuinely do not know if you will have more than five students in the first cohort.

Ruzuku deliberately skips the marketing automation and page-builder depth of Kajabi or Thinkific, which keeps its interface simple but means a creator who eventually needs advanced funnels or landing pages will outgrow it faster than a more full-featured hosted platform.

9. Academy of Mine

Academy of Mine targets businesses and organizations running professional training programs rather than individual creators, with heavy customization, white-label branding, and dedicated implementation support. Its Professional plan sits in a different price bracket entirely from the creator-focused tools above, built for organizational training budgets rather than an individual creator, with a custom Enterprise tier above that for larger deployments.

This is not a platform to consider for a first solo course. It makes sense specifically for a company standing up a customer training academy or certification program where the budget and support needs match an enterprise deployment.

The dedicated implementation support is the real product here as much as the software itself: a company standing up a certification program typically needs help mapping compliance requirements onto the platform, not just a course builder, and that guided setup is what the enterprise price bracket is actually paying for.

10. Skillshare

Skillshare operates as a subscription-based learning community rather than a per-course marketplace: students pay a monthly membership for access to the full catalog, and instructors earn from a royalty pool based on watch time within their classes rather than a fixed price per enrollment. That model rewards engaging, binge-watchable content over one-time high-ticket sales, which is a genuinely different incentive structure than every other platform on this list.

Because the royalty pool mechanics and payout rates have changed over time, check Skillshare’s current teacher terms directly before publishing rather than relying on older estimates, since the exact payout math is not fixed the way a flat platform fee would be.

The format also shapes what kind of course succeeds there: shorter, project-based classes that keep members watching tend to earn more from the royalty pool than a long, comprehensive course a student watches once and finishes. If your teaching style is naturally suited to bite-sized, binge-friendly lessons, that alignment matters more on Skillshare than on any platform charging a flat price per course.

11. Coursera

Coursera partners with universities, companies, and organizations, currently more than 440 partners across dozens of countries, to publish courses, Specializations, Professional Certificates, and full degree programs. It carries genuine academic and industry credibility that no self-service platform can replicate on its own.

The tradeoff is access: Coursera is not a self-service platform where anyone can upload a course. Publishing requires an institutional or corporate partnership, and revenue arrangements are negotiated per partnership rather than published as a standard rate. This is the right fit for an established institution or company, not an individual creator building a first course.

For an individual instructor, Coursera is worth knowing about mainly as a benchmark for what institutional credibility actually requires, not as a near-term option. An individual creator’s realistic path onto a platform like Coursera runs through building a track record elsewhere first, then approaching an existing partner institution, rather than applying directly as an unaffiliated instructor.

Why the WordPress option leads this list

Every platform from Teachable through Coursera above charges either a recurring subscription, a cut of your revenue, or both, and in every case your student data lives on someone else’s servers under someone else’s terms of service. Learnomy, covered first on this list, is the one entry built to remove that arrangement entirely rather than just discount it: your course catalog, your student roster, and your payment records sit in your own WordPress database on your own hosting, with no per-transaction fee and no monthly platform charge sitting between a sale and your bank account.

How the options compare

Platform	Best for	Cost structure
Learnomy (WordPress)	Full ownership, no platform fee	Self-hosted, no per-transaction cut
Teachable	Simple hosted course sites	Tiered subscription, entry tier carries a transaction fee
Udemy	Testing demand with an existing audience	Free to publish, marketplace revenue share
Thinkific	Customizable branding, low fees	Tiered subscription, standard card-processing fee only
Kajabi	Full marketing automation suite	Tiered subscription, priced for the full toolset
Podia	Courses plus downloads plus community	Tiered subscription, entry tier carries a transaction fee
LearnWorlds	Interactive video and quizzes	Tiered subscription, entry tier carries a per-enrollment fee
Ruzuku	First course, free to start	Free tier capped at five students, flat subscription above that
Academy of Mine	Enterprise training programs	Enterprise subscription, priced for organizational budgets
Skillshare	Subscription-based short classes	Free to publish, royalty pool based on watch time
Coursera	Institutional and corporate partners	Partnership-based, negotiated per institution

Read the cost-structure column as a shape, not a number: a subscription-plus-fee model rewards a platform for your growth twice, once through the base price and again through the percentage, while a flat self-hosted structure charges the same regardless of how well a course sells. Which shape actually costs less depends entirely on your sales volume, so run the comparison against your own numbers before treating any single row as the obvious winner.

Common mistakes when choosing a course platform

Picking based on the sticker price alone. Judging a platform purely on its cheapest monthly tier ignores transaction fees, payment processing costs, and the features you will actually need once you have real students, all of which change the real cost significantly from the number on the pricing page.

Underestimating how hard migration gets later. Moving hundreds of students, their progress data, and years of video content off a platform is far harder after the fact than choosing carefully upfront. If there is any chance you will want more ownership later, weigh that risk before building a large catalog on a platform that makes exporting difficult.

Ignoring the audience-reach tradeoff. A brand-new instructor with zero existing audience will likely sell more total courses on a marketplace like Udemy, even at a lower per-sale cut, than on a hosted platform where they have to drive every visitor themselves. Match the platform to where you actually are in building an audience, not where you hope to be in a year.

Overlooking who actually owns the platform infrastructure until something goes wrong. A subscription price is the cost you can see; losing access to your own student list because a vendor changed its terms, raised its cut, or shut down entirely is the cost most creators only discover after it happens. Weigh that risk explicitly rather than assuming today’s terms are permanent.

Frequently asked questions

Can I sell the same course on more than one platform at once?

Yes, and many successful course creators do exactly that: a marketplace listing on Udemy for discovery and testing demand, alongside a hosted or self-hosted version on their own site where they keep the full price and the student relationship. The tradeoff is added maintenance, since course updates need to happen in more than one place, but the reach and revenue upside often justifies it once a course has proven demand.

Do I need my own website before starting a course platform?

Not for a marketplace platform like Udemy or Skillshare, both of which handle the entire student-facing experience for you. For a hosted platform like Teachable, Thinkific, or Kajabi, you typically build your course site within their tools rather than needing a separate WordPress site first. A self-hosted option like Learnomy is the one path here that assumes you already have, or are willing to set up, your own WordPress site.

How much does payment processing actually cost on top of the platform fee?

Expect roughly 2.9 percent plus a small fixed fee per transaction for standard credit card processing through providers like Stripe, regardless of which course platform you use, since nearly all of them route payments through the same handful of processors. Some platforms add their own transaction fee on top of that on lower-tier plans, which is the cost worth checking closely rather than assuming the subscription price is the whole story.

Is a free plan ever good enough for a real business, or just for testing?

It depends entirely on your student volume and revenue goals. Ruzuku’s free plan capped at five students works fine for validating a course idea but will not support a growing business. Learnomy carries no student cap at all on its core platform, which makes it a genuinely viable long-term option rather than just a trial tier, provided you are comfortable managing your own WordPress hosting.

What happens to my course if the platform I chose shuts down or gets acquired?

This is a real risk worth planning for rather than dismissing. Course platforms get acquired, pivot their business model, or shut down entirely more often than most creators assume, and when that happens, hosted-platform creators are at the mercy of whatever migration window the new owner offers, if any. A self-hosted option built on WordPress does not eliminate risk entirely, your hosting provider or plugin developer could still stop supporting their product, but it does mean your actual course content and student database live in a standard, exportable format on infrastructure you control directly, rather than locked inside a proprietary system you have no access to if the company disappears.

Should I worry about video hosting costs separately from the platform fee?

On hosted platforms like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, and Podia, video hosting and streaming bandwidth are bundled into the subscription price, so you do not need to think about it separately. On a self-hosted WordPress setup, video delivery is worth planning for specifically, since serving video directly from your own hosting can get expensive or slow at scale. Most serious self-hosted course builders route video through a dedicated service designed for streaming, rather than uploading raw video files to their own server, and a platform like Learnomy is built to integrate with that kind of external video delivery rather than forcing everything through your web host’s default file storage.

Does adding a self-hosted option to this list mean the hosted platforms aren’t worth considering?

No. A hosted platform trades ongoing cost for genuinely less setup and, in Udemy’s case, access to an audience you haven’t built yet. The right call depends on how much you value speed to launch and built-in discovery against how much you value owning the infrastructure your school runs on. Both are legitimate answers depending on where your business actually is.

How does a self-hosted platform like Learnomy compare on payment processing specifically?

Standard card-processing fees still apply no matter which platform you choose, since every option ultimately routes payments through a processor like Stripe or PayPal. The difference is whether a platform adds its own transaction fee or subscription cut on top of that baseline processing cost. Learnomy runs checkout directly through Stripe and PayPal without adding a platform fee on top, which is the specific gap between a self-hosted setup and a hosted platform’s entry-tier transaction fee.

Matching the platform to where you actually are

A useful way to cut through ten options is to sort by starting point rather than by feature list. If you have no existing audience and want to validate whether a topic sells at all, Udemy or Skillshare cost nothing upfront and put your course in front of people actively browsing for something to learn, even though the revenue share is real. If you already have an audience, through an email list, a social following, or an existing customer base, a hosted platform like Teachable, Thinkific, or Podia lets you keep the majority of each sale while still avoiding the technical overhead of running your own site.

If you are building a long-term education business and expect meaningful, recurring revenue over several years, the math shifts toward either a full-featured platform like Kajabi, if you genuinely need the built-in marketing automation, or a self-hosted WordPress setup like Learnomy, if you want to avoid an indefinitely recurring platform fee once your course catalog grows large enough that a flat annual license costs less than a percentage of a steadily growing revenue stream. And if the goal is specifically training your own team, customers, or partners rather than selling to the public, Academy of Mine’s enterprise focus or a private WordPress installation both make more sense than a public marketplace built for individual consumer sales.

One more way to cut through eleven options: ask what happens five years from now if the course succeeds. A marketplace listing scales your audience but caps your control over pricing and positioning permanently. A hosted platform scales your control but keeps a recurring bill and a revenue cut attached to that success indefinitely. A self-hosted platform scales your ownership from day one, at the cost of being the one responsible for the hosting behind it. None of those tradeoffs disappears with time; pick the one you’re willing to live with once the course is actually working.

Choosing the right platform matters less than actually finishing and launching the course sitting in your drafts folder. Pick a reasonable option from this list, publish something, and let real student feedback tell you whether a different platform is worth the switch later, rather than spending months comparing pricing pages before you have a single paying student.