Selling online courses has never been more accessible — but with dozens of platforms competing for your attention, choosing the right one can feel overwhelming. Whether you're a coach launching your first digital product, a YouTuber packaging your expertise into a course, or an established creator looking to scale, the platform you build on makes a huge difference to your revenue, your audience experience, and your long-term growth. This guide breaks down the best platforms for online course creators in 2025, covering what each one does well, where it falls short, and who it's best suited for — so you can make the right call without wasting months on the wrong tool.
What to Look For in an Online Course Platform
Before diving into specific platforms, it's worth getting clear on what actually matters when you're evaluating your options. Not every creator needs the same thing, and the "best" platform depends entirely on your goals, your audience size, and how you plan to sell.
Key Features Worth Evaluating
- Course builder and content hosting: Can you upload video, audio, PDFs, and quizzes without technical headaches?
- Payment and pricing flexibility: Does it support one-time payments, subscriptions, payment plans, and bundles?
- Marketing tools: Are email marketing, landing pages, and sales funnels built in, or do you need third-party integrations?
- Transaction fees: Some platforms take a cut of every sale. On a platform charging 10%, a $100k year costs you $10k in fees alone.
- Community features: Can students interact with each other and with you inside the platform?
- Affiliate programmes: Can you recruit affiliates to promote your course for a commission?
- Mobile experience: Will your students actually enjoy consuming your content on their phones?
With those criteria in mind, here are the platforms that consistently stand out for course creators in 2025.
Teachable — Best for Beginners and Solo Creators
Teachable has been one of the most popular course platforms for years, and for good reason. It's clean, intuitive, and lets you go from idea to published course faster than almost any other option. If you're launching your first course and don't want to spend weeks learning a complicated platform, Teachable is one of the most beginner-friendly places to start.
What Teachable Does Well
- Drag-and-drop course builder that genuinely works without a tutorial
- Built-in payment processing with support for subscriptions and payment plans
- Native affiliate marketing tools on paid plans
- Coaching products and digital downloads alongside courses
- Basic email automation to send students through onboarding sequences
Where It Falls Short
Teachable's free plan charges a 10% transaction fee, which adds up quickly. Their marketing tools are functional but not deep — if you want complex funnels or advanced segmentation, you'll need a separate email marketing platform. Community features are also limited compared to newer competitors.
Best for: Solo creators launching their first course who want simplicity over sophistication. Also a solid option for coaches selling one-on-one or group coaching alongside digital products.
Kajabi — Best All-in-One Platform for Established Creators
If budget isn't a limiting factor and you want everything under one roof, Kajabi is the platform that consistently gets the most love from professional course creators. It's more expensive than most alternatives, but it replaces a stack of tools — email marketing, landing pages, pipelines (their term for funnels), communities, podcasts, and course hosting — with a single platform.
What Kajabi Does Well
- Genuinely powerful email marketing built in — no need for Mailchimp or ConvertKit
- Visual funnel builder (pipelines) that handles lead magnets, upsells, and follow-up sequences
- Robust community features including discussion forums and direct messaging
- Podcast hosting, which is rare among course platforms
- Zero transaction fees on all plans
- Clean, professional student experience on web and mobile
Where It Falls Short
The price point — starting at around $149/month — is a real barrier for new creators. Kajabi is also a closed ecosystem, which means you're deeply tied to their platform. If you ever want to migrate away, it's a painful process. Some creators also find the sheer number of features overwhelming when they're starting out.
Best for: Coaches, consultants, and established creators who are already generating consistent revenue and want to consolidate their tools. Particularly strong for creators building membership communities alongside their courses.
Thinkific — Best for Scalability and Customisation
Thinkific sits in an interesting middle ground — more flexible than Teachable, less expensive than Kajabi, and better suited to creators who want more control over their student experience without going fully custom. It's particularly popular with creators who are scaling and need features like multiple admins, white-labelling, and advanced course structures.
What Thinkific Does Well
- Highly customisable course and landing page builder
- No transaction fees on any plan (including the free tier)
- Strong quiz and assessment tools, including certificates of completion
- Thinkific Apps marketplace for integrations with tools like Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Zapier
- Communities feature built in on higher-tier plans
- Ability to sell courses through a standalone website with a custom domain
Where It Falls Short
Thinkific's built-in marketing tools are limited. You'll need external email software and probably a separate landing page tool to build effective sales funnels. Their email automation is basic at best. For creators who want everything in one place, this is a meaningful gap.
Best for: Course creators who are growing quickly, have some technical confidence, and don't mind connecting third-party tools for email and marketing. Also a strong choice for business owners building professional development programmes or corporate training products.
Podia — Best for Selling Digital Products Alongside Courses
Podia is one of the more underrated platforms in the creator economy space. It positions itself as the all-in-one platform for creators selling anything digital — courses, memberships, digital downloads, webinars, and coaching. What makes it particularly interesting is how naturally it handles multiple product types without forcing you into a complicated setup.
What Podia Does Well
- Sell courses, digital downloads, memberships, and webinars from one dashboard
- Built-in email marketing with automations included on all paid plans
- Clean, modern storefront design that converts well
- Simple affiliate programme built in
- No transaction fees on paid plans
- Embed a Podia checkout directly on any website
Where It Falls Short
Podia's course builder is functional but not as feature-rich as Teachable or Thinkific. If you're building a highly structured course with complex quizzes, drip content, or certifications, you may find it limiting. The community features are also less developed than Kajabi's.
Best for: Creators who sell a mix of digital products — not just courses. If you're an Instagram creator selling an ebook, a mini-course, and a Lightroom preset pack, Podia handles all of that cleanly in one place. Also a strong option for creators who want simple email marketing included without paying for a separate tool.
Skool — Best for Community-Led Course Creators
Skool has exploded in popularity among creators in 2024 and 2025, largely because of how it flips the traditional course model. Instead of building a course first and adding community as an afterthought, Skool centres everything around the community. Courses live inside the community rather than the other way around — and for many creators, this shift produces dramatically better student engagement and completion rates.
What Skool Does Well
- Extremely strong community experience — arguably the best of any course platform
- Gamification features like points, levels, and leaderboards that keep students active
- Simple, clean interface that students actually want to use
- Flat monthly pricing with no transaction fees
- Free community option to grow an audience before monetising
- Events and live call scheduling built in
Where It Falls Short
Skool is not a full course platform. The content hosting is basic — you can upload videos and PDFs, but there are no quizzes, certificates, or sophisticated drip sequences. If you're building a structured, certification-style course, Skool alone won't cut it. It also lacks native email marketing tools, so you'll need to connect an external list-building tool.
Best for: Coaches and creators who lead with community — masterminds, group coaching programmes, paid communities with course content as a bonus. Particularly powerful for creators who have already built an audience and want to monetise through recurring membership revenue.
Stan Store — Best for Social Media Creators Selling Directly
Stan Store is built specifically for social media creators, particularly those on TikTok and Instagram. It functions as both a link-in-bio storefront and a lightweight course and digital product platform — letting you sell directly to your followers without sending them through a complicated checkout process.
What Stan Store Does Well
- Extremely fast setup — you can have a storefront live in under an hour
- Built for mobile-first audiences who discover creators on social media
- Sell courses, digital downloads, coaching calls, and subscriptions
- Basic email and SMS list building built in
- Flat monthly fee with no transaction fees
- Clean, creator-focused aesthetic that works well with social media branding
Where It Falls Short
Stan Store's course features are basic. If you're building a comprehensive, multi-module course with assessments, drip scheduling, and community, you'll quickly outgrow it. It's designed for simplicity over depth, which means it works brilliantly for smaller, lower-priced courses and digital products but isn't a long-term home for complex educational programmes.
Best for: TikTok creators, Instagram influencers, and social-first creators selling entry-level courses, digital downloads, or coaching alongside other content. If most of your revenue comes from brand deals and you're just starting to add digital products, Stan Store removes friction beautifully.
How to Choose the Right Platform for Your Stage
The honest answer is that there's no single best platform for all online course creators — there's a best platform for your situation right now. Here's a practical framework for making that call:
If You're Just Starting Out
Start with Teachable or Podia. Both are beginner-friendly, relatively affordable, and let you launch without a steep learning curve. Don't over-engineer your first course. Ship something, get feedback, and upgrade your infrastructure once you're generating consistent revenue.
If You're Growing and Need More Control
Thinkific is worth a serious look. The lack of transaction fees and strong customisation options make it a smart choice as your course library grows. Budget for a dedicated email marketing tool alongside it.
If You're Building a Community Around Your Course
Skool or Kajabi depending on whether you prioritise community depth (Skool) or full-stack marketing tools (Kajabi). Both are strong options for coaches and educators who want recurring revenue from memberships.
If You're a Social Media Creator Monetising Your Following
Stan Store or Podia make the most sense. Stan Store wins for speed and simplicity if you're selling to TikTok or Instagram audiences. Podia is better if you're building a proper email list and want slightly more depth in your product catalogue.
Don't Overlook Your Link-in-Bio Strategy
Whatever platform you choose for hosting and selling your courses, there's one piece of the puzzle that most course creators underestimate: how you actually drive traffic to your products from social media. Your link-in-bio is often the highest-traffic page you own — and for many creators, it's the primary bridge between their audience and their revenue.
A weak link-in-bio setup means followers land on a confusing page and bounce. A well-optimised one acts as a mini-storefront — surfacing your course, your lead magnet, your latest content, and any brand deals or partnerships in one clean, branded space.
This is exactly where Linkrr comes in. Linkrr is built specifically for creators who are serious about monetising their social presence. Unlike generic link-in-bio tools, Linkrr lets you showcase your digital products and courses, manage media kits for brand deals, and convert profile visits into actual revenue — all from a single, customisable creator page.
If you're investing time and money into building a course, make sure the path from your Instagram bio or TikTok profile to your checkout page is as clean and compelling as possible. The platform you build your course on matters — but so does how you send people there.
Final Thoughts
The creator economy in 2025 rewards specialists over generalists, and the best course platforms reflect that. Whether you're a coach packaging your methodology into a flagship programme, a content creator monetising your skills, or an influencer adding digital products to your income stack, there's a platform here that fits your model.
To recap: Teachable and Podia for beginners, Thinkific for growing creators who want control, Kajabi for all-in-one power, Skool for community-led education, and Stan Store for social-first creators who want fast, frictionless sales.
Pick the platform that matches where you are now, not where you hope to be in three years. Launch, learn, and optimise as your revenue grows.
And once your course is live, make sure your social media presence is working as hard as your content. Create your free Linkrr page today and turn your link-in-bio into a proper revenue engine — so every new follower has a clear, compelling reason to become a paying student.
