---
title: 'The BEST Online Course Platforms of 2026: Skool vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Teachable vs Learnworlds'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=WYV6tLN3sH8'
video_id: 'WYV6tLN3sH8'
date: 2026-09-15
duration_sec: 628
channel: 'Adam Enfroy'
---

# The BEST Online Course Platforms of 2026: Skool vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Teachable vs Learnworlds

> Source: [The BEST Online Course Platforms of 2026: Skool vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Teachable vs Learnworlds](https://youtube.com/watch?v=WYV6tLN3sH8)

## Summary

The video reviews the top five online course platforms for 2025, comparing their features, pricing, and suitability for different needs. The creator shares personal experience and provides a clear ranking to help viewers choose the right platform for their course business.

### Key Points

- **Teachable: Best Budget Option** [00:13] — Teachable is the best budget option for beginners, with a $39/month basic plan and a 5% transaction fee that is waived on the $119/month plan.
- **Teachable Features** [00:38] — Teachable offers a nice course viewer, a mobile app, and AI tools for generating ideas and course descriptions.
- **Thinkific: Best Overall** [07:25] — Thinkific is the best overall platform, offering a comprehensive suite of features including a course builder, community, and AI-powered tools.
- **Thinkific Integrations** [07:57] — Thinkific has an app marketplace with integrations like HubSpot, QuickBooks, Shopify, MailChimp, and Google Analytics.
- **Skool: Community Focus** [06:23] — Skool is best for community-driven, simple coaching, combining a course platform with a community, gamification, and live event scheduling.
- **Kajabi: All-in-One Marketing** [09:43] — Kajabi is the best all-in-one platform for marketing funnels, including website building, email marketing, and sales tools.
- **LearnWorlds: Interactive Learning** [09:43] — LearnWorlds is best for interactive and academic learning, offering features like interactive video and quizzes.

## Transcript

I've made over $10 million online selling online courses. So the platform that you pick is really important how much money you're gonna make. I've tried pretty much all of them. Now in 2025, it can be pretty overwhelming, right? So that's why in this video,
I'm covering the five best options, some new updates for 2025, and what actually is working. Let's get into it. Before we get to my top picks, let's get to number five, and that is Teachable, which I think is the best budget option for beginners.
So they have a $39 a month basic plan, and that will start your online course business, but there is a 5% transaction fee for every single sale that goes away at the $119 a month plan.
So they have pretty much all the features you need for a basic course business. You can see their course viewer is really nice here, and you can see that there's a mobile app so you can get your students to watch on the go.
And they have, again, all of these platforms have AI tools now to come up with new ideas, course descriptions, and all of that. You can see lots of different interesting courses that are on Teachable. So Tarot Readers Academy, these websites, it'll give you a fully functioning website.
And yeah, it looks nice. It's a really good cheap option and good for beginners. So ultimately, it's very beginner friendly. There's no coding. In 2025, they launched a new AI outline generator and a checkout customizer for a better checkout experience.
They integrate well with ConvertKit, MailChimp, and other main email marketing tools. There are, however, limited visual customization, not the best native community compared to other tools, but it's really best for side hustlers or building your very first course.
Next, number four on my list is LearnWorlds. They're what I consider the most interactive, the most professional, probably best for training companies and certification programs. For example, they have more advanced features. Like, look at this, interactive videos.
So you can have little quizzes that pop up through your video content. that you can gamify your videos so you can have all these pop-ups occur on your videos as you go through them. Lots of different cool interactive features that are really geared toward the student experience.
Another great feature for students is their assessment and form builder, so you can build online exams looking at all these different multiple choice, text-based, long formats. You can build your own SAT if you want to with LearnWorld, all kinds of different quizzes.
So if taking quizzes and tests and exams is important to your course business, then LearnWorlds is probably the best for you. They also have a new mobile app builder, so you can see this. Click a design button you can start implementing and changing what your mobile app looks like So you can see it looks nice No coding is needed and you can really customize the design based on the colors all the videos and people can access it on the go
And again, with LearnWorld, you get a fully fleshed out academy, you know, education website, 100% white label. It looks like your own site. It's not saying LearnWorld's all over it. You can have it, and you can have it basically look whatever you want it to look like,
custom domain, fonts, colors, design, branding, logos, all kinds of different emails from your brand. everything in one. So again, ultimately it's geared more towards training companies, certification programs. If you want deeper student analytics, if you want customizable
certificates, a mobile app that's included in the pro plan, a little bit of a steeper learning curve than teachable. But again, if you're a corporate trainer, this level of customization with LearnWorlds is exactly what you need. All right, number three on my list is Kajabi.
And Kajabi is really the all-in-one funnel machine. So built-in email marketing tools, sales tools, CRM, analytics, website, email, all of it in one. If you want everything in one, then Kajabi is the best product.
If you go to the Kajabi pricing page, it has all these different plans. Then it goes into the creator plan, $99 for three months, so you can claim that offer. You get three websites, 100 products, all of these different things. Unlimited marketing emails, landing pages, all of that.
So Kajabi is typically a little bit more expensive than other course platforms, but they have all the built-in marketing tools. So you could have a Kajabi landing page set up to an email list where you're sending automated emails to people to get them into a sales page, to get them to check out, buy your course, get to your course website, everything all in one platform.
So really what they're known for is their marketing funnels. So they have all kinds of pre-built campaigns and templates to help you to send emails through your website. All kinds of different things like e-books, lead magnets, everything that you can do there.
I've always found you don't have to get super fancy with your emails if you're trying to sell things and sell courses it's text you send simple text emails it could be convertkit for free or active campaign or other tools but there's a lot of really good looking emails and marketing funnels
that you can create all in one platform typically without this creator bundle it's about 149 a month the main thing with Kajabi is again it's a full-fledged CRM email automation funnel podcasting
all in one. They have the AI funnel assistant which helps you build sales sequences with email copy that's new for 2025. Really great user experience. So again, beautiful looking website
but steeper price point. Can feel a little bit bloated if you only want a simple course or you're just starting a very simple course business. They also have a really strong affiliate marketing system and upsell tool So if you want affiliates to sell your courses Kajabi is great for that All right we getting near the end Some of my favorites Number two is school
So school is best for community-first creators. Really simple pricing and business model. We use school for some of our courses. It's simple. Pricing, $99 a month. That's it. It's a group. It has unlimited courses, members, and 2.9% transaction fee.
If you're selling through school, you don't have to do that. You can sell through another platform, your own checkout. and then get people into school. But we use it, for example, for AI Income Blueprint, Income University, and some others.
So you can see a simple community tab. People can comment. We have 4,800 members in this community. There's a classroom tab where you can see all of the different pieces of content in here. So, for example, we have an older, like, Blog Growth Engine 4.5 in here, too,
our older Blog Growth Engine course. And all the different content. You have a video here. You can have any text underneath with links. So, for example, we have, like, resources, So tools, you know, get these deals, here's different tools that you need.
A calendar for live Q&As and events that happen, so we still have three events every week for this community. And then there's members, a leaderboard, all kinds of different cool stuff that you can see gamification over the last 30 days.
So the school, it's really simple. You're building a group here, not just a course. It's kind of like a Facebook group and a course all in one in its own platform. You could use any other online course platform or just any sales method.
You could get people from YouTube. You can get them to buy things on Stripe checkout or just close a deal over the phone, and then you hook Zapier up and just get them into the school community. It's super sticky.
People log in all the time because of the gamification and the ease of use. Community is at the center of this one, so it's really good. It's really popular. A lot of people are using this more and more. 2025 updates have Zoom integration.
They let you schedule host calls inside of the platform. It does lack some of the more advanced built-in quizzes, certificates. You're not going to build your own school website like you can with some of the other ones.
But if you already have a website, you already have a channel or something where you just want to get people into a community, then school is the best choice. All right, and number one on my list, the best overall online course platform to sell courses,
have a website, everything is Thinkific. So their best overall for 2025. They have pretty much everything that you need. It's the best well-rounded course platform. So for example, if you look at their pricing, there's a $36 a month plan where you can create
unlimited courses and a community, digital downloads, sales tools, all of that. They have a full-fledged course builder, so you can view inside of the course you can see just the exact same way You can see the videos the modules the classes the calendars It hooks up with every single app There also an app marketplace
Where you can find all kinds of different functionality like you just hook up go to our app store I like Shopify as an app store You can see like hub spots in here QuickBooks so you can get you know your business data your profit and loss all in one Place after your zoom even hooks up with Shopify MailChimp Google Analytics just makes it really simple
You can see here is like an example website here. The Sew It Academy is a sewing course. Looks really nice, really simple, good design and all of that. I also did a course with Thinkific, Grow Your Content Empire, presented by myself.
They call me a digital marketing expert. So this is a full course I did with Thinkific, which is really cool. It teaches you how to build an organic audience, sell a course through that audience, full-fledged marketing funnel.
So I know Thinkific really well. I've actually worked with them for five years now on different stuff, but I like them. They're the best overall all-around pick. So with Thinkific, you know, in 2025, they overhauled their UX. They also have an AI-powered course builder now.
You can structural modules with AI. Again, the app marketplace is great. Easy to scale. They have memberships, white-labeled websites. So if you already have a blog, for example, or a website, you can just add a link at the top navigation.
They click it. They get to your full-fledged Thinkific course website. Slight learning curve for more advanced setups. You know, there's a lot of advanced companies using Thinkific, these big accounting or big academies that have certification training programs.
So it goes all the way from what Teachable can do on the beginner end all the way up to brands and companies that have hundreds of courses inside of a really advanced website. So it pretty much does everything. So if I had to start over today, Thinkific would be the course platform and the website builder that I would use.
Ultimately, to recap real quick, Teachable, number five, best for first-timers, really simple. Number four was LearnWorld, best for interactive and academic learning. Number three, Kajabi, best all-in-one for the marketing funnel.
Number two, School, best for community-driven, simple coaching. And number one, Thinkific, best overall. So you can see all of my links are below. My Finkific link is a 30-day free trial with Finkific if you sign up for that and then you can sign up for them.
But yeah, all of the links and discounts and trials are in the description. I recommend you start with Finkific based on your goals. Let me know in the comments, are you launching a course? Are you going to be building one? Any questions that you have on any of these course builders, let me know.
I'll do my best to answer. I have used all of them. And I will see you in the next video. Please like, subscribe, and I will talk to you soon.