I Tested 10 Free Online Course Platforms — Here's the Truth

[00:02] 10 years ago, the best option on the market for online course software was by far Teachable because they had this free forever plan, not just a free trial, but a free forever plan that let you create multiple online courses and only charged

[00:15] you payment processing fees and they had amazing customer service. So, of course, that's what I used and I recommended Teachable for years after that. But then a few years ago, Teachable got acquired and their customer service took a huge

[00:28] downturn. And then last year, they got rid of their free plan and they raised their prices. So, at this point, it's really not the best option. And I've been kind of struggling for this past year or so to know what to recommend to

[00:42] my clients as the best, most affordable online course software option. And especially wondering if there is an alternative free option that's actually any good. So, a few days ago, I sat down and I did a ton of research on all the

[00:58] different course platforms that are currently available here in 2026 to find the very best free and affordable course options. And that's what I'm going to be sharing with you in today's video. So, I want to talk about both dedicated

[01:12] learning management systems, also called LMS's, also called online course software options. We're also going to talk about the most affordable all-in-one options like Kajjabi or Cartra or Zendler. We're also though

[01:26] going to talk about some options that you may not have considered before, which are not dedicated online course software options, but software that was originally designed to do something else, but they've since added in online

[01:40] course management or learning management system options that allow you to now use this software as your online course software without having to pay for something extra. And these are things that you might already be paying for. So

[01:55] that's actually what I want to get started with because this would be the very most affordable option for setting up an online course these days is to use a software that you already have. It might be a software that you are using

[02:08] to run your website or your email marketing or even your payment those. So first of all, if you are using Squarespace or Wix or Shopify or

[02:21] WordPress, then you can build your online course on your website for free or pretty cheap. So specifically, Squarespace has something called Squarespace courses that is included for free with every single Squarespace plan.

[02:36] Squarespace plan, you can build your online course on your Squarespace website for no additional cost. and Wix offers something similar as well. Now, if you're on Shopify, you can also build your online course on your website, but

[02:50] you will need to add one of Shopify's app. Some of the most popular Shopify apps for online courses include something called Courses Plus, one called Skypilot, and one called Tevo. Now, most of the online course options

[03:03] for Shopify aren't free, so you're going to have to pay for them separately, but they're pretty affordable as far as online course platforms go. And of you're not going to have to add another whole platform. So, you'll get to keep

[03:17] everything just more simple on your single website. And you'll be able to process your payments through your Shopify system that you already have set up. And then finally, in this category of building on your website platform, of

[03:30] course, we have to talk about WordPress. This is pretty much the original as far as building online courses goes and it's how I very originally got started. But honestly, it was a mess and it was why I ended up switching to Teachable so early

[03:44] on because the plugins for building an online course on a WordPress website, which is how you do it, were quite frankly terrible. They were so clunky. They were so hard to configure, so hard to get to look good, so hard to just use

[03:58] at all. But they have gotten way better. So, there are quite a few different free and cheap WordPress plugins that you can use to build an online course on your just one though, it would probably be LearnPress because it is the very best

[04:14] LearnPress because it is the very best free option that I found for a WordPress online course plugin that lets you use your WordPress website as your online course platform. So, just to be clear, Learnress has a plan that is totally

[04:27] free and lets you set up and run your online course on your existing website. You of course have to do the steps to configure it. There is an option to upgrade to a paid plan for more features and you will need a separate payment

[04:41] processor system. You could use something like PayPal or Woo Commerce. Now, using your website as your online course platform is probably the very most obvious option, but there are some other pieces of software that you might

[04:55] already have that can also act as your online course platform, such as perhaps your shopping cart software. So, if you use something like Sam Cart or Thrive use something like Sam Cart or Thrive Cart, they now have builtin LMS options

[05:09] that let you run an online course right from your shopping cart software. Now, this is pretty convenient because you would sell your online course through your online shopping cart and now the customer can stay in that same ecosystem

[05:23] and on that same platform. So, first here, let's talk about Sam Cart. Sam Cart itself is not very cheap. It starts at $79 per month, but if you're already paying for it, the good news is that you don't have to pay anymore to use their

[05:37] LMS features and run your online course just right out of your Sam Cart account. So, if you're already paying for Sam Cart, you don't need to pay for a separate online course platform. Thrive Kart, on the other hand, which is one of

[05:50] Sam Cart's main competitors in the online shopping cart space, is a little bit cheaper because they offer some like one-time payment options where you can pay for Thrive Cart just once and have lifetime access, which a lot of people

[06:04] really like. But if you want to use Thrive Kart's learn option that allows Thrive Kart's learn option that allows you to use your Thrive Kart setup as generally have to pay something

[06:16] additional, either an additional monthly fee or else an additional onetime fee. Now, the last type of software that you might already be paying for that could be your online course platform is your email marketing software. And more and

[06:29] more different email marketing softwares are offering this option. But a couple that I know specifically offer online course hosting are Kit, formerly called ConvertKit, and Mailorite. Now, these are two different email marketing

[06:44] software options that I already know and use and love. So, I think it's great that they offer this option as well to host your online courses. I will say that the hosting options that they offer and the features they offer are much

[06:59] simpler, much more minimal than most other online course options. So, they may or may not be what you're looking for, and you might want something more of these systems and you're looking for a really affordable option for hosting

[07:12] your online course, then they might be a great way for you to get started. All right, now let's switch gears and talk about dedicated online course hosting platforms. So, these are things like Teachable or Kajjabi. Some of them are

[07:26] specific to online courses and some of them are kind of bigger picture all-in-one type softwares that can also host your website also be your shopping cart etc etc. So I will definitely talk about those different aspects as I go

[07:39] through these best options. Now, the first thing that I got to break to you after all of my research is I've concluded that there is not a single concluded that there is not a single 100% free online course hosting platform

[07:51] at this point, aside from the things I've already talked about where sometimes you can get your online course hosting free included in something you're already paying for. So, like the free plugin that you can use on your

[08:04] have to pay for the hosting for your WordPress website. I recorded this video with a group of my students and they reminded me of a platform that I had

[08:16] totally forgotten about and forgot to include in my research and that is include in my research and that is system.io. System actually has a totally free plan. So this here is the pricing page for system and they've got this

[08:29] free plan but even their next level plan is still pretty much the most affordable plan out there. and system isn't even just an online course platform. It's actually one of those all-in-one platforms like Kajjabi or Cartra or

[08:43] something like that. Now, a few of the students who I was working with today are actually already using system. So, I asked them a ton of questions about what they like about it, what they don't, how good it actually is, and all of that.

[08:55] And I want to share that with you right now. So, the first thing they told me is that systems free plan is actually free. It's not a gimmick. There's no hidden fees or anything like that. In fact, you don't even have to give them your credit

[09:07] card. It's totally free. The next thing they said was just that overall they like it. It's pretty easy to use. It really does check all the boxes. It can be your website. It can be your email marketing. It can do automations. You

[09:20] can run a membership. You can even host a community with it. It also lets you build landing pages and checkout pages. So, thank you pages. Pretty much everything you might want it to do, System.io can do. Next is kind of the

[09:34] first drawback, which is that you probably will outgrow System.io's free plan pretty quickly. If we scroll down here and we look at the features, you can have up to 2,000 contacts. That will probably last you a while. But you can

[09:48] only have a single tag. So, you're not going to be able to like organize or sort these different customers very much. I mean, really at all to be able to send them through different automations or pipelines. And that also

[10:02] relates down here to when we have email campaigns or automation rules or workflows, you really can only have one of any of those things. So there's not going to be a way to send different groups of customers different emails at

[10:15] all. And so for that reason, while you definitely definitely can get started with the free plan and even use it to sell your first online course pretty to the startup plan. So you can have, for example, like a welcome sequence for

[10:30] people who sign up for your free email newsletter. And then after somebody might want to run them through a different automation that's like an onboarding automation. And then there were two other small drawbacks that my

[10:42] students mentioned to me about system. One is that their website builder can feel a little bit clunky and a little bit restrictive where you're not able to easily drag or move the visual elements,

[10:56] say a picture or a header around on the page once they're placed. So, it can potentially be a little bit difficult to customize your pages as much as you want. However, this was not a dealbreaker. systems page builder still

[11:10] seems to be good, just not quite as great or as flexible as some other platforms. The other small drawback is specifically with the community, which you might be using as part of your online course or your membership or as a

[11:23] standalone thing like a free community. And the downside here is just that the community is quite basic. It's not as easy to comment on somebody else's post as it is, for example, in a Facebook group or something like that. You have

[11:38] to click on the post and then add your comment in a slightly old school way. And you also can't respond to posts with voice messages or with video messages or anything like that. It's text only. So, all that to say, System.io doesn't seem

[11:51] to be a perfect platform. It has a few small downsides and drawbacks just like any platform does, but for the price, everybody seems to agree that it is an amazing value and it definitely gets the job done and it's definitely at least

[12:06] with. So, in the rest of this video, we're going to be looking at a whole bunch of different affordable course platforms and one of them might be a better option for you than System.io because System.io, IO. It does have some

[12:20] limitations and it's just not going to be the best fit for every single person. So, for example, there might be features on some of these other affordable platforms that make it better for specifically what you're looking for.

[12:32] But I do have to say right now that system.io really does take the cake for the best free platform that is out there and really the best value for the money even on their paid plans. Now, moving on to some actual online course platforms.

[12:47] The very cheapest one by far is actually going to be school.com. So sk, which is a tech startup company that was created a few years ago by some big

[12:59] names in the entrepreneurial space and backed by some even bigger names and they have done a lot of advertising for the platform. Now honestly I have some slightly mixed feelings about it. What I don't love is that unlike some other

[13:12] online course platforms, it is very much like you are building in their ecosystem and you're not able to customize the platform and make it look like your own website. So, it's kind of like how people used to sell memberships that

[13:26] were basically just Facebook groups on Facebook and they would do like live videos in their Facebook group or even post pre-recorded videos, but they ran group. And I should probably mention that technically you can still do that.

[13:39] It's just that most people feel weird about paying for a Facebook group. So it can make it harder to sell your online course and you also have to use a totally separate system as your website and for your payment processing and it

[13:52] school I would say is a great alternative to that and it only costs $9 per month. So like I said, by far the most affordable platform and that is causing a lot of people to choose school. Now, really the only other

[14:06] platform that comes close to school in terms of affordability is going to be Gumroad, which yes, has a weird name. I've always felt that Gumroad was an odd name for this platform. Now, Gumroad is a platform that was originally set up to

[14:19] be able to sell just digital products, essentially things like ebooks and PDF files. And honestly, that's still basically what it is set up to do. It's not really designed to be able to sell online courses. However, you can because

[14:35] you can sell essentially links to videos and PDFs that have your whole online course laid out in the PDF, including the links to the video lessons. So, it's pretty clunky. Definitely not my favorite, but it does get the job done

[14:50] in terms of processing the payment and giving the new customer access to all of your digital materials for your online course. And also, Gumroad is technically free, at least in the sense that there's not a monthly subscription fee. However,

[15:05] on the other hand, Gumroad is actually kind of expensive because for each sale that you make, Gumroad is going to charge you 10% in terms of both their take and the payment processing fees themselves, as well as 50 cents per

[15:20] tell, that ends up being quite a significant chunk of your earnings for not the best user experience. So, of all the different options that we're talking about today, Gumroad would be near the bottom of my list, even though it's one

[15:35] of the few technically free options. Again, at least as far as monthly the final few options that we're going to talk about, you may not consider to actually be very affordable, but as far as proper online course platforms go,

[15:51] these are the most affordable ones out there. And so, I feel like I should cover them. Between dedicated online course platform options like Teachables, Thinkific, Podia, etc., Thinkific is going to be the cheapest and their

[16:05] cheapest plan offers the best features. Thinkic's lowest cost plan is $49 per month or if you opt for their annual plan, it can get as low as $36 per month. And then the last two options I'm going to share with you are technically

[16:20] all-in-one options. So these are software options that can be your website, your online course hosting, and can also do things like your email marketing and even hosting your webinars for you. So, they're definitely more

[16:32] expensive, but the idea is that they're going to save you money with other first and most affordable of these used to be called New Zenler. And the

[16:44] Zenler comes in at $57 per month. And then just a couple dollars more than that at $59 per month, we have Cartra. Both of these, like I said, they can be your website, your course platform, your email marketing, your webinars, etc. And

[16:57] both of them do a good job of hosting your online course. And they can even go a step beyond hosting just an online course and host a proper membership with multiple courses and other content inside of it. So there you have it. All

[17:11] of the free and most affordable online course options that are available currently. Now, which one should you choose? Well, as you can probably tell, it really depends on your situation. If you have some sort of software that

[17:24] you're already paying for, like a website or an email marketing software or something like that that offers online course hosting, then that is definitely going to be your most affordable and probably simplest option.

[17:37] So, I would recommend that you go with that. But if you don't have that, the best most affordable option is probably school.com at just $9 a month. But finally, on the other hand, if you want to build more than just an online course

[17:50] and you also do want a website, you also need email marketing and all those other aspects of actually building an online business, then you might want to go for Cartra or Zendler so that you can have all of those for just one monthly cost.

[18:05] Now, there's one more thing that we cannot end this video without talking about, which is that if you set up an online course, it is not guaranteed to really difficult to sell an online

[18:18] course, especially if you don't have an audience because to make money online, somebody has to buy the thing you're selling, right? And that's basically what building an audience is. It's getting people to pay attention to you

[18:31] and what you have to offer. Initially, generally, with free content of one variety or another, but then eventually giving them the opportunity to work with you in a paid capacity. So, if you want to get started with online courses, but

[18:45] you don't already have an audience, I really would highly recommend that you get started with that first of all. Now, just to be clear, this doesn't mean that you have to build a big huge audience before you can create and launch an

[18:59] online course. It's great to work on these things simultaneously so that by the time your audience gets to a decent size, you'll be able to start selling something to them and start making money as soon as possible. But if you create

[19:13] the online course and you try to sell it before you have an audience, chances are pretty low that you'll make any money with it at all initially. And even if you then go on to build your audience, chances are high that it might turn out

[19:26] that you build an online course that isn't what these people actually want and your efforts are wasted. So that's why I would recommend that you start building your audience first and then as your audience is starting to grow, you

[19:39] then create the product that you see they actually are looking for. Now, if importance of building your audience, I want to tell you about something that I'm currently working on. It's a free private podcast series called Stuck at

[19:52] Zero: Why Your Online Business Isn't Making Any Money and What to Do About It. And big spoiler here, but the reason your online business isn't making any money is probably because you don't have an audience of people to buy whatever

[20:05] you're offering. But obviously in the podcast series, I get into a lot more than just that. But how to solve this problem, how to get your audience to start growing so that you have customers to buy your products. So if that would

[20:20] be helpful to you, check the description down below. I'm putting the finishing to be available at gillianperkins.com/stuck.

[20:32] and What to Do About It. And you can sign up for free for it at gillianperkins.com/stuck. All right, well, that is everything for helpful, please give it a big thumbs up to let me know and to help more people

[20:46] find it because it really does give it a boost in the YouTube algorithm. and more videos from me in the future all about how to grow your online business. And finally, next up, watch this video

[20:58] right here, which will uncover the reason why your audience isn't already reason why your audience isn't already taking off.