Categories / Online Course
Online course
A curated collection of the best platforms for building and selling courses with video lessons and student enrollment, used by teachers and independent instructors — 34 tools on Founderkit.
34 tools
Online course platforms let you package what you know into a sellable product: video hosting and lesson delivery, curriculum structure, quizzes and assignments, student progress tracking, payments, certificates, and community features. Some also handle the marketing — landing pages, affiliates, and email.
The category divides into platforms where you build and own your school, and marketplaces that sell your course to their audience for a cut. The first keeps your margin and your customer list; the second trades both for distribution you'd otherwise have to earn yourself.
When choosing, focus on the money flow and the student experience: what you net per sale at your expected volume, how video streaming and progress tracking work, and whether checkout and pricing options (subscriptions, payment plans, bundles) match how you intend to sell.
Frequently asked questions
- Host courses on my own platform or a marketplace?
- Own platform if you have an audience — you keep the revenue and the customer relationship. A marketplace supplies the audience but takes a large cut and controls pricing. Many creators do both: marketplace for discovery, own platform for the catalog.
- What do course platforms actually charge?
- Either a monthly fee plus small transaction fees, or a bigger cut of each sale on a free plan. At meaningful sales volume the paid plan usually wins — run the math on your expected price and enrollment, not the sticker prices.
- Do I need video hosting separate from the course platform?
- Almost never — every platform hosts and streams the video for you, and that's part of what you pay for. The exceptions are privacy-heavy use cases where you want tighter control over who can download or embed.
- What features actually affect whether students finish?
- Structure more than features: short lessons, clear progression, quizzes or exercises that make students do something. Community features and certificates help at the margins. The completion rate is set by the content, not the platform.
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