The 10 Best Online Teaching Platforms to Make Cash

If you enjoy sharing your knowledge, online teaching could be a fantastic way to turn that passion into a paycheck.  

The online education market is booming, growing by over 8.5% per year, and is projected to reach a market volume of $279.30 billion by 2029.  In other words, many people want to learn online, so there’s a big demand for teachers like you.

Even then, this demand wouldn’t mean much if you don’t choose the right platform in the first place. So, if you’re ready to dip your toes, today’s article will introduce you to the ten best online teaching platform choices you may consider. 

TL;DR – These are the Best Online Teaching Platforms

What are online teaching platforms?

Online teaching platforms are software services that provide the necessary infrastructure and features you need to create, deliver, and manage educational content online. 

Depending on the platform, you can deliver self-paced courses, live teaching sessions, or even both. You just need to consider your teaching objectives, your students’ needs, and the subject matter when deciding which one to use. 

For example, if you’re teaching busy professionals who can’t commit to specific times, self-paced courses let them learn on their own schedule.

Top features of an online teaching platform

Whether you’re opting for the live class or pre-recorded recorded sessions, here are some basic features the best online teaching platform should have: 

1. Interactive and accessible interface

When you’re just starting with online teaching, the last thing you need is a platform that’s hard to use. If it’s confusing for you, delivering a high-quality course experience wouldn’t be easy. And as such, your students might not stick around. So, before anything, aim for easy-to-use and user-friendly interfaces. 

You’ll also want platforms that work well on different devices, like laptops, tablets, and smartphones. This way, your potential students can learn from anywhere, which increases the chances of them joining and completing your course. 

Lastly, opt for platforms with interactive features. These could include online whiteboards, group discussion rooms, polls, or quizzes. The more interactive your lessons are, the more engaged your students will be. 

2. Management practices 

Managing an online class involves a lot of juggling: tracking progress, handling enrollments, and student communications. A good platform should make these tasks easier. 

So, watch out for management and admin features like automated grading, student enrollment management, learning analytics, course scheduling, and so on. 

3. Systematic, timely feedback

Feedback is necessary for effective learning. It helps you commend learners when they’re doing well and offer guidance on where they can improve, keeping them motivated along the way. 

That’s why you should look for a platform with tools that make it easy to collect and give feedback. For instance, annotation tools, discussion forums, and survey forms. 

4. Data backup and storage

After putting in countless hours creating an online course, the last thing you want is for it to disappear due to a technical glitch. So, when evaluating the best online teaching platforms, look for ones that have a strong commitment to data security, storage, and backup. 

Benefits of online teaching platforms for teachers 

Besides the fact that there’s a huge demand for online teachers, here are some other reasons you might want to consider online teaching platforms: 

• Modern teaching methodologies

They say if you don’t evolve, you dissolve. This rings true for teaching as well. The best online teaching platform introduces you to innovative ways to enhance your teaching effectiveness.

Essentially, features like multimedia content, interactive assessments, and gamification can help you cater to different learning styles and increase your student’s knowledge retention. Isn’t that what teaching is all about?

Compared to traditional teaching methods, a teaching platform online can save you a bundle. First, you won’t have to worry about the cost of renting physical space or investing in expensive equipment. Plus, many platforms offer flexible pricing models, so you can keep a larger portion of your earnings.

Platforms for teaching online can save you a ton of time by handling various administrative tasks for you. For instance, you get to automate tasks like enrollments, class schedules, and payments. This frees up your time to focus on engaging with your students and delivering top-notch lessons.

• Access to a variety of materials 

The best platforms to teach online grant you access to extensive libraries of resources and tools to build your online course. This includes features like pre-made templates, stock images, and even video editing tools. 

What’s even better is that some platforms let you integrate external resources like web links, documents, and multimedia files seamlessly. This means you can curate a rich learning experience for your students without breaking a sweat.

•  Easy to gather student feedback

With the right online teaching platform, gathering student feedback is a breeze.  You’ve seen this from the features we mentioned earlier.

That aside, the beauty of these platforms is that students can give feedback whenever it suits them best. This makes it easier for everyone to participate and ensures everyone’s voice is heard.

10 best online teaching platforms

If you’re ready to give online teaching a chance, consider these ten best online teaching platforms to make money

1. Udemy

Udemy is a leading online education marketplace, attracting millions of learners and partnering with over 15,000 companies. Anyone can create a free Udemy course. But to monetize it, you’ll need approval as a premium instructor. The entire approval process typically takes around two days and it’s free. 

What we like about Udemy. 

Udemy does everything to ensure beginners settle in well, from advice on video equipment to constructive feedback on your course content. 

Its user-friendly interface also makes navigating the platform pretty easy, even if you’ve never created a course before.

You’ll also have access to admin features like a comprehensive analytics dashboard, quizzes, and automated grading. See a sample analytics dashboard, for instance:

In addition, Udemy has a straightforward marketplace insights tool. With this, you can evaluate the demand for your course’s tonic before getting into it. 

And lastly, by enrolling in Udemy’s marketing program, you can even get assistance with course promotion. 

What we don’t like about Udemy

The reality is that learners on Udemy aren’t really your students; they’re Udemy’s customers. The platform keeps their details, such as emails, from you.  And we know that these details can be very necessary to nurture your audience and grow your teaching business. 

Also, Udemy’s marketing program comes at a cost. The platform may discount your course significantly without your control. While this can attract more learners, it can also lower your earnings potential in the long run.

Pricing 

Creating courses on Udemy is free, but they make money from the revenue your course generates. If a student purchases your course through your own promotion, you receive 97% of the revenue. However, if it’s from an Udemy promotion, you only get 37%.

2. Kajabi

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, designed to help you monetize your knowledge. In addition to courses, Kajabi lets you teach through live coaching, podcasts, and membership classes:

With its tons of customizable templates, you can create anything from mini-courses to full-blown online programs. 

What we like about Kajabi

If you need a platform where you’d have better control over your online presence and student experience, Kajabi is a great option. 

Unlike Udemy, you can directly interact with your students and collect important details, like emails during registration. You may even use Kajabi’s email automation tool to build an email list with this information and nurture your audience, all in one place. 

Right on the dashboard, you can monitor metrics like your email opt-ins, the number of students, and your revenue. 

Kajabi also offers other built-in course marketing features such as website & landing page builders and a sales funnel creator: 

Best of all, this platform doesn’t take a cut from your profits. You can easily integrate it with payment processors like Stripe or PayPal and keep all your earnings.

What we don’t like about Kajabi

While Kajabi offers some marketing features, a lot of the marketing effort still falls on you. And let’s face it, marketing a course isn’t always easy.

We also don’t believe the features they offer justify the high price tag. You can find platforms with more to offer at a much lower cost.

Pricing

Kajabi offers three subscription plans with different features and pricing: 

As you can see, plans start at around $149 per month, with higher tiers offering additional features like custom landing page domains and analytics tools. 

3. Coursera

Since 2012, Coursera has been providing online courses from prestigious organizations like Yale, Google, and IBM  to millions of students globally:

It has very a massive student base worldwide, meaning your course can potentially reach a much larger audience. This naturally boosts your earning potential. 

What we like about Coursera

One of Coursera’s strengths is its credibility and recognition. Partnering with top institutions attracts students seeking reputable and well-structured learning experiences. So, as a tutor on Coursera, you instantly enhance your reputation, which is essential for building a successful career as an online teacher.

Coursera’s user-friendly interface offers various online teaching features, including course management, quizzes, and feedback opportunities. 

In addition to self-paced courses, you can also integrate live sessions using the Live2Coursera feature.

What we don’t like about Coursera 

The barrier to entry on Coursera is quite high. To publish a full course, you typically need to be a professor at one of their partner colleges. 

However, Coursera does offer a guided project instructor program where you can create short training programs and earn money per project. But that’s still nothing compared to having a full course with your students. 

You should also keep in mind that Coursera primarily focuses on academic subjects and professional skill development. So if your course falls outside of these areas, it may not be the best fit for you.

Pricing 

All we know is that Coursera’s pricing model involves revenue sharing. But the specific percentages aren’t publicly available. 

4. Classplus

Classplus is quite different from the options we’ve seen so far. Basically, it’s a service that helps you develop your own course websites and native Android applications. 

So, if you value having more control over your branding decisions, it could be an excellent option. Plus, you’ll have your website and app ready within five days, which is pretty impressive.  

What we like about Classplus 

Classplus’ apps provide an easy-to-use dashboard for online tutors to track students’ activities and sales. 

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Besides, it allows you to record your live classes. This way, you can share them with absent students or repurpose them into self-paced courses for sale.

Another nice thing is that Classplus offers a free demo session to get you up to speed before you eventually pay for its services. 

What we don’t like about Classplus 

Your live classes’ are limited to four hours, regardless of the payment plan you opt for.  Though that’s enough for most classes, it can be disappointing if you need longer sessions. 

Furthermore, transactions and payouts are typically in Rupee, which means it was created with just Indian tutors and learners in mind. So, it might not be the most seamless option if you stay outside India.

Pricing

Offers only yearly subscriptions, which vary depending on the features you need for your online course. 

The cheapest plan starts at ₹15,999, which is around $191.9.

5. OpenLearning

OpenLearning is an online tutoring platform that encourages interactive and collaborative learning environments, as opposed to just lecture delivery. 

To this effect, it provides features like discussion forums, group projects, and peer feedback to foster collaboration and student engagement. 

What we like about OpenLearning 

OpenLearning simplifies course creation and marketing with features like: outcome-based assessment, progress tracking, automatic grading, course templates, learner analytics, and multi-language support:

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The platform also provides an AI assistant to speed up content and course creation by up to 20 times. This makes it a valuable time-saving tool, especially for new instructors. 

Furthermore, you can use AI to generate activities to keep your students engaged.

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OpenLearning also offers a drag-and-drop tool course landing page creator to enhance your marketing efforts. 

What we don’t like about OpenLearning 

OpenLearning is on the expensive side of things. This is understandable because it mainly targets institutions and educators looking to build custom learning portals. For individual instructors who just want to reach a wider audience, the cost might be off-putting. 

Also, while it offers solid features, they’re not significantly different from the more affordable ones we’ve mentioned so far. 

Pricing 

For individuals, OpenLearning offers three pricing tiers based on the number of learners you can accommodate at once.

You can save up to 33% by opting for the yearly plan, which starts at $1,170 per year.

6. Teachable

Teachable is a no-code and beginner-friendly platform for course creation and sales. With more than $500 million in sales to over 18 million students, it’s a promising option for teaching online and earning money.

What we like about Teachable 

Teachable’s UI/UX is superb. For starters, adding video lectures or other content to your curriculum  is extremely easy – it literally takes less than three clicks:

It also offers great course enrichment options, including an easy-to-use quiz feature. And you can even generate quiz questions with AI.

Moreover, you get to choose your preferred pricing model to sell online courses:

Plus, its customer support is highly responsive to email messages. They typically address issues within 24 hours, which is commendable.

What we don’t like about Teachable

Teachable falls short in several areas, starting with transaction fees. The free version charges a $1 + 10% transaction fee, and even the first tier of the premium version includes a 5% transaction fee. This can add up, especially when you consider additional fees from payment gateways like Stripe.

While Teachable claims to have a landing page builder and email marketing tool, they may not be reliable for serious course marketing. 

Pricing

Teachable offers a free plan with limited features and paid plans start at $59 per month: 

As the tier increases, more features are added, such as removing transaction fees and customizable branding options.

7. Thinkific

Thinkific is a scalable course creation solution for teachers of all levels- beginner or established:

With its simple drag-and-drop course and landing page builder, you can have a full-blown course up and running within a day.

What we like about Thinkific 

Like most options so far, you’ll be getting the regular course creation features alongside some sales and marketing functionalities. 

But that aside, Thinkific allows you to integrate with multiple third-party apps via the Thinkific store. For example, you can integrate with Zoom to offer live lessons to your students. 

What we don’t like about Thinkific 

The community features in Thinkific might not be the best out there. For instance, it offers no customer activity field or native live streaming, which is understandable of course. After all, Thinkific never claimed community focus as a main goal. 

We checked out its mobile app too and found it has a 2.7 rating on AppStore. That’s surely some serious cause for concern. 

Plus, we believe most of the landing page themes could use some updating.   

Pricing 

Thinkific has a free version that’s limited to one course and two spaces per community. The premium plan starts at $49/month while unlocks premium features like unlimited course

You can save up to 25% if you pay annually.  

8. FreshLearn

FreshLearn is all about streamlined and fast course creation. The platform offers user-friendly tools for uploading content, building your curriculum, and deploying courses in a short time frame. Everything takes less than seven steps. 

This ease of use makes FreshLearn the perfect pick for anyone who wants to launch their online teaching journey without getting bogged down in complex features. 

What we like about FreshLearn

As one of the best teaching platform picks, FreshLearn adds an interactive twist to its courses with gamification.

This way students can earn rewards through points, keeping them engaged and motivated. 

What we don’t like about FreshLearn 

There have been multiple complaints about unresponsive customer support on FreshLearn, which can be frustrating for users seeking quick assistance.

Pricing

FreshLearn offers a free plan with limited features and the ability to sell up to 25 courses.  

Paid plans start at $39 monthly, which offers you unlimited course creation, 0% transaction fees, and other perks. 

9. Skillshare

Unlike other platforms that focus on building your own online courses, Skillshare operates more like a marketplace where creative professionals can both take and teach short, project-based online classes: 

All you need to do is choose a Skillshare topic you’re comfortable with, create a course, and upload it – that’s the extent of your work.

What we like about Skillshare

There’s so much to love about Skillshare. First, it allows you to teach in up to five languages. So, if you’re not comfortable with English, for instance, you have other options. 

What’s even more interesting is that it prioritizes short videos. 20 minutes works just fine. So, you don’t need to spend days creating hours-long content. 

And if you can’t seem to get the hang of the platform as a first-timer, it also has a pretty active and response teachers program to guide you. 

What we don’t like about Skillshare

First up, the platform’s online learning courses primarily cater to creative fields like the ones shown below. So if your expertise lies elsewhere, it may not be the best fit for you.

SkillShare also claims its top teachers make as much as $100,000 yearly, but we all know it’s not all that easy. 

In fact, if you’re just starting out, growing can be very difficult on Skillshare due to its algorithm. The platform chooses courses to display to learners based on factors like reviews and watch time. So, if you’re just starting out and haven’t gained much traction yet, attracting students can be challenging.

Further, Skillshare instructors earn a percentage of the overall subscription revenue pool, and there isn’t much transparency about how much they’ll actually earn. But expect to make less compared to selling your courses independently.

Pricing

Skillshare doesn’t charge instructors a set fee for uploading courses. You can upload your courses for free, but earning from them isn’t straightforward. 

Instructors earn based on the minutes watched in their courses, as determined by Skillshare. Additionally, you can earn $10 for every student you refer to Skillshare.

10. GetResponse

While it’s not specifically an online teaching platform, GetResponse offers all the tools you need to create and market your online courses.

Take Alex Terrier, for example, the owner of Jazz video lessons. He creates his videos using GetResponse’s webinar feature and then uses other features like email marketing and the conversion funnel to market his course to new students.

GetResponse is also releasing a content monetization platform specifically targeting content creators who want to sell courses. You can join the waitlist and be amongst the early adopters of this solution.

The coolest part of choosing GetResponse is that you get all the tools you need to build and market your course in one place, with an easy-to-use interface.

So you won’t need to pay for five different software packages with a developer on top to glue everything together and hope that this Frankenstein of a conversion funnel won’t fall apart.

Conclusion

Online teaching is a fulfilling way to make money while doing what you love – sharing knowledge. Even then, the success of your online teaching career greatly depends on the teaching platform you go for. 

This article covered ten of the best teaching platforms online that you might want to consider. Just take the time to assess the features, upsides, and downsides of each. Then compare them to your goals. From there, the clarity on the best online teaching platform for you comes naturally.