Best Online Course Platforms for Solo Creators: What I Learned After Building My First
I launched my first paid course in a hotel room in Lisbon. It was a Wednesday afternoon, I had terrible WiFi, and I was trying to upload a 700MB video file to a platform whose upload interface I’d only seen once before. The file failed three times. On the fourth attempt, I discovered the platform had a 500MB limit for the plan I was on. I was live in 36 hours.
That experience taught me more about course platforms than any comparison chart ever could. The specs don’t matter when your video won’t upload. What matters is whether the tool gets out of your way when you’re stressed, tired, and building something alone.
Over the last three years I’ve built on three different platforms. Below is what actually separates them for a solo creator who handles their own filming, editing, pricing, and support emails. The recommendations are specific, and two of them are platforms I’ve paid for with my own money.
The real decision: what kind of creator are you
Most “best course platform” articles treat all creators the same. They aren’t. A YouTuber who wants to gate bonus content behind a paywall has completely different needs than a consultant who wants to sell a structured, multi-module curriculum with homework and certificates.
The three models that work for solopreneurs are:
- The content library. Mostly videos, maybe some PDFs. No complicated assignments. The student buys, watches, done.
- The structured curriculum. Sequential modules, quizzes, completion tracking. The creator wants the course to feel like a school, minus the school.
- The hybrid business. Courses plus coaching, memberships, a Best podcast microphone solo creators feed, a Best community platforms creators, maybe a small shop. The course is one part of a larger solo business.
Each of the platforms below maps to one of those models. Trying to force Kajabi into a simple content library is like renting an office building when all you need is a Dropbox folder. Trying to run a coaching hybrid on Teachable Basic is frustrating because the native community and email Best link bio tools creators are thin. Match the tool to the actual business, not the business you pretend you’re running.
#1 — Teachable: best for structured courses with minimal overhead
Price: Free plan available; paid plans from $59/month ($39/month billed annually).Why it works: Teachable is the platform I used for that first Lisbon launch, and I stayed on it for 18 months. The reason is simple: it does one thing extremely well, which is hosting a structured video course with a clean student experience, and it doesn’t pretend to do twenty other things.
The course builder is genuinely intuitive. You upload videos, add text blocks, drop in quiz questions, and arrange everything in a sequence that students can’t skip unless you let them. The student dashboard is uncluttered. I’ve had students in their sixties take courses on Teachable without sending me a single “where is the login button” email, which is a real data point when you’re support-staff-of-one.
The payment processing is also simpler than most competitors. Teachable handles checkout, EU VAT, and affiliate payouts natively. If you want to run a small affiliate program - say, a few other creators who promote your course for a 30% cut - you can set that up in five minutes. You don’t need a separate affiliate plugin or a third-party platform.
The downside: Teachable’s Best portfolio website builder freelancers and email marketing are basic. You get a sales page template, but customizing it beyond fonts and colors is clunky. I eventually moved my landing pages to a separate website because the Teachable pages weren’t converting as well as I wanted, and I couldn’t figure out why until I realized the mobile layout was burying my buy button below the fold on iPhones.
The community feature exists but is rudimentary. It’s essentially a comment section per module. If you want a real community, Teachable expects you to integrate Circle or Discord, which costs extra and adds complexity.
For a solo creator who wants to sell a clean, professional course and handle marketing elsewhere, Teachable is still my first recommendation. It’s what I’d tell a friend who said “I filmed ten lessons and I want to charge $200 for them.”
#2 — Kajabi: best if your course is part of a bigger solo business
Price: Plans from $149/month ($119/month billed annually).Why it works: Kajabi is expensive, and I hesitated for two months before switching to it. But my business had changed: I was running a paid community, a weekly newsletter, a small coaching offer, and two courses. Juggling Teachable for courses, ConvertKit for emails, and Circle for community was taking about eight hours a week in platform management alone.
Kajabi put courses, email marketing, landing pages, and a basic community all in one place. That consolidation is expensive, but if you’re already paying $79 for Teachable, $39 for an email tool, and $39 for community software, the math starts to look different. At a certain scale, paying one company $119 to replace three separate bills is actually cheaper, and it definitely saves time.
The course builder is solid, though slightly less intuitive than Teachable’s. Where Kajabi pulls ahead is the pipeline feature: you can build automations where someone downloads a free guide, gets a three-email sequence, and then is offered a course, all without touching Zapier. For a solo creator who doesn’t want to learn automation logic, this is genuinely useful. I built my first product launch funnel in Kajabi in an afternoon, and it ran itself for two weeks while I was traveling.
The community feature is called “Kajabi Communities,” and it’s better than Teachable’s but not as robust as Circle. You get topics, events, and a leaderbord, but the mobile app experience is where it shines. My members actually open the app and participate, which wasn’t happening in Discord because people have notification fatigue.
The honest tradeoff: price. Kajabi starts at $119/month on annual billing, and that only gives you three products and three funnels. If you outgrow that, you’re at $159/month. For a creator who hasn’t made their first dollar yet, that’s a real gamble. I only switched after my monthly revenue was consistently over $3,000, because the time savings justified the cost.
If you’re just starting and you don’t already have a list, a community, or multiple products, Kajabi is probably too much. But if you’re drowning in tool subscriptions and you want one dashboard, it’s the best all-in-one I’ve found.
#3 — Thinkific: best for free starts and simple content libraries
Price: Free plan available; paid plans from $49/month ($36/month billed annually).Why it works: Thinkific has the most generous free plan of the three major platforms. You can build one full course, host it, and sell it without paying Thinkific anything. They’ll take a transaction fee on the free plan, but for a first-time creator who wants to validate demand before committing to a monthly bill, that structure is hard to beat.
The course builder is straightforward. It doesn’t have the visual polish of Teachable, but it’s functional. Where Thinkific surprised me was the quizzes and assignments. The assessment tools are actually more flexible than Teachable’s on mid-tier plans, with options for multiple choice, file uploads, and even essay-style submissions that you can review and grade manually. One copywriter I know runs a small certification program on Thinkific specifically because she needed the file-upload assignment feature, which Teachable only offers on higher plans.
Thinkific’s website and sales page builder is decent. You can build a homepage and link it to a custom domain, which means you could theoretically run a small business entirely on Thinkific without a separate website. I wouldn’t recommend it for a serious brand - the SEO control is limited, and the blog functionality is bare - but for a creator who wants one place to start, it’s possible.
The downside is scale. Once you have multiple courses, a membership, and email marketing needs, Thinkific’s paid tiers start to feel expensive for what you get. Their email tool is very basic, basically a broadcast sender with no segmentation or automation worth using. Their community feature exists but is weaker than both Teachable and Kajabi. Thinkific is best when it’s doing one thing: hosting courses for creators who are just getting started or who only ever want a simple content library.
What I wish I’d known about pricing before I started
Most platforms show you a monthly price, but the real cost structure is more nuanced. Here’s what I paid over a year on each platform:
- Teachable: $468 annual plan + $0 transaction fee (I was on the paid plan) + $120 for a Zapier integration I needed for advanced email tagging. Total: ~$588.
- Kajabi: $1,428 annual plan + $0 transaction fee. No extra tools needed because email and landing pages were included. Total: $1,428.
- Thinkific: $0 for my test course, then $432 when I upgraded for the second course. Total: $432.
Kajabi was the most expensive, but it also replaced ConvertKit ($468/year) and Circle ($468/year), so my net tooling cost actually went down. This is why the “best platform” question is really a “best stack” question. Count your total software bill, not just the course platform.
Also worth noting: none of these platforms handle the actual video hosting well at large scale. If your course has 50 hours of 1080p video, you’re going to hit storage limits on lower plans. Thinkific’s free plan has a particularly low storage ceiling. I compressed my videos with Handbrake before upload, which is an annoying extra step but saved me from storage overage fees.
Monetization beyond the course itself
One mistake I see repeatedly is creators who build a course and then have nothing else to sell the same student. The most profitable solo creators I know treat their first course as an entry point, not the whole business.
Teachable, Kajabi, and Thinkific all support upsells and order bumps at checkout. A $49 course with a $29 workbook upsell can be more profitable than a $79 course alone. I’ve had upsell take rates of 18-25%, which adds up quickly.
Kajabi goes further with memberships and recurring subscriptions. If you build a “pro” tier where students get new lessons every month, you move from one-time revenue to predictable recurring revenue, which changes your business entirely. Teachable now offers memberships too, but the feature is newer and less flexible than Kajabi’s.
Thinkific supports subscriptions on paid plans, but the recurring billing tools are basic. For a creator whose main goal is a membership model, I’d steer them toward Circle or a Stripe setup before I’d recommend Thinkific’s native subscription feature.
Frequently asked questions
Can I switch platforms after launching?
Yes, but it’s annoying. You’ll need to export your student list, download your videos, and rebuild your course structure. Student progress doesn’t transfer cleanly, so active cohorts usually stay on the old platform while new students go to the new one. I did this migration once. It took a full week.
Do I need a separate website?
Not at first. All three platforms give you a hosted sales page and checkout. But once you’re serious about SEO and brand control, a separate site - WordPress, Ghost, or a custom build - will outperform the platform’s native pages. I kept Teachable for delivery but moved all marketing to my own site after six months.
How much should I charge for my first course?
More than you think. Most first-time creators underprice. I see $19 and $29 courses constantly from people who spent 40 hours building them. My first course was $97. My second was $247. The second one sold better because the price signaled quality. If the cheapest thing you sell is too cheap, you’ll attract students who need refunds and complain.
Can I run live sessions inside these platforms?
Teachable and Thinkific integrate with Zoom for live sessions, but the experience is clunky. Kajabi has native live video through a Circle-like feature called “Coaching,” but I still prefer running live sessions on Zoom and sending the replay to students inside the platform. Keep it simple.
What about payment processing for international students?
All three accept major credit cards and PayPal. Kajabi handles more currencies natively, which matters if you’re targeting students in Europe or Asia. Teachable and Thinkific both work fine for USD transactions, but international students may see currency conversion fees from their bank.
My recommendation
If you’re building your first course and your business is just you and a camera, start with Teachable. The course builder is the best in the industry, the student experience is clean, and the pricing is fair. Upgrade or migrate only when your business actually needs what another platform offers.
If you’re already running multiple products and you’re drowning in software subscriptions, Kajabi is worth the premium for consolidation alone. Just make sure your monthly revenue justifies the cost before you commit.
For creators who want to test demand before spending money, Thinkific’s free plan is unbeatable. Build the course, make a few sales, and then decide if the business is worth investing in.
The platform doesn’t make the course. You do. Pick one, build the thing, and get it live. A mediocre course on Teachable beats a perfect course that never launches because you spent three months comparing platforms.
FTC disclosure: This article contains affiliate links for Teachable, Kajabi, and Thinkific. If you sign up through one of these links, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I’ve paid for all three platforms myself at various points, and my recommendations are based on actual use, not commission rates.