E-learning is one of the fastest growing industries in the world. Little-to-no investment to get started and passive income for months and years to come? Yeah, it’s no wonder so many people are hopping on the online learning bandwagon…
But with the explosion of online courses, has–unsurprisingly–come an explosion of e-learning platforms. And if you’ve ventured into the rabbit hole of online learning, you’ve probably already run into your first major roadblock: Where *is* the best place to host an online course?
Well, you’ve landed in the right place. Here, we’ll be exploring our favorite tool for online course creation and hosting, plus the features and benefits it has to offer.
Disclaimer: Even though we’re in love with this tool, don’t forget that you’ll still need to do a bit of digging to determine your own needs before making a decision (based on your content, hosting needs, audience, budget, etc.).
Kajabi…What the Tech is That?!
When researching the best platform to host an online course, there’s a good chance you’ve probably come across Kajabi—one of the most popular online course platforms out there.
We’re BIG fans of Kajabi at Nicki K Media! It’s user-friendly for both us and our students, making it the perfect platform for all our brands.
Kajabi makes life a lot easier for online entrepreneurs with its powerful all-in-one platform designed for coaches, online educators, and pretty much anyone out there who wants to share their knowledge to transform people’s lives.
What many business owners love about Kajabi is that it’s one of the most integrated platforms around, allowing you not only to create your online course platform, but to also market and sell your offer.
While Kajabi offers a range of features from website building, to online video hosting, email marketing, and much more, an all-in-one solution is not necessarily the best option for your business. The Circuit Sales System team has stuck to using Kajabi as a course builder alone, which we believe is one of its standout features.
The King of Course Builders
We love Kajabi’s course builder as it allows you to package your knowledge and deliver it in a structured and engaging way using one of their many “digital products” (this is how they refer to online courses).
Whether you want to create a membership site, a course with gated content, or a coaching program, Kajabi has you covered. Once you’ve chosen the right digital product for you, you can get an outline for your content in no time at all:
One of the big reasons Kajabi gets the thumbs up from us, is because you get to avoid complicated tech hassles like coding and broken integrations.Trying to piece together 15 different tools and plugins like a stressful piece of flatpack furniture? Nope, that’s not really our jam–and we’d prefer to use the time to grow our business anyway, rather than focusing on tech. That’s why we love the fact that everything in Kajabi is made to work together with user-friendliness in mind.
Ease of Use
It doesn’t get much more straightforward than Kajabi’s drag-and-drop course builder, which lets you upload course content and arrange it however you want to.
While Kajabi isn’t the only course builder out there which features a drag-and-drop online course builder, many don’t offer the same flexibility as Kajabi. With Teachable, for example, you can only add two levels to your online course and its platform isn’t designed to create longer-style online courses.
Once you set up a new online course with Kajabi, you can add unlimited lessons or posts to them, as well as subcategories if you want to give your online course even more structure.
Thanks to Kajabi’s bulk upload feature, adding content to your lessons or online courses is also very intuitive. You have the option to upload lesson files directly from your device or you can bulk import files from Google Drive or Dropbox.
If you do run into issues, Kajabi’s extensive customer support is on hand waiting to help. There’s a webinar, lesson, article, or live chat agent on hand waiting to solve pretty much any issue you might have–which has definitely been a savior for us!
Front End Experience
In terms of online course design, we love Kajabi’s pre-built templates for creating your digital product. You can create fully personalized online courses that not only look appealing, but are also much more engaging for learners.
Many other platforms only feature a single theme for its course player. And without implementing your brand’s unique colors and aesthetics, your course can end up looking pretty, well…generic…
Kajabi’s course player is also highly optimized for all devices, meaning your online courses will look exactly how you designed them across all devices, including mobile and tablet (aka the ones that tend to go a bit funky sometimes).
And in today’s mobile-driven world, Kajabi’s mobile app (primarily designed for students), is something that really sets Kajabi apart from the competition. Learners can conveniently access their courses and consume content anytime, anywhere.
Online Community
One of the best ways to keep your students engaged with your online course is to set up an online community that enables them to come together, build relationships, and collectively work toward their goals.
Kajabi lets you set up a dedicated community area that’s separate from your main online course website. As soon as learners are a part of your online course website, they can access the online community, where users can take part in discussions, leave comments or posts below lessons, and send private messages to other community members or admins.
Kajabi is also very strong in live events and the CSS team has recently been making use of Kajabi’s live class feature, which enables interactive sessions like group coaching (without the need for external tools), accommodating up to 200 students.
Extra Features
Engaging quizzes and assessments can not only boost student participation, but also improve knowledge retention, and ultimately lead to a more successful course. And with Kajabi’s pre-built assessments functionality, you can easily set up quizzes and tests for your online course lessons.
You have the option to set up professional quizzes with different styles of questions and can even let your students upload their assignment files directly from the online course platform. You can also award your students grades once they complete assignments or quizzes.
Reports and Analytics
Building out your course is one thing, but it’s also incredibly important to track how well your online courses are performing. Kajabi’s platform does a great job at tracking your learner’s progress, as well as the performance of your online courses. You can keep an eye on important metrics such as quiz scores, course completion rates, and video engagement rates on your online course website.
When I started to really scale my first brand, Filthy Rich Writer, I knew Kajabi was the best platform not just for me, but for my students. The Circuit Sales System is what helped me 40x my business in just over 2 years. But Kajabi certainly made that process easier.
Nicki Krawczyk, founder of Nicki K Media and the Circuit Sales System
Is Kajabi the Right Fit for Your Business?
It’s fair to say we’ve done a good job of tooting Kajabi’s trumpet as one of the best places to host an online course. But all for good reason—Kajabi has served all of the Nicki K Media brands incredibly well for creating engaging courses, which our students have an easy time navigating through.
The platform makes it easy to consume course content, whether a video, text, or downloadable resource, plus track your progress. And the mobile app is a convenient bonus for learning whenever, wherever!
Stuart Tarn, Comprehensive Copywriting Academy student (Nicki K Media’s first course under the company’s first brand, Filthy Rich Writer)
But as a digital entrepreneur, time is your most valuable asset. And if you’ve already got the knowledge and expertise to share, Kajabi is the fastest, most efficient way to launch your course and grow quickly. With other platforms, it could take you weeks or months to build out your course. With Kajabi, it’s a matter of days.
You can forget time wasted switching between different tools, updating software, and googling how to solve various tech issues—Kajabi seriously cuts down workload and gives you more time back to spend working on your business.
Yes, it does come with a slightly steeper cost. But we truly believe you get a lot for what you pay and don’t forget you’ll be saving money in other ways by not forking out on things like website hosting and webinar software, all thanks to the all-in-one nature of the platform.
Want to see the features for yourself first? Kajabi offers a 14-day free trial so you can test out everything the platform has to offer for two full weeks before deciding if it’s right for you.
And remember, choosing the best online course platform for your content is just the beginning!
Now, you’ll need to outline your program, start the recording process, market it, and decide when to start selling your course.
Whew. Sounds a lot, right? But don’t worry, we can help you out with the rest of the process here.
Note: this page contains affiliate links.