Sites for online courses

Let’s assume you’ve done everything right – you’ve been blogging a decent amount, you’ve been collecting emails, you’ve been giving and giving and giving.

People love your newsletter and pretty much are just waiting for you to announce a book, a product, a “something” that they can buy.

And you’ve heard that creating an online course with WordPress doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. You’ve also heard it’s easier than some other solutions.

Let’s look at your options

What I’m going to do here is walk you thru several options you have available to you when creating an online course with WordPress. None is superior to another simply because what you may want or need will differ from someone else. So I’ve tried to highlight the best pros and cons of each, so you can make your own decision.

In no specific order, here are six options you have.

1. Zippy Courses

I wrote about Zippy Courses when it first came out. While it may have sounded like I was critical, the truth is that I like it. My only issue was what I wrote before – it really needs its own site (either a new site or a sub-domain, like courses.chrislema.com).

That is still true. But Derek has kept moving on Zippy Courses so late last year they added quiz support. It’s only multiple choice for now, but for a lot of folks that’s all they need. I like it so much I’m creating a course with it! More on that later.

So let’s dig into the pros and cons.

Pros

• It is a stand alone solution that requires no other plugins
• It now comes with his own social triggers theme (a bonus if you’re not a designer)
• The interface is the best one I’ve seen to date. Clean and easy
• It supports dripping content out
• You can run more than one course per site
• Works with Stripe & Infusionsoft for payments

Cons

• It needs its own site. Can’t really be part of a larger site
• No support for quiz banks (or random selection of quiz questions) yet
• No certificates or coupon support yet

2. LifterLMS

I haven’t written about LifterLMS before, but have often been asked to by folks who’ve read other eLearning articles I’ve written.