How To Build a Successful Continuing Education Course In 2025
Discover the potential of the professional continuing education market and unlock significant opportunities for education entrepreneurs today.
Discover the thriving world of professional continuing education in our latest video, where we explore the vast opportunities available for education entrepreneurs. Learn about the trends shaping the market, innovative approaches to course creation, and strategies for attracting learners. Whether you’re a seasoned educator or just starting, this video is packed with valuable insights to help you thrive. Don’t miss out — watch now to discover your next big opportunity.
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The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:02.400] – Jonathan Denwood
This is episode 129. In this episode, we’ll be discussing continuing education. It’s an area of eLearning and membership where both Kurt and I have seen people achieve great success. We like in this episode to explain some of the basic principles of it, why it’s slightly different from the general membership website, give you some examples of people that we’ve worked with that have got success, and in the second half, look at some specific tools to produce material and learning management systems that you should consider to be the platform for your success in this particular sector. Hopefully, you’ll get some value from this, I think, and so will Kurt. We’ve seen tremendous success for our clients in this area. So, Kirk, would you like to take a moment to introduce yourself to our new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:27.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yes, I would love to, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen, and I own an agency called Manananomas. We work directly with the good folks over at WP Tonic.
[00:01:35.820] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we delve into the first half, I’d also like to point out that we have a fabulous course that shows you how to build a membership website on WordPress, which runs on 40 to 43% of all websites. It’s done by Kurt himself. It’s normally around $49, but there’s a special deal where you can get it at half price, around $25. It utilizes the latest WordPress technology to cover everything. It will save you a ton of time. You can get this, plus some special deals from sponsors, along with a curated list of the best WordPress technology, plugins, and services. You can access all these goodies by visiting WP-Tonic.com/deals. WP-Tonic.com/deals. What more could you ask for? I have no idea. It’s a fantastic course, and there are some great special offers. What more could somebody ask for? So, Kirk, Somebody has booked a consultation with you, and they’re looking at continuous education.
[00:03:09.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Good news, as these are typically some of the most successful people we deal with. So, how would you do that initial consultation and how would you explain to somebody why it’s such a good idea?
[00:03:24.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, the first thing to understand when you come into a consultation like this is that when you have a client that’s doing continuous education, it’s not the same as a course creator with a hobby or trying to make a course from scratch. It’s different. Typically, these individuals come from a corporate background, bringing expertise, and they have certain expectations that they already have from their other learning environments. And so we have to analyze where they’re coming from, what they’re really looking for. And then the fun part is driving them to a solution that’s both economical and profitable, one that can handle the flow. I think what a lot of people miss when we talk about continuous education or continuing Education is that, normally, our content on this show is about knowing your offer, crafting the perfect offer, building your audience, all that. Many of these individuals in continuing education are already accompanied by students who are essentially directed to them through other organizations or contacts. And so when we build these projects, we’re not building for a launch and marketing effort. We’re building more towards stability and bandwidth and handling the flow that’s actually going to come to it.
[00:04:50.280] – Jonathan Denwood
I agree with that, but I still think there’s some marketing. But I think the beauty of it is that they already know the audience. They have already identified the pain points, which come with the… Because this is continuous education that the student base have to do it normally, not always, but they have to do it normally yearly or every couple of years, depending on the accreditation that they’re looking to get from it could be from the federal government, state government, industry associations, educational, and to renew their license with a particular industry association or trade association, or with the state, or with the Fed, they have to do this accreditation training. They’re normally and the audience is there. The need is there. It’s pretty clear-cut. That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it, Kurt?
[00:06:13.350] – Kurt von Ahnen
It takes them from selling courses on a one to one basis to a one to many basis. And so perfect example, someone is like a dental hygienist. A dental hygienist is going to have to take training once a year to get recertified and make sure that they can continue to offer services to patients. So if you became the continuing education provider for a dental organization, you would automatically get all of the dental hygienists from that organization to take your course. So you’re basically selling one to many. It’s the idea that there’s organizations coming to you for continuing certification.
[00:06:53.180] – Jonathan Denwood
I think the other thing is do your brainstorming of ideas and the development. I think people find this because they… And that’s the beauty of coming to WP Tonic, and it’s the beauty of WordPress, because it will give you the most flexibility and ownership much to much higher level than any SaaS software as a service platform. And we’re going to be talking about some of the SaaS’s in the second half, but we still are dedicating to WordPress because it gives you that ownership. But you might know this accreditation sector by heart, but developing the content can still be daunting. Sometimes for the first course, people can overthink it. I found in particular this sector, they can try and throw everything in at the beginning, and they need to back off and just aim at the basics. What do you reckon?
[00:08:09.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
When we say aim at the basics, it’s very important to recognize who you’re accredited through. So they’re going to have different requirements. So sometimes you need to have some tool in place that’s going to record the timing of something or some way to justify the timing of something. So for instance, we’re big fans of Lifter LMS. Lifter LMS doesn’t have a built-in Timer for its lessons. However, it does have a tool called advanced videos. And so if you can demonstrate that your course has five hours worth of video and you mandate through the course settings that they have to watch all the content, then you can say, well, I’ve got this five-hour course. And so those are the types of things that you need to look for. You need to say, what are the requirements that the accrediting body is looking for? And then how can we meet those requirements? It comes a little bit of like puzzle making, right? Almost like problem solving to figure out how do you hit each of those little bullet points. But if you choose a segment for continuing education, and then you start to look at the different accreditation bodies that let you do it.
[00:09:20.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
They’ll give you the requirements, and then you literally just look for the tools that you’re going to need. And I think Jonathan is right. Shoot for the bare minimum to get launched. Launched. Because realistically, your customers are coming to you through referral. You don’t have to worry about bells and whistles and fancy animations and things like that. You just want to provide the material, the reporting, and the certification. And then as you grow, you can always expand and make things cooler.
[00:09:48.040] – Jonathan Denwood
They see the accreditation process going to these association or state body, and they worry about that. And you do to find out what the specifications are, and you do have to meet them. But it’s a good thing because it will keep some of the competition out. So it’s not a negative thing. And normally, most associations want more people offering more training to their membership, or if it’s accreditation that’s going through a state or whatever. You’re not locked out. There might be a fee involved, I don’t know, for them to check the course over, but it’s normally not ridiculous. But like I say, I’m going to emphasize this again, don’t go get it accredited, meet the initial requirements, but treat it as a first of stepping stone, don’t throw everything in at once because you also want to learn from those students. But, going to emphasize this again, the beauty of it is that there is audience. It’s been proven there’s audience. There’s no guessing. It’s there, it’s established. You’ve probably got other players that you’re going to go up against, but that’s not terrible, especially if you’re going to do something a bit different.
[00:11:35.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
When you think about it, it’s all just part of the free market. Like welders. There’s a ton of welders out there, and welders need continuing education as new things evolve and come out in the field. So in some cases, you don’t even have to make all of the training content yourself. In some cases, the accrediting bodies will provide you with content or outlines or curriculum, and and then you adjust it to fit your platform, and then you have the ability to sell that training to people that require the certification to keep on the job. So it’s a really interesting way to look at things. When I was helping somebody get accredited for a NEMA 2000 course that deals with can bus networks on boats. It was a very interesting process because right when it seemed like an absolute pain in the rear end, everything cleaned up and they got approved and then they were in business. And so it’s one of those things where know what the requirements are, do what you can to meet the requirements, and make sure you have an explanation for everything that seems like it might not be what they’re used to out of the box.
[00:12:45.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
A lot of these accrediting bodies are going to be used to custom one-off Scorm platforms that are very expensive to build and manage. But we can run these tools through WordPress with different tools in WordPress and do it for literally 20 or 30 % of that budget. And so when we can come in as competitive players in this market, it gives us the ability to help our creators make higher margins.
[00:13:12.280] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s a fantastic point, Kurt. So what are any particular continuous education courses, clients that you’ve helped out in the past few years that come to mind? Obviously, you’re not going to talk specifically, but talk about particular areas. I’m sure the listeners and viewers of this are going to be interested in that.
[00:13:41.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
Medical is huge. So literally, I’ve got half a dozen people that I know that are in the continuing education field for medical. How to get your license as a CPN, how to get your license as a nurse, how to get your suture certificate so you can do sutures. I even did a presentation for the Department of Defense while we were showing them how a Lifter LMS site would run scorm content. And what was interesting about that was, that was actually, instead of being a request for quote, that was a request for information. And so we developed our proposal. We gave the request for information presentation, and the Department of Defense was so impressed. They said that was going to be the benchmark for the other people to compete against for the request for quote. So before you make a discount opinion and say, oh, maybe WordPress isn’t strong enough, if you present it the right way, it’s got a lot of Like Jonathan said, we’ve got a lot of freedom, we’ve got ownership, design flexibility. We can do things that other people aren’t able to do in these other platforms. So we’re able to meet a lot of needs.
[00:14:57.660] – Jonathan Denwood
So the medical, what are the Any other sectors that come to mind?
[00:15:01.240] – Kurt von Ahnen
It goes on and on. Automotive mechanics, they got to be certified all the time for their ASE certifications.
[00:15:07.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Are there any that come to mind that you’ve actively helped?
[00:15:12.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, bartenders. There’s the one for bartenders, the NEMA 2000 course, obviously the nurses, dentists. We had a dentist one come through. Mortgage. People that process mortgages have to be certified, I think every two years, I think. So we did one for them. We’ve done a lot of continuing education. And what I like about it, and I’m going to go right back to it again, Jonathan, is they already know that they have a market. They already know they have referrals for the traffic. So the main concern was bandwidth, stability, reliability, and making sure that we could build something on time and have it ready for those students that were already waiting to take the training. It’s really cool to build a project project where you know it’s baked in with customers already.
[00:16:04.160] – Jonathan Denwood
What are some of the things that people, based on your experience with your own agency, working with LiftLMS and WP tonic, what are some of the things that people tend to forget that trick them up, make it roadblocks, things that if they know about it at the beginning will help the process, Kurt?
[00:16:30.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
I drive back to the specifications that the accrediting body requires. What a lot of people miss because they get caught up in the excitement of building something is they’re going to need some a student ID number or a verification serial number or something that gets added to the certificate as an extra field. And while there are ways to do this, obviously, there’s ways to do this. If you don’t dot the I’s and cross the T’s in the build process, you find yourself having these little panic attacks downstream. And if you’ve launched a couple of hundred students through the platform and you’ve missed something that’s required, that’s going to add a lot of back-end manual labor for you that you don’t want to do. So big things like having custom fields in your enrollment process so you can get the required information from the student. Things that a lot of people don’t think about this, but in WordPress, we have very active APIs and different platforms that we use have REST APIs. And so a lot of times these accrediting bodies will want to be connected to your website. And so when that conversation happens, that’s not time to panic and run for the hills.
[00:17:45.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s time to do your research and go, well, how do we make that happen? In some cases, the accrediting bodies actually have their own custom plugins that you can install. And then you put in an API key, you put in an API key, and they shake hands and they communicate your website and their website. And what that’s for is sometimes you’re not even selling the courses. Sometimes the accrediting body is actually selling the courses, doing the enrollment, and then that sale has to be automated into your site to give them access to the course. And then when they complete the course and get certified, that other communication goes the other way, right? So you have the write and the get, or how do they say get and send, or whatever is in APIs. That information for the certificate goes back to the accrediting body and confirms that that account is now closed. And so it just closes the loop for you. But knowing that that’s probably going to be a request in the process is something that you need to bring up from the beginning. A lot of accrediting bodies, when you start to negotiate with them about building a continuing education course site, they take things for granted.
[00:18:53.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so you have to be very clear, like any government contract would be. You would have to look at every single bullet and go, Can we make this happen? Can we make this happen? And then look at what hoops you’d have to jump through to make it happen.
[00:19:07.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, and I think the beauty, if you’re listening to this and you might be considering this sector, the other great thing is both me and Kirk, you can book a free consultation with me at WP Tonic, and you can book some continuous consultation with me and Kirk. That will be paid. But we’ve got a ton of experience in this sector where we can share and really help guide you to be successful. I think the other thing with the research I did on this subject, Kirk, before this show is that it’s predicted to still be a very growth area. Some of the online information that I was researching was saying that this area continuous education has grown quite rapidly since COVID and it’s predicted to keep on growing to 2030 continuously. Have you come across this type of prediction?
[00:20:19.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and we can drive down to what are the root causes for those kinds of things. If we think about every business now, we think about terms of profit and margins and shareholders. The cost to send somebody to a two-day seminar or workshop to get recertified somewhere is it’s time out of the office, it is air fare, hotel, rental car, per diem for food. It gets to be an expensive adventure, even if the training is free, which it rarely ever is. Even if the training is free, a business can be out anywhere from 8: 00 to $15,000 to send an employee out away for training. And so add to that whatever the certification cost was, $1,500 or $2,000 or whatever, it’s very expensive. And so especially since COVID, people have realized if we can do this training virtually and we can save $8,000 to $15,000 per person on the training, then obviously they’re going to search for as many virtual training opportunities as possible.
[00:21:29.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, Yeah, I think it’s amazing. But it’s also through micro learning, through people, they just expect hybrid. We do so much of the training online and then If you’re going to a conference, having some of it at the conference. But people do expect training now to be online, don’t they?
[00:21:57.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Even in-person training. So Let’s drive back to when I did training for Ducati, the motorcycle company. Originally, that used to be two weeks away from the dealership, getting theory education and hands-on education. Well, when I went to Ducati, one of the first things I did was convert all of the theory training into online virtual training, and then we cut the time away from the dealership in half. So that way we said, Okay, get all your theory online so that you know what to do when you get the class, and we’ll go directly to review and hands on practicum stuff. Practicum is a fancy word that means like hand on demonstration, right? And that’s real popular in the medical field. In the medical field, they’ll give the course online, give all the theory online. And then when you actually go to whatever the workshop or the certification is, it’s really just a hands-on demonstration that you have absorbed the content, you understand the process, and you can demonstrate it.
[00:22:55.860] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. I think we’re going to go now and have a short And when we come back for the second half, we’re going to talk about some of the tools that are out there to help you produce content. We’ll probably have a quick chat about SCORM and some of the other interactive formats. And people get a bit hanged up about that and where their place is in producing training, and when they’re probably not appropriate, we’re going to be looking at some online tools that can help you produce content. And then we’ll quickly look at some of the learning management systems, which are your platform to present the training. So it should be a great second half. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a great first half. This is a great area where a lot of clients have a lot of success. But before we go into the second half, got great free resource for you. That’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook group. It’s totally free. Got any questions that come up during the podcast or the video, if you’re watching the video on the WPTonic YouTube channel.
[00:24:16.020] – Jonathan Denwood
You can go to Facebook, join the Membership Machine Show Facebook group, and put your questions there. I also put a load of new content on there. I’ve had a break last week because I’ve been traveling, but normally I put stuff on every day, get back into that in the next couple of days, probably. It’s a great free resource, so join us there. Me and Kurtgo on there. So what more could you ask for? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get from that group. So let’s go in. So a lot of people… I’m not funny enough, I’m not one of them. When I get the idea in my mind, I can then type it out, basically. But a lot of people get writer’s block, and a lot of people, when they really get worked up about writing the content for a course. So I think this is where AI can really help. It can really churn out a layout document for you, a structured document, and it can And it’ll assist you writing some of it, and then you can really customize it and add your own voice. And I really like Claude.
[00:25:42.200] – Jonathan Denwood
I found it Some people say that it’s Anthropic, the company behind it. Chatgpt is a major competitor, and Perplexity is another one. But I just like Claude. I just think the content it produces, and it really does help people get over this writer block, this white sheet syndrome, which I don’t know what you think. A lot of people do suffer from it, don’t they, Kurt?
[00:26:17.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, and not for nothing. Even if you really know a topic, it’s amazing. You think, Oh, I’ve got it all figured out. And then you ask artificial intelligence, Hey, I’ve written this outline, or, Hey, read this outline for me and let me know what I’ve missed. It always comes back with some detail or something that you glossed over, and then you realize, Oh, I should have included that. To me, I don’t really suffer the writer’s block per se, but I do use it to audit my work for completion to make sure I didn’t completely ghost a topic that I should have included.
[00:26:52.680] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. It’s $20 a month. I think it’s unlimited at that. I like it. Like I said, other people think other tools are better, but I still stay with it. I think it’s something you should look at. Grammarly, my grammar’s pretty bad, so I rely on it a lot. And it’s just one of those products that will save you a ton of time. I pay it yearly. Yearly, you get a big discount. I think it’s about $14 a month. If you pay month to month, it’s $30. So they really want you to pay the annual. And it’s one of those. I try and keep my SaaS subscriptions down because you can find a lot of money, but it’s one of those It’s a bit like my Zoom. Grammarly, Zoom, StreamYard, they’re the three that I pay. I only pay for the lowest pro of StreamYard because the next one up, I think, is a little bit expensive. But when it comes to Zoom and Grammarly, I normally just pay it. What do you reckon about Grammarly?
[00:28:09.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
I like that Grammarly gives me a report card every month and says that I use more unique words than 96 % of the other users.
[00:28:18.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Next one is out of order slightly is Canva. That’s the other one that I just pay. I use that almost every day. I’m using Claude almost every day, Gramly every day, and Canva every day. Still pay for my Photoshop, but I just use that 20, 30% and the rest of the graphic I’m just using Canva a lot of the time, and I just think it’s fantastic value. I can find the interface a bit frustrating. Obviously, Adobe, they’ve got their own Canva competitor. I think that’s Express, Adobe Express. So there’s a few other competitors, but I still pay for Canva. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:29:12.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think everybody gets all my money, Jonathan, to be honest with you. I still have Canva. I have no idea why I pay for it. My kids use it. I have it. I have to use it for some of my clients. We share files back and forth and do stuff. But creatively, I I don’t really get as much out of it as I do for my creative cloud account. And I have a whole creative cloud account for another reason, right? Adobe has been getting all my money for all the years. So it’s just one of those things. Like you said, these subscriptions can begin to stack up on On the AI side, because I use AI for some of my image generation, I’ll do that through either Grok or through Magi. And Magi is just a conglomerate of AI tools. But I like that it has agents built into it. So when I’m writing for eLearning material, it’s got an agent for eLearning material, and it customizes the output for what I’m working on.
[00:30:11.240] – Jonathan Denwood
On to some tools that came on my radar I don’t actively been using them, but they seem interesting. I don’t know how to pronounce this correctly. Mentimeter.
[00:30:23.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Mentimeter.
[00:30:24.860] – Jonathan Denwood
How do you pronounce it?
[00:30:26.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Mentimeter.
[00:30:27.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Mentimeter. It’s a quiz This is a survey platform. Some of the survey monkey, there’s a few of them out there, but this come on. They got a free level. They’ve got a basic. These are month-to-month prices at $13, and then they got the pro at $27, so it’s not ridiculous. I had to look at the website and look at… It doesn’t look bad, actually, but it depends. If you got a lot of polling doing quiz making, what do you reckon?
[00:31:03.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
This is where I sound negative, and I’m not trying to sound this way. I was trying to think of the use case for it for me, Jonathan. And if it was prospective students that I wanted to ask questions for, I would probably go to answer the people or something like that and do a broad search for what questions are being asked about learning or whatever. And if I’m going to do quizzes or surveys, since I’m a Lifter LMS expert, I I would probably leverage the quiz tools and Lifter LMS to question my students directly. I really struggled with the use case and where I would use it.
[00:31:40.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Because it’s your WordPress background because some of the SAS learning management systems do, but some of them have very basic polling functionality because it’s a SaaS. There’s not much you can do. So they look at third-party solutions like this. But because both of us are WordPress-focused, you’re not going to have that problem. So that’s why you’re wondering about it.
[00:32:12.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
I did like its analyzing tools and things like that. So it seemed to do a good job of taking the responses and being able to give you a readout or a report of those responses in a way that I thought made more sense than what I see in Survey Monkey.
[00:32:29.660] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. There’s a couple of AI tools, aimed at education, especially. Not specifically, I need to continuous, but there is cross-fertilization because obviously you are in eLearning, and one of them was Magic School, and then the other one is, how do you pronounce it? Eduside AI?
[00:32:57.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
I can’t even… It’s like Eduid. Eduade.
[00:33:00.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Eduade.
[00:33:02.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s not a really bad name.
[00:33:04.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Where do they get these? Magic School, fair enough. But Magic School, 99 per year. Eduida. Ai, whatever you call it, that’s free, or they got a pro version at 599. The problem, they’re specifically aimed at helping schools, teachers, educator. At But I just think it’s very early days when it comes to building these AI tools. Are you going to get enough value out of it than just using Claude or using ChatGPT? That’s the big question, isn’t it?
[00:33:49.540] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I go back to when you had Ryan on from Write Blogger. Could I use ChatGPT to come up with ideas for articles, or did I like the way Write Blogger formatted the responses so I could take them and use them right away the way they were? These SaaS AI tools, I’m going to use Magic School for the example. The Magic School example is giving the instructors more of a instructor’s view. It’s giving it more of a more of a complete package. Whereas when you’re in ChatGPT, perplexity, clog, whatever, you’re basically looking at a chat screen and it’s giving you text, but it’s not giving you the environment for the text. Whereas-for the problems. Yeah, Magic School is filling in the blanks for you. But here’s my nightmare with these tools. And take this with a grain of salt, Jonathan. My fear What they’re doing here is that these schools latch on to these AI tools, and then they put interns or hourly people or somebody, Hey, I need you to make the course for geography. I need you to make the course for this. And then when the instructors actually get these materials that are created by substandard creators, it doesn’t make sense.
[00:35:04.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
Because I go back to the whole thing with AI is like, AI is great and it saves time. As long as you’re an expert, you know what the output is supposed to be. But if they misuse the tool, they’re going to make substandard content for the student.
[00:35:16.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it’s not if. They will. You know and I know. It’s going on right now as we speak, I would imagine. It’s just a fact of the situation. But yeah, that’s a good point. All right, let’s go on to some of the learning management systems. Obviously, we’re WordPress guys. There’s three main ones that I would recommend. I would recommend straight away Lifter LMS, LearnDash, and Tuta LMS. They all do a good job. If you’re in the continuous education, like I said, the only area, but I I definitely know about LearnDash. I’m not sure about Tuta LMS, but the one thing I would love for the Lifter LMS team to develop is, it’s not a major problem because there’s third-party timers out there, is to have this inbuilt Timer as one of their internal add-ons. I think it’s been crying for that for quite a while, but I don’t think it’s on the radar. Am I right about that?
[00:36:28.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
In my discussions, it’s not. So I don’t know. I’m not at that level in there, but it’s come up a fair amount of time with continuing education where people that have a textual course, not a video course, are like, I got to make sure the student spends at least 30 minutes in here. And there’s really no way to know if the student spends because what a student could do is copy the text, put it in the AI tool and say, summarize this for me.
[00:36:54.740] – Jonathan Denwood
They would never do that, would they?
[00:36:56.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so a lot of these sites are going more and more now be requesting timers for the lessons to track each student’s time and screen. But yeah, we don’t have that.
[00:37:10.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, the other thing is, as you mentioned, one of the strengths of Lifter is they’ve got this advanced video add on them, and that has some features. But the other thing, what about if you want to use Presto Player?
[00:37:25.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, Presto Player, you can still use advanced videos through Vimeo. And I shouldn’t say through Vimeo. You can host the videos on bunny. Net, which is cheaper, but you use the Vimeo settings in Lifter LMS to enforce the advanced video.
[00:37:39.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, you can?
[00:37:40.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And so you can literally force someone to watch a video before they get to the next lesson. And so if that video is 45 minutes long, that’s the justification that that lesson is 45 minutes long.
[00:37:54.260] – Jonathan Denwood
And you got various Lifter LMS. It’s It’s a free product, just gives you a ton of functionality just for free. Then you got different bundle offerings that start at 2. 99, but you’re getting a fair amount of functionality. You’re all inbuilt and tested by the core team. When it comes to LearnDash, it’s 199, but they rely a lot more on third. They do have some free internal plugins that are offered, but they do rely on a lot of third party. So does Lifter, but they got a lot more internal add-ons. I think they’ve got the mixture correct. And Tuta, It has a great free offering, and then it’s got 199. But they’re all yearly, unlike the SaaS that we’re going to be talking about. And it’s just fantastic value, folks, because a lot of the SaaS learning management systems, they charge with how many users you got, and then some give you Well, we only charge you for the active users, or we only charge you so much for the non-active, and then we charge you. Well, you don’t have to deal with any of this if you’re using a WordPress, using Lifter or LearnDash, Because you’re just paying a one-off fee and you can have as many users as you like.
[00:39:36.110] – Jonathan Denwood
There are no active users or non-active users. You got so much more ownership. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:39:47.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, part of the reason I fell into WordPress in the first place is because when I was a corporate trainer, I was stuck in that very scenario, working for a large corporation, 2,500 users. Then you had to figure out how many are active. And then our training was annual. And so between October and January or February, we were busy. And the months that we weren’t busy, nothing was happening. So a lot of these platforms had things like it’s $75,000 a year for hosting and maintenance. You take care of your own content, and then you pay a per active user licensing fee, and then they bill you for whatever your active users are for the month. And by the time you add that up, Jonathan, some of them, I mean, it was a quarter million dollars a year to run an LMS. And that is nowhere near the budget that you and I discussed with clients at WP tonic.
[00:40:45.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. And then another, let’s go, well, the other factor is how a lot of people, they’re using a SaaS-based offering tool because they feel they’re going to have scorn content. That’s basically allows to do elaborate animation. We actually, a few, I think it was six weeks ago, actually, times five, and we looked at our AI tool that enabled you to publish animation. I forgot the name of it, but you were quite impressed with it, weren’t you? Was that HIP? No, it was a competitor to PowerPoint and that, now you to do… But you could do elaborate animations. I have to remember the name of it. But a lot of people get stuck. They think they’re going to have animations and interactivity in the initial course, which I don’t think you do at all. But WordPress can handle Scorn. There’s one particular third-party plugin. It works quite well. It’s not that expensive. You can Utilize Scorn content. You do need… You probably could use to lie, I’m not sure, something, a CDN to host the content, Cloudflare. You can’t really use your hosting provider unless you’re telling them, we can help you there, because it does take a lot of file size and bandwidth.
[00:42:23.540] – Jonathan Denwood
But a lot of these SaaS, if you’ve got a A lot of Storm content, they will charge you extra. But let’s go on to a couple of the SaaS that are popular, Azub LMS. They have been growing, they’re still growing. I don’t know. They do have their own publishing tool. It doesn’t compare to, let’s say, iSpring, Learn, or a couple of the other well-known authoring tools, but it does have an authoring tool part of the learning management system. Clean interface, got the basics. They don’t publicly state what the price is. You’ve got to ask. But he is one of the leading ones out there. Do you know anything about Zorba LMS?
[00:43:18.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
I know that when you go to figure out how much it’s going to cost, you got to send them your email first. That’s a sign that is going to be out of budget for a lot of people.
[00:43:29.160] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:43:31.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Also, when you look at SCORM content, so one of the blessings of Scorm is that it is unified. How do I say this? It’s a homogenized way of producing learning content. Like the benefit of SCORM is that I can be an instructional designer that works with Articulate 360 or Captivate or one of these tools, and I can make a SCORM package, and I can put it into any one of these things that we’re discussing right now. When these companies come up with their own learning authoring software, it generally does not transfer-That is the way of making it sticky, making it really pain in the posterior to get away from it. It makes it really unfortunate. You see, in the eLearning space, Jonathan, most people that are like instructional designers don’t know anything about the hosting, the websites, the The particulars about that, all they really focus on is the tools that make the learning content. They generate the file and then someone else in charge of the LMS, the LMS manager is the one that deals with the website and the uploading and all of that. It’s a very unique microcosm of positions and roles, how this works at the corporate level.
[00:44:52.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Another one that is popular is Talent LMS. They’re based in Greece, actually. Got For more transparent pricing, to me, the interface and the core functionality between it and Xaurb LMS seems very similar, but they’re two highly respected platforms. They go by per user. I don’t know if it’s active or the users in the system. So 1-40 is 149. Growth is 1-70, 299, pro is 1-100, and that’s 5-7-9. But at least you know the pricing. But it gets expensive quite quickly, doesn’t it?
[00:45:48.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
It gets super expensive pretty quickly. And remember that in a continuing education mindset, you’re probably going to be dealing with 1,500, 2,000 active users at a time, depending on what segment of industry you’re trying to work with. And so you want to start thinking in those terms of numbers, even if you’re just starting out. The problem with these Scorn-based websites, these SaaS platforms, is, well, it’s like the Vimeo thing that we’ve talked about. It seems affordable getting in. And then when you experience success, you’re heavily penalized for your own success.
[00:46:25.380] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, thousands and thousands.
[00:46:27.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, the budgets go crazy. One thing I will say, and this is just from personal experience, I have dealt with a lot of eLearning professionals that have come from talent LMS, and they have nothing but good things to say about using the platform. It’s reliability, it’s ease of use, it’s all of that stuff. It’s very highly recommended in the space. It’s just well beyond any budget that I have for any of my projects.
[00:46:54.200] – Jonathan Denwood
One I like is Learnworld. It’s It has a lot of functionality when you actually look at the platform. It’s also got affordable app set up. I think if you want it white-labeled, it gets more expensive, but I think they do offer, but just the core functionality and the interface. It starts at $29 per month, but you pay $5 per course enrollment. Then the next one up, which is the one that you should look at, it’s 99. Then the next one up is $299. Then the other ones include the app for iOS and Android. But for the price structure, if you look at what they’re offering, I was quite impressed with it. But I don’t think they’ve got the traction in the corporate world that Xaurb or talent LMS have got. Well, What do you reckon?
[00:48:01.880] – Kurt von Ahnen
The devil’s in the details, Jonathan. When you go to Learn worlds and you start really poking around, you start to recognize, wait a minute, I can only have 20 SCORM files in here. I can only have five administrators or instructors. I can only have this many. And what is an active student? I mean, at least with Learn worlds, they’re saying, hey, it’s five dollars per enrollment. I think that’s actually a little bit better than the deal that says active Active users, because think about this, active monthly users is like, let’s say someone takes your course and then a year later goes, oh, what did they talk about in that course? And they look something up in May. That’s going to be an active user for May. So It’s always… Your pricing is never really in your control. And that’s always been something that’s held me back. In the WordPress space, it’s unlimited. Unlimited courses, unlimited instructors, unlimited administrators, unlimited students The only thing that’s going to hold you back is your hosting. And if you’ve got a strong host like WP tonic, you’re going to cover yourself.
[00:49:06.920] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, because something like this, we normally put it on Vulture. You’re going to have to go with a plan that’s higher than a starter plan. But the next one up, Growth, it’s about 110, I think. You get Vulture and you get everything thrown in. And you get our support as well. It’s a great offering. Next one, which I don’t know much about, 360learning. Com. I don’t see 360. I thought, Is this something to do with Microsoft? I don’t think it is. And they start at $8 per user, up to 100 users. As I did a bit of research, it doesn’t strike me. It’s offering me anything. But I suppose compared to exauble talent, yeah, I don’t know what to say about it. What do you reckon?
[00:50:08.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
If you’re doing a proof of concept to test a course, it’s a wonderful way to go because that pricing model is like eight times 100, $800 a month. It seems crazy, right? But if you were going to test a course to see, A, is this sellable? Is this attractive? Do people make the offer. It’s a good platform to do a sampling on, I think, in that way. I don’t think it’s anything I’d be locked into long term, though. One thing that’s nice about 360 learning is the user interface seems to be really modern looking. And that I like. I think what happens a lot with learning sites is they look horribly, horribly antiquated. I mean, Lifter LMS, when they were on the launch pad their own theme because they had their own theme in WordPress, that launch pad theme was horribly dated. And then when it came out with Skypilot, I’m not saying Skypilot is the best theme ever. I mean, it’s full site editing. You can’t stand it. But appearance-wise, it’s beautiful.
[00:51:15.580] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s nice. It’s just my opinion. I’m just not a big fan of full site editing.
[00:51:22.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
And so when I see a site like 360 Learning and I see the products that 360 Learning puts out, it’s very fresh, it’s very modern, it’s very light feeling to the user, which I think goes a fair distance, right? Because so much stuff in the eLearning space is very plain and dated and ugly.
[00:51:44.660] – Jonathan Denwood
I think to finish off, I think one of the areas that the WordPress offering is criticized, and this applies to Lifter LMS, LearnDash, Tutter LMS, is the reporting because a lot of people I say, Well, like Xaur or TALON LMS or 360, the reporting functionality is going to be a lot more focused at the corporate market. I think Lifter has done a reasonable job, but what people don’t understand, with any of these, with Lyft LMS, with LearnDash, I can’t on my heart comment about tutor LMS because I just haven’t had the practical experience with it. But both with Lift LMS and LearnDash, yeah, but you can customize a solution. You can get WP tonic to add through a custom plugin. You can get whatever reporting function Obviously, there’s limit. There’s some things that just can’t be done, but it’s there with a SAS. If the reporting doesn’t really do what you’re really looking for, Well, you just got to suck it up, aren’t you?
[00:53:02.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
You just got to suck it up. The thing that we have to really pay attention to, especially when we start talking about SCORM in the education space, is when SCORM is hooked up to what they call a learning record store. That’s where it stores a record of all the activities that the student takes within the training course. And so if a scoring package has a lot of interactivities and quizzes and knowledge checks and all those things, to your point, Jonathan, And people that are used to the reporting from an LRS system, they’re going to be like, I want to see what happened on this screen or on that quiz or on this knowledge check. How many people got held up on question four? And they look at those kinds of things. But in the grand scheme, in the big picture, up from a percentage wholesale basis, how important really is that level of granular reporting? It really isn’t, right? I don’t think it is, but- You So your main thing is, how many enrollments did we have? How many people started the course? Out of all those that started, how many finished the dang thing?
[00:54:07.940] – Kurt von Ahnen
And who got a certificate? And if you have a really good CRM in your system, you’re going to be able to send out reminders and things like that to the students to help with course completion. So I think the reporting and Lifter LMS is super, super solid. The one thing that I would add if I were a continuing education professional is, let’s say that it was a requirement that I had to know the student identification number from their enrollment or something. I would create that as a custom field in the enrollment process, and then I would also add that field to the reporting as a custom column. That way, if we ever need to pull a student report, that would be one of the searchable items in the CSV file.
[00:54:52.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think we’ve done a good job here. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and your thoughts, and what you’re up to?
[00:55:04.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
LinkedIn is where I do a lot of activity. I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen there. If you find Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn, you’ve got me. And then if it’s for business, I’m at Manana Nomas.
[00:55:14.780] – Jonathan Denwood
If you found this podcast or the video useful, one way to support the show is to visit Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review, whether good, bad, or indifferent. I read all the reviews on Spotify and iTunes. It really does help the show. It really does promote us, and it means that more people will find the show. Our ratings have recently been increasing significantly. I think some of the feedback I’ve been getting is that people have been really enjoying the conversations Kurt and I have been producing recently. I think we’ve been covering some great stuff. We would also appreciate your feedback on the subjects you would like us to cover in the coming weeks and months. That would be great. But, as I said, if you want to support the show, please go to Spotify or iTunes and leave us a review. We will be back next week covering a topic that will help you in continuous learning or building a membership or community on WordPress. But we cover almost every aspect, WordPress and SaaS. We will be back next week, folks. Bye.
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