Best Online Course Platforms For Sellers (We Have Tried Them All)

Discover the best online course platforms for sellers in 2026. We tested them all so you don’t have to. Find your perfect platform today.

In this show, we explore the top online course platforms for sellers in 2026, drawing on our firsthand experiences. We reviewed various features, pricing structures, and user experiences to determine which platforms stand out in today’s competitive market. Whether you’re looking to create, sell, or promote your courses, this video will provide invaluable insights.

This Week’s Sponsors

Kinta: Kinta

LifterLMS: LifterLMS

Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro

The Show’s Main Notes

[00:00:16.960] – Jonathan Denwood

Welcome back to the Membership Machine Show, folks. This is episode 166. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about the best online course platforms for sellers in 2026. We’ve tried them all, Kirk and I. We’ve tried them all. We’re going to be looking at WordPress because we love it, but we’re also going to be looking at some of the SaaS solutions. Basically, I was reading an article on a well-popular website called Learn— Learning Evolution, and they’ve done an article on it, and I thought it’d be just great to go through some of these platforms and give our quick, honest opinion. I’ve got my great co-host. Give him a digital clap because he’s not feeling too well today, but he still came on the show. So, Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself?

[00:01:08.900] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, Kurt Van Onen. I have an agency called Mañana No Más, and we do a lot of work directly with the great team over at WP Tonic.

[00:01:15.820] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s fantastic. Like I say, we’re going to be looking at Podio, Kajabi, and LifterLMS, which we really love. Fluent Community. We’re going to be looking at them all, folks. Should be an informative show. But before we go into the meat and potatoes, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:01:39.620] – Kurt von Ahnen

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[00:02:13.020] – Jonathan Denwood

We’re coming back, folks. Wanna point out we’ve got a fabulous free resource. We’ve got some special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of WordPress plugins and services that could help you build a membership website. You can get all these by going over to wp-tonic.com/deals, wp-tonic.com/deals. Let’s go straight into it. So I think this started off, um, because it was discussed early on, I’m part of a LifterLabs group with Kurt, and I think why, first of all, why WordPress? Um, this is our introduction. Well, I think WordPress, if you use WordPress for other websites and you like it and you’re used to it, it makes sense to use WordPress for your membership website. Plus, if you really want maximum control over your business, that’s what you’re going to get with WordPress. Is it going to be? And basically it’s been around for 15, 20 years. It’s well proven. It’s got a massive community. One of the biggest on the internet, and it’s got a lot going for it. People say that some of the negatives is it’s a little bit more complicated to set up compared to some of the SaaS competition. Well, it depends on what SaaS you’re using, and it just really depends on your knowledge, your experience.

[00:03:41.590] – Jonathan Denwood

So there are a lot of variables in there. You are going to get something that’s a bit more integrated. But if you host with WP Tonic, we do that integration with you. So it depends on who you’re hosting with, who you are, and who’s supporting you. There are a lot of variables. Now, when it comes to the SaaS, you’re going to get a more unified interface, depending on which one. It could be a little bit less complicated depending on the one that you choose. Some of them have a lot of functionality, and they’re not that simple to use. Depending on your experience, others are limited intentionally because they want to keep it simple. So there are a lot of variables out there. So we’re just going to go through some of the leading ones and just give our honest opinion, and hopefully this will give you some information and help you to make an educated decision. If you’re looking to start a membership community website, or you’re thinking of changing platforms. So how would you respond to what I’ve just outlined, Curt?

[00:04:50.830] – Kurt von Ahnen

All in all, makes a lot of sense, Jonathan. So much is use case or personality or, you know, there are so many variables that come into the conversation about LMSs. Familiarity is a big one. Like if there’s just one person at the office who’s used something before, right? Even if they’re not the expert, they could say, oh, well, we used Podia before, right? Well, then the vice president might just go with Podia. It is. Sometimes there’s not a lot of research behind the concept. I really struggle with the idea of saying something is complex or not complex. That’s where I kind of— I get— because the learning curve for all of these is there. Like, like, you have to learn how to use everything, um, and so it’s not an instantaneous here it is, and we’re off to the races. It’s you still have to figure a lot of things out. So, I think you really should take your time and make a good, sound, well-educated decision rather than an emotional decision when you’re shopping for an LMS.

[00:05:56.350] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, great report. So let’s go straight into it now. Still a large business, but I’ve got to be honest, we’re starting with Thinkific. I, I just think this is probably a little bit brutal. And I’m not saying I’m— I just see it as a kind of quasi legacy platform. It’s not on top of my list of SaaS. If I weren’t looking at WordPress and I wanted to make it totally clear, if I were building a membership website, it would be on WordPress because I want the maximum control. Over what I’m building, right? But I just— in the SaaS, I just see Thinkific as a quasi— not one of the leaders now, but I haven’t used it for a long time, and I might be totally— but that’s my honest opinion. What are your thoughts?

[00:06:53.620] – Kurt von Ahnen

Thinkific is— it’s top of mind, I think, because the marketing’s good, you know, comes up quickly in searches, you know, that kind of thing. Actually using the platform is fairly simple, but then the simplicity kind of takes over for me, and I don’t get the options that I want to have when I build something. That’s the hard part. So when you are looking at an LMS, you know, when we say the options, there are some options we’re going to talk about that are literally like community sites, but you can add a course. Um, that’s completely different than, pardon me, than like a course site that’s more like a university course site. Like, I can add as many courses as I want, course tracks and certifications and all of that stuff. I think Thinkific does a good job of the basics, but when you want to dive a little deeper, I think you have obstacles.

[00:07:48.660] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. And you know, um, these are the month-to-month prices, folks. Basic $49, Start $99. Grow 199. They’re not outrageous. You’ve got to really look at what you’re getting as part of the, of which plan you’re going to choose from. Like I say, it appeals to the more simplistic side, but I think there’s one or two better offerings myself, but people would disagree with me. Which is fair enough. Onto the totally opposite in some ways to Thinkific, which is Kajabi. And I see Kajabi as the all-embracing Swiss Army knife if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to start a membership website on WordPress, um, I just see it as the kind of, um, Swiss Army knife out there. Um, they’ve got a lot of education and they do a really good job of the education side of it. Um, but it’s also pretty complicated depending on your experience. What’s your thoughts on this, Kurt?

[00:09:14.320] – Kurt von Ahnen

Their backend used to be a disaster and they’ve made a lot of improvements. Um, Kajabi is one of the ones where, you know, I’m a WordPress first person, you know, I really like LifterLMS, but if I wasn’t going to be working in WordPress for one reason or another, I would be tempted to look at Kajabi. But the other key element here is budget. Um, it’s not cheap. It’s one of the more expensive platforms. And so, but, but you do get you know, a CRM. So, so you get, you know, you get the course management process, you, you get a full-blown, you know, CRM that works. They have an affiliate program, right? It, it, it can replace a lot of third-party things that you might do outside your learning site. You could do it in your learning site with Kajabi. And so it’s worth taking a look at if you have, you know, if you’ve got your, your feelers into those spaces. Like if you wanted to host a podcast, you could do that through your Kajabi site.

[00:10:13.950] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, starts— they got rid of one plan level. They went back, back to a free plan level, and they’ve got their basic— that’s— these are month-to-month, folks— $179. Growth, $249. Pro, $499. Um, but it’s a pretty robust platform, and I wouldn’t have Um, it’s one of the leaders in the SaaS solutions out there. Um, I think there’s better solutions out there, definitely WordPress, and maybe in the SaaS, but it’s, it’s definitely one of the leaders.

[00:10:59.510] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah. So I’m not, I’m not going to lie, Jonathan, I do struggle with the math, right? So let’s say that you’re on the $4.99 program.

[00:11:07.240] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:11:08.030] – Kurt von Ahnen

How much do you need to sell? Right. If you’re, if just your software expense is $500 a month. Yeah. So it does put the pressure on.

[00:11:20.070] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, yeah. Onto the next, which is WordPress, one of the leading WordPress solutions, and that’s LearnDash. Now we’ve LearnDash been around a little, started a little bit earlier than LifterLMS. One of the problems I have with LearnDash, and it’s still a great solution, still very popular, is that to sell membership, you really need a third-party membership plugin as well. And it just gets a little bit complicated trying to explain it to people that I just find the conversation a bit complicated and a bit frustrating. And when it, when it comes to the interface, either you’re going to love it or you’re not. Basically, some people find it a bit difficult. I, I never found it that difficult when I was actually building out membership websites. But it was this initial discussion that you needed, and it used to be MemberPress that was recommended by everybody. And that combination did kind of increase the complexity a bit because MemberPress has a kind of— it works and it’s well coded, but it has a kind of strange way of dealing with membership, which I’m not going to go in because that’s a bit of a dive. So what do you think about LearnDash?

[00:12:49.340] – Kurt von Ahnen

For me, my obstacle with LearnDash is that they haven’t put out anything new in such a long time. Um, that, that’s kind of where I, where I look at things. So, um, it’s one thing that, you know, it doesn’t work. Yes. You know that, you know, is the interface a little dated, but does it function? Yes. Yes. Like all those things. So like, do I have the security that I know it’s going to work? Yes, it works. But does it have like robust features and options that other competitive brands have been able to come up with in the last few years? And that answer is no, they haven’t really developed the platform in a long time.

[00:13:27.300] – Jonathan Denwood

No, that’s, that’s true. That’s— but have a look at it. You could do a lot worse, but yeah, you could do a lot worse.

[00:13:36.710] – Kurt von Ahnen

I actually have clients on LearnDash and, um, it takes a little bit of readjusting for me to get like, get back into it, you know, like if I’ve got to make a change for them or something. Um, But like I said, it does work. You can sort it out. You know, here’s the lessons, here’s the courses, here’s, you know, here’s the course tracks. This is how this works. Uh, it’s all there.

[00:13:58.070] – Jonathan Denwood

And, um, it’s $199 for the year. Um, you do have, like I say, have to have a membership plugin. You are gonna have to have decent hosting with it. Um, but You have maximum control, design, ownership, all the things that are important to me. On to the next one, which is membership, but also community. You know, a lot of these platforms that overlaps, but, um, there are differences where you got, where you got a kind of quasar forum, you got a kind of Facebook group. Environment combined. Normally, um, you might have an app as well, which is in my opinion overemphasized in a lot of circumstances, but you want more of that community feel with membership. Um, and Circle, um, I think Circle for the SaaS is one of the leading ones. Its interface is one— it’s got one of the I like the interface myself. Recently, you will say recently, probably 6 to 8 months ago, they introduced their own website builder. For a couple years, you really had to put it on a subdomain of, you know, a lot of people in the WordPress space used it. I don’t know why, why you wouldn’t use a native learning management plugin, but some did.

[00:15:34.160] – Jonathan Denwood

And they used to have to have it on a subdomain, but now they built a whole website solution as part of their platform. So what do you think of Circle?

[00:15:46.590] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’m going to be the odd man out on this one, Jonathan. I really don’t like it. All right. I just, it’s, to me, the discussion areas in the community portal, it feels like trying to track stuff in Slack. To me. Like, it just feels like sometimes I go to find something and it’s like, where is that? Where, you know, I’m scrolling through stuff trying to find it, and I don’t like that I have to feel like I’m digging or searching for things, right? I want to know like, where’s it at? Um, so I’m not a really big fan of the interface or the community function of it. And for them to like kind of like, I don’t know, like a Post-it note, you know, just kind of like slap it on there, go, oh, we got courses too. Um, it just seems— I don’t want to say disingenuous because that’s not the right word, but it’s, uh, I just don’t like the platform. I don’t like using it, and, and I don’t like being—

[00:16:39.270] – Jonathan Denwood

I haven’t got— I gotta be— I haven’t got that. It was quite— it was about 2 to 3 years ago when I played around with it, and I haven’t actively utilized it since then. So I’m just So your knowledge on it is more extensive than mine.

[00:16:58.110] – Kurt von Ahnen

Kevin Geary uses Circle for people that are in the etch community.

[00:17:02.360] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s hilarious, really, isn’t it? Yeah.

[00:17:05.060] – Kurt von Ahnen

So when I want to find something new for etch, I got it. And like, people just— it’s an active community and they just bombard, you know, this bulletin board, I guess you’d call it that, some kind of a— yeah, they just bombard the feed with all these things, they’re making an edge. And if you see something that you want to try or something you want to try to duplicate, you, you’ll lose it. Like, if you don’t copy and paste it right then and there, it’s, it’s gone. Like, gone forever. Um, so I started trying to keep the emails that they send in a separate folder in my email client. But I mean, if I’m using folders in an email client to store the notifications because I don’t like the platform that much, that’s— then we, we’ve stumbled into— you know, we’ve gone backwards 3 decades if that’s what I’m doing. So it’s really—

[00:17:58.050] – Jonathan Denwood

thanks for this feedback. It’s really interesting, isn’t it? It really is interesting.

[00:18:03.400] – Kurt von Ahnen

Um, it looks cool, it looks modern, it like— it looks neat. In practice, it’s not. When you have a lot of people sharing a lot of information, it’s very difficult for me to keep things organized.

[00:18:15.660] – Jonathan Denwood

The pricing isn’t ridiculous, folks. It’s $89 a month for their professional, then $199. There’s an asterisk there. I don’t know what the asterisk is about, actually. Oh, here, our price is displayed in US-based annual billing and do not— so it’s annual billing. You’ve got to buy an annual plan with these people. So that’s what, that’s what you get, right? Um, on to the next one, Mighty Networks. Well, Mighty Networks has been around quite a while, and when COVID was around, folks, I probably, um, they really got a lot of traction, you know. Um, a lot of people started using this platform and It has improved. Um, I’ll be interested to see if Kirk’s got any knowledge about this. I always found it a bit of a dog’s breath myself. Um, but there we go. I might be wrong there. Um, um, but he is one of the originals and a lot of people look at Circle and look at Mighty Network because they want an app. Um, they want an app as well. They get fixated about it and there’s nothing wrong in having an app at the right time. Um, but there really has to be a business reason why you want one.

[00:19:41.510] – Jonathan Denwood

Um, and a lot of people don’t work that out. Um, and so you’ve got any knowledge about Mighty Networks?

[00:19:50.980] – Kurt von Ahnen

When it first came out, I could have sworn— I remember all the spammy emails I got, and I could have sworn it was a girl I went to high school with. Bianchini, I think, is the name on the email. And, um, and I tried to give it a look, right? Like, oh, I think I might know this person. So I tried to give it a look, and that was, you know, years ago, years ago. And I was like, this, this is horrible. Um, it, it was hard to set up. It was hard to, to get to understand what the traction would be with the platform. Now, my understanding is that it’s gotten tremendously better, right? So it’d be hard to say that it couldn’t have gotten better. Um, But, and you’d have to correct me on this, I’m going by like hearsay, but my understanding is that if you want one of these native Android and iOS apps, it’s something like $25,000 or $30,000 to get into that space with them. And so that’s a big commitment.

[00:20:48.990] – Jonathan Denwood

That’s if you know, that’s what it costs. But that’s if you want, you want a full white label, you want your branding on it. Otherwise, they’ve got cheaper solutions, Mighty Network and Circle, but you got their branding on your app. Yeah, basically, if you want a full white label app solution, you are looking— supposedly Circle’s a little bit cheaper than Mighty Network. Now they do offer month to month, and whatever platform you’re trying, always try if they offer a free trial, always take that up. But also, if they offer it, I would always go for the month-to-month solution initially. I would resist buying an annual plan until I’ve got a couple months trying it, because we all got personal different tastes, and something might suit somebody else but doesn’t suit you. That’s a problem if you bought the yearly plan. Now with Mighty Networks, it starts at $95, scale plan goes at $215, growth $354. Now I don’t, one of the other factors is that they, they’re very good at having something missing on the basic plans. There’s always some need to go to the middle or higher plan. They’re very sophisticated investigated about that, um, in general.

[00:22:26.680] – Jonathan Denwood

But that’s what you’ve got to watch. Now, um, I think it’s a good time for us to go for our mid-break, and when we come back, we’ve got some others that we’ve got to talk about and give you access to our knowledge about this, folks. We will be back in a few moments, folks.

[00:22:47.940] – Speaker 1

This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training-based membership website, or any type of e-learning project, LifterLMS is the most secure, stable, well-supported solution on the market. Go to lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with coupon code podcast 20. That’s podcast 2-0. Enjoy the rest of your show.

[00:23:25.470] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m coming back, folks. Kirk’s done a great job. He’s struggling through, he’s a trooper. But before we go into the second half, I want to point out I do a great newsletter. Um, basically I tend to give some additional information about our podcast show, give some links, give some additional info, and also I look for the best tech stories of the week, and I put those in the newsletter as well. And it’s totally free, and you can get the newsletter by going over to wp-tonic.com/newsletter, wp-tonic.com/newsletter. On to go on to a totally opposite approach to community and membership, which is school. Um, you, you couldn’t get a different— built for simplicity. It’s got a, it’s got elements of marketplace to it and gamification. And it’s got two, the founder and one of the biggest investors, Umosi, um, some of the biggest marketers, personalities on the internet. Managed to really grow it. You’ve got to admire them. But, um, yeah, it’s totally opposite, really simplistic, really, isn’t it? What’s your thoughts on it, Kurt?

[00:24:51.320] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’ve used Skool. I actually have a product on Skool because I wanted to try it out. Um, I went for the $9 a month plan just to, just to kind of experiment a little bit. I actually found it really refreshing and easy to use.

[00:25:05.460] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah.

[00:25:05.880] – Kurt von Ahnen

Okay, but you can’t change a stinking thing. You have, you have two options: light mode and dark mode, and that’s it. The whole thing is set up based on a template system that, that they have in place, and so you have no say whatsoever in how your course looks, how it’s presented, how it’s sold. Um, you can try to lead people to the course page Um, I want to be like super transparent. I haven’t sold a single version of my course on Skillshare yet. And, and part of me wonders if that’s just because they have so many other creators in the same space in their own marketplace.

[00:25:48.740] – Jonathan Denwood

It’s a difficult one, but you know, um, there are people seem, seemingly doing, you know, if you get on the homepage. Um, that probably will help. You know, there is a lot of people trying it. I think it has affected all the other platforms. Um, myself, um, there’s one here I’m looking at, TFW Global, Trading for Women. Uh, um, um, got what they’re saying, it’s got 2.3 1,000 members, they reckon. $35 a month, um, crypto, all the things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, yeah, there’s people doing okay, but a lot of people don’t, um, but you could say that in general, can’t you? Um, but it’s simplistic. My only, my only concern, folks, is that you’re building your business on somebody else’s platform. Um, but if you’re trying something out, um, and you just want to see if there’s some interest— I’ve just got such mixed feelings about it. Um, but they managed— they got a lot of traction, didn’t they?

[00:27:11.030] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, but you and I have had this conversation in other ways before. You know, how do they have that traction? Well, they Alex Hormozy promoted it, and he’s got millions of people on his list. Um, so yeah, I mean, there’s basically the, the, the cost of entry, right? The cost of entry for them into the market, you know, came on the backs of Alex Hormozy’s following list. Um, does the system work? Yeah, it works. There’s— but there’s no features. There’s, there’s no There’s nothing. I mean, you put up a course and that’s it. Uh, there, but there’s no, there’s a community page. So I think that’s real important. Like, school is, I think school is trying to leverage community more than courses, um, because they’re doing these like feed pages, you know, like a, uh, comment here, comment there, but you know, put your thing in the feed, uh, and then the course is on a separate kind of like back page. But, um, that’s all it does. I mean, that is all it does. There’s, there’s no other features really that are worth speaking about.

[00:28:19.560] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah, well, I think why I think they really got some traction is, is the digital, um, community. You know, you’ve got a YouTube channel, you’ve got a following on TikTok, you’ve got following on Instagram. Whatever platform it is, and you’re looking to monetize the creative community, um, and you’ve got like YouTube memberships, you, um, I personally wouldn’t, I personally wouldn’t want to get too engaged with YouTube apart from using it as an engine to promote, but these, you know, these these creators are looking at, looking at Patreon, they’re looking at Give Us a Coffee. And then it’s just an easy way to set up a membership website that isn’t reliant on YouTube, that at $9, um, get you going. And I think they really marketed themselves to that creator part of the internet, really like how Kit really marketed to that when they were launching their email product. Do you think I’m on the right track there?

[00:29:43.810] – Kurt von Ahnen

Could be, could be. I, I think they wanted to have an, an easy way to put up a course and try to sell it. And I think if that was the goal, I think they’ve attained the goal.

[00:29:55.990] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Onto a WordPress, um, we really love it. Um, it’s Fluent Community. It, um, used to be only BuddyBoss, which is still fantastic folks, but it’s a really serious product. It really competes with Mighty Networks or Circle where Skool, um, sorry, Fluent Community. Is a more lightweight solution. You can, you can have big communities on it though, don’t get me wrong. And it’s, it came to market a couple of years ago, so it hasn’t got all this legacy code inbuilt into it, so it’s super fast and we love it. What’s your thoughts about Fluent Community?

[00:30:45.760] – Kurt von Ahnen

I’ve been a fan. I put a course in Fluent Community as well, again, just to try it out. And adding the course was fairly straightforward. Um, the, the lesson, um, adding lessons and getting the lessons to come up in order, it, there was a little bit of a learning curve, like what order you do things in. Um, but what, once you got that figured out, it was, it was fine. This is another one of those tools though, Jonathan, where What’s the primary— what’s the primary goal, right? The primary goal with Fluent Community is in the name community. It’s the, the primary goal is not the courses. The course is secondary. Um, there’s not a lot of— like school, there’s not a lot of, um, you know, feature-rich, uh, editing that you can do unless you really get into some, you know, custom CSS and stuff like that. Uh, Fluent Community has recently added some features where it’ll adopt some design cues from the theme of the overall website. And so that’s been good, that it’s more and more, it’s starting to look like it’s part of the site rather than something glued to the back of the site.

[00:31:56.080] – Kurt von Ahnen

So it’s getting better. Yeah, I mean, I added a course, the course works. It, uh, taking the course, like as a user taking the course. It’s very direct. It’s like straight to the, straight to the lessons. Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, Lesson 4. Um, whereas with Lifter, I could build things in. I could have sales pages, I could have redirects, I could, you know, I could do different things. Um, so yeah, it doesn’t have the features of Lifter, obviously, but, uh, but it does work and it works well.

[00:32:33.460] – Jonathan Denwood

Well, it was SaaS or WordPress, there’s always a payoff between functionality and simplicity. The more functionality you add to something, it tends to become more complicated to set up. So there’s always this tension, um, demo what solution, but I think it is, um, a lot, it has community. It’s called Spaces, basically, and it’s got a lot going for it. It might not be right thing, but it’s definitely— and it starts at, for one site, you have to buy an annual plan, and it starts at around $199, but they always, at the present moment, they’re offering it for $159. We like it. Onto the next one, Teachable. Well, I treat Teachable similar to Thinkific. I see them as a, which is totally unfair, I see them as a kind of legacy solution. But I really shouldn’t say that because I don’t know what they’ve been up to really lately. What’s your thoughts on Teachable?

[00:33:48.450] – Kurt von Ahnen

Teachable is interesting because they handle— so I don’t think it’s a big deal usually until it is a big deal, right? So it’s a weird way to say things, but Teachable is already set up to handle VAT and taxes in different parts of the world, whereas most LMSs are not. And so there’s, um, having that be automated and having that work properly is, is a huge blessing for people that are into international sales and are based like in Europe, right? So, so I can see that Teachable would be attractive just from that standpoint. Like, I could see that that would be a, a huge boost to it. Um, and I think over time they’ve increased their capacity for features because I know that now they have apps and, and some other things like that. So, uh, interesting. I, I think Teachable’s I think Teachable’s come, come up a little bit, like a few years ago might not have been on the top of my list, but I think they’re getting better and better.

[00:34:53.280] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. Like I said, I haven’t looked at it in years, but, um, onto another one, Podia. Um, I quite like Podia. I think it’s one of the more simplistic ones to set up, but it’s limited because it is more simplistic to set up. And you have to pay for email marketing on top, but Mover starts at $39, $89. The website builder, when I was looking at it, does the job, but it’s pretty basic. But it’s a lot easier to set up. I’d imagine they’ve been hit hard by school, really. But I don’t know. What’s your thoughts on Podia?

[00:35:39.590] – Kurt von Ahnen

Podia has that, you know, I consider it rudimentary, but to people that are looking at other, like if you’re looking at Circle or Fluent Community or one of those, you would think that the page builder is, you know, otherworldly, right? We think of it as being a simple page builder, but in the space they do have a page builder. There is a way to. Semi-customize the experience for yourself and for your users. And so I think Podia is like that. Podia is that great tool that’s like in between because it’s— you’re not getting all the functionality of, of your own WordPress website with ownership and, and full design flexibility, but you’re getting a pretty straightforward example of something that you can alter and somewhat customize more so than some of the other plans we’ve talked about.

[00:36:35.610] – Jonathan Denwood

Yep. Um, Kartra. Um, um, this, I treat it, it’s, it’s fully functional and it’s a kind of Kajabi competitor. It offers a lot more, a lot more than Podia. Um, and it was really popular for the time. And, um, but I kind of see it’s a bit of a legacy as well in my own mind, a bit like Teachable and Thinkific. I don’t know why. Um, yeah. Um, you only know this, uh, Kartra.

[00:37:20.810] – Kurt von Ahnen

I didn’t like their marketing. That’s where I’m at. So I didn’t, I didn’t really dive in to try anything there. Um, they, they, they— were they the same as, um, SamCart?

[00:37:32.980] – Jonathan Denwood

I’m not sure. I think you might be right, actually.

[00:37:36.350] – Kurt von Ahnen

Yeah, because the marketing was very, very similar, right? It was, it was like those— it was like those grifters that are like, um, you know, you don’t need to do this, you don’t need to do that, you can make $50,000 a week and all you got to do is sit down and drink Mai Tais. Uh, it was that kind of marketing and I was like, I’m out. I don’t, I don’t even want to take a look.

[00:37:56.030] – Jonathan Denwood

Yeah. But it’s, um, they’ve updated it. It’s got like, say it’s a real competitor to Kajabi. Um, they do month to month. Essential starts at $59, Starter $119, and Growth is $229. So they’re a bit cheaper. Then, especially the starter plan, um, you get transactional fees. And you get that with, um, the basic plan with Podio. They have transactional fees as well, their basic plan at Podio. And a lot of them do. Um, yeah, but it’s not something was on my radar. And last Is LifterLMS, which we recommend with Fluent Community as well. We offer it and we offer it as part of our hosting package, the Infinity Bundle. Unlike LearnDash, still actively developed, adding new functionality to it. The founders are committed to the product, in my opinion. And it’s just got a great team. Now Kirk’s part of that team, part of the WP Tonic team as well. What’s your thoughts? What’s— what— how would you summarize some of— one or two of its strengths and one or two of its weaknesses, Kirk?

[00:39:27.110] – Kurt von Ahnen

For me to talk about the weaknesses of Lifter is very difficult because I’ve been using Lifter for, uh, started using Lifter about 6 months after they released the plugin. I mean, I’ve been with them for 12 or 13 years. It’s been a long time. So I’m really well acquainted with the ins and outs of it. You had already mentioned coming out with new things. Maybe this is a press release right now. They’re coming out with a new event tool that is— I mean, it’s going to be out in the next week or two or something like that. And it’s something I’ve been asking for for a few years, but the tech team was finally like, hey, we could do this. And we looked at some other examples, we did some things, and, you know, we kind of had a discussion back and forth through Slack, my least favorite tool. And I’m very excited to see them come out with that. But when I look at what they’ve released in the last 2, 3 years, you know, that they had the private site, they’ve got an abandoned cart feature that’s coming out soon. They’ve got, um, it just doesn’t seem to stop.

[00:40:37.920] – Kurt von Ahnen

Like, they continually develop and build what they have, um, and the company itself is run really, really well, right? Like, like, uh, it’s run with the, with the staff in mind. And so, um, Lyft is one of those things where even if I didn’t need the work, I would probably not stop working for them. Like, it’s just fun to be connected, you know. Um, if you’re gonna— if you’re gonna be an agency in the WordPress space, you know, it’s nice to have your tentacles out and attached to something that’s quality. And Lifter is one of those— one of those things for people just getting started, like new people coming to the course space. Um, it can seem daunting, right? Because you’re like, well, I got to think about hosting. And then what, you know, what LMS am I going to use? And all these things. But let’s just face facts, Jonathan, if they come to WP Tonic, you set the whole thing up for them, right? All they have to do really is, is take the LifterLMS Getting Started course. Everything’s listed out for exactly how to start building your course, follow the steps, add your course,and  build out the rest of your site.

[00:41:46.660] – Kurt von Ahnen

And, you know, start making some money with your website. It’s, um, it’s a very, very capable, wonderful platform. I can’t say enough good things about it.

[00:41:56.530] – Jonathan Denwood

Yep. Totally agree with you there. So, oh, the one that we, I forgot in the list was LearnWorlds. Now LearnWorlds, it’s, it’s got a strange position because it straddles the individual entrepreneur, but also the corporate, but Lifter does that, and LearnDash does that, where the majority, and maybe Kajabi, no, I’m not too sure about that actually. And one of the things that LearnWorlds does is provide SCORM support, which most individual small group entrepreneurs won’t be touching SCORM. SCORM, with LifterLMS and LearnDash, there are add-on plugins that allow you to utilize SCORM as well. But I quite, in some ways, quite like LearnWorlds, but it does, it is complicated. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than Kajabi, but it’s also, it doesn’t provide all the kind of marketing functionality that Kajabi does, because it’s like I say, it straddles the individual entrepreneur and the corporate market, where most of the other SaaS and WordPress solutions we’ve talked about in this episode don’t. Do you think that’s fair?

[00:43:31.880] – Kurt von Ahnen

It’s fair. That is fair.

[00:43:34.370] – Jonathan Denwood

And it starts at $29. Per month, um, then, but that’s limited. The Pro Trainer’s $99, the Learning Center’s $299. You really have to look at all these different platforms and make your decision. Like I say, hopefully we’re giving you insight in this episode. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[00:44:02.320] – Kurt von Ahnen

Well, our website is Mañana No Más, and then I’m on LinkedIn. I’m the only Kurt Von Ahn on LinkedIn. It makes it easy for me to find.

[00:44:10.420] – Jonathan Denwood

Right. Yo, we will be back next week with more information to help you launch, hopefully, or, if you’ve got an existing membership website, make it more successful for yourself and your family. We will hopefully be back next week. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.

[00:44:27.540] – Speaker 1

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