
Modern learning management system for education
Canvas by Instructure is a cloud-native learning management system used by K-12 schools and universities. It provides a modern, mobile-friendly platform for teaching and learning.
By Louis Corneloup · Updated Course creation and hosting platforms
67 tools evaluated · 10 top picks · Updated June 2026
Online course platforms split between creator-economy tools (Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia) and marketplace models (Udemy, Coursera, Skillshare). The decision is whether you own the audience and revenue, or trade discovery for the platform's audience.
Starting price, average user rating, and our pick for each category.
| Tool | Our take | Starting price | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best overall | Free + paid | 4.5 | |
| Solid pick | Contact sales | 4.6 | |
| Highest rated | Free + paid | 4.8 | |
| Solid pick | Contact sales | 4.6 | |
| Solid pick | Contact sales | 4.2 | |
| Solid pick | Contact sales | 4.1 | |
| Solid pick | Free + paid | 4.6 |
The online course platforms category is highly competitive in 2026, with Canvas LMS and Skilljar both ranking among the top choices on Toolradar's assessment, followed closely by Systeme.io. The tight competition reflects how mature this market has become.
Pricing varies significantly among the top picks: Canvas LMS (freemium (free tier available)), Systeme.io (freemium (free tier available)) offer free access, while Skilljar and iSpring require a paid subscription. Teams on a budget should start with Canvas LMS, which delivers strong value despite its free tier.

Modern learning management system for education
Canvas by Instructure is a cloud-native learning management system used by K-12 schools and universities. It provides a modern, mobile-friendly platform for teaching and learning.
Customer education LMS to boost adoption and cut support costs
Skilljar is an external learning management system (LMS) purpose-built for customer and partner education. Companies use it to create branded training academies that accelerate onboarding, drive product adoption, and reduce support costs. It supports self-paced courses, instructor-led training, certifications with proctored exams, and monetization through subscriptions or per-course purchases, all with deep Salesforce and CRM integration to tie training outcomes to business metrics.

All-in-one marketing platform for entrepreneurs
Systeme.io is an all-in-one marketing platform for entrepreneurs that combines sales funnels, email marketing, online course hosting, website building, affiliate management, and marketing automation in a single tool. Used by over 500,000 businesses, it offers a generous free plan with up to 2,000 contacts and unlimited emails. Paid plans start at $27/mo and unlock webinars, higher contact limits, and white-labeling with no transaction fees on any tier.

eLearning authoring and LMS platform
iSpring provides eLearning authoring tools and a learning management system. Its flagship iSpring Suite converts PowerPoint to online courses with quizzes, simulations, and interactions.

Simplify employee training and development with an all-in-one learning and development platform.
Eloomi is a comprehensive learning and development platform designed to help companies worldwide train and develop their employees effectively. It aims to simplify people development, eliminate complexity, and boost productivity through its intuitive LMS training software. The platform offers a unified solution that includes learning at its core, along with built-in e-learning content, employee communication tools, and performance management features. This platform is ideal for businesses looking to streamline their employee training, onboarding, and continuous development initiatives. It provides tools for creating custom courses with a drag-and-drop builder, tracking learner progress with reporting and insights, and ensuring accessibility through mobile devices and a dedicated mobile app. Eloomi can be used as a standalone solution or integrated with Dayforce's Human Capital Management (HCM) platform, offering flexibility for various organizational needs.
Open source learning management system
Moodle is the world's most widely used open source learning platform. It empowers educators and trainers to create private websites with dynamic courses for learners.

The #1 cloud LMS software for online learning, designed for simple setup and powerful growth.
TalentLMS is a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) designed to help organizations deliver effective online training to various audiences, including employees, partners, and customers. It emphasizes ease of use, allowing users to sign up and launch training programs quickly, often twice as fast as typical LMS setups, without requiring IT expertise or complex buying processes. The platform is built to scale, enabling the creation of separate training portals for different groups while maintaining centralized management. The platform offers a comprehensive suite of features for course creation, delivery, and management, significantly enhanced by AI tools. These AI capabilities assist in generating course content, creating assessments, translating materials into over 40 languages, and providing real-time learner support. TalentLMS also includes a vast content library, TalentLibrary™, with over 1,000 expertly curated courses. It supports various content formats, learning paths, gamification, mobile access, and automation of administrative tasks, ensuring a flexible and engaging learning experience while proving ROI through data-driven insights.

Affordable online courses on virtually any topic
Udemy hosts online courses for learners worldwide. Vast course catalog at accessible prices-learning that fits any budget. The selection is enormous. The pricing is frequent with sales. The quality varies. Learners wanting affordable courses on any topic use Udemy for accessible education.

Engage students with interactive quizzes, lessons, and presentations for any subject.
Quizizz is an interactive learning platform that allows educators to create and host engaging quizzes, lessons, and presentations. It's designed to make learning fun and effective for students while providing teachers with powerful tools for assessment and instruction. The platform supports various question types, multimedia integration, and customizable settings to suit different learning environments, including in-class, remote, and hybrid models. Primarily aimed at K-12 and higher education teachers, Quizizz helps educators save time on grading, differentiate instruction, and gain real-time insights into student performance. Students benefit from game-based learning, instant feedback, and a self-paced approach that caters to individual learning styles. The platform also offers a vast library of pre-made content created by other educators, fostering a collaborative community.
We evaluated 67 online course platforms tools and these 20 ranked 11 through 30. They're solid options that fell short on one or two axes (review depth, pricing transparency, feature parity), but worth a look if the leaders don't fit your stack or budget.
Showing the top 60 of 67. Filter to narrow down.
Own audience, full revenue: Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, Podia. Use Udemy/Coursera/Skillshare for discovery (lower revenue share, but they bring traffic). Many creators do both at different price tiers.
Drip content, quizzes, certificates, communities, live cohorts — features vary. Match feature set to course format. Kajabi bundles marketing + payments; Thinkific is leaner and cheaper.
Hosting a course is easy; selling it is hard. Platforms with strong email + landing page + analytics (Kajabi, ConvertKit Creator) help; barebones course hosts don't.
Tools that didn't crack the headline list but deserve a look depending on what you optimize for.
Thinkific covers course hosting + light marketing + payments without the Kajabi price tag. Strong default for independent course creators.
We rank by real-world signal: verified user ratings aggregated from G2, Capterra, and our own community, the volume and recency of media coverage, and hands-on editorial review for the tools we cover in depth. Pricing is re-checked and the ranking refreshed monthly. We do not sell placement in this list.
For online course platforms vendors
Newsletter ads and directory listings: the same surfaces buyers use to shortlist. Max 2 sponsors per issue, done-for-you creative.