Sell Video Courses (Creator LMS)

Teachable, Thinkific, Podia, Tutor LMS, Maven — monetise courses outside a school.

You're not a school — you're a creator selling a course. The shape is different from an institutional LMS: payments, drip content, sales pages, affiliate links, email automation. Pair with video lecture hosting, a community / chat, and email / payments.

Hosted creator LMS (paid)

★ Teachable — paid; the long-running default; ~$39-199/mo; massive ecosystem; transaction fees on lower tiers.
★ Thinkific — paid + free starter; competitive with Teachable; cleaner course builder.
Podia — paid + free; bundles courses + downloads + community + email.
LearnWorlds — paid; more LMS-flavoured; corporate-leaning.
Kajabi — paid; expensive (~$149/mo); bundles funnels + email + community; "all-in-one."
Mighty Networks — paid; community-first; courses bolted on.
Circle.so — paid; community-first; courses 2024+.
Skool — paid; community-first; sales-flavoured.
Heights Platform — paid; cheaper Teachable alternative.
MemberSpace, MemberStack — paid; paywall-bolted-onto-your-site.
Gumroad — paid (10% take-rate); the fastest path to sell a single course / file.

★ Maven — paid + free for instructors; Wes Kao + Gagan Biyani's CBC platform; the cohort-based default in 2026.
Disco — paid; CBC + community; big in YC-class cohorts.
Sutra — paid; CBC and "deep learning."
Mighty Networks Live — paid; CBC features bolted onto Mighty.
Notion + Slack + Zoom — free-ish; the bootstrap CBC stack.

★ Tutor LMS (WordPress plugin) — GPL; the WordPress course-selling default; integrates WooCommerce / EDD / PMP for payments.
- https://github.com/themeum/tutor
LearnDash (WordPress) — paid; the older / corporate WordPress LMS.
LifterLMS (WordPress) — GPL + paid add-ons; second WordPress LMS.
Sensei LMS (WordPress, by WooCommerce / Automattic) — GPL; lighter.
MasterStudy LMS (WordPress) — paid + free.
Frappe LMS — see LMS self-host; MIT; can be used for paid courses.
Course Maker / OpenLMS — Moodle-flavoured commercial hosts.

Memberful + your own static site + Vimeo / Bunny Stream — paid; minimal "login + drip" stack.
Outseta — paid; auth + payments + email; bring-your-own-frontend.
Lemon Squeezy — paid; merchant-of-record payments + a basic course-delivery feature.
Stripe + Cloudflare Stream + Tally + custom code — see payments
- video hosting; the bootstrap stack.

Udemy — paid (50%+ take-rate via marketplace); huge audience; aggressive sales / discount policy; you don't own pricing.
Skillshare — paid; royalty-pool model; not great per-student economics.
LinkedIn Learning — paid; site-licence model; high-prestige but very gated.
Coursera / edX (specialisations) — paid; partnerships only; not for individual creators.
Domestika, MasterClass, CreativeLive — paid; juried / curated.