Best Place to Sell Online Courses in 2025

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Why the Platform Choice Dictates Your Profitability
3. The Pitfalls of Redirecting Your Customers
4. The Shopify Powerhouse: Why It’s the Best Choice
5. Expanding Your Business Model: Courses as an Upsell
6. Managing Growth Without Hidden Fees
7. Building a Walled Garden Community
8. Technical Advantages of Native Integration
9. Diversifying Revenue with Memberships
10. Setting Realistic Business Expectations
11. High-Performance Features for Modern Educators
12. Practical Scenarios: How Real Merchants Use Digital Products
13. SEO and the "One Site" Advantage
14. Why "No Hidden Fees" is a Game Changer
15. Customizing the Learning Experience
16. Conclusion: The Best Place to Sell Online Courses
17. Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

Did you know that the global e-learning market is projected to reach a staggering $325 billion by 2026? This explosive growth isn't just for massive universities or tech giants; it represents a fundamental shift in how people consume information and how creators monetize their expertise. For the modern merchant, this shift presents an incredible opportunity: the ability to sell knowledge as easily as one might sell a pair of shoes or a bag of coffee beans. However, as the market matures, the old way of selling—directing your hard-earned traffic to a third-party marketplace where you compete with thousands of others—is becoming a relic of the past.

The purpose of this guide is to explain why the platform you choose is the single most important decision for your digital product business. We will explore the technical and strategic advantages of keeping your educational content within your own ecosystem, the pitfalls of high-fee marketplaces, and why Shopify has emerged as the premier choice for serious creators. From increasing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) to building a robust community that you actually own, we will cover the roadmap to turning your knowledge into a sustainable, high-margin revenue stream.

At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse. We believe that when you build a brand, you should own the entire experience—from the first click on your landing page to the final certificate of completion. This post will demonstrate why centralizing your business on Shopify is the smartest move for long-term growth and recurring revenue stability.

Why the Platform Choice Dictates Your Profitability

When entrepreneurs look for the best place to sell online courses, they are often lured by the siren song of massive marketplaces. These platforms promise "built-in audiences," but that audience comes at a steep price. Often, these marketplaces take a significant percentage of your sales—sometimes as much as 50% to 75%—leaving you with the crumbs of your own hard work.

Beyond the financial cost, there is the cost of your brand identity. When a student buys a course on a generic marketplace, they are a customer of that platform, not a customer of yours. You rarely get their email address, you cannot retarget them with ads for your other products, and you are subject to the platform’s algorithm changes. If they decide to change their fee structure or hide your course behind a "subscription" model, your business could disappear overnight.

By contrast, selling on your own domain gives you total control. You keep 100% of your customer data, which is the most valuable asset in any e-commerce business. This is why we advocate for a "Native Shopify" approach. By using an app that integrates directly into your existing store, you ensure that your courses, memberships, and physical products live side-by-side.

The Pitfalls of Redirecting Your Customers

A common mistake merchants make is using a "subdomain" or a completely separate third-party site for their courses. For example, a customer might buy a yoga mat on yourstore.com, but then have to log in to yourbrand.thirdpartyplatform.com to access their "Yoga for Beginners" course. This creates several points of friction:

1. Fragmented Login Experience: Customers often forget which site they are supposed to use, leading to an influx of "Where is my course?" support tickets.
2. Brand Disconnect: The third-party site usually looks and feels different from your main store, which can erode trust and professionalism.
3. SEO Fragmentation: Instead of building authority for your own domain, you are helping the third-party platform rank for your keywords.
4. Data Silos: Your sales data for physical goods and digital goods are in two different places, making it impossible to see a unified view of your customer’s journey.

One of the biggest hurdles for growing communities is unifying a fragmented system into a single Shopify store. When you move everything under one roof, you eliminate the confusion and technical debt that comes with managing multiple platforms.

The Shopify Powerhouse: Why It’s the Best Choice

Shopify is no longer just a platform for physical goods. It has evolved into a comprehensive commerce engine. When you choose Shopify as your home base, you benefit from the world’s most secure and optimized checkout process. You can use the payment gateways you already trust, like Shopify Payments, Stripe, or PayPal, without having to set up new accounts elsewhere.

The true magic happens when you combine physical and digital offerings. Consider a merchant who sells high-quality watercolor paints. On a generic course platform, they can only sell the tutorial. On Shopify, they can sell the "Mastering Watercolors" course and, at the same checkout, suggest a "Beginner’s Paint Set" as a physical upsell. This synergy is only possible when you use a solution that offers all the key features for courses and communities directly within the Shopify dashboard.

Expanding Your Business Model: Courses as an Upsell

One of the most effective ways to use online courses is not as a standalone product, but as a way to increase the value of your physical goods. This is a high-margin strategy because, unlike physical inventory, a digital course has zero shipping costs and infinite "stock."

Scenario: The Barista Basics

Imagine a merchant selling premium coffee beans. The market is competitive, and price wars are common. However, this merchant creates a "Barista Basics: The Art of the Perfect Pour-Over" video course. They bundle this course with every purchase of a $50 pour-over kit.

• The Result: The perceived value of the physical kit skyrockets.
• The Margin: The digital course costs $0 to "ship," but it differentiates the brand and builds deep customer loyalty.

This type of strategy is exactly how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses. They realized that providing the "how-to" was just as valuable as the "what," and their revenue reflected that realization.

Managing Growth Without Hidden Fees

As your course or community scales, the pricing model of your platform becomes critical. Many "all-in-one" course platforms use tiered pricing structures that penalize you for being successful. They might charge you more as you add more students or, even worse, take a "success fee" of 5% to 10% on every transaction.

At Tevello, we believe in a different approach. We offer The Unlimited Plan at $29.99 per month. This is a flat rate that allows you to scale without fear. Whether you have 10 students or 10,000, your price stays the same. Most importantly, we charge 0% transaction fees. We don't take a cut of your hard work; you keep every cent you earn.

If unifying your stack is a priority, start by a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses.

Building a Walled Garden Community

The future of the creator economy is in community. People no longer want to just watch a video; they want to engage with the creator and with like-minded peers. However, building a community on a social media platform like Facebook is risky. You are subject to their rules, their distractions, and their ads.

The best place to sell online courses is a platform that allows you to host a private community on your own site. This "walled garden" approach ensures that when your customers are engaging with your content, they aren't being distracted by a notification from a competitor or a meme from a friend.

By keeping customers at home on the brand website, you create a destination. You can offer member directories, social feeds, and discussion boards where the conversation is entirely focused on your brand and your expertise. This significantly increases Customer Lifetime Value because the community becomes a reason to stay (and keep paying) long after the initial course is finished.

Technical Advantages of Native Integration

From a technical perspective, "native" means that the app is built specifically to work within Shopify’s code. This isn't a "bridge" or a "plugin" that sends data back and forth; it is a seamless extension of your store.

When you are seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify, you’ll notice that the student experience is fluid. They use their existing Shopify customer account to log in. There is no new password to remember and no new URL to visit. This simplicity is the key to migrating over 14,000 members and reducing support tickets. When things "just work," your customers are happier, and your team is free to focus on growth rather than troubleshooting login issues.

Diversifying Revenue with Memberships

While one-time course sales are great for cash flow, recurring revenue is the holy grail of e-commerce. It provides stability and predictability for your business. Shopify’s robust subscription APIs make it easy to set up monthly or yearly memberships.

You can use a membership model to provide:

• Access to a library of "evergreen" courses.
• Exclusive monthly live Q&A sessions.
• A "Pro" tier for your community.
• Early access to physical product drops.

This hybrid model—selling both physical goods and digital access—is one of the most powerful strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively. It turns a one-time buyer into a long-term subscriber, drastically increasing the LTV of every customer you acquire.

Setting Realistic Business Expectations

We often see marketing that promises "six figures in your first week." At Tevello, we prefer to set realistic, professional expectations. Building a course business takes effort, high-quality content, and a focus on customer success.

The advantage of using a tool like Tevello isn't that it magically generates sales, but that it amplifies your existing efforts. It removes the technical barriers, provides predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees, and gives you a professional framework to host your expertise. Whether you are moving an existing community or starting from scratch, your focus should be on building brand loyalty and providing genuine value to your students.

High-Performance Features for Modern Educators

To compete in the 2025 e-learning landscape, you need more than just a video player. You need a suite of tools that keep students engaged and ensure they actually complete the material.

Drip Content Scheduling

If you are running a 6-week challenge or a structured program, you don't want to overwhelm your students by giving them all the lessons at once. Drip scheduling allows you to release modules over time—perhaps one every seven days—ensuring that the student stays on track and comes back to your site regularly.

Quizzes and Assessments

Knowledge checks are vital for learning retention. By adding quizzes to your modules, you can ensure that students understand the "Level 1" concepts before they move on to "Level 2." This gamification of learning makes the experience more interactive and rewarding.

Unlimited Video Hosting

Many platforms charge you extra for bandwidth or video storage. This can lead to unexpected bills if your course goes viral. Our Unlimited Plan includes unlimited video hosting and bandwidth, so you never have to worry about your hosting costs scaling alongside your success.

Practical Scenarios: How Real Merchants Use Digital Products

To understand the versatility of this model, let's look at how different niches can leverage native Shopify courses.

The Fitness Apparel Brand

A brand selling high-end yoga leggings decides to launch a "30-Day Transformation Challenge." They offer the challenge as a standalone digital product for $49, or they include it for free with any purchase over $150. They use Tevello's community features to allow participants to post their progress photos and encourage each other. By start your 14-day free trial and build your first course now, they can build the entire 30-day curriculum and test the student experience before they even begin their marketing campaign.

The Software Developer or Consultant

A consultant selling specialized B2B services uses Shopify to sell their time. They realize they are constantly repeating the same advice to every new client. They create a "Foundations" video course that all clients must watch before their first 1-on-1 session. This ensures that the high-priced consulting time is used for deep work rather than basic instruction.

The Crafting and DIY Niche

A merchant selling knitting kits includes a video tutorial for every pattern they sell. Instead of a printed instruction sheet that is easily lost, the customer gets a digital "locker" on the merchant's site where they can access all their purchased patterns and videos forever. This creates a powerful incentive for the customer to keep buying from that specific store, as their "library" of content grows over time.

SEO and the "One Site" Advantage

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a long-term game. Every time you create a new page, write a blog post, or add a course description, you are giving search engines more reasons to rank your domain.

When you use a third-party platform, you are essentially giving away your SEO power. Your "Course Syllabus" page ranks on their domain. Your "About the Instructor" page ranks on their domain. By keeping everything on Shopify, every single piece of content contributes to your store's authority. This means that over time, your organic traffic will grow, reducing your reliance on expensive paid ads.

Why "No Hidden Fees" is a Game Changer

In the e-commerce world, margins are everything. If you are selling a $100 course and your platform takes 10% plus a $0.30 transaction fee, and then you have to pay your credit card processor another 2.9%, you are losing nearly 15% of your revenue before you've even accounted for your marketing or content creation costs.

With Tevello, the math is simple. If you sell a $100 course, you pay the standard Shopify credit card processing fee, and that’s it. We take $0. This transparency allows you to reinvest that 10-15% back into your business—perhaps into better video equipment, more targeted ads, or higher-quality student support. This is why many merchants spend time install Tevello from the Shopify App Store today to see just how much they could save compared to their current setup.

Customizing the Learning Experience

Your store is a reflection of your brand. You’ve likely spent hundreds of hours perfecting your Shopify theme, choosing the right fonts, and curating your imagery. When a student enters your "learning area," it should feel like a continuation of that brand, not a generic template.

Native integration allows the course player to inherit your brand's look and feel. You can customize the colors, logos, and layout to ensure a professional and cohesive experience. This level of detail might seem small, but it is what separates "hobbyist" creators from professional "powerhouses."

Conclusion: The Best Place to Sell Online Courses

Selling online courses is one of the most effective ways to diversify your revenue, build brand authority, and increase the lifetime value of your customers. However, the success of your digital product business depends heavily on where those products live. By choosing a native Shopify solution, you avoid the high fees, fragmented data, and brand dilution that come with third-party platforms.

Whether you are an established merchant looking to add a high-margin upsell or a creator looking to build a recurring membership community, Shopify provides the most robust and secure ecosystem to grow your business. With the right tools, you can keep your customers on your own URL, own your data, and scale without the worry of hidden transaction fees.

To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I sell both physical products and online courses in the same Shopify checkout?

Yes! That is one of the primary advantages of a native integration. You can create bundles that include a physical item (like a cookbook) and a digital item (like a cooking course). Your customers can add both to their cart and complete a single transaction using Shopify's optimized checkout.

Do I need to pay for separate video hosting?

No. When you use the Tevello Unlimited Plan, video hosting and bandwidth are included at no extra cost. You don't need to pay for external services like Vimeo or Wistia, and you don't have to worry about "overage" fees if your courses get a lot of views.

How do my students access their courses after they buy?

Students simply log in to their existing account on your Shopify store. Once logged in, they will see a "My Courses" or "Learning Center" tab (which you can name whatever you like). This seamless experience eliminates the need for them to remember a separate password for a different website.

What if I already have my courses on another platform?

Migrating to a native Shopify setup is a common move for growing brands. You can import your students and curriculum into Tevello, allowing you to centralize your operations. Many merchants find that this move pays for itself quickly through the elimination of "per-student" fees and the reduction in customer support tickets.