The Best Places to Sell Online Courses Today

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Evolution of the Online Course Marketplace
3. Third-Party Marketplaces: The "Rented Land" Approach
4. Standalone Course Platforms: The Middle Ground
5. Why Shopify is the Best Place to Sell Online Courses
6. Native Shopify Integration: The Tevello Advantage
7. Strategic Business Growth with Digital Products
8. Setting Realistic Expectations for Your Course Business
9. Practical Scenarios: How Courses Fit into Your Store
10. The Technical Advantage of Being Native
11. Choosing the Best Place to Sell Online Courses: A Checklist
12. The All-In-One Ecosystem
13. Frequently Asked Questions
14. Conclusion

Introduction

Did you know that the global e-learning market is projected to reach a staggering $325 billion by 2026? This massive shift in how people consume information isn't just for academic institutions or tech giants; it represents a monumental opportunity for independent creators and e-commerce merchants. For years, the barrier to entry for selling digital knowledge was high, often requiring complex subdomains, expensive "all-in-one" platforms that didn't actually do everything, or marketplaces that took a massive cut of every sale. Today, the question isn't whether you should sell your expertise, but rather which of the many places to sell online courses will actually support your long-term brand growth.

Choosing the right home for your digital content is one of the most consequential decisions you will make for your business. It impacts everything from your profit margins and customer retention to how much control you have over your own data. Many entrepreneurs start on large marketplaces only to realize they are "renting" their audience, while others struggle with fragmented systems where their physical products and digital courses live on entirely different platforms.

In this article, we will explore the landscape of digital education platforms, comparing marketplaces, standalone builders, and native e-commerce integrations. We will dive deep into why keeping your customers on your own brand's URL is the key to building a sustainable business. Our goal is to provide you with a clear roadmap for diversifying your revenue streams, increasing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), and turning your existing brand into a digital learning powerhouse.

The thesis of this discussion is simple: while there are many places to sell online courses, the most profitable and sustainable strategy is to own the entire customer experience within your existing ecosystem, ensuring your brand—not a third-party platform—remains the star of the show.

The Evolution of the Online Course Marketplace

The early days of online courses were dominated by massive marketplaces. These sites served a vital purpose: they introduced the general public to the idea that you could learn anything—from coding to sourdough baking—through a series of pre-recorded videos. For a creator with zero audience, these marketplaces were an attractive "first home."

However, as the creator economy has matured, so have the needs of the merchants. We have seen a significant move away from centralized marketplaces toward decentralized, brand-owned platforms. The reason is clear: merchants want to own their customer data. When you sell through a marketplace, you often don't get the email addresses of your students, you can't easily retarget them with ads for your other products, and you are subject to the marketplace's ever-changing algorithms and fee structures.

At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse. We believe that if you have already put in the hard work to build a brand and a customer base, you shouldn't have to send those customers away to a third-party site just to consume a digital product. The evolution of this industry is moving toward "Native Shopify Integration," where the checkout, the community, and the curriculum all live under one roof.

Third-Party Marketplaces: The "Rented Land" Approach

When searching for places to sell online courses, marketplaces are usually the first results that appear. These platforms operate like the "Amazon" of digital learning. They have a massive built-in audience and handle much of the technical heavy lifting.

The Benefits of Marketplaces

For a complete beginner, the draw of a marketplace is the discovery factor. You can upload your videos, and the platform’s search engine might show your course to people who have never heard of you. They handle the hosting, the payment processing, and the basic delivery.

The Significant Drawbacks

The cost of that "discovery" is often incredibly high. Some marketplaces take 50% or even 75% of your revenue if they are the ones who drove the sale. Furthermore, these platforms often run deep-discount sales where your $200 course is sold for $10 without your consent. This can devalue your brand and make it nearly impossible to build a high-ticket coaching or membership business.

Perhaps the most damaging aspect is the loss of the customer relationship. In a marketplace, the student is a customer of the platform, not a customer of your brand. You are effectively building someone else's business on rented land. This is why many successful creators eventually look for examples of successful content monetization on Shopify to regain control of their destiny.

Standalone Course Platforms: The Middle Ground

The next category of places to sell online courses includes standalone platforms. These allow you to create your own "school" on a dedicated site. You get more control over branding than a marketplace, and you usually get to keep your customer’s email address.

The Fragmented Customer Experience

The primary issue with standalone platforms is fragmentation. If you are a merchant already selling physical goods on Shopify—perhaps you sell high-quality coffee beans—and you want to sell a "Barista Basics" course, a standalone platform forces your customer to leave your main site.

Imagine a customer buying a bag of espresso beans and a course. On a standalone platform, they have to go through two different checkouts, create two different accounts, and remember two different URLs. This friction kills conversion rates. It also makes your backend operations a nightmare, as you have to sync data between two completely different systems to see your total revenue per customer.

High Monthly Fees and Success Fees

Many of these standalone platforms charge high monthly subscriptions and then add "success fees" or transaction fees on top of that. As you scale, these fees can eat into your margins significantly. This is why many merchants prefer securing a fixed cost structure for digital products that doesn't penalize them for being successful.

Why Shopify is the Best Place to Sell Online Courses

For the modern merchant, Shopify has evolved far beyond a simple cart for physical goods. It is now a comprehensive commerce engine. When you treat your online course as just another SKU in your Shopify admin, you unlock several powerful advantages.

Seamless Brand Consistency

By selling natively, your courses live on your actual domain (e.g., yourstore.com/pages/courses). There is no redirect to a third-party URL. This builds immense trust with your audience. They already know and trust your Shopify store; providing their education in the same familiar environment creates a professional, high-end feel.

Unified Customer Data and Support

When your digital products live alongside your physical stock, your customer profiles are unified. You can see that "Customer A" has bought three bags of coffee and is currently 50% through your "Home Roasting" course. This allows for incredibly targeted marketing. You can send an automated email to everyone who finished the course, offering them a discount on an advanced roasting kit.

Using a unified login that reduces customer support friction means your customers don't have to email you asking why their "course password" doesn't work on your "main site." One account, one password, one brand.

Native Shopify Integration: The Tevello Advantage

We designed Tevello specifically to solve the problems of fragmentation and high fees. We didn't want to build another "destination" platform; we wanted to build a tool that empowers your existing store.

Keep Your Profits with 0% Transaction Fees

Many platforms claim to be "all-in-one" but then take a 5% or 10% "transaction fee" on every sale you make. We find that practice counter-productive to the merchant's growth. With Tevello, we charge 0% transaction fees. You keep 100% of the revenue you generate, minus what your standard payment gateway (like Shopify Payments) charges.

Our pricing is transparent and simple. We offer The Unlimited Plan for $29.99 per month. This isn't a "starter" tier that you'll quickly outgrow. It is a robust, all-access plan designed for serious growth.

Unlimited Everything

When we say Unlimited, we mean it. The plan includes:

• Unlimited courses and students: Whether you have ten students or ten thousand, your price stays the same.
• Unlimited video hosting and bandwidth: You don't have to pay for external video hosting services like Vimeo or Wistia. It's all built-in.
• Community Features: Build deep brand loyalty with member profiles, directories, and social feeds.
• Drip Content & Quizzes: Control the pace of learning and test student knowledge to ensure they are getting results.

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

Strategic Business Growth with Digital Products

Selling online courses is one of the most effective ways to increase your store's profitability. Unlike physical goods, digital products have near-zero marginal costs. Once you have filmed your "Barista Basics" video course, selling it to the 1,001st student costs you effectively nothing.

Diversifying Revenue Streams

Physical products often suffer from supply chain issues, shipping delays, and inventory costs. Digital courses provide a stable, high-margin revenue stream that balances out the ebbs and flows of physical retail. By offering a digital component, you are creating a "hybrid" business model that is much more resilient to market changes.

Increasing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

The most expensive part of e-commerce is acquiring a new customer. Once they are in your ecosystem, the goal is to provide them with as much value as possible over time. A merchant selling gardening tools can significantly increase LTV by selling a seasonal "Organic Gardening Masterclass." Not only does the course generate immediate profit, but it also trains the customer on how to use the tools they bought from you, leading to higher satisfaction and more physical tool sales in the future.

We have seen this work across countless niches. For instance, see how merchants are earning six figures by moving away from external platforms and integrating their knowledge directly into their Shopify workflow.

Setting Realistic Expectations for Your Course Business

It is important to approach the online course world with a realistic business mindset. You may see advertisements promising that you will make six figures in your first week without any effort. At Tevello, we prefer to focus on the reality of building a sustainable brand.

Success in digital learning requires the same thing as success in physical retail: a great product, a clear understanding of your audience, and consistent marketing. A course is not a "get rich quick" scheme; it is a robust tool that amplifies your existing efforts.

The real benefit of the course model is the stability of recurring revenue and the building of brand loyalty. When you provide a student with a transformation—helping them learn a new skill or solve a problem—you aren't just a "vendor" anymore. You are an authority and a mentor. That level of trust is something money can't buy, and it leads to a much more stable business in the long run. By avoiding per-user fees as the community scales, you ensure that as your influence grows, your overhead doesn't spiral out of control.

Practical Scenarios: How Courses Fit into Your Store

Let's look at how different types of Shopify merchants can utilize native courses to grow.

The Hobbyist/Craft Store

Consider a brand like Crochetmilie. They aren't just selling yarn and hooks; they are selling the ability to create something beautiful. By using native Shopify tools, they can bundle a physical kit with a digital course that teaches the specific pattern. You can read about how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses to see exactly how this hybrid model works in practice. This strategy led to strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively, proving that digital education is the perfect companion to physical products.

The Professional Services Merchant

If you sell photography equipment, your customers are constantly looking for ways to take better photos. Creating a series of "Lighting Masterclasses" or "Editing Tutorials" allows you to monetize your expertise alongside your hardware sales. This not only adds a high-margin product to your catalog but also positions you as an expert in the field, making customers more likely to buy their next camera from you rather than a generic big-box retailer.

The Technical Advantage of Being Native

When you choose seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify, you are choosing a path of least resistance for both yourself and your customers.

One Checkout to Rule Them All

Tevello uses the Shopify checkout that you and your customers already trust. This means you can use all of Shopify's native payment gateways, including Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. There's no need to set up a second Stripe or PayPal account just for your courses. When a customer adds a physical shirt and a digital course to their cart, it’s one single transaction.

Video Hosting That Works

One of the biggest hidden costs of selling courses is video hosting. If you host on YouTube, your videos are public and have distracting ads. If you host on a private professional service, you could be looking at hundreds of dollars a month in bandwidth fees. Our Unlimited Plan includes video hosting and bandwidth, so you never have to worry about a "viral" course leading to a massive hosting bill. We handle the technical infrastructure so you can focus on the teaching.

Community Engagement

A course is a monologue; a community is a dialogue. We believe that the best learning happens when students can interact with each other and the creator. Our community features allow you to build a social network directly on your Shopify store. This increases retention and gives students a reason to log in every day, keeping your brand top-of-mind. You can find all the key features for courses and communities in our dashboard, ready to be activated with a few clicks.

Choosing the Best Place to Sell Online Courses: A Checklist

When you are evaluating where to host your knowledge, ask yourself these five critical questions:

1. Do I own the customer data? Can you export your student list and email them whenever you want?
2. Is the checkout experience seamless? Does the customer stay on your domain, or are they redirected?
3. What are the true costs? Are there hidden transaction fees or per-user "success fees" that will punish you as you grow?
4. Can I sell physical and digital products together? Can you easily bundle a course with a physical product in the same cart?
5. Is the pricing predictable? Do you know exactly what your bill will be every month, regardless of your sales volume?

By verifying compatibility details in the official app listing, you can see how a native solution checks all of these boxes.

The All-In-One Ecosystem

Our vision at Tevello is to provide an ecosystem where everything lives side-by-side. Your physical stock, your digital curriculum, and your student community should not be separated by tabs and different logins. They are all parts of the same brand experience.

By staying on Shopify, you benefit from the thousands of other apps in the Shopify ecosystem. Want to use a specific loyalty program? It works with your courses. Want to use a sophisticated email marketing tool like Klaviyo? It integrates perfectly with your student data. This "best-of-breed" approach allows you to build a custom tech stack that is far more powerful than any "all-in-one" platform that tries to do everything mediocrely.

If you are currently using a fragmented system, you are likely losing sales to friction and spending too much time on administrative tasks. We are committed to helping you simplify your business so you can get back to what you do best: creating great content and serving your customers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I sell courses on Shopify without a third-party website?

Yes! By using an app like Tevello, you can host your videos, quizzes, and community directly within your Shopify store. Your students will log in to your store's "My Account" area to access their content, meaning they never have to leave your domain.

Do I need to pay for separate video hosting?

No. While some platforms require you to use Vimeo or YouTube, the Tevello Unlimited Plan includes unlimited video hosting and bandwidth. This saves you money and ensures your content is protected and professional.

Is it hard to set up a course if I'm not a "tech person"?

Not at all. We have designed our interface to be as intuitive as the Shopify admin itself. If you can create a product in Shopify, you can create a course in Tevello. We also offer a 14-day free trial so you can build out your entire curriculum and see how it looks before you ever pay a cent.

Can I migrate my existing students from another platform?

Yes, migration is a common process. Because Tevello integrates with your Shopify customer list, you can import your students into Shopify and then grant them access to your courses within Tevello. This allows you to unify a fragmented system into a single, cohesive brand experience.

Conclusion

The e-learning revolution is here, and there has never been a better time to share your expertise with the world. While there are many places to sell online courses, the most successful merchants are the ones who prioritize brand ownership, customer experience, and long-term profit margins. By choosing a native Shopify integration, you are not just selling a course; you are building an enduring digital asset that lives at the heart of your business.

Remember, the goal is to work smarter, not harder. A flat-rate plan that supports unlimited members gives you the peace of mind to scale your audience without fear of rising costs. Whether you are selling your first lesson or managing a community of thousands, having the right tools in place makes all the difference.

Stop renting your audience and start building your empire. Turn your Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse today. You can keep 100% of what you earn with our 0% transaction fee model and professional hosting.

To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from. You can install Tevello from the Shopify App Store today and start your 14-day free trial to see exactly how digital products can transform your brand.