Top Tools to Create Online Courses and Grow Your Shopify Store

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Understanding the Landscape of Tools to Create Online Courses
3. Why Native Integration is the Key to Scaling
4. Essential Features of High-Performing Course Builders
5. Practical Scenarios: Turning Expertise into Revenue
6. Diversifying Revenue Without Increasing Overhead
7. Choosing the Right Pricing Model for Your Business
8. How to Get Started with Your First Course
9. The Technical Edge: Why Shopify Performance Matters
10. Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
11. Conclusion
12. Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

Did you know that the global e-learning market is projected to reach a staggering $325 billion by 2026? This astronomical growth isn't just for massive universities or tech giants; it represents a fundamental shift in how people consume information. For the modern e-commerce entrepreneur, this shift presents a unique opportunity to stop thinking of customers as one-time buyers and start viewing them as lifelong students of your brand. If you are currently selling physical goods, you are likely all too familiar with the constant battle of inventory costs, shipping delays, and fluctuating supply chains. Digital products, specifically online courses, offer a high-margin escape from these traditional retail headaches.

The purpose of this blog post is to guide you through the complex world of the tools to create online courses, helping you identify which solutions will actually move the needle for your business. We will explore the different categories of course builders, the essential features you need to deliver a premium experience, and why the "native" approach to Shopify is the gold standard for merchants who value their brand integrity. We will also dive into the technical advantages of keeping your ecosystem unified and how to leverage community features to drive recurring revenue.

At Tevello, our mission is to turn any Shopify store into a digital learning powerhouse. We believe that as a merchant, you should own your customer data and your brand experience entirely. This article will demonstrate that the most effective way to scale a digital education business is to integrate it seamlessly into your existing storefront, ensuring a frictionless journey for your learners and a more profitable bottom line for you.

Understanding the Landscape of Tools to Create Online Courses

When you first begin searching for tools to create online courses, the sheer volume of options can be overwhelming. To make an informed decision, it is helpful to categorize these tools based on their architecture and how they interact with your existing business. Generally, course creation software falls into four distinct buckets.

Online Course Platforms and External Hosts

These are standalone platforms where you host your content on their servers. While they offer robust builders, they often act as a "walled garden." When a customer buys your course, they are often redirected away from your website to a third-party URL. This creates a fragmented brand experience and, more importantly, can complicate your data tracking. For a Shopify merchant, this means managing two separate sets of customers, two different login systems, and two distinct checkouts.

All-in-One Marketing Suites

Some tools attempt to do everything: email marketing, funnel building, website hosting, and course management. While appealing in theory, these suites can become "jacks of all trades and masters of none." They often come with high monthly price tags and complex interfaces that take months to master. For someone already established on Shopify, adopting an all-in-one suite often results in paying for redundant features like website hosting or checkout systems that you already have and trust.

Learning Management Systems (LMS) Plugins

Commonly found in the WordPress ecosystem, these plugins turn a standard website into a learning hub. While highly customizable, they require significant technical upkeep. You become responsible for security patches, plugin conflicts, and server optimization. For a busy merchant, the "technical debt" of managing a self-hosted LMS can quickly become a full-time job that distracts from selling and teaching.

Native Shopify Course Integrations

This is where Tevello lives. A native integration is a tool that sits directly inside your Shopify admin. It doesn't ask your customers to leave your store or create a new account on a different platform. By seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify, you can see how the checkout process remains identical to buying a physical product. This unity is crucial for maintaining trust and maximizing conversion rates.

Why Native Integration is the Key to Scaling

The most significant hurdle for many course creators is "customer friction." Every extra click, every redirect to an unfamiliar URL, and every new password a customer has to remember is an opportunity for them to drop off. This is why we prioritize keeping customers at home on the brand website.

When your course lives natively on Shopify, your customers use their existing store accounts to access their lessons. There is no "Where do I log in?" or "I forgot my password for your other site" support tickets. This simplicity was a major factor in migrating over 14,000 members and reducing support tickets for established brands who found that fragmented systems were holding them back.

Furthermore, a native solution allows you to leverage Shopify's world-class checkout. You can use the payment gateways you already trust—like Shopify Payments, Shop Pay, PayPal, or even "Buy Now, Pay Later" options—without having to set up new accounts or deal with different payout schedules. Because Tevello integrates with the Shopify ecosystem, your digital courses are treated like any other product in your inventory, allowing for sophisticated bundles and automated marketing workflows.

Essential Features of High-Performing Course Builders

As you evaluate the tools to create online courses, you shouldn't just look for a place to upload videos. A modern learning experience requires a suite of interactive features that keep students engaged and coming back for more. Here are the core functionalities we include in our ecosystem to ensure your success.

Comprehensive Content Delivery

Your lessons shouldn't be limited to just video. A great course is a blend of various media types. Our platform supports:

• Unlimited Video Hosting: We provide high-speed bandwidth so your videos load instantly, regardless of where your students are located.
• Drip Content Scheduling: Instead of overwhelming students with 20 hours of content at once, you can release modules over time (e.g., one new lesson every seven days). This keeps engagement high and reduces refund requests.
• Quizzes and Assessments: Test your students' knowledge as they progress. This not only adds value but gives students a sense of accomplishment.

Community and Social Engagement

Learning is often a social process. When students feel part of a group, they are more likely to complete the course and recommend it to others. We have integrated all the key features for courses and communities directly into our app. This includes member directories, student profiles, and social feeds where learners can interact with you and each other. By building a community on your own URL, you are creating a "sticky" brand environment that social media groups simply cannot replicate.

Seamless Brand Customization

Your course should look and feel exactly like your Shopify store. If your store has a minimalist, high-end aesthetic, your course area should match. Native tools allow you to use your existing themes, colors, and fonts. This visual consistency reinforces the value of your digital product and makes the transition from "shopper" to "student" feel natural.

Practical Scenarios: Turning Expertise into Revenue

To understand how these tools to create online courses work in the real world, let's look at how different types of Shopify merchants can use them to solve common business challenges.

The Upsell Strategy: From Product to Pedagogy

Imagine a merchant selling high-end coffee beans. While the beans are excellent, many customers struggle to brew the perfect cup at home. By creating a "Barista Foundations" video course, the merchant creates a high-margin upsell. This digital product requires no shipping boxes, no warehouse space, and no international logistics. It turns a $20 bag of beans into a $60 "Masterclass Bundle." This is a classic example of generating over €243,000 by upselling existing customers through educational content that complements physical goods.

The Community Play: Solving Support Issues

Consider a brand that sells complex gardening equipment or software. Most of their support tickets likely come from customers who aren't sure how to use the product effectively. By launching a community-based course, the brand can house all their tutorials, FAQs, and expert advice in one place. When other members of the community start answering each other's questions, the brand's support burden drops significantly. This was precisely the result for brands focused on solving login issues by moving to a native platform where everything is unified under one roof.

The Retention Loop: Building Recurring Revenue

Physical products are often one-off purchases. Digital memberships, however, provide stability. A fitness brand selling yoga mats can launch a monthly subscription for live-streamed classes and a library of workouts. This creates a predictable revenue stream that isn't dependent on new customer acquisition every single day. By focusing on retention strategies that drive repeat digital purchases, you increase the Lifetime Value (LTV) of every customer who walks through your digital doors.

Diversifying Revenue Without Increasing Overhead

One of the most compelling reasons to use tools to create online courses within the Shopify environment is the ability to diversify your income without the usual scaling pains. When you sell more physical products, you usually need more staff, more space, and more capital. When you sell more digital courses, your overhead remains virtually the same.

This scalability is why we advocate for a business model that balances physical and digital offerings. You can use your physical products as a "loss leader" or entry point for your brand, then move those customers into higher-margin digital programs. Alternatively, you can use a free mini-course as a lead magnet to build an email list of highly qualified prospects who are then primed to buy your physical inventory.

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

Choosing the Right Pricing Model for Your Business

Many platforms in the "tools to create online courses" space use "success fees" or tiered pricing that punishes you for growing. They might take 5% of your sales or charge you more every time you add a new student. At Tevello, we believe that your success should be your own.

The Unlimited Plan

We offer a flat-rate model designed to give you total peace of mind. For $29.99 per month, you get access to our Unlimited Plan. We don't believe in complicated tiers or hidden costs. Our goal is to provide predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees, allowing you to reinvest your profits back into your marketing and content creation.

What does "Unlimited" actually mean?

• Unlimited Courses: Whether you have one flagship program or a library of 100 mini-courses, the price stays the same.
• Unlimited Students: We don't charge you "per seat." Whether you have 10 students or 10,000, your monthly cost is fixed.
• 0% Transaction Fees: Unlike other platforms that take a cut of every sale, we take nothing. You keep 100% of the revenue you generate (minus your standard payment processor fees from Shopify).

This transparent approach is essential for avoiding per-user fees as the community scales, ensuring that your margins actually improve as your business grows.

How to Get Started with Your First Course

Building a course can feel like a monumental task, but the key is to start small and iterate. You don't need a professional film crew to launch. Most successful courses start with simple screen recordings or high-quality smartphone videos.

1. Identify the "Pain Point": What is the one thing your customers struggle with most? This is the foundation of your first course.
2. Outline the Transformation: Don't just list features. Tell your students where they will be at the end of the course. Will they be better photographers? More confident cooks? Accomplished knitters?
3. Install the Tool: You can start your 14-day free trial and build your first course now. This allows you to set up your curriculum, upload your videos, and design your member area before you ever pay a monthly fee.
4. Test with a "Beta" Group: Offer your first course at a discount to your most loyal customers in exchange for feedback. This helps you refine the content and collect those all-important testimonials.
5. Launch and Automate: Once your course is live, use Shopify's email automation to suggest the course to customers who have purchased relevant physical products.

The Technical Edge: Why Shopify Performance Matters

When you use external tools to create online courses, you often encounter "technical lag." A student clicks a link, the page takes five seconds to redirect, another three seconds to load a login screen, and then the video player buffers. In the age of instant gratification, this is a recipe for high refund rates.

By keeping your courses native to Shopify, you benefit from the massive infrastructure that powers millions of stores worldwide. Your course pages load with the same speed as your product pages. Your videos are served via a high-performance Content Delivery Network (CDN). This technical reliability ensures that your brand looks professional and that your students have a frustration-free experience every time they log in.

Moreover, having your data in one place—the Shopify Admin—gives you unprecedented insights into customer behavior. You can see which of your top-spending customers are also your most active students. You can track which courses lead to the most repeat purchases of physical goods. This unified data is the "secret sauce" for sophisticated e-commerce scaling.

Maximizing Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

The ultimate goal of adding digital courses to your Shopify store is to increase the total value of every customer. It is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to sell to an existing one. Courses provide the perfect "next step" in the customer journey.

Think of it as a ladder. At the bottom are your entry-level physical products. In the middle are your premium goods and bundles. At the top are your digital courses and community memberships. By offering a range of products across different price points and formats, you ensure that there is always something for your customers to buy, no matter where they are in their journey.

This strategy not only stabilizes your revenue but also builds an incredible amount of brand loyalty. When a customer spends 10 hours learning a new skill from you via your video course, they are no longer just a "customer"—they are a fan. They trust your expertise, they value your community, and they are significantly more likely to choose your store over a competitor for their next physical purchase.

Conclusion

The shift toward e-learning is a permanent change in the business landscape, and for Shopify merchants, it represents one of the most powerful ways to grow a sustainable, high-margin brand. By selecting the right tools to create online courses, you can bypass the headaches of inventory and shipping, create recurring revenue streams, and build a community that truly owns its niche.

At Tevello, we are dedicated to helping you make this transition as seamless as possible. We provide the infrastructure, the "0% transaction fee" model, and the native integration you need to keep your customers right where they belong: on your store. Whether you are looking to add a simple tutorial series or launch a massive global academy, the tools are ready for you.

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

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a separate website to host my online courses?

No. When you use a native Shopify integration like Tevello, your courses live directly on your existing Shopify store. This means you don't have to pay for separate hosting, manage a different domain, or ask your customers to visit a third-party site. Everything is managed through your Shopify admin panel.

How does the 0% transaction fee benefit my business?

Most external course platforms charge a "success fee" or take a percentage (often 5% to 10%) of every sale you make. Tevello does not take any cut of your sales. You only pay your monthly subscription and your standard Shopify payment processing fees. This means as your course sales grow, your profit margins increase because your software costs remain fixed.

Can I sell both physical products and digital courses together?

Yes, and this is one of the biggest advantages of a native integration. You can create bundles that include a physical item (like a knitting kit) and a digital course (like a "How to Knit" series). Shopify treats the course as a product, allowing it to be added to the cart alongside any other item in your store, leading to a single, unified checkout experience.

Is there a limit to how many videos or students I can have?

With our Unlimited Plan, there are no limits. You can host as many videos as you need and enroll an unlimited number of students without seeing an increase in your monthly bill. We also provide unlimited bandwidth to ensure your students always have a smooth, high-quality viewing experience regardless of your course's popularity.