I decided to write a post about this because every time I would publish a snapshot in my stories, a teacher would reach out to me and ask about Course Craft.

When I first started looking for an online platform to create my first online course – I had certain criteria in mind.

1. It had to be free or very cheap since I didn’t know whether or not people would actually buy my course.

2. It has to be intuitive and easy to use. I didn’t have time to spend countless hours figuring out what to click and how to set it up.

3. It had to have an easy way to integrate PayPal (the method of payment I was accepting at the time).

The first thing I googled is “top online platforms for courses”. The results yielded many similar blog posts where people were comparing different platforms. The most popular comparison was with Teachable. Many seemed to like it very much. I also liked Thinkific because I saw that you could integrate Captivate files into your course. I was already an advanced user in Adobe Captivate and thought that would be cool. Then I came across Course Craft and decided that I would stop at these three, register for a trial in all three, and give myself 30 minutes to try to set up a course in each one.

I recommend you do the same. If in 30 minutes you are experiencing negative emotions or you are looking for buttons or ways to do something, then this is not the platform for you. The only exception to this rule being the fact that you are not computer friendly, then you should just disregard this advice and stick to Course Craft.

So after I spent 30 minutes in Teachable, then Thinkific, I still wasn’t happy. I didn’t find the solution I was looking for. I registered for Course Craft and there it was. In 5 minutes I created my first lesson. I set up a payment system. They had a very easy way to make a landing page to sell your course that was very intuitive to me.

If you decide to use Course Craft I’d love it if you used my referral link (they have an excellent referral program as well!): https://coursecraft.net/ref/rkwf3p

So here is the top 5 reasons I chose Course Craft.

1. Pricing. Course Craft was the only platform that offered a FREE membership. That means that I could create a course, have students take it and pay 0. The lowest membership was at $29 and you could go back and forth between the Free and Paid versions as much as you wanted. For someone who was just getting started in the online course world – this was a perfect solution for me.

2. Design. I love that it’s super simple and minimalistic. It’s simple for me and it’s simple for my students. I have students of different ages from early 20s to late 60s and no one asked me “how do I use it?” or “how does this work?”. Students register and then everything is linear and clear. Russian is hard enough, I wouldn’t want my students to experience additional weight of a poor designed platform.

3. Payment system. I don’t know about the others but it was easy for me to connect PayPal and then I added Stripe to accept credit card payments. The fee for these is about the same across all three platforms ranging from 10% to 5% for the lowest pricing plans. It also allows you to sell a course and then “add-ons” inside of the course. So if you have additional materials, you could sell them later inside your course.

4. Landing pages. You need a landing page to sell your course and CourseCraft has an easy and intuitive layout to create it. It also allows you to easily collect email addresses of potential candidates.

5. Management tools. You can see the activity on your page, the leads lists, participants list, comments and quizzes and it’s all straightforward and clear. I don’t have to “look” for this information. It’s right there.

Is there anything that can be improved?

The forms (quizzes) feature is very limited. 

• It would be great if they added the ability to add images/video for multiple choice tests.
• Very often for a multiple choice test the answers are the same. It would be great if there was a way to copy the previous questions without having to rewrite it all over again. 
• I think adding more interactions to the course, like the ability to sort or drag/drop would really make coursecraft the #1 platform for course design!

Another place of improvement is the selling marketing tool. Right now, it only lets you add “add-ons”. From the marketing perspective, I’d like to have the ability to list the course at the highest price and then “remove” the add-ons.

I also want the ability to discount my add-ons later on in the course. It would be great if there was a quick way to do that.

If I convinced you to try it out, please use my referral link for Karma points 😉 : https://coursecraft.net/ref/rkwf3p

Good luck!