How to Sell an Online Course From Your Own Website

You know something people would pay to learn, and you are ready to sell an online course. Then the choices pile up: Teachable, Thinkific, Podia, a WordPress plugin, or the website you already pay for every month. Each pricing page looks reasonable on its own, yet none of them tells you what you will actually keep from a $200 sale. Two worries tend to sit underneath the comparison. One is fees quietly taking a slice of every purchase. The other is getting stuck on a platform right when the course starts working. You can settle both before you spend anything, with a few numbers and one short check of the website you already have.

You Can Sell Online Courses From Your Own Website in Three Ways

Every route to selling a course does the same basic job: it takes a payment, gives the buyer a login, and shows them the right lessons. What changes between routes is who runs the machinery, what you pay each month, and how much of the setup lands on your desk. The three routes below are the practical options, and the right one depends on the course you have planned and the website you already run. Start with the one that asks the least of you and still does everything the course needs.

A hosted course platform does the heavy lifting

Teachable, Thinkific and Podia host your videos, organize lessons, handle student logins and run checkout. You pay a monthly plan, and on some plans a platform fee per sale. Thinkific and Podia let you put the course on your own web address, so buyers can move from your site to the course without feeling like they left. This is the fastest route to a first sale and the one with the least maintenance, which is why it is a sound choice for a first course.

Your website builder may already sell courses

If your site runs on a builder, check whether your plan includes member areas, gated pages or course features before paying for anything new. This is the route people mean when they search for ways to sell online courses on Squarespace or similar builders. Costs depend on your current plan, any member-area upgrade and your payment processor. The catch is learning features: a builder may handle payments and logins well but track progress, quizzes and lesson order less thoroughly than a course platform. Check the specific builder and plan, since features differ from one to the next.

A WordPress LMS plugin gives you control and the chores

If you want to sell online courses on WordPress, a learning management system (LMS) plugin such as LifterLMS adds courses, enrollment, memberships and progress tracking to your site. LifterLMS Core is free, and its paid bundles run $199, $299 or $799 a year, renewing at full price. The plugin is only one line of the bill. Hosting, updates, security, backups, email, payment setup and tax handling become your job or someone you pay.

Plan Prices, Platform Fees and Card Processing Are Three Separate Costs

Pricing pages put the monthly figure up front, which makes plans easy to compare and easy to misread. A course sale can carry three charges at once: the plan you pay every month, a platform transaction fee on some plans, and payment processing on every card purchase. A plan advertised with no transaction fee still has card processing. The table keeps the three apart, using each platform's own pages as listed in mid-2026. Prices change, so confirm on the linked pages before you sign up.

Teachable's figures come from its June 2025 plan update, updated in May 2026, and its fees page, which also covers tax handling through its native payments. Thinkific's plans are on its pricing page, and its processing rate is on its Thinkific Payments fees page. Podia's plans and fees are on Podia's pricing page.

A First Year Costs More Than the Monthly Price Suggests

The fairest way to compare plans is to add up a year. Take a simple illustration: a $200 course that sells 20 copies in its first year, for $4,000 in sales. The math below uses Teachable because its pages give all three layers.

On Teachable Starter billed annually, the plan costs $348 for the year. The 7.5% platform fee takes $300. Card processing at 2.9% plus $0.30 per sale takes about $122. That is roughly $770 out of $4,000.

On Teachable Builder billed annually, the plan costs $828 for the year, with no platform fee, and the same $122 or so in processing. That is roughly $950.

At that sales level, the cheaper plan with a fee comes out ahead. The two cross where the extra $480 a year for Builder equals 7.5% of your sales, which is $6,400 a year. Below that, the fee plan tends to cost less. Above it, the flat plan does. Podia works the same way: Shaker costs $504 more a year than Mover and drops the 5% fee, so it pays off once yearly sales pass about $10,080.

Run your own numbers with your real price and a sales estimate you believe. If you are also pricing an ebook or a download next to the course, pricing a digital product around platform fees uses the same logic.

A Course Needs Seven Working Parts Before the First Sale

A course is more than videos on a page. Before you take money, every part a buyer touches has to work, from checkout to the last lesson. The research behind this post lists the pieces a small course needs, and the table shows which route handles each one for you.

Teachable and Thinkific list hosted video, lessons, quizzes, student logins, progress records and checkout. Podia lists courses, video hosting, checkout, customer accounts, email and sales-tax features. On WordPress, the LifterLMS feature list covers courses, enrollment, memberships and progress, but hosting, payment gateways, email, backups, security and tax setup sit with you.

You do not need every advanced feature to make a first sale. Video, organized lessons, student accounts, payment, email, a refund process and basic progress tracking are enough to begin. One thing no route can promise: access controls reduce casual sharing, but no web platform can stop a paying student from recording a lesson. Put your effort into the course working well on a phone, where a slow video or a login loop costs you more than an occasional shared password.

Test an Export Before You Commit to Any Platform

A course that works is a course you may want to move someday, to a cheaper plan, a better platform or your own site. That is where the lock-in worry becomes real. A hosted platform ties you to its pricing, policies, payment system and export rules. A custom domain makes the course look like yours, but the software behind it still belongs to the platform.

Before you choose, find out what you can take with you. The list is short: lesson text, downloadable files, video files, student names and email addresses, purchase records, and completion data. Podia advertises moving course content and customer emails, within its product limits. Teachable and Thinkific offer data exports, but a one-click rebuild on another platform is not something to count on.

WordPress gives you more control over hosting, the database and future moves, and the upkeep comes with it. Even there, your payment account, email service and video host may still be outside companies. WordPress documents how to import content, which helps when the course is already on a WordPress site.

The simplest protection is a trial run. Create a test product, buy it with your own card, log in as the student, request a refund, and export the customer and course data. If the export comes out usable, you have your exit door. If it does not, you know before a single real student depends on it.

Completion and Refunds Belong in Your Price

Students do not all finish, and some ask for their money back. Both affect what you should charge and how much support time you set aside. There is no reliable completion benchmark for courses sold by small businesses, because published rates depend on how completion is defined, who enrolled, the price and the course length.

The figures that do exist come from free online courses at scale. A University of Edinburgh report on MOOCs cites completion ranging from 7% among starters on FutureLearn to 18% in one Coursera course. A 2024 University of the Philippines Open University study reported 28.86% completion in one gamified course. Treat these as a sign of how widely results vary, not as a forecast for your course.

Refund rates are not published as an industry figure either. Your refund terms are your own policy, within the law where you sell, so write them down and state them on the sales page. The same goes for what you promise. The FTC's advertising basics put it simply: "Advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers." Claims about income, career results or completion need evidence behind them.

In practice, price for support time, refunds, payment fees and future updates. A shorter course built around one clear result, with some help along the way, can justify a higher price than a large video library with little guidance.

The Fifteen-Minute Check Tells You Which Route Fits

You can answer most of the platform question tonight, with your website dashboard and your email tool open. Write down:

• Your website platform and plan: The name of the builder or host and the plan you pay for.
• Member accounts: Whether your plan supports logins and gated pages.
• Lessons and progress: Whether lessons can be grouped into modules and marked complete.
• Video: Whether videos can be hosted on the plan or only embedded from elsewhere.
• Payments and tax: Your payment processor, its fees, and any tax calculation it offers.
• Refunds and exports: How a refund is issued, and what data you can export.
• Your email list: The number of active subscribers who agreed to hear from you, not social followers.
• Course length: Lessons and minutes counted from actual scripts or recordings, not a list of topics.

If your current site checks the boxes for accounts, lessons, checkout and access, use it and skip the new subscription. If it does not, a hosted platform is usually the lighter lift for a first course, and a short pilot of one module or three to five lessons is enough to test demand. A WordPress LMS earns its upkeep when you need custom workflows, already run WordPress, or plan a wider membership. If you have sold downloads before, the checkout steps in selling an ebook on your own website carry over.

Choosing a platform does not create demand, and a self-hosted site does not prevent it. The route matters less than a clear offer, a checkout you have tested, a refund policy in writing, and a way to reach people who want what you teach. When the course sells, the numbers worth watching are completed purchases, successful logins, support requests, refunds and net revenue after software and payment fees, not gross sales alone.

Frequently Asked Questions About sell online course

Can I sell an online course from my own website?

Yes. Use a hosted course platform on your own web address, your website builder's member or course features, or a WordPress LMS plugin. Check what your current site can do first.

What is the cheapest way to sell an online course?

If your current website plan already handles logins, lessons and checkout, using it avoids a new subscription. Otherwise, add up a full year on each plan, including platform fees and card processing, at your expected sales.

Is WordPress cheaper than Teachable for a course?

The plugin can be cheaper, and LifterLMS Core is free. Hosting, updates, security, payment setup and any development add to the cost, so compare full-year totals.

Do plans with no transaction fee have no fees at all?

No. Payment processing still applies to card sales, and taxes, currency or gateway charges may apply as well.

Do I own my students' data on a course platform?

Read the platform's terms and export tools, then test them. Confirm that names, email addresses, purchases and progress export in a usable format before you commit.

Can I stop people from sharing my course videos?

Not completely. Logins and access controls reduce casual sharing, but no web platform can guarantee a paying student will never copy or record a lesson.

What This Means for You

Selling a course from your own website comes down to three routes: a hosted platform, your builder's features, or a WordPress plugin. Keep plan price, platform fee and card processing as separate lines, add them up over a year at a sales figure you believe, and the cheaper option usually becomes clear. Test an export before you commit, so moving later is a known task instead of a worry.

A setup that fits the course you have, with a tested checkout and a written refund policy, lets you put your time into the teaching and the students. That is the part buyers remember and the part that brings the next sale.

If you want help with the parts where mistakes cost the most, Web Leveling can test your checkout and student access, connect payments and email, or plan a move to your own site. Our digital product creation work starts with the smallest setup that runs your actual course, and sometimes that is the website you already have. We work with small and medium businesses across the country and overseas. Tell us about the course you want to sell, and we will help you pick the route that fits.

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