Create an online course for free: tools and softwares
If you're looking to design your first course and don't have a budget to match you're in luck! It's 100% possible to make an online course no cost (or at the very least for a minimal cost) and then increase the amount you invest when your company grows.
However, that's only one method to create an online course at affordable cost. We'll look at the software and the tools that you could use for creating your course, with very little or no investment upfront.
Online course creation tools to create an online course that is free
The software you employ to create your course make the difference in your success. They help you create a quality product that students love. They can help you automate your processes and save time. They also aid in selling to more people, so it can boost your profit.
1. A free trial plus an affordable tech stack
Used by first-time course creators up to multi-million dollar entrepreneurs, helps you streamline your business, so you can concentrate on the things you are best at: creating courses, coaching programmes, memberships, as well as other digital offerings which serve your clients.
Additionally, its online course building tool, provides everything you need to build your very first course, and to grow your business which includes:
- Builder for websites
- Build a landing page
- Builder of sales funnels
- Email marketing software
- Hosting of course videos
- Order pages
- Payment processing
The Basic plan ($119 per month, which is billed annually) lets you build 3 products, 3 sales funnels, unlimited landing pages, and unlimited email marketing to as many as 1000 customers.
Try it for free for 14 days
It has everything your business requires for your online business. Everything you need in one location. Yes! Let's go!
2. Filmora, iMovie, and Davinci Resolve are free and inexpensive video recording and editing software
The most important software needed that is essential for online learning is a video recorder and editor. Wondershare Filmora allows you to record and edit your videos using the same interface, it's flexible and easy to utilize.
You can use it to create videos with talking heads or screen recordings as well. This is an option will not be found in comparable software for filmmakers.
If you're just beginning to learn about video editing, Filmora gives you templates that allow you to create polished, professional videos. If you're an experienced video editor, you'll enjoy its more advanced features, such as keyframes, split screens motion tracking, the present template, and automatic beat sync.
Filmora is compatible with desktop, iPad, and mobile devices. The three versions are downloaded free, but to gain access to advanced features and remove the watermark, you'll have to upgrade to a paid version.
The annual plan costs $49.99 each month.
If you own an Apple computer, you already can access iMovie from the app store. It's free and straightforward to install and use for editing video. You can also make audio recordings as well as add slides. This is great for those who are making their first video maker or an online course creator who wants to make a simple video
If you're more experienced with editing skills for video, DaVinci Resolve is another software that's free and doesn't limit Mac users. It includes audio post-production, color grading, as well as color correction. Due to this feature, it can be more complicated to use.
3. Zoom: no-cost virtual meetings and recordings
If you need an unrestricted video recorder, Zoom may be your best choice. Create a gathering, press record, and start instructing. Even though it's not an editing tool however, it has options to make it easier for teachers.
Zoom's free plans allow you to host unlimited meetings up to 40 minutes. Additionally, it has automatic captions, simple screen-sharing capabilities as well as editable whiteboards. If you'd prefer hosting classes live, the Zoom Free plan lets you host up to 100 participants.
Following your "meeting," your recording is saved to the cloud or your PC (your preference). It gives you the Audio file (M4A) as well as a video file (MP4) as well as a text file of your conversation.
At $149.90 annually You can upgrade to Pro and Pro Plus, however the basic plan gives you everything you need to make a the best course possible.
4. Canva: free and low-cost graphics
Whether it's video thumbnails and course handouts, or even social media posts that promote your course, you'll need to create graphics. The Canva is a no-cost program that lets you make it easy to create beautiful graphics to match your brand's individual fashion.
Canva Free gives you more than 250,000 free templates, more than 100 types of graphics, and 5 gigabytes of cloud storage. If you want to use images or elements which are of a premium quality, you can use them for a small fee.
Canva Pro unlocks unlimited access to premium components such as a brand kit folders for organizing your projects as well as a background removal tool. Also, you'll receive 1TB of cloud storage. At $119.99 per year, this is an affordable option for designer.
5. Snagit is a free screen capture application (free trial)
Another option for creating graphics and videos can be Snagit. It is free for the first 15 days, a lifetime license costs only a one-time fee of $62.99. This is a one-time license that works that works with Windows as well as macOS as well as the initial year's maintenance.
Though other screen capture software are free to download, none give you the high-quality images that Snagit's captures offer. Snagit gives you high-def graphics and videos, as well as an editor which allows you to reduce your video, mark up your screenshots as well as make animated GIFs.
It is possible to use it to make your own course videos, provided that the duration of your classes is one hour or less. Plus, it can double as an editor that can alter the size of images as well as edit images and video. This is a great low-cost option for creators of courses.
6. MailerLite EmailerLite: Hosting of free email
The email marketing software is an essential software for online courses. The software will be used to create lists of clients and potential customers who are enthralled by your work.
MailerLite has an affordable plan for free that can send up to 12,000 monthly emails as well as 1,000 contacts. The plan includes an email automation builder, an online site, 10 landing pages, including sign-up forms as well as pop-ups. Additionally, it has integrations with e-commerce that allow you to take the payment on your MailerLite website's landing pages.
If you use MailerLite to create a site or landing pages, you'll receive random URLs "subscribepage.com" for landing pages and "mailerpage.com" for websites. It is necessary to upgrade to a premium plan in order to get a customized domain.
Even though this might not be the best option, it equips you with the ability to build your list of email subscribers and selling your online course for free. When you begin to earn money then you'll be able to change to a premium plan or opt for the complete system.
7. YouTube: no cost video hosting
Some course developers can offer no-cost or cheap plans, but they are not offering video hosting within their platforms. Students must discover a new method to host their videos.
The fastest and most simple solution the simplest and fastest solution is YouTube that offers free, unlimited video hosting. After uploading your video it is important to change its status to "unlisted." This means it will not be displayed in search results.
YouTube is tied with your Google profile, so it's simple to start when you sign up to YouTube, click the profile photo, then create a channel.
Upload videos using your phone, desktop or even recording applications. YouTube provides a link for the video that you can use to upload your video to your course creator.
YouTube is an excellent alternative for hosting videos on no budget, but it comes with its flaws. Unlisted videos can still be shared , so those who aren't paying could be able to access the course materials. And, at the end each video YouTube recommends other related videos to watch next. It could distract your students and make them leave your lesson rather than progressing into the next class.
8. Veed: free video and hosting for low-cost videos
If you want to avoid "watch this next" recommendations at the end of your video, Veed offers free hosting of videos under 10 minutes. Your videos will have a watermark, removable when you upgrade to a paid plan.
Veed can create, edit, share, collaborate, and host your videos all on one platform. Use the platform to record, edit, and host video chats on one platform.
You are able to make MP4 videos with a resolution of 720p, that can be uploaded to files with a maximum size of 250MB on the plan for free. You're limited to 2GB of space for files.
To get more limits, you can upgrade to the Premium plan ($18 a month). It allows for 25-minute videos as well as 1080p resolution. To record 4K video lasting up to two hours You'll have upgrade to the Professional plan for $30 a month.
9. Landingi: a low-cost landing page builder
The Landingi Core plan costs monthly at $29 and less if you sign up annually. This allows you to create an unlimited number of landing pages and 1000 unique visitors per month. It also comes with a custom domain. In order to integrate it with your email marketing program or Zapier it is necessary be upgraded to Create plan ($65 monthly). The plan increases your limit of traffic to 20,000 unique visits per month and two domains.
Try Landingi at no cost for 14 days, which might be enough for you to sell your online courses for free!
10. PayPal: Affordable payments
Now that your course is designed, it's time to sell it. With a free PayPal business account, you can easily to accept online payment without having a merchant account. You can set it to allow one-time or regular payments and subscriptions.
PayPal is a good option to accept payments since it seamlessly integrates with the majority of landing page builders or shopping carts. If you don't have a landing page no problem. It is possible to accept payment through an PayPal.me link to your customers.
Unlike merchant accounts, which may cost up to $500 each month, you pay PayPal when you sell something. When a customer makes a purchase on the course through your PayPal button or integration PayPal takes a small percentage of the purchase price prior to depositing the money into the account of your PayPal account.
11. Stripe: cheap payments
A different popular method of payment is Stripe. As with PayPal however, you pay for Stripe when you've sold something. You can accept credit cards and debit cards, and then deposits the proceeds directly into your account at the bank, so you don't have the funds transferred to get these funds.
Stripe is compatible with a variety of websites, however it is also possible to build your own payment pages directly with Stripe.
Stripe Checkout gives you a already-built and hosted payment site to offer one-time purchase or subscriptions. Its capabilities include auto-complete address payment options, one-click transactions and real-time card validation. brand-name identification for cards, as well as built-in fraud prevention and compliance.
Other options for collecting payment using Stripe includes sharing links, flexible invoicing as well as in-person payment.
Through Stripe When an individual purchases your course successfully, you'll pay 2.9 percent plus $0.30.
12. Zapier is free and inexpensive integrations
When thinking about how to develop an online course for free, make sure you know how these tools interact with one another. Many of the software that are used for online courses work with one another. But when they don't, you'll need an easy method to make an integration.
Zapier can automate your work across 5,000+ apps with simple workflows, conditional logic, and data formatting. You can get started for no cost and then upgrade to Professional when you're ready.
: one platform that does it all
We've given you 12 tools that can help you get started without any initial investment. This helps solve the problem in creating online classes for no cost, however it also brings some other challenges.
Utilizing different software will require you to incorporate the tools into one stack and make sure they are integrated to ensure a seamless customer experience. It's also necessary to switch from one platform to another in the process of creating your funnels, courses, or email marketing campaigns.
The cost with this approach starts at around $200 and may go up to $10,000 when you create your online course. That means you have to attract a significant number of potential customers before you can turn into a profit.
An all-in-one platform like can make you money, time, and stress. lets you:
- Create a mobile-responsive, professionally-looking and user-friendly website with no design experience. Just drag and drop to design an infinite number of websites.
- Utilize your own domain name to create a branded online presence for your website and online course.
- Create sales and email marketing funnels. Create email campaigns, automated email flows, re-marketing campaigns as well as other features with drag-and-drop ease. With built-in marketing pipelines and steps-by-step instructions, you'll be able to develop and sell to your list easily and efficiently.
- Create upsells, downsells, and free trials. You don't have to worry difficult programming or clashing plugins. makes it easy to create numerous upsells, discounts, and even free trials for your loyal followers.
- Build and lay out your course in a snap. Course Builder provides plug-and-play templates that cover the most popular kind of classes. Just a few clicks you'll be able to lay out and organize your course, including assessments, quizzes, videos and worksheets.
- Accept online payments. integrates with Stripe as well as PayPal which makes it simple to take payments directly through your site.
- Build more than just an online class. includes memberships, paid newsletters, podcasts, and coaching. If you think of that, you could create it using .
You can start with the cheapest investment available in the Basic plan. You can build three different products as well as gain 1000 active users prior to having for an upgrade Growth plan.
The free portal for education, University, gives you high-quality tutorials and tutorials that will show you the steps to design an educational course, but also how you can turn the course into a successful enterprise.
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