Are you looking for a robust learning management system (LMS) to create and sell online courses? LearnWorlds is an all-in-one platform that provides the tools to build interactive courses, design professional websites, and market your offerings effectively.
In this comprehensive LearnWorlds review, we‘ll take an in-depth look at its features, pricing, pros and cons to help you decide if it‘s the right solution for your e-learning business. Let‘s dive in!
What is LearnWorlds?
LearnWorlds is a cloud-based online course platform that enables digital entrepreneurs, businesses, and educational institutions to create and sell engaging online courses and training programs under their own brand.
The software provides an end-to-end solution with tools for course authoring, website building, user management, assessments, analytics, marketing and more. It‘s designed to help you deliver interactive learning experiences that boost engagement and lead to better outcomes for your students.
LearnWorlds is suitable for a variety of use cases, including:
- Solo edupreneurs creating and selling video courses
- Bloggers and creators monetizing their expertise
- Companies providing employee training and onboarding
- Educational institutions delivering online programs
- Coaches and consultants productizing their services
The platform powers over 10,000 online schools across 120+ countries. Some of its notable customers include Hootsuite, PwC, and Zendesk.
LearnWorlds Features
Now let‘s take a closer look at the key features LearnWorlds offers for building and growing an online education business:
Course Builder
The heart of LearnWorlds is its drag-and-drop course builder. It enables you to structure your course into sections and populate them with various types of learning activities like videos, text, images, documents, quizzes, assignments and more.
The visual, non-linear interface makes it easy to organize your content. You can quickly reorder lessons, change settings, and preview how everything will look to learners.
One thing that sets LearnWorlds apart is the level of interactivity it enables you to add to your courses. For example, you can insert elements like:
- Overlay buttons and hotspots on videos
- Navigation buttons to let students choose their path
- Interactive transcripts
- Pop-up text and images
- Downloadable attachments
- Social sharing prompts
This allows you to create dynamic, choose-your-own-adventure style courses that are more engaging than passive video. Templates are included to create interactions like interactive videos, ebooks, tests and more without having to start from scratch.
LearnWorlds supports uploading content in multiple formats including video (MP4, MKV, MOV up to 5GB), audio (MP3, M4A up to 500MB), images (JPG, PNG, GIF), documents (PDF, PPT, DOC, DOCX up to 1GB), SCORM and HTML packages. All content is automatically converted and optimized for playback on any device.
Interactive Video
LearnWorlds takes video-based learning to the next level with its powerful interactive video editor. You can enrich your videos with:
- Quizzes, surveys and polls
- Downloadable attachments
- Tables of contents for easy navigation
- Calls-to-action and affiliate links
- Subtitles and transcripts
The interactive video player remembers where each student left off and automatically resumes playback. You can also enable note-taking and discussions directly inside the player to foster active learning.
Another unique feature is the ability to create conditional videos. You can build interactive scenarios that send viewers down different paths based on their choices and responses. This enables you to craft personalized learning experiences at scale.
Course Player
Your course content is delivered to students through LearnWorlds‘ proprietary course player. The user-friendly interface lets learners easily navigate between sections, interact with content, take notes, and track their progress.
As a course creator, you have granular control over the player settings and policies. For instance, you can:
- Enforce sequential navigation vs. let students skip around
- Require students to watch videos to completion
- Set minimum quiz scores to advance
- Award certificates and badges
- Enable discussions, assignments and social sharing
- Customize player appearance and branding
This flexibility allows you to design the experience to match your course material and teaching style. You can provide an open, self-paced environment or a more structured, compliant one.
Instructor-Led Training
LearnWorlds supports both asynchronous on-demand courses and synchronous instructor-led training. You can schedule and host live classes and webinars directly on the platform using Zoom or your preferred web conferencing tool.
During live sessions, you can:
- Present slides and videos
- Use an interactive whiteboard
- Launch polls and quizzes
- Share your screen
- Break students into groups
Live sessions are automatically recorded and added to your course for later viewing. You can also set up automated reminder emails to boost live attendance.
Assessments and Quizzes
To test knowledge retention and award course completion, you can create graded assessments like:
- Multiple choice quizzes
- Open-ended questions
- File submission assignments
- Coding exercises
- Presentations
Assessments can be timed and proctored. LearnWorlds automatically grades multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank responses. You can leave feedback and manually grade open-ended submissions from your admin dashboard.
Conditional logic lets you create adaptive quizzes that adjust question difficulty based on previous responses. Question banks allow you to generate dynamic quizzes by pulling from pools of questions.
Upon successful completion, you can award certificates of achievement. LearnWorlds provides customizable certificate templates that are automatically personalized and issued to passing students.
Website Builder
LearnWorlds includes a full-featured website builder so you can create your storefront and market your courses. Using the visual, drag-and-drop builder, you can create any type of page including:
- Homepage
- Course landing pages
- About and contact pages
- Blog
- Checkout pages
You can start with a blank slate or customize one of the designer-made templates for different educational niches. The builder includes conversion-optimized elements like CTAs, countdown timers, testimonials, and pricing tables.
Popups and announcement bars let you highlight promotions. Built-in SEO tools help you optimize your pages to get found on search engines.
The site builder is highly flexible, enabling pixel-perfect designs without touching code. But if you need more customization, you can add your own HTML/CSS as well.
User Management
As your student base grows, LearnWorlds makes it easy to manage your users at scale. You can:
- Bulk import and export users via CSV
- Organize students into groups and cohorts
- Assign different user roles and permissions
- Set up automated onboarding sequences
With the Teams feature, you can provide multi-seat subscriptions and group discounts. This is ideal for selling courses to businesses and organizations.
To incentivize referrals, you can enable students to become affiliates and earn commissions for bringing new sales.
LearnWorlds also makes it easy to collaborate with co-instructors and team members. You can assign granular admin roles to control who can do what (e.g. edit content, manage users, view reports etc.).
Learner Engagement
LearnWorlds goes beyond the typical online course experience with a range of tools designed to boost learner engagement and course completion rates, such as:
- Discussion forums and social profiles
- Gamification with points, badges and leaderboards
- Automated drip notifications and reminders
- Daily content digests to bring students back
- Built-in social network for peer interaction
You can use the learner insights dashboard to track student progress, quiz scores, completion rates, and more. This lets you identify at-risk students and reach out with targeted interventions.
Mobile Apps
LearnWorlds is the only major online course platform that enables you to launch your own branded mobile apps for iOS and Android.
Using the mobile app builder, you can create a customized app experience featuring your logo, colors, and content. Customers can purchase and log into their courses via the app.
Push notifications allow you to alert users to new content, live events, and promotions – helping to increase retention and revenue. Students can download content for offline access and learn on the go.
Marketing and Sales
Beyond course creation, LearnWorlds provides a suite of tools to help you get your courses in front of the right audience and drive sales.
- Run flash sales and evergreen promotions
- Create 1-click upsells and bundles
- Maximize revenue with tiered subscriptions
- Capture leads with free courses and wait lists
- Build urgency with social proof and scarcity
- Recover abandoned carts with exit-intent popups
- Accept global payments via Stripe and PayPal
- Optimize your funnel with A/B testing
All checkout pages are mobile-responsive and conversion-optimized. LearnWorlds handles EU VAT calculations, invoicing, and affiliate payouts to minimize your admin work.
Integrations and API
To connect with the rest of your marketing tech stack, LearnWorlds offers 1-click integrations with popular tools like:
- Email: Mailchimp, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit
- Analytics: Google Analytics, Facebook pixel, Mixpanel
- Automation: Zapier, Integromat
- Advertising: Google Ads, Facebook Ads
- CRM: Salesforce
For more advanced use cases, developers can use the LearnWorlds API and webhooks to build custom integrations and workflows.
Support and Training
LearnWorlds provides several resources to help you get up and running quickly:
- Live onboarding webinars
- 200+ help articles and tutorials
- Free course on online course creation
- Supportive Facebook community
- 24/5 email and chat support
Pro Trainer and Learning Center plan customers also get access to a dedicated customer success manager for 1:1 strategic advice.
LearnWorlds also has an extensive library of free resources including ebooks, guides, and case studies to help customers succeed.
LearnWorlds Pricing
LearnWorlds offers 3 main paid plans:
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Starter: $29/mo + $5 per course sale. Includes unlimited paid courses and sales pipelines.
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Pro Trainer: $99/mo. Adds unlimited courses, memberships, subscriptions, SCORM support, live classes, learning analytics and custom checkout.
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Learning Center: $299/mo. Adds advanced features like interactive video, question banks, custom roles, API, integrations and mobile app builder.
All plans come with zero transaction fees (except the Starter plan), unlimited students and 24/5 support. You can save 20% by paying annually.
There‘s also a free 30-day trial that lets you test out all the features before committing.
For high-volume customers, LearnWorlds offers custom enterprise plans with premium migration services, dedicated servers, account management, and flexible invoicing.
LearnWorlds Pros and Cons
Here are the main advantages and disadvantages of using LearnWorlds to create and sell online courses:
LearnWorlds Pros
Powerful, flexible course builder. LearnWorlds gives you a high degree of control over your course content and delivery. You can mix multiple types of learning activities, set custom completion rules, and craft conditional learning paths.
Standout interactive video. The ability to easily add interactive elements like quizzes, buttons, and hotspots to your videos is a key differentiator. This can lead to better engagement and retention.
Professional site builder. You can create a stunning branded website to showcase and sell your courses. The optimized templates and built-in marketing tools help to maximize conversions.
Comprehensive user management. LearnWorlds has all the features you need to onboard, segment and support your students at scale. The Teams feature is great for selling B2B.
Exceptional customer support. LearnWorlds is renowned for providing prompt and knowledgeable customer service across multiple channels. The inclusion of a dedicated success manager on higher plans is a valuable perk.
LearnWorlds Cons
Steeper learning curve. Because of the sheer depth of features, LearnWorlds may take longer to master than simpler platforms like Teachable or Thinkific. The backend can feel overwhelming initially.
Transaction fees on starter plan. LearnWorlds charges a $5 fee per course sale on the entry-level plan, which can add up. However, the higher plans have zero transaction fees.
No mobile app builder on lower plans. The ability to build branded mobile apps is a unique selling point, but this feature is only available on the pricier Learning Center plan.
LearnWorlds Alternatives
If you‘re not sure LearnWorlds is right for you, here are some top alternatives to consider:
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Thinkific: Another leading online course platform with an intuitive drag-and-drop builder and plenty of sales and marketing features. Lacks some of LearnWorlds interactivity features but has a more affordable free plan.
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Teachable: Known for its simple, easy-to-use interface. A good choice for first-time course creators who don‘t need advanced features like interactive video or mobile apps.
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Podia: An all-in-one platform for selling courses, memberships, webinars and digital downloads. Has a clean, modern interface but fewer customization options than LearnWorlds.
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Kajabi: Another full-featured platform with powerful tools for building courses, landing pages and marketing funnels. More expensive than LearnWorlds but offers some unique features like an upcoming AI creator.
Is LearnWorlds Right For You?
LearnWorlds is an excellent choice if you‘re looking for an all-in-one platform to build highly engaging online courses and training programs.
It‘s particularly well-suited for experienced creators and organizations who need advanced features like interactive video, custom learning paths, mobile app building and robust user management.
However, be aware that the power and flexibility comes with a steeper learning curve. It may take some time to fully harness all the features. The lower-tier plans also have some limitations like transaction fees.
Overall though, LearnWorlds is one of the most comprehensive online course solutions on the market. The extensive feature set, professional site templates, and strong support make it an ideal platform for scaling an online education business.
If you‘re ready to take your courses to the next level and deliver standout student experiences, we recommend giving LearnWorlds a try. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial here.
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