Top Simplero Alternatives, Competitors, & Similar Software in 2023
Simplero is an online platform that allows you to create courses and build websites. In addition, you can send emails, sell your products, manage affiliate programs, etc.
If you're a coach or a creator looking for a platform to build your online business, you might've heard of Simplero. Simplero is about simplicity, and that's what it does best. Simplero provides simple and easy features that help you sell your products and collect leads.
While Simplero has many great features, it has its downside too. If you've used simplero, you might've faced how technical it can get. There is a tough learning curve if you're not familiar with the technical aspects of the platform. Additionally, Simplero has steep pricing tiers and may not be suitable for every business.
That's why you don't have to make a decision right away. In this article, we'll share with you what are Simplero's shortcomings and the best Simplero alternatives.
Reasons to look for Simplero Alternatives
-
While Simplero offers templates, it lacks customization. You're limited if you're looking to build a crafty or fancy website. Building a website that matches your brand will be difficult as Simplero does not provide white labeling. Moreover, Simplero requires CSS knowledge to enhance the design.
-
If you want to create and sell courses, Simplero might not be the best solution here. Simplero has its main focus only on selling your digital and physical products. Even though it provides courses, you do not get quizzes, surveys, student progress reports, and a built-in discussion forum.
-
Simplero does not have a mobile app that aligns with your brand. Your members would not be able to access your content or purchase your product directly from their mobile devices. In addition, it might be challenging to integrate any other tool, as many users have said that the integrations are a hassle. There is no Zoom integration available for hosting webinars.
Best Simplero Alternatives you can try
Graphy Community Platform
Teachable
LearnDash
LearnWorlds
Zenler
Hotmart
Ruzuku
Kajabi
Thinkific
Mighty Networks
Gumroad
Podia
Graphy Community Platform
Graphy Community Platform is an ultimate community platform that helps you build a robust community where you can sell your courses and host live events, webinars, and live streams. It offers the best community features through which you can moderate, manage, and monetize your community all in one place - with your brand appearance, under your custom domain. Graphy Community Platform can also generate a whitelabelled mobile app and list it on the Play Store/App Store.
Features
Pros
- Available across in multiple formats & avatars; be it a web app under your domain, a native whitelabeled app on Android and iOS, integrations within your existing app or API-based integrations.
- Auto Scaling across platforms - Scenes uses powerful auto-scaling technology to keep your community blazing fast no matter how many visitors you have across all devices. They scale as you scale.
- The only platform that enables custom CSS for top to bottom granular-level user interface customization. You can make your community look close to your app/website's UI.
- A built-in coin system lets you incentivize your community members to engage more.
- Live audio-video features for your events, webinars and live classes where all your members can get notified and RSVP.
Cons
- You will lose some members during the platform migration process.
Teachable
Teachable is a popular online course platform that allows anyone to create, host and sell their pre-recorded online courses. So if you have your videos recorded & ready, you can create an online course within half an hour without being tech-savvy.
Teachable Features
- Drag and drop builder - Building courses on Teachable can get slightly confusing if you try to do it all yourself. But thankfully, if you follow their tutorials, it becomes easy.
- Quizzes - You can add multiple choice questions alongside (or after) your lectures - this helps your students assess their learning progress.
- Promotional offers - You can create coupon codes. This is a good way to run discounts and increase sales on your courses.
Teachable Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month.
- Teachable has free trial.
Pros
- Teachable is affordable even on the paid plans, making it accessible to everyone.
- Teachable is easy to start with - it best suits beginners to advanced-level users.
- You can sell a variety of add-ons alongside courses like ebooks and services and even set up workshops and conferences.
Cons
- Pay-out options are a problem for customers from outside of the USA.
- Teachable doesn't include email marketing, community management, or landing page software.
- Teachable does not offer gamification or live learning which can make your courses boring and not up to the mark, as per 2023 standards (where cohort-based courses are the norm).
LearnDash
LearnDash is a platform for creating course websites using WordPress. In addition, LearnDash offers great LMS features for course instructors, educators, and knowledge creators.
LearnDash Features
- The drag & drop course builder helps course creators create courses easily and quickly.
- It offers gamification tools like badges and certificates - Award certificates based on quiz results and course completions.
- It has a built-in notification feature that prevents your students from missing any necessary updates.
LearnDash Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $199/year.
- No free trials available.
Pros
- The video preview feature gives students a sneak peek into video lessons and makes the course more engaging.
- It offers a flexible quiz builder that makes creating QnAs easy.
- Provides gamification tools that help in engaging your members in your courses.
Cons
- Its URL structure is highly complicated, making SEO difficult. There is no way to shorten it.
- It takes some time to get used to all the new features. The learning curve is steep.
- It runs only on WordPress, which means you'll need to know all WordPress functionalities.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is a learning management system that lets course creators create online courses. Using LearnWorlds, you can create student communities and sell online courses.
LearnWorlds Features
- Offers gamification tools such as badges so that you can acknowledge efforts & promote good behaviour.
- In-built shop for highlighting the details of your courses and selling them all in one place.
- A broad range of assessment tools to help the educator & the students measure the learning progress.
LearnWorlds Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $24/month (billed annually).
- LearnWorlds offers a free 30-day trial.
Pros
- You can create student communities in LearnWorlds so that your members can share their experiences, ideas, and learnings.
- Students can interact with your course content through LearnWorlds' course builder and enjoy a blissful learning experience.
- LearnWorld's live online classes encourage your students to have interactive sessions and discussions among each other.
Cons
- LearnWorld's interface is difficult to understand, and there are no tutorials that can help you get started.
- Regarding email management and funnel-building tools, LearnWorlds does not offer as many options.
- In LearnWorld, users complain that many features do not work when courses are published, making the learning experience less seamless.
- With LearnWorlds, you need too many integrations and more management, distracting you from your business activities.
Zenler
Zenler is a web-based online course platform best suited for creators and educators to create and sell their online courses and memberships. Zenler also helps you design video-based courses and build your video library.
Zenler Features
- Learning tools - Zenler offers tools like quizzes, exams, assignments, certificates, and more. Quizzes are its best feature, with plenty of available customization options. You can create quizzes with multiple-choice answers or single answers, images, and true or false questions.
- Page designer - Zenler allows you to create a page without any coding knowledge. You can use the Page Designer to customize your course website, with the home page, landing pages, funnels or even a blog with SEO settings.
- Community – Zenler lets you build an online community with your members. You can create different groups where you and your members can post anything.
Zenler Pricing
- Paid plans start at $67/mo.
- No free plans are available.
Pros
- Zenler provides many easy-to-use features that save a lot of your time on learning complex things.
- Zenler Integrates well with email, funnels, payments and blogs that make you market your courses better.
- You can host live webinars and classes and stream live with your members, making your sessions more fun and interactive.
Cons
- Because Zenler does not offer mobile app features, users may not open your website regularly, reducing retention and losing interest.
- Zenler is not the place to go if you want to make unique newsletters. It has limited email design options making your newsletters look boring.
- There are no creative templates or designs in Zenler that match your brand. It significantly affects the user experience.
Hotmart
Hotmart allows users to create and sell digital products that can be consumed on any device at anytime. Professionals of different fields create content for their students, clients, and followers by transforming their knowledge into videos, courses, eBooks and other resources.
Hotmart Features
- Hotmart Members Area, Online Events Personalize your Members Area to be more than an online classroom or create unique online events that fit your brand.
- You can reach a wider audience with Hotmart Affiliate Program which helps automate payments to your affiliates and reach more potential buyers while keeping control of your brand.
- You can share the journey with Hotmart Co-Creation and Hotmart Collaborators Center by adding partners to your product, automatically distribute profits, and set access permissions according to your team.
Pros
- You get real-time updates, set tracking pixels for customized reports, and more which helps in making sound decisions
- Host livestreams, gather leads, and offer products with one-click buying during your webinar.
- The perfect way for potential buyers to find your work at no extra cost. Customers can browse the products of Hotmart Creators according to their interests and needs.
Cons
- It is expensive and takes a 10% commission on top.
- It has few features to increase student engagement in class.
- An inexperienced user may find it difficult to use.
Ruzuku
Ruzuku is an online portal where students from across the globe can learn by taking courses. The website enables education institutions to upload courses, track student performance and more efficiently manage monetary transactions which lead to a highly effective student-professor interaction as well as better ranking for prestigious institutions.
Ruzuku Features
- It helps you set up and configure different types of course content- including images, videos, quizzes, lists, etc- without coding anything at all.
- Course Analytics – As an online tutor, you should be able to track your students as they progress through the courses.
- A Flexible Subscription System – You could choose to have your subscription bill coming in every month or on an annual basis.
Pros
- Students can mark each activity as “complete”, and track their own progress.
- It provides a straightforward system of setting up your online courses and configuring the accompanying options. You could, for instance, select a relevant payment framework for your students, and then determine an ideal price for each course.
- You can rely on Ruzuku to handle not only the enrolment process but also the corresponding payments. All the students will be charged accordingly based on their selections and your precise course pricing schedule.
Cons
- You cannot offer a free trial of your course.
- There is no place to promote active, continuous and open discussion. It does not have a central forum.
- Can suffer from feature bloat(result of packing too many features and functionalities into a product).
Kajabi
Kajabi is a platform that enables educators to run their online courses and manage their students in one place. Moreover, Kajabi also offers a mobile app to allow your users to access courses on the go (however, it is not a native white-label app)
Kajabi Features
- No bandwidth or storage restrictions - Upload all of your videos, photos, and other files without worrying about space or bandwidth limitations.
- Fully-fledged LMS capabilities let you run your courses and manage your students seamlessly.
- Integrated checkout - Accept payments from anywhere in the world using Stripe or PayPal and give instant access to your content behind a paywall.
Kajabi Pricing
- Starting Price is $119/month.
- Kajabi offers a 14-Day free trial.
Pros
- Kajabi has rich-text and media features that let you upload all kinds of content into your online content library.
- You can track lesson progress, view grades, and get detailed analytics on how well students digest your content.
- Kajabi offers your prospective students free trials to taste your content before rolling them over to become paid customers.
Cons
- Kajabi is one of the most expensive solutions out there when it comes to LMS + community platforms.
- It lacks good customer support and offers minimal options to customize your course community.
- You have no native branded mobile app; your students will have to download the Kajabi app to access your content.
Thinkific
Thinkific is a digital course creation platform where educators can curate online courses for their students. In addition, they offer competitive LMS features that let their customers run online courses effectively.
Thinkific Features
- Assessments & Certificates - Offers comprehensive quizzes, engagement surveys, assignments, exams and certificates.
- Progress Tracking - In-depth reporting to track student progress.
- Live Lessons - Deliver lessons via live audio/video and let your students engage with you in realtime (via Zoom integration).
Thinkific Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month to $399/month.
- The free plan includes access to all the core features of the platform.
Pros
- Easy-to-use UI that makes running courses on Thinkific all the more seamless.
- A very prompt support system responds to customer queries and problems and comes with an active Facebook group filled with Thinkific customers.
- You can design the access portal, the courses, and the payment methods all in one interface without needing third-party integrations.
Cons
- Not built for community engagement - in 2023, an LMS is not enough to successfully run courses. Thinkific lacks critical community features like gamification and incentive systems.
- Cannot manage multiple cohorts under the same roof - this may constrain you as your courses start scaling and diversifying.
- The pricing is slightly more expensive than alternatives and confusing for some.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks allows businesses of any size to create online courses, mobile apps, and communities. In addition, one can create membership sites to offer paid courses, paid groups, or bundles of courses and groups.
Mighty Networks Features
- It offers platform capabilities that scale as your community scales, allowing a seamless experience for you and your community members.
- White-label and customize your community under your domain and replicate your brand aesthetics.
- It has many LMS features that let educators and course-creators manage and run their online courses in one place.
Mighty Networks Pricing
- Starts at $39/mo.
- A 14-day free trial is available.
Pros
- It offers good social engagement features like live audio/video and chat that lets your members engage with each other.
- It comes with a native mobile app that is fully Whitelabeled (available when you buy the Mighty Pro plan)
- It has a very user-friendly UI on the web that replicates Facebook groups on some level.
Cons
- Not very customizable when it comes to their user-interface. Community owners have to work within a relatively rigid set of constraints.
- At $30,000, the native mobile app is the most expensive compared to other alternatives.
- The course creation experience has been said to be 'cumbersome' by many of their paid customers.
Gumroad
Gumroad is a digital marketplace for independent artists and creators selling digital services like books, memberships, and courses.
Gumroad Features
- Gumroad offers a robust analytics dashboard that provides you with an array of data about your sales, including - How much you've sold over the last week, month, or year.
- Your customers can enjoy full content access as long as they are subscribed. You can also create discount codes for your products.
- Gumroad offers email marketing tools that will help you send automated messages. Workflows help save time and energy, automating email campaigns and sequences after your customers purchase a product.
Gumroad Pricing
- Starts at $10/mo.
- Free version available.
Pros
- It's possible to accept any payment format, including different foreign currencies, create software licences, and sell similar products in various forms.
- It has a user-friendly interface that is simple to set up and can quickly go live with a product.
- With Gumroad, you can set up a simple storefront with a profile image of your brand - and upload some text to describe the products you'd like to sell.
Cons
- There are limited options for customization when it comes to email design, and all you can do is format the text and add a call-to-action button; that's it.
- There are no trial capabilities, A/B split testing, or other forms of payment processing.
- When you sell products on Gumroad, you'll be charged a fee for every transaction on the platform.
Podia
Podia is a platform that lets you build a free, no-code website and sell your online courses. With Podia, you can create a business from anywhere in the world with zero fees or start-up costs.
Podia Features
- Connect your audience and your content – You can host an online community in the same place that your audience uses your digital products.
- Community – In Podia, you can create a community that works like a forum or Slack. The design is clean, and the workflow is simple.
- Course Features – Using Podia, you can quickly create lessons and quizzes.
Podia Pricing
- Paid Plans start at $39/month.
- It has a free version.
Pros
- You can offer your audience webinars using YouTube Live and Zoom with Podia.
- If you want your website to look professional and run smoothly, you do not need to be tech-savvy or have coding knowledge.
- You can connect your payments, scheduling, and sales pages all in one place in minutes with Podia.
Cons
- Podia does not have a mobile app if you want to build courses that will be accessible on mobile for your members.
- Podia doesn't offer in-depth lesson reports if you're interested in knowing how impressive your course is. Only some basic information about student progress is provided.
- To assess your students more effectively, Podia lacks open-ended questions. The use of multiple choice questions is not suitable for all courses.
Disclaimer: To curate the pros, cons and reviews - we mine the internet for customer references regarding the said software. Some of our sources include Reddit, Product Hunt, Twitter & Quora (and sites like G2 & Capterra).
What you should do now
Whenever you’re ready…here are 3 ways we can help:
If you’d like to turn your business into a community-led business, book a call with us. One of our community experts will understand your current situation, and suggest how a community can work for you.
If you’d like to learn the exact community-building formula we’ve used to help build 2000+ communities, watch this masterclass or read this guide.
If you know another colleague or friend who’d enjoy reading this page, share it with them via email, Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook.
.webp)
