Course Creation

2 November 2023

10 Best Software & Tools for Easy Course Creation (Beginner Toolkit)

If you’ve decided to teach others what you know through an online course, congratulations. It’s easy to get lost in the thought of requiring premium equipment to deliver a high-quality course. Good thing you don’t need one.

Even on a budget, you can create a premium quality online course appealing to your participants and generate revenue for yourself.

In this article, you’ll get to know the best free and cost-effective tools to use for easy course creation.

Let’s get started!

Best Tools For Creating Online Courses

Here are the best tools to use for creating online courses.

1. Selar: for creating and selling an online course

Selar is an e-commerce store builder for digital creators looking to sell their online courses on a premium tool providing a low-cost solution.

It’s a free and easy tool to use such that you can upload and host your course in any format and start selling in minutes.

Selar offers relevant features you need as a digital creator. Some of which include;

Analytics (to help you measure your course progress).
Downloadables (e.g. PDF, Audio, Worksheets, etc.) to complement your course.
Sales page builder to create an online course sales page to boost your sales and increase conversions.
Custom domain and branded store to boost sales.
Automated follow-ups to ensure you don’t lose a buyer.
Affiliate network to encourage other marketers to promote and sell your course whilst earning a good commission for themselves.
Multiple payment gateways such as Paypal, Stripe, Verve, and Visa to enable you receive payments from anywhere in the world instantly.

These features are ideal for online course creators who want to enjoy the ease of running an online business, save funds on sales pages and membership sites, and have more time to focus on creating highly valuable content.

Selar will always be free for you to create and sell your online courses, but you can look at our affordable prices from ₦8,000 / $20 per month to enjoy all the amazing features.

See Why Selar Is The Best Platform to Host Your Online Courses and is trusted by over 500,000 users.

2. Canva: for design

Canva is a free design tool that allows you to easily design anything. Even better, it is one of the best tools for creating online courses because of its simplicity. If you have no idea about design, there are ready-to-use templates on Canva that you can customize to suit your needs.

Although it has a pro version, you can design just about anything with the free plan. Canva provides a wide range of layouts, fonts, colors, and elements that you can use to design your online course material.

Alternatively, if you have a brand identity, you can import them to Canva for your designs and use them to create your online courses.

Good news! We’ve created free Canva templates for your product promotions. All you need to do is insert your product.

3. Camera: for recording

The next tool for easy course creation is a camera. You need this to record high-quality videos for your students.

For beginners, you may want to consider using your smartphone’s camera. Get comfortable with the tools you have at your disposal before investing thousands of dollars into buying a camera set.

A good way to get the best out of your phone camera is to optimize your camera settings to achieve better video quality, e.g., HD and 4K video resolutions. So feel free to play around with your settings until you find something suitable.

Also when shooting, ensure your phone is placed horizontally. Or else you’re recording social media reels, horizontal videos are a better position for online courses.

Alternatively, if you prefer to get a camera, we recommend any camera product from Canon, Sony, and Nikkon. Watch videos on YouTube to learn the pros and cons of using any camera you decide to buy.

Learn How to Create a Profitable Online Course: Beginners Guide

4. WordPress: for website building

If you’d like to build a website to host your courses, then WordPress is the world’s go-to for fast and reliable websites.

WordPress powers 45.8% of all websites, and is a powerful tool for creating the perfect website for your online course. Even better, you can install themes and customize them to suit your taste.

You can also add plug-ins to perform various seamless functions on your site and give your users a great experience. WordPress gives you the flexibility to create the website you want in whatever manner.

This is perfect for online course creators who enjoy building websites to host their courses and handling all technicalities themselves.

PS: You can save time. Selar offers tools to create your sales page and custom site with your domain name. Get started here.

5. Veed.io: for video editing

92.3% of the 5.3 billion global internet users worldwide watch digital videos every week. This means videos are a great way to share your courses with your participants as they cater to all their needs.

Veed.io is a great tool for creating and editing videos to a professional standard. We use Veed.io to edit our videos at Selar. Although it’s a paid tool, you can still try it for free.

This tool is ideal for creators who want to provide subtitles and other details in their videos.

See these 5 Best Video Editing App For Online Courses

6. Zoom: for virtual meetings and webinars

Another great tool that allows for easy course creation is Zoom. Zoom is a video conferencing tool that offers a variety of features.

You can use Zoom to host live webinars, have live calls with your participants, and conduct various video calls. While it offers a free plan, you get to enjoy Zoom’s unlimited features with its pro plan. For example, you can have a call on the free plan for 40 minutes or less. But if you’d like to go longer, then you’d need to upgrade to the pro plan.

If you’d like to add webinars and calls to your online course package, then this tool is for you.

7. Mailchimp: for email marketing

Mailchimp is an all-in-one email marketing tool that allows you to keep in touch with your students. The best part is that it integrates directly with Selar, so you can set up automated emails at the click of a button.

This is a great tool to use if you’d like to manage your participants and keep your prospects engaged till they purchase your course.

LEARN: How to Write Great Emails to Sell Out Your Products

8. Google Slides: for course creation

Any list of the best tools for creating online courses has to include Google Slides. Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft’s PowerPoint. It is easy to use and is a good way to create your course content such that you focus on the most important points and explain them while teaching.

Slides also serve as your digital board where you explain what you’re teaching in clear terms so your students can easily grasp it. It gives you a ton of functionality so you can present your points in awesome layouts and designs using text, images, and multimedia elements.

One key advantage of Google Slides is collaboration. Multiple collaborators can work on the same presentation simultaneously, which is beneficial for co-creators, subject matter experts, or peer review processes.

Being a Google product, it also integrates with other Google Workspace apps like Google Drive and Google Docs to streamline file sharing, document management, and collaboration. The ability to include hyperlinks, quizzes, polls, and other interactive elements within slides helps engage your students and create dynamic, interactive content.

9. Ringlight

A ring light is an essential tool for creating high-quality online courses, especially those involving video content.

First and foremost, it dramatically improves the quality of lighting, which is important if you want to look your best and maintain viewer engagement. Additionally, it adds a professional and captivating look to the video, making you appear more visually appealing.

Many ring lights also offer adjustable color temperature settings, allowing course you to match the lighting to the environment or the desired tone of the course. This ensures consistent and visually pleasing results, regardless of the recording conditions.

Beyond course creation, ring lights are versatile tools, also suitable for live streaming, video conferencing, and photography. So get one to up your course creation game!

10. Microphone

This list of best tools for creating online courses wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t include a microphone.

A high-quality microphone is an indispensable tool for creating an engaging online course. It greatly improves your audio quality and captures your student’s attention due to its clarity.

Even better, a good microphone eliminates background noise so your voice is the only thing capturing attention and the only thing your students can focus on. When recording, using a microphone helps your videos appear more professional, enhancing their overall quality.

Nonetheless, while getting a good microphone as a beginner creator may be pricey, it’s still an important investment to make. But if you can’t yet, ensure you record in a quiet environment, so your audio is better.

Bonus Tool

11. Appy Pie Design

Appy Pie Design is an easy-to-use tool for making online courses. Even if you’ve never designed anything before, this tool is simple to navigate. It offers a bunch of templates that you can tweak to fit what you’re looking for, making it quick to start.

You get lots of design choices with Appy Pie Design, like styles, fonts, colors, and more. These features let you create a variety of materials for your courses. While there are premium plans for more features, the basic options help you make your courses look nice.

Appy Pie’s AI Pictur e Generator is another cool part of Appy Pie Design. It lets you make unique images easily, which is great for keeping your course’s look consistent and true to your style. This way, your course not only grabs attention but also shows off your brand well.