Imagine you've spent two years selling your course on a marketplace. It works. Until one day the terms change, you get swept into a promotion you never chose, or you want to write to your students and discover that email list isn't yours. This article looks at what a website to sell online courses really needs, without depending on anyone: a student area, progress tracking, certificates and payments. And yes, it's less than you think.
What you lose by selling only on a course marketplace
Selling on a marketplace has one clear advantage: there's traffic. That traffic is paid for in three ways you notice every month.
- A commission on every sale. On the final price of the course, month after month. The better you do, the more you pay.
- The student list isn't yours. You can't write to them to offer your next course or ask what they're missing. That relationship – the most valuable thing you build – stays with the platform.
- Rules that change without warning. Minimum prices, platform-wide promotions, changes to how your course is displayed. You decide the content; the terms, you don't.
When you sell only on a marketplace, you don't have customers: you're sharing the platform's.
None of this is a betrayal: it's the deal. The problem is depending on it alone. If this sounds familiar, the small print of all-in-one platforms is broken down in this other article.
The minimum features of a website for selling courses
The right question isn't "which platform has the most features?" but "what do I need to take payment for my first course this month?". The list is short:
- A sales page per course: what students will learn, who it's for, what it costs and a buy button.
- Your own domain: so people find you by searching your name, not the platform's.
- A blog to answer the real questions your future students ask: the searches they're already making before they buy from you.
- A direct checkout that works without sending account details over email.
Everything else – the perfect design, the thousand integrations – is noise that delays your first sale. Start simple and sell sooner.
The student area: modules, lessons and progress
Here lies the difference between a course website and a website with links. Each student signs in with their own account and sees their modules and lessons with their progress marked: what they've finished and what's left.
If you deliver your courses as PDFs by email or behind a shared password, you already know what happens: they get forwarded, you don't know who's getting in, and you can't improve the course with what you learn from real use. A student area of your own turns that into a product.
Think about the day-to-day: the student opens their account and sees that two lessons and the final submission remain; you see which submissions are waiting for you to mark. That's all it takes.
Payments: making sure the money reaches your account
There are two pieces to getting paid on a course website, and it's worth keeping them apart:
- The payment processor (Stripe, for example), which charges its own processing fee for moving the money.
- The platform commission charged by whatever hosts your website and your student area, if there is one.
With WordNext, payments run through Stripe Connect: the money from every sale goes straight to your business account; it never passes through WordNext. And the commission depends on the plan: the Docente plan costs €29/month with a 5% commission per sale, and the Academia plan (several teachers, 5 included, each one sees only their own) costs €69/month with no commission per sale. You can compare the two plans here.
If you want the full breakdown of what it costs to set up and run an online course with a student area, you'll find it in this cost guide.
Marked activities and certificates
A course that only plays videos is a long video. What adds value and credibility:
- Self-marking activities: exercises that mark themselves at the end of each lesson. They scale without you and give students instant feedback.
- Teacher-marked submissions: at least one per course, where you read what the student has done and respond. That's the human part – and the reason people will pay for your version of the topic.
- Certificates in PDF on completion: students have something to show, and you're spared the eternal "could you send me proof?" email.
With these three pieces, your own course stops feeling like a favour and starts feeling like proper training.
What you don't need at the start
The most heavily marketed features are the ones you need least before your first sale:
- Your own mobile app: the website already works on the student's phone.
- A student community: lovely… if you have students. Before that, it's an empty forum.
- Gamification, coupons and instalment payments: they complicate sign-up and delay the purchase.
An honest confession: today WordNext offers neither a mobile app, nor a student community, nor coupons. And that's fine. For the first sale, one well-made pilot course, with its activities and its certificate, is enough – then see what happens.
How to make the move without losing what you've built
Nobody's telling you to close your marketplace account tomorrow. The sensible path is gradual:
- Build your website around a single pilot course. Sales page, student area, checkout. Nothing else.
- Keep whatever suits you on the marketplace. Compare: what commission you pay, what list you get, what terms you have.
- Build your own list from day one. A newsletter with double opt-in on your own website (in WordNext it's included, with an automatic welcome email): the subscribers are yours.
- Keep your own content. Your videos, your exercises, your materials. They should always be able to live somewhere else.
An alternative to course marketplaces isn't about walking away from them: it's about no longer depending on them.
Frequently asked questions
Can I keep selling on a marketplace while I build my own website?
Yes, and it's the sensible thing to do. Build your website around a pilot course, compare results and decide with data: the commission you pay, the list you get and the terms you have on each side.
How much does a website with a student area and payments cost per month?
With WordNext, from €29/month (Docente plan) with a 5% commission per sale; the Academia plan costs €69/month with no commission. On top of that, add the payment processor's fee (Stripe, for example), which is charged separately.
Do I need to know how to code to have my own student area?
No. With a block editor and live preview, like WordNext's, you build pages, courses and lessons without touching code or installing plugins.
Who keeps the money from each course sold?
With payments through Stripe Connect, the money goes straight to your business account: WordNext never touches it. The plan commission is charged according to your plan: 5% on Docente, 0% on Academia.
Start with the minimum
Selling online courses from your own website isn't about building a platform: it's a sales page, a student area, a certificate and a payment that lands in your account. If you want to see how that looks in practice, take a look at the Docente and Academia plans from WordNext. And every website built with WordNext includes WordNext Guardian, a firewall designed for when AI agents visit your website.