Top 13 elearning platforms for 2024

Elearning platforms serve as versatile tools for delivering online courses, conducting virtual classrooms, and offering valuable resources and support to employees. In this article, we delve into a curated selection of cost-effective elearning platforms that empower you to effectively train and upskill your workforce.

These platforms not only make learning accessible but also offer a budget-friendly solution versus traditional face-to-face training. Whether you're seeking to enhance employee skills, introduce new concepts, or foster continuous learning, these elearning platforms have a diverse range of features to cater to your needs.

What are elearning platforms?

Elearning platforms are digital systems or websites that help with the delivery of training content and courses online. These platforms offer a virtual learning environment, allowing users to access educational materials, join online courses, and interact with instructors and peers.

Elearning has become increasingly popular because of its flexibility, convenience, and accessibility. Key features of elearning platforms typically include:

• Course Content Delivery: Elearning platforms host a variety of educational materials, such as video lectures, presentations, documents, and quizzes. These resources can be accessed by learners at their own pace and convenience.
• Assessment and Feedback: Elearning platforms often include tools for quizzes, assignments, and exams. They give instant feedback on performance and include grading systems to track progress.
• User Management: These platforms allow administrators to manage user accounts, track progress, and monitor performance. Instructors can create and organize courses, enroll students, and manage content.
• Multimedia Integration: Platforms may support various types of media, including videos, audio, and interactive simulations, to enhance the learning experience.
• Certification and Badges: Upon completion of courses, some platforms offer certificates or badges to validate a learner's achievements. These can be valuable for professional development or as evidence of skills acquired.

Elearning platforms have played a significant role in expanding access to education and training, making learning opportunities available to a global audience.

1. SC Training (formerly EdApp)

SC Training (formerly EdApp) is a versatile and innovative elearning platform for teams of any size. It’s used by industry leaders around the globe, such as Shell, Marley Spoon, Mars, and the United Nations to give a superior adaptive learning experience for their teams.

Part of SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s popularity with large organizations is its collection of built-in tools, all of which boost engagement and knowledge retention rates. These features make the whole process as smooth as possible for training managers and their teams.

One such feature is SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s free editable course library, which is a collection of ever-growing ready-made courses that’s there for you to browse, edit, and deploy to your teams within minutes. The courseware is contributed by world-class organizations and expert instructional designers so you can expect high-quality content for every industry.

SC Training (formerly EdApp) will soon launch an innovative cloud-based learning platform with its AI Doc Transformer. The team at SC Training (formerly EdApp) recognizes that training by PowerPoint (PPT) is just as uninspiring as it is ineffective. So, SC Training (formerly EdApp) created a free tool that’ll transform your dated PPT slides into beautiful and interactive microlessons.

With the rise of AI technology, SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s also quick to adapt and is now offering its game-changing Create with AI feature. All you need is a keyword or topic, and with the click of a button, you can generate a full course filled with lessons, quizzes, games, and other interactive materials in minutes.

Cost: Free

Rating: 4.7/5

Best for: All-in-one elearning platform for industry leaders

Pros: 

• Mobile and microlearning features
• Editable course library
• AI Doc Transformer (coming soon)
• Create with AI for easy AI-generated courses

Cons: 

• Email notifications

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2. Masterclass

MasterClass stands out as a unique training software that offers an immersive learning experience through exclusive video lessons from renowned experts in various fields. Learners can access classes taught by industry icons, gaining insights and techniques directly from masters in their respective crafts.

With a diverse range of subjects, including filmmaking, sports, writing, and cooking, MasterClass emphasizes the art of learning from the best in the business. It’s an inspirational platform for those seeking expertise and mentorship in their chosen fields.

Cost: Starts at 10 USD monthly

Rating: 4.5/5

Best for: Mastery mentorship learning

Pros: 

• A-list instructors
• Well-produced video lessons
• Good course structure

Cons: 

• Unclear course run times
• Senseless ads

3. Pluralsight

Geared towards technology professionals and aspiring developers, Pluralsight is a learning experience platform that offers an extensive library of courses. Its catered industries include software development, IT operations, data management, and cybersecurity.

Pluralsight stands out with its hands-on, skill-focused approach, with interactive labs and assessments to reinforce learning. With a paid subscription, users can access expert-led courses to help them stay current with the rapidly evolving tech industry and acquire skills that are relevant to their professional roles.

Cost: Starts at 19 USD per month

Rating: 4.4/5

Best for: IT industry upskilling and reskilling

Pros: 

• Extensive course library
• Hands-on, skill-focused approach
• Interactive labs and assessment

Cons: 

• Paid subscription
• Lack of expert-level materials

4. Thinkific

Thinkific offers an elearning platform for coaches, trainers, and individual experts to create a solid course base for their audience. Whether it’s sports, brand management, or photography, Thinkific offers easy and powerful tools to create comprehensive online courses. With this platform, you can create courses and promote them through memberships and bundles.

Thinkific also offers individual client support and the possibility to build a website to promote your work. It’s easy and intuitive to use and offers a range of business tools to promote your brand.

Cost: Starts at 36 USD monthly

Rating: 4.4/5

Best for: Comprehensive course management for various industries

Pros: 

• Solid course bases
• Membership and bundle promos
• Individual client support

Cons: 

• Pricey paid plans
• Needs more flexible customization options

5. Learningbank

Learningbank builds courses primarily for corporate clients. Their preboarding and onboarding programs can help hiring and L&D departments that want to prep their new hires before they start working. The platform is mobile-friendly and delivers most of its products as smartphone applications.

Learningbank is also a gamification elearning platform: its courses are broken down into short quizzes and puzzles equipped with memory tracking. Aiming primarily to upskill workers, it offers multiple short video courses covering topics from service to leadership skills.

Cost: Contact Learningbank

Rating: 4.5/5

Best for: Hiring teams and L&D departments

Pros: 

• Mobile-friendliness
• Microlearning and gamification features
• Covers diverse training topics

Cons: 

• Requires a minimum of 100 users
• Not suitable for smaller enterprises

6. Rise Up

Rise Up delivers a platform dedicated to the blended learning experience. Offering LMS, LXP, and content design solutions, they cater mainly to international, multilingual corporate clients’ needs.

Rise Up is very much community-oriented: forums and clubs are available with almost every elearning course to facilitate peer support. Their LMS software combines face-to-face and online training from the same interface. It’s sort of like an online campus available in multiple languages. The platform also offers authoring tools to create your own products.

Cost: Contact Rise UP

Rating: 4/5

Best for: International, multilingual corporate clients

Pros: 

• Blended learning experience
• Community-oriented peer learning
• Face-to-face and online training available

Cons: 

• No free version
• Ticketing tool and feedback link needs improvement

7. eloomi

eloomi is an LMS that focuses on onboarding courses for corporate workers. It offers simple solutions to elearning development and onsite training covering the preboarding, onboarding, and compliance modules. The platform includes a custom builder to import and create your content, a blended learning experience, and development tracking.

eloomi is available on mobile devices, which makes it easily accessible for all workers in training. The trainer’s overview covers comprehensive data and statistics. eloomi’s interface is pretty basic and covers only a limited scope of themes. Individual customers and small-scale entrepreneurs might not find the offer particularly interesting.

Cost: Contact eloomi

Rating: 4.4/5

Best for: Onboarding courses for corporate workers

Pros: 

• Custom course builder
• Blended learning experience
• Easy development tracking

Cons: 

• Not suitable for individuals or small businesses
• Basic interface and limited themes

8. Skillshare

A well-known platform for creators, designers, and beginners of all sorts, Skillshare caters to everyone who wishes to learn something new, even if it’s not for professional development. Still, one can find a good handful of courses dealing with basic business strategies, e-marketing, and even programming.

Skillshare is a highly competitive elearning platform that delivers selected content, so the courses are usually of high quality. It’s not an LMS per se, but it offers a good balance for elearning in a business setting, even if it’s only to take care of the mental health of the employees.

Cost: Contact Skillshare

Rating: 4/5

Best for: Professional and non-professional upskilling

Pros: 

• Diverse range of courses
• Targeted, high quality content

Cons: 

• Lacks good opportunities for learner and instructor interactions

9. Firmwater

Firmwater delivers a white-label solution to compile elearning courses for small and big brands. They partner with Shopify to sell and promote the courses on their blog with a variety of customizable themes to match their brand aesthetic and engage their audience.

The elearning platform offers a range of top-notch authoring tools, including module assembly for quick and easy course design. Firmwater LMS can be easily connected to other LMS systems, making the transition of products quick and seamless. Plus, the platform’s available in four languages: English, Spanish, French, and German, catering to multilingual global clients.

Cost: Contact Firmwater

Rating: 4.5/5

Best for: Elearning courses for small and big companies

Pros: 

• Shopify partnership and integration
• Intuitive authoring tools
• LMS integrations

Cons: 

• No free option
• No gamification options

10. CEC Global

CEC Global is chiefly an elearning platform delivering automatized training and reports for organizations and working professionals. CEC has authoring tools for creating engaging learning activities and interactive courses, as well as converting or redesigning legacy training materials into digital learning content. This way, they’re available through a variety of LMS products.

All courses and learning materials are available through the cloud, so they’re accessible anytime, anywhere. A strong point of this platform is its focus on the multilingual diversity of learners. But, CEC Global doesn’t focus on mobile elearning solutions and doesn’t give much information on the authoring tools.

Cost: Contact CEC Global

Best for: Automized training and reports

Pros: 

• Authoring tools for engaging content
• Digitizing legacy training materials
• Cloud-based courses and learning

Cons: 

• Not mobile friendly
• Non-intuitive authoring tool

11. Codecademy

Codecademy is a user-friendly and interactive elearning platform designed to teach coding and programming skills to beginners. It offers hands-on coding practice directly within the browser, allowing learners to apply what they're learning in real time.

Codecademy covers a wide range of programming languages and technologies, making it an ideal starting point for those with little or no coding experience. The platform's gamified lessons, projects, and quizzes offer an engaging learning experience, and learners can track their progress as they build a solid foundation in programming. It’s a free elearning platform for individuals but can be costly for teams.

Cost: Starts at 299 USD yearly for teams

Rating: 3.9/5

Best for: Individuals, students, or teams who want to code

Pros: 

• Hands-on coding practice
• Wide range of languages nad technologies
• Beginner-friendly gamified lessons

Cons: 

• No accredited certificates
• Pricey 

12. FutureLearn

FutureLearn is a UK-based elearning platform that collaborates with universities and organizations worldwide to offer a diverse range of online courses. Its key feature is the accessibility of high-quality education, often with the option to audit courses for free.

The platform emphasizes social learning through discussion forums, encouraging learners to interact with each other and share perspectives. With a focus on professional development and personal enrichment, it gives learners the opportunity to explore a wide variety of subjects and earn a verified certificate upon completion.

Cost: Starts at 27.99 USD

Rating: 4.7/5

Best for: Professional development and enrichment

Pros: 

• Accessible high-quality education
• Auditable courses
• Social learning

Cons: 

• Lots of popup ads
• Certificates are paid

13. OpenSesame

OpenSesame is enhanced for corporate elearning, offering a marketplace for businesses to buy and sell pre-built courses. It allows organizations to customize training programs to meet their specific needs.

The platform covers a broad spectrum of topics, from compliance training to leadership development, allowing companies to create a tailored learning path for their employees. With a vast library of courses, OpenSesame streamlines the process of employee training and development, offering a cost-effective and scalable solution for businesses of all sizes.

Cost: Contact OpenSesame

Rating: 4/5

Best for: Corporate training with marketplace options

Pros: 

• Options for buying and selling courses
• Customizable training programs
• Personalized learning paths

Cons: 

• Limited language options
• Difficult content and customer categorization