Online courses are nothing new, but thanks to the global pandemic they have become even more popular than ever. If you’ve got knowledge and experiance that others don’t and you want to earn some extra money, creating an online course can be an excellent idea.
To get the most from course platforms you typically need to pay $50+ per month, with some platforms charging hundreds per month, which is why I was so exited to discover Spayee on AppSumo.
Spayee is a complete course website builder, it hosts courses, your website, has marketing features and allows you to build a course website and blog from scratch very quickly.
I’ve recently been discussing a new project with a friend and couldn’t believe how many boxes Spayee ticked.
Course Website Requirements
For this new project we wanted something that could tick as many of these requirements:
- Host unlimited courses
- Unlimited students
- Host a website
- Blogging features
And any extras they offered were a bonus. I took a look at the usual platforms such as Teachable and Thinkific, as well as newer platforms such as Heights and FreshLMS and even tried out WP Courseware on a WordPress site, but nothing seemed to offer exactle what I was after.
Spayee isn’t a platform I’d heard of until I came across it on AppSumo, but it appeared to not just meet my requirements, but vastly exceed them!
Exceeding Requirements
After grabbing a lifetime deal I heading over to setup my new site. Spayee is easy to get started with, you can have a site up and running in a day, however there are lots of extras that will take a while to get the hang of.
Here are some of my favourite features:
Website builder
Setting up a website is made very easy thanks to a built in website builder. Brilliantly they automatically set up the pages you’re likely to want (e.g. home page, privacy page etc) and even fill them all with content (including a privacy and refunds policy!).
If you’ve used any sort of online website builder you’ll get the hang of this in no time, pick from the template blocks, edit the content, pick the next block. It’s more limited than a lot of online builders, but the overall results are perfect for a course website.
Coins
There is a built in reward system, when customers purchase a course they can earn coins which can later be spent on further products, a great way to encourage repeate business.
Affiliates
Marketing is hard work, let someone else do it for you via an affiliate system. You pay others who generate sales for you.
Inbuilt messaging
You can have on site forums for students to start and contribute to discussions and there is an inbuilt messaging feature allowing you to push out messages to registered students.
Mobile Apps
Currently in development, they are looking to launch mobile apps. You can make use of the Spayee branded apps or pay an additional monthly fee to have your own school app for Apple and Android mobiles.
Integrations
There are a number of built-in integrations, for example it’s very easy to set up your Google and Facebook tracking, it links to MailChimp and there are a range of other services you can use as well (incliding Zoom for live sessions). If an app you want isn’t available you can use webhooks, APIs and Zapier to connect it to additional software.
Ease of Use
It’s no exageration to say you can have a course website launched in a couple of days with Spayee. You need to connect your domain, add your course(s), add a payment processor (PayPal or Stripe), make the home page look how you want and you’re done!
Inside the website is a reporting suite so you can see how many sales you’ve made, one which courses and you can see how learners are getting on (great to spot if a course needs changing, you can spot if learners drop off at the same point).
I have had a lot of questions, the team have been very helpful in answering them quickly, in some cases resolving the issues, in others highlighting where a change request is required.
For example, at the time of review when learners sign up they only enter a first name, which is displayed on the optional completion certificate. Most will want first and last name to be on the certificate so there is a change request in asking for the sign up page to collect this information.
Depending on the plan you pick you can add additional teammates to the account, granting different levels of access. This is going to be great for anyone working with a team/VA who wants to pass some of the admin work over to others.
Adding new website pages and blog posts is very easy, and while it’s not going to beat WordPress as a blogging platform it is brilliant to have the ability to add blogs for content marketing, something a lot of platforms I checked out didn’t offer.
Course Creation
You can add as many courses as you like and they can be made up of different media. For the most part I’m going to be using the text module, which isn’t text only, it’s more like a blog post that can have text, images and videos.
An interesting feature I’ve not seen elsewhere is SCORM package compatibility. This seems very useful if you’ve got SCORM content already created, I’ll have to experiment with it to see if offers advantages over the inbuilt course builder.
As you build your course you can add a quiz at any point, and can make it a requirement the learner gets above a certain grade to be awarded a certificate. The quiz feature is basic but does the job, and if the learner retakes the quiz they’re shown a before/after scorecard showing how they’ve done.
Course Pricing
When you’re course is built you set pricing options. Courses can be offered free (a great way to get people to sign up, offer a free mini course), and the platform can even do geolocation pricing, but to unlock that feature you need to leave a product review on a few different websites and then they add it to your account for free.
That platform handles all transactions, using either PayPal or Stripe to process purchases. Each course has its own settings, they can all be priced differently, be placed on sale, and earn learners different reward coins.
Is the Spayee course platform deal comparable to the Audiio.com Lifetime Deal?
The Spayee course platform deal is certainly competitive, but is it comparable to the lifetime deal for audiio.com? Both offers provide great value, but the decision ultimately depends on individual needs and preferences. It’s worth exploring the features and benefits of each before making a decision.
Is Spayee a Good Investment?
You’d normally pay monthly for this platform, for any platform that had so many features in it. You can launch a complete website with unlimited courses on the lowest price offer of $79, but for those with big ambitions or who want the option to connect to other services you’ll be looking at $299.
Sounds a lot, but look at it this way, that cost could be covered by the sale of a single $299 course, or just 10 x $29.99 sales. After that you’ve don’t pay anything monthly until you want to launch a branded mobile app.
If you’re serious about launching a course I think Spayee offers a fantastic opportunity, a combined website and course hosting platform for a single payment doesn’t come along often, so don’t miss out as this won’t offer won’t be around forever!
