Skip to content

How to start a website to sell online courses

Teachers and trainers can sell courses on their own site and keep their students and revenue. Here is the setup, from domain to video.

IDX·October 24, 2026·1 min read

Course marketplaces take a large share of each sale and own the relationship with your students. Your own course website changes that.

What you need

  • A learning management system (LMS): WordPress with an LMS plugin is a popular, flexible choice.
  • Payments: a gateway for cards and wallets, plus bank transfer for organisations.
  • Video delivery: host videos on a streaming service built for it, and embed them; serving large video files from your web server is slow and expensive.
  • Student accounts, progress and certificates.

Step 1: domain

Your name or academy brand makes the best address. Register your academy's domain at IDX.

Step 2: hosting for logged-in users

Students log in, so pages cannot be cached as easily as a blog. Choose web hosting for more CPU and memory, and move to a cloud VPS as enrolments grow. Downloadable materials can be stored on object storage.

Step 3: email students reliably

Enrolment confirmations and password resets must arrive. Use your domain with business email, properly authenticated so messages avoid spam folders.

Step 4: build the first course

Start with one course you know sells, structure it into short lessons, and add quizzes. A free sample lesson converts visitors better than any promise.

Step 5: grow

Collect emails, publish useful free content and ask students for reviews.

Want it built?

IDX can build your course platform with payments and student accounts. Share your plans.

IDX on digital infrastructure

Back to blog →

Ready to move to hosting that keeps up?

Start today with a free migration and a money-back guarantee.