E-learning and Course Website Cost UK: A 2026 Price Guide

Quick answer

An e-learning or course website in the UK costs from about £69 a month on a hosted course platform such as Thinkific (billed yearly), or our £499 WordPress website plus a learning plugin, with course features quoted in writing. A custom learning platform with your own reporting starts at £1,999. Video hosting and card fees come on top.

The right route depends on what you are teaching, who to, and how much control you need over the experience. A plasterer selling one skimming course to DIYers has very different needs from a training company issuing certificates to hundreds of staff. Below are the three routes with published prices, what each feature adds to the cost, three worked examples by situation and the questions to answer before you get a quote.

What every course website needs

Whatever you build on, a course site needs these parts working together:

1. Lessons: video, text, downloads, in a set order.
2. Enrolment and payment: one-off, instalments or subscription, plus coupon codes.
3. Student accounts: login, progress tracking and the ability to pick up where they left off.
4. Assessment: quizzes, assignments or both.
5. Completion: certificates, especially for CPD or compliance training.
6. A sales page: the page that persuades people to enrol in the first place.

Hosted platforms supply 1 to 5 out of the box. A WordPress or custom build lets you shape each one, at a cost.

The three routes compared

Route 1: a hosted course platform

Hosted platforms give you lessons, payments, accounts and quizzes ready-made. At the time of writing (October 2026):

• Thinkific’s pricing page lists its Start plan at £69 a month billed yearly (£92 billed monthly), Grow at £139 a month billed yearly (£186 monthly) and Expand at £318 a month billed yearly (£424 monthly). Thinkific says there is no free plan, but a 30-day free trial.
• Teachable’s pricing page lists Starter at $29 a month billed yearly ($39 monthly) with a 7.5% transaction fee, and Builder at $69 a month billed yearly ($89 monthly) with a 0% transaction fee when you use Teachable’s own payments. Card processing fees still apply.

Watch the transaction fee on entry plans. On a £200 course, 7.5% is £15 per sale on top of card fees, which can be more than the difference to the next plan up once sales pick up.

Route 2: WordPress with a learning plugin

A learning management plugin turns a WordPress site into a course platform you own. LearnDash is one widely used option; Liquid Web’s LearnDash page currently lists a single-site licence at $350 a year, bundled with three other plugins. Prices and bundles change, so check on the day.

Our custom WordPress website is £499 one-off for up to 8 pages, hand-coded with no page builders, and you own the code and can host anywhere. It includes an SEO foundation, Google Analytics, a written CMS walkthrough and 30 days of support. Course and member areas are quoted in writing before any work starts, so you see the full price, plugin setup included, before you commit.

Route 3: a custom learning platform

Some training is not a course you sell to the public. Staff onboarding, compliance training, franchise training and client education often need custom reporting for managers, links to HR or booking systems, or a structure no plugin handles well. That is a web application. Our web applications start at £1,999 for custom web apps, dashboards and portals, and our guide to web app development costs explains how scope moves the figure. If your learners are existing clients, our guide to a client portal for a small business covers the login side.

What each feature adds

• Video: hosting video yourself on ordinary web hosting is slow and wasteful. Use a video host, priced separately, and embed lessons from it.
• Drip release: unlocking lessons week by week is standard on most platforms and plugins.
• Certificates: simple certificates are usually included; branded, numbered or verifiable certificates take more setup.
• Quizzes with pass marks: included on most routes; complex marking or assignments that a tutor grades add work.
• Group or company accounts: one buyer enrolling several staff, with a manager view, is where many plugins hit their limits.
• Live sessions: usually linked from a video-call tool rather than built in.

Running costs to budget for

• Platform or hosting: the hosted platform’s monthly plan, or hosting for your own site. Our website management and hosting is £20 a month with UK hosting, SSL, daily backups, security monitoring and automatic updates.
• Plugin renewals: yearly, on the WordPress route.
• Video hosting: a monthly plan with your chosen video host.
• Card and transaction fees: card processing on every sale, plus any platform transaction fee.
• Email: enrolment confirmations, reminders and course announcements.
• Updating the course: your own time to keep lessons current, which is the cost people forget most. Regulations, products and prices change, and an out-of-date lesson undermines the whole course.

Two years of cost, side by side

Monthly fees look small; over two years they add up. Using the published figures above:

• Thinkific Start, billed yearly: £69 x 24 months = £1,656, before card fees.
• Thinkific Grow, billed yearly: £139 x 24 months = £3,336, before card fees.
• Your own WordPress site with us: £499 one-off plus hosting at £20 x 24 months (£480) = £979, before the learning plugin licence, the quoted course setup and video hosting.

The WordPress figure is not a like-for-like total, because the course setup is quoted per project and the plugin renews yearly. But the shape is clear: hosted platforms cost little to start and more to keep, while your own site costs more to set up and less to run. If you expect to sell courses for years and want to keep the customer relationship, owning the site usually wins over time. If you are testing whether anyone will buy, a hosted platform’s free trial is the cheaper experiment.

Worked examples by situation

In the first case, the platform fee is small next to the time it takes to make a good course, so speed matters more than ownership. In the second, a branded site that ranks in search for each course and keeps all the fees is worth the setup. In the third, the reporting is the product, so custom is the only route that delivers it.

The sales page matters as much as the platform

A course with a weak sales page does not sell, whichever platform delivers it. The page needs a clear promise, who it is for, what is inside, a sample lesson, the price and honest answers to the questions people ask before they pay. If you are on a hosted platform but want a stronger front door, our landing page design is £199 and can point straight to your course checkout.

For the whole market in one place, from DIY builders to full agency builds and the running costs after launch, see the full UK website pricing guide.

Questions to answer before you get a quote

1. How many courses at launch, and how many lessons in each?
2. Are you selling to the public, to companies, or training your own staff?
3. Do learners need certificates, and must they be verifiable?
4. One-off payments, instalments or subscriptions?
5. Do managers need reports on staff progress?
6. Does anything need to connect to existing systems, such as bookings or HR?

With those answers, a hosted platform’s own pricing page gives you a figure in minutes, and a WordPress or custom build can be quoted in writing. Our website cost calculator gives a rough figure for the site itself, and every price we publish is on our pricing page.