5 Best Ruzuku Alternatives [November 2023]: For Every Budget

WRITER:
Mihael Cacic
EDITOR I:
Matija Laznik
EDITOR II:
Anja Jazbinsek
Updated date: November 17th, 2023

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Ruzuku is an easy-to-use e-learning platform for experts to create, promote, and sell their courses online. You get every feature you’d need so you can collaborate with multiple instructors, facilitate live webinars, and create engaging and impactful course content. But, in some areas, Ruzuku falls short:

  • Not a lot of focus on student assessment.
  • The only digital products it supports are courses and communities.
  • Although it offers a built-in community, the features and chat options are basic.
  • It has limited sales and marketing features.

We tested various tools in the course creation space to find Ruzuku alternatives that address these pain points. These are the areas we focused on:

  • Student engagement and retention,
  • Community features,
  • Sales and marketing automation,
  • Supported products,
  • Course translation features.

Here’s our list of Ruzuku Alternatives. Let’s see how they compare!

Best Ruzuku Alternatives: Executive Summary

You’ll get the best features for business growth if you go for Kajabi.

You’ll get the best deal for tracking students’ performance if you switch to EzyCourse.

You’ll save the most money if you choose Thinkific.

Best Overall Runner-Up Third Best Alternative
Kajabi EzyCourse Thinkific
Best all-in-one alternative with built-in funnels and automation to market and sell courses and other products. Best alternative for educators looking for a learning platform with multiple quiz types to assess their students’ performance. Most affordable alternative for educators who want to scale their businesses with unlimited courses and a community.
Visit Kajabi Visit EzyCourse Visit Thinkific

Buying Guide & How We Rate The Tools

Every course creation tool has a “specialty” that makes it ideal for a specific audience. However, all these tools have four basic dimensions in common, and we’ve used those to curate this list. 

Ease of Use: This score reflects how easy a tool is to use and how quick it is to learn. This is especially important if you’re looking for a tool for your team, as the faster everyone learns to use it, the faster they’ll get on board and increase productivity.

Features: How well do the features support your course creation, marketing, and selling needs? How do you deliver courses? Does the app allow videos, audio, quizzes, worksheets, and mobile apps or downloads? What are the payment options and integrations? Can you easily create a website and landing pages? Can you grow, build, and monetize your community?

Affordability: Based on features, does the pricing make sense for your business? Are there transaction fees? Can you test the platform before committing to paying?

Learning Experience: What are the experiences of teachers and learners? Are there options to make lessons interactive? Does the app have gamification features to increase retention? Are there completion certificates or badges to motivate students?

Remember though: low scores aren’t always bad!

Again, each tool has a specialty. For example, if a tool is made for large enterprises, it’s going to be inherently more complex to use. So at the end of the day, it all comes down to determining the combination of features you want out of your online course platform.

Now, let’s walk through a mini-review of each.

All Ruzuku Alternatives

Kajabi

Best all-in-one tool with advanced automation like built-in funnel templates, email sequences, and dynamic landing pages for entrepreneurs to create, market, and sell their courses, coaching, communities, and podcasts.

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Podia

Best for creators offering multiple high-ticket products like coaching programs, memberships, webinars, and digital downloads.

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Thinkific

Most affordable option for educators who want to scale their businesses with core products like courses, a community, and a single administrator.

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EzyCourse

Best alternative for educators looking for a learning platform with multiple quiz types to assess their students’ performance.

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LearnDash

Ideal for educators who want to translate courses and supplementary assets like quizzes, slides, and checklists to any language on their WordPress site.

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Mighty Networks

Best for course creators looking to build and grow their community with live community sessions and events while offering a unique and vibrant culture.

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Skool

Ideal alternative for experts who want to create a more engaging experience using leaderboards, points, levels, gems, and prizes to increase retention.

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Ease of Use:
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Kajabi — Best Alternative With All-Inclusive Sales and Marketing Features

Ease of Use Features Affordability Learning Experience
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Kenny Rueter founded Kajabi in 2010 as an all-in-one platform with sales and marketing features for entrepreneurs to successfully create, market, and sell their content online.

Kajabi’s Top Features

  • Its sales and marketing features include funnel templates, automated email sequences, one-click upsells, integrated checkouts, and coupons.
  • Offers unlimited file hosting which includes videos and photos.
  • Enables you to create a professional website with their drag-and-drop website builder.
  • Helps generate different content with AI Creator Hub.
  • Kajabi University offers webinars for users to master the platform.

Kajabi is the best all-in-one alternative for coaches, consultants, and podcasters who want to increase sales with automation like email sequences, marketing funnels, offers, bundles, and one-click upsells.

Kajabi Pros Kajabi Cons
✅ Effective sales and marketing automation ❌ Expensive
✅ Active creator community ❌ Lower plans have limited products
✅ Free and paid website templates ❌ Fewer integrations
✅ AI Creator Hub for generating content ❌ Steep learning curve

Kajabi vs Ruzuku

Compared to Ruzuku’s basic marketing features, Kajabi offers funnels, coupons, bundles, sales pages, affiliate programs, and automated email campaigns. It excels at bringing your marketing and knowledge under one roof.

For example, Kajabi’s Funnels feature provides you with automation options and landing pages that’ll easily put your courses in front of your target audience. It also collects emails to scale your business and promote your courses to new customers which will help grow your customer base and save time and money. Ruzuku has no email automation, so you’ll need a third-party email marketing tool like MailChimp to get new leads.

Kajabi Pricing

Kajabi Pricing starts at $149/month with 3 products, 3 funnels, and 1,000 customers. To access more features like advanced automation or the affiliate program, you’ll need to upgrade to the Growth plan at $199/month or Pro at $399/month.

Meanwhile, Ruzuku starts at $99/month and offers unlimited courses, unlimited video hosting, and live video conferences so if your focus isn’t on expanding your student base, it will work just fine.

But if you’re looking to reach new students and increase your customer base, Kajabi is the best alternative with its all-encompassing marketing features.

Kajabi also offers a 14-day trial period for you to test its features thoroughly, but with our affiliate link, you get 30 days for free!

Use Kajabi If:

  • You need an all-in-one course creation platform with robust sales and marketing features.
  • You want to collect emails to grow your leads and increase sales.
  • You want to use the marketing funnels feature and create landing and sales pages to lead customers through the pipelines.

Not satisfied with the quick overview? We’ve got you covered; read our in-depth comparison of Ruzuku vs Kajabi for a detailed analysis!

Podia — Best Alternative For High-Ticket Coaching and Webinars

Ease of Use Features Affordability Learning Experience
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Spencer Fry wanted to help creators build an audience and sell digital products. So he founded Podia in 2017 as an easy-to-use platform that supports courses, webinars, and coaching products for infopreneurs.

Podia’s Top Features

  • Offers diverse products.
  • Offers free website on all its plans.
  • Has a presell option to increase sales.
  • Built-in communities with unlimited members.
  • Makes knowledge more accessible to members with bundles.

Podia is perfect for creators who want to test their course creation ideas with multiple digital products.

Podia Pros Podia Cons
✅ Beginner-friendly interface ❌ Advanced features are locked in the lower plans
✅ Affiliate program ❌ Limited free plan
✅ Free and custom domain ❌ No mobile app
✅ Presell options  

Podia vs Ruzuku

Both Podia and Ruzuku are easy-to-use course creation platforms. But Podia offers more product types like coaching programs, webinars, and memberships, which are great additions to courses. On the other hand, Ruzuku focuses more on delivering content to students rather than increasing sales.

Unlike Ruzuku which is dedicated to course creation rather than marketing, Podia offers bundles, membership sites, and coaching. It’s a good platform for beginners to sell high-ticket coaching programs with fewer students. The coaching programs foster more positive and strong relationships that create the best learning experience.

Podia Pricing

Podia’s Pricing starts at $39/month with:

  • unlimited courses, coaching programs, and downloads,
  • built-in community,
  • free website.

Unlimited webinars, affiliate programs, and course certificates are included in the Shaker plan at $89/month.

Both paid plans include one administrator, but you can add more at $20 each. If you’re unsure and want to test the platform, Podia offers a free plan that comes with one download, one coaching product, a community, and a website and charges an 8% commission fee on sales.

Meanwhile, Ruzuku’s free plan doesn’t charge a transaction fee, doesn’t offer a free website, and puts a cap on the number of students. If you’re looking to grow exponentially and need a free website, Podia is better, but if unlimited video conferencing is more important to you, Ruzuku is better.

Use Podia If:

  • You want to sell various products like coaching programs and digital downloads.
  • You are a beginner looking to test your ideas with different products, including a free, fully-featured website.
  • You want to increase revenue with memberships.

Thinkific — Best Alternative for Educators Who are Starting Out

Ease of Use Features Affordability Learning Experience
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Greg Smith developed Thinkific after failing to find a solid platform for taking his law classes online. He wanted to create an affordable course creation platform with unlimited core features like courses and students.

Thinkific’s Top Features

  • Offers essential features like courses, communities, and a website.
  • Offers custom themes and domains in all paid plans.
  • Has community spaces for collaboration and sharing resources.
  • Live sessions to increase engagement.
  • Affiliate marketing to extend brand reach and increase revenue.

Thinkific is an affordable tool that’s ideal for startups looking for an affordable platform with core features like unlimited courses, communities, and a website to market courses and increase sales.

Thinkific Pros Thinkific Cons
✅ Custom domain in all paid plans ❌ Focuses only on courses
✅ Live sessions ❌ Advanced features are locked in lower plans
✅ No transaction fees ❌ No advanced community features
✅ Bulk student emailer ❌ Fewer admins in all plans

Thinkific vs Ruzuku

Thinkific offers a website with a custom domain on all its paid plans, while Ruzuku has basic website features and offers a custom domain only on its top paid plan.

Unlike Ruzuku, Thinkific lets you build brand identity with its lowest pricing plan immediately after you launch your website. A lot of elements are customizable, even if you don’t know any HTML and CSS. Visitors will immediately notice branding that matches your company and differentiates you from competitors.

Thinkific Pricing

Thinkific’s Pricing starts with the Basic plan at $49/month. It includes everything you need to start your business, including unlimited courses, unlimited students, one community, and an admin.

As your business grows, you can upgrade to Start at $99/month or Grow at $199/month to access more features like live lessons, assignments, and bulk enrolment.

You can sign up for the free plan with 1 course, 1 community, 1 administrator, and unlimited students to test the platform. Also, there are no transaction fees on all plans.

If you want an affordable platform that builds your brand identity from the start, Thinkific is better than Ruzuku.

Use Thinkific If:

  • You want to scale your business with unlimited courses, students, and affiliate marketing.
  • You’re looking to start your business with a custom domain and make courses more visible online.
  • You need a wallet-friendly platform with no transaction fees or hidden costs.

EzyCourse — Best Alternative for Student Assessment

Ease of Use Features Affordability Learning Experience
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Sadek Hossain’s passion for programming drove him to start EzyCourse — a simple but feature-rich platform for experts and non-tech-savvy creators to create, market, and sell their content online.

EzyCourse’s Top Features

  • Enables you to create your website with a no-code page builder.
  • Offer premium one-on-one chat sessions with private chats.
  • Creates different quiz types with the quiz builder.
  • Manage appointments with appointment booking.
  • Enables you to sell physical products to increase revenue.

EzyCourse is great for non-tech-savvy educators who need basic and advanced tools to quickly create courses with multiple quiz types and plan on carefully tracking students’ performance.

EzyCourse Pros EzyCourse Cons
✅ Unlimited courses and active students ❌ Charges transaction fees on some plans
✅ Advanced grading and assessment ❌ Some features are locked in lower plans
✅ Offers appointment booking ❌ Limited community features
✅ Drip courses for managing lessons  

EzyCourse vs Ruzuku

EzyCourse is a great alternative to Ruzuku if you want better tools to assess students’ progress on your course. Its quiz builder creates dynamic quizzes that support a wide range of questions to encourage interaction, motivate students, and help them recall information.

Meanwhile, Ruzuku only allows multiple-choice quizzes. If you want different question types, you’ll have to use external tools which takes extra time, effort, and possibly money. EzyCourse gives you various question types:

  • single or multiple choice,
  • fill the blank questions,
  • textbased,
  • true or false,
  • advanced quiz retake.

EzyCourse Pricing

EzyCourse Pricing plans start with the Basic plan at $31/month, which includes unlimited courses, unlimited custom pages, 2 communities, and 2 admin accounts. Its lowest pricing plan lets you create up to 2 communities and you can upgrade to add more making it ideal for creators with many communities.

If you need more features like affiliate programs and memberships, you can upgrade to Pro at $89/month or Unlimited at $199/month.

EzyCourse has no free plan but offers a 14-day free trial.

Use EzyCourse If:

  • You want to assess your students’ performance with different types of quizzes.
  • You are looking for a feature-rich platform that you can quickly set up and use.
  • You have large communities and you require more than one administrator.

LearnDash — Best Alternative for Multilingual Courses

Ease of Use Features Affordability Learning Experience
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Justin Ferriman worked as a consultant for LMS plugins but he wanted to offer WordPress users something different. So, he founded LearnDash in 2013 as a learning management system that offers multilingual courses for educators to create and promote their courses.

LearnDash’s Top Features

  • Has course translation packs for reaching a wider audience with different languages.
  • Offers course a creation wizard for faster course creation.
  • Enables you to approve and award points on submitted assignments with assignment management.
  • Automatic backups to keep your courses safe.
  • Allows course cloning to save time.

LearnDash is a WordPress plugin that’s ideal for creators who want to translate their courses to any language on WordPress and sell them to a wider audience.

LearnDash Pros LearnDash Cons
✅ Unlimited courses in all plans ❌ Limited products
✅ Allows course cloning ❌ Limited functionality without plugins
✅ Can translate courses into any language ❌ Premium plugins increase cost
✅ Intuitive course builder ❌ Limited advanced design customization

LearnDash vs Ruzuku

Ruzuku lets you translate course content. But with LearnDash, you’ll be able to translate your course content, plus supplementary materials like quizzes, PDFs, slides, checklists, and lesson topics. Also, if you have videos, you can translate their subtitles and closed captioning to provide students with an excellent learning experience. The same goes for text and images in the videos.

LearnDash also lets you promote courses with content marketing on your website. Meanwhile, Ruzuku focuses on educating and only lets you build sales pages to market courses.

LearnDash Pricing

LearnDash Pricing starts with the Starter plan at $29/month with unlimited courses, 1000 students, and 30GB storage.

The plans scale with the number of students and storage. So if you have more students or you need more space, upgrade to the Growth plan at $49/month with 5000 students and 60GB.

The Pro plan is $99/month and allows 25,000 students and 120 GB. If you’re on the Growth or Pro plans, you get a 20% discount on premium plugins. If you want to translate course content for some of your students, Ruzuku will work well enough. But if you want to reach a wider audience with multilingual courses and SEO, LearnDash is better.

Use LearnDash If:

  • You want to translate your courses and supplementary assets to any language.
  • You prefer teaching in a specific language to increase comprehension.
  • You need to extend your brand reach with multilingual courses.

Mighty Networks — Best Alternative for Building a Vibrant Community

Ease of Use Features Affordability Learning Experience
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Gina Bianchini, Tim Herby, and Thomas Aaron founded Mighty Networks to enable creators to build their own unique and vibrant internet subculture.

Mighty Networks’ Top Features

  • Community spaces to bring people and content together.
  • Live streaming to engage more with your audience.
  • Cohort and content courses to create a social learning environment.
  • Community events to increase engagement.
  • White label website to comply with your branding.

Mighty Networks is an ideal solution for knowledge creators looking to grow their communities with live streaming, cohort courses, and community events.

Mighty Networks Pros Mighty Networks Cons
✅ Robust community features ❌ Charges transaction fees
✅ Enables white labeling ❌ Some features are locked in lower plans
✅ Offers cohort courses ❌ Basic sales and marketing features
✅ Supports various content formats  

Mighty Networks vs Ruzuku

Mighty Networks offers more robust community features for communication and collaboration than Ruzuku.

In the course creation area, Mighty Networks lets you create different types of courses that emphasize member challenges, activities, and events:

  • Content-only,
  • Cohort-based,
  • Community-based.

You can also run any type of live event you want, including high-ticket masterminds, conferences, or meetups. This wide selection is useful for including all of your students and engaging them, no matter their learning preferences.

Mighty Networks Pricing

Mighty Networks’ Pricing starts at $39/month, but some features like a branded website, Google Analytics, and co-hosting are locked. To access them, you’ll have to upgrade to the Business plan at $119/month or contact the Mighty Networks team for the Mighty Pro plan.

It’s also worth noting that, unlike Ruzuku, Mighty Networks charges a 2-3% transaction fee for every sale you make.

If you’re more interested in delivering course content to students and offering basic online community discussions Ruzuku is better. But if you’re more focused on creating a vibrant community, Mighty Networks is a better choice.

Use Mighty Networks If:

  • You want to build a cohesive community with live streaming, cohort courses, and community events.
  • You want to build a unique culture with better communication and collaboration.
  • You want to host different types of live events and extend your brand reach.

Skool — Best Alternative for Course Completion and Retention

Ease of Use Features Affordability Learning Experience
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Sam Ovens, a popular marketer who wanted a more scalable learning platform for knowledge creators, founded Skool in 2019. Skool is an online learning platform with advanced gamification features like leaderboards, badges, and prizes for creators to engage and collaborate with their communities in fun ways.

Skool’s Top Features

  • Advanced gamification features including levels, gems, prizes, and leaderboards,
  • Unlimited courses and community members,
  • Live streaming to increase participation,
  • Affiliate program to extend brand reach,
  • Group funnels to build relationships and promote courses.

Skool is best for creators who want to build strong connections, improve student experience, and reach a bigger crowd via affiliate marketing. It lets you increase retention with advanced gamification like leaderboards, prizes, and points.

Skool Pros Skool Cons
✅ Offers advanced gamification features ❌ No website or funnel builder
✅ Unlimited courses and community members ❌ Limited marketing features
✅ Offers subscription memberships and coaching ❌ No direct chat option with customer support
✅ Short learning curve  

Skool vs Ruzuku

Skool’s courses are a mix of communities, games, business, and learning.

But it shines with its fun communities for students to hang out, connect, share ideas, and deepen their relationships. Gamification helps you increase engagement with points, levels, leaderboards, gems, and prizes. It’s a great way to identify and reward learners who add value to others with their comments or posts.

Gamifying your courses also offers a great learner experience and increases the lifetime value of your customers. Ruzuku doesn’t offer such features.

Skool Pricing

Skool has only one plan at $99/month with 1 group, unlimited courses, and members. It offers access to all features and lets you test-drive the platform for 14 days.

If you’re fine with basic course discussions, Ruzuku is better for course creation. But if you want to increase course completion and engagement with advanced gamification like leaderboards, prizes, and badges, go with Skool.

Use Skool If:

  • You want to create strong connections and an excellent learner experience with exciting gamification features.
  • You want to increase the retention rate of customers.
  • You’re interested in improving the learner experience.

The Final Verdict

There are many tools out there that can help create, market, and sell your online courses, but the truth is that each tool shines in its own area.

Our list highlights these areas and advises how you can benefit from them. No single platform can perfectly satisfy a creator’s need even though they have everything under the same roof. But knowing what your needs are and which tools offer solutions for them, will make your final choice easier.

Here’s our final verdict:

  • Kajabi for entrepreneurs who want an all-in-one tool with advanced automation like built-in funnels, email sequences, and dynamic landing pages to create, market, and sell their courses.
  • Podia for creators who want to create and sell high-ticket coaching programs, memberships, and downloads.
  • Thinkific for educators who are starting their online courses and want to affordably scale their businesses with core products like unlimited courses, community, and a website.
  • EzyCourse for educators who want to effortlessly assess their students’ performance with multiple quiz types.
  • LearnDash for experts who want to translate courses and other content on their WordPress site to any language.
  • Mighty Networks for creators who want to build a unique and vibrant culture in their communities with live sessions and events.
  • Skool for creators who want to increase engagement and retention with robust gamification features like leaderboards, gems, and prizes.

Author:

Mihael Cacic
Miha is a writer and an expert in comparative content. After graduating from Physics, Mihael left his job as a software engineer developing SaaS products and began writing about them instead. He gets a kick from writing in-depth, objective, and though through software reviews, knowing his readers will find the best software for their needs.
Author:
Mihael Cacic
Miha is a writer and an expert in comparative content. After graduating from Physics, Mihael left his job as a software engineer developing SaaS products and began writing about them instead. He gets a kick from writing in-depth, objective, and though through software reviews, knowing his readers will find the best software for their needs.