Course Creation Roadmap
Step 4 - The Tech
COMING SOON: Step 5 - Review
You know what you are teaching and who you are teaching it to, and you’ve mapped out your content… so now it’s time to think about how students will access your course.
(Not there yet? Make sure you’ve thought about Step 3 – Course Content before you dive into this one.)
The best platform is the one you and your students will actually use.
What is The Tech?
The tech is everything that sits behind the scenes to make your course accessible, functional, and deliverable. It’s the platform your course lives on and the systems that handle all the bits… things like payments, emails, and student access.
It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to be intentional.
A lot of course creators make the mistake of either choosing the flashiest platform available, or defaulting to whatever their favourite online expert uses — without stopping to ask whether it actually suits their course, their audience, or the way they work.
The tech should serve your course. Not the other way around.
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What to think about at this stage:
Your Course Platform
This is where your course will live, where students log in, access their content, and track their progress.
There are plenty of options out there, from simple and affordable to feature-rich and complex.
The right one depends on how your course is structured, how many students you’re expecting, and how much you want to manage yourself.
Self-hosted vs all-in-one
This is one of the bigger decisions you’ll make.
An all-in-one platform keeps everything in one place and is generally easier to manage.
A self-hosted option (like a plugin on your existing website) gives you more control and often lower ongoing costs, but requires more technical confidence to set up and maintain.
Student Experience
It’s easy to get so focused on building your course that you forget to think about what it actually feels like to be a student in it. Will your students be able to log in easily? Can they navigate between lessons without getting lost? Does the platform work well on the devices they’re most likely to use?
A smooth student experience isn’t a nice-to-have — it directly affects completion rates and how students feel about your course.
Supporting Systems
Beyond the platform itself, there are a few other pieces to consider, like how students will pay, how you’ll communicate with them before and during the course, and whether your platform connects with your existing email marketing tools.
It’s also worth thinking about automations early.
The right setup can save you significant time and create a much better experience for your students without you having to do everything manually.
Questions to ask at this stage...
- What platform do you think will work best for your course?
- Does it suit your course type, budget, and audience?
- Will it grow with you as your business expands?
- How confident are your students with technology?
- Wil they be able to log in, navigate, and complete lessons?
- What devices will they most likely use?
- What integrations do you need?
- Does it need to connect your course with your email marketing or payment systems?
- Are there automations that could save you time or improve the student experience?
NOTE:
Here at Hearthlight Learning we don’t promote just one course platform, because we honestly believe there isn’t one perfect option. Different courses and different course creators have different needs.
Please be wary of consultants who only ever recommend a single platform. It often means they receive a referral commission from that platform, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right fit for you.
Book a chat…
Don’t know your LMS from your PDF?
Been asked by your boss about SCORM and wonder if it’s something you can catch?
Started looking at platforms but already overwhelmed?
Book in for a course chat and the team can point you in the right direction for getting started or provide with a quote for a specific project.