Can I Host a Course on ThriveCart? Everything Course Creators Need to Know

Yes, you can absolutely host a course on ThriveCart — and more course creators are making the switch every year. ThriveCart is no longer just a checkout cart tool. With the launch of ThriveCart Learn, it became a full course-hosting and selling platform rolled into one, with no monthly fees eating into your revenue.

If you've been paying $100+ every month to platforms like Kajabi or Teachable just to host your content and process payments, this article will show you exactly what ThriveCart Learn offers, how the course hosting works, what it doesn't do, and whether it's the right fit for your business.

What Is ThriveCart Learn?

ThriveCart is a tool for selling digital and physical products with features like product pages and payment processing. ThriveCart Learn is the integrated course platform where you can build and host modules with videos, worksheets, audio, and more.

ThriveCart Learn allows vendors to easily sell their training and content to customers through highly flexible courses containing modules and lessons. Each has a wide range of drip-feeding options, giving you complete customization on how your content is delivered to your students.

There are two versions of Learn:

  • ThriveCart Learn — free for all ThriveCart users, included with your account

  • ThriveCart Learn+ — a paid upgrade with advanced features like student tagging, product bundles, and team access

Both versions allow for unlimited courses, unlimited modules, unlimited lessons, and unlimited students. That alone puts it ahead of platforms like Teachable's basic plan, which caps you at five courses.

How Does Course Hosting Work in ThriveCart?

This is where people sometimes get confused, so let's clear it up. ThriveCart Learn hosts your course structure — the modules, lessons, drip schedules, student access, and checkout flow. It does not host your video files directly.

Some course platforms offer to host your videos and course downloads, but those platforms can cost hundreds of dollars every month and take a percentage of your sales. Learn is a free platform available within ThriveCart, and their one-time pricing does not provide scope for hosting your videos or downloads. Embedding videos into your lessons can be achieved using almost any video hosting service that provides an embed code. Platforms like YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia are all popular video hosting services. For downloads, services like Amazon S3 are popular for extremely low-cost hosting solutions.

In practice, this is simpler than it sounds. You upload your video to Vimeo or YouTube, copy the embed code, and paste it into your lesson. The student sees a clean, professional course page — they never interact with Vimeo directly.

Key Features of ThriveCart for Course Creators

Unlimited Courses and Students

With just the basic ThriveCart features, there isn't a limit to how many courses you can create and sell. This means more online sales opportunities while serving a wider audience, and you can better serve your current students by providing additional or more in-depth content.

Compare that to Kajabi, which limits the number of products and courses based on your pricing tier, or Teachable's basic plan where you're capped at five courses and hit with transaction fees on top.

Drip Content Scheduling

Drip content is super easy to set up — you can configure the course to release content gradually over time to keep students engaged and motivated. This feature can also be used to launch a course and pre-sell it before it's actually made, so you can work on the course in the background and set it to release when students expect it to be ready.

Automated Email Sequences for Students

With the standard edition of Learn, it is possible to integrate with an email system and trigger automated emails when a student completes a module, a lesson, or the whole course. This makes it possible to send specific emails offering help or extra tasks at the exact right time — imagine students getting an email offering very specific help just as they're learning about it inside the course.

High-Converting Checkout Built In

One of ThriveCart's biggest selling points is that your course checkout and your course delivery live in the same platform. You get order bumps, one-click upsells, payment plans, trial offers, and "pay what you want" pricing — all without connecting a single third-party tool.

So now you can host your course, create quizzes, track user progress, and offer certifications, all within the ThriveCart ecosystem. This means you can track users, gain insight through analytics, run funnels, and add upsells all in a few clicks with zero integrations.

Built-In Affiliate Program

ThriveCart's affiliate platform makes it easy to build your business by getting others to promote your product. Affiliate marketing is the easiest and cheapest way to grow in the beginning, since you don't pay anything until you make a sale. It helps to have the platform built straight into the tool — just generate the affiliate link and anyone can start promoting your products.

Kajabi locks affiliate features behind higher-tier plans. ThriveCart includes them natively once you're on the Pro plan.

What ThriveCart Learn Does Not Include

Being straight with you here matters, because some course platforms oversell what ThriveCart can do.

No built-in video hosting. As covered above, you need Vimeo, YouTube, or Wistia for your actual video files.

No built-in email marketing. ThriveCart is really specializing in the cart checkout system and leaning into course hosting and management. So you can still use your favorite email marketing software, still use your favorite website builder, and embed the cart in those places. This is actually a feature in disguise — you keep using ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or Flodesk instead of being locked into a clunky built-in email tool.

No website builder. ThriveCart creates sales pages and checkout pages, but not a full website. You'll want Squarespace, WordPress, or Showit for that.

No community features. If you want a discussion forum or community feed inside your course, you'll need to integrate a tool like Circle or Slack.

ThriveCart Learn vs. ThriveCart Learn+

Here's a side-by-side breakdown of what you get at each level:

Feature

Learn (Free)

Learn+ (Paid Upgrade)

Unlimited courses

✅

✅

Unlimited students

✅

✅

Drip content

✅

✅

Email trigger sequences

✅

✅

Student tagging

❌

✅

Product bundles

❌

✅

Student importing

❌

✅

Team/staff accounts

❌

✅

Advanced segmentation

❌

✅

Learn+ gives the option to create bundles at special prices and even more advanced sequencing based on segmentation and tagging. The customer experience is completely in your hands and can be truly customized based on the specific needs of each segment.

For most solo creators and coaches just getting started, the free Learn version handles everything well. Learn+ makes sense once you're running multiple programs, need team access, or want to segment students by purchase type.

ThriveCart vs. Kajabi: Is the Price Difference Worth It?

With something like Teachable, you're paying $99 a month, which is well over a thousand dollars a year. With something like Kajabi, you're paying well over a hundred dollars a month depending on the plan you want.

Instead of paying $149 a month on Kajabi — $1,788 a year — you make no more payments for your course platform after the one-time ThriveCart fee.

That's a significant difference for any creator who's bootstrapping or wants to keep overhead low. The money you save in year two and beyond is basically free profit.

Once you've paid for a membership and joined ThriveCart, you can use the original service and ThriveCart Learn forever without spending any more money.

The main thing Kajabi wins on is being a genuinely all-in-one solution — website, email marketing, community, and courses in a single dashboard. If your question is "How do I get more revenue from the traffic I already have?", ThriveCart is the answer. For sales and checkout conversion, it's the top-performing cart on the market.

If you want everything under one roof and budget isn't the main concern, Kajabi fits that need. If you want lower costs, better checkout conversion, and the flexibility to use your own tools for email and website — ThriveCart wins easily.

ThriveCart Pricing: What Does It Actually Cost?

ThriveCart operates on a one-time lifetime pricing model rather than monthly subscriptions. The standard account costs $495 and includes ThriveCart Learn. Upgrading to ThriveCart Pro adds features like the affiliate program center, custom domain names, and automatic sales tax calculation for an additional one-time fee of $195.

If you want to save on the entry price, check out these 50% off ThriveCart coupons before purchasing — discounts like this make the lifetime deal even more compelling compared to paying $1,200+ per year on competing platforms.

Who Should Use ThriveCart to Host Their Course?

ThriveCart Learn is a great fit if you:

  • Already sell digital products and want to add a course without a new monthly subscription

  • Run a coaching business and want payment plans, upsells, and course delivery in one place

  • Have an email provider you like and don't want to switch to a platform's built-in email tool

  • Want affiliate marketing built into your course sales from day one

  • Are launching your first course and want to keep costs low while still looking professional

It's less ideal if you need a built-in community, a website builder, or you prefer not to manage a separate video hosting account.

How to Set Up a Course on ThriveCart: The Basic Flow

Getting a course live on ThriveCart Learn takes less time than most people expect. Here's the general process:

  1. Log into ThriveCart and navigate to the Learn tab in your dashboard

  2. Create a new project — this is your course folder, invisible to students

  3. Add a course inside the project and set up your branding, logo, and color scheme

  4. Build your modules and lessons — add text, embed videos from Vimeo or YouTube, and attach downloadable files

  5. Set your drip schedule if you want content released gradually after enrollment

  6. Connect the course to a product in ThriveCart's checkout system

  7. Set up your pricing — one-time, subscription, payment plan, or pay-what-you-want

  8. Test your funnel by going through checkout in test mode to see exactly what students experience

  9. Go live and share your sales page

The ThriveCart hosted success page will have a link to access the course. Students are presented with a registration form where they can enter a password of their choice. Their name and email will be prefilled based on the purchase information, and they'll also receive an email with a link to access their course.

Real Results from Course Creators Using ThriveCart

After switching to ThriveCart, many creators canceled Teachable, Kajabi, and Zapier subscriptions entirely — using ThriveCart for all checkout pages, upsells, funnels, tagging, and the affiliate program in one place.

One creator went from about $5,000 in sales in their first year to more than 5x that in the first six months with ThriveCart — adding upsells like eBooks, templates, and coaching calls that now run 24/7 on autopilot.

The average order value increase people see after adding order bumps and one-click upsells is genuinely one of ThriveCart's strongest selling points as a course platform.

For those looking to get the full Pro experience at a reduced rate, this ThriveCart $690 lifetime discount covers the complete package and is one of the best ways to get started without overpaying.

The Short Answer

Yes, ThriveCart can host a course, and it does it well. ThriveCart Learn gives you unlimited courses, unlimited students, drip scheduling, automated sequences, and a checkout experience that most dedicated course platforms can't match.

You do need a third-party video host like Vimeo, and you'll want your own email marketing tool. But for the one-time price and the checkout power you get in return, it's one of the best setups available for independent course creators in 2025 and beyond.