How to Price Online Courses

There is a fine line between a potential buyer for your course and an active one. It’s important to make sure that engaged audiences who love what your course content has to offer don’t change their minds before clicking “buy now.” 

That buyer decision often comes down to three key factors: 

1. How much you charge

2. How much other course creators charge

3. How easy or difficult it is to make a payment 

But there’s no one-size-fits-all online course pricing calculator that can accurately determine the value of your course or what price will lead to the best customer conversion rate. You’ll want to set your pricing strategy based on your expertise and how competitors with similar experience price their classes or courses.

Knowing your own value

How you price your online courses often comes down to how well you know your subject. A true expert in a particular field can charge a higher price for course content than someone with a relatively cursory understanding of the field. If you’ve spent the past 20 years working as an architect, your course on architectural drawing may justifiably have a higher price point than a similar course developed by someone with just a few years’ experience and who’s teaching their first online course.

The value of your knowledge isn’t always exactly equal to the amount of time spent working in your sector, though. If you’ve achieved a particularly high degree of respect for your expertise (e.g., if you have a large social media following in your field or have won a high-profile award), your learning content may be considered more high value than someone with more experience but fewer accolades.

Also consider your experience in course creation and education, not just your experience in the topic you’ll be teaching. Would you be likely to have a higher-priced course than someone who has exactly the same subject knowledge as you do, but less teaching know-how? The answer is probably yes.

Knowing your market value

Often, whether there are other programs covering the same subject matter as yours—and how those online course creators price them—will have a significant impact on the price of your course. 

If there are hundreds or even thousands of experts offering similar course content to potential customers, you may have to start at a lower price to win business. So, it’s worth spending some time analyzing the market to see how popular your chosen course topic is already. Get a sense of the average cost at both the high price and low price ends of the spectrum. 

If your topic is very popular, you may want to circle back and find a more niche topic or find a more unique approach to how you teach it, which may allow you to give your course a higher price tag.

You might help your course stand out by offering extra features, like a group coaching program, for example. Or, you could draw in new customers by emphasizing that you teach a smaller number of students and can give individuals more attention, or with pricing tiers that offer more or less content for a different price, depending on what people want to spend.

However, if there are many courses like yours on the market, but none of such high quality, you will be in a much stronger position to price your course above those of your competitors. You simply need to be able to prove your perceived value in your marketing materials (e.g., you’re the only award winner to provide this type of learning material online).

Also consider your target audience in relation to those of your competitors. Are you targeting people with more or less disposable income? If you’re positioning your course content as a luxury purchase (e.g., a series of acting masterclasses for high-income learners who wish to learn from the best), then you can charge more of a premium price than for a beginner’s class targeting students on a budget (e.g., drama classes for beginners).

Generally, the right price is somewhere around those of your competitors. Take your research on how people with similar experience and expertise handle pricing, and set yours in a similar range. You can always make adjustments to your pricing model later based on feedback or your enrollment numbers.

Making it easy for students to pay

According to Baymard Institute, 69% of all online shopping carts are abandoned. That means that even when customers are engaged, excited about a product, and ready to buy, something stops most of them at the final hurdle. In the case of your course sales, you can address this by making the purchase process as smooth and simple as possible. The easier it is to go through the payment process, the less often customers will abandon their purchase.

If you host your course content on a Squarespace website, it’s easy to connect a payment processor that will simplify checkout for your customers. That includes one-click payment options and buy-now-pay-later tools that put users on a payment plan, so they don’t have to search for their credit card or cover the cost of a pricier purchase all at once. 

You can create pricing tiers and exclusive paywall content, including the ability to collect subscription payments by adding online courses to your Squarespace website. This makes finalizing that course purchase all the more attractive to your potential students, since the online course business is connected to your main website. You can even offer the option of recurring scheduled payments so that they don’t have to pay up front.

With Squarespace Courses, you can choose between charging your students a one-time fee or giving them the option to purchase a recurring subscription. You can also use flexible merchandising options to support selling courses individually or in bundles.

Learn about developing and marketing online courses

This post was updated on August 21, 2023.