Website builder and ecommerce platform Squarespace has just announced the launch of a new feature — ‘Squarespace Courses’ — that will enable small businesses and content makers to create and sell educational courses through the platform.
With this new tool, creators will be able to use Squarespace to build out structured online courses to sell on their sites, using a mix of media types, including video, text, PDF, audio, downloadable course materials and so on.
Courses made with ‘Squarespace Courses’ can be structured into sequential lessons and chapters, and Squarespace has included a handy ‘progress tracking’ feature so that students can monitor where they are in terms of completing the overall course.
Squarespace subscribers will be able to sell courses on the ‘Business,’ ‘Basic Commerce’ or ‘Advanced Commerce’ plans; however, doing so involves a 9% transaction fee.
In order to avail of lower transaction fees, as well as additional video storage for courses, Squarespace subscribers can pay for a ‘Digital Product’ add on, with the following costs applying:
- Digital Product ‘Starter’ add-on — +$9 per month if paying annually; +$12 per month if paying month-by-month.
- Digital Product ‘Core’ add-on — +$34 per month if paying annually; +$44 per month if paying month-by-month.
- Digital Product ‘Professional’ add-on — +$119 per month if paying annually; +$149 per month if paying month-by-month.
Transaction fees are reduced to 7% on the ‘Starter’ plan and 3% on the ‘Core’ plan, with no transaction fee on the top-tier ‘Professional’ plan.
The other key difference between these plans relates to how much video content you can store. The ‘Starter’ plan lets you store 10 hours of video, which rises to 50 hours on the ‘Core’ plan. The ‘Professional’ plan lets you host an unlimited amount of video content.
Considering that pricing for entry-level plans with dedicated course builders like Thinkific and Teachable start at around $36 per month — $27 more than Squarespace’s ‘Starter’ plan above — it’s fair to say that the ‘Squarespace Courses’ offering may prove tempting to existing and potential educators among Squarespace’s sizeable userbase.
To help would-be course creators get up and running with the new feature, Squarespace has developed a range of materials to provide guidance on getting started with ‘Squarespace Courses’. These materials include a 7-part video course that takes you through the full process of building a monetizable course with Squarespace, from creating a course outline to shooting your educational videos, and ultimately, marketing and selling your course.
You can learn more about Squarespace in our Squarespace review.
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