ChatGPT answers, unedited

If you mean a true marketplace where many instructors upload their own video libraries, set prices, and get paid automatically (more like Udemy than a single creator selling courses), your shortlist changes quite a bit. Many popular course platforms are built for one brand with many courses, not a multi-vendor marketplace. CreatorStackClub

Here are the strongest options by business model:

My recommendations by stage

1. You want to launch quickly (MVP)

Use:

• WordPress
• LMS plugin
• WooCommerce
• Stripe Connect for instructor payouts

This gets you:

• instructor profiles
• course catalogs
• subscriptions
• commission splits
• coupons
• reviews
• SEO pages

The downside: you own more maintenance.

2. You want a serious Udemy competitor

Build a custom marketplace layer:

Core stack:

• Frontend: React / Next.js
• Backend: Node.js, Django, or Laravel
• Video: Vimeo OTT, Mux, or AWS Media Services
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Search: Algolia or Elasticsearch
• LMS features: custom or Moodle-based

You need:

• instructor onboarding
• course approval workflow
• revenue sharing rules
• affiliate/referral system
• ratings/reviews
• DRM/video protection
• analytics dashboards

3. You want a Netflix-style subscription library

Consider:

• Uscreen — built around video memberships and communities rather than a multi-vendor marketplace. Uscreen

Features I would prioritize for your model

For “multiple instructors selling libraries,” the critical pieces are:

1. Instructor storefronts

• Each teacher gets a profile page and catalog.
• Revenue splitting

• Example: instructor keeps 70%, marketplace keeps 30%.
• Subscription support

• Users pay monthly and access many libraries.
• Content rights management

• Important if instructors own their video IP.
• Video security

• Signed URLs, watermarking, download restrictions.
• Marketplace discovery

• Search, categories, ratings, recommendations.

My top pick

For a startup testing the idea:
WordPress + LMS + WooCommerce + Stripe Connect

For a venture-scale marketplace:
Custom build with Stripe Connect + dedicated video infrastructure

For a curated instructor network where you control quality:
Thinkific/Teachfloor-style academy model rather than a fully open marketplace. Thinkific Teachfloor

A key question: are you trying to build “Udemy (any instructor can join)”, “MasterClass (curated premium instructors)”, or “Netflix for niche courses (subscription library)”? The best architecture is different for each.

If your core model is “many instructors each sell their own video libraries, while I run the marketplace and take a commission”, I would not start with Kajabi/Teachable/Thinkific. Those are excellent for a single business selling its own courses, but they aren't really designed as multi-vendor marketplaces.

My shortlist

1. Best match: Mentor LMS

For the model you described, Mentor LMS is closest to what I'd investigate first. It explicitly supports a Udemy-like multi-instructor marketplace: instructors create profiles and courses, customers browse a common catalog, and the marketplace owner can set commissions and manage instructor payouts. Mentor LMS

That gets you much closer to:

Instructor signs up → uploads 20-course library → sets prices → customers buy → platform takes 20% → instructor gets 80%.

That's fundamentally different from simply having multiple "authors" inside an LMS.

2. Uscreen — best if the product is really a Netflix-like video library

Uscreen is particularly strong if you envision the product as:

Netflix for [your niche], with instructor channels/libraries.

It supports subscriptions, rentals, one-time video/course sales, collections, and video-focused monetization. Uscreen Uscreen Help Uscreen Help

Uscreen also added an Authors system that lets you organize content by instructor and track performance for revenue sharing. However, there's an important limitation: instructors aren't independent sellers with their own dashboards; administrators manage the authors and content. Uscreen Help

So I'd choose Uscreen if you control the catalog and instructors are content partners.

I wouldn't choose it if you want 500 independent instructors self-publishing and managing their own storefronts.

3. Mighty Networks — excellent if community matters

Mighty Networks is compelling if each instructor is essentially building a community around their courses.

It supports pre-recorded courses, live courses, memberships, resource libraries, events, and community features. Mighty Networks Mighty Networks

But it's not really a multi-vendor course marketplace. Mighty itself notes that it doesn't provide an existing course marketplace audience—you have to build the audience yourself. Mighty Networks

4. WordPress — my choice if you want maximum control

If this is intended to become a real marketplace business, I'd seriously consider:

WordPress + LMS + multi-vendor marketplace + Stripe Connect

That gives you control over:

• Instructor registration
• Instructor storefronts
• Course approval
• Individual course pricing
• Bundles
• Platform commissions
• Instructor payouts
• Subscriptions
• Coupons
• Reviews
• Search/filtering
• Affiliate commissions
• Instructor analytics
• Your own domain/brand/data

The key is to make sure the stack supports actual marketplace payouts, rather than merely calculating commissions. That's an important distinction: some "multi-instructor" LMS products simply track what an instructor is owed and leave you to pay them manually. ThemeAlley

The architecture I'd recommend

If your vision is something like “Skillshare/Udemy, but focused on a particular niche”, I'd structure it as:

Marketplace
→ instructor profiles
→ course/library catalog
→ search + categories
→ reviews
→ subscriptions
→ individual course purchases

Instructor side
→ onboarding
→ upload video
→ build courses/playlists
→ pricing
→ sales analytics
→ earnings
→ payout history

Platform side
→ approve instructors
→ approve courses
→ set commission
→ manage refunds
→ featured courses
→ platform-wide subscriptions
→ analytics

Payments
→ Stripe
→ Stripe Connect
→ automatic instructor payouts
→ platform commission

The subscription model is particularly interesting. Instead of just:

Customer buys Instructor A's $99 course.

you can have:

Customer pays $29/month → gets access to the entire marketplace → revenue is allocated among instructors based on consumption.

Uscreen's author analytics are actually relevant to that model because it can attribute viewership to authors, although it doesn't provide independent instructor dashboards. Uscreen Help

What I'd pick

If you're validating the idea: Mentor LMS / WordPress marketplace.

If you're building a polished Netflix-style video subscription service: Uscreen.

If courses + community are equally important: Mighty Networks.

If you expect hundreds/thousands of instructors and this is the actual business: I'd lean toward a custom or heavily customized marketplace, rather than trying to force a normal LMS into being a marketplace.

The most important question is actually how you want instructors to get paid. If you tell me whether you're thinking (A) instructor sets course price + you take a commission, (B) $X/month subscription shared among instructors based on watch time, or (C) both, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 software stacks and the likely monthly cost.

If your goal is specifically “a marketplace where many instructors each sell their own video-course libraries”, I’d narrow the field considerably. Most course platforms are built for one business + many instructors, not a true multi-vendor marketplace.

My shortlist

1. LearnWorlds — my first choice

LearnWorlds is unusually close to what you're describing.

It supports instructor accounts, assigning instructors to courses, and specifying an instructor's percentage of course revenue. It calculates commissions across courses, bundles, subscriptions and payment plans. The important caveat is that payouts to instructors are handled outside LearnWorlds, rather than being automatically split through the platform. support.learnworlds.comsupport.learnworlds.comhelp.uscreen.tvhelp.uscreen.tv

It also now has Course Hub, a marketplace where creators can publish courses and other schools can license them. support.learnworlds.com

Best if:
You want something you can launch relatively quickly, with:

• Instructor profiles
• Hundreds/thousands of video courses
• Course categories/search
• Individual course sales
• Bundles
• Subscriptions
• Instructor commissions
• Your own branding/domain
• LMS functionality

Big weakness: if you're envisioning a true Udemy-like marketplace where instructors independently manage their storefronts, receive automated Stripe payouts, run their own promotions, etc., you'll eventually hit platform limitations.

2. Uscreen — best for a Netflix-style library

Uscreen is excellent if the experience you're imagining is:

“Pay $19/month and get access to hundreds of videos from dozens of instructors.”

It has strong video hosting, collections/courses, subscriptions, tiered memberships, one-time purchases and bundles. help.uscreen.tv

For example, you could have:

$29/month

• Instructor A's library
• Instructor B's library
• Instructor C's library
• New courses every month

Or:

Instructor A — $99

• Course 1
• Course 2
• Course 3

The problem is that Uscreen is fundamentally designed around a creator/business operating its own video membership, rather than a marketplace with independent sellers. Its team-management functionality is about people operating your store, rather than independent instructor merchants. help.uscreen.tv

So I wouldn't choose it if the marketplace itself is the key innovation.

3. Sharetribe + video/LMS — interesting if marketplace is everything

If your actual business model is:

“Airbnb/Etsy, but for video-course instructors.”

then I'd seriously consider a marketplace platform rather than an LMS.

You'd essentially have:

Marketplace layer

• Instructor signup
• Instructor profiles
• Course listings
• Search/filtering
• Reviews
• Checkout
• Vendor commissions
• Payouts
• Marketplace admin

+

Learning/video layer

• Video hosting
• DRM/content protection
• Course player
• Progress tracking
• Quizzes
• Certificates
• Drip content

This gives you much more freedom, but you're assembling a system rather than buying one.

The key question is your business model

There are actually three very different products hiding inside your question.

A. “Netflix for courses”

Users pay you:

$25/month → entire library

Instructors contribute content and you pay them based on consumption/revenue.

Best: Uscreen or LearnWorlds.

B. “Udemy for instructors”

Users browse:

Photography
→ John Smith's courses
→ $79

Marketing
→ Jane Doe's courses
→ $129

The instructor is essentially an independent seller.

Best: marketplace architecture / custom build. LearnWorlds can approximate it, but isn't my first choice for this model.

C. Hybrid — probably the most interesting

I'd seriously consider:

Free account

↓

Individual courses

• $49
• $99
• $199

Instructor bundles

• $149

All-access membership

• $29/month
• Access to 500+ courses

And instructors get, say:

70% of course sales + proportional share of membership revenue.

That gives you both the Udemy marketplace economics and the Netflix recurring-revenue model.

What I'd choose

If you told me “I want to launch this without spending a year building software”, I'd start with LearnWorlds.

Its instructor/commission functionality is much closer to your requirement than most mainstream course platforms. support.learnworlds.comsupport.learnworlds.comhelp.uscreen.tvhelp.uscreen.tv

If you told me “the marketplace itself is the business, and I expect 500+ independent instructors”, I'd not lock myself into an LMS. I'd build the marketplace layer around Stripe Connect + a video/LMS infrastructure, because automated vendor onboarding, KYC, payouts, refunds, commissions, tax handling, instructor analytics, etc. become core infrastructure.

And if the concept is specifically “one subscription gives you access to everyone's video libraries,” I'd look hardest at Uscreen because its subscription/video infrastructure is particularly mature. help.uscreen.tv

If you tell me roughly how you want instructors to get paid (e.g. 70% of their course sales, 50/50 subscription revenue, or per minute watched), I can narrow this down to the best 3 platforms and the exact architecture I'd use.

If your goal is a marketplace where many independent instructors each sell their own video-course libraries, I would not start with Kajabi/Thinkific/Teachable. Those are excellent for an individual creator or a single branded academy, but the marketplace model needs multi-vendor instructor accounts, revenue splits, payouts, instructor storefronts, moderation, and ideally subscriptions.

My shortlist

Uscreen, for example, is particularly video-centric, while Thinkific/Kajabi/LearnWorlds are more conventional course-business platforms. www.uscreen.tvwww.uscreen.tv

🥇 My recommendation: WordPress marketplace stack

If you're trying to launch your own brand, I'd seriously consider:

WordPress + LearnDash/LifterLMS + WooCommerce + a multi-vendor/revenue-share layer

That gives you the ability to have:

• Instructor accounts
• Individual instructor storefronts
• Multiple courses per instructor
• Video lessons
• One-time course purchases
• Bundles
• Recurring memberships
• Platform-wide subscription
• Instructor-specific commissions
• Automated instructor payouts
• Coupons/affiliate tracking
• Course reviews
• Admin approval/moderation
• Your own branding and domain
• Your own customer data

There are already WordPress marketplace implementations specifically designed around this model. For example, one current approach combines LifterLMS or LearnDash with WooCommerce and a revenue-sharing system to automatically distribute course-sale and subscription revenue to instructors. www.sirenaffiliates.com

🥈 If you want the fastest route

Mentor LMS is worth investigating. It explicitly supports the Udemy-style model: multiple instructors, instructor dashboards, course publishing, commissions, revenue sharing, payment gateways, reviews, etc. www.uscreen.tvmentor-lms.comwww.uscreen.tv

I'd choose this if your priority is:

"I want something resembling Udemy, but under my own brand, without spending six months building software."

🥉 If the business is really "Netflix for courses"

Then I'd look much harder at Uscreen.

For example, imagine:

$29/month → access to 500 courses from 40 instructors

rather than:

Buy Jane's course for $79.

Uscreen is designed around video subscriptions, memberships and community, so that model fits its strengths much better. www.uscreen.tvwww.uscreen.tv

The tricky part is how you compensate instructors. If you're paying instructors based on watch time, course consumption, or a percentage of subscription revenue, make sure the platform can support your exact royalty calculation rather than merely splitting individual purchases.

One important architectural decision

Before picking software, decide which of these you actually want:

A. Udemy model

Student → buys Instructor A's course → Instructor A gets 70% → you get 30%.

B. Netflix model

Student → pays $29/month → watches courses from 10 instructors → you distribute a monthly royalty pool based on watch time/enrollments.

C. Hybrid

Student → can buy individual courses or subscribe to everything → instructors participate in both revenue streams.

C is probably the most interesting business model, but it's also where generic course platforms start becoming restrictive.

For reference, Udemy itself currently uses substantially different revenue shares depending on whether the instructor generated the sale: its published figures are 97% of net revenue for instructor-promotion sales versus 37% when the sale isn't attributable to an instructor promotion. support.udemy.com

What I'd choose

If you told me:

"I want to build a serious marketplace where 50–500 instructors can each maintain a library of video courses, and I want to take a percentage of sales/subscriptions."

I'd rank the options:

1. Custom marketplace — best if you have meaningful budget and expect this to become a substantial business.

2. WordPress + LMS + multi-vendor/revenue-share stack — best way to validate the business without building everything from scratch.

3. Mentor LMS / similar marketplace-focused LMS — fastest inexpensive MVP.

4. Uscreen — best if the core product is a video subscription service rather than a traditional course marketplace.

5. Thinkific/Kajabi/Teachable — excellent products, but I'd generally avoid making them the foundation of a true multi-instructor marketplace.

If you tell me your approximate budget (e.g. <$5k, $5–25k, $25–100k, $100k+) and whether you want individual course sales, a Netflix-style subscription, or both, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms and the exact stack I'd use.

If your goal is “MasterClass/Udemy-style marketplace, but I own the platform and multiple instructors can sell their own video libraries”, I’d narrow it to these:

🥇 My first choice: Uscreen

Uscreen is probably the closest fit if video libraries are the actual product.

It supports a Netflix-style video catalog, subscriptions, one-time purchases, memberships, communities, and branded apps. More importantly for your idea, Uscreen added an Authors system specifically for sites with multiple content creators: viewers can filter by instructor, while you can track each author's viewership for revenue sharing. www.uscreen.tvhelp.uscreen.tv

So you could structure it like:

Your marketplace
→ Instructor A → 40 courses / 300 videos
→ Instructor B → 15 courses / 120 videos
→ Instructor C → 60 courses / 500 videos
→ Students subscribe to the entire library
→ You calculate each instructor's share

That's a much better fit than trying to force a traditional LMS into being a marketplace.

🥈 Thinkific — best if “courses” matter more than Netflix-style video

Thinkific is worth serious consideration.

Thinkific supports multiple instructors/course administrators and, importantly, has Revenue Partner functionality for splitting revenue among co-instructors/content partners. support.thinkific.com

It's particularly attractive if your marketplace looks more like:

Instructor → Course → Modules → Lessons → quizzes/certificates

rather than:

Instructor → giant searchable video library → Netflix-like consumption.

Thinkific also supports subscriptions, payment plans, bundles, memberships and other commerce features. www.thinkific.com

🥉 LearnWorlds — best for a serious educational product

LearnWorlds is probably the strongest option if you want the platform to feel like a professional education company, rather than primarily a video subscription service.

It has particularly strong interactive-video capabilities, assessments, transcripts, learning paths, certificates, and content protection. www.learnworlds.com

Interestingly, LearnWorlds also has its own Course Hub marketplace, where schools can license courses from other academies and add them to their catalogs. www.learnworlds.com

The important distinction

There are actually two different businesses you might mean:

A. “Netflix for instructors”

Customers pay $20/month and get access to everyone's libraries.

I'd choose Uscreen.

Revenue could be:

$20 subscription × 10,000 members = $200k/month

Then you distribute, say, 50% of subscription revenue among instructors based on watch time or another formula.

B. “Udemy for instructors”

Each instructor creates courses and sets prices.

Example:

• Instructor A: $149 course
• Instructor B: $79 course
• Instructor C: $299 course
• Platform takes 20%
• Instructor receives 80%

I'd lean toward Thinkific or a custom marketplace architecture.

C. Hybrid — probably the most interesting

You could offer:

Individual course purchase
$99 → instructor gets 80%

All-access membership
$29/month → revenue pool distributed based on consumption

Instructor premium channel
$9/month → dedicated instructor gets most of that revenue

That starts looking much more like a creator marketplace + streaming platform.

One warning

If “multiple instructors can sign up themselves, create storefronts, upload content, set prices, receive payouts, and manage their own customers” is a hard requirement, I would not automatically choose a standard LMS.

That's a true multi-vendor marketplace. You need to think about:

• instructor onboarding
• Stripe Connect / payouts
• revenue splits
• refunds and chargebacks
• tax reporting
• instructor dashboards
• content ownership
• instructor-specific analytics
• affiliate commissions
• subscriptions vs. individual purchases
• marketplace search/discovery
• moderation
• instructor contracts
• video DRM/security

Uscreen is unusually interesting here because its current Authors functionality explicitly addresses multiple creators and revenue-sharing analytics. www.uscreen.tvhelp.uscreen.tv

My ranking for your specific idea

1. Uscreen — best if video libraries + subscriptions are the core
2. Thinkific — best if structured courses + instructor revenue sharing are the core
3. LearnWorlds — best if sophisticated education/LMS functionality is the core
4. Custom build — best if you want a genuine Udemy/Skillshare competitor with independent instructor storefronts
5. Kajabi — excellent creator-business software, but I'd choose it less readily for a multi-instructor marketplace

If you tell me roughly how you want the money to flow (e.g. “students pay $30/month for everything and instructors get 60% based on watch time” vs. “each instructor sets their own course price and we take 20%”), I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms and the exact architecture I'd use.

If your goal is “Udemy, but I own the marketplace”—multiple instructors each selling video libraries, with you taking a commission—I would not start with Kajabi, Teachable, or standard Thinkific. Those are primarily built around an individual creator/academy rather than a true multi-vendor marketplace.

My shortlist

1. 🥇 Mentor LMS — best if you want to launch cheaply

Mentor LMS is probably the most interesting off-the-shelf option I found for your specific model.

It explicitly supports a multi-instructor marketplace, with separate admin/instructor/student dashboards, instructor-created courses, commission settings, payment gateways, reviews, certificates, etc. It's self-hosted, so you control the platform rather than renting an academy from a SaaS provider. mentor-lms.comwww.learndesk.us

Good fit if:

• You want to get an MVP live quickly.
• Instructors upload their own video libraries.
• You take 10–30% of sales.
• You want one-time purchases initially.
• You don't want to spend $100k+ building version 1.

Big caveat: I'd treat it as an MVP/early-stage solution rather than automatically assuming it's the architecture you want for a huge marketplace.

2. 🥈 LearnDesk — interesting if you want a marketplace component

LearnDesk explicitly describes a marketplace where individual instructors and educational institutions sell learning content, alongside payments, subscriptions, payment plans and marketing. www.learndesk.us

I'd investigate it if you want a marketplace that already has instructors/content on the other side of the platform, rather than merely software for creating your own school.

3. 🥇 Custom build — best if this is intended to become a real marketplace

If you're envisioning something like:

Instructor joins → creates profile → uploads 50-course library → sets prices → you approve → students buy → Stripe automatically splits revenue → instructor gets paid → marketplace takes commission

then I'd seriously consider a custom marketplace.

A modern implementation can use Stripe Connect for the money movement. For example, marketplace developers are building systems with instructor onboarding, configurable revenue sharing, automated payouts, instructor tiers, course-category commissions, reviews, search, recommendations and learner histories. www.raftlabs.com

The important distinction is that you're not really building an LMS. You're building three products at once:

1. Marketplace — discovery, search, categories, rankings, reviews
2. Instructor SaaS — upload/manage courses, analytics, pricing, students
3. Learning platform — video player, progress, quizzes, certificates, memberships

That's why I'd avoid trying to force a conventional course platform into the marketplace model.

What about Thinkific?

Thinkific is excellent software for a company/creator selling a catalog of courses, memberships, communities, coaching, etc. www.thinkific.com

But I wouldn't make it my first choice for your model if you want hundreds of independent instructors selling through a common marketplace.

Thinkific is more naturally:

You → your courses → your customers

whereas you want:

Marketplace → Instructor A/B/C/D → their courses → shared customers

That's a materially different architecture.

One interesting wildcard: LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds Course Hub has a feature called Course Hub, where you can license courses from other academies and add them to your own catalog. www.learnworlds.com

That's intriguing if by "libraries" you mean curated/licensed libraries, rather than necessarily letting every instructor operate their own storefront.

What I'd choose

For an MVP:
Mentor LMS + Stripe + your own video hosting/CDN

For a business you expect to scale substantially:
Custom marketplace + Stripe Connect + dedicated video infrastructure + LMS/course engine

For a simpler “academy with lots of content” rather than a true marketplace:
Thinkific or LearnWorlds

And there's one architectural question I'd settle before picking software:

Are you selling individual courses, or selling access to instructor libraries?

Those are very different businesses.

For example:

Model A — Udemy

Instructor uploads 20 courses → students buy individual courses → instructor gets 70%, marketplace gets 30%.

Model B — Netflix for courses

Student pays $29/month → gets access to 500 courses from 40 instructors → marketplace distributes subscription revenue based on consumption.

Model C — Hybrid

$19/month library + individual premium courses + instructor subscriptions.

If you're thinking Model B or C, I'd favor a custom platform (or a platform specifically designed around marketplace subscriptions), because revenue attribution, instructor payouts, entitlements, cancellations, refunds and watch-time accounting become core infrastructure, not just LMS features.

If you tell me your expected number of instructors, approximate course count, pricing model, and whether you want subscriptions, I can narrow this down to the best 3 platforms and an estimated monthly/initial cost for each.

For a multi-instructor video course marketplace (think “Udemy, but owned by you”), the best software depends on whether you want to launch quickly with SaaS or build a true marketplace with instructor storefronts, revenue splits, and scalable payouts.

Here are the strongest options:

My shortlist by business model

1. You want 100+ instructors selling their own libraries

Best choices:

• Custom build
• Moodle + marketplace extensions
• Sharetribe + video/LMS integrations

You need:

• Instructor onboarding
• Individual instructor profiles/storefronts
• Course approval workflow
• Revenue splits
• Automated payouts
• Coupons/affiliates
• Search and discovery
• Reviews/ratings
• DRM/protected video hosting

A generic LMS usually struggles here.

2. You want to launch an MVP in 30–60 days

Consider:

• Thinkific
• LearnWorlds
• Kajabi

These are faster, but typically you’ll manage instructors manually rather than have a true open marketplace. www.thinkific.comwww.savingsec.com

3. You want a true “creator economy” platform

Look for software that supports:

• Stripe Connect or equivalent marketplace payouts
• Instructor dashboards
• Revenue-share rules
• Subscription libraries
• Bundles
• Affiliate commissions
• API access

Some newer LMS marketplace solutions are specifically targeting this model, including platforms with multi-party licensing and payouts. perfectum.ai

A common winning architecture

For a serious marketplace, many companies build:

• Frontend: React / Next.js
• Marketplace: Sharetribe, custom backend, or Laravel marketplace framework
• Learning engine: Moodle, Open edX, or custom LMS
• Video: Vimeo OTT, Mux, Bunny Stream, or Cloudflare Stream
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Storage/CDN: AWS or Cloudflare
• Search: Algolia or Elasticsearch

My recommendation

If you are starting from zero:

• <50 instructors: Thinkific/LearnWorlds + manual instructor management
• 50–500 instructors: Sharetribe + LMS/video integrations
• 500+ instructors or a marketplace business: Custom build

The key question is whether instructors are employees/partners you manage or independent sellers who need their own storefronts and payouts. That determines the right stack.

If your goal is a marketplace where multiple instructors each sell their own video-course libraries, I’d shortlist these:

🥇 My pick: Uscreen

Uscreen is probably the closest fit if you're envisioning something like “Netflix + Udemy, but our instructors supply the content.”

It supports:

• Multiple authors/instructors, with author pages/filtering and performance analytics. help.uscreen.tv
• Video libraries and structured courses.
• Individual course purchases and subscriptions. help.uscreen.tv
• Bundles and subscription tiers. help.uscreen.tv
• Revenue-sharing workflows around different creators/authors.
• A branded storefront rather than sending instructors to a third-party marketplace.
• Web, mobile and TV apps if you eventually want a Netflix-style experience. www.uscreen.tv

Important caveat: Uscreen is much better at “I operate a video membership business with multiple instructors” than “any instructor can sign up, create a seller account, list courses, receive payouts, and manage their own mini-store.” If the latter is your exact marketplace model, I'd investigate the architecture carefully before committing.

🥈 LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is particularly interesting because it has recently added Course Hub, which is explicitly a course marketplace connecting creators/schools. Creators can publish courses and earn from enrollments, while buyers can license courses. www.learnworlds.com

It also has robust course creation, ecommerce, instructor/user roles, analytics and interactive video. www.learnworlds.com

However, there's an important distinction: Course Hub is primarily a licensing ecosystem between LearnWorlds schools, not necessarily the turnkey consumer marketplace you're describing.

If you're building a true marketplace

If by “multiple instructors can sell libraries” you mean:

Instructor A signs up → uploads 30 courses → sets prices → Instructor B does the same → customers browse everyone → platform takes 20% → instructors receive 80%

then I'd not automatically choose a conventional LMS.

You need marketplace infrastructure for:

1. Instructor onboarding
2. Instructor dashboards
3. Course approval/moderation
4. Individual instructor storefronts
5. Platform-wide search/catalog
6. One-time purchases + subscriptions
7. Split payments/payouts
8. Refunds and chargebacks
9. Instructor revenue reporting
10. Coupons/affiliates
11. Video hosting/DRM
12. Reviews/ratings
13. Tax/VAT handling
14. Admin control over every instructor
15. Potentially different commission rates per instructor

That's closer to building “Shopify + Teachable + Netflix” than simply launching an LMS.

What I'd choose based on your business model

If you want to launch quickly:
→ Uscreen

If this is primarily a professional education/LMS business:
→ LearnWorlds

If community/social interaction is a major part of the product:
→ Mighty Networks

If you want a genuinely open marketplace where hundreds/thousands of independent instructors sell through your platform:
→ Custom marketplace, probably using an LMS/video infrastructure underneath rather than trying to force an LMS into marketplace behavior.

If you tell me roughly how you want instructors to get paid (e.g. 80/20), whether they set their own prices, and whether customers buy individual courses vs. one subscription for the entire library, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 architectures and estimated monthly cost.

If your goal is a true marketplace where many instructors each upload a library, learners browse everyone’s content, and you take a commission, I would not start with Kajabi/Thinkific/Teachable. Those are primarily built for individual course businesses rather than a Udemy-style multi-vendor marketplace.

My shortlist

Uscreen, for example, is particularly strong for video-centric subscription businesses, while Thinkific/Teachable/LearnWorlds are generally positioned around creators selling their own courses. www.uscreen.tv

What I'd choose for your model

If you mean something like:

"I'm building the Udemy for [a particular niche]. 100 instructors can each have 10–50 courses. Students subscribe or buy individual courses. I keep 20–30%, instructors get the rest."

I'd rank the approaches:

1. Bubble + Stripe Connect + dedicated video hosting — best MVP

This is probably the sweet spot. Bubble supports the multi-role/data structure required for a marketplace, while Stripe Connect can handle instructor payouts and platform commissions. www.lowcode.agency

You can build:

• Instructor signup/KYC
• Instructor dashboard
• Course/library creation
• Course approval workflow
• Individual instructor storefronts
• Marketplace search/filtering
• Video lessons
• One-time purchases
• Subscriptions
• Coupons
• Reviews
• Instructor analytics
• Platform commission
• Automated instructor payouts
• Admin moderation

I'd host the actual video somewhere purpose-built rather than storing huge video files directly in Bubble.

2. WordPress + LearnDash/LifterLMS — best if you want maximum control

This is attractive if you're comfortable with WordPress. You can add multi-instructor functionality and revenue-sharing infrastructure. There's even a current solution specifically designed to distribute subscription revenue among instructors based on learner engagement. www.sirenaffiliates.comwww.sirenaffiliates.com

The downside is that you'll be assembling several pieces rather than getting a single elegant marketplace product.

3. Custom build — best if you already know this will be a substantial business

If you're expecting hundreds/thousands of instructors and want sophisticated marketplace economics, build the architecture around:

Frontend → marketplace/course engine → video platform → Stripe Connect → analytics/search

That gives you complete control over instructor contracts, commissions, subscriptions, bundles, recommendations, and payout rules.

One important distinction

There are actually two very different marketplace models:

A. Transactional marketplace

Student buys Instructor A's $99 course → Instructor A gets 70% → you get 30%.

This is relatively straightforward. Udemy uses a version of this model, with different revenue shares depending on how the sale was acquired. support.udemy.com

B. Subscription library

Student pays you $29/month → they can watch courses from 100 instructors → you distribute the $29 among instructors according to consumption/enrollment/completions.

This is substantially more interesting—and more complicated. You need a revenue-pool algorithm, e.g.:

$29 subscription × 70% instructor pool = $20.30
Instructor's share = their qualified watch/completion activity ÷ total marketplace activity

There are WordPress solutions already implementing engagement-weighted subscription revenue sharing. www.sirenaffiliates.comwww.sirenaffiliates.com

My recommendation

If you're starting from scratch, I'd seriously consider:

Bubble + Stripe Connect + Mux/Vimeo + Algolia + PostHog

That gives you a relatively fast way to build a real multi-instructor video marketplace, rather than trying to bend a creator-focused LMS into something it wasn't designed to do.

If you tell me (1) one-time purchases vs subscription, (2) expected number of instructors, (3) whether instructors upload their own videos, and (4) your approximate budget, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 platforms and give you the actual architecture + estimated monthly cost.

If by “video course marketplace” you mean something like Udemy, but you own the marketplace—multiple independent instructors upload courses, students browse a shared catalog, buy courses/subscriptions, and you take a percentage—I would not start with a conventional course platform like Kajabi or Thinkific. They are primarily designed for one business/brand selling its own courses.

My shortlist

Current platform comparisons also put Uscreen particularly strongly in video-first memberships, while LearnWorlds is stronger on structured/interactivity-heavy courses. www.uscreen.tvwww.learnworlds.comwww.uscreen.tv

🥇 What I'd choose

If your core model is:

Instructor signs up → creates profile → uploads 10–50 courses → sets prices → you approve → students buy → platform automatically splits revenue → instructor gets paid

I'd build a custom marketplace, rather than trying to force Kajabi/Thinkific/Uscreen into that model.

A practical stack would be:

• Frontend: Next.js
• Backend/database: Supabase/Postgres
• Video: Mux or Cloudflare Stream
• Payments: Stripe Connect
• Search: Algolia or Typesense
• Course/LMS: custom application layer
• Email: Resend
• Analytics: PostHog
• Authentication: Clerk or Supabase Auth

The critical piece is Stripe Connect because it is designed around platforms/marketplaces where money needs to flow between customers, your platform, and individual sellers.

That gives you considerably more control over:

• instructor onboarding
• instructor commissions
• platform take rate
• coupons
• bundles
• subscriptions
• instructor-specific pricing
• refunds
• payouts
• affiliate commissions
• course approval/moderation
• instructor dashboards
• ratings/reviews
• search/ranking
• revenue reporting

One interesting alternative: LearnWorlds

If you want to avoid building the LMS itself, I'd investigate LearnWorlds first. It's much more education-oriented than most video membership platforms, and it has particularly strong course/video capabilities. LearnWorlds also has its own Course Hub marketplace, although that's primarily for licensing third-party courses into your school rather than being an open Udemy-style marketplace where independent instructors operate their own storefronts. www.learnworlds.com

LearnWorlds Course Hub

If subscriptions are more important than individual course sales

Then Uscreen becomes much more interesting. It is built around video libraries, memberships, subscriptions, live video, and community. Its current plans support selling individual videos/courses as well as subscription tiers. www.uscreen.tv

But again, Uscreen is not the obvious choice if your defining feature is “hundreds of independent instructors, each earning their own share.”

My recommendation: if you're trying to build a serious business rather than just launch a single instructor's course site, I'd go custom marketplace + Mux/Cloudflare Stream + Stripe Connect, unless you can simplify the model to “we own all the courses and instructors are essentially content contributors.”

If you tell me roughly (1) number of instructors, (2) whether courses are sold individually vs subscription, and (3) your expected launch budget, I can narrow this down to the 3 best platforms/architectures and approximate monthly cost.

If your core model is “multiple instructors each have their own libraries, students browse one marketplace, and you take a cut of sales/subscriptions,” I’d narrow it to these approaches:

Best overall: self-hosted WordPress + LMS + marketplace layer

WordPress with an LMS such as LearnDash/LifterLMS plus a multi-vendor/revenue-sharing layer is probably the most flexible.

• Each instructor can manage their own courses/library.
• You control branding, pricing, commissions, subscriptions, and customer data.
• Revenue can be split between instructor and platform; WordPress-based setups can automate instructor royalties. www.sirenaffiliates.com
• Best if you want something resembling your own Udemy, rather than another creator simply having a course website.

Downside: more setup and ongoing technical maintenance.

Best hosted option: Thinkific

Thinkific is a strong choice if you want substantially less technical work.

It has course, bundle, community and commerce functionality, and its Revenue Partners feature can allocate a percentage of sales to other instructors/contributors. support.thinkific.com

The catch is that Thinkific is fundamentally designed around an academy/business, rather than a true open marketplace where hundreds of independent instructors sign up and operate storefronts.

Best for a video-library/subscription business: Uscreen

Uscreen is worth considering if the experience is more:

“Netflix for educational video libraries”

rather than:

“Udemy with hundreds of independent sellers.”

It's particularly strong around video delivery, memberships, communities, and subscriber experiences. Current comparisons put it at the premium end of hosted video-course platforms. www.uscreen.tv

Best if you want a true marketplace

I'd actually look at dedicated multi-vendor marketplace software or a custom build, rather than forcing Kajabi/Teachable/Thinkific into the role.

A true marketplace needs things like:

• Instructor onboarding
• Instructor profiles/storefronts
• Individual course libraries
• Platform-wide search/discovery
• Instructor-specific analytics
• Per-instructor commissions
• Automated payouts
• Refund/chargeback handling
• Coupons/affiliate attribution
• Platform-wide subscriptions
• Potentially subscription revenue allocation across instructors

Those last two are particularly important. A normal LMS can sell courses; a marketplace has to solve the money flow between the platform and many sellers. Dedicated marketplace implementations explicitly support configurable commissions and automated instructor payouts. www.webority.com

My recommendation

If you're starting this as a serious business, I'd choose based on the model:

One important distinction: if instructors are going to sell their own libraries and you take a percentage, I would not make Kajabi or Teachable my first choice. They're excellent creator platforms, but you're describing a multi-vendor marketplace, which has materially different requirements.

If you tell me roughly (1) number of instructors, (2) one-time vs subscription pricing, (3) whether instructors set their own prices, and (4) your expected monthly budget, I can narrow this down to the 3 best platforms/architectures and estimated costs.

If you mean “I want to build my own Udemy-like marketplace where many instructors each have a library of video courses, students buy courses/subscriptions, and I take a commission,” the shortlist is quite different from the usual “best online course platforms.”

My ranking

🥇 Best turnkey option: Mentor LMS

Mentor LMS

This is probably the closest fit to what you're describing. It's explicitly designed to run either a solo course business or a multi-instructor marketplace, with separate admin/instructor/student dashboards, instructor commissions, course publishing, video lessons, quizzes, certificates, etc. It's self-hosted rather than a conventional SaaS. mentor-lms.commentor-lms.com

The big advantage is economics: you aren't paying a SaaS platform a percentage of every instructor's sale. You own the installation and control the commission model. mentor-lms.commentor-lms.com

I'd choose this if: you want to validate the business quickly without spending $100k+ building software.

🥇 Best if this is intended to become a substantial business: custom marketplace

If your vision is something like:

“Hundreds of instructors → each with their own library → learners can subscribe to everything or purchase individual courses → we take 20% → instructors get automated payouts”

I'd seriously consider a custom marketplace, rather than trying to force Thinkific/Kajabi into doing something they weren't designed for.

A proper architecture would have:

Learner side

• Marketplace/catalog
• Instructor profiles
• Course pages + trailers
• Search/filtering
• Individual purchases
• Bundles
• All-access subscription
• Watch history/progress
• Reviews
• Certificates
• Recommendations

Instructor side

• Onboarding/KYC
• Course builder
• Video upload/encoding
• Course/library management
• Pricing
• Coupons
• Sales dashboard
• Student analytics
• Earnings dashboard
• Payout history

Marketplace/admin side

• Instructor approval
• Course moderation
• Commission rules
• Automated payouts
• Refunds
• Tax handling
• Featured courses
• Promotions
• Analytics
• Content rights management

Stripe Connect is particularly useful for the money flow because it is designed for platforms that collect payments and route funds to multiple sellers. A custom implementation can support configurable instructor commissions and automated payouts. www.raftlabs.com

What about Thinkific?

Thinkific

Thinkific is excellent if you are the course business and you're selling your own courses. It has strong course creation, video, commerce, subscriptions, learning paths, certificates, etc. www.thinkific.com

But I wouldn't make it my first choice for a true multi-vendor marketplace where independent instructors operate their own stores and you automatically split every transaction.

Same general caveat applies to Kajabi, Teachable, and LearnWorlds. They're excellent creator/course platforms, but a marketplace with independent sellers introduces a different set of requirements.

If your concept is more “Netflix for education”

Then I'd look harder at Uscreen.

Uscreen

Uscreen is particularly strong around video libraries, memberships, subscriptions, communities, and the viewing experience. It's a better conceptual fit if the customer pays, say, $19/month for access to an entire library rather than buying individual courses. www.uscreen.tv

The problem is the multi-instructor economic model. You'd want to verify exactly how you would attribute subscription revenue to individual instructors and automate their revenue shares before committing.

One interesting wildcard: Perfectum

Perfectum AI

Perfectum is worth investigating if your marketplace will eventually have B2B licensing in addition to individual learners. It positions itself around LMS + marketplace/licensing, with instructors, learners, course marketplace functionality, and organizational licensing. perfectum.ai

What I'd do

For your specific description, I'd narrow it to:

1. Mentor LMS → launch MVP cheaply
2. Custom build → if you expect this to become a major marketplace
3. Uscreen → if the core model is Netflix-style subscriptions/video libraries
4. Perfectum → if B2B licensing is important
5. Thinkific/LearnWorlds → if you're really building an academy rather than a marketplace

The most important question isn't actually the LMS. It's your monetization model.

For example, there's a huge architectural difference between:

A. Udemy model

Instructor sells $100 course → you keep 30% → instructor gets 70%

B. Netflix model

Student pays $30/month → watches 12 instructors → you distribute subscription revenue based on watch time

C. Hybrid

$49 individual courses + $19/month all-access membership + instructor revenue sharing

If you tell me which of A/B/C you're aiming for, roughly how many instructors you expect (10 / 100 / 1,000+), and whether instructors need to bring their own audience, I can give you a much more specific software stack + estimated monthly cost + recommended architecture.

If your goal is a marketplace where many instructors each have their own course libraries, while you control the overall platform and take a cut of sales, I’d narrow it to these:

1. LearnWorlds — my top pick

This is probably the closest match if you're building “a marketplace of instructors” rather than simply one instructor's course website.

LearnWorlds supports instructor roles where instructors can create/manage assigned courses and upload content. Its higher-tier plans support multiple admin/instructor accounts. support.learnworlds.com

More importantly, LearnWorlds now has Course Hub, essentially a built-in marketplace where course creators can publish courses and other schools can license them. It supports per-enrollment economics and instructor/course revenue analytics. support.learnworlds.com

Why I'd choose it:
You can create a branded destination such as:

YourPlatform.com
→ Browse instructors
→ Browse categories
→ Instructor profile
→ Instructor's course library
→ Buy individual courses / bundles / membership

It's much closer to the architecture you're describing than a conventional single-creator LMS.

2. Uscreen — best if video is the product

I'd seriously consider Uscreen if you envision something like Netflix + MasterClass + Udemy, where the primary experience is browsing and watching a large video catalog.

Uscreen has an Authors system specifically designed for sites with multiple creators. You can associate content with instructors, create author pages/filters, and use viewing analytics to calculate revenue-sharing arrangements. help.uscreen.tv

The catch is important: authors aren't independent sellers with their own dashboards. They're managed by your platform administrators. help.uscreen.tv

So Uscreen is excellent if you operate the marketplace centrally and instructors supply content. It's less ideal if you want each instructor to independently log in, manage their own storefront, set prices, receive automated payouts, etc.

3. Thinkific — best conventional LMS option

Thinkific has instructor profiles and a Revenue Partners feature for tracking revenue allocation between course collaborators. support.thinkific.com

However, there's a significant limitation for your use case: Thinkific says each account can have only one PayPal and one Stripe account, and revenue-sharing payments to partners are made manually outside Thinkific. support.thinkific.com

That's fine for:

You + 5 instructors

but becomes awkward for:

You + 200 instructors + automated marketplace payouts.

The important distinction

There are actually two different products you might mean by "course marketplace":

A. Centralized marketplace

You own the platform:

Customer → Your marketplace → Instructor courses

You collect $100 → platform keeps 30% → instructor gets 70%

Instructors essentially provide content to your marketplace.

B. True multi-vendor marketplace

Each instructor operates almost like an independent seller:

Instructor A → own profile/library/pricing
Instructor B → own profile/library/pricing
Instructor C → own profile/library/pricing

Platform automatically handles checkout, commissions, taxes, payouts, refunds, etc.

B is considerably harder, and I'd be careful about selecting a traditional LMS. You need marketplace infrastructure—particularly vendor accounts + automated split payments/payouts, not merely "multiple instructor profiles."

My recommendation

If you're starting from scratch, I'd rank them:

LearnWorlds → Uscreen → Thinkific → Kajabi → Teachable

But if your requirement is specifically “100+ instructors can independently sell courses and automatically receive their share of each transaction”, I'd actually look beyond the traditional LMS category and consider a marketplace platform + video/LMS layer.

If you tell me roughly (1) number of instructors, (2) whether customers buy individual courses or one subscription for the whole library, and (3) your desired commission split, I can narrow this down to the best 2–3 architectures and what they'd cost.

If you mean “I want to build my own Udemy/Skillshare-style marketplace, where many independent instructors upload courses, set prices, and earn a share of sales”, the answer is different from simply choosing an LMS.

My shortlist

🥇 For your specific idea: Sharetribe + video/LMS

I'd look hardest at Sharetribe if the key requirement is that each instructor is effectively a seller/vendor.

A typical architecture would be:

Instructor
→ creates seller profile
→ uploads/links courses
→ sets price
→ students purchase
→ platform takes commission
→ instructor receives payout
→ student gets access to protected videos

That's fundamentally a marketplace, rather than a conventional LMS.

The big thing to investigate is Stripe Connect integration for splitting payments/payouts between your platform and instructors. If you need sophisticated instructor dashboards, course authoring, video DRM, quizzes, certificates, etc., you may want Sharetribe handling the marketplace layer while another service handles learning/video delivery.

🥈 LearnWorlds if education is more important than marketplace mechanics

LearnWorlds is particularly interesting because it now has Course Hub, essentially a marketplace where course publishers can make content available to other academies. LearnWorlds describes it as a two-sided system where creators can monetize content and schools can license it. www.learnworlds.com

However, that's not exactly the same thing as “10,000 instructors each have their own storefront and sell directly to consumers through my marketplace.” I'd validate that workflow before committing.

🥉 Uscreen if your idea is more like Netflix

If you're imagining:

“Pay $20/month and get access to thousands of videos from hundreds of instructors”

rather than:

“Buy Instructor A's $79 course”

then Uscreen becomes much more compelling. It's specifically designed around video libraries, memberships, subscriptions, one-time purchases, communities, and branded apps. www.uscreen.tv

What I would choose

If you're building a real marketplace:
Sharetribe + Stripe Connect + a dedicated video/LMS layer

If you're building an education platform where you control most of the instructors/content:
LearnWorlds

If you're building a subscription video library:
Uscreen

If you're trying to launch quickly and don't actually need independent instructor/vendor accounts:
Thinkific or Kajabi. Current comparisons show both are strong course platforms, but they're fundamentally more creator/business-oriented than true two-sided marketplaces. www.kajabi.com

The most important distinction is whether instructors need to be independent sellers with their own accounts, storefronts, pricing, sales analytics, and automatic payouts. If yes, I would not start with Kajabi/Thinkific just because they're popular course platforms.

If you tell me your intended model — e.g. “100 instructors, $50 courses, I take 20%, students can buy individual courses or an all-access subscription” — I can map out the best tech stack and approximate monthly cost.