My Online Course Techstack: What I Can't Live Without
Most people overthink the tech and underdeliver the course. Ouch. I said it.
You don’t need a giant funnel, 45 different apps, and a color-coded project management board to launch a course that sells.
You need a solid idea, a clear plan, and the right tools—just the right ones—to pull it off without losing your mind (or your margins).
Over the past decade, I’ve built and scaled digital products, courses, memberships, and coaching programs for business owners ready to grow beyond 1:1. People who were already good at what they did but wanted a way to reach more clients, make more money, and buy back their time.
I’ve tested just about every platform out there from scrappy private YouTube video hacks to overengineered systems that looked impressive but felt like building IKEA furniture blindfolded.
I promise, the tech doesn’t need to be complex. Less is more.
You can build a highly profitable, high-impact course with just a handful of tools and if I had to pick only one, I wouldn’t launch without: Teachable.
Now, before you write me off because they are sponsoring this post (not hiding the truth), I’ve been loyal for YEARS! Well before they paid me a dime to promote their software. Here’s my full honest review.
Below, I’ll break down the full tech stack I use (and recommend to clients) by category, so you can go from idea to income ASAP.
This blog post is sponsored by Teachable
All the tools you need to create and sell premium education products are on Teachable. We do earn an affiliate payment at no extra cost to you should you sign up. Read our affiliate disclaimer.
Course Creation
You don’t need a finished course to start selling, but you do need a clear transformation.
If you can’t articulate what changes for your students by the end, no tech stack will save you. A vague promise leads to vague results. And vague doesn’t sell.
Planning your course isn’t about cramming everything you know into a slide deck. It’s about mapping a path that gets your people from point A to point B without detours, dead ends, or missing pieces.
Before I build anything, I make sure the structure supports the transformation. Every lesson earns its place. Every tool I use here is designed to help me clarify, simplify, and deliver the result I promised.
Hosting on Teachable
Teachable isn’t just where your course lives (and is hosted), it’s where it comes to life. From pre-selling to lesson uploads, it makes course creation feel streamlined and intuitive.
You can pre-sell a product before it exists (yes, really), track your students’ progress, and scale your delivery. I used it when my membership had 12 students, and when a single course had 10,000+ enrollments. It WILL scale with you.
💡 Need help pricing your course? Read this Blog Post.
Planning in Google Docs
I map every course in a Google Doc before I build. This is where the magic starts: big-picture curriculum decisions, module breakdowns, transformation mapping, and more.
📍 My Personal Online Course Curriculum Planner Google Doc
📍 Digital Product Planner Google Doc
Recording in Loom
My go-to for recording lessons. Whether I’m sharing slides or doing a talking-head intro, Loom makes it simple to get it done without a full video setup.
💡 Free alternatives: QuickTime (Mac users) or OBS Studio (PC or Mac)
Learn how to write effective digital product sales pages that convert both a warm and cold audience! With the Digital Product Sales Page Copywriting Blueprint, we’re giving you the EXACT formula we use to build our own sales pages with this easy-to-implement template.
With 6 designs to choose from, you can mix and match for various courses, or choose one look that suits your brand best.
📍 Teachable Course Thumbnail Template: Bright Collection
📍 Teachable Course Thumbnail Template: Neutral Collection
📍 Teachable Course Thumbnail Template: Soft Collection
Design & Delivery
The way your course looks and flows is part of how it teaches.
Design isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about trust. It’s how your students decide whether to engage or bail after five minutes. It’s how your brand carries through from your sales page to the learning experience itself.
A clunky interface or off-brand layout can kill momentum, even if the content is gold. But when the visuals are cohesive, the slides are polished, and the flow feels intuitive? Your course feels valuable before you’ve even opened your mouth.
That’s why I’m intentional not just about what I teach, but how it’s delivered and which tools help me do it beautifully, without spending hours in design hell.
UX/UI Experience in Teachable
Beyond hosting, Teachable lets you design a beautiful course experience without touching code. Clean layout. Branded visuals. Built-in navigation that doesn’t confuse your students.
Design in Canva
I design every slide deck, workbook, and graphic in Canva. Consistency matters and Canva makes it easy to create materials that match your brand.
There is no need to start from scratch, I have hundreds of design templates to make your life easier, but here are a few favorites.
📍 Offer Suite Planner / Client Journey Template
Create a living document to map out your offer ecosystem with the Sales Funnel + Client Journey Map Canva Template. This document will help you understand the relationship between all your offers and your clients at different stages of their journey.
Present and sell your offer with confidence with these slide templates. These decks include everything you need to create a strategic and effective presentation.
📍 Course Slides Template: Bright Collection
📍 NEW Course Slides Template: Bright Collection
📍 Course Slides Template: Neutral Collection
📍 NEW Course Slides Template: Neutral Collection
📍 Course Slides Template: Soft Collection
📍 NEW Course Slides Template: Soft Collection
Sales & Marketing
A course without marketing is like a match without oxygen, there’s no fire without follow-through.
You can have the most thoughtful curriculum in the world, but if no one knows it exists, it won’t matter. Sales and marketing aren’t about being loud or clever; they’re about making it easy for the right people to say yes.
That means clear messaging, frictionless checkout, and a way to follow up that doesn’t fall through the cracks.
This is where too many business owners stall, caught between overthinking funnels or underestimating how many touchpoints it takes to convert. The tools I use here help me stay visible, build trust, and turn interest into income without reinventing the wheel every time I launch.
Sales Pages & Checkout with Teachable
Teachable makes it ridiculously easy to sell. Use it for pre-sales, payment plans, and even lead magnets.
It’s your built-in sales engine. From drag-and-drop customizable sales pages to frictionless checkout, order bumps, one-click upsells, abandoned cart recovery, and even affiliate payouts. It’s all right there, no extra tools required.
Want to offer flexible payment plans or subscriptions? Done.
Want to add an order bump or upsell to increase cart value? A few clicks.
Want to run a flash sale using a coupon or track performance with custom codes? Easy.
With Teachable, you have flexibility. You can use their integrated sales pages or build your own on your platform of choice and easily integrate a seamless checkout experience.
Nearly all my sales pages are built on Squarespace, with a direct link to checkout through Teachable.
And it now directly integrates support for Buy Now, Pay Later options like Afterpay and Klarna, giving your buyers more reasons to say yes without waiting for payday. Plus, teachable:pay means secure payments with Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and credit cards are all baked into one clean checkout flow.
I’ve sold everything from $9 templates to $12,000 coaching programs on Teachable, and the platform keeps up no matter what I throw at it. It's powerful enough to support a 7-figure business, but simple enough for a beginner to use on day one.
Don’t duct tape platforms together. Stick with a single solution that gets the job done. 👉 Try Teachable free.
📍Digital Product Jumpstart + Launch in a Box
Plan and write your marketing content easily with the Marketing Planner Pageless Google Doc. This strategic template was created to help you keep all your marketing materials in one place, using Google Doc’s “document tabs” feature.
Email Marketing with Flodesk
This is hands-down my favorite email platform and the one I trust to power every single launch, nurture sequence, and evergreen funnel in my business.
Flodesk is beautiful, beginner-friendly, and radically straightforward. Just a clean, modern interface that helps you design emails people actually want to open. With flat rate pricing (why pay more as your list grows?!)
It’s not just easy, it works. Email marketing is still our #1 source of revenue, and switching to Flodesk played a massive role in that growth.
I’ve sent over 40 million emails in my business and I can tell you with total confidence: Flodesk is the platform I’d choose if I had to start from scratch today.
Promote your digital products in style with these 6 emails using the strategically designed sections to help you market and sell your digital products to your email audience.
📍Digital Product Promotion Flodesk Email Templates: Neutral Collection
📍Digital Product Promotion Flodesk Email Templates: Bright Collection
📍Digital Product Promotion Flodesk Email Templates: Soft Collection
👉 Curious why I’ve stayed loyal since beta, even after testing four major platforms (including the ones “everyone” uses)? Read my full Flodesk review here and get 50% off your first year with my link.
Showcase Testimonials with Senja
This tool is new to me, but I’m already floored. I was looking at what other top creators were using to showcase testimonials. Like I literally looked at the code on their website to figure it out. Nearly ALL of them were using Senja.
It is now the tool I use and can’t wait to embed everywhere. Social proof is EVERYTHING.
Other Alternatives: Use Google Forms or Typeform to collect feedback + screenshot it for your sales page.
Social Scheduling with Later
When it comes to social media, consistency matters more than cleverness. Later helps me batch and schedule content across platforms without getting sucked into the scroll. I can map out today (or a week) of posts in one sitting and trust they’ll go out on time, even when I’m knee-deep in a launch.
Visual planning, drag-and-drop scheduling, and link-in-bio tools make it easier to stay present without being online 24/7.
Automation & Support
Your business shouldn’t fall apart the second you step away from your laptop.
If delivery, onboarding, or follow-up rely on you remembering every single detail, it’s only a matter of time before something slips.
Automation isn’t just about saving time, it’s about protecting the customer experience. It’s what ensures students get what they paid for, feel taken care of, and stay engaged—without you playing air traffic control behind the scenes.
These are the tools I use to create a self-sustaining backend, so I can show up for the moments that need me and let the rest run on autopilot.
Student Experience Automation with Teachable
This is where Teachable really flexes.
Drip content? Built-in.
Student onboarding emails? Done.
Affiliate payouts, tax forms, course completion certificates, payment processing? All handled
… without needing to stack five different platforms just to get through the basics.
If you’ve ever pieced together a Franken-system of Zapier triggers, PayPal links, Google Sheets, and manual reminders, you already know how fragile that setup feels. With Teachable, all the critical automations that actually keep your course running behind the scenes come standard and they just work.
From the moment someone buys, Teachable delivers a smooth, professional experience that runs whether you're online or off. It’s not just about saving time, it’s about making your business feel like it has its act together from day one.
The tech is ready. Your audience is waiting. Try Teachable free and see just how simple it can be to start selling what you know.
Get everything you need to plan, create, and launch effective online courses on Teachable with the Online Course Creator Template Bundle. This bundle includes strategic documents to help you plan and teach curriculum, and create a recognizable brand identity for your course thumbnails, Teachable School thumbnail, and easily size your logo and favicon graphics for Teachable.
📍Online Course Creator Template Bundle: Neutral Collection
Workflow Integrations with Zapier
I use Zapier to connect Teachable to other tools, like tagging a new student in Flodesk or notifying my team in Slack when someone enrolls.
Those tiny behind-the-scenes actions add up. With just a few zaps, I can create a smoother onboarding experience, keep my team in the loop, and make sure no one falls through the cracks without manually updating five different platforms every time someone buys. Learn How to Connect Teachable & Flodesk via Zapier.
Live Support & Coaching with Zoom
While most of my delivery is self-paced, I use Zoom for live calls, bonus Q&As, and coaching sessions when I want to connect more directly.
Whether it’s onboarding a new cohort, answering high-level strategy questions, or adding that personal touch inside a premium offer, Zoom gives me the flexibility to show up live without complicating the rest of my workflow.
Bookkeeping, Records, Registration & Taxes
Let’s take a second to talk about something most creators completely overlook until it’s a mess: the back-end legal and financial setup.
This isn’t as fun as picking a slide deck design or planning your module outline. Getting this stuff right from the beginning will save you serious stress down the road, especially when tax season hits or you're scaling fast.
Before you launch that course and start collecting payments, make sure you have the basics covered:
File Your LLC
Protect yourself legally by registering your business with your Secretary of State. This is your foundation.
Draft an Operating Agreement
Even if you’re a single-member LLC, it’s smart to document how your business is structured and run. We use Contract Club for our agreements—it’s simple, clear, and built for entrepreneurs.
Track Your Financials
Whether you’re making $500 or $50,000, keep clean records from the start. You’ll thank yourself at tax time.
Use Bookkeeping Software
Use accounting software like FreshBooks to keep everything organized and track all revenue and expenses. Generating a P&L at the click of a button can tell you the health of your business. It’s intuitive and built with small businesses in mind.
Remember: the IRS doesn’t care if your course is live yet. If you’re accepting money, you’re running a business. Treat it like one.
Ready to Build Your Own Tech Stack?
Don’t overcomplicate it. You don’t need to learn 20 brand new tools and jerry-rig them together to run a wildly successful online course.
Most creators I know get stuck in tech paralysis and never launch. Meanwhile, the people selling consistently they’re keeping it simple and focused.
If you take only one thing from this post, let it be this:
Teachable is the one platform I wouldn’t build without.
The rest support the vision, but they are ultimately extra.
Super quick recap:
Teachable - For Hosting and Selling Your Courses
Google - For Developing your Curriculum
Canva - For Designing your Content
Loom - For Recording Videos
Senja - For Collecting Testimonials & Displaying Reviews
Flodesk - For Marketing Your Course
Later - For Scheduling Social Media Content
Zapier - For Automating Tasks
Zoom - For Interfacing with Students
📍 Curious about the other tech I use in other areas of my business? See it ALL on Our Resources Page
📍 Want to steal my templates and get started faster? Browse the Creative Template Shop
