Best Course Authoring Software of 2026

The major challenges for people who develop eLearning courses are time and budget. On average, it takes 100-160 hours and costs about $18,760 to create an hour of online content. This is because course developers need to add variety of engaging elements such as quizzes, 3D elements and interactive PDFs, in the lessons.

So, how can you create courses engaging courses without going over budget and still ensure on-time delivery of your course?

The answer is course creation software.

Course creation software helps businesses create customized lesson, quizzes and other course materials without having to invest a ton of time and money. Most course creation software vendors offer free trials and demos, which allow you to explore features and benefits, without having to pay for it.

With hundreds of tools in the market, choosing one solution for your needs isn't easy. How do you decide which software is right? After all, it needs to meet the expectations of all your stakeholders such as the authoring team, finance team and your end users.

To help out eLearning professionals like you, we created this guide on course creation software. The guide discusses the software's features and considerations to help you find the right fit for your small business or institution.

In this guide, we'll cover:

What Is Course Creation Software?

Common Features of Course Creation Software

What Type of Buyer are You?

Market Trends to Understand

What is Course Creation Software?

Course creation software allows you to create, design and deliver online courses for various training needs. Many vendors follow the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) as a standard framework for integrating content with learning management systems (LMS).

The unique feature of course creation software is the ability to create courses without having to write a program or code. The programming features are built-in, which lets authors create a course without complex coding.

The three main components of course creation software are:

• Content organization: Allows users to structure and sequence the instructional content and media.

• Control of course delivery: Lets users set the pace of delivering the content.

• Type(s) of assessment: Allows users to set learning outcomes, usually in the form of tests, discussions, assignments and other activities for evaluation.

Easygenerator question creation view (Source)

When contacting various vendors, look out for the following functionality in their course creation software:

• Create multimedia content in the form of text, audio or videos.

• Publish course material on a third-party platform or built-in LMS.

• Support for the latest industry standard in content interoperability.

Common Features of Course Creation Software

In this section, we've covered the key software features that a buyer should be aware of before they purchase a solution. Most small businesses and educational institutions will need some (or all) of these features in course creation software.

To further understand these features and the vendors in this category, call our advisors at (844) 687-6771 for free, no-obligation help. They'll help you narrow down your options by understanding your requirements and recommending the best-suited solutions for your business.

What Type of Buyer Are You?

Before you start shortlisting course creation software for your business, you need to understand the type of buyer you are to correctly estimate your needs. The next section breaks down the most common buyer types. Based on our research, buyers of this software fall into one of the following category:

Corporate buyers: These buyers need to frequently provide job-specific training or impart best practices to their employees. They need course creation software to create in-house content that contains sensitive company information. E.g., a video course where a leader discusses the organization's specific techniques to deal with customers.

Moreover, corporate professionals prefer training material in the form of bite-sized modules of shorter duration (not more than 3-4 minutes). It also reduces the cost of training delivery, thus increasing the ROI of training budgets.

Educational institutions: Such buyers seek to have engaging courses and lessons by making it more digital and less reliant on paper. They seek multimedia options such as HD video lectures for classroom learning, distance learning, flipped learning and massive open online course MOOCs.

They should ask for the storyline editing feature to create online interactive courses using character templates, voice elements, animation and advanced editing tools. These can help them boost learner engagement. For example, if you want to add audio or animation in your courses, use the storyline editing feature to record and edit the audio/video.

Market Trends to Understand

The tools and technologies used in the content creation space are manifold. To keep up with all the advancements in this space, you should be aware of the following market trends:

Microlearning to disrupt eLearning market: Microlearning or course creation in bite-sized modules was a key trend in 2018 that will continue in 2019. Businesses are increasingly looking at microlearning to impart short courses in a short time at a minimal cost. Even learners prefer to access short courses (of two to five minutes) over daylong training sessions. Microlearning helps them retain more information and learn a specific skill one at a time.

Interactive infographics to boost learner engagement: Interactive infographics let you present complex information in a concise, engaging and easy-to-understand way. That's why sixty-five percent of marketers use infographics for content creation.

The addition of interactive elements, such as pop-ups, click-and-reveal features and animated GIFs, decrease the learning time and allow you to disseminate lessons in an engaging manner and concise format. Infographics-based courses will only increase in number and be an important trend in 2019 and beyond.