Whether you want to sell courses or grow a community, online course platforms like New Zenler will help you.
86% of students reported that online courses are more helpful with learning communities. New Zenler can help you boost your online presence with dedicated communities. However, if you are in a dilemma about whether to use New Zenler in 2024 or not, this guide will help you.
Today, I’m going to give a detailed overview of the New Zenler community, Zenler pricing, features, etc. In addition, we will explore the reasons that you may want to consider a New Zenler alternative and thoroughly compare it with EzyCourse - the all-in-one online course platform.
Without further ado, let’s know why you need a community inside your course platform.
Why are Communities So Important?
Creating a community for your course platform is vital as it enhances the online learning experience. Communities boost student engagement by building an interactive connection between students and teachers.
Moreover, a community motivates learners, offering a social element that encourages feedback and success sharing. If you use external platforms like Facebook groups, you don’t have the option to give it a personalized touch.
But if you use online course platforms like the New Zenler, Thinkific, Teachable, Mighty Network, and EzyCourse, you can easily create a customized community with these. Overall, online learning communities can help you offer a better learning environment to your students and monetize from it.
What is the New Zenler Community
The online course platform New Zenler comes with a community feature within it. The Zenler community offers a particular space for users to interact like a community platform. It includes two options to set the community either for the site or for course-specific interactions.
Members can share their posts and engage in basic interaction through likes, comments, and emoticons. You can also send email notifications for added communication.
Limitations of Zenler Community
However, the community on New Zenler is too basic. It does not offer key features like channels or spaces, events, member directories, chat options, and other community functions. So, you won't have the chance to create a full-fledged forum with several channels, feeds, and community options. Plus, Zenler pricing is comparatively higher which comes at $67/month in the Pro Plan & $167/month in the Premium plan.
Essentially, if you want advanced customization, there are better ones than Zenler. Zenler's community feature needs improvements in functionality and user experience to keep pace with the evolving world of online learning communities.
This limitation can hamper interaction between members. So, you may search for a New Zenler alternative.
What is the Best New Zenler Alternative
As you have seen, New Zenler is offering a very basic, minimalistic community feature. Now, you must be looking for a more reliable, user-friendly, and feature-rich alternative to Zenler. From an honest perspective, I’d suggest you choose the all-in-one online course platform EzyCourse. Yet, there are other options like Thinkific Community. You can check the comparison between the Thinkific community and the EzyCourse community here.
Why EzyCourse?
EzyCourse is a robust white-label course creation platform offering several advanced features, and customizations to help you create and sell your courses online.
As we are talking about communities, let’s know about the EzyCourse community.
What is an EzyCourse Community
EzyCourse is one of the best online course platforms with community features. With this platform, you can create your very own community along with courses.
EzyCourse comes with a super interactive community like a Facebook group to help the members create posts, add channels, instantly chat in groups or private, see members lists, etc. There are many interaction options inside the community. For example, users can like, react, comment, and share the posts.
Moreover, you can monetize from your community. You can either keep the pricing of your community free or premium.
Are you thinking about which community is better for your course or site? Did you find any difference between the New Zenler community vs. the EzyCourse community? Let’s cut between them!
New Zenler Community vs. EzyCourse Community: Quick Comparison Chart
If you don’t have enough time to go through the full article, here’s a quick comparison chart for you between Zenler and EzyCourse:
Feature | New Zenler | EzyCourse |
|---|---|---|
Unlimited community | ✅ | ✅ |
User interface | Basic, Minimalistic | Advanced, User-friendly |
Channels/ Spaces | ❌ | ✅ |
Post options | Text, Photo, Video, File | Text, Photo, Video, File, Poll, Background |
Shareable post link | ✅ | ✅ |
Visibility options | Visible for all/ logged-in users | Public Private Hidden Restricted |
Branded mobile app | ❌ | ✅ |
Options to set pricing for community | ❌ | Free One-time payment Subscription payment |
Group/ Private chat | ❌ | ✅ |
SEO features | ❌ | ✅ |
Real-time push notification | ✅ | ✅ |
Popup notification | ❌ | ✅ |
Email Notification | ✅ | ✅ |
Schedule posts | ❌ | ✅ |
Post approval options | ❌ | ✅ |
Cross-post from other groups/ community | ❌ | ✅ |
Posts Trend | ❌ | Trending posts/ Save posts to watch later |
Pricing | $67/m | $59/m (Essential) |
Also Read: Difference between Thinkific vs. Teachable
New Zenler Community vs. EzyCourse Community: Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Now let’s get a detailed feature-by-feature comparison between the community features of the two online course platforms.
1. User-friendly Interface
First thing first. An effective course platform should have a beautiful, easy-to-use community interface for seamless interaction between students and teachers.
A glimpse of the community in New Zenler:
EzyCourse Community Interface:
When comparing both platforms, EzyCourse's community looks more like a Facebook group. The platform allows users to add discussion channels, share posts, and interact through reactions and comments. Students and teachers can actively engage in group or private chats. You can also see group members from there. All these make EzyCourse a convenient alternative to a Facebook group.
On the contrary, New Zenler features a very basic community. It lacks channels, topics, and chat options. Plus, it doesn't provide options for polls in posts like EzyCourse and offers only one reaction option to posts.
Winner: EzyCourse
2. Communities on Mobile Apps
Course platforms are more interactive and accessible on mobile apps.
New Zenler Mobile App: You can use a mobile app in the Pro or Premium plan that gives your students the flexibility to access your communities from anywhere. But you don’t have that many customization options with the Zenler app.
Ezycourse Branded Mobile App: With the mobile app, you can interact in the community just like any community platform. There users can post, comment, and react from any device, anywhere. Moreover, it offers other features like courses, chat, blogs, etc. The app provides real-time push notifications. So, no chance of missing out.
If we consider both platforms’ mobile apps, EzyCourse will outrank New Zenler with its top-notch branded solution and extra features.
Winner: EzyCourse
3. Media Options in Posts
New Zenler media options in community posts: New Zenler lets you create posts including text, photos, video links, and link options. But the platform doesn’t include poll options.
EzyCourse media options in community posts: With EzyCourse, you can post using text, videos, files, polls, backgrounds, etc. You can create a poll for asking questions, taking votes, and knowing insights from your students.
So, EzyCourse is by far a better option with a unique poll and other post options.
Winner: EzyCourse
4. Group Chat or Private Chat Options in the Community
New Zenler: Unfortunately, New Zenler doesn’t include any group or private chat options.
EzyCourse: One can create free or premium group chat and private chat with EzyCourse. It just looks like another messenger inside your course website.
Winner: EzyCourse
Pricing Plans
Zenler Pricing: New Zenler offers two different pricing plans after the free plan:
Pro Plan: $67/m
Premium Plan: $197/m
You can get community features in any paid plan of Zenler.
EzyCourse Pricing: On the other hand, EzyCourse lets you create two Communities and five Channels per community in the Essential plan at $59/month. You can get 5 Communities and Unlimited channels per community in the Pro plan. More interestingly, the Unlimited plan offers you unlimited communities and unlimited private chat.
Winner: EzyCourse
6. Pricing Options in the Community
You can monetize with your community by setting pricing for it.
Zenler pricing options in the community: Zenler doesn’t include any option to set community pricing. But you can sell a course with a community, only those who enrolled in the course will have access to that particular course.
EzyCourse pricing options in the community: EzyCourse offers different pricing options for the community:
Free
One-time payment
Subscription payment
Winner: EzyCourse
Get Started with the EzyCourse Community!
7. Visibility/ Accessibility/Approval Options
New Zenler: There are no approval or accessibility options in Zenler. However, you can keep the community page
Visible for All users
Visible Only for Logged users
EzyCourse community access options:
Public
Private community
Hidden community
Restricted community
With the community access options, you can determine whether your community will be visible to all or not. If you set the access as a private community, your students have to request access to enter the community. There is another option to set Hidden community, people with direct access can get into your community. The restricted community will be visible everywhere, but users can not buy or send purchase requests for it.
Plus, EzyCourse gives you a unique option to select the post-approval option. You can choose post-approval and you will get instant notifications on post-approval requests.
Winner: EzyCourse
8. Other Community Features
There are some other important features you will need in a community.
More New Zenler Features:
You can share links to your community posts in Zenler. Plus, it offers real-time push notifications on the web and mobile.
More EzyCourse Community Features:
EzyCourse offers some extra features. You can schedule posts to publish later, set posts to watch later, and cross-post from other groups/communities. Moreover, users will be notified with real-time push notifications and popup notifications.
Last but not least, EzyCourse lets you see the stats and insights from the dashboard like this.
Winner: EzyCourse!
Get Started with the EzyCourse Community Now!
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I need a dedicated community for online courses?
A dedicated online course community improves collaborative learning, peer support, and networking. It gives the students motivation and helps them with problem-solving.
Interactions within the community enhance the overall learning experience. That’s why, you will need to offer a community along with your course. There are online course platforms like EzyCourse, New Zenler, Thinkific, etc that offer a personalized community inside courses.
What is the purpose of an online learning community?
In any learning community, members can interact directly from their course platforms, It’ll help them to enhance the learning process. However, online tutors can also create a community using other online community platforms like Facebook groups, Discord, Slack, etc to interact with students. But, these platforms don’t offer many customization options like a dedicated course platform.
Can I sell community from Zenler?
You can sell a course with a community and only those who enrolled in the course will have access to that particular course. However, you can easily monetize from your community using EzyCourse.
Final Words: New Zenler Community or EzyCourse Community?
I’ve provided you with an in-depth review of the New Zenler community and the EzyCourse community. Could you already take your decision?
I think it’s not tough to differentiate between both online course platforms. As you are looking for the best online course platform with a community, EzyCourse will easily outrank Zenler with its extraordinary community features.
Also read: Thinkific Community Vs. EzyCourse Community 2023
