In 2025, at an estimated 60 to 260 hours required to develop a 1-hour course, you can expect to pay roughly $5,450 USD to over $13,500 USD to get a fully polished course, in addition to the cost of your SME (Subject Matter Expert).
Since the explosive growth of AI a few years ago, anyone in the online learning and training space has had to quickly rethink everything they thought they knew. From the possibility of using new technology to create content more cost-effectively to the need to anticipate LLM use from students (86% of students regularly use AI now), the game is changing.
Naturally, this has an impact on the costs of course creation.
Whether you’re in the process of future-proofing existing courses by adapting them to this new, AI-driven era or building a program from scratch, this guide breaks down the kinds of costs you can anticipate. We’ll start by running through the basics of course creation, before moving on to contemporary issues facing the industry (and of course, the pricing in 2025).
Understanding Your Objective
Before you can develop your course, you need to have a clear objective and an understanding of your audience.
To find your main objective, consider these points:
- How will your business benefit from this learning course?
- What content is the most important for your employees to learn?
- What content has the most employee interest?
- How long do you want your course to be?
- How much money do you have to invest in this course?
- How will you motivate employees to take the course?
When answering these questions, try to go beyond qualitative thoughts and think about the quantitative results you want to get. For example, how much do you expect employee retention to increase? Or how high of a productivity bump are you aiming for? Creating these projections will be very helpful in defining a clearer objective.
It’s also a good idea to start drafting an employee exit survey for employees who finish the course so you can have them evaluate the effectiveness in other areas.
Here are some more questions to consider before creating a course.
Course Audience: Who will be taking the course?
Your audience will determine the format and the content of the course. Is this for new employees or people that are more established on your team? Is this for a technical role? These considerations are critical for course design because more established employees will have a completely different set of needs than new employees. Similarly, technical courses need to display and test knowledge completely differently than courses that focus on soft skills, like communication or leadership.
How will this benefit them?
Have a clear vision of the problem this course will help your team combat. How will this course impact your company? How will it improve their workflow? It’s vital to set projected metrics, even if you don’t end up meeting them. Making these projections is how you can effectively determine how much you want to invest in the course and what kind of learning course you want to develop.
Traditionally, course creation has focused on why organizations want their team to learn certain skills or information. But that can often lead to disengaged learners who speed through programs as fast as they can with little interest in the content.
Make sure you consider the pain points and motivations of the learner, too!
What problem within your organization is this going to solve?
As much as the motivations of the learner should be prioritized, we can’t forget about the objectives of their organization completely.
- Are you launching a new product or starting a new process?
- Are you introducing complex new programming software and need to train your technical employees on how to use it?
- Do you need to release interactive training on the appropriate procedures to follow in the event of a fire at your company?
Remember to think about the problem from multiple perspectives. Interview multiple people about how they would like best to tackle the problem so you can get more specific feedback.
Insights and Analytics: How will you measure success?
At the end of the day, you want to feel like providing your team with learning materials will be worth the time and effort that you’ve put into creating this course. Which metrics will you track to determine the success of your curriculum?
Don’t make these metrics so restrictive that you don’t have room to grow as a company. The first integration of online learning courses can be really challenging for any company. If you don’t make your targets, it’s okay as long as your company sees a benefit from it.
Your answers to these questions will help you determine how to format the course to optimize its effectiveness within your organization.
4 Levels of eLearning Courses
The different eLearning levels are based on the amount of interactivity your learners will have with the course. The more interactivity in the material, the more engaging it is to your learners and also the higher the course development cost. You can also expect an enhanced learning outcome from a more in-depth curriculum. However, with increased interactivity comes higher costs and a longer time for course creation. According to eLearning Industry and Christopher Pappas, these are the 4 levels of eLearning courses.
Level 1 – Passive eLearning
This level of online learning requires no interaction from the person taking the course, hence the term passive eLearning. Typically, this course is presented like a PowerPoint slide show that will include graphics, audio and video. The questions are usually multiple-choice or true/false. This level effectively delivers information about new products and policies within the business in a quick and easy fashion. Another perk is that they don’t require a ton of time or resources to make, so they are an affordable option if you have a small budget.
One of the benefits of passive eLearning is that employees have more control over pacing. They can start and stop the course when they have time. The problem is that this course can be easy to tune out, so it generally produces a lower understanding of the information. Very few people can learn a new skill this way.
Level 2 – Limited Participation eLearning
Limited participation eLearning requires more interaction from the course-taker than a passive course. For example, this type will usually use a drag-and-drop function and interactive media forms to increase engagement.
An example would be a course where you have to watch a video and answer quiz questions within it. This is an effective way to train employees on appropriate workplace conduct or safety policies and procedures.
Limited participation eLearning courses test employee knowledge and provide some metrics for gauging employee understanding. However, it is meant to test general knowledge and not really teach a new skill. These courses are perfect for communicating new procedures for the entire employee body or for specific teams.
Level 3 – Moderate Interaction eLearning
Moderate interaction eLearning provides a more personalized experience for course takers. That means that there will be simulations, detailed scenarios and more complex drag-and-drop functions. If your objective is to teach employees a new skill, level 3 is going to be the best choice.
When done well, employees tend to enjoy these courses because they are more engaging so they’ll actually develop marketable skills. These courses are also the ones that will show results for your company. Typically, companies will see an increase in productivity and efficiency from employees who complete these types of courses.
Level 4 – Full Immersion eLearning
Full immersion eLearning normally requires participants to constantly interact with the material in order to progress. This level often includes simulated job exercises, interactive games, branching stories based on their decisions, and other forms of multimedia. These are meant to feel like on-the-job training.
Of course, because of the complexity of these courses, they are the most effective at teaching employees, but they are also the most expensive. It can take a lot of time to develop these courses and then even more time for their employees to take the course and practice the skills. However, if you want to produce a huge jump in results for your employees, this is the best course to develop.
When considering which course to create, remember that as the level of interactivity with the course increases, so does the time it takes to create it and the cost associated with the development.
How AI is Changing Full Immersion Learning
When the use of AI tools like ChatGPT among learners first became widespread, many educators busied themselves worrying about how to detect this AI use.
But this is the wrong question.
Instead, they should be thinking: If it’s really so easy for AI to “cheat” the system on my course, was my course really doing the job that it’s supposed to?
Often, the answer is no.
Traditionally, online education platforms have relied on learners consuming content and then taking a short quiz to test their recall. Yet the information they “learn” is often forgotten shortly after, and the practical application of the knowledge never even enters the equation.
AI has the potential to create a truly immersive learning experience by:
- Providing interactive experiences tailored to a specific learner
- Using analytics to continuously track a user’s performance and continuously test them on weak areas
- Offering personalized resources or information
For instance, Duolingo has introduced Duolingo Max, which allows users to apply their language knowledge through real-time conversations with AI. This is far more immersive than its previous fill-in-the-blank exercises.
Cost of Creating Your Online Course or Training Program
Now that you’ve determined your course objective and the level of interactivity. You can start looking at what it’s going to cost to make your eLearning dream a reality. If you don’t have an in-house team, you’ll need to look at hiring professionals outside of your business. Hiring contractors will be the path most businesses have to take, although it’s now possible to use AI to cut costs in some areas.
Hiring Talent
Creating an online course requires a full team of individuals to come up with ideas, create content, and develop the course. Two crucial positions on your team are your Instructional Designer and your Subject Matter Expert (SME). You cannot create a training course without these roles, which are vital to online course development costs.
Instructional Designer (ID)
The ID is responsible for developing your course curriculum. They take the subject matter that you want to teach your employees and transform it into digestible content that your team can learn from effectively.
The instructional designers will be the ones plotting the pacing of the course and developing it in such a way that makes it engaging for your team. They create the questions and help to determine which levels of interactivity will be most effective relative to your learning objectives.
According to a recent Synthesia report, almost half of instructional designers use AI every day in their work, with 84% saying they have tried ChatGPT.
Note that these instructional designers are not necessarily domain or topic experts. Instead, they create the course format and activities that make the training interactive and effective. In order to create the course, they will need the appropriate learning material from your Subject Matter Expert (SME).
Subject Matter Expert (SME)
The SME is the person with a deep understanding of the material you’re trying to teach your employees. They need to be an expert in a process, software, function, or department. Their in-depth knowledge of a particular subject or technology will be necessary for creating a course that is relevant and accurate for your employees.
The subject matter expert also needs to communicate regularly with the instructional designer. Without each of these positions working together, the course cannot be designed. While the subject matter expert is responsible for writing the actual content, the instructional designer helps make it comprehensible to a new learner.
However, it should be noted that instructional designers don’t always closely collaborate. The aforementioned Synthesia report found that the largest group of respondents only collaborated with SMEs 38% of the time. This may vary depending on the organizational structure.
Overall eLearning Development Cost Calculation
The cost of these two individuals – SME and ID – will play a significant part in the cost of your course.
(Hourly Rate of Instructional Designer * Number of Hours) + (Hourly Rate of SME * Number of Hours) = Total Cost of Online Course or Training Program
According to Salary.com, as of March 2025, the average Instructional Designer salary in the US is $77,990 per year, which is about $38 an hour.
The pricing for a subject matter expert (SME) is a little more complicated. Their cost depends entirely on the topic, years of experience, and area of expertise. According to ZipRecruiter, as of March 2025, the average salary for a SME in the US is 88,568 a year, or $43 an hour. This rate can definitely vary, though, and the general range is between $33 and $68. Recall that this rate also depends on the education, certifications, additional skills, and the number of years they have spent in their profession. For example, the cost of an SME in aerospace engineering or cardiology could be significantly higher than in other fields. This is simply because their skill sets are rare and difficult to obtain.
Of course, the cost and required hours will depend on their experience level and the project’s complexity.
You can, however, refer to this table as your baseline:
Cost Breakdown of Key Roles
| Task | Role | Rate/Hour ($USD) |
|---|---|---|
| Curriculum Building and Guidance | Instructional Designer | Beginner: $30/hr Intermediate: $59/hr Advanced: $125/hr |
| Production Ready Script Write-Up | Copywriter | Beginner: $30-40/hr Intermediate: $45-60/hr Advanced: $65 – $100/hr |
| Filming, video editing, sound mixing, color correction and effects | Video Editor | Beginner: $25-45/hr Intermediate: $50-100/hr Advanced: $60-150/hr |
| Illustration and character development, overall design of course materials and resources. | Graphic Designer | Beginner: $20-30/hr Intermediate: $35-50/hr Advanced: $55-75/hr |
| Voice Over Recording | Voice Over Artist | Beginner: $20-30/hr Intermediate: $35-50/hr Advanced: $50-100/hr |
In addition to the roles listed, you might need support from the below:
- Audio Editors
- Developers (for the more interactive content creation)
- Animators
- Voice Over Talent
- Software Developers (for custom implementations)
- LMS Specialists
- Slide Creators
All of the above positions depend on how complex and interactive your course is.
Use of AI
While the need for all these professionals may sound expensive, the good news is that AI tools can help to cut down costs in some cases.
With the emergence of Large Language Models (LLM) and tools like ChatGPT, Cohere, and Anthropic, AI in LMS software has transformed modern learning by automating administrative tasks, improving content creation, enhancing engagement, and improving learning outcomes.
For instance, LLMs can help out with scripting, therefore cutting down on the hours required from a copywriter. Or you may decide to apply voice cloning instead of using a voiceover artist.
However, just because you can, doesn’t always mean that you should. In some cases, obvious or excessive use of AI can disengage learners or make them perceive content as lower quality. Make sure you think through who your target audience is and where their preferences lie.
Some more potential areas to use AI include:
- Video generation
- Course editing
- Fact checking
- Digital avatar creation
Choosing a Learning Management System (LMS)
The next component of your course is to choose a Learning Management System (LMS), which is your content delivery mechanism. An LMS is software that your Instructional Designer will use to develop your eLearning course, and it’s used to deliver the training to your employees. Your LMS will track your employees’ progress in the course, issue certificates upon completion, and improve the overall learning experience.
Choosing the right LMS is crucial to your training course’s success, especially now that the landscape has changed so much.
Forward-thinking LMS platforms are using AI-driven reinforcement systems to guide learning, delivering tailored information exactly when a specific user needs it (rather than taking every user through a generic learning journey). Many also provide additional AI tools to make the job of course creation easier.
Fortunately, almost all of the larger LMS companies have introduced some form of AI to their platforms in 2025.
You can always start your research with our LMS Advisor AI-powered tool. You will get LMS recommendations with a single prompt.
Due to the incredible growth and innovation in the eLearning space, a lot of LMS options have entered the market for both enterprise and small business/individual settings. They can range from $100 to $2000 a month, depending on functionality and the number of licenses. Let’s look at the top LMS software on the market for 2025. These platforms are a big factor in course and training program development costs.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds stands out amongst course creation tools due to its emphasis on interactivity, customization and social learning. This LMS is an all-in-one platform that has a user-friendly interface as well as built-in sales and marketing tools such as interactive video editing. The drag-and-drop design for editing makes it easy to use even for those who aren’t tech savvy. Additionally, the platform integrates with trusted global and local online payment gateways, ensuring secure transactions.
The LMS also integrates with many popular platforms, so it’s great for existing infrastructure. They advertise as a tool for selling online courses, but it’s also great for businesses to create continuing training for employees due to the interactive nature.
LearnWorlds claims it is the “#1 AI-powered LMS built for course creators, ”with features like:
- Course Planner. A built-in tool that allows you to tailor your course outline process by selecting your preferred instructional model and learning outcomes. The final output is produced instantly.
- Content Editor. Similar to the capabilities of ChatGPT, you can elevate the content quality with AI-polished text, ensuring clarity and consistency throughout your scripts.
- Assessment Designer. An easy way to build contextual exams.
- Feedback Generator. Personalized feedback for learners.
LearnUpon
LearnUpon is a future-oriented LMS that uses AI to take education to the next level, replacing repetitive learning experiences with a tailored approach.
It has introduced instant assessment generation that goes through your content and suggests questions in different formats (eg. Multiple Correct, True/False, etc.). This can help you build highly relevant exams that truly assess your learners’ comprehension.
Learners will also benefit from learning bots to coach them and the use of analytics to create a unique educational journey personalized to each individual.
Thinkific
Thinkific enables businesses and entrepreneurs to create, market, sell, and deliver their own online courses and training programs. The LMS has a mix of individual creators and corporate clients, who use the platform to create amazing micro-academies for their products. A notable client of theirs is Hootsuite with their Hootsuite Academy. Thinkific is also the only platform that has an app marketplace for developers. In 2025, having an app complement to the LMS is another way to increase employee interaction and enjoyment.
It has introduced various AI features so far, including a course outline generator, a quiz generator, and AI-powered landing pages.
Nas.io
Nas.io is another LMS that’s excellent for businesses creating communities and courses for anyone due to its comprehensive features, user-friendly interface and focus on community building and monetization. We even created a comprehensive guide on this particular platform.
This LMS allows businesses to create and sell courses, manage memberships and host events. It also offers integrations with popular apps such as Zoom, Discord and WhatsApp. The platform’s analytics feature helps businesses track performance and make data-driven decisions. This is a lifesaver when it comes to improving courses especially if you’re just starting to implement them for employees.
Disco
Disco is one of the newest LMS options on the market. This LMS is great for small businesses looking to develop online courses, but may have a smaller budget. It’s a cost-effective solution that also has the customization options of higher tiered platforms. Disco also offers progress tracking so you can see how employees are doing with the courses to ensure they complete it on time.
With Disco, you can also host events, create cohort-based courses as well as self-paced courses right in the platform. They also offer a multitude of popular integrations.
It uses AI to ensure that no user feels they have to learn alone, with bots to answer questions in real-time, nudge learners automatically, and provide prompts. There are also various features to help you create your course more efficiently.
Kajabi
Kajabi is an all-in-one business platform that helps you create and scale your knowledge business and training programs. The Kajabi LMS comes with a lot of integrations to make the learning experience of any student incredible. It has email automation and landing pages, as well as an advanced curriculum builder and landing page. A popular creator on the platform is Blaine Anderson with her Dating By Blaine coaching programs.
It also offers an AI Content Assistant to help you create or upgrade a course within minutes.
In general, Kajabi is just a really great all-around choice with a variety of customizations and an impressive range of optionality.
Docebo
Docebo leans on the academic and corporate side and has been in the market since 2005. The LMS is compatible with SCORM 1.2 and 2004 as well as Tin Can. The LMS has the ability to centralize and organize courses, distribute and manage online and instructor-led courses, track certifications, and measure results with dashboards and custom analytics.
Although it’s an older LMS, Docebo has been quick to adapt to new technology. It automatically tags learning content using AI, making it easier for users to find.
Adobe Learning Manager
Adobe has produced a lot of eLearning and Design tools over the years, but their main LMS product is called Adobe Learning Manager (formerly Adobe Captivate Prime). The LMS gives you complete control to deliver personalized learning experiences to your employees, customers, and partners. You can also take advantage of AI-based recommendations to deliver a hyper-personalized learner homepage experience. If your business already uses a lot of Adobe, this is a great option because it is easy to integrate into your current workflow.
Start Your Project: Determine Your Course or Training Program Cost
We’re not going to skirt around the truth — getting online courses right in 2025 is not an easy job. Fundamental flaws in traditional methodologies have been exposed, there are tons of new tools to get your head around, and the costs of hiring the best talent and using the most effective platform can add up.
But thanks to this fresh technology, there’s also never been a better time to get things really right.
Since the last thing you want is to spend time and money on eLearning material that you don’t end up using, we recommend taking some time to make sure you understand contemporary challenges. Then, the next step is to accurately assess how much to charge for curriculum development.
At SkildLabs, we offer a tailored one-stop-shop approach, so your course is designed with your business objectives in mind. We take the time to understand the outcomes you hope to achieve with your eLearning. Then, we work to develop a curriculum that is designed with the appropriate level of interactivity based on your needs and budget. We also make it our business to keep up with the latest technological shifts to ensure you can provide the most effective learning experience possible and remain on the cutting-edge.
From the first brainstorming session all the way to implementation, SkildLabs is there every step of the way. Our partnership doesn’t end after the implementation of your course either. We want to ensure that the program we’ve created delivers the outcome you expected. We’ll continue to fine-tune the material until the curriculum is perfect for your needs.
Creating an eLearning course doesn’t have to be complicated. There are a few ways SkildLabs can help, including:
You can also book a consultation with us today to discuss your project.