Are there any examples of people using Bubble to deliver training… as an alternate to something like Teachable? I have been using Kajabi for many years but I’ve run into limitations on the ‘learner’ experience.
I realize there are dramatic differences in what Kajabi offers built-in, but I’d love to know if anyone has done a comparison or discussion of specific-purpose course platforms (no/low-code) versus using Bubble.
Cheers,
Kathy
I doubt it. The goal is usually to be able to build things fast that fill a gap online, but there are many good online platforms that are fairly cheap to host on already. Bubble does excel at custom solutions, but training platforms by design should usually be pretty generic. That being said, if you simply want a custom solution for yourself so you can offer different and niche features, well that’s a different story. But I personally haven’t seen any as the actual platform.
This is a little plug for myself hah but I’m going to be streaming on Twitch tomorrow doing a quick and dirty build of just that haha. @troy.roberge is definitely right, however that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for some boutique options in the space.
The short term reason for why I’m rapidly building v1 is to migrate one of my client’s existing programs from a platform that is paid for annually and is up in a couple weeks for renewal.
The long-term vision is that it is integrating with his non-profit’s entire event management and alumni center that I am building as well.
Tomorrow I’ll be doing a quick and dirty design build of the course purchase page + individual lesson page and then we’re going to get in to configuring the APIs needed for the actual video content and checkout to work. The stream isn’t so much a tutorial as just another way to #buildinpublic though, so it’s definitely not a hold-my-hand kind of thing.
The problem I have with literally all existing course platforms is I need high interactivity, and most of them are designed as presentation delivery, not interactive learning.
Most of the platforms do allow iFrames, and I spent a year building activities in Javascript and embedding them in iFrames on my ‘presentation’ pages, but it was always a problem and never felt integrated with the rest of the user’s experiences. (Not to mention having to keep a separate database etc.)
I’m fairly sure I’m an outlier on this. Most of the Kajabi community is far more focused on the marketing/sales features of the platform than adding new features to the learner side.
I won’t try to bring my main course out of Kajabi and into Bubble, but rather to create completely new types of learning experiences that Bubble makes possible in ways existing course platforms do not. But we’ll see. I have a looooong learning curve head of me 
What kind of interactive experiences are you trying to create? (Or have already created using your workaround) I have an existing app where I overlay some data on playing video. It’s not interactive necessarily (it reacts to live data, not user input) but there’s no reason it couldn’t be. I could definitely dive in to that a bit.
This is super interesting! And yeah, I think there ARE options in Bubble for those who want / need more custom learning experiences than most of the presentation-focused course platforms support. Or simply better integration of the ‘learning’ stuff with the entire user’s experience. Most of the platforms have a clear line drawn where the user is now entering LEARNING CONTENT MODE and it’s often completely different from anything else in the website. I want learning to happen in ways that are not so strictly presentation, but, for example, can happen within the context of using the app I’m building. I also need a lot of custom video control, and use The Vimeo Player SDK. In all platforms, I had to do this with an embedded iFrame of a javascript app I had to host on Firebase.
I was able to replicate that functionality here using the Bubble Vimeo plug-in and I barely know what I’m doing
How can I find out more about what you’re up to? Is there a place I can watch the stream?
The more I hear about it the more I’m sure you could definitely build something like this on Bubble. I personally use the video.js plug-in @pork1977gm made. I initially used it with Vimeo but have since switched to using Mux for my delivery with Vimeo’s policy changes re: API access. It has a ton of actions to control the player outside of the player view itself whether in workflows or other buttons. And visually you can basically use custom CSS to style however is needed. For mobile there’s even a function to disallow the phone’s native video mode from taking over in full screen mode (which would break overlays).
I plan to be live on Twitch sometime around noon PST. I’ll announce when I go live on my Twitter 
https://twitter.com/mflotron
I’ve started planning for this like 8 times, but never end up doing it. I start thinking about the costs associated and it gets pricey quickly, even for zero subscribers. Platforms like Podia have a lot built into it for a low fee, but I’m definitely constrained from what I want to offer. Using something like Bubble gives me more freedom, but then I have to stitch together a lot of different paid services to make it all work.
I swear, I’ve been stuck in this decision loop for years!
What services are you referring to? I feel like the only paid service I would need is Mux. And costs for that are $0 unless you’re actually selling.
I have a bunch of small interactive activities, including some that are more like small games and some that are more like quizzes but with strict timing, etc. The timing restrictions are one of the biggest challenges I had with most existing quiz engines. I built one that is actually driven by video, though it’s not technically interactive video… the answer buttons are sitting just below the video, but controlled by a constant loop of checking the playback position (user has no control over). One activity I’ve used is sort of like ‘refrigerator magnets’ where they drag and drop from a bunch of random pieces create a specific ‘phrase’. Nothing fancy – all easy javascript – but still way outside the limitations of the learning platforms.
In my perfect scenario, the learners can access the ‘normal’ presentation-y things such as a video, maybe some text, possibly a downloadable thing – the things that ALL the platforms offer – but then ALSO have these interactive activities in some of the lessons, either on the same ‘page’ as the video lecture, or stand-alone but only after they’ve watched the video, etc.
A lot of platforms offer the option of a basic quiz, but as I said, then they make it nearly impossible to embed an interactivity that is well-integrated with the rest of the lesson. (I guess that’s mostly a limitation of using iFrames… that not-from-here code is meant to stay in it’s own little corral).
Well, I’m committed now. But I’m not thinking I will need to stitch much together? Right now it seems like nearly all that I need IS possible in Bubble. Even though Kajabi has its own video hosting, I still always keep a paid Vimeo account, so I’m not counting that as an additional cost, and I have full use of The Vimeo player SDK with one of the bubble plug-ins (and it works great). But I don’t really use much in terms of Kajabi marketing/sales funnels and all that, so all I need is to accept payments, enroll people, and send some email.
The community stuff looks like it CAN be done in Bubble but with a lot more work for me personally, but it’s lower on my priority list. I might just use Discord or something.
I’ve spent the last couple years just wishing for a more flexible option but I did not even know ‘no-code’ was a thing until recently. I tried out virtually EVERY course platform before finally giving up and deciding to do it all by hand with a Firebase back in. And I hated every second of trying to build it ALL myself in javascript… even the basics of a sign-up / log-in was a nightmare for a mediocre programmer with virtually no full-stack web dev experience. So when I found Bubble, to me it is a near-perfect happy medium. Bubble is not nearly as powerful/full-featured as Kajabi, but it’s a zillion times more do-able than creating a website WITH paid plans and courses all by hand on my own.
I did not know that! That’s all the incentive I need to sign-up for it, then. Does this mean that their ‘community’ area is – I assume – also build in Bubble?
Their community area is on circle.so which has a pretty good API and supports SSO with Bubble!
Video hosting, which you took care of with Vimeo.
Transaction emails, like Sendgrid or Postmark.
Newsletter functionality, like Email Octopus.
Payments, like Stripe.
It’s not monumental, but it’s also more expensive than managing everything in one platform like Podia. There’s a lot of extra junk, boilerplate stuff, that the service providers handle for you that we have to rebuild in Bubble.
Again, it’s not impossible, but it’s probably also not how I want to spend my time. Also, I’m lazy
If you think YOU are “lazy”, hold my beer 
…
I get that, and I feel the same. But can’t we already do Stripe in Bubble? (Literally next on my to-do list).
I don’t do newsletters, so that doesn’t apply for me.
Transaction emails is something I do care about, though very limited needs.
Bottom line for me: if I needed only presentation-style courses with limited interactivity, the course platforms are fantastic. And now that Kajabi just purchased a great community product, that’s an even more compelling reason to keep courses there. But for my own use case, the interactivity is too important. So for ME, it’s worth all the extra work to have a more flexible platform. But my ‘learning experiences’ are unique to my domain and pedagogical approach… definitely doesn’t apply to most teaching.
I need to do more research on the emails and payments issues you mentioned… I was kinda assuming I could still do this (in at least a limited way) from inside Bubble.
“Issues” is a strong word, it’s just more pieces to have to worry about integrating and maintaining yourself.
I’m eager to see how this unfolds for you!
Same 
(But my expectations are – fingers crossed 
– reasonably low, so we’ll see…)
I am building an interactive learning app on Bubble, but still not on the interactive part yet, but on the overview and user dashboard. Let me know if you want to connect. Most existing platforms focus on content delivery via video which I do not consider as interactive experience.
