We're working on a search engine for online courses (classpert) and the subscription model was always a big question mark for us. We try our best to show advantages of the subscription but for the end user, we're not so sure it's the best model (and we doubt providers really believe that either). Personally, Udemy model (pay per course) works better for the general case, and I would only subscribe to specific content made by specific, top-notch people.
This is Felipe, FJ and Thiago from Classpert (https://classpert.com/). We've built a (free) search engine for online courses. Our intention is to help people search and find courses that most suit their personal and professional needs.
The idea is to offer an ultimate platform for comparing different and relevant aspects of online courses such as price, duration, providers, ratings, audio language, subtitles, etc. We believe the wide variety of courses and platforms available is an obstacle to the user’s optimal choice.
From a software standpoint, we faced 2 main challenges when building Classpert. 1) Crawling providers: Since we wanted to be the most accurate possible, crawling is the best option (instead of using affiliate feeds and APIs). The crawling engine is built using Ruby and PL/SQL 2) Building the search engine experience (VueJS)
From a business standpoint, we launched our MVP in December 2018 and are still working on our platform to give the best experience. This is why we’d love to get HN’s feedback. Thanks for taking the time to read this :)