In this guide 6 sections
Use a hosted platform unless one of four tests fails. Can it assign seats to a firm’s staff, tie access to instalment payments, hold cohort limits with a waitlist, and connect to your sales system? Pass all four and you should build nothing. Fail two or more and custom development starts to make sense.
A hosted platform is the right start for most trainers
Hosted platforms already handle video streaming, quizzes, progress bars and certificates. Building those yourself takes months. Recorded Zoom sessions, PDF workbooks and SCORM packages usually import as they are, so keep your own code for the part that fails. After launch, someone has to patch it, watch it and restore it from backup when a server fails on the night a batch begins.
Custom work earns its place only where your selling model is unusual. The four tests below find that. Run each one on a real offer from your catalogue, with real learner counts, before you sit through a vendor demo built to show only the happy path.
Test one: can a firm buy twenty seats and assign them later?
A company buys twenty seats for its sales team in one purchase. The HR manager then assigns each seat to a named person, swaps out a leaver mid-course and expects a single invoice for the lot. Many hosted tools sell only to individuals. They treat a team as twenty strangers who each need a login, a payment and a certificate.
Have the vendor demonstrate the manager’s screen, not the learner’s. Can the manager invite people by email, reassign a seat, watch group progress and download a completion list without opening a support ticket? If any step needs the vendor’s staff, the test fails.
Test two: do instalments control access?
Many institutes sell a diploma in three instalments. Access to module four should pause when the second instalment is thirty days late, then resume the day payment arrives, with no assistant involved. Payment plans exist in most hosted tools. Access rules that follow them are rare.
Write your exact rule on paper first. List the grace days, what closes, who may override, and what reopens on payment, then ask to see that exact case working with a test learner. A workaround counts as a fail. An assistant who checks the bank statement each Friday and reopens accounts by hand is the cost you are trying to remove.
- Grace days after a missed instalment
- Which modules close and which stay open
- Who can override, and where the reason is saved
- What reopens when payment arrives
Test three: can cohorts hold seat limits and a waitlist?
A live batch of thirty needs a hard cap, a waitlist and a promotion rule for the day someone drops out. Self-paced tools often have no batches. They offer a start date and nothing else, so a full cohort keeps selling seats until a trainer notices the roll has passed the room capacity.
A learner who misses week two should move to the next intake without buying again, and the old seat should return to the waitlist at once. Ask for that scenario by name. Watch the seat move.
- Capacity set per batch
- A trainer and a room per batch
- Waitlist with ordered offers
- Transfer between batches without a new purchase
Test four: does it join your sales system?
Payment, batch and status should reach your CRM. A lead who attended a free webinar should join the same person record once they buy, rather than becoming a duplicate. Look for a documented REST API or webhooks that fire on payment, enrolment and completion events. A connector tile that syncs once a day will not tell a salesperson that a learner paid ten minutes ago. Ask what happens in the CRM when a learner is refunded, defers to the next batch or transfers a seat to a colleague.
Score each test as pass, workaround or fail. Note the staff hours each workaround eats every month, then compare a custom build against the hosted tool plus those hours if two or more tests fail.
Bring the filled table to your first developer call. It saves hours.
Build or buy scorecard
One sheet, four rows, one per test. Columns hold your exact rule, the vendor demo result as pass, workaround or fail, the staff hours the workaround takes each month, and notes. The decision and the name of who made it go in the bottom corner. Date it, so the next review starts from facts.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Can I start hosted and move to custom later?
Yes, provided you can export learners, enrolments, completion records and certificate serials in a file format that a developer can load. Check the export before you sign. Keep the numbering unbroken.
What does a custom course platform need at minimum?
It needs accounts, a course and lesson store, a payment link, enrolment rules, progress records and certificates, plus an admin screen for fixing a wrong enrolment. Buy video hosting as a service.
Who owns learner data on a hosted platform?
You hold the relationship, but the vendor stores the data. Read the terms on export, deletion and what happens to your learners’ records if you cancel, and ask for a sample export file before you commit. Terms differ by vendor.
How should a custom build be scoped?
Start narrow. A first release limited to the one test that failed is far smaller than a full learning platform, and it can run beside the hosted tool. Ask for a staged plan.