Online Course Development Price According to Researchers
In 2010, the Chapman Alliance did in-depth research and found that it can cost around $10,000 to produce one hour of educational content. Why exactly “around”? It’s effortless. The more features you want to add and the more dynamic and interactive your course needs to be, the more significant the final price will be. However, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, and these data are far from relevant. In our detailed analysis, we will provide you with the following:
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New information as of August 2021 will show the numbers of developing an online course from scratch.
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A detailed analysis of all development elements and a breakdown into the roles of participants in the course creation.
All subsequent information was collected from open sources and is also the result of a compilation of our experience in tailoring custom online learning solutions.
Cost to Develop an Online Course – It’s all About the Chosen Model
To begin with, it is worth clarifying that the values of the final development price tag largely depend on which educational design model you choose. To avoid confusion, in our estimate, we will consider only one model named ADDIE. This model is the most common way how to develop an online course and is an abbreviation where:
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“A” is for Analysis. At the analysis stage, you should carefully study the market that you will enter and your competitors. This will help you develop a unique solution that will stand out from the background and provide a personalized experience for each client.
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“D” is for Design. The design phase deals with working out the appearance of your teaching material.
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“D” is for Development.The primary and most crucial stage during which you develop educational material (write text, create assignments, presentations, and much more)
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“I” is for Implementation.All the finished material is added to the LMS at this stage, structured into an online course. In addition, during this stage, the first tests of the online course are passed to eliminate bugs and mistakes in learning material.
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“E” is for Evaluation. The final stage in which the analyst comes into play. You carefully monitor the success of the course and compare the indicators with the set objectives and goals.
Creating a course is almost impossible without a team of specialists who will take on specific tasks.
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SME or Subject Matter Expert – A specialist in the field in which your course will provide training material. They are engaged in research, text writing, lecture notes, and much more.
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The instructional design team– Graphic designers, cameramen, video editors, and others.
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Project Manager – Course owner who oversees all aspects of course development and overall progress.
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Technical staff specialists– A group of people responsible for the technical part of the course creation (QA engineers, DevOps specialists, content managers, and others).
Now for a final note. In this article, we will consider all the stages of the ADDIE model except the final Evaluation, since this stage depends on the type of course, the niche it occupies, the LMS system on which it is based, and much more. As a prime example, we created an hour-long abstract course that consists of the video material, text content, visual content (charts, graphs, and much more).
Let’s dive in.
Stage #1. Analysis and its Cost
How to develop an online course and make it right? Start with analysis. You hardly want your course to go unnoticed and hang like a dead weight. That is why it is essential to conduct an analysis stage that will help clarify the feasibility of creating a course from an economic and social perspective. The analysis stage includes the following aspects:
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Target audience research
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Analysis of competition in the selected niche
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Analysis of available and preferred ways of promotion
Further, along with the text, we will mainly present all the information in tables since they allow us to display important information and the pricing policy of developing an online course as clearly as possible. Prices for the services of certain specialists will be taken from open recruitment sites such as Upwork, SalaryExpert.com, Indeed.com, and others. Now, let’s move on to the price of the analysis stage.
| Team roles | Involvement stages | Time, hrs | Hourly rate, $ | Overall check, $ |
| Course owner | All | Individual | Individual | Individual |
| Marketing specialists | Analysis | 30-40 | 30-75 | 900-3000 |
Once the analysis stage is set and done, it’s time to proceed to the design sequence.
Stage #2. Design Cost
| Phase name | Specialists involved | Time, hrs | Upwork rates,$ | Contractors’ rates,$ | Experts’ rates,$ | Overall check,$ |
| Consultations with SME | SME | 10-15 | Individual | Individual | Individual | Individual |
| Psycholinguist | 10-15 | 30-40 | 30-40 | 65+ | 300-975 | |
| Lecturer | 10-15 | 25-40 | 30-45 | 60+ | 300-900 | |
| PM | 10-15 | 30-55 | 30-75 | 75+ | 300-1125 | |
| Instructional designer | 10-15 | 33-50 | 15-80 | 85+ | 150-1275 | |
| Designing visual content | Lecturer | 24-36 | 25-40 | 25-45 | 60+ | 600-2160 |
| Instructional designer | 24-36 | 33-50 | 15-80 | 85+ | 360-3060 | |
| Graphic designer | 24-36 | 23-50 | 25-60 | 70+ | 600-2520 | |
| Designing practical tasks | Lecturer | 6-8 | 25-40 | 30-45 | 60+ | 150-480 |
| Instructional designer | 6-8 | 33-50 | 15-75 | 85+ | 90-680 |
Note: How to develop an online course and save some resources? You must have a well-organized “face-to-face training content” rich in various media materials, visual content, and more. This content will help you quickly create a course storyboard for subsequent structuring, addition, alteration, and other integral operations of online course development.
Stage #3. Development Price
| Phase name | Specialists involved | Time, hrs | Upwork rates,$ | Contractors’ rates,$ | Experts’ rates,$ | Overall check,$ |
| Writing notes | Lecturer | 10-20 | 25-40 | 30-45 | 60+ | 300-1200 |
| Instructional designer | 10-20 | 33-50 | 15-80 | 85+ | 150-1700 | |
| Psycholinguist | 10-20 | 30-40 | 30-40 | 65+ | 300-1300 | |
| Video guideline design | Graphic designer | 15-20 | 23-50 | 25-60 | 70+ | 345-1400 |
| Video editor | 15-20 | 20-50 | 25-40 | 60+ | 375-1200 | |
| Shooting videos | Lecturer | 3-5 | 25-40 | 30-45 | 55+ | 75-275 |
| Video operator | 3-5 | 20-75 | 25-50 | 80+ | 60-400 | |
| Director | 3-5 | 70-85 | 70-85 | 90+ | 210-450 | |
| Intro design | Graphic designer | 20-30 | 23-50 | 25-60 | 70+ | 460-2100 |
| Video editor | 20-30 | 20-50 | 25-40 | 60+ | 400-1800 | |
| Editing videos | Video editor | 16-20 | 20-50 | 25-40 | 60+ | 320-1200 |
Stage #4. Implementation Price
So, all the training material is ready, and now is the time to add it to your chosen LMS. However, this is not just a process of “pouring” content into the system. It is necessary to fully transform it into a ready-made course using the LMS tools. In addition, it is vital to ensure the maximum quality of the finished course, so proofreading and error checking is critical.
| Phase name | Specialists involved | Time, hrs | Upwork rates,$ | Contractors’ rates,$ | Experts’ rates,$ | Overall check,$ |
| Course upload | Content manager | 2-3 | 35-60 | 35-60 | 65+ | 105-195 |
| Content manager | 30-40 | 35-60 | 35-60 | 65+ | 1050-2600 | |
| QA | PM | 30-40 | 30-55 | 30-75 | 75+ | 900-3000 |
| Course owner | 30-40 | Individual | Individual | Individual | Individual | |
| Course creation monitoring | Course owner | 2-3 (daily) | Individual | Individual | Individual | Individual |
| Project management | PM | 2-3 (daily) | 30-55 | 30-75 | 75+ | 60-225 |
Also, do not forget that the LMS setup is also included in the final check.
| Team member | Hours | Hourly rate, $ | Overall check,$ |
| DevOps | 50-80 | 50-75 | 2500-6000 |
| QA | 15-50 | 40-50 | 600-2500 |
Note: All of the above roles can be combined to one degree or another in one specialist, for example, a video operator and a video editor in one person. In addition, the development phases can also be combined. These two facts can reduce the cost of development stages by 30%.
Wrapping Up
Technology and trends in online course development force the eLearning industry to keep up with the times and stay up-to-date. Additionally, the most successful courses require constant revision and improvement to correspond to today’s realities. That is why even after the final release, you will face the additional costs for various course improvements. Now, let’s look at the final estimate of each development participant and the total cost of creating an online course.
| Team roles | Involvement stages | Time, hrs | Rate,$ | Final paycheck,$ |
| Course owner | All | Individual | Individual | Individual |
| SME | Design | Individual | Individual | Individual |
| PM | All | 40-55 | 30-75 | 1200-4125 |
| Instructional designer | Design, development | 50-79 | 15-85 | 750-6715 |
| Marketer | Analysis | 30-40 | 30-75 | 900-3000 |
| Lecturer | Design, development | 53-84 | 25-60 | 1325-5040 |
| Psycholinguist | Design, development | 20-35 | 30-65 | 600-2275 |
| Graphic designer | Design, development | 59-86 | 23-70 | 1357-6020 |
| Director | Development | 3-5 | 70-90 | 210-450 |
| Video operator | Development | 3-5 | 20-80 | 60-400 |
| Video editor | Development | 51-110 | 20-60 | 1020-5500 |
| Content manager | Implementation | 32-43 | 35-65 | 1120-2795 |
| Overall cost,$ | 8542 – 36320 |
Now, let’s sum all our calculations and notes:
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In 2021, 1 hour of learning content can take around 100 – 160 hours to create
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In 2021, 1 hour of learning content can cost about $8,542 – $36,320 ($22,431 on average).
In the table below, you can see how numbers evolve during the last couple of years. We observe a rapid increase in costs for 1-hour complete learning content during the 2017-2020 years.
| Year | 1 hour of eLearning content costs, $ |
| 2021 | 8,542 – 36,320 (22,431 on average) |
| 2020 | 8,150 – 36,205 (22,178 on average) |
| 2019 | 7,830 – 37,365 (22,598 on average) |
| 2017 | 7,140 – 35,550 (21,345 on average) |
Changes in online course creation rates: 2021/2020
| Role | Min rate increase/decrease | Max rate increase/decrease |
| Marketer | +50% | -20% |
| PM | 0% | +7% |
| Content manager | +16% | -23% |
| Graphic designer | -9% | -14% |
| Instructional designer | -33% | +41% |
| Lecturer | +25% | +9% |
| Psycholinguist | +50% | +9% |
| Video editor | -20% | 0% |
| Video operator | 0% | +14% |
| Director | +75% | -18% |
| SME | Individual | Individual |
Note: Online course development is a multi-stage and complex process, and it is impossible to know the price in advance thoroughly. There are too many variables in the final price tag equation that affect pricing. To get a complete and accurate estimate, you should contact the experts in online course creation and book a demo to tell all the details about your upcoming project.
