from Hacker News

Coursify: A Free Open-Source Online Course Platform

by Felix21 on 4/6/15, 6:38 AM with 58 comments

• by Felix21 on 4/6/15, 12:23 PM

  WOW! I made it to the front page. Okay so I posted it yesterday and went to bed. Thank you all for your support an feedback.

  When Udemy decided to start charging 50% of every sale, I needed another way to sell my Online Courses.

  I looked at a few self-hosted Online Course platforms, but they all wanted a monthly fee + transaction fees, which I think is excessive.

  So I started working on Coursify. With Coursify, you can download it, install it and use it without paying.

  If you don't know rails, you can pay me a one-time installation fee and you can use it forever without any more charges from us...

  I also released it under the MIT licence, so others can improve on it.

  Thank you.

• by ankurfedora on 4/6/15, 5:17 PM

  Felix,

  I'm the founder of http://usefedora.com -- a product you are intimately familiar with.

  Love the effort and open source contribution -- but definitely put off by stealing our UI/UX almost verbatim (example site built with our tool: http://bitfountain.io/courses/iwatch-course <-- the same people as your case study, your tool: http://www.onedayrails.com/)

  While it is incredibly flattering for a small startup like ours to have an open-source derivative, stealing our interface and design patterns for a project that you charge hundreds of dollars in installation fees definitely leaves a bad taste.

  Do it right and we'd have probably helped you promote it. But this just doesn't seem cool.

• by shahocean on 4/6/15, 8:19 AM

  Congrats on your launch! Just wondering, how did you come up with this pricing model? I think you need to change it because majority of the buyers can wait for 1 day than paying $400. OR am I missing something here?

• by UserRights on 4/6/15, 1:36 PM

  Question: from the video I get the impression that this platform can handle only ONE course, is this right? Still a very nice implementation, good interface work!

• by phenomenon on 4/6/15, 11:58 AM

  Really neat! online courses are on the rise and having such a platform just makes it easy to start one.

  Just found a typo -

  "That means you'll get the best developers from all over the world, working hard to make Courify an excellent platform for you to sell your online course."

  I see "Courify".

• by techplex on 4/6/15, 11:45 AM

  The github link on the downloads page seems to be broken: https://github.com/felixog/coursify

• by flashman on 4/7/15, 5:38 AM

  Is your target market individual education entrepreneurs and small teams, or do you have plans to offer this product to universities? The reason I'm asking is because many colleges would spend money on a lightweight course builder that hooked back into their existing learning management system, especially if it gives them flexibility to develop their own courseware, or hosts it for them.

• by funkaster on 4/6/15, 5:30 PM

  great job! it looks like a good replacement for people trying to juggle with the complexity of a software like moodle. I'm also interesting in knowing if it will support some type of assessment, because it looks like so far it's only a paywall for content. Do you have plans to add support for any type of assessment?

• by fweespeech on 4/6/15, 1:51 PM

  I was excited until I realized the Courses weren't open source. Ah well. xD

  It looks nice for its purpose. Congrats on launching. :)

• by ozkan on 4/6/15, 3:37 PM

  Hmm.. seems like server is unable to response to overwhelming & sudden interest

• by sbose78 on 4/6/15, 11:11 AM

  Looks great, could you have a list of features you offer? :)

• by wehadfun on 4/6/15, 2:38 PM

  Any plans to have a hosted version?

• by NamPNQ on 4/6/15, 9:45 AM

  only with video learning support?

• by matthias_ on 4/6/15, 5:19 PM

  .

• by allworknoplay on 4/6/15, 5:03 PM

  Thanks for cloning my company's product, we're flattered.

  http://usefedora.com

  (We're the ones who power courses like http://bitfountain.io)