How to create an online course marketplace with WordPress

Decide whether instructors can apply themselves or whether you will add them manually. Set your approval rule before inviting anyone: you can allow instructors to publish immediately, or keep new courses pending for admin review.

Also decide how you will handle commissions, refunds, minimum withdrawal amounts, payout timing and disputes. Tutor LMS supports revenue sharing and withdrawal settings, but you still need a written policy for instructors.

Install Tutor LMS, then choose one monetisation engine. Tutor LMS supports its native commerce system as well as WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, Paid Memberships Pro and Restrict Content Pro, but its documentation warns that multiple commerce engines must not run at the same time.

The manual route is possible only for a catalogue: WordPress can publish course pages, but it does not provide course progress, protected lessons, student dashboards, instructor workflows, checkout or commission accounting by itself. For a real marketplace, plugins are not optional unless you build those systems yourself.

In Tutor LMS, enable the marketplace setting so multiple instructors can upload and sell courses. Then enable the multi-instructor feature if you want co-teachers or several instructors assigned to one course.

Enable the instructor application option if you want public sign-ups. Review applications from the instructor management screen, and keep direct publishing disabled until you are comfortable with the quality and legal checks.

Generate or check the LMS pages for login, student registration, instructor registration and the dashboard. Add the instructor registration page to your navigation only if you are accepting applications from the public. Missing generated pages can usually be recreated from the LMS tools area.

Set WordPress permalinks to Post name, save the setting and clear any caching layers. Tutor LMS documents this as a requirement; using another permalink structure can produce 404 errors on dashboard and course URLs.

Go to the Tutor LMS course builder and create the course title, description, category, thumbnail, curriculum and price. Add topics, lessons and quizzes, then decide whether learners can preview content or must enrol before seeing it.

If you use WooCommerce, create or connect the product used to sell the course and configure the checkout, tax and payment gateway there. Keep the LMS and shop roles clear: Tutor LMS controls learning access, while the selected commerce engine records the sale.

Use a test student account to browse a course, register, pay, receive the order email, enter the dashboard, open a lesson and record progress. Test an instructor application, course approval, a refund and a withdrawal request as separate scenarios.

A common failure is treating WooCommerce as a normal shop while forgetting to select it as Tutor LMS's active eCommerce engine. That can result in a paid order without the expected course enrolment. Also check that only one commerce engine is enabled and that the gateway returns successful orders to the site.

The fast route is to install Geeks, then configure it with Tutor LMS and your chosen commerce engine. Geeks is a Tutor LMS-focused theme for course sales, student dashboards and marketplace-style course listings, so it reduces the front-end design work rather than replacing the LMS or payment setup.

After activating the theme, import its setup or starter layout if provided, check the generated LMS pages, and repeat the student and instructor tests above. Choose this route when you want a polished marketplace presentation without designing every course archive, profile and dashboard template yourself.