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Ruzuku and Pathwright are two options for coaches, authors, bloggers, speakers and other independent experts who are creating online courses.
Pathwright is an online course platform that is hosted for you at pathwright.com. Pathwright was founded in 2012 by Greg Taylor and Paul Honson .
Ruzuku is a course platform that is hosted for you at ruzuku.com. Ruzuku was designed by user experience consultants Rick Cecil and Abe Crystal, Ph.D., and launched in 2011.
Let’s take a look at the similarities and differences between the two platforms.
Who is Pathwright for? Who uses it?
Pathwright is designed to help educators launch their own online school. According to the Pathwright website, you can “Launch your own, branded online school with engaging online courses that reach students all around the world.”
Pathwright allows you to structure and post the content of your online program (such as audio recordings, articles, and downloadable files.)
Pathwright is commonly used by companies and experts who specialize in academic topics and specialized business topics. Examples of schools and courses listed on Pathwright.com include integralCALC (an online math school), Academy Medical (which trains medical salespeople), and GetElected (a voter-education startup).
Who is ruzuku for? Who uses it?
Ruzuku is designed to support online courses or group programs in which many people go through a structured, step-by-step program together. For example, a blogger who has written popular posts about using LinkedIn to find new career opportunities might create a 6-week course on “Using LinkedIn to Take Your Career to the Next Level.”
Here’s an example of of an online course hosted on ruzuku: Your Best Self: The Proven Path to Self-Discovery Ruzuku is commonly used by experts and companies who offer courses in the areas of art & design, crafts, health, creative business, personal development, and professional skills, among other areas. When considering any online course platform, you’ll want to examine several factors: We’ll go over each of these areas in more detail. A key factor in moving forward with your online course is ease of use — how easy it is to set up and manage your online program? Pathwright emphasizes ease of use for people who want to set up a complete “online school.” Their website states that Pathwright includes, “Every tool you need” with an “easy course builder.” Ruzuku focuses on ease of use for initial course creation. You set up your first course by registering for a trial account on ruzuku.com, then clicking the “Create a new course” button. Both ruzuku and Pathwright enable you to set a price for your online program and charge for access. However, these platforms focus on different registration models. Pathwright focuses on registering people into an online school or community. Pathwright also supports features for more complex membership models, such as multiple levels of memberships with different prices, or a single-payment membership. Ruzuku focuses on registering people into a course. For example, a career coach might create a 6-week course for $499. The course would combine videos, worksheets, and group coaching calls. She might run this course several times throughout the year. Ruzuku would handle registration and payment for people signing up for sessions of this course. Ruzuku can also be used with ongoing membership or continuity programs, by using a 3rd-party recurring billing service, such as MoonClerk or PayPal Pro. For either platform, payment flows through a payment processor or shoppping cart of your choice. Both ruzuku and Pathwright support Stripe, an increasingly popular payment processor. Ruzuku also supports several additional payment processors and shopping carts, such as: Pathwright does not support these additional payment processor options. Pathwright offers both “immediately available” and “drip” content, which is released over time based on when a participant signs up. For example, a new participant might get immediate access to a certain set of resources upon signing up, and then receive new content 30 days later, and so on. Ruzuku is also designed to host both “scheduled” and evergreen courses. A scheduled course starts on a specific date and allows a cohort of participants to go through the course together, on the same schedule. This model facilitates peer-to-peer learning and community for “live” courses and group coaching programs. Ruzuku’s visual outline tool makes it straightforward to plan out your course, and choose the dates on which lessons are released. The same visual outline can also be used to structure evergreen courses, as well. Pathwright does not provide a video hosting service as part of its course delivery platform. It is up to the course creator to identify the best way to host media such as audio/video files, and incorporate these media into Pathwright-hosted pages. Typically, creators would use an professional video hosting service such as Wistia ($300 – $1,200/year) to host their media because using a public video service such as YouTube has important limitations for private courses. For example, YouTube may display ads in the videos, which can distract participants from the learning experience and hurt your brand. Ruzuku includes professional audio and video hosting service as part of its course delivery platform, at no additional cost. You can upload unlimited audio and video files directly to the ruzuku platform. You also have option to embed videos from 3rd-party services. All of ruzuku’s plans include a global Content Delivery Network (CDN), to support students around the world. Ruzuku is designed around the importance of community and peer-to-peer support in online courses. The platform provides integrated discussion forums for each lesson, as well as optional discussion prompts for specific activities. Participants can respond with text comments as well as documents, images, or even videos. For example, in an art course, a participant could upload a photo of one of her artworks to share with the community. This gives the instructor a chance to pose questions — and gives students a space to reflect and share as they move through the course. The “Recent Activity” stream makes it easy to see what others are posting and contributing in the course. In addition, automatic email notifications keep participants engaged. For example, if Alice posts a comment and then Bob replies to her, Alice will receive an email notification. Pathwright also includes course-specific discussion features. Participants can leave “comments” underneath a specific piece of content, such as a video in the course. Ruzuku’s “Course Health” feature gives instructors insight into how students are progressing and interacting in the course. You can view analytics for the course as a whole, or drill down and view data for a specific step in your course. You can use information found in Course Health to help determine who is staying on track, and who might need a little more encouragement. Pathwright provides an overall report of how students are progressing in a course. Live calls or webinars are a critical component for many online courses. This is especially true with group coaching programs. The ability to meet in a “live” setting and share progress is what keeps your participants on track and motivated. Ruzuku offers two forms of live events and interaction: You can easily create an event and run these live events directly through ruzuku without having to purchase or learn an external service. Your students receive customized email reminders about the event and attend the webinar directly inside their course. Teleconferences and webinars can be recorded automatically for later access. Pathwright does not currently offer any conferencing or webinar features. Pathwright offers plans based on the number of active students in your courses. For example, if you plan to run 2 courses with a total of 150 participants, you would select the “Large Community” plan at $299/month. Complete Pathwright pricing can be found here: Pathwright Pricing » Pathwright also charges a per-student fee for additional registrations beyond the level allowed in each plan. They give the following examples: Ruzuku’s plans (which include video hosting) start at $41/month (if pre-paid annually), or $79/month (paid monthly). View Ruzuku’s pricing here: Ruzuku Pricing » Both Ruzuku and Pathwright allow unlimited courses or programs with a paid subscription. One other pricing difference to note is that ruzuku offers substantial discounts with a pre-paid annual purchase. For example, you can save $791/year by pre-paying for the Up-and-Comer level plan. Pathwright does not currently offer annual discounts. First, review what types of online courses/programs you plan to offer. Are you intending to offer “live,” scheduled courses? For example, a 6-week course that starts on a specific date, with a group of people all going through the course together. Do you also want to offer “On Demand” courses that are always available for registration? Or do you want to create an ongoing membership or “continuity” site with recurring billing? Ruzuku and Pathwright support both models. Next, review what types of live events and interaction you’d like to have within your programs. Do you want to offer group conference calls or video webinars as part of a course? Ruzuku integrates these types of live events directly into your courses. With Pathwright, you would research and purchase a separate conferencing and/or webinar system. Finally, test out each platform by participating in a sample program and creating a test program of your own. Ruzuku provides free, sample courses you can join: … as well as a 14-day free trial (no credit card required for sign up). Pathwright offers a “10 day free trial with up to 5 members” to test out the platform. Course platform capabilities
Ease of Initial Setup & Use
Registration and Payment
Scheduling and Content Delivery
Audio and Video: Hosting & Streaming Content
Learning Community and Discussion Forum
Progress Tracking
Live Calls or Webinars with Recording
Pricing
How to choose the right platform for you
Pathwright and Ruzuku:
Step-by-Step Decision Guide
Ruzuku vs. Pathwright: A Complete Feature Comparison
Category / Feature
Pathwright
Ruzuku
Platform category
Managed (cloud) service, hosted on pathwright.com.
Managed (cloud) service, hosted on ruzuku.com.
Technical knowledge required
No specific technical knowledge is assumed.
No specific technical knowledge is assumed.
Registration & Payment
Charge for course access (single payment)
✔
✔
Charge for course access (single payment)
✔
✔
Charge for course access (recurring/continuous payments)
✔
Use a 3rd-party billing tool, such as MoonClerk or PayPal Pro.
Create free ($0) courses
✔
✔
Invite or remove participants from courses
✔
✔
Coupon codes/discounts
Use a shopping cart (e.g. 1ShoppingCart; InfusionSoft) or 3rd-party billing tool, such as PayPal Pro.
Use a shopping cart (e.g. 1ShoppingCart; InfusionSoft) or 3rd-party billing tool, such as MoonClerk or PayPal Pro.
Supported payment processors
PayPal, InfusionSoft, 1ShoppingCart, and others.
Direct integration: PayPal, Stripe, InfusionSoft, 1ShoppingCart. Other processors supported via link/redirect.
Supported email marketing providers
MailChimp, InfusionSoft, 1ShoppingCart, and others.
MailChimp, InfusionSoft, and 1ShoppingCart.
Scheduling and Content Delivery
Live (scheduled calendar-based) courses
✔
✔
Copy a previous course and run it again on a new schedule
✘
✔
Self-study courses
✔
✔
Self-study courses with drip content
✔
✔
Audio and Video: Hosting & Streaming Content
Host and stream video
✘
✔
Host and stream audio
✔
✔
Word documents
✔ (as a link/attachment)
✔ (can be displayed directly in the web browser for students to view easily)
PDF documents
✔ (as a link/attachment)
✔ (can be displayed directly in the web browser for students to view easily)
PowerPoint slides
✔ (as a link/attachment)
✔ (can be displayed directly in the web browser for students to view easily)
Learning Community and Discussion Forum
Students have social profiles, bios, and photos in the course community
✔
✔
Discussion questions/prompts for specific activities/content
✔
✔
Students can post images, PDFs, and videos in their responses
✔
✔
General course-wide Q&A and forum
✔
✔
Receive email notifications when a student posts a question
✔
✔
Send email announcements to all participants in course
✔
✔
Progress Tracking
Students can mark each activity as complete, and track their own progress
✔
✔
Course Health feature shows students’ activity completion and comment rates, with data for the whole course or by lesson
✘
✔
Live Calls or Webinars with Recording
Host teleconferences with slides, group chat, and automatic recording
✘
✔
Host video broadcasts with slides, group chat, and automatic recording
✘
✔
Customer Service & Support
Instructor support (supporting you as you create and run your courses)
Phone/Skype
✘
✔
Email
✔
✔
Live chat
✘
✔
Private Facebook group
✘
✔
Searchable FAQ/knowledge base
✘
✔
“101” online training course
✘
✔
Tutorial videos
✘
✔
Student/participant support (supporting your participants as they register, pay, and access your courses)
Phone/Skype
✘
✔
Email
✘
✔
Searchable FAQ/knowledge base
✘
✔
Tutorial videos
✘
✔
Pricing
Free trial (no credit card required to sign up & try the platform)
10 days free (only 5 student signups allowed)
14 days free
Initial setup fee
free
free
Ongoing hosting/support fee
Starts at $129/month for 50 students
Starts at $41/month for 50 students (pre-paid annually)
Category / Feature
Pathwright
Ruzuku
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