OnlineCourseHost.com Reviews

Spiritual, Self-Help, and Alternative Health Creators: Beware of OnlineCourseHost.com’s AI based censorship. My course was rejected unless I agree to re-write the whole thing using their AI.

I’m a shamanic practitioner with 25 years of experience who tried to publish my course on energetic protection from spirit attachment and negative energy on OnlineCourseHost.com. The platform blocked it at the final “Publish” step — after I’d spent significant time, energy, and money building it. I tried to work with the helpdesk for a manual review, thinking human eyes on it would allow for context, which I provided.

Their automated AI toxicity checker flagged it for promoting “pseudoscience,” even though the topic of energetic protection is recognized in many spiritual traditions and widely discussed in books and online searches. Despite adding detailed disclaimers stating my course is educational and not a replacement for mental health care, the platform repeatedly urged me to rewrite my entire course using their AI tool to pass their toxicity checks. I refused, because it would strip out the precise language and nuance essential to my work. Even after incorporating exact disclaimers they suggested, they returned to insisting on a full AI rewrite. Plus, the fact that they seemed to be using AI to write their help email responses seemed to add a bit of insult to injury.

The core issue seems to be that certain spiritual and shamanic topics simply aren’t welcome on the platform unless rephrased by AI— but they give no warning about this upfront.
If you create courses on spiritual, alternative, or non-mainstream topics, be very cautious. You could invest heavily only to find your work can’t be published unless you let AI rewrite it — potentially losing your authentic voice and message.

If you teach mainstream topics — business, tech, hobbies — this platform may work well for you. I wish I’d known all this before committing to the platform. I’ve had no issue with this on any other LMS platform I’ve explored. This AI based censorship seems to be only an OnlineCourseHost.com thing.

The Biggest Flaw is Only 1 Course Upload with 1 Code of 99$, for every course you need to stack up more code each for 99$. Its better to use Udemy as a hosting or systeme.io they provide better price to performance.

I struggled to rate this product. Not because the software itself is bad (more on that below), but because the deal structure is confusing and, frankly, misleading. My review is mainly about the deal terms, not the product itself. I lost a lot of time due to the team’s habit of using “website” and “course” as if they’re interchangeable.

MY CORE ISSUE
The “number of course websites” you get is really just the number of *published courses*, NOT the number of brands or domains you can use. It gets murkier because the ONLY clear limitation at the top of the deal listing is:

Number of codes = number of course “websites” = number of custom domains.

Every other feature is either listed as unlimited or doesn’t mention any limits, which makes it look like you can create as many courses as you want—just like most AppSumo lifetime deals. Even their pricing page (txhq.org/ochpricing) says unlimited courses are included on the basic plan.

MY EXPERIENCE
I considered stacking codes for multiple brands, clients, or projects. But first, I tried building out a single course to get a feel for the platform. After spending over two hours setting everything up, I tried to click “Create New Course.” I immediately got this error:

“Your maximum of 1 courses is reached. To create another course, please purchase a new code in AppSumo.”

When people bring this up, the founders quickly reply with, “Don’t worry! You can upgrade to unlimited for just $59/month. What a steal!”

It honestly feels like you’re being played. Where’s the deal? This is basically paying for a trial with a small discount to their existing Pro plan. Check their pricing page: unless you absolutely need features in Unlimited, you’re not getting extra value from the lifetime deal. If you need only basic features, get Basic. If you need Pro, get Pro. Otherwise, because of the LTD’s upfront fee, you probably won’t ever get a real discount.

One founder said unlimited video hosting forever isn’t sustainable (which is fair). But their basic tier includes unlimited storage, and it’s cheaper than their “upgrade” option, which is apparently the only path for AppSumo users. Plus, I don’t want to upload videos to their platform—embedding is enough for me, which makes that argument moot.

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ON THE SOFTWARE ITSELF
The product is fine. I’ve been looking for an Open edX alternative and am willing to pay extra to offload technical work. When I saw this on AppSumo, I thought it might be the answer and bought a code to test it out.

- Setting up a course was straightforward.
- Features were easy to find—no endless digging.
- Stripe integration was smoother than with most SaaS tools.
- The built-in AI generator for content is a nice touch. While not necessary in every tool, it actually works. The downside: AI-generated content often didn’t paste cleanly into course fields and usually needed reformatting elsewhere.
- Course landing pages look clean and are audience-friendly. The main course interface is good too.
- I had a caching issue when setting up the CNAME, but support was quick and helpful.

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BOTTOM LINE
As a course creation tool, this holds up with the competition.

As a lifetime deal, it’s confusing. Communication needs to be clearer about what’s actually included, and the deal structure should be reconsidered. Investors would probably love the founders’ approach: it boosts user numbers and, from what I can see, they aren’t cutting profits and are price services like more mature competitors—a win-win for them.

If you have zero technical experience (rare on AppSumo) and need every Unlimited Plan feature — maybe you’re an agency or established course creator — this deal *might* make sense. Otherwise, I’d pass and just treat this tool as another option in a crowded market.

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A NOTE FOR THE FOUNDERS
Possible ways to fix this deal:
- Let users apply the discount to any of your three plans, not just Unlimited.
- Allow unlimited courses up to a reasonable storage limit. Keep unlimited storage for a single course per code for anyone who hits their storage cap.
- Just map codes directly to storage limits, if that’s the real concern around LTD costs.
- Cut AI usage from the LTD or limit it to personal keys if that’s part of your cost concerns.

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Edit for purposes of reply. Trying not to touch original review here.

Thanks for the response, Vasco. I'm keeping an eye on the update re subscription options. I'm looking for an excuse to not refund here. Updated from 2 to 3 tacos on 2025-06-21 because I appreciate the responsiveness to concerns, and it does suck that the language issue of courses != websites seems out of your hands and may not be your fault.

PRO:
You can build a course in just a couple of hours.
Nice integration with ChatGPT.
If you have your own ChatGPT you can even have it create your outline for you, etc.

CONS:
Ability to create 1 course with multiple lessons
NOT SCORM compliant
I didn't see any ability to separate domain and email (maybe I'm wrong) and separate payment gateway PER email and PER domain
I tried to love it but the framework given seemed quite restrictive for my needs. Although the ease of set up was nice. 
I'd rather set up an alternative LearnDash where the number of course restrictions aren't so weird.
I did honestly give it a try. I would not recommend if you want to build MULTIPLE courses and lessons, which is typical of any instructor.
Who really does just a couple courses? Their pay to play model is actually more expensive.
I also didn't like the lack of video hosting. Again very restrictive when most people serve video content as the course.
You can embed the video... okay. Sure.
Just not as robust as I thought and I am frankly a little disappointed.
I kinda feel like I paid for canned air.

If I could give this 10 tacos I would. Easily one of the best AppSumo purchases you can make. What Vasco and his team are doing is phenomenal.