A Quick Guide to Creating an E-Learning Platform with Airtable, Memberstack, Webflow and Zapier

friends i got carried away and i built

my own custom e-learning platform inside

of webflow

let's check it out

hey friends welcome back to the channel

if you're new here my name is connor i'm

the founder of the unicorn factory a

freelancer marketplace in canada and in

new zealand

so i use this channel here to make

tutorials teaching people how they can

build their own

no code marketplaces or directories

using webflow ear table and zapier

so today i am not going to be talking

about marketplaces

i want to show you an e-learning

platform that i built using the webflow

ear table member stack and zapier stack

as some of you may already know besides

running the unicorn factory i also run

my own consulting business where i teach

people how they can build their own

directories and marketplaces using the

same tools that i use to build the

unicorn factory

now one of the things that i recently

started working on for the students that

i've been working with

is a little e-learning platform where i

basically post tutorials like these

where they can re-watch it in their own

time so that they can build additional

features

on top of what they're already doing so

obviously there are already tools out

there that you can use to build

e-learning platforms like

podia or teachable and i did a little

bit of research but i ended up deciding

to have a little crack at building it

myself

inside of webflow and then using ear

table and zapier to basically build the

database and set up all the automation

so what i'm going to be doing in this

video is taking you behind the scenes of

it showing you how it's all set up

and then at the end of the video i am

going to tell you what makes more sense

should you

build a custom version of your

e-learning platform

or should you just stick to the existing

tools that are already out there

but before we get into it you know what

i'm gonna ask please

like this video subscribe to the channel

makes me feel good makes me want to make

more of these videos

but without further ado let's get into

it alright so

here we are so of course i'm using

memstack to run the user portal inside

of webflow what we're looking at here

is the user only page that is built

inside of the webflow cms

so this is actually something that i

haven't done before and what you can do

with member stack is you can create

member only pages where you create a cms

collection inside of webflow for your

students and then you can build them

their own

unique dashboards now what's cool about

building

your dashboards with the webflow cms is

you can add more data rich things in

there for example links

videos and images so at the moment it's

pretty simplistic i only have a bunch of

links in there to our zoom recordings

and their webflow marketplaces and the

air table links

but i've got a lot of plans for this

particular section in the future

so what i want to do is i want to

include things like little

quizzes or progress reports and all

those types of things

and basically the way it will work is

every single

student on the platform will have their

own unique cms

page that they have access to where they

can kind of just see how things are

going what the next few steps are

and so being able to use the members

only

feature inside of member stack has been

really fantastic and that was actually

one of the key reasons why i wanted to

just try and build this myself

first so obviously the main part of the

learning portal is the lessons pages so

i have a bunch of lessons that i've

uploaded already

and again it's pretty straightforward i

use this year to host

all of the different um videos and then

i created a webflow cms collection

for the lessons and i just basically

upload all of this information into here

now one little thing that i've added

that is quite fun is a resource section

so

what i did was i created a separate

collection for

links to different resources or

different action items

so in this case i have added a link to

a google sheet where they can basically

create a metrics dashboard for their

marketplace

and i can just link that through the

webflow collection

and that has been a real fun little

add-on

to add to the site so the other than

that there's not

a lot much else inside this user portal

right now my top priority with this

and the whole reason why i started

working on this in the first place was

just so that i could create these videos

that would allow

my students to prepare or to even just

recap some of the things that they

learned in our coaching sessions

and so really what i'm spending most of

my time on at the moment is just

creating more videos and resources that

i can add to the site

and yeah so that is kind of where i am

with it now

but i just also want to show you now

some of the workflows and some of the

behind the scenes things that i'm doing

with webflow zapier and airtable

so inside of airtable i kind of have my

main

dashboard with all of my lessons and

different themes

where i can add videos and

update descriptions for the different

texts and all those types of things

so what i'm doing at the moment is i

plan out all of my videos in here

and then what i do is i just go and

write the outline

and then i just start recording the

video as soon as i've recorded the video

i also

write the about section and then from

there i have a workflow set up that then

allows me to send

all of the information that i populated

in here

to webflow so once all that information

has been sent to webflow it

automatically populates the different

fields and what's cool about that

is that i can now actually control the

data flow

from inside of airtable which means that

if i add

any new videos that are in between two

existing videos then i can automatically

update things like

the next lesson link or the previous

lesson link or the orientation link

while we're at it i might as well show

you the resource and action section so

what i do here is i

have um a link to a resource for example

in this particular case i link to

an introduction about the box model

inside of webflow

and what i do here is i just populate it

i select the lesson that i want it to be

sent to

and once that's all linked up it then

automatically adds through a collection

list that i added to the lessons page

so in terms of zaps you know because

it's early days i don't have that many

yet but i do have one where i send the

tutorials

from ear table to um

web flows so again it's the standard

steps of

creating a new record in view creating

the actual lessons page inside of

webflow

and then using the custom request step

to also send through any additional

resources that i might want to link to

that particular lesson i also

set up a workflow for when i add a new

student to my

account so i create the accounts in

member stack at the moment

but what that then does is it

automatically creates a google drive

folder where i

store all of the videos that we um from

our one-on-one sessions

then it also creates a new user in the

accounts table inside of ear table

creates the dashboard

um and then it does a whole bunch of

updates to member stack into air table

just so all the data sits in the right

place and so that is the first

version of my e-learning platform

obviously it's still very early days it

doesn't have a lot of features

but it was a very fun use case to

experiment with inside of the airtable

webflow and zapier stack

but now the question becomes is building

an e-learning platform using this stack

better than actually using one of the

existing tools

let's first of all have a look at how

much it actually costs to use

my stack to build an e-learning platform

so

member stack is 25 a month i don't

actually process any of my transactions

through member stacks so i don't get

affected by the transaction fee

then web flow is 25 to 50

depending if you already have an account

you don't need to pay extra for an

account plan but i use cms hosting for

this so that is definitely another

25 i do however already pay

for the cms hosting for my personal

website which this e-learning platform

is

built on so uh to me that is not really

an additional cost

then airtable is 25 but again i'm

already using a table so i'm paying for

the pro

plan that would otherwise cost 25 then

zapier can be between 25 and 50 which

again i'm already paying for

because i'm using it for other platforms

like the unicorn factory

and then the only real thing that i did

have to pay for was

this thea to host all of my videos so i

paid this dear 99

a month and that is something that is

reasonably expensive but it is a really

great platform you can do really

fantastic things with the videos for

example

automatically generating captions adding

chapter titles to your videos

and the whole branding functionality is

quite nice as well

so really the main cost that i

personally have is an additional 125

a month which is the additional member

stack plan and the vista account

but if you were to start from scratch

you can see quite quickly that it does

add up to quite a bit now the question

is

what makes more sense building it

yourself or just using a platform like

teachable or podia

so as you all know i'm very biased

towards building online platforms

yourself using webflow airtable and

zapier

but i can tell you right now there is

absolutely

zero reason why you should be building

your own

custom e-learning platform with

platforms like podio or teachable

already out there

no matter how you look at it in every

regard using a platform like teachable

or podia just makes more sense

because for starters it's a lot cheaper

so the prices of using even the more

advanced plans that they have on their

websites it can range anything between

79.99

i am just paying that for this dear and

vistia is actually included in these

platforms which means that you'll

actually save money by just using a

platform like teachable or podia

so the second thing is you just get way

more useful functionality using a

platform like teachable and podia so

they have a whole bunch of tools

and systems already set up that allow

you to

integrate third-party tools to set up an

affiliate marketing program all those

types of things so

honestly you'd have to build all of

those things from scratch inside of

webflow your table and zapier

and a lot of the features that they have

you couldn't even really rebuild with

that stack

but what if you want to really customize

the look and feel of your e-learning

platform

even then you can actually customize a

whole lot with those platforms so really

the marginal benefit that you get from

using a design tool like webflow which

is definitely better you won't actually

get all the benefits that you get from

the existing

inbuilt features of these e-learning

platforms

so even if you are already a web flow

wizard you know your way around air

table you know heaps about zapier

you should definitely just stick to

using a platform that is already built

and fit for purpose

with all that being said i should

probably explain why i decided to build

my own

custom e-learning platform instead of

just using podia or teachable now the

main reason why i wanted to build it

from scratch was mostly because i wanted

to try out some different use cases

using the airtable webflow and zapier

stack

i'm always really interested to see how

far you can take these tools what kind

of use cases they solve and what use

cases they don't solve

in this case building an e-learning

platform just happened to align with the

kind of consulting work that i'm doing

and it was just a really good way to

experiment with different types of

features that the

awz stack has so if my priority was to

build an e-learning platform or an

online course i would definitely just

use podio or teachable to build it and

that is only because the focus should be

on the course creation not on the

building of the platform

so in conclusion if you want to practice

your airtable webflow and zapier stack

skills then this is definitely a fun

interesting use case to try out

but if your main goal is to build an

online platform or an e-learning

platform then just use one of the

existing tools that are already out

there

with that being said i hope this was an

informative video

if it was please hit like please

subscribe to the channel

and i'll be making more of these fun

videos in the future

other than that i hope you have a great

rest of your day goodbye