What's missing with course hosting software?

Yes definitely. In previous projects I used "hotmart" a Brazilian platform that really served me very well. I usually use options from abroad, especially now that my course and content will be in English. But creating a community around a forum is something I'm still looking for a better option.

I currently don't have courses, but soon will scale a community. Majority of course creators look for extra sources of income. If you give them a easy-to-use chat where they can engage with their audience - this will be nice, as many use other providers for it. Will be even better if you take the hassle with monetization, so I can just say "completed the course? Connect with 300 other //founders// for just $19/mo!"

Like your product's demo on the website, can help you get playground to 3K MRR in 6 months, just drop me a DM on Twitter.

A lot of course / community platforms have some of the below functionality, but I haven't found one that has all of it:

• Sub groups - Ability to create paid sub-groups.
• Badges - Award badges to users based on course completion / group membership.
• Prerequisites - Unlock new courses based on previous course completion.
• CRM integration - Allow admins / moderators to take and share notes on students. Bonus for third party integration capabilities.
• Live Stream Recording - Record live streams, playback later (optionally for a fee), turn live stream recordings into an online course

Ideal flow for me would be:

• User signs up for the course and and an account is created in the CRM - or - admin creates a user in the CRM and an account is created for the course
• Admins can check progress and make notes on the back end
• Admins alerted if the user does not complete the course or stops taking it
• New courses unlocked as prerequisites are completed
• New groups unlocked as courses are completed
• Achievements visible as badges on the user profile and when they interact in the community

For example, Teachable doesn't support community well and circle.so doesn't support courses, so they partnered together forcing you to have two solutions if you want community + courses.

Mighty Networks has multiple courses, but their badges implementation is horrible and they don't support prerequisites. And none of them have solid CRM capabilities, so you have to use something like Zapier to shoestring it all together.