I think this is a no brainer, are you a creative pro or product creator - getting this deal.

Compared to
- the getting onboard the established big players & monthly costs. 
Being able to set it up and experimenting & creating your courses until you are ready to go, whiteout some monthly costs snapping you're heals…
Or
- the WP route I was planning on, as simply not only the upfront cost - but much more the number of hours you need to spend on designing, styling - not to mention finding your way trough which extra plugins you need + integrating them so it works, before actually getting to designing & developing your courses. - Only to realise that when things are going well and you are breaking even, you suddenly have to pay attention - and time to new updates, functionalities, risks, etc. besides creating your content & interacting with your tribe/customers. - And then you’ll if this does not “kill you” - you find your self having to outsource maintenance to a third party or VA, to not get caught up in tech & maintaining of the platform, but now all your creative workarounds - ends up costing you time and errors as the third party (you spend several hours evaluating) don't know these and you can’t remember exactly how and why you did it.

All in all the upside of the established is down-weighted by monthly costs and inflexibility, - and the WP solution costs your valuable time & focus.

Besides all the fine answers already given in the Q&A easing me, - I only have 2 points:

1. I really am hoping that the UI will get an overhaul.
Anything inspiration/styling it in the direction of Tutor LMS, Learndash-ish or similar would be golden! 

(including the badges)

2. Integration - SyncSpider!

Get integration with Sycspider, like Zapier, but much better + cheaper!! Syncspider.com is capable of so much more and, much more affordable than zapper. - The team behind are both super skilled & super nice, plus its an “easy” integration, that would not take much time. They’ll help you/ do all the work!!

:-)

Henrik