Not there yet
“Go beyond a standard learning management system with a platform that offers a complete toolkit for creating content, teaching online, and selling to a global audience...
Alternative to: Kajabi, Teachable, and Thinkific. Get integration for Zoom and BlueJeans by Verizon, one-click classes, and a calendar that allows students to track live classes.” ---Utobo
I purchased Utobo a few months ago for a specific event and was not able to use it. It just wasn't where I wouldn’t be as embarrassed to use it. I know that “you get what you paid for”, but in this case I did not get what I paid for.
I was sold on Utobo by the Appsumo review, and an interview I'd seen with Raj, the CEO and a few reviews on their website.
Unfortunately, the reality is that Utobo does not go beyond a standard LMS, and does not offer a complete toolkit for creating content, teaching and selling to a global audience—at least not in the way that Kajabi, Teachable, and Thinkific do. They don’t begin to reach them, let alone go beyond them or other “standard” LMS’.
I held-off on this review because I wanted to give the Utobo team time to incorporate the basic changes/features I requested ( I have listed a few below). I appreciate that Raj and his team have incorporated most from a list of 10 or so, but the platform still leaves a lot to be desired-especially if you want to present a professional service and provide a user-friendly experience to your students.
Please know that I have the receipts for requests for all of the basic features that Utobo did not/still does not include or has fixed, but don’t have space to list them here.
-Student registration is super confusing. PARTIALLY REMEDIED
-No administrative way to test how the course looks or will run before you publish it. NOT REMEDIED
-Even though they said you could, they had no way for us to sell digital products. No ebooks, audios or other kinds of digital products. PARTIALLY REMEDIED. (They promised that I would be able to sell interactive ppt.macro enabled digital product. Platform still only accepts basic ppt slides.
-Students can’t download documents, any kind, no workbooks, checklist, guides, essentially the basic, normal stuff that goes along with teaching or taking a course. REMEDIED
-The image box to promote your digital product is a small horizontal shape, which means when you upload an image of your ebook or other vertical document, only 1/3 of the image appears. Since most digital products such as ebooks will be vertical, I don’t understand why they would make the image box a small horizontal one. They need to make the image box vertical so the customer can see the entire cover of the ebook, audio file, document etc. NOT REMEDIED
I did not ask for a refund because I was/am hopeful that as they did with other requests to incorporate basic features, they will continue to improve the platform. I do believe they want to be a competitor in the CMS/LMS space and have the capacity to do so.