A lean course-platform stack for solo consultants

First choose who owns the infrastructure work

A hosted platform such as COACHY packages the member area and course-delivery infrastructure. A membership plugin runs inside a WordPress installation you control. That is not merely a feature difference; it assigns responsibility differently.

The hosted starting point: COACHY Premium

COACHY Premium was listed at €42 per month on monthly billing or €35 per month equivalent with €420 billed annually, before VAT. The published boundary included one course or product, unlimited members and storage, a COACHY subdomain, course media and downloads, sequential release, basic statistics, landing pages, tracking-code support, and autoresponder connections.

The vendor documents a 30-day trial that expires automatically without requiring cancellation. COACHY Deluxe was listed at €78 monthly or €65 equivalent with €780 billed annually and added five included courses, deeper automation, a landing-page builder, tests and certificates, staff access, integrations, and use of an own domain. The pricing page listed a one-time $25 plus VAT setup fee for connecting that own domain.

Premium is defensible when one course is the product and hosted operations are valuable. Deluxe becomes a candidate only when you can name the second-course, domain, automation, certificate, staff, or integration requirement. Do not pay for five course slots before the first course has a validated learner and support path.

The owned-WordPress path: pause on DigiMember right now

On August 19, 2026, DigiMember's product, order, support, and affiliate pages returned a 503 maintenance response. There is no live page on which to confirm checkout, requirements, support boundaries, or whether the partner program is operating. We therefore removed the vendor CTA and do not treat it as a current shortlist.

An August 12 documentation snapshot described a WordPress-only free and Pro path, but that snapshot is not a current quote. If the site returns, recheck the exact WordPress and PHP requirements, plan boundary, tax, cancellation, changelog, support policy, and a native Digistore24 promolink before publishing any price or affiliate CTA.

The general WordPress responsibility remains: add hosting, backups, transactional email, hardening, update testing, restore drills, plugin compatibility, and admin time to the comparison. A plugin license is not the whole delivery stack.

The five-part minimum stack

1. Protected delivery: one course or membership home with a tested learner login.
2. Commercial start: one payment event that grants access and one failure or refund event that removes it correctly.
3. Permission-based email: receipts and service messages separated from optional marketing consent.
4. Support route: one monitored address, honest response time, and a recovery process that does not request passwords by email.
5. Exit archive: original video, audio, text, downloads, learner records you lawfully need, and an export test outside the platform.

Run one closed-loop trial

Create a short internal course with two modules and a test learner. Verify enrollment, receipt, login, timed release, password reset, completion, export, cancellation, failed payment, and access removal. Time the work. Do not test with a real paid customer until the commercial and support paths are understood.

The winning platform is the one whose responsibility boundary you can operate reliably—not the one with the largest list of course-business features.