LearnCube

LearnCube is virtual classroom software for live online teaching, built first for tutors and language schools. Its About page describes the company as "an award-winning virtual classroom software startup on a mission to reimagine live online tutoring and language education." It was incorporated in London in 2014, describes itself as remote-first with a team of 10+ nationalities, and sells three things: a virtual classroom for individual teachers, an Online School platform that runs a whole tutoring or language business, and APIs that larger companies embed in their own products. The homepage says it has "helped over 50,000 tutors and teachers deliver more than 5 million online classes."

The founding story on the About page explains the language focus. LearnCube's founder, an Australian developer, moved to Mexico in 2011 to learn Spanish and started building a way to video-chat with friends in Argentina alongside his classes. In 2013 he turned that into an online language school and joined the StartUp Chile incubator, where he met Alex Asher, now CEO. LearnCube later joined the Emerge Education program before registering in London.

The virtual classroom

The classroom runs in the browser. "LearnCube delivers quality audio / video simply through the web-browser (WebRTC) so you no longer have to spend time training students on software," the homepage says, and the tagline is "No downloads. Brand as your own. Designed for teachers, tutors & trainers." There are also Android, Chrome and Apple apps.

The whiteboard is the center of a lesson. Teachers "Draw, type, annotate, load content and switch between multiple whiteboards," and the About page describes multi-tab whiteboards with an integrated cloud-based content library. Teachers upload slides, documents and media to that library and pull them into class instantly. Recording is built in, which the company pitches both as quality control for schools and as review material for students. Over time LearnCube has added post-class notes, homework, subject-specific features and breakout rooms, in its words "to improve education outcomes."

The product is sold for two kinds of teaching. For languages, LearnCube offers ESL lesson materials, "Modern content & curriculum (CEFR A1-C2 + Business) designed for teaching ESL, French and Spanish online," plus an AI Teacher Assistant, still in beta, that can "Create personalised language exercises in seconds with just a few clicks (reading comprehension, fill-in-the-blanks and more)." For tutoring, the virtual classroom is pitched as "Perfect for math & science tutors."

Branding is a selling point throughout. On the homepage, LearnCube "allows you to white-label the classroom (logo, colours, domain)," so a school's students see the school, not LearnCube.

Online School for tutoring and language businesses

For organizations, LearnCube's Online School is described as an all-in-one system that "Includes CRM, LMS (Learning Management System), class/course scheduling, online classes and online payments." The About page lists what it manages: student and teacher accounts, administration staff, class credits, scheduling, calendars, virtual classes, automated reminders, lesson materials, detailed reporting and white-label branding.

Administration is designed for staff who schedule many classes: a drag-and-drop calendar, recurring classes, bulk student enrollment and automatic email reminders. Reporting covers class attendance, teacher ratings for quality control and student feedback. The Online School Premium plan adds learning analytics including talk-time, a payment gateway for credit cards, scheduling with student self-booking, a dedicated account manager and marketing resources. The company manages the infrastructure, and says its platform "is used by students in over 1000 cities world wide."

A corporate version, the B2B Language Training Platform, is a "Turn-key solution for live online corporate training: class scheduling, payments, reporting, content, teachers." The Enterprise solution promises the ability to "scale to 1000s of concurrent classes," with single sign-on and developer APIs.

APIs

LearnCube also sells its technology to other platforms. The Virtual Classroom and Whiteboard APIs let companies "Integrate our highly scalable APIs into your existing language teaching platform," and the Whiteboard API offers drag-and-drop images, drawing, writing and real-time collaboration "at high scale." The About page says LearnCube serves "some of the largest online language and tutoring companies in the world" with these API products and names Babbel, Kern Training, Preply and Iboux among the companies it helps scale. Fabio Venneri of Lingoda says, "Integrating the virtual classroom API was very quick," and Mark Hughes of Tutorful calls it "Extremely easy to integrate, very reliable, top-class support from the team."

Plans and prices

The pricing page lists four options:

• Virtual Classroom Basic, for new teachers, is free: a professional virtual classroom, unlimited 1:1 classes, video, audio and chat, and a materials library that saves up to 10 files.
• Virtual Classroom Pro, for independent teachers, is from $19: everything in Basic plus unlimited group classes, branding with logo and colors, automatically saved class notes, breakout rooms, a library of up to 1000 files, professional customer support and an optional ESL Materials add-on. Pro starts with a free trial.
• Online School Premium, for schools or companies, starts from $99 a month plus a one-time setup fee of $1497. It includes unlimited student, teacher and admin accounts, a central materials library, scheduling, automated reminders, attendance and class reporting and premium support, with add-ons for company features, learning analytics, ESL materials and homework. The Online School page adds a 4-week pilot including training, consultation and onboarding materials, a monthly subscription based on class volume, a Video Recording add-on at extra cost, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
• Enterprise is quoted after a free consultation.

The homepage suggests the Online School to anyone with more than 10 teachers.

What users say

The homepage reports that "97% of students rate LearnCube's Virtual Classroom 4+ stars" and that it has delivered 5 million classes in 140+ countries. Cleri of Savani English Language School writes, "The classrooms are very easy to use both for the teachers and the students - even the seven-year-olds."

Who it suits

LearnCube suits independent language teachers and math and science tutors who want a proper teaching room in the browser, starting free and moving to Pro when they run group classes or want their own branding. It suits language schools and tutoring businesses with a team of teachers that need scheduling, payments, reporting and a white-labeled classroom in one system, and companies running corporate language training. Developers at larger language platforms can use the APIs instead. The focus is live teaching: LearnCube is built around scheduled classes, a whiteboard and the administration behind them, so a creator who mainly wants to sell recorded, self-paced courses is not its audience.