Lectea

What Lectea Is

Lectea (レクティー) is a Japanese service for building and selling an online school. Its home page promises that anyone can easily make an online course, and lists what is included: video course creation, sales pages, payment processing and an email delivery system, so a creator does not need to combine several separate services. The site and its help center are in Japanese, and prices are in yen.

Lectea is run by 株式会社いないいないばぁ (IIB Co., Ltd.), founded in August 2013 and based in Shibuya, Tokyo, with 20 staff including external partners. The company page says its mission is to build a platform where anyone can teach easily and to give more people a place to learn. Besides Lectea it makes educational board games, including a board game based on the bestseller The 7 Habits, and produces educational content for people who want to teach their knowledge and skills.

The product is aimed at individuals and small businesses who want their own course site without web development knowledge. The home page says a school can be opened in three steps (register an account, set up the course, upload video) in about five minutes.

Building Courses

Content is organized into courses, chapters and lessons. Each lesson centers on video, and creators can also upload audio (MP3) and documents such as PDFs; the FAQ confirms PDF course materials can be uploaded alongside video. Courses can be duplicated, the site colors changed, and a school theme chosen.

The lesson tools are more detailed than the simple pitch suggests. Every plan, including the free one, includes:

• scheduled publishing of lessons with an automatic email when each lesson goes live;
• a live streaming function;
• a publication deadline for a course and a viewing deadline for learners;
• conditional publishing, so a lesson can be shown only to certain learners;
• sample videos that prospects can watch before buying;
• a blog or news function;
• an editable purchase form.

Paid plans add automatic enrollment in another course after an email is sent and simultaneous enrollment in several courses. Managing learners covers adding and removing them one by one and checking each learner's progress, and the home page notes that progress data shows which courses have low or high learning rates. CSV upload of learner lists starts on Basic, and the report function on Pro.

Selling and Payments

Lectea includes a landing page builder for product sales and newsletter sign-ups, a sales page builder, and a generator for the legally required commercial transactions notice, terms of use and privacy policy pages. Creators can set multiple prices for a course, cap the number of sales, sell products other than courses, and add an order bump so buyers can add a second item at checkout.

Payments run on Stripe. Credit card, bank transfer and installment payments are available on every plan; subscription billing is available on paid plans, while the free plan cannot start new subscription sales. The home page says payments can be used from as early as the same day, with no screening. Coupon codes, for discounts to specific participants or referral discounts, start on the Basic plan, as do Google Analytics and Tag Manager settings. The pricing table lists Facebook Pixel setup ("Facebookピクセルの設定") in the same row.

Email, LINE and Community

Email is a large part of the product. Lectea sends bulk email, automatic reply emails and HTML email on every plan, and segments sends by type of reader (purchasers, non-members, members). The home page says Lectea built its own mail server to achieve a high delivery rate. Step email sequences for automated follow-up are on the Pro and Business plans.

LINE delivery, also on Pro and Business, lets a creator send messages to learners from the Lectea admin screen, including step sequences. Chat with learners starts on Basic. Pro and Business add lesson comments and the room (community) function: 1 room per course on Pro and 5 rooms per course on Business. The FAQ explains that the point of these tools is automation: application, payment and course delivery normally each need checking, but Lectea automates them so one person can run a course.

Plans, Prices and Fees

The pricing page lists four plans, with no initial fee:

• Free, 0 yen: 1 free course, up to 30 learners, unlimited lessons, 2GB of video storage, 1 admin account.
• Basic, 2,980 yen a month or 29,800 yen a year: unlimited courses and learners, 20GB of storage, the Lectea footer advertising removed, 1 admin.
• Pro, 7,980 yen a month or 79,800 yen a year: 40GB of storage, 3 admin accounts, reports, LINE, step email, comments and 1 room per course.
• Business, 19,800 yen a month or 198,000 yen a year: 100GB of storage, 5 admin accounts and 5 rooms per course.

Extra storage can be added on any plan: 5GB for 2,980 yen a month, 10GB for 4,480 yen and 20GB for 9,980 yen.

Fees are charged per sale. Stripe's fee is 3.6% on every plan, and Lectea's own transaction fee is 6.4% on Free and Basic, 1.4% on Pro and 0% on Business. The pricing page works through a 1,000 yen sale on the lower plans: 64 yen goes to Lectea, 36 yen to Stripe, and 900 yen is paid into the creator's Stripe account automatically. The free plan needs no credit card; a card is only required for paid options. The FAQ lists planned updates including surveys, affiliate features, tests and upsells.

What Customers Say

One customer, Tamura, a business owner, says: "私一人で十分運営できているのは嬉しい誤算でした。" (Being able to run it well on my own was a pleasant surprise.) Tamura also notes that several learners found the member site through search. Koji, who runs a bread-making class, says online courses sell well some months and poorly in others, so not having to worry about a monthly fee was a big draw. An editor (綛谷さん) says the requirement was a service that could hold video materials, handle communication with learners, build landing pages easily and take payment from them, and Lectea covered all four.

Who It Suits

Lectea suits Japanese-speaking creators, coaches and small schools who want course hosting, sales pages, payments, email and LINE in one place, and who may run the whole business alone. The free plan lets a first course go live at no monthly cost, with fees taken only on sales. Creators with steady sales will find the Pro and Business plans cut Lectea's share of each sale from 6.4% to 1.4% or 0%. Buyers who do not read Japanese should note that the site and help center are in Japanese.