Skillba

What Skillba is

Skillba is a Dutch-language academy platform where coaches and trainers build and sell their own online trainings and e-books. The home page calls it "Hét academy platform voor coaches en trainers" (the academy platform for coaches and trainers) and describes it as 100% Dutch software, built in the Netherlands, with the platform fully in Dutch. A creator gets an academy in their own branding, a drag-and-drop lesson builder, landing pages, a checkout tied to their own Mollie account, and a dashboard that shows how far each customer has progressed.

Skillba says it wrote the platform from scratch rather than building it on WordPress. Its FAQ explains that WordPress is fine for a simple blog but easy to hack, so the team wrote all the code itself and keeps security and updates in its own hands, and that Skillba was built by online marketers who know what entrepreneurs want. The home page says more than 850 customers use it and that more than 17,000 transactions have gone through it.

What a creator actually gets

Building lessons. Lessons and landing pages are put together in a drag-and-drop builder that the home page says offers more than 15 options. Quizzes let students test their knowledge, and content dripping releases material either from the moment a student enrolls or on a fixed date and time. Skillba says all the technical setup is already done, so a creator can start building the academy and its products straight away.

An academy in your own branding. The academy carries the creator's logo, background photos, font and colors. Products appear only in that academy: the FAQ points out that many other online academies place a training in a kind of marketplace, where the creator loses customers, and that Skillba does not.

Getting customers in. Every e-book and training gets its own landing page with either a signup form or a button to the payment page. As soon as someone fills it in or pays, they receive an email on behalf of the creator's academy with unique login details, set a password and have access at once, so a purchase made in the middle of the night needs no manual work. A creator can also give away an e-book with its own landing page to collect leads, and one customer quoted on the home page describes running a free challenge on the platform.

Access duration and renewals. For a paid training the creator sets how many days a customer has access, which the FAQ says keeps anyone from having lifelong access to the content. A renewal offer lets a customer buy extra access time at a set price, configured under a "Verlengen" (renew) tab on the product.

Discount codes. Creators make their own codes in the dashboard, typing a code or generating a random one, and set how often it can be used and until which date it is valid.

Selling and payments. Payments run through the creator's own Mollie account, with iDeal and Bancontact included plus six more payment methods, and all money goes straight to that account. When a buyer from abroad purchases a training, the checkout page works out the VAT of the buyer's country automatically. Each paying customer gets a PDF invoice at once, and the creator receives an email per sale with the customer's details and the amount paid, plus the invoice for their own bookkeeping.

Tracking progress. The FAQ says the creator's dashboard shows "hoe ver klanten zijn in jouw online training" (how far customers are in your online training).

Marketing tools and integrations. Pages are built for Google with fast loading and clean URLs. Tracking codes for Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Microsoft Clarity and Hotjar can be added, email integrations cover Laposta, Mailchimp, Enormail, ActiveCampaign and MailBlue, and chat options put WhatsApp, Tawk, Crisp or FB Messenger on a landing page. Skillba does not promote a creator's training itself, the FAQ says, but it gives tips on social media and online marketing and can put a training or academy in the spotlight on its own social channels by arrangement.

On a phone. The academy is responsive, so customers can log in and follow a training on mobile. Skillba recommends setting the academy up on a computer.

Plans, fees and support

The FAQ describes two packages. The Opstartpakket (Startup package) can do everything the Pro-pakket (Pro package) can, except sell products, and is meant for putting a training online at your own pace; when it is ready, one click upgrades the account to Pro. Charging for a digital product requires one of the paid subscriptions. The site invites creators to open a free trial account without obligation, or to book a call first to talk through their situation. The home page prints no prices.

Skillba keeps no fee on sales. Asked whether it takes a cut, the FAQ answers no: it charges no transaction costs, and the creator pays only for the academy license. The home page claims that on average creators earn back their Skillba subscription within two months, and one customer, Jeroen Kemker of Kemker ICT, says the same of his own academy: "Binnen twee maanden had ik de kosten van mijn online academy al terug verdiend" (within two months I had already earned back the cost of my online academy).

Every subscription has a one-month notice period, and canceling is done by contacting Skillba. After canceling, students keep access to the creator's digital products for one more month, but nothing new can be sold.

Security and privacy get their own FAQ answers. Videos and e-books cannot be seen without login details, the platform is regularly tested by ethical hackers, and the home page lists data centers in the Netherlands with daily backups. The platform is built to the guidelines of the AVG, the Dutch name for the GDPR; the data and the backup servers are in the Netherlands, only essential personal data is stored, and Skillba signs a data processing agreement digitally with each teacher.

Support is a selling point. The home page promises customer service you can phone, "Ook in het weekend en per WhatsApp" (also at weekends and via WhatsApp). The team helps with using Skillba, with where to begin on an online product and with advice on promoting it, and a 3-minute video introduces the platform.

Who it suits

Skillba suits a coach or trainer working in Dutch who wants a branded academy for self-made trainings and e-books, sold through their own Mollie account with no cut taken from each sale. Creators selling to Dutch buyers get iDeal and Bancontact without extra setup, and the automatic VAT calculation helps when a buyer comes from another country. Someone building a first course can use the Startup package to put the content online at their own pace before paying to sell, and anyone who prefers to talk things through can phone the team, at weekends too.

The access-duration and renewal settings fit trainers who sell time-limited programs, and the lead-capture landing pages fit a creator who grows a list with a free e-book or challenge. The customers quoted on the home page run a numerology academy, a piercing academy, an ICT business and a weight-management program, which shows the range of small businesses using it.

It is a narrower fit for a creator who wants to work in a platform in another language, since Skillba is fully in Dutch, and for anyone who expects the platform to market their courses, because promotion stays the creator's job.