Custom edtech apps for operators who outgrew Teachable
Custom LMS, cohort management, enterprise training, and certification platforms on subscription. Senior engineer, $3,499/mo, 2 to 4-day delivery cycles.
Who this is for
Edtech founder, online-school operator, or corporate L&D lead whose off-the-shelf LMS (Teachable, Thinkific, Canvas) has hit a wall.
The pain today
- LMS cannot support cohort structure your program needs
- No gamification or engagement features to lift completion
- Enterprise customers want SSO, custom branding, reporting
- Certification or compliance features missing
- Student data locked in the LMS with no good export path
The outcome you get
- Custom edtech web app on subscription at $3,499/mo
- Cohort, gamification, or enterprise features shipped in 8 to 14 weeks
- SSO (SAML, OAuth) and custom branding for enterprise deals
- Stripe or invoice billing with subscription and one-time flows
- Clean data model with export paths for student data
When your LMS stops scaling with your program
Three signals. One: your program has cohort structure (weekly live sessions, peer feedback, fixed start dates) and the LMS forces on-demand patterns. Two: enterprise customers are asking for SSO, custom branding, and reporting the LMS cannot deliver. Three: you are hitting API limits or paying for features you do not need. Custom work becomes worthwhile when the LMS costs are climbing and the platform is blocking your growth. Below that threshold (usually under $500k in annual revenue), staying on the LMS and configuring hard is still the right call.
Typical features I build
Cohort management (fixed start dates, peer cohorts, live session scheduling, attendance). Progress tracking (module completion, assessment scores, certificate generation). SSO and enterprise auth (SAML, OAuth, Azure AD, Google Workspace). Custom branding (white-label for enterprise customers). Gamification (points, leaderboards, badges where they actually help). Billing (Stripe subscriptions, invoice-based for enterprise, coupon logic). Reporting (student progress, cohort outcomes, enterprise dashboards). Video integration (Mux, Cloudflare Stream, Zoom). Each is 2 to 6 weeks of subscription work.
Integrations that matter
Stripe for subscription and one-time payments. Zoom or Daily.co for live sessions. Calendly for office-hours scheduling. Slack, Circle, or Discord for community (deep integration or lightweight SSO-to-Slack). Mux or Cloudflare Stream for video hosting and delivery. SendGrid or Postmark for transactional email. For enterprise deals, SAML SSO is the hardest integration and worth doing right — Okta, Azure AD, and Google Workspace cover 80 percent of enterprise customers. I set up SAML with a proper test matrix before shipping to the first enterprise customer.
Pricing and engagement model
Standard $3,499/mo. Pro $4,500/mo. Pro for faster cycles during initial build phase. 14-day money-back guarantee. Cancel anytime. 100 percent code ownership under Work Made for Hire. Hosting on Vercel or AWS — separate cost, typically $100 to $800/month. Video costs (Mux, Cloudflare Stream) pass through — budget based on video hours per student. For edtech founders raising or scaling fast, Pro tier during the initial 3 to 6 months usually pays back through faster go-to-market.
Case: GigEasy — 3-week MVP pattern applied to edtech
At GigEasy I delivered a Barclays and Bain Capital-backed MVP from scratch in 3 weeks. The discipline — aggressive scope, senior engineering, daily async updates — transfers directly to edtech MVP work. For edtech founders raising on the back of an early product demo, shipping the first usable version in 3 to 6 weeks is realistic. Cohort infrastructure, progress tracking, and Stripe billing are all well-understood patterns. Fancy video is not needed in V1 — good UX and working live sessions cover 80 percent of the value.
When a white-label LMS is enough
If your program structure fits Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, or Circle, and you only need custom branding plus Stripe integration, the right answer is a white-label plan on one of those platforms. $200 to $500/month, running in a week. Custom LMS work pays back when the platform genuinely blocks you — cohort mechanics, enterprise SSO requirements, or data-ownership needs. I will tell you in the first call which bracket you are in. Most edtech founders stay on a platform for longer than they should before building custom.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Built and shipped an investor-ready MVP from scratch
Built the entire technological base and delivered MVP in just 3 weeks, enabling a successful rapid launch and investor demo.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Can you implement SSO for enterprise customers?
- Yes. SAML 2.0 and OIDC both supported. I use WorkOS, Auth0, or Clerk for managed SSO, or build directly against Okta and Azure AD depending on client needs. Each enterprise customer gets a test-before-go-live SSO matrix ensuring their IdP configuration works. Typical first SSO implementation: 2 weeks. Additional enterprise SSO setups: 2 to 4 days each. This is table-stakes for enterprise deals above $20k ACV.
- How do you handle video hosting?
- Mux for adaptive bitrate streaming at professional quality. Cloudflare Stream as a budget-friendly alternative with similar quality. Both handle transcoding, adaptive delivery, and analytics. For live sessions, Zoom or Daily.co with SSO and attendance tracking. Video costs pass through — budget $0.01 to $0.05 per video-minute delivered depending on provider. For programs with heavy video load, cost optimisation is worth 30 to 60 minutes of audit in the first month.
- Can we export student data?
- Yes, and you should insist on this from day one. I build the data model so every student interaction is exportable — progress, assessments, time-on-task, cohort participation. CSV export, API access, or webhook streaming to a data warehouse (BigQuery, Snowflake). You own the data. No vendor lock-in. This matters for compliance, for enterprise customers who demand portability, and for future product decisions based on cohort data analysis.
- Do you integrate with Zoom or Calendly?
- Yes. Zoom integration creates meeting rooms programmatically, tracks attendance, and embeds recordings. Calendly integration lets students book office hours with instructors or TAs directly from the app. Both are OAuth integrations — users connect their accounts once and meetings flow through. For programs running heavy live-session schedules, a custom scheduler on top of the Zoom API is sometimes worth building — 2 to 3 weeks of extra work.
- What about gamification?
- Points, badges, leaderboards, streaks — all easy to implement, all worth considering. Impact on completion varies by program. For consumer edtech (Duolingo model), gamification drives engagement. For professional training, subtle progress indicators outperform flashy gamification. I help you decide in week one based on audience research and similar program benchmarks. Avoid gamification for gamification's sake — it adds complexity without lifting learning outcomes if done wrong.
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