LearnHub Academy
Online Learning Marketplace
LearnHub Academy is a full-featured online learning marketplace connecting 500+ instructors with over 10,000 active students. Code Zerra built the entire platform — from a rich course authoring studio to live video streaming, Stripe subscription billing and an AI-powered recommendation engine — all on a PHP/MySQL stack optimised for performance and cost.
The Challenge
The client wanted a full-featured learning marketplace competitive with Udemy and Teachable, but with a unique community-first model. The core challenges were the course authoring complexity, scalable video transcoding and delivery, a fair multi-party Stripe payment split between platform and instructors, and a personalisation engine that worked without invasive data collection.
- Rich course authoring with video, quizzes, assignments and certificates
- Video transcoding (FFmpeg) and adaptive bitrate streaming (HLS)
- Stripe Connect for split payments: platform fee + instructor payout
- Recommendation engine without third-party tracking cookies
- Must handle 500 concurrent live video viewers per class session
- Full SEO indexing of all 2,000+ course pages
Our Solution
We built on PHP 8.2 with a custom MVC architecture for maximum performance and hosting cost control. FFmpeg powered async video transcoding into HLS with CloudFront delivery. Stripe Connect with automatic payouts handled instructor revenue sharing. The recommendation engine used collaborative filtering on anonymised learning behaviour stored in Redis.
- PHP 8.2 custom MVC — lightweight, fast, cost-effective to host
- FFmpeg async transcoding → HLS with multiple quality renditions
- AWS CloudFront CDN for global video delivery at scale
- Stripe Connect: platform fee splitting and automated instructor payouts
- Collaborative filtering recommendation engine on anonymised data
- Algolia search across 2,000+ courses with sub-50ms results
The Results
LearnHub launched on schedule and hit profitability within eight months — faster than any comparable platform the client had benchmarked against. Twelve months post-launch: 10,000+ active students, 500+ instructor accounts, £180K MRR and zero critical incidents. The Lighthouse performance score holds at 97 across all pages. The client's Series A fundraise cited the platform's technical quality and growth metrics as primary drivers.
Technology Stack
Key Features & Capabilities
Course Authoring Studio
Drag-and-drop lesson builder supporting video uploads (auto-transcoded to HLS), rich text, quizzes, assignments and completion certificates.
Live Video Classes
WebRTC-powered live sessions with up to 500 concurrent viewers, interactive Q&A, screen sharing and automatic recording to course library.
Algolia-Powered Search
Sub-50ms full-text search across 2,000+ courses with faceted filtering by category, level, price range and rating.
Recommendation Engine
Collaborative filtering surfacing relevant courses based on anonymised learning behaviour — no third-party cookies required.
Stripe Connect Billing
Flexible pricing (one-off, subscription, bundle), automated instructor payouts with configurable platform fee, and full invoice management.
Certificates & Progress
Auto-generated completion certificates, per-lesson progress tracking, streaks and a student dashboard with enrolled, in-progress and completed views.
"From strategy to launch, Code Zerra was an extension of our own team. LearnHub now serves over 10,000 active students with zero downtime since go-live. The ROI has been extraordinary — and we're already planning our next build with them."
Amanda Torres
CEO, LearnHub Academy