What's New in Zenler: 2025 Year in Review and 2026 Platform Updates

A complete walkthrough of Zenler's major feature releases in 2025, including community features, survey funnels, gamification, and what's coming in Q1

🎉 What we covered in our Special Christmas Office Hours:

The complete community feature set launched throughout 2025, including posts, live chat, live streaming, and social features
Survey funnels with branching logic that automatically segments and qualifies leads
The new gamification system with levels, points, daily streaks, and leaderboards
Newly announced features including double opt-in and scheduled blog posts
The Q1 2026 roadmap including cohort courses, branded mobile apps, and the reimagined site builder

We've just wrapped up what might be the biggest year of development in Zenler's history. During our Special Christmas Edition Office Hours with the full education team, we walked through every major feature that shipped in 2025—and it became clear that these weren't just incremental updates. These were fundamental shifts in how online course creators build their businesses.

This isn't about adding bells and whistles. Every feature we launched this year came directly from what you asked for on the feedback portal, in the Facebook community, and during live support sessions. We listened, we built, and we kept building.

Let me walk you through what shipped, what just launched, and what's coming next.

The Community Revolution: Why We Invested So Heavily

The most successful creators aren't just selling courses anymore. They're building community first. They're nurturing their audience and creating engagement before they even think about opening a course for sale.

That's why we didn't just launch community features and walk away. Throughout 2025, we continuously updated and enhanced the community platform based on how you actually used it. We watched, we listened, and we kept shipping improvements.

Posts and Engagement Features

Your members can now create posts with polls built right in. We added direct video uploads so you don't have to route through the video library anymore. You can trigger email notifications to keep members engaged, disable comments on specific posts when needed, and feature important posts.

These aren't just nice-to-haves. These are the tools that keep your community active and your members coming back.

Live Chat: Real-Time Connection

We built robust live chat functionality into the platform. One-to-one chat, group chat, all happening in real time. This means learning and connection happen immediately, not days later when someone finally checks their email.

Your members get real-time notifications, push notifications straight to their mobile devices. Students can quickly get answers from each other between lessons. It's almost like having Slack or Discord built right into your learning site.

Social Features That Create FOMO

Users can now follow each other. Each profile has a unique handle and URL. When someone follows another member, they get notified when that person creates a post or when someone comments.

You can also follow specific posts for updates. And here's something people might have missed: we added user presence tracking. You can see who's online right now. These are signs of life in your community. When members see lots of other people online, it shows the community is alive and active. These social signals create FOMO and keep people coming back.

Admin Controls: You're in Charge

You have complete control. Pending approvals let you vet each post before it appears. You can add a member questionnaire where people have to answer questions before you accept them into the community. This keeps spammers away.

You can set your community as public, private, or secret. You have all the tools to moderate and manage your community your own way.

Growing Your Community

Growing is straightforward. Click invite, send an invitation by email. Your members can invite others to join as well. Members can lead communities on their own. All the tools you need to scale strategically.

When you post content as an admin, all members get push notifications directly to their mobile devices.

Live Streaming Without Third-Party Tools

This is huge. You can go live directly inside the community. Select the community you want to broadcast to and you're live. No third-party tools needed. No redirecting people to YouTube or Zoom.

We built Zenler's version of Zoom right into your browser without any Zoom client needed. Your members are already in the community, and now you can broadcast to them right there. Perfect for workshops and Q&A sessions.

When you go live, if someone is visiting your page, your live stream automatically pops up. They don't have to wait for it. If they're logged in as a member, they'll see your live stream appear automatically.

We also added automatic cloud recording. Every live stream creates a cloud recording. You don't have to download it and upload it again. All your live streams are automatically recorded and replays are available for anyone to engage with in the future.

Using live streaming in a public community is brilliant for lead generation. It puts community at the heart of your business.

Survey Funnels: Lead Qualification on Autopilot

We launched survey funnels with branching in April 2025. This is intelligent lead qualification that runs almost on autopilot.

Instead of manually sorting through survey responses trying to figure out who's a hot lead versus who needs more nurturing, survey funnels do the segmentation automatically.

Every respondent gets a personalized path through the survey based on what they answer. Hot leads get directed to a booking page. Warm leads get educational content. Cold leads get a nurturing sequence. All automatic, all based on the path they take.

You're not just collecting data. You're automatically categorizing, scoring, and routing leads into the right next step. Faster follow-up, more relevant messaging, higher conversion rates.

In traditional surveys, you get a spreadsheet of responses that someone has to manually review. With survey funnels, you get qualified leads that automatically route to the right place with the right message. That's the difference between collecting information and actually converting leads.

You can enable branching in your surveys. If someone answers a particular question, you can send them to a specific result page or another question. You decide exactly what path you want each type of lead to take.

You can add as many result pages as you want. Each result page can redirect users to a specific URL or display a popup with a download. In the automation section, you can have different sequences for each segment.

The combination of branching logic with automation transforms how you qualify and manage leads. It's not manual qualification anymore. It's faster, more consistent, and the right follow-up happens immediately.

Branching in Course Quizzes and New Quiz Types

We also added branching to course surveys and quizzes. You can enable branching in quizzes or surveys right inside course lessons. You can set the path for a particular learner based on their responses.

For quizzes, we added enhancements including new quiz types like fill in the blanks. These came from popular demand on the feedback portal.

Gamification: Turning Learning Into Achievement

This is a complete engagement system that turns your platform into an achievement-driven experience. It turns learning or membership into a game.

We built the system with configurable levels, different point-earning events, celebration animations, and automatic rewards at each milestone.

Levels and Rewards

You can configure up to 10 levels for your students to progress through. Each level except the first one lets you set a custom name, define the points needed to reach it, and assign a reward.

When a student hits a particular level, they automatically get enrolled in the course or community you've assigned as a reward. Everyone starts at level one, and you watch them climb the levels as they engage.

Point Configuration

You can set exactly how many points students earn for different activities. Award points for completing lessons, passing quizzes, submitting assignments, creating community posts, getting likes, and more.

You can customize the point values to match what matters in your courses. If you want more community participation, give it more points. It's completely flexible.

Leaderboards Create Friendly Competition

Students can see their ranking in three different leaderboards: all-time, 30-day based on recent activity, and 7-day. Each leaderboard shows the top 10 members with their profile images.

This creates healthy competition and rewards high performers. These are social signals that drive engagement.

Daily Streaks: The Psychology of Habit Formation

Zenler is the first and only course platform to have daily streaks built in. Daily streaks are brilliant for building daily habits.

Students earn streak points by doing any point-related activity. When they complete seven consecutive days of activity, they get bonus points plus one streak freeze.

The streak freeze automatically protects their streak if they miss a day because they're on holiday or sick. Students can hold up to 10 streak freezes.

This is the same psychology that makes apps like Duolingo so addictive. Now you have it on your site. Students don't want to break their streak, so they come back daily just to maintain it.

The Redesigned Student Dashboard

The moment a student logs in, they see everything that matters. Total points earned, their rank, how many daily streaks they have, how many streak freezes they have left, recent achievements, the leaderboard, all the details right there.

We've redesigned and reimagined the student dashboard. Everything is prominently displayed. Students can go to their profile and see their current level, how many points to the next level, their rank, and the leaderboard for their community.

Seeing progress and achievement immediately creates motivation to continue. Students who see these dashboard stats have higher engagement and completion rates.

The psychology is simple: visible progress drives continued action. If they have the fear of missing out on their daily streak, they'll come back and do some activity to maintain it.

It's important that you also add content regularly so they keep coming back for fresh material. Even in the community, when someone likes your post, they get points. They'll come just to engage in the community and earn points.

Just Announced: Double Opt-In and Scheduled Blog Posts

During our Christmas Office Hours session, we announced two brand new features that just launched.

Double Opt-In for Email Compliance

Many of you have been requesting this on the feedback portal. Double opt-in is finally here.

When you enable double opt-in for your site and someone signs up for your email list, they receive a confirmation email asking them to verify their subscription. They must click to confirm before being added to your list.

This means only people who actually want to hear from you receive your emails.

Why this matters: First, it dramatically improves your email deliverability. Email providers see that people are actively confirming they want your emails, which protects your sender reputation.

Second, although GDPR doesn't mandate double opt-in, it's considered best practice for demonstrating clear and explicit consent.

Third, it filters out fake emails and spam signups. Your list hygiene stays high.

You'll find this in your site settings under emails. Enable double opt-in, and everyone signing up for your email list will receive a confirmation email. They must click to verify before being added. No automations will trigger until they verify.

Scheduled Blog Posts

You can now schedule blog posts to go live at a particular date and time. You can be on holiday or taking a break, and your blog posts will publish automatically.

Schedule your entire content calendar for blog posts and forget about it for a while. Your blog posts will go live exactly when you want them to.

When you create a blog post, there's a small calendar icon. Click it, specify the date and time, and your post will go live automatically. It picks up the timezone you've selected in your settings.

What's Coming in Q1 2026

This is going to be massive.

Scheduled Community Posts

Once this feature goes live, you'll be able to plan your community content calendar in advance. Schedule posts to go out at optimal times. Keep your community active even when you're not online. Set it and forget it.

Community Email Digest

Keep your members engaged without spamming them. Automated email digests will summarize community activity. Members can set the frequency: daily, weekly, whatever works for them.

Community Onboarding Automation

When a new member joins your community, they automatically get a welcome chat message from you as the admin. Personalized, automated, scalable messages. Every new member feels welcomed from day one without you manually sending a message to every single person.

The New Site Builder

This is the big one. A brand new site builder with professional themes. We're not just updating the current builder. We're building something brand new from the ground up.

Beautiful themes, intuitive design, powerful customization. Without a doubt, the most powerful site builder out there on any creator platform. This is something that can compete with the likes of Wix.

We've completely reimagined it. Everything is theme-based, like WordPress themes. Select a theme and customize it. If you don't like it, work on another theme and push that live.

Zero technical experience required. We're keeping what you love from the old page builder so you don't have to relearn everything, but we're making it faster and easier.

Page speeds will hit 90% and above. We're doing everything required to get there.

The interface is the sleekest out there. Your primary colors, secondary colors, background, text, buttons, all organized. Save your brand colors and change the entire site's color theme with one click.

True drag and drop. Not the kind where you fight with alignment for 25 minutes. This actually works. Headers, paragraphs, images, buttons, custom HTML—everything is drag and drop.

You can manage your entire site from within the builder. Unlike the old page builder where you had to go back to the admin area to edit a different page, everything happens inside the site builder now. Switch between pages, edit any page, all within the builder.

You can add elements inline without dragging and dropping if you prefer. Just click the plus icon and add elements. We're catering to both schools of thought.

Button customization gives you complete control. Text, borders, corners, icons, backgrounds, hover states—all without touching code.

Jump links are simple now. If you have a button that says "go to my pricing" and you want people to jump down to your pricing block, you just select the block from a dropdown. No custom code needed.

Add animations to make your pages come alive. Different animation effects, all professional looking, without touching a single line of code.

We've revamped popups. Position them, size them, type them. Popup library with pre-built templates for hero sections, testimonials, all of it. Page load triggers, scroll triggers, exit intent popups. Target specific audiences and show different popups to different people.

This is coming in Q1 2026. Hopefully. I say hopefully because we're not rushing this. We're building a site builder that makes beautiful websites accessible for everyone. This takes time to get deployed right.

We'll give early access when we're ready, then expand from there.

Expanded Stripe Payment Options

We're expanding payment options significantly. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Bancontact, iDEAL, and a whole lot of options for European users. This removes payment friction and increases conversion for your worldwide user base.

Branded Mobile App for Everyone

We're opening this up to everyone. Build your own iOS or Android app with your branding. We're enabling in-app purchases so students can buy your courses directly from within your app.

Your course, your membership, your bundles, your subscriptions—all available for purchase in your app. You can also use your app as a marketing tool. The app will support free course enrollments, so someone can enroll in your free course on your app.

Push notifications go straight to students. This is the next level of audience ownership. You own your audience even on your mobile app.

Cohort Courses

This is one I'm particularly excited about. With cohort courses, you can sell the same course multiple times to different cohorts.

From January to March, you have one cohort. April to June, another cohort starts together. You sell the same course—cohort one, cohort two, cohort three.

This creates scarcity, lets you build community around each cohort, and increases the value of your courses. This is precisely how big online education companies operate. Companies like Maven have built entire platforms around cohort-based courses.

Once this feature is out, you'll be able to take a course and offer different cohorts. Same course, different cohorts, with separate tracking per cohort.

The Support and Education That Sets Zenler Apart

Not just great features. Our commitment to world-class user education and support from our incredible team.

We're not hiding behind tickets. No other platform comes close to the number of live sessions, workshops, office hours, and support desks that we run.

Live workshop sessions where you learn features hands-on with live instruction. Not pre-recorded videos. Live, interactive workshops where you can ask questions and get help in real time. Visit our tutorial site.

Weekly live support desk run by the team. Drop in, ask your question, get real help when you need it. You talk to real people, not bots. Not generic ticket responses. Real humans who understand the platform and care about your success.

In 2025, we created 80+ blog posts, ran 50+ weekly support desk sessions, 40+ office hours, and answered thousands of support questions. We've run micro workshops on creating stories with AI, branching funnels, Halloween AI workshops, mega sessions like the tour of Zenler, community connection workshop, 60-day accelerator program, and the create your new year product workshop.

Your success is what drives us. We invest heavily in making sure you have every resource you need to succeed with Zenler.

What This All Means for You

What we covered in our special Christmas Office Hours isn't just a few feature updates. This is Zenler evolving into the complete platform you've been asking for.

This is a platform we've been building with you, by you, around your needs. Every feature you see came from what you asked us to do on the feedback portal, your feedback, your real-world challenges running your businesses.

You told us engagement was everything. We doubled down on community features. You told us you needed better lead qualification. We launched survey funnels. You wanted higher completion rates and engagement. We launched gamification.

We build features around your needs.

In 2025 we delivered community features that put engagement at the heart of your business, survey funnels that qualify leads while you sleep, quiz enhancements with branching, gamification that turns passive students into active participants, the new student dashboard that keeps them coming back with daily streaks and leaderboards, and just announced double opt-in for better email deliverability and scheduled blog posts.

What's coming is your own branded mobile app with in-app purchases, cohort courses for running cohort-based programs, scheduled community posts, email digests, onboarding automation messages, expanded payment options, and a completely reimagined site builder.

Backing all of this up is unparalleled user education and support. Weekly workshops, live office hours, active community, real people helping you. Join the Zenler Facebook community

Your success drives us. That's our north star. Zenler: built with you, by you, around your needs. A platform for creators who are serious about building real businesses.

Ready to build your course business with a platform that's actually built for creators? Start your free trial with Zenler today!

Categories: : Zenler Events