When creating learning platforms like Udemy, it isn’t just about the quality of content. You must also plan carefully about how you deliver that content. This is because modern learning platforms thrive on accessible, fast, and easy-to-absorb media.
Behind the scenes, however, developers are repeatedly reengineering the same building blocks. For instance, some still prefer uploading, processing, and delivering course files from scratch. This is fine, especially for those with plenty of resources, but truthfully, it’s a silent grind that slows innovation and lacks efficiency.
So, instead of always starting from scratch, you can turn to specialized tools like Filestack to handle file management and delivery. These tools help you skip the grind, letting you focus on the more important things, such as building great learning experiences.
Why File Handling is a Hidden Bottleneck in Learning Platforms
Platforms like Udemy rely heavily on content-rich formats, such as videos, slideshows, PDFs, screen recordings, and even images. These files are the core of learning experiences, but behind the scenes, they introduce complexity early on in development.
In effect, your team might experience some bottlenecks without even realizing that file handling is the root cause.
Unpredictable Upload Experiences
Uploading large files, especially video lectures, often comes with different problems without the right infrastructure. For example, users might experience:
- Failed uploads on slow or spotty networks
- No progress indicators, possibly confusing users
- No resumable upload support, meaning that the user always has to upload a file from scratch should a disconnection or power outage occur
A poor and unpredictable upload experience can deter or annoy educators, especially if they’re teaching multiple courses.
Video Encoding and Compatibility Issues
The challenge doesn’t stop when a video gets uploaded. You should also ensure that all uploaded videos play well, no matter what.
For instance, you should consider that different browsers and devices might support different video formats. Additionally, if videos aren’t properly transcoded (format conversion)*, users could experience long buffering times or errors like “This video can’t be played.” Lack of video compression is another thing to consider, as this could cause high-quality videos to load very slowly (or not load at all).
Without automatic transcoding and multiple output formats, you end up with inconsistent playback and, eventually, support headaches.
*Note: Transcoding is the process of converting video or audio files to another format. This allows you to play or deliver media across different devices consistently.
Difficulties managing file formats and sizes
Educators upload all kinds of content, as discussed earlier. However, each type of content has its quirks.
For example, PDFs require rendering or preview generation. PowerPoint slideshows, on the other hand, might contain media or animations that break when converted. Moreover, malicious users could upload risky or unsafe files (e.g., .exe files disguised as documents or embedded macros in documents).
Handling this diversity with a DIY setup means writing dozens of file type validators, conversion scripts, and error catchers. It’s not as safe or scalable compared to what you normally want when creating learning platforms like Udemy.
Clunky user experiences for educators and learners
When file management isn’t seamless, the user experience suffers across the board. Here are some situations that show this:
- Educators struggling with unintuitive upload interfaces or confusing error messages could add friction to their experience.
- Learners dealing with slow videos, broken preview links, or corrupted files might cause them to drop their current course or the platform entirely.
- A lack of drag-and-drop support, mobile-optimized UI, customizable cloud storage, and upload reliability adds up to a frustrating and unpolished product.
To build learning platforms like Udemy, you must prioritize having a smooth UX just as much as functionality. It’s a vital part of learner and educator retention.
If not taken care of, these hidden issues in file handling could cost you wasted dev time, bad UX, and poor scalability. In the next section, you’ll see some common yet not too optimal solutions to these problems.
What Developers Usually Do (And Why It Slows You Down)
Building a learning platform like Udemy from scratch often means figuring things out as you go. While this might seem flexible at first, it can quickly drain your development time.
Manual Setups
Most teams start with direct integrations into cloud storage services like AWS S3. That means manually writing logic to handle uploads, file organization, and access permissions. This solution works perfectly fine for a capable or large team, but it’s not the fastest for everyone.
Beyond just storing files, you also have the challenge of encoding videos into different resolutions and generating previews for PDFs. These tasks seem straightforward, but if you factor in edge cases and volume, it’s a different story.
Edge Cases Make Everything More Complicated
Supporting large video files or slideshows means dealing with slow or failed uploads, especially from mobile or slow network users. Thus, developers often need to build resumable uploads, mobile-optimized flows, and even chunking* systems. And this is aside from your learning platform’s core functionality.
*Chunking refers to dividing a file into smaller “chunks” before uploading it to improve efficiency, reliability, and resource usage. This is commonly used when handling large file uploads.
Security and Compliance Overhead
When making learning platforms like Udemy available to your users, you’re not just moving files. You’re also responsible for protecting user data, such as (but not limited to):
- Validating file types and sizes (important for malware detection and protection against DoS)
- Scanning for viruses or malware
- Controlling access permissions
- Logging uploads and accesses for compliance audits
- Storing files in secure locations
Doing this correctly is not trivial, and doing it poorly exposes your platform to different security risks. Because your audience possibly includes minors or handles sensitive educational content, you mustn’t ignore security.
The Cost of Building in-House
While rolling your own solution gives you control, it does come with some trade-offs:
- More development time, budget, and research spent on infrastructure, not features
- Higher maintenance as new file types and browser versions (and with them, issues) emerge
- Slower release cycles due to QA requirements around uploads and media playback
- Higher developer count or quality requirements because of complex functionalities
In the long run, building this infrastructure in-house can delay your MVP and possibly increase your costs.
Why Developers Building Learning Platforms Like Udemy Need a Shortcut
Imagine for a second that you’re an astronaut (from a sci-fi setting) who’s stuck in another world. Assume that you can build your own spaceship from scratch, but you’ll take a few years building it. If a rescue team with an advanced ship comes to take you home much faster and safer, will you take the chance?
This scenario also applies when creating learning platforms like Udemy. You can build your own from scratch, but you will need more time and resources. On the other hand, you can take a shortcut and opt for an existing and complete solution.
Nothing is completely better than the other, but the latter helps you launch faster with fewer moving parts. Here are some benefits of using a complete file management solution:
- Multiple ways to upload multiple file types (e.g., upload images, videos, PDFs, MP4s, and so on using drag-and-drop or upload from cloud apps)
- Automatic video transcoding into web-optimized formats
- Instant file previews for images, documents, and videos
- Built-in CDN (content delivery network) delivery for fast access, regardless of geographical location
- Enhanced reliability for student-facing content
- APIs, SDKs, and integrations for developers
Now, should you opt to take a shortcut, you still have to decide which shortcut you’ll take. Many file management solutions exist for learning platforms like Udemy, and most of them are great. In the next section, take a look at how Filestack makes course file management simpler, safer, more intuitive, and more reliable.
A Developer’s Shortcut: How Filestack Simplifies Course File Management
Filestack is a complete file management solution that helps you solve file upload, transformation, and delivery challenges. With this, you don’t have to build these file-related features from scratch. Here’s how it helps developers move faster and launch better learning platforms.
Seamless Upload UI and UX
Filestack provides a highly polished file picker that supports
- Drag-and-drop functionality right out of the box
- Mobile-friendly uploads, including camera and file system integration
- Cloud source support like Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive
With Filestack’s file picker, you get a plug-and-play UI that works across different platforms and file sources. This is essential for Udemy-like platforms where educators upload files from various devices.
Smart Processing
Filestack handles the difficult parts when it comes to file transformation:
- Automatic video encoding into multiple formats and resolutions, ensuring compatibility across browsers and devices
- Thumbnail generation for videos, PDFs, and images to improve the visual experience in course listings and dashboards
- Watermarking and compression, which help protect IP while optimizing bandwidth
These features are critical for course creators who want to upload once and trust that their content will look great and play smoothly.
Secure and Fast Delivery
After file processing, Filestack distributes the files using its built-in CDN, providing
- Fast load times for learners anywhere in the world
- The Content Ingestion Network (CIN), which helps make uploads 100x more reliable
- Upload retries, wherein timed-out upload parts are re-chunked and uploaded, allowing for successful uploads even in spotty network conditions.
- URL-based transformations for responsive image sizing and on-demand previews
- Link control, including expiration policies, signed URLs, whitelists, and more
For course platforms, reliable delivery isn’t optional. Instead, it serves as the backbone of a smooth learning experience.
Built-in Protection Measures
Every file entering your platform is a potential risk. Filestack, an SOC2-compliant solution, helps solve this issue by
- Scanning for viruses and malware at the point of upload
- Validating file types and restricting file size to prevent unsupported formats
- Letting you customize a policy-based access control
Filestack integrates security into the entire file pipeline right away, helping you meet data protection and compliance requirements with less effort.
How It All Comes Together for EdTech Platforms
Let’s walk through how small development teams might use a file infrastructure layer to build a functional MVP for a learning platform:
Two small dev teams are each building an EdTech platform MVP. Both teams have similar goals: allow instructors to upload content, let students access course materials easily, and launch quickly.
Team A: Builds File Handling In-House
- Spends the first few weeks setting up direct S3 integration, enabling different upload methods, writing upload handlers, and troubleshooting mobile compatibility
- Realizes late in the process that PDF previews don’t work on some devices and adds a workaround
- Adds basic access controls but delays full CDN implementation due to complexity
- MVP launch is delayed by several weeks due to edge-case bugs and inconsistent file behavior
- Either hires a security expert, conducts heavy security research, or temporarily adds basic security only due to complexity
- After launch, support tickets pile up (e.g., “video won’t load,” “file too large,” “upload stuck at 95%”)
Outcome: The product works, but file handling becomes an ongoing source of bugs and distractions. The team spends more time maintaining infrastructure than building education features.
Team B: Uses a File Infrastructure Layer
- Integrates file upload, transformation, and delivery using a ready-built service early in development
- File processing (encoding, thumbnailing, and preview rendering) happens automatically
- Uploads are mobile-friendly, resumable, and support drag-and-drop from different sources, including cloud storage solutions
- Secure delivery is in place from day one, backed by CDN and policy controls
- Launches MVP within weeks with a polished, professional file experience
- Post-launch, users experience smooth uploads and playback, reducing support overhead
Outcome: The team stays focused on core educational features. File handling works, and user feedback praises the platform’s reliability.
Investing in file infrastructure early has a direct impact on launch speed, user experience, and productivity. Building learning platforms like Udemy from scratch may seem flexible, but it often leads to delays, bugs, and maintenance costs that outweigh the benefits.
On the other hand, choosing to integrate a robust file management layer lets teams deliver quality experiences faster. Moreover, this helps developers like you spend more time building what makes their platform truly valuable: the learning experience.
Build Smart, Scale Fast: Why It’s the Right Choice for Technical Teams
Most EdTech developers are lean, meaning that they need to operate as fast as possible to complete as much as possible. Thus, time spent building infrastructure is time lost building features.
File management tools handle the complex, repetitive parts of platform development. Let your team build the features that differentiate your platform from the rest. And with the focus that these tools give you, you can accomplish that easier.
As your platform grows, file management tools scale with you. This way, you’re not rebuilding most of your application’s file-handling logic every few months. You’ll also have fewer dependencies, third-party tools, and compatibilities to track.
Final Thoughts: Don’t Let File Handling Slow You Down
If you’re building a learning platform like Udemy, you know how critical smooth content delivery is. You also know how fast development timelines move. Both educators and learners want and expect seamless teaching and learning experiences.
So, instead of building everything from scratch, why not take the shortcut? Let tools like Filestack do the heavy lifting. You’ll free up development time, improve the UI and UX, and launch better and faster.
