Best WordPress LMS Plugins In-Depth Comparison

best wordpress lms plugins compared

If you plan to create online courses, you may need a WordPress LMS plugin for your site. LMS plugins convert your WordPress installation into a fully functional online school.

Choosing the right plugin can be a hassle with so many options available. The ideal plugin should support creating and managing courses. It should also provide a grading system, a means to accept payments, and much more.

This article will review the best WordPress LMS plugins for creating online courses. This will help you make an informed decision on the plugin to use for your website.

Content:

What is WordPress LMS Plugin?

Learning Management Systems (LMS) are software applications that let you deliver educational course content on the internet. LMS plugins make this possible for WordPress users.

With this purpose in mind, LMS applications have these features:

  1. Supports course building
  2. Administration
  3. Tracking
  4. Documentation
  5. Tests and Grading
  6. Reporting of course progress
  7. Certification for completed courses.

Why you need an LMS Plugin

You need to use an LMS Plugin because it saves time. With the application, you can set a unified learning standard for all your students flawlessly.

Also, by using automated grading and quizzes, students can easily be scored. Some may decide to use posts and membership plugins to offer paid training, and this may work in some cases.

However, if you wish to track student progress, offer tests and grading, etc, then the LMS plugin is the way to go.

If you are just starting, we have a comprehensive guide on how to create an online learning website using WordPress.

Essential Features of a WordPress LMS Plugin

To give yourself a smooth online teaching experience, here are a few rather useful features you should look for in an LMS plugin for WordPress.

  • Course builder feature where you can create lessons as well as upload lesson files.
  • Course progress information to show your students their progress.
  • Student enrollment and management should also be there. This will show you how many people are in your courses as well as membership payments.
  • Quizzes and tests in order to evaluate how much your students absorbed your course material.
  • Content Dripping: A feature that allows creators to slowly rollout course materials after a specified period of time.
  • Chats and Forums for interactions between students and teachers.
  • Also, there should be automated email support to notify students of their progress status.
  • It should support a payment gateway or the ability to integrate with payment gateways.
  • Additionally, it should offer certification on course completion.

Top 9 WordPress LMS plugins compared

We have put together 9 WordPress LMS plugins. We will provide details of their features in order to enable you to choose the best LMS plugin for your site.

LearnPress

learnpress wordpress lms

LearnPress is one of the best plugins for Learning management in WordPress. The plugin lets you create unlimited courses on your site. With it, you can also sell your courses to users.

This LMS Plugin provides a great user interface to create and manage courses. The plugin is free to use and you get access to most of the features it supports. However, they do have premium add-ons you can buy for extra features.

Features of this WordPress LMS Plugin

  • LearnPress works great with any WordPress theme.
  • It supports WordPress Multisite.
  • Courses can be imported or exported from and to other websites which also use LearnPress.
  • The courses you have created can be shared. Also, you can monitor its trend and student statistics.
  • LearnPress allows you to sell the courses you created. It supports many billing methods such as Paypal, WooCommerce, Stripe, etc.
  • It also supports Group Payment.
  • LearnPress facilitates communication between students and instructors via the WordPress forum.
  • You can create quizzes from random questions in the question bank. There’s also a no distraction mode when a student is taking a quiz.
  • Equally important, you can view all enrolled users.
  • LearnPress provides a bunch of free and premium add-ons. These add-ons are used to provide extra features for LearnPress.
  • Most important, LearnPress has been translated into the following languages:
    • English
    • French
    • Indonesian
    • Italian
    • German
    • Polish
    • Russian
    • Dutch

LearnDash WordPress LMS Plugin

learndash

LearnDash is a premium LMS plugin for WordPress sites. It comes with lots of features that make it easy to build and manage courses on your LMS website.

The plugin integrates well with e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce as well as membership site plugins. And it is compatible with any WordPress theme. The price for this plugin ranges from $159 to $369, between the Basic, Plus, and Pro packages.

Four categories of features of the LearnDash WordPress LMS plugin are:

1. Courses feature

  • It has a great, drag-and-drop course builder feature.
  • There is also an advanced quizzing feature.
  • Courses and lessons can have prerequisites that must be completed first.
  • Additionally, the grade-book feature can be added (paid ad-don).
  • Courses can have points.
  • It also issues badges and certificates.

2. Monetize feature

  • It has a one-time purchase option.
  • Subscriptions are supported for users.
  • It also has a shopping cart feature for courses.
  • There is a membership access feature for users.
  • Also, a course bundle can be purchased by students.
  • Bulk licenses for organizations are available too.

3. Administration feature

  • User profiles.
  • Email notifications.
  • Group management.
  • Detailed reporting.
  • Assignment management.
  • Expire access.

4. Tech feature

  • LearnDash supports TIN CAN API & SCORM.
  • It is enabled to function on multisite.
  • The LMS can be used with any WordPress theme.
  • All forms of media format WordPress supports. These include Images, Videos, Audio files, Google docs, SWF files, etc.
  • Of course, it is responsive and is supported on mobile devices with various resolutions.
  • There is support from industry experts when you need it.

Teachable LMS Plugin for WordPress

teachable wordpress lms plugin

Teachable LMS is a tool for creating online courses and hosting them on its subdomain. But, you can integrate your courses into your WordPress site. It has three plans: Basic $29, Professional $79 as well as Business $399 plan. On the Basic plan, you pay a 5% transaction fee for every course sold. However, if you sign up for the Professional or Business plans, you will retain all the profit.

The plugin comes with a powerful drag-and-drop page builder that makes editing courses easy. With this builder, you can create and design your website pages.

Additionally, you can issue certificates to your students upon completion of an assignment or test. The plugin also lets you customize the certificate to suit your brand. Below are other features of the software.

Features of Teachable LMS Plugin

  • Create engaging lectures: Add video, audio, text, image, as well as PDF files. You can also import content from OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox.
  • Your course site is fully responsive. Content can be viewed from smartphones, tablets, as well as computers.
  • Easily draft, customize, and launch new course pages with a page editor.
  • You can start with a free domain (yourname.teachable.com). You may also host with your domain (yourname.com), or use a subdomain (school.yourname.com).
  • Reach students worldwide in any language.
  • It has a comprehensive dashboard. You can see a snapshot of student signups and revenue across a defined time period on your Teachable dashboard.
  • The plugin lets you create quizzes to grade your students.
  • You can add discussions through the comments feature.
  • Student feedback. Collect information from students with surveys, Google forms, etc.
  • Includes Advanced pricing options. You can charge a one-time fee, sell a subscription, or set up a payment plan. Also, you have an option to offer individual or bundled courses.
  • It lets you accept payment from 130+ international currencies through Stripe or PayPal.
  • Live chat support to resolve any issue you may encounter using the plugin on your website.
  • Instant upgrades: Automatically receive the latest features immediately, without having to manually update.
  • SSL certificate. A 2048-bit SSL certificate keeps your students’ information secure during login and checkout.

LifterLMS

lifter lms

This LMS plugin is one of the powerful plugins for creating online courses in WordPress. LifterLMS makes it easy to create and sell engaging courses on your WordPress site. The plugin has three bundles.

  1. $120 each for the Individual Add-ons bundles. This plan only supports one site.
  2. $360 per year for Universal Bundles. You can add up to 5 sites.
  3. $1200 per year for Infinity Bundle. This plan lets you add unlimited websites.

LifterLMS is easy to use and has a setup wizard that can install demo courses for you. This will reduce most of the heavy lifting involved in creating online courses. Below are other features of this LMS plugin:

Course Creation feature

  • Multimedia Lessons: supports different forms of media as well as learning styles.
  • Quizzes and Quiz Timer.
  • Course Builder: Build courses with ease.
  • Prerequisites: You can require the completion of other lessons before a course unlocks.
  • Student Dashboard: Learners can keep track of their progress.
  • Multi Instructor: Assign multiple teachers to a course.
  • Lesson Downloads.
  • Discussion Areas: Enjoy multiple discussion areas including forums as well as private coaching.
  • Form Integrations: Use form plugins to collect assignments, messages, etc.
  • Graphics Pack for pre-designed certificate backgrounds and achievement badges.
  • Course Reviews.

Monetize feature

  • Payment with credit cards.
  • Recurring subscriptions.
  • Payment Plans.
  • PayPal integration for recurring payments or one-time purchases.
  • Subscriptions.
  • Free Courses.
  • Course Bundles: Create and sell bundled courses.

Student Engagements feature

  • Certificates.
  • Personalized Email.
  • Text Messaging.
  • Achievement Badges.
  • Private Coaching.

Site Management feature

  • Automatic Enrollment: Students can be automatically enrolled.
  • Content Restrictions: Prevent access to courses, forums, pages, etc with membership options.
  • Special Pricing for Members: A price reserved for subscribed members to gain access to exclusive content.
  • Bulk Enrollment: Enroll current members into recently added courses with a single click.
  • Most payment gateways are supported.
  • Responsive on mobile devices.
  • Compatible with most WordPress themes.

Support Feature

  • Technical Support.
  • Live Office Hours.
  • Free Training Courses: to help you get the skills you need to build your project.
  • Setup Wizard.
  • Detailed Documentation.
  • Demo Course.

Sensei LMS Plugin in WordPress

sensei lms for wordpress by automattic

Sensei LMS is built by Automattic, the company behind WordPress. So you can be sure the plugin will integrate effortlessly with your WordPress site. It is a WooCommerce extension and it enables you to sell your courses using the WooCommerce eCommerce platform.

You can download the plugin from the WordPress plugin directory. The free plan lets you create and sell courses online. However, to enjoy the full features of this plugin, you need to upgrade to their pro plan.

Their pro plan starts at $149 per year for a single site license. Alternatively, you can choose their agency plan which cost $349 per year. This plan will allow you to add up to 20 websites.

Also with the extension comes the following features:

  • Generate income by creating courses that can be sold.
  • Offer a free trial.
  • Restrict course content to paying members.
  • Accept recurring payments for continued access to a course.

Sensei LMS makes the creation of courses, lessons, and quizzes to be easy. All your course settings can be done through your WordPress Admin Dashboard. And it integrates well with any WordPress theme.

Namaste! LMS

namaste lms

Namaste! is a WordPress LMS plugin that lets you create unlimited courses on your website. The plugin has a free and pro plan to choose from. When compared to other plugins we reviewed, it is relatively inexpensive. For the pro plan, you pay a one-time fee of $67. This gives you access to Namaste! Pro module.

The plugin works with any theme on your WordPress site. However, you can get the Namaste! LMS theme for $47. It has one year of premium support and free upgrades.

Basic features of Namaste! WordPress LMS Plugin are:

Create High-Quality Online Courses

  • Create Lessons: Manage an unlimited number of lessons in each course.
  • Define various criteria for lesson completeness.
  • Set lessons users need to complete before changing the status of the course to complete.
  • Create and add assignments.

Site Management feature

  • Publish the course descriptions on your site to encourage subscribing.
  • Charge to enroll in courses. Paypal and Stripe integrations are also available.
  • Auto-approve or manually review students who want to enroll in a course.
  • Manage students in each course as well as see their to-do lists for every lesson.
  • Add notes to students’ solutions to help them resolve the problems.
  • Issue completion certificates.

MasterStudy LMS

masterstudy lms

MasterStudy LMS Plugin is free and integrates well with any WordPress theme. But when you use the Masterstudy WordPress theme, you’ll get extra features available in the Pro version of the Masterstudy LMS plugin. This will help create a great online learning website for you and your students.

Key Features of this WordPress LMS Plugin

  • Comprehensive lesson content that consists of 3 lesson types: video, slideshow, and text.
  • You can enable recurring subscriptions for students.
  • The plugin supports One-time purchases.
  • You can also integrate with PayPal & Stripe.
  • It supports real-time questions and answers during the lessons.
  • Quiz countdown timer, results, and retake option.
  • Course rating feature to get users’ feedback.
  • The plugin supports messaging and notification systems.
  • Certificate generation.
  • Wish list for courses.
  • You can create profiles for instructors and students.

Good LMS

good lms

 

GoodLMS is a premium LMS plugin for creating and managing online courses in WordPress. The plugin goes for $32.

Its basic LMS features include the option of creating unlimited courses, rewards for the learner, and online payment.

Features of this WordPress LMS Plugin

  • The course builder feature allows the upload of different categories of media such as videos, pdf, texts, etc.
  • Created courses can be sold with payment methods such as PayPal and Stripe.
  • Online Quiz: You can add a quiz at the end of a course to judge the knowledge of the student about a certain subject.
  • Coupon Code: in order to increase student enrollment, you can create coupons and give discounts.
  • Instructor Profile.
  • Course Certificate.
  • The rating system enables users to rate the courses on the website. It also increases visitor involvement on the site.
  • GoodLMS WordPress Plugin is WPML compatible. It helps you translate your website to any preferred language.

CoursePress Pro WordPress LMS Plugin

coursepress pro wordpress lms plugin

Coursepress PRO is a premium plugin and is valued at $59. But with the EducationPress theme, you can get it for free.

EducationPress theme helps to build text courses, video courses, share audio, creates quizzes, etc.

Key Features of this LMS Plugin

  • It can offer courses for free. You can also sell access to your courses with e-Commerce integration.
  • It has no course limitations.
  • Courses are delivered with assessments, questions, chat as well as forums.
  • WordPress CoursePress Pro Plugin is completely customizable. It also works well with any WordPress theme.
  • Other features are as follows:
    • Automatic reporting
    • Automatic grading
    • Teacher and student management
    • Interactive discussion board
    • Live chat integration
    • Promotional videos
    • Signup forms
    • Popup login forms

Our Verdict

All the WordPress LMS Plugins listed in this review are certainly great for hosting online courses. However, choosing the right plugin will depend on many factors such as budget and features offered.

If you are on a tight budget, then you should consider the LearnPress and Sensei LMS plugins. These plugins are free and provide the basic features you need to start creating courses.

If you need a robust LMS plugin, then we recommend LearnDash or LifterLMS plugins. Both plugins have solid technical support teams that provide 24/7 live chat support to customers. They also offer robust features to provide your students with a seamless learning experience.

Conclusion on WordPress LMS Plugins

Building your online course and hosting it makes you responsible for the management of your site and students.

For any serious education provider, your aim is to provide the best course experience for your students. For this purpose, premium plugins may serve you better because you get some support and advanced tools.

However, the decision is up to you. You now know the features to look for in good WordPress LMS plugins. Armed with the knowledge from this review, you can surely make an informed decision.

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