If you are looking to create and sell online courses using WordPress, then you need an effective learning management system to bring your business to life. Fortunately, WordPress has a lot of powerful LMS plugins that can help you design varied and stimulating courses that hungry learners will pay for.
When seeking out a good WordPress LMS, it’s important to look for options that enable you to manage your online courses and users, accept payments, track and reward course progress, and foster an online community. So which LMS plugin should you use for your project?
In this article I’m going to compare four options – LearnDash, LearnPress, LifterLMS, and Masteriyo. The first three are well established, while the last one is a relative newcomer on the scene, but has been quickly growing in popularity.
Read on to learn how their features, user experience, and pricing stack up against one another and then choose the one that best fits your needs.
What’s the top WordPress LMS? Four options compared…
Let’s get started by taking a quick look at how the main features of these four plugins compare:
| Feature | LearnDash | LearnPress | LifterLMS | Masteriyo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drag-and-drop course builder | ✅ | * | ✅ | ✅ |
| AI tools | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | * |
| Flexible course options – lessons, quizzes, forums | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Membership site options | ✅ | * | ✅ | ❌ |
| Detailed assessment and grading options | * | * | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in payment processor | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Website analytics | * | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Free plan | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Cheapest premium plan | $199 per year / 1 site | $149 / 1 site | $149.50 / 1 site | $129 / 1 site |
Now let’s find out exactly what each of these plugins has to offer in more detail.
LearnDash
LearnDash is an extremely popular and feature-rich WordPress LMS. Their customers consist of Fortune 500 companies, world-class universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs from across the globe, who all create and sell online courses.
Using LearnDash, you can easily design and sell fun, informative, and varied courses.
This platform comes packed with options, enabling you to incorporate quizzes, assignments, forums, certificates, badges, and much more into each course, ensuring your students stay engaged with your content.
Top features of the LearnDash plugin 👨🏻💻
LearnDash has so many features that to mention them all would eat up this entire article. With that said, here are some of the ones that really stand out the most…
- AI course builder
- Drag and drop functionality
- Learning paths to segment students
- Course duplicator (big time saver)
- Completion certificates
- Onboarding wizard
- Blended learning with virtual and in-person elements
- Multiple ways to sell courses: pre-sale, one-time fee, recurring subscription
Additional features offered by LearnDash cloud plans ☁️
The cloud plans offer all the features of the plugin, but in addition you get access to the following:
- Website hosting with WordPress and the LearnDash plugin installed
- 24/7 phone support if you ever run into any issues
- ProPanel analytics to gauge students’ progress
- Object cache pro to improve site loading times
- SolidSuite security to protect your platform from hackers
Why choose LearnDash over LearnPress, LifterLMS, or Masteriyo? 🤔
The main reason you’d want to use LearnDash over LearnPress, Masteriyo, or LifterLMS comes down to two broad use cases:
- You want a fully hosted solution where you can avoid researching hosting companies and setting up a WordPress website.
- There’s a specific feature offered by LearnDash, and only LearnDash.
With respect to the second point, one example of this is the course duplicator. This is an incredibly valuable feature for anyone who is creating a library of similar courses. Imagine spending several hours building a single course and then having to repeat the entire process versus just clicking a button and swapping out some details. With LearnDash you can do that, but with Masteriyo for example, you can’t. Not directly at least.
LearnDash pricing 💰
Due to its complexity and depth of features, LearnDash has a wide variety of options to choose from. They can be broken down into roughly four categories:
Premium LMS WordPress plugin
$199 for one site / $399 for ten sites / $799 for unlimited sites (all prices billed annually)
Cloud (hosted) solution
These plans include a single WordPress site with a free SSL certificate, daily automatic backups, the core LMS plugin, unlimited courses, and the option to pay monthly or annually. Prices below reflect annual billing.
- Starter: $300 per year / 1,000 / 30 GB of storage / 20
- Growth: $492 per year / 5,000 learners / 60 GB of storage / 30 PHP workers
- Pro: $996 per year / 25,000 learners / 120 GB of storage / 40 PHP workers
Optional add-ons
These are based on the unique needs of your eLearning platform, and including features like group management, custom report card building, two-way communication between students and instructors, ratings and reviews by students, advanced analytics, and more. Prices start at $49 per add-on.
Bundled packages
LearnDash bundles combine the core LMS plugin with specific add-ons. Examples include the ultimate course creator bundle and the student success bundle. Prices start at $249 per year.
LearnPress
LearnPress offers an attractive array of features in its free plugin and builds on it with a simple to navigate menu of optional add-ons. Eight of those add-ons are completely free, but there are almost 40 premium ones available as well. Their value proposition is clear – they give you a powerful free LMS plugin and it’s up to you whether you want to pay a little extra for specific features or you want to do a full on upgrade to a premium plan that bundles several of those features together.
Top features available with all LearnPress plans 👩🏾💻
- Unlimited courses, instructors, and students (memberships are a premium add-on)
- PayPal and Stripe support, with options for one-time payments, subscriptions, and multi-currency transactions
- Full control over student enrollment – set class size limits, add fake students for marketing purposes, and more
- Instructor profiles showcase qualifications and courses taught by a particular teacher
- Prerequisites force students to complete certain classes prior to enrolling in others
- Coming soon page boosts interest in upcoming courses and lets you offer early sign-up discounts
- Full library of video tutorials and docs help you get started
Why choose LearnPress over LearnDash, LifterLMS, or Masteriyo? 🤔
Assuming you plan to run your eLearning business for more than a year, there’s arguably no better deal than LearnPress when it comes to long-term pricing. LearnPress gives you everything you need to create, market, and sell courses but starting in year two, it’s significantly cheaper to use than the other three plugins.
LearnPress pricing 💰
LearnPress has a free plugin with two premium plans that have a unique pricing model where they renew at a lower price. This is uncommon, as typically companies try to lure customers in with cheaper introductory rates, but LearnPress takes a contrarian approach.
- Free: $0
- Semi-Pro Bundle: $149 in the first year / renews at $104 + taxes
- Pro Bundle: $299 per year / renews at $209.30 + taxes
LifterLMS
LifterLMS is another powerful WordPress LMS that is well worth considering if you are looking to create online courses – and you have some money to invest.
The plugin functions as a complete membership solution, and works by turning your website into a membership site, where your students can then sign in to access their courses. You can set up different membership options, allowing certain members access to different courses and areas of your site.
The core LifterLMS plugin is free and lets you create unlimited courses and memberships with unlimited teacher and learner support. However, the only way to accept payment is via the built-in manual payment gateway. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you prefer to use Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.net, then you’ll need to spring for at least the entry-level premium plan.
Top features of LifterLMS 🧑🏼💻
Below is a sampling of some of what you can do with LifterLMS. However, LifterLMS is heavily tiered, so specific features are only available in more expensive plans.
- Unlimited courses, memberships, students, teachers
- Intuitive multi-tier drag and drop course builder
- Drip content and course prerequisites
- Multi-instructor option
- Graphics pack (for certificate backgrounds, achievement badges, and more)
- Import, export, and duplicate courses
- Accept payments via credit cards or PayPal
- Numerous payment types: one-time, subscription, private coaching upsells, course bundles, payment plans
- Multi-currency support (sell from almost anywhere)
- Activate “Facebook-like” community on your site to increase conversation and completion rates
- Membership options with member-only pricing
Why choose LifterLMS over LearnDash, LearnPress, or Masteriyo? 🤔
If you’re specifically looking for a free LMS solution, then you can eliminate LearnDash right off the bat and narrow your choice down to Masteriyo, LearnPress, or LifterLMS.
Overall, the free version of Masteriyo edges out the free version of both LearnPress and LifterLMS with more features. However, there are specific things like the course duplicator option mentioned previously, that you can do with LifterLMS (but not Masteriyo).
The same goes for building a membership site. There’s no direct way to do this with Masteriyo, but LifterLMS offers it by default. And while LearnPress does make it available, it’s not by default, but as a premium add-on. So if you have these particular needs, then LifterLMS might make a better choice.
In terms of the paid plans, it’s hard to justify the price of any of LifterLMS’s plans compared to what you get with LearnDash, LearnPress, or Masteriyo, but again, there are always unique use cases that can be an exception. With that said, I think the mid-tier plan makes the most sense in terms of what it offers at the price it’s asking.
LifterLMS pricing 💰
LifterLMS comes as a free plugin with three premium upgrades – Earth, Universe, and Infinity. All of the premium plans support unlimited courses, memberships, students, and teachers. In my opinion, the Earth plan isn’t different enough from the free plugin to justify its price, but you can judge for yourself. The true “power” features are unlocked on the Universe tier, with the Infinity tier giving you the full scope of what LifterLMS can do.
- Earth: $149.50 first year / renews at $299 / 1 active site / 1 user / basic features
- Universe: $249.50 first year / renews at $499 / 5 active sites / 2 users / advanced features
- Infinity: $749.50 first year / renews at $1499 / unlimited sites / 3 users / all features
Masteriyo
Masteriyo is a relative newcomer in the WordPress LMS space, but it has quickly made a strong name for itself by offering massive value to its users, at a fraction of the cost of more veteran options. The free plugin alone has so many features that most users won’t even need to upgrade to a premium plan. However, for those who do choose the premium path, the cost won’t break the bank.
Overall, Masteriyo is arguably the most attractive option on the market today for the vast majority of WordPress users who are looking to launch an eLearning business.
Top features of Masteriyo on all plans 👩🏾💻
- Unlimited courses, instructors, students, lessons, and quizzes
- Drag-and-drop course builder
- Built-in order system that lets you sell courses without a third-party ecommerce plugin
- Coming soon pages with a countdown timer to course launch
- Drip course content (great for teasers and sequential progression of courses)
- Reviews and ratings let students give feedback on courses
- Reset and retake course option
- Course completion certificate builder
- Distraction-free learning pages remove the header, footer, and sidebar to help students focus on their course
- SCORM import feature to load up courses from other platforms
- Gamification options via GamiPress integration
Why choose Masteriyo over LearnDash, LearnPress, or LifterLMS? 🤔
I alluded to this already, but Masteriyo is simply a better value than either LearnDash or LifterLMS. It offers most of the same features as the other two but for less money, and when compared to LearnPress, the free Masteriyo plugin gives you more than its LearnPress counterpart.
Take for example LearnDash’s paid add-on called “Ratings, Reviews, & Feedack.” It starts at $49 per year and gives you full control over the display of ratings and reviews, which is nice, but Masteriyo offers something similar even in its free version.
Another example is the ability to sell courses to cohorts and organizations using groups. This is free in Masteriyo, whereas LearnDash sells it as an add-on starting from $99 per year. LifterLMS only includes it in their most expensive plan.
Masteriyo pricing 💰
Masteriyo offers a free plugin and three premium plans that you can purchase on an annual basis.
- Free: $0
- Basic: $129 first year / renews at $259
- Pro: $199 first year / renews at $399
- Elite: $399 first year / renews at $799
The Basic and Pro plan support one website, whereas the Elite plan can be used on up to ten websites. The Elite plan is also available in a lifetime subscription format and costs $999 for a single site or $1,799 for up to ten sites.
Masteriyo is a member of the Themeisle family of products and is maintained by the same team that supports WPShout.
Which plugin is right for you?
All four of the plugins featured here are effective. Regardless of which one you choose, you’ll be able to create immersive online courses to engage your learners and generate revenue. So which one is “the right one?” The best way I can summarize it is like this:
- 🥇 Masteriyo has most of the same features as LearnDash, LearnPress, and LifterLMS. In some cases, it even gives them to you for free, whereas the others charge you for them. Unless there is some very specific functionality that your eLearning business needs (that either LearnDash, LearnPress, or LifterLMS offer but Masteriyo doesn’t) then your best bet is going to be Masteriyo.
- 🥈 LearnDash is a powerful learning management system, but it’s not a cheap one. If you know exactly what features you need and you’re willing to pay for them, then you will not be disappointed by LearnDash. Plus if you’re not the type that wants to search for web hosting and deal with managing a WordPress site, then their cloud hosting plans are a convenient way to avoid dealing with that.
- 🥉 LifterLMS and LearnPress can be good alternatives to Masteriyo if you need a free LMS solution in certain instances. For example, course creators with a deep catalog of similar courses that want to save time by using the course duplicator function might prefer LifterLMS. Also, those who wish to build a membership site (which you can’t do with Masteriyo) would be better off with LifterLMS. Finally, Lifter’s mid-tier paid plan can be a good alternative to LearnDash’s tier two plugin plan if you have up to five separate eLearning businesses, and the LearnPress entry-level plan has the best long-term pricing of any other premium option.
Have you used any of these plugins or any other alternatives? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.
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