5 Best WordPress LMS Plugins For Creating Online Courses (Comparison)

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LMS PluginKey FeaturesPricingDirect Link
LearnDash✓ Course builder with drip feed lessons
✓ Flexible pricing models
✓ Certificates, quizzes, assignments
✓ E-commerce Integration
$199/yearCheck out
LifterLMS✓ Unlimited courses & memberships
✓ Certificates, quizzes, assignments
✓ E-commerce add-ons
✓ Create basic courses using the free plan
Free

Pro plan
($199/year)
Check out
Sensei✓ Unlimited courses and students
✓ WooCommerce integration
✓ Schedule and drip-feed lessons
✓ Conditional content & quizzes
Free

Pro plan
($179/year)
Check out
LearnPress✓ Easily create & sell courses
✓ Add lessons, quizzes, & assignments
✓ Multiple payment methods
✓ Bunch of add-ons for extra features
Free

28 pro add-ons
($299)
Check out
WP Courseware✓ Drag-and-drop course builder
✓ Certificates, quizzes & surveys
✓ Drip feed content
✓ WooCommerce integration
$129/yearCheck out
Best WordPress LMS Plugins for online courses
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Teaching what you know online can be the best thing you can do for your audience. More and more bloggers, entrepreneurs, and freelancers are adding online courses in addition to their blogs.

It’s a great way to help others while establishing yourself as an expert in your field.

One of the first things you’re going to need when launching a course is a piece of software for creating your content.

Courses are not the same as blog posts. For one, a course needs to be accessed by registered students and not just anyone who lands on your site. It doesn’t matter if you’re offering a free or paid course, you need to have some kind of student profile to track your students’ progress.

The next feature for paid courses is a payment gateway. There should be a way for you to accept payment when a user enrolls in your course.

PayPal, Stripe, and 2Checkout are popular online payment gateways that are available for online course integration.

These and more features are now accessible with WordPress plugins. You don’t have to hire a developer to build a simple eLearning site. If you want, you can even use your existing WP site to host your course.

These eLearning plugins work like regular plugins in WordPress, where you install them and access their control panel from the WordPress dashboard.

In some cases, you may need to install add-ons to add more functions to the main eLearning plugin.

Let’s take a look at these plugins and what they can do to help you create and publish courses on your site.

  1. LearnDash
  2. LifterLMS
  3. Sensei
  4. LearnPress
  5. WP Courseware

Best WordPress LMS Plugins To Launch Your Online Portal

1. LearnDash

  • Save
  • Price: $199/year
  • Features: Inbuilt payment system, quizzes, drip content, pre-requisite courses, multiple instructors, lesson timers, Tin-Can API

LearnDash is a feature-rich plugin that’s focused on providing the best eLearning options for traditional learning environments like schools and universities.

It’s an ideal solution for big projects that might involve a considerable amount of courses.

Best eLearning options
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You don’t have to install a separate membership plugin with LearnDash, as it has its own membership functionality. This is done through the native user registration system on your WordPress site (which can be a big issue as one review reveals).

LearnDash is also the only plugin that supports Tin-Can API integration. Tin-Can is a better version of SCORM (Shareable Content Object Reference Model), which collects detailed student information for more accurate learning records. This means LearnDash can be integrated with eLearning software like Adobe Captivate and Articulate.

  • Pros
    • Quizzes available
    • Unlimited courses
    • Unlimited users
    • Drip feed lessons
  • Cons
    • Takes time to learn the interface.

2. LifterLMS

LifterLMS
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  • Price: Free (with paid extensions)
  • Features: Inbuilt membership functionality and payment system, gamification, drip content, coupons, student profiles

LifterLMS is a free plugin that’s ideal for smaller learning projects and course-makers on a budget. It’s surprisingly easy to use and has all the features (and more) of paid plugins.

LifterLMS For WordPress
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The important thing to note is that its payment integration function requires a paid add-on.

At the time of this writing, all add-ons for LifterLMS cost $199/year. This includes separate add-ons for PayPal, Stripe, and WooCommerce as payment gateways.

There’s also a WordPress theme called LaunchPad that you can purchase to easily customize your course design.

  • Pros
    • Great for creating basic courses for free.
  • Cons
    • Requires paid add-ons for payment and other integrations.
    • No customer support for free users.

3. Sensei

Sensei by WooThemes
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  • Price: $179
  • Features: WooCommerce integration, quiz styles, course analytics, ideas board, question bank, certificates

Sensei is made by the same developers behind WooCommerce.

It’s built to seamlessly integrate with WooCommerce for course payments. This means that you can sell courses the same way you would sell products on an e-commerce site.

With this setup, you don’t have to install a membership plugin just to allow access to paid courses.

Sensei Setup
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Courses are broken down into lessons, which are made just like standard WordPress posts and pages. Each lesson is then configured using a meta box below the post editor.

While Sensei is made to work with most popular themes, the plugin creators have released a guide to help fix design problems that might arise from the plugin.

Sensei can be a bit tedious to configure, as it will rely on WooCommerce to accept payments. However, it’s a great option for those who are familiar with WooCommerce and WooThemes in general.

  • Pros
    • Clean code.
    • WooCommerce integration.
    • Lots of free extensions for added functionality.
  • Cons
    • Drip content is a paid option.
    • Can be hard to set up for a non-technical user.

4. LearnPress

LearnPress
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  • Price: Free
  • Features: Drag and drop editor, timed quizzes, PayPal integration, course statistics, free add-ons for more functions

LearnPress by ThimPress is a free plugin with lots of free and premium add-ons for added functionality.

The plugin adds a LearnPress tab on the WordPress dashboard where you can start creating courses and quizzes.

The visual editor has some drag and drop features, although they are not as advanced as WP Courseware’s.

LearnPress by ThimPress
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While LearnPress offers basic LMS features like creating quizzes, limiting the number of students, and integrating with a payment method, other functions require you to install add-ons.

There are 28 add-ons for LearnPress at the time of this writing. Eight (8) of them are free including Offline Payment and BuddyPress integration. Fifteen (15) add-ons are paid, including Content Drip and Stripe Payment (Costs $299).

  • Pros
    •  Create attractive courses for free.
  • Cons
    • Only a few free features.

5. WP Courseware (Avoid this in 2023)

WP Courseware
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  • Price: Starts at $129/year
  • Features: Create quizzes, drag and drop builder, drip content, certificates

WP Courseware is great for WordPress users who like building websites with drag-and-drop interfaces.

Courses are added the same way you would add a new post.

You can also add in media content like audio and video.

Once you have all your content added, you can organize them with the plugin’s easy-to-use course builder.

easy-to-use-course-builder
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WP Courseware also allows you to have certain modules available in batches. You can enable this drip-feed function with options to schedule content delivery on fixed dates, at specific intervals, or upon completing specific courses.

  • Pros
    • More affordable than most premium plugins.
    • Easy to use.
  • Cons
    • Can have conflicts with other plugins.
    • No built-in payment system.

Conclusion: Which WordPress Online Course Plugin To Select?

These WordPress eLearning plugins have their own strengths and weaknesses. The key is to recognize which features are important to you and which ones you can do without.

If you’re new to creating courses and want the easiest way to do it, LearnDash is the best LMS option in 2023.

Personally, I like WP Courseware the best. It’s the most affordable premium plugin that meets my needs. I’m not an overly technical person, so I like that WP Courseware is easy enough to learn.

No matter what kind of lessons you plan to sell or publish, always remember that you should value functionality over cost. Avoiding paid options might cost you in the long run when you discover that your free plugin can’t do what you want it to do.

The best approach is to try some free options first and see if they’re enough to meet your standards. If not, then you can look at premium plugins for a better course creation experience.

Have you created an online course in the past? Which WordPress plugin did you use? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

41 thoughts on “5 Best WordPress LMS Plugins For Creating Online Courses (Comparison)”

  1. Peter

    Hi Kim,

    I am using Sensei plugin now and can verify it’s a great and easy to use tool. Past few months i tried few more plugins, I strongly recommend this sensei plugin, Thanks for great article.

  2. Yasir Khan

    Thanks Kim very helpful article 🙂

  3. Gulam Ansari

    Hiiiiiiiiiii Kim,

    Thank you so much for sharing these WordPress Course plugin. I am thinking about LearnPress for my upcoming blog course. Hope this will be a great one for me.

  4. Azhar

    Hi KIM,
    Thanks for this valuable article about online course plugins. Am wordpress website developer these plugins helped a lot to my LMS projects..They made my work easy and complete website soon..

  5. manish

    Hi Kim,
    Launchpad is my personal Favorite as i used it before. Thanks for the list.

    1. Kim Barloso

      Thanks for adding Launchpad, I didn’t know about this option. Cheers!

  6. Rayhan Islam

    Hi Kim,
    Thank you so much for sharing these WordPress Course plugin. I am thinking about LearnPress for my upcoming blog course. Hope this will be a great one for me.

  7. Vishal Pundit

    Wow, this is what I was looking for my educational blog. Thanks Kim for this wonderful blog post. All plugins look to be great but as if now I am looking for a free plugin like Learn Press. I have to really dive in into the details of Learn Press to understand its full capability. I have a question for you. Does Learn Press has timed quiz functionality for FREE or do I have pay for the add ons. I am looking to create timed quiz but the motive is to give away free.
    Anyways amazing and informative post. Thanks.

  8. Aryan

    Great List Kim,
    I wonder if there is any lifetime access plugin or membership for my courses? Also, It is possible to use coupons, restricted areas, pdf, and checklist enabled options?

    1. Kim Barloso

      Hi Aryan. Most of the paid plugins would require that you renew the service after a specific period. If you want lifetime support, then you may choose a free plugin such as Learn Press or LifterLMS.

      As for coupons and restricted areas, you’re gonna have to check with the plugin’s features (or test it) to see if it’s an option.

  9. John Fambrini

    Thanks for a review of the tools. Learnpress sounds like a winner. Great job, keep up the good work.

  10. BALAMURALI

    This is one of the brilliant posts on Learning Management system in wordpress, and thank you for providing such a nice article.

  11. Ravi Chahar

    Hey Kim,

    No doubt that LearnDash is one of the most reputed plugins and people are really into launching their online courses these days.

    Just a few days back, one of my clients asked for the same. She also wants to start her business.
    I am sure, this will be a great start for her.

    Thanks for the info.
    ~Ravi

  12. kashif naqvi

    Nice article about WordPress e-Learning plugins. This information is very useful for me to choose best plugin. Thank you so much for sharing this article.

  13. Susan Velez

    Hi Kim,

    It seems like you can do pretty much anything with WordPress. I personally haven’t used any of these plugins.

    However, I will take a look at them when I do end up creating a new course. LearnPress looks pretty cool.

    The hard part is going to be trying to decide which one to use.

    Thanks for sharing, have a great one 🙂

    Susan

  14. Utsav Chopra

    Hey Kim,

    You shared an awesome list for creating online course portal. I feel soon the giant companies like Udmey, Lynda, etc will gonna launch their plugins for WordPress.

    What’s your view on this?

    1. Kim Barloso

      That might happen, but I think Udemy and Lynda offer their platform to those who want to sell their courses online without having to set up their own website.

  15. Sachin Bishnoi

    Hello Kim,
    Nice article about WordPress e-Learning plugins. This information is very useful for me to choose best plugin. Thank you so much for sharing this article.

  16. Mazino

    I have been reading a lot of both shoutmeloud and wpsutra and finally falling in love in WordPress with a whole lot of amazing features. For me, I think Learnpress will be better.

    1. Osundare Toheeb

      what people always mention is that WordPress is better than blogger in many ways. They won’t state the major reasons. Reading this post really enlightened me too!

    2. Kim Barloso

      LearnPress is a good choice. Good luck to your course creation!

  17. Digitant

    Hi Kim,

    Nice article about WordPress e-Learning plugins. This information is very useful for me to choose best plugin. Thank you so much for sharing this article.

    1. Kim Barloso

      Sure thing! Always glad to share what I know. 🙂

  18. Amit Mishra

    Hello Harsh/Kim

    Is their any big difference in between paid and free course plugins?

    And I am a big fan of your blog shoutmeloud’s biggest fan.

    Thanks for this much help and support.

  19. Jones

    LearnPress is a really good plugin for beginners, It’s free and easy to use, thanks alot for this article. Good work

  20. Dina

    HI

    Can you integrate LifterLMS into an existing website or does it need to be a stand alone website?
    thanks

    1. Kim Barloso

      You can use LifterLMS with any WordPress site.

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