Top 7 WordPress LMS Plugins to Make Learning a Pleasure
These days, it’s really hard to find an excuse not to learn something new, since there is such an abundant offer of online courses in every field, from agriculture to psychology, golf, parenting, programming, design, writing…you can literally learn everything online. And the greatest thing about it is that you can even learn how to set up an e-learning website in no time and monetize the knowledge from your expertise. If you already have a blog or a website and the theme of your choice isn’t bundled with LMS functionality, that can easily be fixed with the appropriate WordPress plugin as they perfectly fit any kind of WP theme. With a good WordPress LMS plugin, you will be creating and managing detailed courses, just like the ones you find on Udemy and similar platforms. If you are setting up an online education site and starting from scratch, you might want to consider some Learning Management System WordPress themes too.
Now, choosing an LMS plugin is not a decision you want to make on a whim, since you will, for sure, invest a lot of time and energy whichever LMS plugin you pick, and it won’t be that simple to just change your mind and switch to a different one after building out all your educational content. To help you make a wise decision we came up with this list of the top WordPress LMS plugins:
LearnPress is a lightweight, easy to use, and powerful LMS plugin that enables you to create a variety of online education platforms without any coding knowledge. Its user-friendly interface enables you to manage all the lessons and tests and follow up on your students with great ease. You can customize all the course options, edit and maintain curriculum layouts and also share, manage, and see the statistics about the number of students and course trends for every course you create. As for selling the courses, the plugin supports a variety of billing methods such as WooCommerce, Stripe, PayPal, and more. The plugin also enables you to communicate with your students easily as it supports BuddyPress so that you can get in touch with students or instructors via the WP forum. It is also great that it is translated into many languages. Plus, this is a completely free plugin.
The best part is anyone can use it with zero effort! Also, you can find a detailed LearnPress tutorial with simple and concise explanations to help you.
Tutor LMS is a unique WordPress LMS plugin that enables you to easily create and sell online courses. What makes this tool so great are quizzes, stats, reports and interactive lessons that come with it. You can manage and monetize all sorts of online courses without any coding knowledge. This plugin is also Gutenberg-compatible and comes with its own dedicated blocks: Tutor Student Dashboard, Instructor Registration Form and Student Registration Form. Some of its awesome features include multiple video sources, styling options, Q&A for students with the course teacher, tracking course progress, course difficulty level, teacher profiles and panels and many more. The plugin has a free version and a premium plan that provides you with more detailed reports on how successful your course was, beautifully designed certificates, and a lot more advanced features. What’s also great about this plugin is that even total beginners will find it very easy to use, thanks to its intuitive course builder.
The Sensei LMS seamlessly integrates with your WordPress theme and allows you to create all sorts of online courses. It comes with WooCommerce Paid Courses Extension so that you can sell your courses easily via the most popular eCommerce plugin for WordPress – WooCommerce. Sensei LMS provides you with all the essential functions you need to create a successful online course. It is a robust solution, just perfect for beginners as it requires no coding knowledge at all, it isn’t overloaded with features and functions and you will quickly and easily master it. Its quiz functionality is pretty wide and also allows for a lot of customization. Plus, this is a completely free plugin, developed by the company that stands behind WordPress and WooCommerce which tells a lot about its reliability and its compatibility with both.
If you are looking for a powerful LMS plugin that has it all and does not require specific addons to enable selling and paying the courses, LifterLMS might be just the one for you. You will easily set up credit card payments, course bundles, coupons, one time or recurring payments etc. It comes with neat features and enables you to create full-fledged online courses with lessons, training modules, degree programs, and similar. It also allows you to enrich your courses with video, audio, images texts and other features to create a more engaging online learning experience. What makes it great is that it offers powerful features such as course certification, automated emails, gamification with badges, and more. Furthermore, you have the option to restrict any WordPress page on your site to students/members only. You can use the free version of the plugin and upgrade it at any time with some of the paid addons which will, among other things, provide you with the option to accept credit card or PayPal payments. Addons can be purchased individually, and you can also choose between two premium bundles.
MasterStudy LMS is a feature-rich plugin that enables you to create all kinds of educational content and online courses. It is very easy to use thanks to its well-structured builder, visual composer plugin, and drag and drop functionality, not to mention that no coding knowledge is necessary. With this plugin, you can easily create group courses, points reward system, trial courses, grade books, and a lot more. You can pick between three different types of classes: text lessons, video lessons, and slideshow lessons, and you can always add more elements to them such as templates or text blocks. You can also easily create various types of quizzes with or without countdown timers, which require different types of answers – single choice, multiple-choice, and true or false. Plus, the BuddyPress plugin is included for free, providing you with some great functionalities such as advanced profiles, activity feeds, course messaging, course groups, and much more. As for the design, the plugin offers a minimalistic and elegant look and 11 different designs to choose from. You can also further customize the layout of your classes as the Visual Composer is also bundled for free.
LearnDash is a very popular, feature-rich LMS plugin used by many universities, institutions and companies worldwide. It lets you easily create all kinds of online courses and also sell them by setting membership plans, one-time price, recurring payments, subscriptions, and similar. It offers a variety of gamification techniques and reward systems to make your courses more engaging. You can also show course progress, award points, and provide certificates to inspire learners’ ambitions. Its user-friendly interface makes it really easy for you to familiarize yourself with all the powerful features this plugin has to offer. Some of them include advanced monetization options which allow you to effortlessly choose a payment schedule and take orders, administration options thanks to which you can track progress, group your students, make reports, and a lot more. Furthermore, it comes with extensions for bbPress, WooCommerce, MailChimp, Stripe, Slack, and a lot more popular applications. LearnDash isn’t free, it offers three pricing plans to choose from but considering its features and overall quality, itand definitely pays off.
Namaste! LMS is a simple yet pretty effective LMS plugin that is highly recommendable for beginners although experienced users will also find it quite useful as it offers just enough advanced options. It is very intuitive and creating a course is very similar to making a standard WordPress post. If you wish to create a gamified atmosphere to inspire your students to put in more effort you have the option to award badges too. You will also find making quizzes and exams very easy with this tool. One of the benefits that also come with is that you can protect your files from undesired intruders. Another great functionality that you can use is to enable a shopping cart to manage subscriptions and collect money. The pro (paid) version comes at a very affordable price and provides you with many more advanced features such as premium support for the year, numerous add-ons, an option to delay course material, and a lot more. Plus it is integrated with BuddyPress, WooCommerce, Watu, and many other relevant plugins.
In Conclusion
Each of these LMS plugins will provide you with the essential features for a successful online education establishment whether you were an individual, a company, or a university. What you should pay attention to, in order to make the best choice are the exact features you want for your online classroom. Only after you have carefully thought this one out, think about the price in terms of your budget, as some of these are free and some come in various pricing plans.
We hope this article was helpful. If you liked it, feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
