6 Best WordPress LMS Plugins Compared For 2020

Do you want to create and sell online courses on your WordPress website?

What you need is a good WordPress LMS plugin that will transform your WordPress website in an online course platform where you can start selling online courses.

To choose the right LMS plugin you’ll need to know which features are essential for your situation. It’s important to choose a plugin that fits all your needs, because you are going to invest a lot of time in the LMS plugin that you ultimately choose. You don’t want to switch to another LMS plugin when you created an implement all you course content in WordPress.

If you search the internet you’ll find a lot of plugins with LMS functionalities.

To help you choose I handpicked what I think are the 6 best LMS plugins around at this moment.

I’ll show you their functionalities, compare the plugins with their pros and cons so you can choose the best LMS plugin for your situation.

What Is a LMS Plugin?

Before I dive in to my WordPress LMS comparison, let talk what a LMS plugin exactly is.

A Learning Management System is software or a plugin with which you can create, sell and manage online courses. It will also help you with the administration, tracking and reporting for your online courses and course students.

An LMS plugin adds functionality to your WordPress website so that you can create, manage and sell your own online courses.

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) but has no specific features to create courses and quizzes. But WordPress has tons of plugins to extend its functionality. With LMS plugins you’ll add the options to your WordPress website to create and sell your own profitable course on your own website.

Why Do I Need One?

Good question!

The answer is simple: An LMS plugin saves you a lot of time and hassle.

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) but has no specific features to create courses and quizzes. But WordPress has tons of plugins to extend its functionality. With LMS plugins you’ll add the options to your WordPress website to create and sell your own profitable course on your own website.

A good WordPress LMS plugin takes care of all the managing stuff and lets you focus on creating the best and most profitable online course for your target audience.

So if you’re planning on doing something with learning in your organization or you want to sell courses an LMS plugin in WordPress is an must have.

How To Choose The Best LMS Plugin for Your WordPress Site

Ask yourself these questions before comparing the LMS plugins so you know what to look for:

• What kind of course do you want to create? Do you want to teach a single course with one unit? A course with multiple units and multiple lessons? Multiple multi-tier courses?
• What’s your budget? Yes, there will be costs involved – good quality WordPress LMS plugins require online fees for licenses, updates, and support.
• What kind of site do you want to create? A simple online course? Integrate courses into an existing site? Create a marketplace for courses?
• What kinds of features do you need? Dripped content, quizzes, assignments, certificates, prerequisites, payment gateways, and email notifications are just a few features you should look out for in a quality LMS plugin.

WordPress LMS plugin Features

Before choosing a LMS plugin you’ll need to know which features are essential for your situation. Below I explain some of the basic features of the LMS plugins and some extra features that can give your course website an extra advantage against your competitors.

Course Builder

For the selected LMS plugins you don’t know how to program to build your online course. To build your course you’ll use course builder or course creator in your LMS plugin. With a Course builder you can:

• Set up the structure of your course and divide it into multiple lessons and topics.
• add quizzes to your course structure to check that students understand and remember your course content.

Student Progress Status

Progress status is to show your students which parts they already completed in your course and what their progress is over your whole course for instance in a progress bar.

Example of progressbar in LearnDash

Student Enrollment

With enrollment you give a student access to your course. For enrollment most LMS plugins have multiple options:

• Manual enrollment: With manual enrollment you must subscribe students manually in your LMS and give them access to a specific course.
• Automatic enrollment: Students can buy a course and are automatically enrolled in the course they bought. You don’t have to worry about it.
• Bulk enrollment: Enroll groups of students at once in your courses. Mostly with csv imports

Dripped Content And Prerequisites

You can give all your lessons at once as a student purchases your course. But you can also drip your content. For instance that you release a new lessons each week or on a specific date.

With Prerequisites you can restrictions in your course structure. An example of an prerequisite is that a student must complete lesson two and pass the quiz before he can continue to the next lesson.

Content Protection

Your courses are protected standard so only enrolled students can view the lessons. Most LMS plugins have the options that you can enable previews of your course. A visitor of your site can see a how your course looks like and decide if he’s interested in buying it.

Quizzes And Tests

With quizzes and test you can check if a student fully understand what you’re teaching and if he’s ready for the next lesson with a prerequisite or that he gets a certificate at the end of your course.

Not all LMS plugins have the set of question types that you can choose from. Most common question types are:

• Single choice,
• Multiple choice,
• Fill in the blank
• Drag and drop

Before buying an LMS plugin check if the question types that you want to use in your course content are available in the LMS plugins.

Badges and Certificates

Badges are digital awards that a student gets when he successfully completes a specific task or activity. You can use badges to motivate your students, because everyone loves rewards and recognition for knowledge.

Integrations And Add-ons

Most LMS plugins have a wide range of features of their own but not all functionalities that you need to create an profitable online course are not standard available in the LMS plugins. Here integrations and add-ons come in handy.

For instance:

• Email provider integrations as Activecampaign, Mailchimp or Convertkit.
• Woocommerce integrations.
• Integreations with buddypress and bbpress.
• Integration with Zapier.
• Add-ons for form builders such as Gravity forms or Ninja forms.
• Add-ons to support SCORM and xAPI standards.

Payment Gateway Options

The last feature that I will mention here and probably the most important one If you’re going to sell your courses to students is the option to connect to different payment gateways such as paypal, Adyen and stripe to your LMS plugin. With this integration a student can buy your course, pays the price you have set gets login credentials to follow the course and the payment provider will deposit the paid amount in your bank account.

Nb: For users in the Netherlands that want to create an course with WordPress and an LMS plugin check if the payment gateway supports iDEAL. In the Netherlands there are 50 million iDEAL-payments per month. So if you don’t have the option to pay with IDEAL you throw up a threshold to buy your courses and this way you can miss out on sales.

Best WordPress LMS plugins Compared

Now it’s finally time to look at what I think are the 6 best WordPress LMS plugins in the market. Here is my list of the best LMS plugins for WordPress in 2020.

1. LearnDash
2. LifterLMS
3. AaccessAlly
4. LearnPress
5. WP Courseware
6. Sensei LMS
7. Tutor LMS

You can click on of the links above to go directly to a specific plugin.

Now let’s start the WordPress LMS plugin comparison.

LearnDash

From the 6 plugins in my list LearnDash is the most popular WordPress LMS plugin. LearnDash is used by Fortune 500 companies, universities and single entrepreneurs for building their online courses.

In the past LearnDash had different usability and on-boarding issues compared to other online course platforms like Teachable or Thinkific. This all changed when LearnDash released their 3.0 version mid-2019.

LearnDash blew all the other WordPress e-learning plugins out of the way with great improvements like adding your own theme colors in the LearnDash settings (Before version 3.0 you had to dig deep in the CSS and PHP files). Another great improvement is great drag and drop course and quiz builder in LearnDash 3.0.

With LearnDash 3.0 you can create engaging and interactive courses that your learners will love and that give your brand a professional look and feel.

New LearnDash 3.0 Course Builder

The new LearnDash 3.0 Course Builder has some great new features that you cannot find in the other LMS plugins available:

• The new Course Builder is very user friendly. Even if you never build a course in LearnDash before you have your first course set up in minutes.
• Another Great feature in the new Course Builder is the option to re-use content in multiple courses. You don’t have to copy stuff and worry about different versions in different courses.
• You can easiliy create quizzes with the Drag and Drop Quiz builder.
• You can re-use questions in multiple quizzes in the new Quiz Builder

Try LearnDash Now 

Other Key Features In LearnDash:

• Unlimited courses: You can create an unlimited amount of online courses
• Drag and drop course builder: It is really easy to rearrange content and re-use content in different courses.
• Focus Mode: With a single click you can enable a distraction-free experience that looks great and is easy to use. Focus Mode has been specifically designed to help increase both learner retention and course completion rates.
• Drip-feed your content so you can create a guided learning experience for your students.
• Advanced Quizzing options. You can use up to eight question types, use question banks and display custom messages bases on your students quiz performance.
• Dynamic forums. You don’t need another plugin for this. Forum are standard in LearDash
• Different monetization strategies for your courses like one-time purchase, memberships, subscriptions, course bundles and course licenses.
• Detailed reporting functionalities and the option to send automated e-mails and reminder notifications.
• Group management options. You can organize students in groups and assign a group administrator who can follow the students’ progress.
• LearnDash is multisite enabled, so you can use LearnDash on a WordPress multisite install if needed.
• Mobile compatible, If the theme works on mobile so does LearnDash.
• LearnDash is compatible with every modern WordPress theme or page builder such as Divi, Elementor and Beaver builder.
• xAPI integration: LearnDash has a integration with GrassBlades LRS and with the TinCanny Reporting plugin. This gives you the opportunity to embed content created by authoring tools like Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, Lectora and H5p in your LearnDash courses.

Pricing:

LearnDash has three annual pricing tiers

• Basic package: $199 for a single site license with one year support and updates. The basic packages comes without the LearnDash ProPanel.
• Plus package: $229 then you have up to 10 site licenses, the ProPanel and 1 year support and updates.
• Pro package: $369 you have up to 25 site licenses, the ProPanel and also 1 year support and updates.

With all tiers you get the new LearnDash Demo Site Template (https://demo.LearnDash.com/) for free. This site is created together with Astra.

LearnDash has no free trail or free version of their plugin, but comes with an 30-Day money back guarantee.

Which Websites Use Leardash?

LearnDash features big companies as Infusionsoft (now keap) and the university of Michigan who use LearnDash. But there are also a lot of smaller (and non-enterprise) companies that use LearnDash to create and sell theire courses:

• Yoast SEO Academy (https://yoast.com/academy/) – Yoast (known for the WordPress SEO plugin) moved in the past from LifterLMS to LearnDash. See also their casestudy (https://www.LearnDash.com/case-study/yoast-academy/) why the switched to LearnDash.
• OptinMonster University (https://optinmonster.com/university) – By the creators from OptinMonster use LearnDash to train their users how they can get the most out of OptinMonster plugin. You can find their case study here https://www.LearnDash.com/case-study/optinmonster-university/.

Review:

LearnDash Pros:

• Great documentation on how to use LearnDash and all its features.
• Astra theme integration for a
• LearnDash content can be reused in multiple courses.
• A lot of Third Party plugins to extend the functionalities of your LearnDash LMS.
• Great video progression feature where you can require users to watch a video completely before they can mark it as complete.

LearnDash Cons:

• LearnDash has a relatively steap learning curve if you haven’t that much WordPress experience.
• LearnDash has no free trail or a basic plugin. They offer a 30 day moneyback guarantee.

For more information read my LearnDash review

Try LearnDash Now 

LifterLMS

In addition to LearnDash, LifterLMS is also a very popular plugin to transform your WordPress site into an online course platform for selling your online courses.

LifterLMS is founded by Chris Badgett and Thomas Levy and it serves three types of people:

1. Builders. WordPress developers and designers who build LMS websites for their customers
2. Starters. Experts, Coaches & Entrepreneurs who want to create effective an engaging online courses or membership sites.
3. Switchers. People who want to switch from their current LMS platform to LifterLMS for more control and better support.

LifterLMS is a freemium LMS plugin. It consists of a free core plugin with lots of paid add-ons for extra functionality.

Try LifterLMS Now 

LifterLMS Key Features:

• Course builder: You can create your courses with the Drag and drop course builder.
• Student dashboard: Set up user accounts for each of your learners, giving each individual access to their own front-end dashboard. Here they can view, track and study their courses
• Lesson Downloads: Offer downloadable worksheets like ebooks, PDFs and audios files for offline learning to your students
• Course import and export features: You can easily import or export a course from one LifterLMS site to another for backup, migration and licensing.
• Members-Only Pricing: Make paid memberships more valuable by giving them different pricing for courses than the general public.
• Bulk Course Enrollment: With one simple click you can enroll existing members in newly added courses.
• Tools to monetize your website: LifterLMS provides numerous ways to generate revenue. Integrate your website with numerous payment providers, including PayPal (built-in), Stripe, Authorize.Net, and WooCommerce. You can charge one-off payments for access to courses, create an unlimited number of membership plans and set the pricing, charge monthly or annual subscriptions, create an affiliate program, and more.

Pricing:

The core LifterLMS plugin is free. You can download it directly from wordpress.org. The core plugin has limited functionalities.

If you want extra features for the LifterLMS you can buy separate add-ons. For instance the Paypal add-on for $99 per year or the advanced quizzes add-on for $199 per year.

If you’re planning on buying and using multiple LifterLMS add-ons it is cheaper to go for the LifterLMS add-on bundles. There are two:

• Universe Bundle: for $299 per year you have access to 13 premium add-ons.
• Infinity Bundle: for $999 per year you’ll get 20 premium add-ons to create your online courses.

If you want to try LifterLMS before buying it LifterLMS has also an almost free ($1) 30 day demo with all their tools from the Infinity Bundle available. So you can test if LifterLMS fits your all your needs.

Do you want more information about LiferLMS? Read my LifterLMS review.

Which Websites Use LifterLMS?

Next to LearnDash LifterLMS is also a very popular option for WordPress course providers. Here are two examples of LifterLMS in action:

• Divi Academy – Learns you all about Divi. Their four courses are created with LifterLMS.
• WP101 – The site where you can learn all about WordPress has all his courses in LifterLMS. On wp101.com you can see LifterLMS live in action.

LifterLMS Pros:

• Drag and Drop Course Builder.
• LifterLMS’s Core plugin is completely free.
• LifterLMS has a great integration with Woocommerce to sell your courses and memberships.

LifterLMS Cons:

• LifterLMS can get really expensive if you need a lot of extensions to build your WordPress LMS platform.
• little support if you use the LifterLMS free plugin.
• No distraction free learning mode.

Try LifterLMS Now 

AccessAlly

AccessAlly is a WordPress plugin build to help you create successful online courses and membership sites. AccessAlly gives you a great set of features so you can focus on creating engaging online courses and membership experiences and AccessAlly takes care of all the technical details.

Try AccessAlly Now 

AccessAlly claims it provides you all features you need so you don’t have to search for any extra third party plugins. So let’s look at their features.

Key Features In AccessAlly:

• Built in order forms: You can take orders directly on your WordPress website with a Stripe or PayPal integration. AccessAlly supports multiple currencies.
• WordPress affiliate options included. With AccessAlly you’re ready to setup your own affiliate program in no-time.
• Trial offers, Subscriptions and 1-click Upsells. You can offer a free trail period for your course of increase your revenue by adding 1-Click Upsells to your order funnels.
• Design your own dashboards. You can keep track of the data that’s most important to you.
• Unlimited instant and Dripped courses. You can create courses as you want. AccessAlly gives you no restrictions.
• Homework submissions. Students can answer questions, upload files and submit homework for review. Teachers get an email notification when a student submits something.
• Gamification with credit system. Students can earn credits to unlock bonus content.
• Automated follow-Up based on student actions. Every student action can trigger a tag automated sequence or conditional content dripping.

Pricing

AccessAlly has three tiers

• AccessAlly Essentials – For small businesses & solopreneurs: $ 82/mo billed annually or $ 99/mo paid monthly. With annually billing you save two monthly pays
• AccessAlly Pro – For online educators & marketers: $ 108/mo billed annually or $ 129/mo paid monthly. With annually billing you save two monthly pays
• The third option is the AccessAlly Done For You plan where you hire a AccessAlly Certified Expert who sets up AccessAlly completely to your needs an wishes. Tihis plan starts at $ 4,500

AccessAlly offers a 30 day Money Back Guarantee.

Learn more about Accessally, by reading my Accessally review.

Which Websites Use AccessAlly?

• Todd Herman – Founder of the 90 day year program. Todd hosts hist 90 year program on AccessAlly
• Eddie Faria 3d animation professional & educator runs his Game Arts Academy completely on AccessAlly. You can visit his course website here.

AccessAlly Pros:

• Integrated online course and membership plugin.
• Great features for billing and selling your online courses.
• Deep CRM Integration for selling your courses on autopilot.

AccessAlly Cons:

• Confusing documentation, the software is not really not designed beginners.
• No pre-built templates for your course pages.

Try AccessAlly Now 

LearnPress

LearnPress is one of the few WordPress LMS plugins that has a free core version. LearnPress is used on more then 50.000 WordPress websites.

Try LearnPress Now 

Key Features In LearnPress

The LearnPress structure is set up modular. You can start with the free version of LearnPress and only add the functionalities to your LMS website that you’ll need.

LearnPress works with add-ons to add extra functionalities to your LearnPress website. Some extensions are free but most Add-ons are paid. Most features, for instance content dripping that are standard in LearnDash are paid and only available in the LearnPress theme Bundle or the LearnPress Pro bundle.

Here you can find an overview of all the free and paid LearnPress add-ons.

LearnPress has also an integration with GrassBlades LRS. This gives you the opportunity to embed content created by authoring tools like Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, Lectora and H5p in your LearnPress courses.

Pricing

LearnPress has three pricing bundles:

• LearnPress Free is $0. It’s a single site license. This bundle comes with some basic add-ons for your LifterLMS website. Do you want to extend the features of your site than you can buy premium add-ons.
• LearnPress Theme Bundle starts at $49 – $69: With the Theme Bundle you buy one of the LearnPress themes and you get also some extra premium add-ons in comparison with the free bundle. For instance content dripping and extra quiz question options. You can use the Theme bundle only for one site.
• LearnPress Pro Bundle is $249: You can use the Pro bundle for up to 3 websites. You’ll get access to all the Premium features that LearnPress offers. You can use any theme with the LearnPress Pro Bundle so there’s no restriction on the look and feel of your LearnPress LMS website.

Read my extensive LearnPress review for more information on LearnPress.

Review

LearnPress Pros:

• Free core plugin with basic course building features.
• To setup LearnPress you don’t need any coding experience.

LearnPress Cons:

• The documentation is not comprehensive.
• The LearnPress Theme bundle is not compatible with other WordPress themes.
• Quiz options like sorting questions and random quizzes are paid features.

Try LearnPress Now 

WP Courseware

WP Courseware is a LMS plugin developed by Fly Plugins. First for their own needs to create a WordPress course and later they made the plugin commercial in 2012 under the name WP Courseware. It’s one of the longer existing plugins in the market.

The structure of a course in WP Courseware is built up form modules and units. You can add multiple units to your modules. The units are content pages that act like lessons. Your units can contain textual content, video and audio files or downloadable pdf files. When you created the units you can simply drag and drop them in the right order or in the right module.

In Wp Courseware you have the option to create three types of quizzes and you have the option to include true or false, multiple choice, text entry and assignment upload questions to your quiz.

Now let’s look at some other key features that WP Courseware offers.Try WP Courseware Now 

Key Features In WP Courseware

• Drag and Drop Course Editor: WP Courseware’s Drag and Drop Course editor is probably the most easy to use drag and drop builder of all the plugins that I reviewed in this article. It really sets WP Courseware apart from the other WordPress LMS solutions on how easy it is to build your course from within the WordPress dashboard. While other course builder plugins for WordPress require you to manually enter every single course lesson to assign it to the right place within your course, WP Courseware includes a simple, intuitive drag and drop course ordering editor. This way of building a course saves you a lot of time.
• Drip content: In WP Courseware you can choose of different drip feed options. You can drip feed course units on a specific date or with a specified interval after starting the course.
• Built-In Shopping Cart: WP Courseware has a built in shopping cart functionality. You can connect your PayPal or Stripe account and start selling courses directly from WP Courseware. You can have allow free access courses, charge an onetime fee for your courses or sell your courses as a monthly or annual subscription.
• Online Course Email Notifications: WP Courseware has a wide range of configurable automated email notifications. WP Courseware can send mails on course unit drip, module completion, Course completion, when a quiz is completed, as a final summary of a course with all the course details and custom feedback messages with custom messages when a student scores higher or lower than a predefined grade.
• WordPress Course Instructor Role: From WP Courseware 4.0 version it offers a special instructor role. This allows you to host multiple courses which are managed by different instructors. The instructor can then create and modify all course components: Course instructors can also enroll students into their own courses, view their students’ progress, access their course’s classroom & grade book pages, and grade quizzes within their assigned courses. Instructor are not allowed to edit any WordPress back-end setting like plugins, posts or pages.
• Grassblade xAPI integration: WP Courseware has a integration with GrassBlades LRS. This gives you the opportunity to embed content created by authoring tools like Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate, Lectora and H5p.

Pricing

WP Courseware has three license levels available to meet your needs.

• Teacher 2-Site License $129: You get one year of updates and support and can install WP Courseware on 2 WordPress Sites.
• Professor 10-Site License $149: You also get one year of updates and support and can install WP Courseware on 10 different WordPress Sites.
• Guru 25-Site License $199: This license level also gives you one year of updates and support and can install WP Courseware on up to 25 different WordPress Sites.

Do you want to try WP Courseware? They offer a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so you can test if WP Courseware is the LMS plugin that is right for you. WP Courseware also has a fully working demo WordPress website where you can see how a student would see your courses.

Read more about WP Courseware in this WP Courseware review.

Which Websites Use WP Courseware?

WP Courseware is used by some of the top universities in the world, such as the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin Madison.

WP Courseware is also used by:

• Caitlin Pyle form ProofreadAnywhere.com. She helps proofreaders earn extra income from anywhere in the world.
• David Risley who own the Blogmarketing academy.

Review

WP Courseware Pros:

• WP Courseware is Fully GDPR Compliant for EU Customers.
• WP Courseware seamlessly integrates with any WordPress theme or page builder.

WP Courseware Cons:

• For certain functionalities, WP Courseware relies on third-party vendors.

Try WP Courseware Now 

Sensei LMS

Sensei LMS previously known as Sensei is an WordPress Learning Management System plugin built by Automattic, the company that created products like WordPress.com and WooCommerce. Because Sensei LMS and WooCommerce are both build by the same company Sensei LMS comes with outstanding WooCommerce integration.

Try Sensei LMS Now 

In the past Sensei wasn’t a huge focus for Automattic. It has fallen behind in usability and features. Mid 2019 the guys from Automattic released a new version of sensei. Sensei LMS 2.0.

in Sensei 2.0, there were no real big new functionality updates. The biggest change was that Sensei LMS is now a free plugin which you can download from the WordPress plugin repository. You can start creating online courses completely for free.

Pricing

The Sensei LMS plugin is free of charge. When you want to sell your courses you need the WooCommerce Paid Courses extension for $129.

In addition to the paid courses extension there are 5 free extensions and 1 other paid extension. Below I’ve listed all the extensions:

• Sensei LMS Course progress $0: Enables students to view their course progress and pick up where they left the course.
• WooCommerce Paid Courses $129 for single site: Is the extension you need to sell your courses in combination with WooCommerce. You can offer free trails, one-time payments and recurring payments.
• Sensei certificates $0: With the sensei certificates extension you can reward your students with a certificate after completing the course.
• Sensei Media attachments $0: With the Media attachments extension installed you can provide additional learning materials to your students. From audio files to slideshows and PDFs.
• Sensei Course Participants $0: With this extensions you can show site visitors how popular your courses are.
• Sensei Share Your Grade $0: Students can easily share their grades on social media and promote your online course.
• Sensei Content drip $29 for single site: This extension gives you the possibility to drip feed your course content. With a fixed interval after the date they start the course, or on a specific date.

Review

Sensei LMS Pros:

• You can start without costs creating online courses with the free Sensei LMS plugin.
• Sensei LMS has outstanding integration with WooCommerce.
• Manual quiz grading options. An Instructor can grade quizzes manually and provide custom feedback per question.

Sensei LMS Cons:

• If you want to sell your courses you must buy the WooCommerce Paid Courses extension for $129.
• Not that many features in comparison to the other e-learning plugins for WordPress reviewed here.

Try Sensei LMS Now 

Tutor LMS

Tutor LMS is one of the most recent entries into the learning management system landscape for WordPress. It is developed by Themeum, a company that maintains several professional WordPress plugins and dozens of premium themes.

Key Features In Tutor LMS

• Drag & drop course building: It’s easy to jump right in and start building courses without any programming knowledge required.
• Multimedia course content: Users can take advantage of native video uploading, or embed hosted content from services such as Vimeo and YouTube.
• Quiz creator: Tutor LMS provides extensive built-in options for developing rich-content quizzes and generating automated quiz results.
• Course management: Easily manage course enrollments, instructor assignments, course fees, prerequisites, and keep track of certifications.
• Analytics: Keep track of course earnings, reviews, quiz attempts, and other key metrics with a centralized analytics dashboard.
• Integrations: Tutor LMS offers integrations with services and tools such as BuddyPress, WooCommerce, and more.
• Translation friendly: This plugin is designed to be easily translated into multiple languages. Support is available if you need help setting up the plugin to work in a different language.

Pricing

Tutor LMS has a unique pricing model that is very flexible. They offer two tiers – a free license and a professional license. The professional license is sold per domain name, and can be purchased on an annual basis or a lifetime basis. The pro version of the plugin will keep working even after the license expires – however, an active license is required for support, updates, and access to new addons.

• Single domain license: A single license for Tutor LMS starts at $149 per year or $399 for life.
• Five domain license pack: Five sites can be activated for $199 annually or $599 for a perpetual license.
• Unlimited licenses: Unlimited usage is billed at $299 per year. Lifetime unlimited usage starts at $999.

Tutor LMS Pros

• The pricing structure is very flexible. The free tier can be used as long as users would like, while professional licenses can be purchased on an annual basis or a lifetime basis. All licenses come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
• Users get access to great professional support, active forums, and detailed user documentation.
• Tutor LMS integrates well with other popular plugins, including WooCommerce.
• Tutor LMS is designed to be easy to use, even for those who are new to WordPress. After reviewing documentation, anyone can quickly begin creating high-quality courses with this plugin.

Tutor LMS Cons

• While Tutor LMS is more affordable than some competitors, it also lacks some of the fine-grained controls that are typically available as far as email automation, content drip, and templates.
• While professional licenses do come with support, there aren’t options for training or consulting.

Do you want to know more about Tutor LMS? Read my full Tutor LMS review here.

Which websites use Tutor LMS?

Tutor LMS is still relatively new – it entered the market in the fall of 2019. Despite its relative newness, it is already widely used, with 10,000+ active installations according to the official WordPress plugin directory.

WordPress LMS Plugins, Scorm And xAPI

Maybe your are an e-learning developer or instructional designer and you work with authoring tools like Articulate Storyline, Adobe Captivate or Lectora Publisher. You want to embed SCORM or xAPI courses to your WordPress based LMS. All of the six plugins that I’ve discussed In this article doesn’t support SCORM and xAPI content out of the box.

Embed SCORM cContent In WordPress

When you want to add SCORM and xAPI modules to your online course platform you have a couple solutions to embed SCORM or xAPI content in WordPress:

1. You can choose LearnDash as your LMS plugin and use the Tin Canny Reporting plugin by Uncanny Owl. Other than the name of the plugin suggests the plugin supports xAPI, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 content. You can track your SCORM and xAPI courses directly inside WordPress.
2. Another option is to use the GrassBlade xAPI Companion plugin in combination with GrassBlade Learning Record System. This works in combination with LearnDash, WP Courseware and LearnPress. With this solution you can track xAPI and SCORM content on your WordPress website.
3. A third solution is the SCORM Cloud WordPress plugin to add SCORM and xAPI support to your online course website. A major drawback of this solution is SCORM Cloud user license model. It can get very expensive if you have a larger group of students that are following your course.

Head To Head WordPress LMS Plugin Comparison

Have you already reduced your choice to two online course plugins and would you like to compare them? Check out my head to head comparisons for a more in-depth analysis of the plugins:

• LearnDash vs LifterLMS
• LearnDash vs LearnPress

My Verdict – What Is The Best WordPress LMS Plugin?

Building an online course website on your WordPress website isn’t something that is done in a few hours. However, a LMS plugin that fits your needs definitely help you speed up the process.

That being said, here are my top recommendations:

After comparing the LMS plugins i think LearnDash is the overall winner. It is the best choice if you want to  create and sell professional online courses. LearnDash has the most powerful online course builder and lot’s of integrations to extend your e-learning platform.

LifterLMS comes in second place just behind LearnDash. – LifterLMS has also lot’s of powerful features to create and sell your own courses. LifterLMS has also a free core plugin so you can give it a try if you’re just starting your online course adventure.

So if you’re looking for the absolute best LMS plugins, my two recommendations are:

1. LearnDash as number one
2. LifterLMS close behind second.

Both plugins are regularly updated and the teams behind LearnDash and LifterLMS developing new features. LifterLMS looks cheaper at first sight but if you want all features it can be more expensive then LearnDash. So think about which features you need for you’re WordPress online course platform and choose the plugin that suits your needs best.