What is LearnDash
LearnDash is one of the most popular WordPress Learning Management Plugins and founded by Justin and Cloe Ferriman.
LearnDash adds specific Learning Management Systems to your WordPress website. This way, you can create courses, track progress, add quizzes, and award users with custom certificates and badges when they completed certain Course activities.
The structure of Learndash is based on instructional design principles that are used to develop e-learning for the business market. This makes LearnDash a great tool to create and sell online courses.
LearnDash pricing
LearnDash has 3 pricing packages. A Basic, Plus, and Pro package. Learndash pricing for the Basic packages starts at $159 per year for 1 site license. More details for the pricing of the other LearnDash packages and their features you’ll find in the overview below.
LearnDash has no free core version. They offer you a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re not satisfied with the product.
LearnDash review
If you want to create and sell online courses from your WordPress website, there are a lot of learning management plugins that can do this job for you. Each plugin has its own pros and cons. LearnDash is one of the most used online course plugins.
I’ve written a comprehensive LearnDash review to learn if the best LMS plugin for your situation.
LearnDash Hosting
When you’ve chosen LearnDash as your LMS plugin, you can’t start directly. The first step is to decide which hosting provider is best for your situation to host your learning management system. Do you expect a lot of students right away when you launch your course, or will they grow in time? Not each hosting provider is suited for every situation.
When you choose a LearnDash hosting provider, check their services like support hours, backups, and security. Usually, you pay a little more if your hosting provider arranges this for you. But if there is something wrong with your site, you want to be able to quickly restore a backup or ask a support department if they’re going to take a look at your site.
LearnDash Themes
If you have WordPress and LearnDash installed, you’re not ready to start. Your next step is to decide what your LearnDash website will look like. If you understand HTML and CSS, you will be able to customize a lot of things yourself, but it is easier to find the LearnDash theme that suits your needs.
What should you pay attention to when buying a LearnDash theme?
The most important thing is whether the theme is easy to use. For you in the WordPress admin to set it all but even more important for front-end learners. An intuitive, useful, and easy to access theme determines not only your content but also the success of your online course.
There’s a lot of difference in LearnDash theme pricing. There are basic free themes and more expensive themes with lots of premium functionalities. The best is to think about which features you need in a theme and to agree on a budget with yourself.
you can find, what I think are the best LearnDash themes here
LearnDash and Page Builders
Page builders are becoming more and more popular in the WordPress community. The significant advantage is that you don’t need much HTML and CSS knowledge to build and maintain your WordPress website.
LearnDash also supports the following page builders:
- Elementor
- Beaver Builder
- DIVI
LearnDash Add-ons and plugins
LearnDash has lots of standard functionalities like drip-feed content, prerequisites, quizzing, course Bundles, assignment management, and much more.
But you may need features for your online learning platform that LearnDash doesn’t have by default. Fortunately, there are a lot of great plugins and add-ons that add extra functionality to your LearnDash LMS. For example, if you want to integrate SCORM or xAPI modules, adaptive learning in LearnDash, or additional reporting options.
LearnDash tutorial
Do you want to use LearnDash to create online courses, but you don’t have that much experience with WordPress and LearnDash? I’m working on a detailed tutorial where you’ll learn how to set up WordPress and to set up LearnDash and how you can create courses and quizzes in LearnDash.
LearnDash alternatives
As I mentioned earlier, LearnDash is one of the most popular LMS plugins for WordPress. But this doesn’t mean that it’s the best plugin for your situation.
Therefore I’ve listed several LearnDash Alternatives for you and made an extensive comparison for you.