9 Best WordPress LMS Plugins To Create Online Courses (2020)

Are you looking for the best WordPress LMS plugin for your website? A Learning Management System (LMS) provides you with a platform to create online classes, enroll students, evaluate students, and more.

With an LMS, you can create an online learning platform very easily. Whether you want to sell your courses or create an online class for your school, a Learning Management System lets you do all of that.

But not all WordPress LMS plugins are perfect. Some of them have full-blown features while others lack important features.

If you plan to sell courses and teach online, it’s important you choose the right LMS plugin for your website.

In this article, I’ll be sharing the best WordPress LMS plugins you can use on your website. We’ll be going through each plugin in detail.

Let’s get started.

What To Look In A WordPress LMS Plugin?

Before we jump into the list of the LMS plugins, it’s important to understand what to look for in a WordPress LMS plugin.

You may know about a few features that you want in the plugin. But later on, your needs might change and you’ll want some features that are not available in your plugin.

If this happens, you’ll be stuck with your plugin and your investment would be wasted. That’s why it’s always good to know what good LMS WordPress plugins offer and what to look for in these plugins.

Best WordPress LMS Plugins

Now that you know the features to look for in an LMS plugin, it’s time to look at the plugins we’ve handpicked for you.

1. LearnDash

LearnDash is one of the most popular and trusted LMS plugin for WordPress. It’s been used by big fortune 500 companies and is the go-to choice for many professionals.

Whether you want to sell online courses or offer classwork to your university/school students, LearnDash is one of the best plugins to use.

With this plugin, you can create courses, offer drip-feed content, award certificates, and more.

Their course builder lets you easily create courses and customize them as you wish. You can change the order of the content, update the content, break-up content into sections, and more.

The course builder also lets you create advanced quizzes with different answer types such as single choice, multiple-choice, essay, survey, fill in the blank, etc.

You can display custom messages based on the student’s quiz performance, use times for conducting quizzes, and much more.

The LMS also lets you award badges and certificates to students based on quiz completion or course completion.

Selling courses using LearnDash is very simple as well. You can sell courses based on one-time payment or recurring subscriptions. You have complete control over the subscriptions you create.

The plugin also lets you create memberships, sell courses as bundles, and even create licenses for your courses.

LearnDash also makes student management and administration very easy. You can easily look up student profiles and view their history.

You can send email notifications to students, create groups and manage them, expire content access, etc.

Here’s an overview of the different features available in LearnDash LMS:

There’s no doubt that LearnDash LMS plugin is loaded with features. Let’s take a look at the pricing of this feature-rich LMS plugin.

The single-site site license of the plugin normally costs $199 but at this moment, they are running a discount so you can get this license for just $159.

Other plans are priced as shown below:

The plus and pro plan of the plugin comes with the ProPanel which is a dashboard that shows the live activity of the students.

LearnDash is the full-blown LMS plugin that comes with all the features you can ask for. But if you’re someone who just wants to sell online courses and doesn’t need all these features, then this may not be the ideal solution for you considering its price.

If that’s the case, you can look up the other plugins we mentioned on this list.

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2. Tutor LMS

Tutor LMS by Themeum is another powerful LMS plugin for WordPress. This complete LMS system is perfect for individual instructors, educational institutions, and e-learning platforms.

The plugin has a clean and extensive course builder with a drag-and-drop interface allowing you to create courses with ease.

This course builder has a very user-friendly interface and comes with a lot of customization options so that you don’t have to make any compromises with your course.

The plugin also features an advanced quiz creator that lets you create different kinds of quizzes. There are 10 pre-defined quiz types you can choose from.

The quiz creator lets you randomize or reorder the questions, limit quiz attempts, set answering time limit, show quiz grades, and automate results.

Apart from the back-end course builder that lets you create and order the content of the course, Tutor LMS also provides a front-end course builder to help you present your course in the best way possible.

The front-end course builder also has a drag-and-drop interface and allows you to put quizzes in your course.

From here, you can add media attachments, set course price, add course instructors, and more.

Managing your courses in LMS is very easy as well. You can view all your courses, edit them, add instructors, award certificates, and more.

Tutor LMS provides powerful reporting for your courses. You can get an overview of your performance at a glance from the reports dashboard.

The reports show the number of students, instructors, reviews, courses, lessons, and more.

Here’s an overview of all the key features of Tutor LMS WordPress plugin:

Just like LearnDash, Tutor LMS is also loaded with a ton of features. Let’s take a look at the pricing of this LMS plugin:

The pricing of the single-site license of the plugin is $149 annually. The 5-site license costs $199 annually and the unlimited site license costs $299 annually.

They also offer a lifetime license that starts at $399 for the single site license.

If the pricing seems high, then you can give the plugin a test run. They do offer a free version of the plugin.

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3. Lifter LMS

Lifter LMS is another WordPress LMS plugin that you can use to sell courses online. This plugin comes with a lot of features.

Let’s start with their course builder that allows you to create courses easily with the drag-and-drop interface.

You can also create quizzes easily for the lessons in your course. You can even set timers for the quiz.

The course builder allows different types of multimedia so that you can have video, audio, image, or text-based lessons.

The plugin lets you award certificates to students enrolled in your courses on completion of any course or quiz.

You can offer downloadable resources to students such as PDFs, worksheets, and other files for learning.

To encourage discussions, the plugin provides lesson comments, forums, and private coaching areas.

Selling courses with Lifter LMS is very easy as you can collect payments through various methods. You can also collect one-time payments or recurring payments.

You can sell courses in bundles, offer upsells, and more.

The plugin also lets you create memberships for students.

Here is an overview of the key features of the plugin:

Let’s discuss the pricing of the Lifter LMS plugin:

The single site license of the plugin costs $99 annually. The 5-site and unlimited site license costs $299 and $999 annually respectively.

The downside of the single site plan of Lifter LMS is that it doesn’t come with a lot of addons that you may require to achieve certain functionality.

Overall, Lifter LMS is a good plugin but the interface of the plugin is not as intuitive as the previous two plugins on our list.

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4. LearnPress

LearnPress is an LMS plugin for WordPress made by Thimpress. With this LMS plugin, you can easily create and sell online courses on your WordPress site.

You can create unlimited courses and manage them with ease using their user-friendly interface. You can also create quizzes in your courses.

The drag-and-drop course builder makes the course and quiz creation process very fast and hassle-free.

With LearnPress, you have complete control over your courses and its content. You can control who enrolls in your courses. You can also control students, add instructors, and create membership levels for students.

When it comes to payment methods, LearnPress offers different payment gateways ensuring people can purchase your courses without any difficulties.

Let’s take a look at the key features of this plugin:

Coming to the pricing, LearnPress is a free plugin and is perfect for those who want to sell online courses without getting too deep into the different features.

But it’s worth mentioning that they also offer a pro version with more features and addons.

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5. MasterStudy LMS

Number five on our list is MasterStudy LMS. This is a free WordPress LMS plugin for creating online courses.

It’s a very simple and lightweight plugin that doesn’t have all the fancy features of an LMS plugin.

Creating courses using MasterStudy is simple. You can add lessons, course level, duration, skill level required, and more.

You can create lessons in different formats such as audio, video, and slideshow. Similarly, the plugin also lets you create quizzes for the courses. You can select the answer type from a single choice, multiple-choice, and true or false.

Here is an overview of the key features included in the plugin:

For a free LMS plugin, MasterStudy LMS is a great plugin and does almost everything you’d want when selling online courses.

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6. WP Courseware

WP Courseware is an LMS plugin by Fly Plugins. It is a complete online course selling package in a plugin.

The drag-and-drop interface of the course builder makes it very easy to arrange and structure your course content.

The plugin also has a drip-feed content feature that allows you to gradually provide lessons to students.

Moreover, you can conduct quizzes and surveys using the plugin. You can choose from the different advanced quiz types, set quiz timers, show quiz results, and much more.

You can award certificates to students on course completion to give them a feeling of accomplishment.

WP Courseware also allows you to add, edit, and manage instructors for your courses.

Let’s take a look at the key features of the plugin:

Here’s the pricing of WP Courseware plugin:

The plugin costs $124 annually for the 2-site license. The 10 and 25 website license costs $149 and $199 annually respectively.

Although the plugin has a lot of features, other plugins like LearnDash provide more value and features for almost the same price.

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7. Sensei LMS

Sensei LMS is the official LMS plugin by WooCommerce for selling online courses. With this plugin, you can seamlessly create courses, lessons, and quizzes.

Their course builder makes creating courses, adding modules and lessons very easy and fast.

Similarly, you can also create quizzes in Sensei LMS. you can add questions, set the question type, add question grade, attach media, and more.

With Sensei LMS, you can either sell your courses as a subscription or as memberships. The plugin gives you full control over the customization of the subscriptions.

Here are the key features of the plugin:

Sensei LMS is available for free on the WooCommerce store. If you already use WooCommerce on your website, then you should definitely check out Sensei LMS.

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8. Good LMS

Good LMS is a WordPress LMS plugin available on CodeCanyon. This Learning Management System plugin has a lot of features.

Creating courses in Good LMS is simple. They don’t have a dedicated course builder and you can create your course content in the default WordPress editor.

You can also create quizzes using the plugin. The quiz builder lets you add sections, number of retakes allowed, quiz timer, question types, and much more.

You can award certificates to students for completing your course. Besides certificates, you can also award badges to students.

The plugin even lets you create coupon codes for your courses to increase sales.

Good LMS allows you to add multiple instructors for courses and you can also set commission rates for these instructors.

Here are the key features of the Good LMS WordPress plugin:

Let’s take a look at the pricing of the plugin:

As you can see, the plugin costs $32 for a single site license and comes with 6 months of updates and support.

For an LMS plugin, this price is a bargain and very low compared to the other plugins on our list. Not to mention, Good LMS provides a decent amount of features that are more than enough for selling courses online.

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9. Namaste LMS

The last plugin we have on our list is Namaste LMS. It is a free LMS plugin for users who want to sell courses online.

You can create an unlimited number of courses, lessons, quizzes, and assignments.

The plugin lets you award certificates to students on the completion of courses. Apart from this, there are grading and point-based systems for tracking the performance of students.

It’s a very simple plugin with the following key features:

If you’re looking for a very simple plugin, then this might be the one. Since it’s available for free, you can go ahead and check it out to see if it fits your needs.

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What Do You Need To Create an Online Course Site?

So now you have seen all the best WordPress LMS plugins you can choose from for creating and selling courses online.

But besides an LMS plugin, what else do you need to create an online course site?

In this section, we’ll be answering this question. If you already own a website and know the requirements for creating online courses, you can skip this section.

A Domain Name

A domain name is a first and foremost requirement for creating an online course site. A domain name is basically the name of the website.

If you already own the domain, you may not need to purchase a new domain. But if you’re starting out new, you’ll have to first purchase a domain name before creating your website.

There are many domain registrar websites such as Namecheap and GoDaddy where you can purchase your domain name.

But you can also get a domain name for free.

A WordPress Hosting Account

After purchasing your domain, you will need web hosting to set up your WordPress site. There are many great WordPress hosting provides that you can choose from.

A lot of these hosting provides, offer a free domain name for a year. This means that you don’t have separately purchase a domain name.

These web hosting providers can easily set up your WordPress website in minutes.

A Learning Management Plugin

Now that your website is up and running, you need a Learning Management System (LMS) plugin on your website.

This will enable allow you to create courses, add lessons, and more. I’ve already listed the best LMS plugins for WordPress on this list.

So, you will no trouble picking the one that’s best for you.

A WordPress Theme

Lastly, you’ll need a WordPress theme that can display your courses beautifully on your website. There are many great WordPress themes out there that you can choose from.

Conclusion

So, that’s all about the best WordPress LMS plugins. I hope this list will help you choose the right plugin for your website.

If you have any questions regarding the plugins mentioned in the list, feel free to ask them in the comments.

Also, what do you plan to sell on your website? Let us know in the comments.