ThemeGrill AuthorAre you searching for the best WordPress LMS plugins for building online courses? Or WordPress plugins for online school websites? If yes, then you’re at the right place.
To put it simply, Learning Management System (LMS) plugins make it possible to create online courses with WordPress without any coding. Besides, you get better control over your course content as it also allows organizing and selling them directly from your dashboard itself.
In this article, we’ll be presenting you with the best WordPress online course plugins for your site. So, that you can instantly convert your WordPress website to an online learning platform without any difficulty.
Let’s begin!
What is WordPress LMS Plugins?
Learning Management System (LMS) plugins are the add-on applications for WordPress with you can create online courses or the LMS websites.
They help you create and run the online classes with WordPress and allow you to take care of all the aspects related to it. For example, you’ll get full control over its administration, documentation, tracking, reporting, automation, and delivery.
Some benefits of using WordPress LMS plugins are:
- No Platform Charge: LMS plugins for WordPress avoid the need to pay for your online course platform, unlike Udemy, Thinkific, Learnworlds, etc. You don’t need to share your earnings with the corporations as you own whatever you earn.
- Easily Personalize Your Content: WordPress online course plugins allow you to create any type of content your users may be interested in. You can add tutorials, presentations, lectures, quizzes, polls, etc. Also, add any kind of interactive elements to engage your users.
- Recurring Income: Another benefit of using the online school WordPress plugin is that it provides several options to monetize your LMS website. Aside from selling one-time course fees, you can sell monthly/ yearly subscriptions and recurring money.
What to Look for in the WordPress LMS Plugins?
We’ve briefly introduced the WordPress online course plugins above. Now it’s time to explore the features that we should look for while choosing the plugin.
- Course Building: The plugin must allow you to create engaging lesson types for the learners that include videos, audio, PDFs, slides, and so on.
- Content Dripping: Release more course materials as learners progress through your course.
- Quizzes and Tests: Evaluate how much your students learned from your course content and determine its effectiveness.
- Course Progress Information: Help learners to know how well they’re performing and track their progress.
- Student Management: Keep a record of the number of students enrolled in your class.
- Incentives: Offering rewards like badges or certificates for successful completion of the course.
- Payment Gateways Integration: Collect payments and handle other monetization options.
Top 11 Best WordPress LMS Plugins for 2022
The plugins we’re going to mention below are suitable for any kind of information or learning website. Besides, they possess all the important features that WordPress online course management plugins should have.
So, without further ado, let’s get started with the list.
1. Masteriyo
Masteriyo is your one-stop solution for creating and selling online courses on your WordPress website. It offers an intuitive course builder, where you can create courses and add sections, lessons, and quizzes to it in just a few clicks. It is a revolutionary WordPress Learning Management System.
Once your course is ready, you can publish it on your site as either a free or paid course. You also have the option to make the free courses available to only registered users.
Better yet, it comes with an in-built order system, consisting of a cart and checkout. This means you can sell courses and accept payments directly without having to rely on eCommerce plugins like WooCommerce. Currently, Masteriyo supports offline payment and the payment gateway PayPal.
Key Features:
- Distraction free learning page: Help students focus on the course material with a distraction-free learning interface.
- Course Progress Bar: Show leaners how much progress they’ve made in the course.
- Advanced Quiz Builder: Create true or false questions, multiple choice and single choice questions with the quiz builder.
- Q&A section for each lesson: Provide a discussion area for students to ask questions and receive answers under each lesson.
- Compatible with any theme: Use any WordPress theme with Masteriyo to create an awesome LMS website.
Pricing: Free
2. LearnDash
LearnDash is one of the most popular and beloved WordPress LMS plugins. Creating the best professional online curriculum for your learning website becomes effortless with this plugin. Moreover, it allows you to provide drip-feed content to your learners to release content in the allocated schedule.
You can even encourage your learners by rewarding them with certificates, points, badges, etc. based on their quiz performances or upon successful completion of the course. Besides, the sophisticated marketing and sales feature enables easy selling of your courses.
Key Features:
- Discussion Forums: Create specific discussion forums for inspiring interactions or communications among your learners.
- Assignment Management: Provide users with assignments and easily approve or comment on the submitted assignments.
- Easy Customization Options: Customize the colors, logos, or lesson display options in a few clicks without any difficulty.
- Multimedia Support: Use any type of media like videos, audio, images, and more for creating impressive lessons.
- Support Third-Party Plugins: Compatible with WooCommerce payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe), page builder plugins (Elementor, Divi), and more.
Pricing: $159/Year
3. LearnPress
LearnPress is one of the most downloaded free online school WordPress plugins of all time. You can easily create, manage, and sell your online courses using this plugin. Though free, LearnPress offers several powerful and premium-like LMS features. Further with its premium add-ons, you can lift your LMS website even more.
LearnPress supports WordPress multisite so you can use this plugin on multiple sites and networks with single WordPress installations. Moreover, this LMS plugin is created in a way that perfectly works with any of the WordPress themes to create a beautiful learning website instantly.
Best of all, the popular Zakra theme includes online course demos created using this plugin. So, if you want quick and easy start, get Zakra theme and start your e-learning site right away.
Key Features:
- Communicate with Your Students: Integration with BuddyPress and other forum plugins allow easy communication with students
- LearnPress Wish List: Users can add the courses of their interest to the wish list.
- LearnPress Course Review: Enrolled students can review courses on your site to get a rough idea of the type of curriculum.
- Import and Export Courses: Easily import and export courses from the other websites that are also using LearnPress.
- Prerequisites Courses: Require completion of a specific course before being enrolled in the other course.
Pricing: Free + Premium Add-ons
4. LifterLMS
If you’re searching for brilliant LMS solutions to create impactful courses for your learning website, LifterLMS is a great option for you. It’s a multi-tier drag and drop course builder that lets you build effective courses easily.
You can engage your students with text, image, audio, or video-based interactive lessons. Furthermore, creating dynamic quizzes to encourage learning and test the proficiency of the lessons is plain sailing with this plugin. Also, the quiz timer feature ensures that your students learn specific courses within a certain time.
Key Features:
- Lesson Download Options: Download learning materials like eBooks, PDFs, audios, or other files for offline learning.
- Import and Export Courses: Import or export your LifterLMS courses from one site to another in a few clicks.
- Content Protection: Lock down your content for your website users and make them available exactly at the right time.
- Solid Platform Management: Easy management and control of bulk enrollments, email notifications, detailed reporting, and more.
- Awesome Plugin Support: Provides detailed documentation, free training courses, live office hours consultation, technical supports, etc.
Pricing: $99/Year
5. MemberPress
MemberPress is both a powerful membership and LMS plugin for WordPress available in the market today. You can easily create your course curriculum with the drag and drop interface of this plugin. Additionally, it allows live previewing of your course content right from the WordPress Customizer.
MemberPress works great with any WordPress theme. And it also integrates seamlessly with bbPress and many other WordPress forum plugins. Further, it offers features like content dripping, content access expiration, subscription management, etc. to build a fully functional LMS website.
Key Features:
- Powerful Access Rule: Control what your users can see based on the membership types or the products being purchased.
- Course Progress Tracking: Track the progress information of your learners through the curriculum.
- Dynamic Pricing Page: Create an awesome pricing page for membership products where you can sort the products, change the look or feel, and more.
- Reporting System: Clear report on revenue you succeed to bring in, most selling digital products, and so on.
- Coupons: Generate unlimited coupons and easily customize your coupon codes.
Pricing: $129/Year
6. WP Courseware
WP Courseware is an online school WordPress plugin that allows hassle-free creation of LMS websites with its drag and drop interface. It’s also really easy to customize the look and style of your eLearning website. Moreover, making engaging video courses is a piece of cake with this plugin.
It also comes with a drip content system so you can schedule the release of course content as the learners progress through your curriculum. Besides, you can reward your students with downloadable certificates upon course completion.
Key Features:
- Automated Notifications and Emails: Automatically triggers personalized emails based on students’ activities.
- Powerful Quiz Functionality: Create advanced quiz questions, set quiz timers, and retake limits.
- Course Content Protection: Protect your valuable courses by making them accessible to only those students who are enrolled or logged in.
- Membership and eCommerce Integrations: Seamlessly integrates with your favorite membership and eCommerce plugins.
- Course Styling: Easily style your course elements using the WordPress Customizer.
Pricing: $129/Year
7. Namaste! LMS
Namaste! LMS is one of the best free LMS plugins for WordPress. This plugin allows unlimited courses and lessons creation, student management, adding notes, and many more. You can even create different rules for the course and lesson access with this plugin.
Besides, the grade and point system of the plugin lets your students keep track of their performance. Overall, Namaste! LMS is a lightweight plugin that allows the creation of a basic learning website. That means you need to upgrade to its pro-version to create a fully-fledged LMS WordPress site.
Key Features:
- Reporting Module: Get a user-report to track the performance of each user connected with your learning website.
- Connect Module: Allows adding notification and commenting system and keeps you connected with your students.
- Watu Quiz Integration: Handle quizzes, tests, and exams easily with Watu Quiz.
- Payment Gateways: Integrated with PayPal and Stripe for collecting charges for course enrollments.
- Gamification: Award your users with badges for earning points or for successful course completion.
Pricing: Free or $ 67
8. Sensei
Sensei is a great option for those beginners on a budget who want to build a professional eLearning website for free. It’s a powerful WordPress LMS plugin developed by Automattic i.e. team behind the famous WooCommerce plugin.
With Sensei, you can easily create courses, lessons, and quizzes. However, it’s required that you purchase the WooCommerce Paid Courses extension before you can sell your curriculums. This extension not only allows you to earn passive income but also allows you to restrict your course content to paying members only.
Key Features:
- Seamless WordPress Integration: Smooth integration with WordPress for the effortless addition of courses and lessons to your learning website.
- Supports all WordPress Themes: Highly compatible with the entire WordPress theme library
- Powerful Quiz Functionality: Display random questions via question bank. Also, permits automatic or manual setting of quiz grading.
- Reporting System: Keep the track of your courses, grading, and the registered users.
- Easy Payment Management: Deep integration with WooCommerce makes it easy to receive payments for your courses.
Pricing: Free + Premium Add-ons
9. GoodLMS
If you want the best features for your learning website then GoodLMS is the right online school WordPress plugin for you. It’s extremely easy to add the courses to your site similar to creating any WordPress blogs with this plugin. Additionally, it allows adding various course categories like PDFs, images, videos, etc.
Apart from that, selling your courses is not a problem since you can easily choose the pricing options and sell them with payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe. Other features include an online quiz, course certificates, commission settings for instructors, and many more.
Key Features:
- Course Progress Information Option: Learners can easily track their progress through the courses.
- Coupon Code: Create and share codes to enroll more students.
- Instructor Profile: Unlimited instructor profile creation so that they can easily add their courses, information, and more.
- Course Rating System: Enable course ratings by the learners to evaluate the effectiveness of the curriculum.
- Support Multiple Browsers: Compatible with various browsers like Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari.
Pricing: $32 for Regular License
10. Teachable
Teachable is a self-sufficient platform for building online courses. However, it’s possible to link Teachable with your existing website using a custom domain. It’s a highly customizable course builder with powerful editors to build interactive courses online.
Similarly, it also provides coupons and advanced pricing options for subscriptions, membership, course bundles, and more. Teachable is highly suited for those who want to launch paid courses without having to set up their WordPress site.
Key Features:
- Drip Feed Content: Deliver the content gradually instead of releasing it all at once.
- Detailed Analytics: Track the number of students or sales of your courses right from the dashboard.
- Sales Page Designer: Build an attractive sales page with a flexible page editor.
- Feedback: Use third-party forms and surveys to collect student feedback.
- Zapier Integration: Connect with more apps and functions with Zapier integration.
Pricing: Free or $29/Month
11. MasterStudy LMS
MasterStudy LMS is a comprehensive WordPress online course plugin to build a professional school and university website with ease. Creating complete online courses, taking full control over them, and selling your courses online becomes super-easy with this plugin.
MasterStudy LMS is compatible with any WordPress theme. So, your learning website is sure to look stunning; attracting more and more learners to your site. Besides, this course progress WordPress plugin also delivers important features like content dripping, trail courses, assignments, course bundles, group courses, etc.
Key Features:
- Support Different Lesson Types: Create captivating lesson types using videos, slides, texts, streams, and zoom.
- Advanced Quiz Options: Create interesting quizzes, set a timer for taking quizzes, set up automated quiz results, and more.
- Certificate Builder: Build your personalized printable certificates to reward the learners for the successful completion of the course.
- Course Wish List: Users can add the courses of their interest to the wish list for purchasing later.
- Translation Ready: Translate your website to any language and make your online courses available for people all around the world.
Pricing: Free or $54.99/Year
Wrapping It Up!
The WordPress LMS plugins mentioned above possess spectacular features that are sure to help you create a robust eLearning platform without any hassle. Moreover, the benefit of using these LMS plugins in combination with the best LMS WordPress theme is out of the box.
For instance, Zakra is the leading multipurpose WordPress theme that lets you take full advantage of the powerful LearnPress plugin to build a stunning LMS website. Check out this guide on how to create an LMS website using the Zakra theme.
We expect that this article has helped you find the best online school WordPress plugin for your site. If you enjoyed reading this article then make sure you share it with your friends too.
You can also check our article on the best WordPress plugins and the best LMS WordPress themes.
Have any say on this? Please feel free to write to us in the comment section below.
