Are you searching for the best WordPress online course plugins?? Or wondering which WordPress plugin is best for creating an LMS (Learning Management System) website?
The online course plugins help you to instantly convert your WordPress website into an online learning platform without any difficulty. With these plugins, you’ll be able to create, manage, deliver, and even sell online courses directly from your dashboard.
Therefore, to help you look for the one that fits your needs, we’ve listed some of the best WordPress online course plugins for your site. Among them also, most of them are free to use.
Let’s begin!
What to Look for in the WordPress Online Course Plugins?
No doubt, you’ll find a handful of good WordPress LMS and online course plugins. However, finding a full-fledged learning management system plugin for your eLearning site can be overwhelming.
Therefore, below are the some of the features to explore while choosing the best WordPress plugin for creating an online learning platform:
- Course Builder – The plugin must have an interactive course builder i.e drag-and-drop tool to create engaging and interactive courses quickly and easily.
- Progress Tracker– There should be a feature where it keeps the track of each student’s performance and the number of students enrolled in your courses.
- Content Dripping – With this feature, you’ll be able to release the content slowly as the student progresses through the course.
- Assignments and Quizzes – It should allow you to create interactive assignments and quizzes to evaluate how much the students have absorbed the material.
- Badges and Certificates – To boost your students’ confidence and progress, any good plugin must offer badges and certificates for your students.
- Payment Gateways Integration – Any decent WordPress LMS plugins must integrate with secured payment gateways like PayPal, Stripe, etc., to easily collect payment.
These are some of the key features to check when looking for the best WordPress LMS plugin. Now, let’s look at some of the best online course plugins with their features so that you can pick them easily.
11 Best WordPress Online Course Plugins 2022
Here we’ll look at some of the best WordPress online course plugins along with their features and pricing. So, look over all the details of these online course plugins to find out the one that best suits your needs.
1. LearnDash (Premium)
LearnDash is the most popular WordPress online course plugin that lets you create the best professional online learning website effortlessly. It provides everything you’ll ever need to build a successful online learning platform.
Similarly, it provides you with content dripping that includes scheduling and releasing the course timely. Moreover, it comes with a powerful drag-and-drop course builder that helps you easily create your course curriculum.
Furthermore, it lets you create eight different question types – single choice, multiple-choice, essay, fill-in-the-blank, etc. to make assessments more engaging and meaningful. Not just that, for any difficult quizzes, you can also provide text, video, and image hints to your students.
Alongside that, it seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce and lets you easily add a shopping cart for easy purchase of your courses. Also, you can create specific discussion forums for inspiring interactions or communications among students and teachers.
Key Features:
- Question Banks: This allows you to create custom question banks and organize them into categories.
- Automated Notification: Automatically receive emails based on actions students take in a course.
- Focus Mode: This allows you to create a distraction-free environment for your students for more concentration and dedication.
- Course Bundles: You can sell multiple courses as a bundle so that your customers get access to more than one after purchase.
- Payment Option: Simply set a price for your courses with a one-time purchase, subscriptions, or membership plans.
Pricing:
LearnDash is a premium WordPress plugin that is quite affordable and offers wholesome features in each of its plans. It offers three different pricing plans to choose from Basic, Plus, and Pro.
- Basic – $159/year for 1 site.
- Plus – $189/year for upto 10 sites.
- Pro – $329/year for upto 25 sites.
2. Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS is yet another popular WordPress LMS that helps you create, manage, and sell courses on WordPress. It’s a free LearnDash alternative you can use if you’re on a budget.
Tutor LMS allows you to create dynamic courses with compelling quizzes, assignments, lessons, and more. This is all possible due to its intuitive frontend drag-and-drop course builder.
Likewise, it gives you full control over your course management with powerful addons like Course Content Drip. Moreover, this plugin lets you easily set up registration forms to approve and review instructors’ profiles for a course and then have custom settings for the instructor role.
With Tutor LMS, you can also keep track of all the purchase options using the purchase history in the dashboard. And, you can enable spotlight mode to hide the header & footer for distraction-free lessons.
Key Features:
- Event Calendar: It allows the students to schedule their assignments and even set the deadlines to be up to date with their academic plan.
- Multimedia Options: You can upload versatile multimedia attachments from video sources like Vimeo and YouTube to engage your students.
- Quiz Builder: Create custom-tailored quizzes with unique question types, timers, and more to create compelling quizzes.
- Question Patterns: You can create questions over 10 question types that you can choose from to fulfill all your quizzing needs such as True/False, Multiple Choice, Single Choice, etc.
- Mobile Option: Allow its students to access courses anywhere, anytime through mobile devices.
Pricing:
Tutor LMS is a free WordPress plugin that you can download from WordPress.org. Or, just install the plugin right on your WordPress dashboard.
However, it also comes with a premium version that comes with three pricing plans:
- Individuals – $119.20 on an annual term; $319.20 for a lifetime; 1 site license and 1 free installation service.
- Freelancers – $159.20 on an annual term; $479.20 for a lifetime; 5 site licenses and 2 free installation services.
- Agencies – $239.20 on an annual term; $799.20 for a lifetime; unlimited licenses and 5 free installation services.
3. LearnPress
LearnPress is a comprehensive free WordPress online course plugin that helps you easily create and sell courses online. Hence anyone, including beginners, can easily create an online school and online-course website with no coding knowledge required.
Likewise, it’s a perfect choice for educators and tutors who want to sell their courses online and make money out of them. Plus, it works seamlessly with any of the WordPress themes to create a beautiful learning website instantly.
It has an excellent easy-to-use user interface for creating online courses and any options you need with a full curriculum layout. Besides, you can also export and import your courses to another website using LearnPress.
Not to mention, it also comes with a bunch of add-ons to help you provide extra features for your online course. Such as LearnPress Wishlist, LearnPress Course Review, and LearnPress Offline Payment.
Key Features:
- LearnPress Mobile App: This supports you to convert your current websites to LMS mobile apps easily.
- Payment Gateways: This allows you to receive your payments via different payment gateways like PayPal, 2Checkout, Stripe, Offline Payment, etc.
- Community and Forums: Well integrated with BuddyPress and other forum plugins to allow you to communicate with your students or instructor.
- WordPress Multisite: It supports WordPress multisite and lets you create WordPress-based LMS as a multi-site.
- Multiple Course Instructors: With this, you can assign multiple instructors to manage one course.
Pricing:
The core LearnPress plugin is free which you can easily download and install on your site from WordPress.org.
However, it comes with two premium LearnPress bundles – LearnPress Theme Bundle and LearnPress Pro Bundle.
- LearnPress Theme Bundle ($49 – $69) – The bundle comes with the theme of your choice and gives you access to almost all LearnPress add-ons for free. The add-ons can only be used with the theme you choose.
- LearnPress Pro Bundle ($249.99) – This gives you access to all LearnPress premium & advance features to build an online school you want. And allows you to create 3 different websites.
4. LifterLMS
LifterLMS is a powerful WordPress LMS plugin that allows you to create, manage, and sell online courses without any hassle. It’s lightweight, powerful, and works with any well-coded WordPress theme, modern WordPress blocks, and all the popular WordPress page builder plugins.
Additionally, it comes with a drag-and-drop course builder that lets you easily build online courses and provides the easiest design experience possible. Further, you can create dynamic multimedia quizzes to reinforce the learning programs for your students.
To make your courses more interesting, you can incorporate multiple learning styles with video, audio, text, image-based lessons, and more. It even lets you create a multi instructor platform and even assign multiple instructors to a single course.
Moreover, you can even conduct 1:1 private coaching for maximum income potential and learner results. Also, you can download your lessons in downloadable formats such as ebooks, PDFs, audios, and other files for offline learning.
Key Features:
- Drip Content: You can make your lessons available over time so that you can protect your learner focus and future recurring revenue.
- Quiz Timer: This allows you to set a maximum time limit for a quiz so students can solve it within a certain time.
- Prerequisites: You can set the requirement of successful completion of a specific course before another one unlocks.
- Student Dashboard: Provides an intuitive front-end student dashboard so that students can track their activity and stay organized.
- Course Tracks: Offers certificates or other gratitude on completion of a group of courses taken in any order.
Pricing:
LifterLMS core is a free WordPress online course plugin. So, you can easily download it from the WordPress plugin directory.
Meanwhile, there are 3 pricing plans if you want to collectively get the add-ons based on your need.
- Individual Add-Ons – $120+ each per year and 1 active site included.
- Universe Bundle – $360 per year and 5 active sites included.
- Infinite Bundle –$1200 per year and unlimited active sites included.
5. Masteriyo
Masteriyo is a new yet powerful WordPress online course plugin. It comes with a user-friendly and minimalist course builder that lets you make online courses easily and quickly.
Further, you can find a section and lesson builder that helps you create different sections and add unlimited lessons with ease. With this, you’ll also be able to upload featured images and videos. And, it fully supports YouTube, Vimeo, and self-hosted videos too.
Unlike other LMS plugins, Masteriyo is quite easy to set up and has a minimal learning curve. In fact, it comes with a separate and beautiful user interface for creating courses, handling memberships, payments, and all under one roof. Hence, it’s really user-friendly.
Besides creating online courses, you can even start selling them easily. It comes with its inbuilt order system so that you don’t need to go through the hassle of installing separate eCommerce plugins. Plus, Masteriyo supports both PayPal and offline payment as payment gateways.
Key Features:
- Progressive Bar: This provides students a clear idea of how they’re progressing within the course.
- Inbuilt Order System: It has an inbuilt course selling feature that supports PayPal.
- Vertical Course Navigation: It makes it easier to navigate through all the sections, lessons, and quizzes of the course curriculum.
- Student Account Page: Helps students get a quick overview of the courses they’ve enrolled in or purchased.
- Distraction-Free Mode: It changes the default site design with a unique distraction learning interface that helps students to focus on their courses entirely.
Pricing:
You can get the Masteriyo for free on the WordPress.org official plugin repository. However, you need to purchase its premium version for more advanced features
Moreover, it comes with 3 premium plans with a 100% no-risk money-back guarantee. So, the pricing plans are:
- Starter – Costs $49.75/year, contains 1 site license, premium support, and free updates for 1 year.
- Growth – Get it at $74.75/year, contains 5 site licenses, premium support, and free updates for 1 year.
- Scale – At $124.75/year, it includes 99 site licenses, premium support, and free updates for 1 year.
6. MemberPress (Premium)
MemberPress is the most popular WordPress membership plugin that comes with the feature of letting you build online courses. You get a complete set of features that you need to build a powerful, unique course curriculum for your schools and colleges.
With its Course add-on, you’ll get the combined power of both membership and the LMS featured plugin. Hence, you can make online course building easier and simpler.
This add-on allows you to create your curriculum, plan lessons, and construct quizzes with an intuitive, drag-and-drop visual builder. Further, its content dripping feature helps you restrict content to members after a certain time.
Likewise, you get built-in support for payment gateways from PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net. Also, it integrates well with popular email marketing services such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, and GetResponse.
Key Features:
- Access Rule: Gives you full control over what content your students can see based on their membership level.
- Community Forum: Integrates seamlessly with bbPress and many other WordPress forum plugins.
- Customizable Coupons: Generate customizable coupons and control their expiration dates and their number of uses.
- Pricing Page: Create dynamic, beautiful pricing pages for selling your membership products effortlessly.
- Reporting System: Provides a detailed report on revenue you’ve generated, most selling curriculum, and so on.
Pricing:
MemberPress is a premium WordPress plugin that you can purchase from its official website. And it comes in three pricing plans –
- Basic – $15/month. Use on 1 Site.
- Plus – $25/month. Use on upto 2 Sites.
- Pro – $35/month. Use on upto 5 Sites.
Want to find the MemberPress alternatives for WordPress? Check out our complete list of best MemberPress alternative WordPress plugins.
7. MasterStudy LMS
MasterStudy LMS is a free WordPress online course plugin that turns any WordPress website into a professional online platform. It’s a user-friendly tool that includes a powerful admin panel, a messaging system, a quiz builder, and course announcements.
This plugin gives you full control over creating your courses and selling them online. Besides, it has flexible payment options due to PayPal and Stripe integration. Plus, you can charge monthly or annual subscription plans or introduce one-time payments.
However, it comes with a bunch of educational modules with shortcodes that help you add different blocks to any theme. For instance, a course grid allows you to show the courses grid, where you can fully adjust the display.
Likewise, you can create captivating lessons with videos, graphs, slides, and pretty much anything. Further, you can translate your website to any language to make it available for people all around the world.
Key Features:
- Demo Course Import: In just one click, import courses, lessons, and questions from the demo template to use on your website.
- Advanced Quiz Options: Create interactive and engaging quizzes, set a timer for taking quizzes, set up automated quiz results, and more.
- Course Wish List: The students can add their favorite courses to the wish list for purchasing later.
- Message Board: Provides students and instructors to have 1-1 interaction where the students can ask more specific questions.
- User Profile System: Both students and instructors can check their course progress, check quiz scores, and students can purchase courses or membership plans.
Pricing:
MasterStudy LMS is a freemium plugin so it comes with both free and premium plans. For the free plugin, you can download it through WordPress.org.
You can also get the premium version from its official website with three different pricing plans:
- Single Site – $54.99 on an annual term; $149.99 for a lifetime
- 5 Sites – $69 for a lifetime
- 25 Sites – $199.99 on an annual term; $599.99 for a lifetime
8. WP Courseware (Premium)
WP Courseware is a popular WordPress LMS plugin that makes course creation simple and fast. It comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop course builder that helps you keep your content organized, and allows you to create courses faster.
With WP Courseware, you can create an unlimited number of courses, and also you can host and manage an unlimited number of students too. You can even easily restrict course access to students who have completed previous courses.
Additionally, you get a built-in shopping cart that includes complete shopping cart functionality to sell your courses. You can offer a special pricing plan for groups of courses purchased together.
Apart from that, students also get the intuitive dashboard that gives them access to course outlines, payment history, account details, etc. Also, it includes a default translation file to easily display all course elements in any language.
Key Features:
- Drip Content: Schedule your course content so that it’ll be released on specific dates or at intervals from enrollment.
- Instructor Roles: Allow instructors to create, edit, and manage their courses without allowing access to all courses.
- Retake Limits: Set how many attempts a student is allowed to have to achieve a passing grade.
- Progress Reporting: Keep track of the progress of each student as they move through courses.
- Bulk Enrollment: Allow large groups of students to enroll at once and automatically create user accounts.
Pricing:
WP Courseware is a premium WordPress plugin, so you can get it from its official website. It comes in 3 premium plans with a 30-day risk-free money-back guarantee:
- Teacher (2-Site License) – $129/year
- Professor (10-Site License) – $149/year
- Guru (25-Site License) – $199/year
9. Teachable
Teachable is a full-fledged online course platform that integrates well with WordPress as a plugin. This comes with all the tools you need to build, grow, and manage a thriving online course and coaching business.
Similarly, you can easily start creating self-paced courses, cohort-based courses, or live coaching with their intuitive drag-and-drop builder. Not just that, you’ll also be able to quickly start selling right away with its built-in, fully customizable sales page builder.
With its sales page builder, you’ll be able to build a checkout page with full eCommerce capabilities. So that, you can get paid quickly without the need for a third-party payment system.
Lastly, it allows you to create any number of courses you want and repurpose the lectures with ease to scale even faster. Plus, its bulk upload feature lets you seamlessly migrate student information and courses from another platform.
Key Features:
- Integrations: Well integrated with MailChimp, Zapier, ConvertKit, Google Analytics, Segment, and more.
- Student Engagement: Provides student-side features like comments, quizzes, and certifications of completion to optimize student engagement.
- Payment Gateway: Accept payments in over 130 currencies via Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and more.
- Monetization Option: This allows you to set up free trials, subscription payments, installments, and more for added flexibility.
- Advanced-Data Reporting: Provides intuitive reporting on sales and student engagement to help you make data-informed decisions.
Pricing:
Teachable is a free online course platform that you can easily enroll in by just signing up for their free account. This free plan only allows you to create one course and can have only 1 admin user.
However, for unlimited courses, you should check out its premium plans:
- Basic – $348 on an annual term; $39 for a monthly term with 2 admin users.
- Pro – $1,188 on an annual term; $119 for a monthly term with 5 admin users.
- Business – $2,988 on an annual term; $299 for a monthly term with 20 admin users.
10. Sensei LMS
Sensei LMS is a popular WordPress online course plugin that lets you create beautiful and engaging online courses, lessons, and quizzes. It’s built by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Jetpack.
Hence, Automattic uses Sensei LMS to conduct employee training and course programs. With this, you can create courses directly in your WordPress editor and customize them to your brand requirements.
However, to be able to sell your curriculums, you’ll need to purchase the WooCommerce Paid Courses Extension. This extension will allow you to restrict your course content to paying members only.
Key Features:
- Learning Mode: You can give your students a distraction-free and immersive learning experience for more focus and concentration.
- Certificate Extension: Helps you create beautiful downloadable PDF certificates for students when they complete a course.
- Reporting System: Let’s keep the track of your courses, grading, and the registered users in one place.
- Quiz Functionality: This allows you to choose from many question types and quiz settings, including multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true/false, and more.
Pricing:
Sensei LMS plugin is available in both free and premium plugins. You can get the free version from the WordPress.org official directory.
However, to unlock advanced features, it comes with two pro versions called Sensei Pro and Sensei Agency.
- Sensei Pro – $119 per year for 1 site.
- Sensei Agency – $279 per year for 20 sites.
Besides these two, there is another pricing called Sensei Blocks. This plan costs $39 per year and this comes with interactive blocks that you can use anywhere – pages, posts, lessons, etc. But, this doesn’t include the Sensei LMS plugin though.
11. Namaste! LMS
Namaste! LMS is an online course plugin for WordPress. This plugin allows you to create unlimited courses, lessons, assignments, students, etc.
It’s a lightweight plugin that lets you create different rules for the course and lesson access. Besides, with its reporting module, you can get a user report to track the performance of each student connected with the platform.
Likewise, it’s well compatible with PayPal and Stripe for collecting charges for course enrollments. Also, you can enable a shopping cart to collect money and manage subscriptions for individual courses or curriculums.
Key Features:
- Certificate Builder: You can create beautiful certificates and assign them to students for completing the course(s).
- Quiz Integration: Well integrated with Watu and Chained Quiz for handling quizzes, tests, and exams easily.
- Student Review: It lets you auto-approve or manually review students who want to enroll in a course.
- Gamification: Reward your students with badges for earning points or for successful course completion.
Pricing:
You can get the Namaste! LMS plugin for free on the WordPress.org official plugin repository.
Moreover, it comes with 3 premium plans containing premium add-ons and supports. So, the pricing plans are:
- Pro – $67
- Plugin Bundle – $97
- Full Bundle – $137
Conclusion
That’s all folks. These are the list of the 11 best WordPress online course plugins for 2022 (mostly free). We genuinely hope that you found our article helpful.
Still, confused about which WordPress online course plugin to choose?
LearnDash is the best pick although it’s a premium LMS plugin that comes with advanced functionalities. Similarly, TutorLMS can be your other go-to option, is not only free to use but also has a simple and user-friendly interface.
Please feel free to comment below if you have any further queries about the best WordPress online course plugins. We’ll do our best to respond as soon as we can.
Also, let us know which WordPress online course plugins are you going to choose from the list? You can share your top favorite pick in the comments section below.
You may also like our article on the best free WordPress landing page themes and a review article on the MemberPress plugin. Be sure to go through it once.
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