In our guide to selling online courses, you will learn how to create courses and sell online profitably. So, if you are just getting started, you may want to read that article.
WordPress is one of the best platforms to sell online courses – you just need a learning management system (LMS) plugin that provides tools to share your resources, create classes, enroll members, accept payments, and other essential features.
WordPress LMS plugins offer tremendous support in letting you run courses similar to other ed-tech platforms like Udemy. You can effortlessly handle course subscriptions, grade quizzes, track students’ progress, and reward them with certificates, which is an indispensable solution in running a profitable online learning site.
Having said that, I’ve picked some of the best WordPress LMS plugins you can use to create and sell online courses successfully.
Ready to dive in? Let’s get started.
1. LearnDash
LearnDash is one of the most popular WordPress LMS plugins that offers incredible features to launch an impressive online course-selling website. It is developed by a group of dedicated e-learning experts that lets you build a solid online course page with magnanimous capabilities.
It offers a powerful drag-and-drop builder that allows you to create multi-layer courses, and advanced quizzes that allow you to set eight question types, create question banks, etc.
Also, you can reward your students/members with badges and official certificates based on their performance. It gamifies the experience, keeps your students engaged, and encourages them to join more courses.
LearnDash opens the door to abundant monetization options, including subscriptions, one-time purchases, memberships, etc. It enables you to accept payments via Paypal, Stripe, and other payment gateways.
Key Features –
- It helps in maximizing content delivery so that you unlock more completion rates.
- It allows you to automatically deliver content according to a predefined schedule at the correct time for your students to receive it.
- It sends engagement triggers such that the students who fall behind will get nudged and progress forward.
- It offers a discussion forum to build a loyal community and a leaderboard to display the highest scorers in your courses.
- It enables you to approve, comment, and award points on the submitted assignments.
- It allows you to add more functionalities by integrating with popular plugins like WooCommerce, EDD, and many more.
Pricing Plans – LearnDash has a flexible plan starting at $199/year for 1 site, $399/year for 10 sites, and $799/year for unlimited sites.
2. LifterLMS
LifterLMS is another powerful and flexible WordPress LMS plugin that delivers the best-in-class learning experience for your students. It is a packed LMS system that lets you build a highly customizable online learning website that helps you nurture, grow, and strengthen your online presence.
It helps deliver an engaging and interactive learning experience to your students by conducting assignments, quizzes, and gamification with badges and certificates upon course completion. It also has a built-in content restriction that lets you create premium content and grant access to specific members only.
LifterLMS offers diverse payment options to enhance your living. You can accept credit card payments, one-time & recurring payments, subscriptions, etc., and it lets you boost your revenue by offering course bundles to your students.
Key Features –
- It allows you to create multi-tier courses with training modules, lessons, categories, etc.
- It enables you to build a multi-instructor platform and assign multiple instructors to a course if you teach in teams.
- It allows you to add form plugins to collect contact details, assignments, and more.
- It enables you to deliver private 1:1 coaching, content, and discussion, thus making your students feel special.
- It enables you to send personalized emails and SMS to engage with your students constantly.
Pricing Plans – LifterLMS has a free plan that gives you access to all the essential course management features. However, to host a website, you will require it paid plan starting at just $199/year, giving you access to its advanced features and Add-ons.
3. LearnPress
LearnPress is a free and reliable WordPress LMS plugin that lets you create, manage, and sell online courses hassle-free. The best part is that it is lightweight and offers a suite of powerful free and paid add-ons that deliver a spectacular e-learning experience for students.
Setting up courses is a smooth process as it offers a user-friendly interface to launch lessons, quizzes, and questions quickly. If you wish, you can also export/import your courses and host them on another WordPress site using LearnPress.
This easy-to-use WordPress LMS plugin lets you collect payments via PayPal, Stripe, WooCommerce, etc. Also, thanks to its BuddyPress integration, you can transform your online learning website into a knowledge-packed community.
Key Features –
- It allows you to share, manage your course, and view statistics about the number of students, trends, etc.
- It works with any WordPress theme, and you can also choose from one of their own LMS WordPress themes for better compatibility.
- It helps you to schedule content and offers integration with WordPress membership plugins.
- It supports PayPal as the default payment gateway and other payment platforms are available as paid add-ons.
Pricing Plans – LearnPress has a free plugin that allows you to add LMS features to your WordPress site. However, for advanced features and access to its add-ons, you will have to purchase its Pro bundle which costs $299 with 12-month tech support.
4. WP Courseware
WP Courseware is another popular and great WordPress LMS plugin that makes creating and selling online courses a complete breeze. It gives you all the customization options to create a frictionless learning experience, and it is compatible with any WordPress theme, making your life much easier.
It enables you to neatly organize your courses with the help of a flexible drag-and-drop builder. Besides, it lets you create free courses and allow students to try attending your classes. This is one of the most powerful ways of creating the best impression to garner more students for your courses.
This LMS plugin helps you to get more profits by accepting one-time payments, subscriptions, installments, bundles, and much more. Also, thanks to its built-in shopping cart solution that accepts payments via PayPal or Stripe, you can quickly start monetizing your courses.
Key Features –
- It helps you to engage with your students by creating interactive videos actively.
- It enables you to send automated notifications and emails to your students so that they know their learning status at each level.
- It allows you to send drip content based on enrollment intervals or specific dates to begin selling your content while working on the course content.
- It offers course pre-requisites, instructor profiles, student grade books, and many more useful features.
Pricing Plans –
- Teacher Plan – $129/year – 2 sites
- Professor Plan – $149/year – 10 sites
- Guru Plan – $199/year – 25 sites
5. Sensei
Sensei is one of the best WordPress LMS plugins created by WooCommerce experts. It also offers many paid WooCommerce extensions that let you increase your revenue by selling your courses on the WooCommerce platform.
It allows you to run quizzes, and assignments and then grade them manually or automatically. You can also offer badges to students based on their grades.
Also, this plugin works effectively and enables you to add more features if used along with the WooCommerce plugin.
Key Features –
- It is highly compatible with most WordPress themes, which may also let you sell online courses on your existing theme.
- It provides course analytics regarding grading, course completion, and the number of students registered.
- It allows you to conduct quizzes in the form of true/false, single-line, multi-line tests, etc.
- It enables user registration via WordPress, which makes the process relatively easier for you.
Choose the Best WordPress LMS Plugin
All the above-listed plugins have something unique to offer for selling online courses. So, the perfect WordPress LMS plugins for you entirely depend on your course type and the features you want to offer your students.
Apart from these, you also want your LMS plugin to provide complete flexibility in designing and integrating with another WordPress plugin you might already be using. So, make sure you analyze every aspect of the plugin before deciding.
I hope this article helped you pick the most suitable LMS plugin for your site. If so, you may want to read these hand-picked articles next –
