LearnDash Review: Is It The Best WordPress LMS Plugin?

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The LearnDash learning management system (LMS) allows teachers to create lessons, assign tasks, track student performance, and communicate with students. The platform also offers a wide range of features such as quizzes, tests, assignments, discussion boards, forums, and much more.

Since its release in 2013, LearnDash has since grown into a leading LMS provider. LearnDash is a great tool for anyone who wants to create courses or teach online. In addition to being completely free, it has several unique features that make it stand out from other platforms.

Pros
  • Easy to use drag and drop course builder
  • Access to all features, functionality, and support
  • Additional Resources and WordPress Templates
  • Allows for customization for better learner experiences
Cons
  • Limited built in payment options
  • Limited membership options

LearnDash is one of the most popular learning management systems (LMS) – part of the Stellar WP WordPress solutions. This learning management platform allows you to easily create courses and manage students.

This review covers the LearnDash plugin and LearnDash cloud. Read on to learn about what makes LearnDash stand out from the competition with its plugin and cloud options.

LearnDash LMS review

LearnDash Overview

The world of education is changing rapidly, and there are many different ways to teach students today. Many teachers use traditional textbooks and lectures, while others prefer online learning platforms like Udemy.

But what about those who want something completely different? For example, some people learn best when interacting with others in real life. Others prefer to watch tutorials and practice exercises over long periods. And still, others might prefer to just sit down and read a book.

With LearnDash, you can create your custom course that combines all three options. You can even include interactive elements such as quizzes, assignments, and discussion forums.

This makes it easier for anyone to create a course that suits their needs. LearnDash offers two options, a plugin to add to your already existing website and the LearnDash cloud option offers an all-rounded solution with a fully functional website. Read on to see which option best suits your needs as a course creator, education institution, or company looking to train your team.

Who Is LearnDash For?

LearnDash is designed to help trainers and educators build a great learning experience for their learners. Whether you're looking to educate your team, set up an academic institution, or sell online courses, LearnDash has a solution for you.

LearnDash is a WordPress course builder that allows anyone to easily create online courses. With LearnDash, there are no coding skills required and it takes just minutes to set up a basic course.

If you are a beginner you might want to start with the LearnDash cloud platform because it gives you a fully functioning solution. So, LearnDash LMS has a solution for both small and large organizations.

Let’s look at the learning management features offered by LearnDash.

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LearnDash Features & Functionality

The main benefit of LearnDash is that it provides a lot of customization options with both the plugin and cloud platform to sell courses with WordPress. For example, you can choose whether to display the student or instructor dashboard. You can also decide how much space each student gets on the screen. Finally, you can set up different types of quizzes.

There are several premium plans available. However, the free plan is sufficient for most people. Once you upgrade to a paid plan, you'll enjoy additional benefits like unlimited categories, custom branding, and more.

An Easy to Use Drag & Drop WordPress Builder

Course Builder lets you build online courses without having to go through multiple steps. You can add videos, quizzes, text boxes, slideshows, and even interactive elements such as polls and surveys with just one tap. You can customize everything about your course, including the layout and colors.

You can also use the drag-and-drop editor to make changes to your course. For example, you could swap out a video for another image, change the font size, or move buttons around. All this is done with compatible WordPress Themes that work well with LearnDash LMS/

Themes for LearnDash LMS

With LearnDash, you can set up assignments and allow uploads to your website. You can set up your course in steps so you give your users a flawless learner experience.

Once you're done designing your course, it's ready to publish instantly. You can choose how long learners have access to your course, whether they'll be able to download it, and what type of payment method you want them to use.

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Great Learning Experience

The best way to learn how to use your product is to use it. You want to give learners a great experience during onboarding. This includes making sure they can easily navigate your course. With LearnDash, they have built their entire learning management system around giving learners an excellent front-end learning experience.

LearnDash makes it easy for you to build out your learner journeys. The website’s user interface makes it easy for your learners to follow through with the completion of your course.

When it comes to creating a great experience, there are many things you can do. For instance, you could include a quiz element to help learners understand key concepts. Or, you could include some video tutorials to show learners how to complete common actions.

You could even use LearnDash to teach learners how to use your product. For example, let's say you're teaching salespeople how to close deals. You could include a tutorial that walks them step-by-step through each action needed to close a deal.

LearnDash has been designed to work seamlessly with most eCommerce platforms. So, whether you're selling physical products or digital downloads, you'll find everything you need to create engaging and effective learning experiences.

You can set up progress bars, table of contents, etc. to encourage them to complete their learning experience. The front-end experience includes a lesson content list, great video content display, and user-friendly navigation to improve moving to the next lesson.

Detailed Video Content Support

Videos are an important part of online learning platforms. They provide a great way to engage learners and keep them interested. But videos aren't just good for keeping people engaged - they're also an effective educational tool.

Learners often prefer to watch videos over reading text because it helps them understand concepts better. And there's no doubt that video content is easier to consume than written content. LearnDash supports video content

You can use videos to help teach your learners about topics they might otherwise struggle to learn. For example, if you're teaching them about data science, you could include some short videos explaining what data mining is and why it's useful. Or if you're teaching them how to build a mobile app, you could show them how to code one step at a time.

So next time you plan to add some videos to your course, think about how you can use them to improve your learner experience.

The LearnDash Quiz Builder

LearnDash makes it easier than ever to create engaging online quizzes. With our flexible quiz builder, you can easily add questions, answer choices, and even videos to your quiz. And because we offer unlimited questions, there’s no limit to how long your quiz can run.

There are many different ways to build quizzes. Here are some of the most popular options:

  • Create multiple choice, true/false, matching, fill in the blank, drag and drop, and text-based questions.
  • Add images, video, audio files, and web pages to your quiz.
  • Choose from hundreds of question types including Likert scale, rating, matrix, and free response.
  • Customize every aspect of your quiz including background color, font, layout, and more.

You can even use LearnDash to make interactive surveys. For example, let’s say you want to ask people about their favorite sports team. You could create a survey where each respondent chooses one team. Then, you could show them a picture of the team and ask them what position they play. Or, you could give them a list of teams and ask them to choose the best three.

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Drip Content, and Prerequisites

LearnDash has some advanced features including drip content and prerequisites. The drip feature allows you to release new lesson plans over time, rather than having to create everything at once. This gives you more flexibility and control over how your courses are delivered.

You can even use it to make sure people complete certain steps before they can move forward. For example, you could require learners to watch a video before moving on to another section of the course.

Prerequisites let you set conditions for enrollment, such as requiring a certain number of hours of training per week or completing a specific quiz. When those conditions are met, learners receive access to the next module automatically.

You can find out more about these tools here.

Automation Rules using Engagement Triggers

Automation is a powerful tool that helps businesses save time and money. With this feature, you can set up rules and triggers to move your learners along the course. For example you can set up an automation for what happens when a student passes a test or a quiz, completes a course and or submit an assignment.

These are email triggers for your students with different parameters you can set to make it work for you and your students.

Third-Party Extension Marketplace

There are lots of free and premium extensions available for LearnDash. There are over 200 extensions out there that make it possible for you to customize your course experience. This post looks at some of the most popular ones.

The extension marketplace is growing rapidly. When we launched LearnDash about three years ago, there were just six extensions. Today, there are hundreds. And many of those extensions are being used by thousands of students every month.

Why do people use third-party extensions? Because they provide value and improve . They can give you tools to improve student retention and completion rates. Or they can let you integrate data into your course that wasn't originally planned.

In addition, extensions can save you money. You don't have to pay for expensive software licenses or hire someone to build custom solutions. Instead, you can leverage existing open-source code and libraries.

Finally, extensions can help you reach more learners. If you're looking for an audience outside of your current target market, extensions can help you find them.

What types of extensions exist? Here are some great ones

  • Course ratings and reviews
  • Multiple instructors (like Udemy)
  • Front-end course creation
  • Private messaging
  • Custom course checkout and upsells
  • Topic Progression for Storyline & Captivate
  • Custom Certificate Shortcodes
  • Certificate tracker
  • Group registration for selling courses to organizations

See the learndash third party apps marketplace for more extensions, some are free some are available for a premium.

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Payment Options

There are many ways to integrate payments into your WordPress site. Some popular methods include

  • WooCommerce
  • Easy Digital Downloads
  • Stripe
  • 2Checkout
  • SamCart
  • ThriveCart

However, there are some limitations to each method. For example, you cannot use built-in payment options like PayPal and Stripe within the WordPress Admin Panel. This makes it difficult to set up recurring billing plans and subscriptions.

However, there are several ways to work around this limitation. One option is to install a third-party plugin such as WooCommerce Subscriptions, which allows you to add a subscription plan to your site.

Another option is to pay directly via a custom form field. Finally, you could build your solution by creating a custom post type and adding a custom Meta box.

Membership Options

Built-in membership options are limited when it comes to customizing the look and feel of your memberships. They only offer basic features for membership with the core LearnDash plugin.

For example, you cannot restrict access to a landing page of your membership with the LearnDash plugin. You can, however, choose to use some of the best membership plugins offered by WordPress to make things work in your favor.

Memberships LearnDash

There are several ways to expand upon what built-in membership offers. One way is to use a third-party plugin like Memberpress to create a membership levels and assign a course to different levels of membership.

LearnDash Pricing

LearnDash offers different pricing plans for their learning management system. Two options are available, getting a plugin to use with your already existing website and the LearnDash cloud plan to allow you to build your website from scratch on the fully hosted platform.

The LearnDash WordPress plugin is offered in 3 options for one site ($199/year), 10 sites ($399/year) and unlimited websites ($799/year).

LearnDash cloud goes for $29/month with an all in one solution for your institution to create great learner experiences on a fully hosted platform.

LearnDash offers free trials for each plan. If you want to try it out, you can sign up here.

Learndash Worpdess plugin
LearnDash cloud plan

In Summary: LearnDash LMS Review

LearnDash is a premium plugin designed to help you build better online courses. In our review, we found it easy to set up and use.

One great plus about LearnDash is the ability to integrate with other themes, which means you might not necessarily have to change your website theme altogether to make use of this robust learning management system.

However, there are some things we didn't like about LearnDash. The main is the price tag, especially for the plugin. While it does offer a lot of functionality, it doesn't come cheap. This is why LearnDash Cloud looks more attractive, at $29/month it can be a good option for beginners looking to cement in the online learning market.

Overall, though, we think LearnDash is worth checking out. Start with a 15 day free trial to get a feel of the platform and see if it suits your needs.

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Build a course on WordPress

Get a 15 day Money Back Guarantee

Try LearnDash to see if its the best option for building your online course.

Try for Free

FAQ LearnDash WordPress LMS

What Is LearnDash?

LearnDash is a WordPress learning management system plugin that makes it easy for anyone to create online courses and offer them for sale. You don’t need to know anything about coding or design to use it. Instead, you simply drag and drop elements into the editor and watch as your course appears live on your site.

How Does LearnDash Work?

LearnDash is a WordPress plugin, which means it works with WordPress, and not on anything else. WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world. LearnDash uses its capabilities to expand into e‑​learnings.

Who Can Use LearnDash?

Anyone who wants to start selling courses online can use LearnDash. Whether you’re looking to build a side hustle, earn extra money while working full-time, or just want to teach yourself something new, LearnDash can help.

Is LearnDash easy to use?

LearnDash is a WordPress based online course-building tool that makes it super easy to build and publish online courses. 

You can start with one of the many prebuilt templates or create your course. Once your course is ready, you can publish it directly to any one of your social channels on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, for promotion and marketing.

Is LearnDash scalable?

LearnDash is built around the idea that education technology should be simple enough for anyone to use, but powerful enough for experts to customize. This approach makes it possible for educators to quickly build customized courses without having to hire expensive consultants.

LearnDash is completely customizable and scalable and allows for growth from being a small organization o large entities to even as much as 500, 000 students. You can design courses exactly the way you want them to look, and you don't even need programming skills to do it. Once you've set up your course, you can add videos, quizzes, assignments, tests, and much more. You can even include interactive features like chat rooms, polls, and surveys.

Is LearnDash free?

LearnDash does not offer a free plan, but they, however, do have a 15-day money back guarantee and you can also play around with a demo to try it before you buy.


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Nonofo Joel

Passionate blogger with expertise in Branding, Website Design, Content Marketing and SEO. Engaging content, unique perspective, and over a decade of experience. Join me on Global Tech Stack for captivating insights, reviews and inspiration.