What is The Best WordPress Plugin for Online Courses? Leading Solutions

WordPress as a platform is loved and praised by educators, small companies, and big enterprises. Want to join the league and monetize your knowledge? Congrats, good choice!

But what is the best WordPress plugin for online courses if you choose to power your site with the biggest CMS in the world? Do you want to sell subscriptions, offer specific lesson time slots, or build an LMS marketplace?

This article covers solutions for all those needs!

LearnPress

LearnPress is one of the most chosen plugins – well-designed, highly rated, and powerful.

Within the course editor, you can add lessons containing text, images, videos, and various types of questions for quizzes. The plugin easily integrates with PayPal, Stripe, and WooCommerce to sell content. The best WordPress plugin for online courses helps you see student progress, statistics about enrollments, and revenue through the interactive admin panel.

Why use LearnPress:

• Mobile app to study on the go.
• Seamlessly works with such themes as Eduma and EduPress.
• Supports free courses, as well as one-time payment, subscription, or membership.

Best for: Individual teachers, trainers, and instructors who want to create and sell their own online courses.

Cost: free – various bundles, prices start at $210.

BookingPress

One of the core capabilities of BookingPress is to serve as a class scheduling software. This means you pre-build your availability, place a calendar on your site, and students then choose the lesson and time that suits them.

For instance, language schools often have multiple weekly sessions by language level or topic, and tools like BookingPress make it easy for students to reserve spots in classes that fit their schedule (dance studios, music schools, and similar businesses can use BookingPress in the same way without limits).

Why use BookingPres:

• Perfect for school website bookings initiated by students.
• 20+ payment gateways without any code or extra plugins.
• One-to-one and group classes, including virtual ones.

Best for: Online course availability and appointment scheduling.

Cost: free – $79/year

Tutor LMS

Tutor LMS is probably the best WordPress plugin for online courses creation: it’s actively developed and always in tune with teachers’ needs and challenges. Automatically generate assignments and quizzes that align with your course content, receive payments through top payment gateways (10+), and offer course bundles.

Why use Tutor LMS:

• A great choice of pre-made designs for a single or multiple courses.
• Supports blended learning experience through Tutor LMS live classes (Google Meet, Zoom, Jitsi Meet, and more).
• Course outlines in a click with AI.

Best for: All types of online courses, lessons, and quizzes (+ extensive support of AI).

Cost: free – $199/year

ARMember + Course Builder Add-on

ARMember + its own Online Courses extension is a powerful duo for course creation needs.

This membership plugin allows you to create and sell courses on WordPress, customizing registration, gamification, payments, and certificate features. It supports multiple payment gateways, interaction, and email marketing services.

Why use ARMember:

• Offer courses as separate membership plans with class registration.
• Control content access by user registration.
• Build member profiles, directories, and communities.

Best for: Tutors looking to run full online courses with lessons, paid subscriptions, and student communities.

Cost: free – $69

Masteriyo LMS

Masteriyo LMS is a WordPress course builder plugin that’s quickly gaining traction among online educators and entrepreneurs.

You will love how it focuses on creating a smooth, distraction-free learning experience for your students. Masteriyo LMS comes with a unified course builder and a built-in order system (no WooCommerce needed). Some say its free version is actually the best WordPress plugin for online courses.

Why use Masteriyo LMS:

• Quick setup using a React-based interface and integrated course builder.
• Quiz builder, progress tracking, and certificate generation.
• Push notification for teacher-student engagement.

Best for: Solo educators and small teams who want a lightweight LMS solution with course protection and security measures.

Cost: free – $99/year

LifterLMS

LifterLMS is a unique WordPress plugin for building feature-rich online learning platforms. Just like many other courses and LMS plugins presented in our article, this solution works with multi-tier courses with modules, lessons, and content dripping.

LifterLMS is perfect for selling individual courses or memberships, offering recurring subscriptions, and building certificates for student achievements.

Why use LifterLMS:

• Built-in course builder with support for prerequisites and lesson gating.
• Stripe, PayPal, WooCommerce, and Authorize.net for flexible payments.
• Create coupons, quizzes, videos, and assignments.
  

Best for: Membership-based courses, coaching programs, and certification training.

Cost: free – $299/year (Earth bundle)

MasterStudy LMS

MasterStudy LMS is one of the regularly updated course builders for WordPress used by educators and course marketplaces. It focuses on the capabilities of building full-featured online schools or multi-instructor platforms.

You can sell individual courses or subscriptions, track student progress, and deliver lessons via various video sources including HTML5 (MP4), YouTube, Vimeo, external links, embedded videos, shortcodes, and Presto Player.

Why use MasterStudy LMS:

• Supports building an LMS marketplace, where multiple instructors can create and sell their own courses.
• Detailed student progress tracking.
• Powerful multimedia lessons and quizzes.

Best for: Single tutors and online learning marketplaces.

Cost: free – $149/year

LearnDash LMS

LearnDash is a powerful, all-on-platform for creating your courses. In addition to many course-related features, it offers custom templates built using Kadence Theme that are designed specifically for courses. Unlimited courses and students are one of the key advantages of this WordPress plugin for online courses. You can use Stripe, Paypal, RazorPay, and 2Checkout for payments.

Why use LearnDash LMS:

• Non-tech users can start with the packages that include the plugin+hosting.
• Award-winning platform for creating traditional step-by-step online courses.
• Many WP integrations, including the Events Calendar, Woo, BuddyBoss, and more.

Best for: Approve submissions, award points, and gamify course content.

Cost: $199/year

Sensei LMS

Sensei LMS is a great WordPress course creator plugin, which is helpful for creative courses with interactive content.

It allows you to create courses quickly by converting existing blog posts into course lessons in just a few clicks. Sell courses, segment students by cohorts, and build advanced quizzes. Note that most of these features are not available in the popular free version of the plugin.

Why use Sensei LMS:

• Create interactive videos (add breakpoints with content like quizzes or flashcards).
• Works with multiple video hosts (Vimeo, YouTube, and VideoPress).
• Automatically generate beautiful downloadable PDF certificates.

Best for: Courses highly based on video content and video learning.

Cost: free – $60/year

Concluding – What is The Best WordPress Plugin for Online Courses?

In the modern world, there are multiple ways you can offer education services, create courses, and schedule lessons. But also think of what your students need from the platform you provide them with (mainly, flexibility and interactivity!).

Also, students crave quizzes, assignments, and multimedia-rich lessons. Tutor LMS and MasterStudy offer built-in tools for a more engaging experience. For personal teaching and availability, choose BookingPress.

Plugins like LifterLMS and Sensei LMS let students control their learning paths. For more flexibility, learning on-the-go (mobile app) is provided by LearnPress. Students also want to feel connected with peers – and tools like ARMember, Masteriyo, and LifterLMS include discussion boards and chat features for better interaction. Giants like LearnDash LMS have it all!

It’s worth noting that almost all of these top WordPress LMS plugins offer free versions, so you can try them out and get a real feel for how they work.

Finally, think of these solutions in terms of specific features as well as global capabilities, value for money, design, and flexibility you can provide your students with.

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