The best LMS plugins to turn your WordPress website into an educational platform

you want to create a new educational platform to publish your educational courses on, you will find advanced programming requirements that require experience, as well as a lot of time, effort, or money if you hire a programmer to work on programming the educational platform.

But the other easier option for you is to rely on the WordPress platform directly and then install one of the LMS plugins for WordPress that turns your website into an educational platform and then customize the platform to suit your needs.

Here you will find many different plugins specialized in converting websites into educational platforms, some of which are free and others are paid, and they differ in terms of prices and features they provide. Therefore, we will discuss the best LMS plugins for converting WordPress websites into educational platforms in detail in today’s article, but first let us get to know the meaning of And the importance of LMS add-ons.

The word LMS is an abbreviation for Learning Management System, which is an educational content management system. It is a sub-add-on on the WordPress operating system that directly transforms the WordPress website into an educational platform.

The LMS system helps organize the process of uploading and displaying courses and course-related content, such as explanation files, applications, questions, exams, assignments, certificates, etc.

It also provides many software features in a pre-configured form, for example, offering grouped courses, multiple payment methods, displaying live courses on Zoom, a profit points system, special groups, and ready-made interfaces.

When searching for the best LMS add-ons, you will find a large group of different add-ons. In today’s article, we will try to list the most important of these add-ons while clarifying the sub-features of each add-on, but let us explain to you the basic criteria that you should look for to choose the best LMS add-on for your educational platform.

The criteria for choosing add-ons for creating an LMS learning management platform vary from one person to another according to the order of priorities and requirements, but the most important of these common criteria that you should look for in add-ons is the following:

• How to build courses : You must examine the mechanism for uploading and displaying course contents using the LMS add-on, and the method of organizing and dealing with lectures, tests, questions, and assignments, and make sure that it suits your needs. 
• Multimedia support : You must examine the multimedia that the LMS add-on supports, for example video, audio, PDF files, and the video sources it supports, such as Youtube or Vimeo, and make sure that they are compatible with the content of the educational courses that you provide, so that your course becomes more integrated.
• Available payment methods : The payment methods available to the student are among the most important points that stimulate the purchase process. There are some LMS add-ons that provide multiple ready-made payment method settings that suit most students’ needs without the need to install other external add-ons, for example payment by Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal and others.
• User interface : Most learning management system add-ons offer options for preparing the user interface with pre-set options that help you prepare the user interface for the trainer and trainee quickly and well, and they differ greatly from one add-on to another, so you must examine this point well and make sure that it suits your needs.
• Multiple course purchase options: Some LMS add-ons provide multiple features for purchasing courses, for example purchasing bundled courses, monthly subscriptions, trial versions, limited free lectures, the number of monthly hours, etc. All of these options give multiple options to the trainer and trainee to control the mechanism of dealing with Courses.
• Plugins: Plugins are one of the basic points that vary greatly from one LMS add-on to another, unlike all the previous points, as you make sure that the LMS add-on is compatible with the plug-ins you need, for example, adding BuddyPress and adding bbPress, which helps you prepare trainee profiles, interact and communicate. With them via private messages or group chat.
• Marketing tools: You must examine the availability of marketing tools that work to increase course sales, for example, the profit points system, referral programs, commission systems, discount coupons, and other incentives for trainees to publish courses.

In this way, we have explained to you the most important criteria for choosing the best LMS add-ons for managing educational content, and you can judge through them the different LMS add-ons. These are the criteria that we relied on in today’s guide to choose the best add-ons for you, which will be explained to you in detail in the following paragraphs, so continue reading with us. .

We also explained to you in the introduction that there are multiple options for LMS add-ons and your choice of an appropriate add-on will affect your educational platform in the long run, so we have listed for you the 5 best LMS add-ons that you can rely on to establish your educational platform.

The LearnDash add-on is one of the best and most popular LMS add-ons that the largest companies and major universities rely on because of its high speed, the features it offers, and the way it presents courses in an organized manner and excellent design.

The LearnDash add-on is considered a paid add-on, as it costs $159 per year with a permit for one site. It does not provide a lifetime subscription, nor does it provide trial or free subscriptions through which you can test the add-on, but it does provide a 15-day guarantee through which you can test the add-on and get a refund if you do not like it.

The most important features of the LearnDash add-on are the following:

• The LearnDash add-on provides you with the ability to customize the course interface in a flexible and distinct way and the ability to upload an unlimited number of courses and lessons.
• You can customize the method of selling courses, whether by paying once for life, allocating monthly or annual subscriptions, or allocating different memberships for a limited selection of courses without the need for additional external components.
• The LearnDash add-on allows you to create multi-level courses and lessons that are linked to each other. For example, the trainee cannot access advanced lessons in the training course except when he completes specific lessons, and he cannot move to specific courses except when he completes other courses.
• The LearnDash add-on allows you to impose certain restrictions on courses and lessons in terms of specifying the number of hours or number of times the trainee can watch the course.
• It supports courses with different media, whether they are text courses, audio courses, recorded videos, or live lectures on Zoom, with the ability to record lectures and upload them directly to the educational platform.
• It provides 8 types of questions and tests that you can attach to courses and imposes restrictions on them that determine the transition to the higher level.
• You can submit assignments to trainees and interact with them through their performance and results.
• The LearnDash plugin provides you with a pre-built interactive community for learners without the need for external components. 
• You can send an email to all trainees through internal marketing tools by adding LearnDash to help you increase course sales.
• The LearnDash add-on provides a complete control panel for the trainer through which he can organize courses and offers, analyze the performance of courses and trainees, progress rates, results, evaluations, and more.
• The possibility of preparing a course completion experience certificate for trainees and displaying the course results automatically.
• The LearnDash add-on is compatible with most of the popular payment methods that learners need, for example, Paypal, Stripe, and 2Checkout.
• Technical support is one of the most important features of the LearnDash add-on, as it provides you with technical support through internal tickets on your account on the LearnDash platform .

The Tutor LMS add-on is one of the latest LMS add-ons. The add-on was first published in 2019 by Themeum, and during that short paragraph it was able to gain the trust of more than 60,000 educational platforms with a rating of more than 4.7 on the WordPress.org platform.

The Tutor LMS add-on is available in a free version that you can rely on completely to establish your educational platform, or the advanced version paid with additional features at a cost of $149 per year with a license for one site or $399 for life, and you can rely on shared plans to reduce the cost, for example, $199 per year. With a license for 5 sites.

The most important features of the Tutor LMS add-on are the following:

• The advanced version of the Tutor LMS add-on provides a ready-made interface that you can rely on to prepare courses flexibly by dragging and dropping.
• You can fully customize the platform’s interface from Oxygen or Elementor page builder by drag and drop as well.
• The Tutor LMS add-on provides a distinct builder to create course completion certificates by dragging and dropping with a special code for each trainee to authenticate the certificates from theft.
• The advanced version provides a pre-equipped control panel for trainees, trainers, and supervisors with complete settings for all powers, through which they can follow sales, profits, commissions, and complete analysis of the courses.
• It supports uploading multimedia courses, whether they are text or video files, as well as SWF files and HTML pages.
• The Tutor LMS add-on provides 10 different types of questions in the Quiz Builder that you can rely on to make the courses more interactive with the trainees.
• It provides you with the ability to customize assignments, deal with them directly on the educational platform from the trainee, and evaluate and edit from the trainer.
• It helps with email marketing and increasing sales by preparing messages using the message builder integrated with the template’s text editor and automatically sending messages about the latest offers and discounts to all trainees.
• It provides the ability to send notifications to trainees on the platform by adding Tutor LMS Notification integrated with the Tutor LMS add-on.
• The Tutor LMS plugin provides the ability to create an interactive forum between trainers and trainees for discussion through questions and answers.
• It provides the possibility of paying a commission to trainers outside the platform on the sales of their training course on the educational platform.
• The Tutor LMS add-on is compatible with the most important plugins for educational platforms, for example, the Easy Digital Downloads add-on and the Paid Membership Pro add-on, which helps prepare monthly or annual memberships for trainees.
• The Tutor LMS add-on provides the ability to migrate the educational platform with one click from other LMS add-ons, for example LearnDash and LearnPress, but you must take a backup copy of the educational platform before migrating.
• The Tutor LMS plugin is multilingual, offering you 27 different languages ​​to rely on.  

The LearnPress add-on is the simplest and most popular LMS add-on, as it has achieved more than 100,000 installations on the WordPress.org platform, with a rating of more than 4.7, and thus it is the most installed and rated in today’s article.

The main reason for the popularity of the LearnPress add -on is that it is generally easy to use, as it is completely free and does not require an annual subscription, but you may need an advanced template with an average cost of 50 US dollars and some advanced add-ons with an average additional cost of 30 US dollars, instead of paying an annual cost exceeding 200 dollars. As in other LMS add-ons, you can also rely on the completely free version to prepare the basics of the educational platform and develop it in the future when you achieve profits.

However, one of the negative points of the LearnPress add-on is the technical support, as it does not provide specialized technical support like other LMS add-ons. When communicating with technical support, the response period may reach 24-48 hours and will be insufficient in most cases, and this is considered one of the common defects in free add-ons.

The most important features of LearnPress add-ons are the following:

• Learn Press is completely free.
• It is easy to deal with the addition directly because it relies more on the basics than the advanced options. 
• There are a large number of paid and free templates available that are compatible with the LearnPress add-on, as well as many ready-made applications, for example EDUMA MOBILE APP , which converts the template into an application directly at an additional cost of only 54 US dollars.
• The LearnPress add-on is compatible with most educational platform plugins, for example, the bbPress add-on and the BuddyPress add-on.
• It is compatible with most of the payment methods that trainees need, for example Paypal, but advanced payment methods require paid add-ons with an average cost of $30 USD, for example the payment gateway 2Checkout, Authorize, or Stripe.
• The LearnPress add-on provides the ability to have multiple trainers on the same course and specify the permissions for each trainer separately.
• The possibility of adding random tests during the course stages to help improve the interaction between the trainer and the trainee, especially in online courses.
• It provides a system of rewards for purchasing courses, whether in points or discounts, as well as the possibility of issuing a course completion certificate with an academic degree upon completion of the course.
• The Learn Press add-on provides the ability to sell courses in more than one form, whether it is a one-time payment, premium memberships, or monthly payment.
• LearnPress is available in 23 different languages.

The MasterStudy LMS add-on is the newest and most professional LMS add-on in today’s article in terms of components and sub-features. The add-on is available in a free version with limited features and a paid version at a cost starting from $25 per year or at a cost of $67 for life.

The most important features of the MasterStudy LMS add-on are the following:

• Ease of controlling all the features and components of the MasterStudy LMS add-on through a direct control panel that you can handle with average experience. It also provides a set of ready-made settings for the main and sub-interfaces in the control panel.
• The MasterStudy LMS add-on relies on the WYSIWYG editor, which is considered a flexible and professional editor for customizing course interfaces, through which you can control all the details of the basic courses page.
• The MasterStudy LMS add-on provides a special page for trainers that helps them upload courses, fully control them, and know all the statistics and data about the courses and trainees.
• The MasterStudy LMS add-on provides a special page for trainees that helps them access the courses they are participating in in an organized manner, communicate with the trainer, upload assignments, obtain course completion certificates, and more.
• The ability to prepare live lectures on the ZOOM application from within your educational platform.
• It provides the ability to control course restrictions by specifying a limited number of hours or a specific number of times during which the trainee can watch the course after which his subscription expires.
• The ability to view free episodes or hours of courses that the trainer can watch before purchasing the course.
• Provides the possibility to prepare offers on a set of shared courses via the COURSE BUNDLES plugin.
• There are 9 different types of questions and tests that can enhance your training courses.
• The ability to add recorded courses from different sources, for example through YouTube, Vimeo, Presto Player, HTML pages, or from direct links.
• The MasterStudy LMS add-on provides the ability to design a course completion certificate for students through the certificate editor attached to the add-on, and specify the period for obtaining the course completion certificate and the required conditions.
• The MasterStudy LMS addition provides a system of rewards and points that can be obtained when purchasing new courses, inviting friends, or participating in educational platform activities.
• The possibility of setting up a blog or group chat between the trainer and trainees to increase interaction during the courses. It is also compatible with the BUDDYPRESS INTEGRATION plugin.
• The possibility of preparing a special application for your educational platform by linking your educational platform to the MasterStudy App at an additional cost of 25 US dollars.
• Compatibility with most basic payment methods, for example Payal or Stirpe.
• The possibility of marketing via e-mail by preparing offers and sending them to all trainees using the special message editor included with the MasterStudy LMS add-on.
• The ability to link the blog to your account on the UDEMY platform or add external courses for trainers from the UDEMY platform and obtain a percentage of profits from sales through affiliate marketing.

The fifth and final add-on in today’s article is the LifterLMS add-on, which is very similar to LearnDash, but the cost will be relatively high, as the annual subscription starts at a cost of $299 per year, or you can purchase separate services from the add-on at a cost of $99 per year, but it is certainly preferable to purchase the integrated package given that The cost of only 3 sub-services is equivalent to the cost of the complete package with all its services.

The most important features of the LifterLMS add-on are the following:

• The LifterLMS plugin is fully integrated with WordPress, and you can rely on it as a completely separate platform, but at an additional cost.
• It provides a trial package at a cost of one US dollar, through which you can try all the add-on services for a full month.
• The LifterLMS add-on provides a set of ready-made designs for all pages of the educational platform. You can choose from them when installing the add-on and preparing your educational platform in very simple steps without technical experience.
• The ability to prepare course pages using the drag-and-drop feature and flexible modification.
• The ability to create an unlimited number of paid and free courses and lessons.
• It supports courses with multiple levels, and this feature helps you create paths for integrated courses, where admission to a course is linked to the condition of completing another course.
• It provides you with the ability to display a specific part of the courses at a special cost as a type of marketing or paid samples at a nominal cost.
• It provides a large library of images and elements that you can rely on to design your online store.
• There is a specialized technical support team available 24 hours a day that you can rely on to solve all problems with the educational platform.
• The LifterLMS add-on provides the ability to transfer your educational platform from other LMS add-ons in very simple steps. You can also contact technical support to transfer the educational platform on your behalf.

Conclusion

LMS plugins are the best option for trainers to prepare an educational platform on WordPress to display their courses in a professional and organized manner without the need for programmers or great effort.

In today’s article, we showed you the best LMS add-ons that you can rely on to build your educational platform. You must make sure that the LMS add-on that you will rely on is compatible with your needs and the requirements of your courses, based on the criteria that we presented to you in the introduction to the article, as well as compatible with the budget available for the educational project. .

In this way, we have reached the conclusion of the article. If you have a question or inquiry that was not answered in the article, do not hesitate to comment below the article and you will be answered as soon as possible, God willing.