Are you looking for the best LearnDash alternatives to host your online courses?
Sell. Change lives. And make money.
LearnDash is one of the popular online course builder WordPress plugins reportedly used by Fortune 500 companies, major universities and training organizations, and entrepreneurs to publish course content online.
But the major constraint is that the eLearning plugin is limited to only WordPress users. Unfortunately.
Which makes it not a great fit for every kind of online course project or entrepreneur.
Asides from the WordPress limitation, it has
- excessive confusing options
- A steep learning curve,
- And quite an expensive pricing for low budgeters
This competition review will help you find out why you should consider a suitable LearnDash competitor for your next online course project.
With their strengths and weaknesses.
So you’d make a reasonable choice best fit for your level of online business.
Let’s dive right in.
And oh, before then…
6 Best LearnDash Alternatives for Courses
So what solid alternatives are available to ditch LearnDash for?
Summary: Overall Teachable came out the best alternative while LifterLMS falls as the perfect WordPress plugin alternative. While Kartra ended as an ideal all-in-one platform to host an entire business on.
Diving into full reviews…
#1: LifterLMS
LifterLMS is a WordPress LMS (learning management system) plugin used to create your own online courses just as LearnDash.
Which makes it the best LearnDash WordPress alternative.
Over the years, the online course plugin has established itself as one of the best ways to host an online course with WordPress.
It was designed to provide an LMS from which you can deliver online courses with your existing WordPress site theme.
Asides working with your existing WordPress theme, you can also create a new online learning portal.
The core plugin is free with payment for add-ons starting from $99.
Apart from the learning management system which forms the core of the plugin…
LifterLMS allows you to add premium add-ons such as:
- Payment gateways
- Content dripping
- Paywalls
And more for… increased functionalities
Essentially, LifterLMS helps you implement an online learning ecosystem on your WordPress website. You get to create and publish online courses, with assessments, and certifications all from your existing WordPress site.
LifterLMS Features
LifterLMS comes as a free core WordPress plugin with the online course management functionality.
Here’re the features what you get the plugin:
- Design and structure your courses with a drag-and-drop editor
- Add more advanced quizzes and assignments to test the abilities of your students
- Set up custom emails based on your students’ activity
- Award certificates and achievements when your students complete your course and certain actions
- Run drip campaigns to keep your students coming back to each course content
- Use premium add-ons to add more functionality to your courses learning portal
- Integrate either with direct payment gateways or a WooCommerce and email marketing tools
LifterLMS Pricing
The core LifterLMS plugin is free.
For added functionality, there are three payment options that all come with the core LMS plugin. And you can buy individual addons for $99 per year.
- Individual Add-Ons for $99+ (each) per year
This plan allows you to get your online course up and running using the core LifterLMS plugin and an individual add-on of your choice.
You get the following features:
– LMS Plugin on 1 active site
– Standard support
– 1 tech support account
– All add-ons available for individual purchase
- Universe Bundle for $299 per year
The LifterLMS Universe Bundle is the most popular plan and is suited for you to level up your online course website with beautiful design, marketing tech, and automation tools that help you scale.
Here’s what you get on the universe bundle:
– LMS plugin on 5 active sites
– Priority customer support
– Up to 2 tech support accounts
– Design add-ons
– Ecommerce add-ons
– Marketing & CRM add-ons
– Form add-ons
- Infinity Bundle for $999 per year
The LifterLMS Infinity Bundle allows you to add more engagement to your training programs comes with the following advanced features:
– LMS Plugin on unlimited active sites
– Priority support + live office hours
– Up to 3 tech support accounts
– Design add-ons
– Ecommerce add-ons
– Marketing & CRM add-ons
– Form add-ons
– Advanced quizzes & assignments
– Private coaching features
– Social learning features
– Advanced video features
– Custom fields features
– Groups features
Get started with LifterLMS right here
#2: Teachable
Teachable – a hosted LearnDash alternative – is focused on being the BEST platform you need to create, host, and deliver online courses to your students.
With over 28M students and 124,000+ instructors using the platform to share and sell their knowledge – Teachable gives you the right tools you need to create, publish, and sell online courses and digital products.
Teachable aims to provide a world-class learning experience for course students.
They have a drag and drop site builder, intuitive and user-friendly interface, in-built payment processing facilities.
And more features so you can focus on what matters – creating EPIC content.
Teachable Features
- Has an iOS App
- Upload your content (in bulk or singly) in any format
- Mobile responsive user-friendly course player
- Test the progress of your students and grade them with quizzes, surveys, and assessments
- Award certificates of completion natively to your students
- Awesome course reporting and analytics tools
- Stay in touch with your students by sending broadcast emails with Teachable’s email capabilities
- Vast third-party integration
- Great course security
Teachable Pricing
Teachable has four major pricing plans (which includes a free plan) and you get an unlimited number of courses, students, hosting, and video storage on each paid plan.
Let’s take a look.
- Free Plan
Teachable has a FREE plan which lets you test drive the platform with access to basic features and a maximum of 10 students.
On this plan, you don’t get most features on the free plan and get charged a $1+10% transaction fee for every sale you make on your course.
- Basic Plan for $29 per month
This plan is a great fit for newbie course creators and you get to pay $29 per month when you pay yearly ($348 billed annually). Here are the features you get on the Teachable Basic Plan:
– All base features
– Unlimited students
– 5% transaction fees
– Instant payouts
– 2 admin-level users
– Product support
– Course creator training
– Custom domain support
– Coupon codes
– Drip course content
– Integrated email marketing
– Third-party integrations
- Professional Plan for $119 per month
This is the most popular Teachable pricing plan which gives you access to most features in Teachable with fewer restrictions than in the Basic plan.
You get the following features on the Teachable Professional Plan:
– All in the Basic plan
– Unlimited students
– No transaction fees
– Instant payouts
– 5 admin-level users
– Priority product support
– Graded quizzes
– Advanced reports
– Unbranded website
– Course completion certificates
– Course compliance
– Integrated affiliate marketing
- Business Plan for $299 per month
This plan lets you get the best of Teachable with access to ALL the features. You get to pay $249 per month ($2988 billed annually) when you pay yearly and get the following features:
– All in Professional plan
– Unlimited students
– No transaction fees
– Instant payouts
– 20 admin-level users
– Priority product support
– Manual student imports
– Bulk student enrollments
– Custom user roles
– Advanced theme customization
– Group coaching calls
There are also some Teachable base features you can view on the pricing page here.
Get started with Teachable right here
#3: Thinkific
Our second LearnDash alternative – Thinkific.
Thinkific is a learning management system that gives you the required tools you need to create, market and sell your own online courses.
With ease.
If you want to sell your courses with little or no tech skills and you don’t want to use WordPress LMS plugins such as LearnDash or our first option – LifterLMS.
Then Thinkific is an option you should definitely look into.
You are able to upload your course, content, structure your course, create sales pages as well as course pages, and receive payments and recruit affiliates with Thinkific.
They boast of over 36,000-course creators using their essential course creation tools to share and sell their knowledge.
With the features in Thinkific, you are empowered to:
- Create compelling course content
- Get your course up and running so you can start selling immediately
- Build your brand and grow your audience
- And scale your business
Thinkific Features
- Zero coding skills needed
- A hosted platform
- Different formats (text, videos, audio files, PDFs, quizzes, type forms, surveys) supported
- Ability to create a standalone community area
- Course compliant features
- Huge third-party integrations
- Supports advanced quiz features
- Voice-over PowerPoint presentation tool that makes video production easy
- Thinkific centralized tracking and analytics system is awesome
Thinkific Pricing
You get four pricing plans (with a free plan) to choose from with unlimited students, no transaction fees, support team, and a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.
You also get a 20% Thinkific annual discount on all paid plans.
The core features you get on all Thinkific plans include:
– Instant access to your funds
– Student notifications
– Full e-Commerce
– Upsell offers
– Easy drag and drop Course Builder
– Discussion forums
– Build out your entire website
– Secure cloud hosting
– Multiple instructor profiles
– Choose your site language
– Easy, built-in SSL certificates
– Email and phone support
The core Thinkific plans are:
- The Free Plan – $0
- Basic Plan – $49 per month
- Pro Plan – $99 per month
- Premier Pan – $499 per month
You can preview all Thinkific plan w/features here
And wait… there is also a plus plan.
- Thinkific Plus Plan
This is the enterprise package with pricing not widely advertised.
This mighty package is suitable for companies and high volume customers and you need to reach out to the Thinkific admin to receive a quote based on your custom needs.
#4: Podia
With over 20,000 content creators using the platform (as at when writing this)…
Podia describes itself as the platform that gives you all you need to sell online courses and digital downloads and turn your passion into income.
The platform gives you tools to create an all-in-one digital storefront and start selling online courses, webinars, digital products, and memberships.
It is another LearnDash alternative designed for those who want to share and sell your knowledge online.
And you don’t need much in-depth technical know-how or coding skills to use Podia. And yes, you don’t need WordPress either.
The platform has an easy to use, user interface and is friendly for newbies and veterans who want to monetize and sell their knowledge online.
Podia Features
What do you get on Podia?
- Supports both digital downloads and memberships
- Build sales pages and your digital storefront to host your products
- Collect payment and give out coupons right from within Podia
- Send newsletters and run automated drip campaigns to keep your subscribers and students engaged
- Track email campaign metrics such as click, open and unsubscribe rates
Podia Pricing
Podia has two interesting pricing plans, with zero transaction fees and unlimited core features to begin selling your online courses.
Do take advantage of the 14-day free trial is available for you to test-drive the platform and see if it’s great for your digital business and see which plan is right for you.
No CC is required for the trial period and you can cancel anytime.
Plus, there’s a little discount if you decide to pay annually.
Taking a closer look at each of the plans:
- Mover Plan for $39 per month
This plan is great for creators launching their first digital products. You get to save $78 when you pay yearly ($390 billed annually) and here’s what you get in return on this plan:
– Your own storefront
– Online courses
– Digital downloads
– Webinars
– Email marketing
– Messaging
– Additional teammates ($20/mo each)
– Zero transaction fees
– Unlimited everything
– 7-days-a-week support
– Free migrations
- Shaker Plan for $79 per month
It is suitable for experienced creators For creators ready to grow their business. Paying yearly saves you $158 ($790 billed annually) and you get the following features:
– All features in Mover plan plus
– Memberships
– Blog
– Offsite Buy Buttons
– Affiliate marketing
– Third-party code
See more price details and try Podia for free here
#5: Kajabi
Kajabi is an online marketing platform that’s all about helping you create and sell online courses or digital products. It is a great fit for digital product creators.
They empower you with the tools you need to host your online courses, build a membership site, deliver your content to your students.
And run your online business in one place with ease.
Kajabi was founded by Kenny Rueter and the platform is home to 25,000+ experts, entrepreneurs, and influencers around the world including the likes of Brendan Burchard and Amy Porterfield.
If selling courses and digital products are your major use case, then Kajabi is a great LearnDash alternative you should explore.
Kajabi Features
On the platform, you are able to build websites, blogs, sales funnels, and even run automated email campaigns.
Here’s all the powerful stuff you can do with Kajabi.
- Unlimited video hosting
- Detailed insights and analytics
- Use quizzes and assessments
- Inbuilt email autoresponder
- Ability to build a professional website as well as a blog
- Offers powerful engagement tools like community
Kajabi Pricing
Kajabi has three pricing plans with unlimited bandwidth, unlimited video hosting, and zero transaction fees.
To test-drive the platform, you get a 14-day FREE trial to try out the platform. And to also save money, you get a 20% annual discount.
Here are the Kajabi pricing plans available:
- Basic Plan for $149 per month
This plan is great for entrepreneurs and the prices reduce to $119 per month ($1438 billed annually) when you pay yearly. You get the following features on the Kajabi basic plan:
– 3 Products
– 3 Pipelines
– Landing Pages (Unlimited)
– Emails (Unlimited)
– 10,000 Contacts
– 1,000 Active Members
– 1 Website
– 1 Admin User
– Kajabi University
– 0% Transaction Fee
– Webinars & Events
– Ready to Use Templates
– Assessments (Quizzes & Surveys)
– Chat Support
– Automation
- Growth Plan for $199 per month
This is the most popular Kajabi plan useful for large businesses and organizations to create more digital products and courses.
Using the annual discount, you get to pay $159 per month ($1908 billed annually) and get access to the following features:
– 15 Products
– 15 Pipelines
– Landing Pages (Unlimited)
– Marketing Emails (Unlimited)
– 25,000 Contacts
– 10,000 Active Members
– 1 Website
– 10 Admin Users
– Kajabi University
– 0% Transaction Fee
– Webinars & Events
– Ready to Use Templates
– Assessments (Quizzes & Surveys)
– 24/7 Chat Support
– Advanced Automations
– Ability to Remove Kajabi Branding
– Affiliate center
- Pro Plan for $399 per month
This is the most advanced Kajabi pricing plan with unlimited features.
The price reduces to $319 per month ($3828 billed annually) when you pay yearly. And you get the following features:
– 100 Products
– 100 Pipelines
– Unlimited Landing Pages
– 2,000,000 Marketing Emails
– 100,000 Contacts
– 20,000 Active Members
– 3 Websites
– 25 Admin Users
– Kajabi University
– 0% Transaction Fee
– Webinars & Events
– Ready to Use Templates
– Assessments (Quizzes & Surveys)
– 24/7 Chat Support
– Advanced Automations
– Ability to Remove Kajabi Branding
– Affiliate center
– Code Editor
#6: Kartra
Kartra is an all-in-one online marketing platform with various in-built tools.
For building sales funnels, running email campaigns, hosting your online courses, hosting videos, managing affiliates, split A/B testing, running your webinars, and more.
The platform was co-built by Andy Jenkins in 2018 to help entrepreneurs to run and manage their entire online business from one central place.
Instead of wasting time and money duct-taping a bunch of solutions together, you can have all the tools you need inside Kartra to run your online business.
My Kartra review goes into more detail.
Kartra Features
Whether it’s a landing page builder, checkout page, mailing tool, or affiliates management system to make your eLearning experience worthwhile.
Kartra has it all.
Here’s a rundown of the awesome features you get on the all-in-one marketing platform:
- A complete marketing tool-suite
- Engaging membership portal
- Inbuilt video hosting
- Scheduling/calendar-booking app
- Helpdesk portal with support ticketing and live chat
- Sophisticated email and automation platform
- DFY funnels and campaigns to quickly launch your courses
- Manage affiliates (to promote your courses and digital products) natively inside Kartra
- Kartra marketplace
- Kartra Agency to manage customer accounts
Kartra Pricing
Kartra has four pricing plans for you to choose from with each plan having some form of limitation that differentiates it from higher tiers.
When you pay for each plan yearly, you get a 25% annual discount to save money.
And to test-drive the platform and see if it’s a suitable LearnDash alternative for you, they have a 14-day FREE trial for $1 only.
Let’s take a look at each plan in detail.
- Starter Plan for $99 per month
This plan is a great fit for entrepreneurs and online business owners with little audience base and you get to pay $79 per month ($948 billed annually) when you claim the annual discount.
Here are the features you get on the starter plan:
– 2,500 Leads
– 1 custom domain
– 15,000 emails per month
– 50 GB bandwidth
– 100 pages
– 50 videos
– 20 products
– 2 membership sites
– 1 additional team member
– 1 helpdesk
- Silver Plan for $199 per month
This is the most popular Kartra pricing plan and its suitable for agencies and entrepreneurs with a large audience base.
You pay $149 per month ($1788 billed annually) when you pay on a yearly basis for this plan and get the following features:
– 12,500 Leads
– Emails (Unlimited)
– Bandwidth (Unlimited)
– 3 custom domains
– Pages (Unlimited)
– Videos (Unlimited)
– Products (Unlimited)
– Membership sites (Unlimited)
– Team members (Unlimited)
– Helpdesks (Unlimited)
– Kartra Agency
- Gold Plan for $299 per month
The next plan you unlimited features and fewer restrictions than the Silver plan.
The pricing reduces to $229 per month ($2748 billed annually) when you pay on a yearly basis and you get the following features:
– 25,000 Leads
– 5 custom domains
– Emails (Unlimited)
– Bandwidth (Unlimited)
– Pages (Unlimited)
– Videos (Unlimited)
– Products (Unlimited)
– Membership sites (Unlimited)
– Team members (Unlimited)
– Helpdesks (Unlimited)
– Kartra Agency
- Platinum Plan for $499 per month
This plan gives you unlimited features of Kartra and you get to pay $379 per month ($4548 billed annually) using the annual discount.
And here are the features you get on the Kartra platinum plan:
– 50,000 Leads
– 10 custom domains
– Emails (Unlimited)
– Bandwidth (Unlimited)
– Pages (Unlimited)
– Videos (Unlimited)
– Products (Unlimited)
– Membership sites (Unlimited)
– Team members (Unlimited)
– Helpdesks (Unlimited)
– Kartra Agency
If you need enterprise-level accounts, you should reach out to Kartra support and they will arrange one for you according to special needs and demands.
Read my Kartra vs LearnDash comparison here. Or…
Try Kartra for ONLY $1 here to see its membership capability
Why Consider a LearnDash Alternative?
LearnDash bills itself as the most trusted LMS plugin for WordPress.
It comes with a long list of features and was built for anyone who wants to publish courses online on an existing WordPress website.
But unfortunately, LearnDash might not be a good fit LMS or online course platform for you.
And here’s why:
With a long list of features, LearnDash might actually be an overkill for your online course project.
You get a lot of settings and options at every step of the way. This could be quite overwhelming when you’re trying to do something as simple as creating a simple quiz.
To create a simple quiz, for example, you’ll get confused with all the different types of quizzes you can create with the plugin along with all of the options that go with them.
This eminent overwhelm brings about a steep learning curve to get to know how to use the plugin for your needs.
On the lower entry-level plan, you won’t get some necessary features such as reporting functionality that give you solid insight and progress into your website and course content.
Final Words: Which is Best?
If you’re looking to try out the best LearnDash alternatives in the market, you should not look further than these options.
Overall, each of these platforms is a good option.
If you have a WordPress site and would like to host your courses in one place, then try out LifterLMS.
Podia, Teachable, and Thinkific are top choices and similar solutions. If you’re not down on a WordPress alternative.
They provide essential features for building online courses without having a WordPress site. Kajabi is also similar but allows for more use cases such as selling your digital products.
Above all the above Teachable is my favorite!
If you need a robust, all-in-one platform, I’ll recommend you watch the Kartra demo. And try it out.
Kartra is the most complete marketing platform with a wide range of marketing tools. You get to host courses, run email campaigns, host webinars, book appointments, provide support, manage affiliates.
And do a lot more in one central place.
With just $1 you can get started with Kartra
What LearnDash alternatives do you have your eyes on?
Let me know in the comment box below.
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