Though LearnDash and LifterLMS are winning hearts in the LMS plugins field, it becomes difficult to pick “the best one” between them. This blog covers a comprehensive comparison between LearnDash vs LifterLMS to help you choose the right WordPress LMS plugin for your business.
If you have decided to hire a website development company to set up an e-learning site using WordPress, you’re making the right decision. If you want to create and sell online courses and manage your site easily and effectively, you will need LMS plugins. However, in today’s overwhelming marketplace, it’s hard to find an LMS that ticks all the boxes on your list.
If you ask any WordPress development agency, they will advise you to choose LearnDash and LifterLMS as they are robust learning management system (LMS) plugins for WordPress and evidently the top, best, and popular ones.
They are built to flex and work with your business. LearnDash and LifterLMS appear quite similar LMS options in terms of features. However, they really stack up against each other.
Let’s get to know the basics of LearnDash and LifterLMS and uncover the differences by comparing each plugin to various factors.
What Is LearnDash?
LearnDash is a leading learning management system for WordPress. This plugin claims to be the most trusted LMS plugin for WordPress, allowing businesses to facilitate selling and managing online courses on the WordPress platform.
LearnDash is a premium plugin that comes with tons of features to create online courses on your WordPress site. Many companies, universities, training organizations, and entrepreneurs worldwide trust LearnDash to a great extent.
What Is LifterLMS?
LifterLMS is a freemium WordPress learning management system plugin that sells premium add-ons separately or as a bundle. It’s yet another powerful and complete LMS package that lets you build online courses and memberships easily and quickly that include engagements.
Being an all-in-one LMS system, LifterLMS works well with any well-coded WordPress theme and popular WP page builders, helping you run and grow your business efficiently.
LearnDash vs LifterLMS: In-Detail Comparison Based on 9 Different Criteria
Ease of Use
LearnDash is an easy-to-set-up WordPress LMS that comes with a dedicated dashboard that lets you create course materials, lessons, topics, quizzes, certificates, assignments, groups, and more. It has a new industry-first focus mode feature and ProPanel option.
LifterLMS is also a super easy LMS to add the course content to your website. However, there are some moving parts to get it to look decent on the front-end. LifterLMS has many alike features but has slightly more options than LearnDash.
Features
Both LearnDash and LifterLMS come with almost identical features with minor differences, providing you the necessary functionality to get started. Though LifterLMS is an all-in-one solution and has a robust set of features. It has its membership, e-commerce, and engagement tools built right in. However, you won’t notice huge differences either way for the average use case when it comes to high-level stuff.
Course Builder
Creating a course with LearnDash is fun, easy, and fast. You get various course options to add by shortcode, category, tag, etc. Likewise, you can add topics, quizzes, certificates, assignments, etc. Though LifterLMS offers easy options for creating the course. LifterLMS has more options like configuration to adjust course length, option for embedding a feature of video/audio, adding access plan, and more.
Extensions and Themes
LifterLMS supports various extensions, such as WooCommerce, MailChimp, bbPress, Affiliate WP, BuddyPress, etc. but the extensions and themes supported by LearnDash LMS make the e-learning site much easier. The library-supported extensions and themes for LifterLMS are much smaller compared to LearnDash. Though LearnDash seems to have a clear upper hand when it comes to extensions and themes.
Performance
Performance can make or break your website to the core. LearnDash enhances WordPress site performance using the latest tech tools in both the e-learning and WordPress industries. By employing add-ons, you can integrate content created into your website. LifterLMS is also great with its performance. It is super fast and very much responsive if you use a responsive theme. Both the plugins emphasize performance optimization.
Payment Option
When it comes to the payment option, LearnDash supports PayPal as its default payment option. You need to include your currency, email addresses, country, and other necessary details to start accepting PayPal payments. LifterLMS, on the other hand, doesn’t come with any default payment gateway. You will have the choice to select the way you want to accept the payment. You need to select a payment gateway from the add-on directory.
Pricing
Even though LearnDash doesn’t come for free, it is deemed underpriced when you look at the offerings it has compared to LifterLMS. On the other hand, you can get the basic version of LifterLMS for free, but the price goes too far, and it gets really expensive compared to LearnDash. Where LearnDash offers you three different pricing plans, starting from $1599 and goes to $329, LifterLMS starts from the free version and goes to $999. It’s huge, no?
Documentation
Both LearnDash and LifterLMS contain comprehensive documentation that guides you through every aspect with ease and simplicity. Though when it comes to choosing one, LearnDash is a clear winner. It has got the most detailed documentation of any LMS in the world.
From basic tutorials to explanatory videos, everything at LearnDash will help you understand “anything and everything” you want to understand about it. However, LifterLMS also has adequate documentation, but it mostly consists of text content.
Support
LearnDash offers all of its customers a wide range of support. You can get access to community forums where you can reach out to other users for help. And, if you still get stuck, the LearnDash support site helps you directly. For LifterLMS, you will need to submit a support ticket and wait for a response. In terms of technical support, both LearnDash and LifterLMS do not offer any type of live chat services.
Conclusion: Which One Should You Choose for Your LMS Needs?
LearnDash and LifterLMS are deemed the two best WordPress LMS plugins so far. Both the LMS plugins are user-friendly and highly functional. Whether you go with LearnDash or LifterLMS, you won’t make a bad decision. If you are looking to build a premium website for online courses, go with LearnDash; however, if you are thinking of starting a free course initially, LifterLMS is the right choice. Remember, whatever you choose, choose wisely!
