LearnDash Review 2023

LearnDash is the leading learning management system for WordPress. It allows you to easily sell and manage online courses on a self-hosted platform that you own and control.

Current Pricing

1 Site: $199 Per Year

10 Sites: $399 Per Year

Unlimited: $799 Per Year

SUPPORT

 9.5/10

No other LMS WordPress plugin is as easy to set up as this one thanks to the new “industry first” mode feature.

In fact, LearnDash is relatively inexpensive when you consider what you get and the other options out there.

It’s easy to get any help you need from their comprehensive ticket office or active Facebook community.

LearnDash Pros

user-friendly and easy to set up, even for those without technical expertise

Can be customized to fit your course, including the ability to create custom quizzes, assignments, and certificates

Integration with payment gateways

Includes features such as course progress tracking, user management

Can handle a large number of users and courses

has an active community and offers excellent customer support

Can be integrated with other WordPress plugins

LearnDash Cons

It can only be used with a WordPress website.

Limited third-party integrations

LearnDash 4.0: Overview

Since the first time it was released to the WordPress community, LearnDash has consistently climbed to the top of the list as the best Learning Management System.

It is the leading LMS WordPress plugin that allows you to create self-hosted courses that you have full control of, and it’s the go-to course creation plugin for:

Educational institutions
Independent course creators
Non-profits
Developers
CEU Training Organizations

And now, with the recent rollout of LearnDash 4.0, LearnDash just blew all the competition out of the ocean. With their new Focus Mode, incredible course builder, and many more shiny new features, managing and selling online courses just got easier.

Common Issues with Learning Management System Plugins

E-learning as an industry has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. Modern technology lets anyone with the passion to teach create their own courses and distribute them the way they want to.

A Learning Management System is a website or application that lets you deliver and manage online courses and keep track of users as well.

The purpose of LMS WordPress plugins is to turn any WordPress site into LMS. Although great in theory, many of these plugins come with a boatload of issues that make course creation harder than it needs to be.

Common Issues with LMS Plugins:

Bad UX/UI that gives both course creators and learners an overall bad experience
Complicated front-end and back-end setup that eats up too much time
Not mobile friendly

The amazing thing is these are exactly what LearnDash sought to solve in their recent version, and I couldn’t be more excited!

Key Features of LearnDash 4.0

Now for the juicy part, we’re going to walk through the key features of LearnDash 4.0 that truly set it apart from other LMS (Learning Management System) WordPress plugins.

1. Powerful Course Builder

Drag and Drop Interface

The new course builder makes it so simple and easy for anyone to start creating courses and lessons. To start creating a course, click “Courses” on the left side panel, and click “Add New,” and then type the title of your course.

Then click “Builder” at the top. This is where things get interesting. You can easily add section headings by clicking “New Section Heading” or add a new lesson by clicking “New Lesson”. You can also rearrange them by dragging and dropping or clicking little up-and-down buttons on the side.

You can also directly add an unlimited number of topics and quizzes under one lesson.

The easy drag-and-drop interface is really something to enjoy and will let you edit the flow of your course in no time.

Gutenberg-like Lesson Editor

To actually add content to your lessons, just hover your mouse over the lesson and click “Edit”.

You will be taken to a Gutenberg-like editor where you can place any kind of content you want like videos, photos, or texts.

Since the editor feels very much like WordPress Gutenberg, it won’t be too hard for you to edit your lessons.

You can actually type “” and choose the kind of content you want to add, like this:

Reusable Course Content

A HUGE plus for me is the fact that you can easily reuse any of your course content like lessons or quizzes for any courses you make.

So if you create a lot of courses that are closely related in subjects, you can easily reuse the same lessons without having to do another version of it or setting it up on another page again. This feature will save you so much time.

For example, say I created a new course called “First Semester”. Since I will be covering how to use Semester System for colleges, I can reuse the same lessons I created for my course “First Semester”.

I can do this by looking for the lesson I want to use on the right-side panel under “Document,” hovering my mouse over the lesson I want to reuse, and then clicking “Add”.

This will automatically add the lesson to the course.

2. Focus Mode

Remember how I said that most LMS plugins look so ugly on the frontend side that it reduces the quality of the learners’ experience?

Here’s what I meant:

It looks just like an ordinary blog post with unnecessary items and doesn’t feel professional enough. If your students paid for your course, you want to give them an amazing experience on top of the amazing content.

Yes, you can just remove unnecessary items or widgets manually, but that will just leave you a plain, boring page with nothing else going on.

LearnDash 4.0 gives the PERFECT solution.

The Focus Mode gives your lessons an instant facelift with just one click.

To enable Focus Mode, you literally have to do just 3 things:

Go to the “Settings” of LearnDash
Toggle on the “Focus Mode”
And click “Save”.

With just a click, your lessons turn from looking like ordinary blog posts to official-looking courses made by professional developers.

You don’t have to do any coding to get modern features like a distraction-free interface, a progress bar, and a neat course outline.

Focus Mode is also brandable as you can use your brand colors, your logo, and other elements related to your brand to give users a uniform experience.

The Focus Mode is a game changer and will really help enhance the learning experience of your students.

3. Advanced Quiz Builder

The quiz builder of LearnDash is also another great feature, as it lets you create quizzes with any type of question and tweak more settings according to your requirements.

There are two ways to create a quiz. First is by going to “Courses,” clicking the course you want to create a quiz for, and go to the Course Builder.

There, you can add a new quiz for a specific lesson, as shown here:

The second way to create a quiz is by clicking “Quizzes” on the left side panel, clicking “Add New,” and naming the quiz.

Once that’s done, it’s time to add questions to the quiz by clicking “Builder” and “New Question”:

You can select the question type and the question editor will automatically adjust:

You can further modify the question settings by clicking “Question Settings”:

You can also tweak the general quiz settings by clicking “Settings”:

4. Drip-Feed Content

You can also set a specific release date for lessons by going to “Lessons”, clicking the lesson you want to drip feed, “Settings,” and set the Lesson Release Schedule under Lesson Access Settings.

5. User Profile Page

It’s also an industry standard for course students to have a user profile where they can see what courses they have access to, their progress, and other useful information.

Setting up a user profile in LearnDash is pretty easy. You’ll have to create a new page, click the Add Block button, and look for LearnDash blocks.

Click the “LearnDash Profile” block, and it will automatically create a gorgeous-looking user profile layout:

6. Several Payment Options

To start selling your courses, you have to set up the ideal payment system for you. LearnDash allows you to receive PayPal and Stripe payments right off the bat without the requirement for third-party apps or plugins.

But this option lacks the bells and whistles some people like such as the ability to offer coupons, vouchers, discounts, and even sell stuff other than courses/

If you want to be able to do those things, you’d have to use third-party plugins.

Such as:

ThriveCart
2Checkout
Easy Digital Downloads
SamCart

You can easily integrate these apps by going to “Add-Ons”:

Other Features:

Easy setup of user registration
Course, lesson, and quiz-based prerequisites
Private or public forum for students
Gradebook that syncs with LearnDash quiz and assignments and also manual grading
Course completion bonus points
Custom certificates and badges
Ability to create and sell course bundles
Ability to create a course marketplace like Udemy
Automatic email triggers for students
Multi-site enabled

LearnDash 4.0 Pricing

LearnDash offers 3 packages:

$199 for one site / Per Year
$399 for 10 sites + ProPanel / Per Year
$799 Unlimited sites + ProPanel / Per Year

What is ProPanel?

ProPanel is an add-on that lets you do a number of things:

See important metrics like the current number of students, number of courses, assignments pending, and essays pending
See real-time activity as students take your courses
View and download user course progress and quiz results
Manage, approve, and delete assignments and essays

GIF by LearnDash

Refund Policy

As for their refund policy, you can get a refund within 30 days after your purchase should you decide that LearnDash is not the right fit for you. Also stated in their policy statement is product upgrades, add-ons, and license renewals cannot be refunded.

SPECIAL OFFER:

You can get free access to my online premium services such as Professional SEO Tools, a Large File Sharing Platform, link shortening with your domain name, and many more which are worth $499 if you purchase LearnDash through my referral links. This course will help you create online courses using LearnDash in a matter of days. Once you bought LearnDash with my link, email me a copy of the receipts, and I’ll give you access to the premium services for free.

LearnDash 4.0: Some Important Questions

1. What’s the best hosting for LearnDash course websites?

If you’re just starting out and you’re looking for something that gives good value for your money, nothing beats Contabo. It’s got great speed and performance.

But if you want to create high-volume course sites, I’d recommend CloudWays.

2. What’s your recommended theme for LearnDash? AstraTheme

3. Can Elementor Pro edit and style LearnDash courses? No. But Elementor and other page builders can edit internal topic pages.

4. Will LearnDash work well with membership plugins? Yes. LearnDash is compatible with:

MemberPress
PaidMembershipsPro
Restrict Content Pro
Memberful
Memberium
UltimateMember
ActiveMember360
iMember360

LearnDash 4.0: What I Like About It

There’s a lot I like about the new LearnDash mainly because the team behind it really prioritized the learners’ experience. The Focus Mode is truly game-changing, and the Course Builder makes course creators’ lives so easy.

I also like the support they provide to users. After installing LearnDash, you’ll be taken to the built-in LearnDash Bootcamp, where you can watch tutorials on how to set up LearnDash. You can also read how-to articles, recent announcements, and events, and learn tips and tricks like adding a course affiliate program through LearnDash – all these right inside WordPress.

If you’re having issues with LearnDash, you can check out their extensive knowledge base. If you still haven’t found the answer, you can submit a ticket by going to their Contact page.

LearnDash pretty much does everything for you from building your courses to creating user profiles, but if you need to use third-party software for additional functionality, it’s good to know that the LearnDash learning management system is compatible with a lot of popular software.

LearnDash 4.0: What I Don’t Like About It

Since this version has only been recently released, there’s still a lot to see in terms of compatibility with other WordPress plugins like page builders, caching plugins, and so on.

Also, LearnDash is not an all-in-one solution in the sense that you may need to also have a shopping cart and a membership plugin. So it is more designed to work with your existing infrastructure.

Yes, you can sell courses in a basic way without a shopping cart, but it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles you may want, like coupons, product bundles, etc. It’s not so bad since it is very easy to add WooCommerce.

LearnDash is not a membership plugin. So if you want to protect content outside the lessons themselves, you will need to also add a membership plugin such as MemberPress or Restrict Content Pro.

LearnDash 4.0 Review: Final Thoughts

LearnDash 4.0 is a truly revolutionary learning management system in the world of e-learning. It set the bar really high, and I know it’s only going to get better from here. I’m excited to see future updates and new features that will improve the experience even more.

I recommend LearnDash to anyone who wants the easiest way to create a self-hosted course website without breaking the bank.

LearnDash Coupon Discounts

There are currently no active LearnDash Coupon or LearnDash Discounts available. I do have a special promotion when you purchase LearnDash through the link on this website. For more information on that, you can click on the button on this page.

LearnDash Review: Wrap Up

LearnDash has a lot of things going for it. They say the cream rises to the top, well LearnDash has clearly become the market leader for WordPress Learning Management Systems.

When you pair LearnDash with the Astra Theme, you can have a beautiful online course website with very minimal effort.

I expect to see LearnDash continue to add innovative features to stay one step ahead of competing products.

LearnDash Expert Analysis: Pros & Cons, Pricing, Features and More

LearnDash Review 2023

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