If your LearnDash renewal notice made you wince this year, you’re not the only one. 😅
In May 2026, Liquid Web, LearnDash’s parent company, folded its StellarWP brands into one consolidated lineup. The standalone sites for Kadence, GiveWP, The Events Calendar, and learndash.com itself started redirecting to Liquid Web, MemberDash got merged into LearnDash, and the whole thing triggered enough confusion (lost logins, missing download pages, a public backlash) that plenty of course creators started quietly browsing for exits.
Then there’s the price 💸. LearnDash now starts at $259/year for the Essentials plan, Pro is $399/year, and Elite is $599/year. And there’s still no free version to test-drive.
LearnDash is still a very good LMS (learning management system, the software that runs your courses), mind you. But it’s no longer the default answer. WordPress now has cheaper (and genuinely free) options that cover what most course creators need.
This guide walks through six LearnDash alternatives: what it’s like to use each one, what the free version really gets you, what you’ll pay when you upgrade, and when sticking with LearnDash is honestly the right call.
In a rush? Here’s the shortlist
| Tool | Free version? | Paid from | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Masteriyo | ✅ Full free LMS (sells courses, free certificates) | $99/yr intro (renews $199) | Most people switching from LearnDash |
| Tutor LMS | ✅ Free core plugin | $199/yr | A mature, battle-tested ecosystem |
| LifterLMS | ✅ Free core (but can’t take online payments) | $199/yr first year (renews $398) | Membership-style course sites |
| LearnPress | ✅ Free core (PayPal + offline payments) | Paid add-ons | Tight budgets and simple courses |
| Academy LMS | ✅ Free core (free certificates) | $199/yr or $399 lifetime | Lifetime-deal hunters, marketplaces |
| MemberPress | ❌ No free tier | $199.50/yr + 4.9% fee on Launch | Membership sites where courses are a perk |
| 👉 Go to Masteriyo: free version on WordPress.org, no card required | |||
All prices below are for annual billing. Watch for first-year promos, since several of these renew higher, and each section flags it when they do. ⚠️
1. Masteriyo
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: yes, Masteriyo is our plugin. No, that’s not why it’s #1.
It’s #1 because of one simple thing: Masteriyo free is the broadest transacting free tier in the category. Yes, Tutor, LearnPress, and Academy LMS also sell courses for free (their sections below say so). But none of them puts all of this in one free plugin: selling, certificates, SCORM import (SCORM is the standard format corporate training content is exported in), H5P (interactive content like quizzes, games, and interactive video), three payment gateways (PayPal built in, Stripe and Mollie as free addons), and 0% transaction fees on every tier. Plus unlimited courses, lessons, and quizzes, a drag-and-drop builder, offline payments, and a free Lemon Squeezy addon.
One more thing matters here: the free migration tool imports from LearnDash (plus LearnPress, LifterLMS, TutorLMS, and MasterStudy), including courses, lessons, quizzes, orders, and students. If you’re leaving LearnDash, that’s the moving van. 🚚
⚖️ DISCLAIMER: Masteriyo is a member of the Themeisle family of products. This section is written like a review, not a parent, and the drawbacks below are real. Judge the free version yourself; it costs nothing to install.
The honest drawbacks: Masteriyo is a young product. Its install base is a fraction of Tutor LMS’s, and its wp.org review count (177 ratings, 4.8/5) is small next to the veterans. The free quiz builder has only 3 question types (True/False, Single Choice, Multiple Choice), and anything fancier is Pro. There’s no front-end instructor dashboard, translations are thin, and the discounted intro prices renew at roughly double.
Using it
Everything happens in one clean, React-powered screen. You build your curriculum (sections, lessons, quizzes) with drag-and-drop, like so:
A setup wizard configures your pages, currency, and a starter design in a couple of minutes. It works with any properly coded theme (Neve and Astra are named-compatible), with free addons for Elementor, Divi, Bricks, Beaver Builder, and Oxygen, plus Gutenberg blocks. 🧱
There’s a full click-by-click walkthrough in our guide on how to create an online course with WordPress if you want the longer version.
Free vs pro
Price: free on WordPress.org; Basic $99/yr intro, Pro $149/yr intro, Elite $399/yr intro.
The free plugin is genuinely usable as your forever-version: unlimited courses, 3 quiz question types, the certificate builder with 1 template (QR code validation included; the rest of the template gallery is Pro), SCORM and H5P addons, YouTube Live lessons, course reviews and Q&A, groups, wishlist, multiple currencies, and built-in email notifications. PayPal and offline payments work out of the box; Stripe, Mollie, and Lemon Squeezy are free addons. WooCommerce and SureCart integrations are free too.
Upgrading gets you the advanced stuff: six more question types (9 total), assignments, gradebook, content drip, prerequisites, course bundles, subscriptions and recurring pricing, coupons, multiple instructors per course, and the marketing integrations (Mailchimp, HubSpot, Zapier, and friends).
One thing to know before you buy: those are intro prices. Basic renews at $199/yr, Pro at $299/yr, and Elite at $799/yr, so the renewal roughly doubles, and it’s in the small print. ⚠️ If you ever let the license lapse, your courses keep working; you only lose updates and support. There’s a 14-day money-back guarantee, so test it properly in week one.
Key features
- Free checkout with 0% transaction fees: PayPal and offline built in, free Stripe/Mollie/Lemon Squeezy addons, no WooCommerce required (but it integrates if you want it). 💳
- Free certificates: visual builder, QR validation, 1 template included. The full template gallery below is Pro: 🎓
- Free SCORM import and H5P: rare at this price point (that price point being zero).
- Free migration tool: imports courses, lessons, quizzes, orders, and students from LearnDash, LearnPress, LifterLMS, TutorLMS, and MasterStudy. 📦
- Free live lessons: YouTube Live built in, plus free Google Meet and Google Classroom addons. (Zoom is paid, from Basic.)
- AI course creation: works even in the free version, but you plug in your own OpenAI API key. LearnPress and Academy LMS ship similar bring-your-own-key AI, so don’t pick an LMS on this alone. 🤖
- One plugin, no addon marketplace: everything ships as toggleable addons inside the same plugin, so you’re not hunting down 15 separate purchases.
We also did a full 1:1 breakdown in Meet Masteriyo, the free LearnDash alternative.
2. Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS is the heavyweight of free WordPress LMS plugins: 100,000+ active installs, a 4.4/5 rating from 583 reviews, and version 4.0.3. If Masteriyo is the scrappy newcomer, Tutor is the established rival with the biggest user base in the free-LMS category.
And it shows in the details: the interface is polished, the feature list is enormous, and there’s a real ecosystem around it, from pro themes and a migration tool to front-end dashboards for instructors and students. Its free quiz builder also gives you a few more question types than Masteriyo’s three, which matters if quizzes are central to your courses.
The catch is what’s gated: per Tutor’s own wp.org readme, certificates, content drip, assignments, and H5P are premium add-ons. So the free version builds and sells courses happily, but the engagement features most people associate with a “real” course platform (drip schedules, graded assignments, completion certificates) need Pro.
Using it
Tutor feels like a modern SaaS (a hosted software service) that happens to live in your wp-admin. A setup wizard gets you going, the course builder is front-end and visual, and students get their own dashboards that don’t look like WordPress at all.
Free vs pro
Price: free core plugin; Pro Individual $199/yr (1 site), Business $399/yr (10 sites), Agency $799/yr (unlimited sites). Lifetime licenses exist too, starting at $499 one-time.
The free core is a full course platform: unlimited courses and users, the course builder, quizzes, native eCommerce to sell courses directly (plus WooCommerce support), and basic reports. Tutor takes no percentage cut of your revenue; their FAQ states it plainly.
Pro adds the engagement and marketing layers: certificates and the drag-and-drop certificate builder, content drip, assignments, gradebook, course bundles, subscriptions, live classes (Zoom, Google Meet, Jitsi), advanced quizzes, and the AI Studio (which, like Masteriyo’s, needs your own OpenAI API key).
There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, and nonprofits get 30% off if you ask. 💸
Key features
- Biggest free-LMS install base: 100,000+ active installs means answers, tutorials, and compatible themes everywhere.
- Front-end everything: course builder, instructor dashboard, student dashboard. Users never touch wp-admin.
- Native eCommerce in free: sell courses without WooCommerce; PayPal, Stripe, and more supported.
- More free quiz types than most: its free quiz builder beats Masteriyo’s three question types, though the fancy interactive ones (draw, pin, puzzle) are Pro.
- Lifetime licenses: from $499 one-time if you hate subscriptions.
- Free migration tool: imports from LearnDash, LearnPress, and LifterLMS.
3. LifterLMS
LifterLMS is the veteran of the group. It’s been around since 2014 and has a loyal following among coaches and membership-style course sites, and its free core plugin is legitimately unlimited: unlimited courses, unlimited memberships, unlimited students and teachers.
But there’s one giant asterisk: the free core can’t take online payments. No Stripe, no PayPal, no WooCommerce; those are all paid “ecommerce add-ons.” Free LifterLMS is a great tool for internal training or free courses, but the moment you want to charge someone, you’re buying a bundle.
Using it
LifterLMS leans into the membership model: courses plus engagement, with achievements, certificates, and a community-ish feel around your content. The course builder is a classic WordPress-style drag-and-drop affair that feels a generation behind Masteriyo’s or Tutor’s interfaces.
Where it wins is depth: cohorts, private areas, social learning, and advanced quizzing add up to a decade of features for serious training operations. The flip side is that many live in the pricier bundles.
Free vs pro
Price: free core plugin; Earth Bundle $199/yr (1 site), Universe $299/yr (5 sites), Infinity $799/yr (unlimited sites).
Now the fine print, because it matters here more than anywhere: those are 50%-off first-year promo prices. Renewals are at full price, so Earth renews at $398/yr, Universe at $598/yr, and Infinity at $1,598/yr. Year two of LifterLMS costs more than year two of LearnDash Essentials. Ouch. 😬
The Earth Bundle is where selling starts, adding the Stripe, PayPal, and WooCommerce add-ons. Universe piles on email marketing, CRM, and form integrations, while Infinity adds the 15 advanced add-ons (cohorts, groups, assignments, advanced video, and so on). There’s a $1 demo site to try everything for 30 days, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee.
On wp.org, LifterLMS sits at 10,000+ active installs with a 4.8/5 rating, which is smaller than you’d expect for its age, but the reviews are strong.
Key features
- Truly unlimited free core: courses, memberships, students, teachers. Just no way to charge anyone.
- Membership DNA: built for coaching programs and membership sites, not just standalone courses.
- Deep feature catalog: cohorts, private areas, social learning, advanced quizzes (mostly in higher bundles).
- Sky Pilot theme: their own LMS theme, bundled from Universe up.
- Prorated upgrades: you can move between bundles later and get credit, which is more flexible than most.
4. LearnPress
LearnPress is the long-running free favorite: 70,000+ active installs and 595 reviews on WordPress.org. For years it was the default answer to “what’s a free LMS?”, and it’s still a solid one, with caveats.
The big win: you can sell courses for $0. PayPal and offline payments are built into the free plugin, so a working course store costs nothing but hosting. The big gaps, per the plugin’s own add-on lists: certificates and Stripe are paid add-ons. If your students expect a completion certificate, free LearnPress won’t give them one.
One more thing, said with love: the project shows its age in places. Features arrive as a pile of separate add-ons (free and paid) rather than one cohesive product, and recent changelogs are heavy on security fixes. Also, learnpress.org itself currently serves a broken default-theme page, so the WordPress.org listing is the page to trust. ⚠️
Using it
LearnPress feels like classic WordPress: menus, metaboxes, the occasional modal. Not glamorous, but familiar. It plays nicely with both Gutenberg and Elementor, and there’s a huge theme ecosystem built around it (ThimPress’s Eduma is one of the best-selling education themes ever). There’s even a mobile app add-on for iOS and Android. 📱
Free vs pro
Price: free core plugin with free add-ons; premium add-ons sold individually or in a PRO bundle.
Free gets you: unlimited courses, lessons, and quizzes; PayPal and offline payments; plus genuinely useful free add-ons like course reviews, wishlist, prerequisites, import/export, bbPress and BuddyPress integrations, and a coming-soon mode.
Paid add-ons cover the gaps: Stripe and other gateways, certificates, content drip, assignments, co-instructors, gradebook, and WooCommerce integration. It’s an à la carte model: cheap if you need one or two extras, annoying if you need ten.
Key features
- Free selling via PayPal: no paid gateway add-on needed to start earning.
- 70,000+ active installs: battle-tested at scale, with a big theme ecosystem.
- Gutenberg and Elementor support: plus dedicated education themes like Eduma.
- Offline course support: sell in-person classes and workshops, not just online content.
- Multilingual strength: translated into 30+ languages, which most competitors can’t touch.
5. Academy LMS
Academy LMS is the newcomer worth watching. The install base is tiny (2,000+ active installs), but the rating is a striking 4.9/5 from 120 reviews, and the free version is unusually generous.
How generous? Free certificates. Free multi-instructor support with revenue sharing, the kind of feature comparable platforms often reserve for paid tiers. A free native checkout (via their sibling plugin StoreEngine), plus free WooCommerce, EDD, and SureCart integrations. And a React-based admin that’s genuinely fast.
The trade-off is what you’d expect from a young plugin: less battle-testing, a smaller community, and a shorter track record. If Masteriyo feels too new to you, Academy LMS will feel newer.
Using it
The admin is a single-page React app, so screens load instantly with no wp-admin reload crawl. There’s a front-end course builder, an AI Studio that generates outlines, lessons, and quizzes from a prompt, and a native Gutenberg builder (aBlocks) for designing course pages with blocks.
Free vs pro
Price: free core plugin; Pro from $199/yr for 1 site, or $399 as a lifetime license. Multi-site and unlimited tiers go up from there.
Pro gates the power features: content drip, SCORM, assignments, gradebook, Zoom and Google Meet live classes, advanced analytics, and white labeling. The lifetime deal is the headline: $399 once for a single site, when LearnDash wants $259 every year. 🤯
Key features
- Free multi-instructor + revenue sharing: build a mini-Udemy without paying for it.
- Free certificates: creation and distribution included in the core plugin.
- Free native checkout: StoreEngine integration, plus WooCommerce, EDD, and SureCart.
- Lifetime licenses: from $399 one-time, a rare escape from annual renewals.
- Fast React admin: the snappiest backend in this list.
6. MemberPress
MemberPress is a different animal: it’s a membership plugin with a genuinely good LMS built in, not an LMS that bolted on memberships. It belongs on this list because a huge share of “should I leave LearnDash?” people are really running membership sites where courses are one benefit among many.
If that’s you, MemberPress is arguably the best tool in WordPress, period. Access rules, paywalls, dripping, subscriptions, corporate accounts: it’s the mature standard. (It shows up throughout our best WordPress membership plugins roundup for good reason.) If courses are your whole business, though, the five tools above fit better.
Using it
The drag-and-drop curriculum builder and the ReadyLaunch feature get a sellable course page live fast, but check the tier gating before you buy. The Launch plan ($199.50/yr promo) includes only the essential LMS features: unlimited courses and lessons plus that curriculum builder. Quizzes, assignments, certificates, and course content drip start at Growth ($349.50/yr promo), and the gradebook is Scale-only ($499.50/yr promo). What you get on every tier is the access rules engine: you can protect pages, posts, files, categories, or chunks of content with fine-grained rules, then drip and expire access on schedules. LearnDash can’t touch that without extra plugins.
Free vs pro
Price: no free version at all. Launch $199.50/yr, Growth $349.50/yr, Scale $499.50/yr.
Two catches, both in the fine print. First, those are 50%-off promo prices, so renewals hit the “normally” rates of $399/$699/$999. Second, and this one really matters: the Launch plan charges a 4.9% transaction fee on every payment, on top of Stripe’s fees. Sell $10,000 of memberships on Launch and MemberPress keeps $490. Growth and Scale have 0% transaction fees, so do the math before picking the cheap tier.
Key features
- Best-in-class access rules: protect anything, anywhere, with drip and expiration schedules.
- Built-in LMS: unlimited courses and lessons plus the curriculum builder on Launch; quizzes, assignments, certificates, and drip start at Growth; gradebook is Scale-only.
- Subscriptions done right: prorations, upgrade/downgrade paths, and full subscription management.
- CoachKit and ClubSuite: coaching programs and community features on higher tiers.
- No free tier: and watch that 4.9% Launch fee.
When LearnDash is still worth it
Fairness time: this is a LearnDash alternatives post, but sometimes switching is the wrong move:
- You’re already on it, and it works. If you have years of courses, students, and order history running smoothly, the savings from switching are real but so is the migration effort. Don’t move to save $60/year.
- You need the enterprise stuff. Group and cohort management, seat-based sales to companies, front-end course creation by instructors, and multi-instructor collaboration are LearnDash Pro and Elite territory, and the cheaper tools mostly can’t match them.
- You want memberships included. MemberDash is now merged into LearnDash, so membership tiers and subscriptions come built into every plan. The $259 entry price buys more than the old entry tier did.
- You live on reporting. ProPanel (Pro and Elite) gives real enrollment, completion, and quiz analytics that free plugins only approximate.
And about the Liquid Web consolidation: it’s messy, but it’s not abandonment. Liquid Web says current plans and pricing stay until renewal, the four core products (Kadence, LearnDash, The Events Calendar, Give) are the focus going forward, and MemberDash users get folded into LearnDash rather than orphaned. Watch how the next renewal treats you, then decide.
Which LearnDash alternative should you pick?
Quick recap:
- Most people switching from LearnDash → Masteriyo. The free version sells courses, issues certificates, imports SCORM, and migrates your LearnDash content for free. Start free, upgrade only if you outgrow it.
- You want the biggest ecosystem → Tutor LMS. 100k+ installs, front-end dashboards, and maturity; just expect to pay Pro prices for certificates and drip.
- You’re building a coaching/membership program → LifterLMS. Unlimited free core and deep features, but you must pay to accept payments, and renewals sting.
- Your budget is literally $0 and PayPal is enough → LearnPress. Free selling, huge theme ecosystem, bring patience for add-ons.
- You hate subscriptions → Academy LMS. Generous free tier and a $399 lifetime license.
- Courses are one perk of a bigger membership site → MemberPress. No free tier and that Launch fee, but unmatched access control.
Still torn between the free options? Our best free LMS plugins for WordPress roundup goes deeper on that specific decision, and our WordPress LMS guide covers the big picture.
And if you’re currently on LearnDash and leaning toward the exit: we’re publishing a step-by-step guide to migrating away from LearnDash (backup, migration, verification, the works). The short version: Masteriyo’s free migration tool does the heavy lifting.
Your courses belong to you either way, and that’s the whole point of running them on WordPress. The rest is up to you.
Which LMS are you switching to, or are you sticking with LearnDash through the rebrand? Let us know in the comments! 💬
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