LearnDash vs TutorLMS: Which is Better for your E-learning Site?

Confused between TutorLMS and LearnDash?

Do you aspire to launch your eLearning business using WordPress? Are you struggling to find the perfect WordPress LMS plugin?

Well, fret not! You’re in the right place.

The eLearning industry continues to show exceptional growth both prior to and after the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the overall global eLearning market is expected to hit $350 billion by 2025. (explodingtopics.com).

And as online learning grows, the demand for All-in-one and easy-to-use LMSs has also resulted in an all-time high. The modern Learning Management System (LMS) not only helps you create and sell courses but also delivers an exceptional online learning experience.

Since WordPress is the most widely used platform to create a website, WordPress-based LMS solutions continue to evolve to fit your exact needs.

LearnDash and Tutor LMS are two of the most popular LMS plugins for WordPress. Both of these plugins are rich with features and are also scalable enough to meet your future needs.

So in this article, we’ll explore and compare LearnDash & Tutor LMS and help you decide which one is better for your online education business.

First, let’s have a quick introduction to LearnDash and Tutor LMS.

Ready? Let’s get started!

LearnDash Overview

Image Source: LearnDash.com

LearnDash is one of the most popular premium WordPress LMS plugins. Currently, 138,487 websites are using LearnDash. It is used by major universities like John Hopkins University, and Michigan University, and also by fortune 500 companies.

This WordPress LMS plugin, helps you create and sell training programs & courses. It also allows you to track user progress and award certificates, badges, and points, among other things. LearnDash is easy to use and comes with robust, attractive, and customizable features.

Additionally, LearnDash offers seamless integration with many popular third-party plugins, themes, apps, and services. You can easily use it in conjunction with popular plugins like Zapier, Convertkit, BuddyBoss, PayPal, MailChimp, Stripe, WooCommerce, etc. Therefore, LearnDash gives you the flexibility to provide the best eLearning experience and meet all your LMS needs.

Read More: LearnDash: The Most Versatile Learning Management System Available

TutorLMS Overview

Image Source: Themuim.com

Despite being a relatively new WordPress LMS plugin, Tutor LMS is known to power over  55,476 currently websites and continues to grow. Tutor LMS is a freemium WordPress LMS plugin that can help you create, sell, and manage online courses. It’s also used by established startups like Khan Academy.

Tutor LMS offers a wide range of attractive features, including course creation tools, quizzes, course progress tracking, and student management. Users can create courses using a variety of multimedia content, such as video, audio, and text, and can customize their courses with a range of design options.

In addition to these course creation features, Tutor LMS can also integrate with famous third-party plugins like Paypal, stripe, and woocommerce to sell courses. Overall, Just like LearnDash, Tutor LMS can offer you everything you need to get started and launch your online course with ease.

LearnDash vs TutorLMS – Fundamental differences

If we see at a fundamental level, there are no major differences between these platforms as both of them utilize WordPress to create an LMS solution that is robust and scalable.

Unlike other LMS options that are self-hosted platforms (i.e. Teachable) or full-fledged open-source LMS platforms (i.e. Moodle), here LearnDash has competition with something that has been built for the same playground in which it rules.

As a result, there are not too many differences in the core functionality of both these LMS options.

With that in mind, let’s dig deep into our comparison to figure out which platform is the best.

1. LearnDash vs. TutorLMS – Features & Functionality

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There’s a long list of common as well as unique features in LearnDash and Tutor LMS. 

But as you’ll see in the list given below, the uniqueness part clearly leans in the favor of LearnDash.

It has many features that are not available in Tutor LMS and that gives it a clear upper hand in the very first criteria of our comparison. 

Common Features:

• Drag and Drop course builder
• Certificate builder
• Synchronous learning
• Blended learning
• Learner portal
• In-built course authoring functionality
• Reports and Analytics
• Notification reminders and emails

Also Read: The Importance of Student Reports in Online Learning

Features unique in LearnDash:

There’s a long list of unique features in LearnDash when compared to TutorLMS. The major ones among them include:

• Gamification
• Challenge Exams
• SCORM Compliance
• Built-in Stripe connectivity
• Various marketing and sales options
• Lots of extensibility with help of plugins and custom development
• Automatic installation of add-ons.
• A huge community of users

All these features are not available in TutorLMS.

Features unique in TutorLMS

There’s no such unique feature in TutorLMS that is not available in LearnDash. All its features are already built into the core functionality of LearnDash or WordPress, so nothing much to mention here.

Winner – LearnDash.

2. LearnDash vs TutorLMS – Content Creation & Management

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When it comes to course creation and management features, both LearnDash and Tutor LMS provides all the necessary features that you need. 

Both of them include a drag-and-drop course builder, multimedia inclusion capabilities, an advanced quiz system, drip-feed lessons, and other necessary course management features. 

However, there are some unique capabilities in both of them that can make your job easier or more difficult depending on what you’re looking for.

First, let’s look at LearnDash.

• It comes with a unique course scheduling feature that allows you to automatically deliver the lessons to your students according to a pre-set schedule. 
• It also has a large library of plugins and themes that can create stylish courses in a snap. The same is not true for Tutor LMS.

However, that doesn’t mean Tutor LMS is devoid of unique course creation and management features.

• It allows a full-fledged course preview before you publish your course to understand what it will look and feel like once published. 
• It has also got a more advanced quiz system that allows you to create quizzes that are completely unique in nature i.e. image-matching-based quizzes, image answering-based quizzes, fill-in-the-blanks, etc.

In a nutshell, there’s no clear winner between these LMS platforms in this department. The winner may be either of these depending on your requirements.

Winner – None.

3. LearnDash vs TutorLMS – Ease of Use

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Both TutorLMS and LearnDash are very easy-to-use LMS platforms, mainly because both of them are based on WordPress – the most easy-to-use CMS ever created.

Due to that reason, both of them offer an identical and unparalleled level of ease of use. The interface of both Tutor LMS, as well as LearnDash, is very intuitive, simple, and well-polished. 

Tutor LMS comes with a setup wizard to automate the individual LMS site or course marketplace-building experience.

The recent LearnDash update also includes an onboarding wizard which helps in setting the course website and course pages.

It automatically installs plugins depending on the settings you select. Also, it will create required registration and registration success pages.

Plus, they also have detailed documentation available to get you started in case you get stuck somewhere (or in case you prefer a more guided approach to learn anything instead of tinkering yourself).

Winner – None

4. LearnDash vs TutorLMS – Support

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The reviews about the customer support for TutorLMS are not very favorable. Though they claim to be providing the most professional quality support through email and chat, the reviews of users regarding their support are not very positive. 

LearnDash, on the other hand, has a solid reputation for customer service. It has extremely positive reviews regarding its customer support on all popular review sites, and in the form of online forums.

Moreover, they also have a big community of loyal users and developers who can assist you if something goes wrong and you can’t find a tutorial to fix it. 

Winner – LearnDash.

5. LearnDash vs TutorLMS – Selling your courses

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Since both LearnDash and Tutor LMS are based on WordPress, they can be integrated with WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads (EDD), and other popular e-commerce plugins of WordPress to sell your courses. 

And, as a result, the e-commerce functionality remains pretty much the same on both these platforms. 

Both platforms also work with multiple payment gateways (i.e. PayPal, Stripe, etc.) and generate all the necessary sales reports that you may need.

In fact, LearnDash 4.0 now comes with Stripe connect built into the core. Therefore there’s no need to install the add-on.

Both of them also have the functionality to share your earnings with instructors from within the LMS dashboard (Tutor LMS allows it on a native basis, while LearnDash has got some add-ons for the same), so not a major difference at all between them in this area.

Winner – None.

6. LearnDash vs TutorLMS – Gamification

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Gamification refers to the process of making the learning experience interactive and fun with the help of reward points, certificates, badges, awards, and other techniques that reward a learner for completing certain milestones in the course. 

This increases engagement and improves the quality of the learning experience. LearnDash comes with built-in gamification features to make learning fun and rewarding. 

Features like course points, leaderboard, badges, and certificates are already built into it, and if you want more features then there’s a long list of plugins that can be used to add them.

Recently LearnDash invented a very interesting feature known as ‘Challenge Exams’. By setting challenge exams you can test your user’s knowledge on a subject, let them skip an entire course, and move on to a course that fits their level of expertise.

On the other hand, TutorLMS comes with very limited gamification features. There are only certificates and a grade book functionality to reward your learners. Needless to say with this limited functionality, you can’t create the best possible learning experience for your students.

Winner – LearnDash.

7. LearnDash vs TutorLMS – Pricing

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One more area of difference between these LMS platforms is price. 

Tutor LMS comes with a Basic license that’s Free to use but has limited options. While LearnDash does not offer any free trials.

For the premium versions, there’s a significant difference not just in license fees but also in the structure of license fees.

Here’s a comparison of the available licenses:

As you can see, the major difference between LearnDash and Tutor LMS pricing is that Tutor LMS also has free and lifetime license options that allow you to purchase it and then use it for as long as you wish. 

Tutor LMS excels on the criteria of affordability too – all its license options are cheaper than LearnDash.

Winner – Tutor LMS.

Pros and Cons

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Before we reach our conclusion. It’ll be better to take a quick look at the pros and cons of both these platforms based on the information given above.

That way it’ll be easier to understand what we say in our verdict, so let’s do that:

Pros and Cons of LearnDash

Also Read: What are the Pros and Cons of using LearnDash

Pros and Cons of Tutor LMS

Final Verdict: Is TutorLMS worth it?

By now, it’s clear that LearnDash is ahead of the Tutor LMS in all major criteria. 

However, it comes at a cost. All LearnDash plans are slightly more expensive than Tutor LMS. But if you can afford it, then nothing like it.

I understand that choosing an LMS is a difficult yet important decision. It can also feel like a once-in-a-lifetime decision. So I’d suggest making a checklist of things and discussing them with your team before you make the final call.

And don’t fret! If LearnDash doesn’t fit your budget then Tutor LMS is a good choice to start with.

However, if you do decide to go with LearnDash, our team can help you with the setup as well as any customization if need be.

Discuss your project for free!

So, let us know which one you picked and why in the comments section below 🙂

Also Read: We’re doing a complete series of LMS comparisons. You can also check out LearnDash vs Teachable, LearnDash vs Moodle, and LearnDash vs Thinkific.