Post updated by Andrew Folkler
When you’re faced with a choice and there are way too many options, what happens?
One of two things: either you freeze and choose nothing, or you make a choice without being sure it’s the right one for you.
This is definitely a big problem when you’re looking for the best learning management system (LMS) for your online course.
Your choice of LMS is important, because it isn’t just a software app that lets you organize your course content, present it online, and manage student quizzes and assignments. Your LMS influences your experience of course creation – as a frustrating struggle or a fun adventure – and it has a huge impact on your students’ experience of learning from you, too.
But when I started looking at LMS providers, I found several hundred options. There were so many options, I hired a virtual assistant to help me with hours of research and we still couldn’t cover them all. That’s without even looking at the alternatives to a full LMS, such as WordPress plugins or online course marketplaces.
If you’ve been staring at pages of Google results or software reviews, wondering how the heck you’re supposed to figure out which learning management system to use, this post is for you.
Here you’ll find a round-up of the best learning management systems of 2022, including pricing information and an overview of each LMS so you can easily assess which one is the best choice for you and your online course.
What Is An LMS?
A learning management system (LMS) is, by its most basic definition, a software system that helps you create, manage, deliver – and sometimes sell – your online courses.
The LMS you choose should ideally help you create the content for your online course, organize it in a way that makes sense for both you and your students, deliver the content to as few or as many students as you want to teach, enroll said students into your course, and monitor their progress and performance as they go through the course.
There are so many options for course builders to choose from, with LMS options that range from simple to incredibly advanced.
To make the decision process simpler, it’s important to be clear on what your key course-building priorities are before you dive in.
You can accomplish this quickly and easily by reading the following statements and picking the one that fits the best with how you feel and think about building your online course.
- “I want to experiment with course building and try out some ideas.”
- “I want to create a course that earns me a fair income without too much effort.”
- “I want to launch a course without worrying about technological hassles.”
- “I want to create a course my students will complete and benefit from.”
Next, based on that top priority, think about what features will help you get there. Let’s focus on these six key things a smart course builder might consider when choosing a learning management system:
- How much it costs.
- Whether the LMS helps you market and sell your course.
- Whether they provide support and customer service for you and your students.
- How steep the learning curve is.
- What kind of analytics and reporting the LMS offers.
- Whether a free trial or “forever free” plan is available.
All six of these criteria are important, but some are less important than others for your specific situation and your priority outcome.
As you read through our list of learning management systems, be sure to keep your main course-building priority in mind and look for an LMS with features that will help you achieve it.
The 21+ Best Learning Management Systems for 2022
Now you get to pick your favorite LMS-or your favorite few-and start trying them out!
To help speed you through this step, I’m gonna give you a list of learning management systems that the Mirasee team and I have either tried ourselves, researched, or heard good things about. You’re welcome. 😉
Remember, while you’re reading these LMS descriptions, keep your *priorities* front-of-mind!
(Seriously, if you haven’t chosen your #1 course-building priority and identified the most important LMS features to think about, then reading the information below will only be half as useful to you. Scroll up, invest two minutes in getting your priorities all set, and then come back down here.)
Ready with those priorities? OK, here you go, in alphabetical order:
1. Absorb
From $1250 – $4000 month; 30-day Free trial; learn more here.
Absorb LMS is straightforward and has a good interface design, informative reporting, and takes intuitive actions. Absorb supports Instructor Led Training (ILT), a teaching style where you can teach your students in a classroom setting.
You will be able to access course assembly tools that come in handy for creating exams, quizzes, and assessments. This LMS also lets you embed YouTube videos in courses and has multiple trusted payment gateways.
Absorb LMS interfaces with industry-leading business solutions like ADP, Salesforce, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, and offers thousands of ready-to-use courses through content library partners like BizLibrary, Skillsoft, LinkedIn Learning, and others.
2. Academy of Mine
From $599/month (Essentials); 30-day free trial; learn more here.
On Academy of Mine, you can create beautiful online courses and landing pages easily and without coding, by using its drag & drop course builder, or flexible website builder. Afterward, you can manage all your courses in one place, the Integrated Dashboard.
Assess your students’ learning progress through quizzes and exams withmultiple-choice and True-False questions. You can also give assignments and evaluate them within the platform. Finally, track students’ grades andprogress with the inbuiltgradebook.
Academy of Mine also comes with built-in-built messaging. This means you and your students can privately send messages to each other from within the platform.
This learning management system also provides a powerful marketing dashboard and integration with Google Analytics and webmaster tools.
3. Adobe Captivate Prime LMS
Between $4 – $16 USD per month per registered user; 30-day free trial version; learn more here.
The Adobe Captivate Prime LMS is easy to use and automates processes by assigning learning plans and syncing users for a seamless experience. They feature gamification, video streaming, mobile-friendly learning, and customized dashboards to keep users interested and engaged.
Here, you can track an individual’s learning progress, and provide progress reports. This LMS also offers powerful API integration and strong accessibility features.
Adobe Captivate LMS is highly responsive, features industry standard security, and provides 24*7 support to help you address any problems that might come up.
4. Canvas
From US $22.50 per user per year; free trial; learn more here.
Canvas is great for education and it offers a collaborative workspace. Canvas allows you to record and upload video messages and share resources.
With their content editor, you can customize user profiles to fit your requirements and analytics. It also supports external integration like Facebook, Google, as well as mobile apps for Android and IOS. This allows you to build your community around your online course while setting up channels for your students to contact you about their concerns or difficulties.
Canvas also lets you integrate tools like Google documents, Ether pad, and media reporting for improved customer experience. With these integrations, you have an LMS that allows you to easily build an online course for your students with high efficiency and quality.
5. Chamilo LMS
Free; learn more here.
Chamilo LMS is open source software, so you don’t need to pay anything for it, but you may need to pay service providers to help you set stuff up the way you want it. I love the way they describe open source on their website: “All the Chamilo software products are entirely free (as in freedom), free (as in beer) and complete, and are production-ready without requiring any type of payment.”
You can create courses, map out learning paths, deliver tests and assessments, run surveys and live chats, and check student progress with Chamilo’s built-in features. Handy plugins and integrations include PrestaShop for sales and OpenMeetings for video conferencing, as well as Softaculous for easy installation on hosting with CPanel.
6. CoAssemble
From $50/month (Starter), $120/month (Pro), $160/month (Premium); free trial available (contact the company to enquire); learn more here.
CoAssemble is a simple platform that combines authoring and LMS tools into one “easy-to-master” platform. While designed for employee training, the platform could just as easily be used for creating and hosting online courses.
The Author plan boasts fully mobile responsive designs, with a range of drag and drop templates (and a powerful WYSIWYG editor), with unlimited storage, as well as advanced branding to match your company branding. And the Core plan (with 100 monthly active users) claims to be a great match for early stage and small businesses looking for a lightweight LMS.
CoAssemble integrates with Zapier to connect with your other software systems. To see more about how you could use one of their plans, take a tour of their platform here.
7. DigitalChalk
From $10/month (Essential), $69/month (Professional), to $129/month (Premier); no free trial; learn more here.
DigitalChalk lets you guide your students along specific learning paths with prerequisites, tests, and assignments – useful if you want to create a set of short courses for your students to progress through. You can brand your course with your logo and sell it through DigitalChalk’s e-commerce tools.
Although DigitalChalk doesn’t offer a free trial, it *does* offer free demos to help you see how it works.
8. Docebo
Prices on request; 14-day free trial; learn more here.
With Docebo the Growth plan lets you have up to 300 active students. Some advanced options are included with the Enterprise Plan.
Among the more interesting add-ons is a blogging app that lets your students write and comment on blog posts within the LMS.For analytics and student progress tracking, you can customize your dashboards and reports – and if you need help, Docebo’s users say the customer service team is attentive and quick to resolve support requests. To get a sense of how easy the software is to learn and use, check out this quick overview of the Docebo platform.
“Docebo is a very intuitive and user-friendly LMS for businesses, which makes it a good choice for people who aren’t tech-savvy, but it also has robust capabilities that can be leveraged by more advanced users.”– Alison Grenkie, Docebo
9. Eduflow
From a Free plan, $20/month (Lite plan), $120/month (Pro plan); learn more here.
Eduflow is a robust learning platform designed for higher education and business training. It has a sleek, user-friendly design that allows users to construct social and collaborative learning environments. Eduflow may be used as a stand-alone LMS or can be integrated with another LMS.
Free plans allow for up to 15 learners, while a lite plan allows up to 100 learners. With Eduflows easy integrations, you can build your online courses with video content, discussions, quizzes, peer reviews, polls, SCORM, Zoom calls, and much more.
Eduflow can also integrate with other tools like Google docs, Slack, Zoom, Loom, and many other programs that may play a key role in your online course building.
10. iSpring Learn
US $2.82 – US $3.66 per user/month, billed annually; 30-day free trial; learn more here.
iSpring Learn provides a systematic learning path for each individual, as well as the ability to adapt the path structure to meet the demands of the learner. iSpring Learn provides SCORM support, a variety of supported formats, and unlimited storage space.
This LMS allows you to send invitation emails, set up a self-registration feature, and provides detailed reporting on users’ progress. iSpring Learn provides an Event Calendar that lets administrators organize activities easily: live training, workshops, and webinars all in one place.
Paying only for active users, iSpring Learn lets you cut down on costs while still being able to integrate with Zoom and Microsoft Teams to plan, set, and hold web meetings within the training portal.
11. Joomla LMS
From $37/month (Standard), $64/month (Professional); 30-day free trial; learn more here.
Joomla LMS includes Video Conferencing, comprehensive tracking and reporting, advanced ecommerce capabilities, and an Android and iOS mobile app. And if your website is built on WordPress, Drupal, or any other non-Joomla CMS, it is a good solution, as well as one of the most secure open-source systems. It integrates with multiple ecommerce tools, and allows for a multilingual interface.
You can choose to install the LMS on your website, or choose a hosted cloud-based plan (the prices listed here).
The Standard plan starts at $37/month with up to 50 users, and extends up to 10,000 users for $300/month — with 6 different user tiers to choose from.
The professional plan includes their “branding free” option for no extra charge, and you can also upgrade to that option from one of the Standard plans for an extra $199. The cloud-based plans all include hosting fees and JoomlaLMS maintenance, including upgrades and backups.
12. Kajabi
From $149/month (Basic), $199/month (Growth), to $399/month (Pro); 14-day free trial; learn more here.
Kajabi is a feature-rich LMS that’s been around for years of iterative improvement, so you can expect a good experience with it.
The system includes tools for marketing and selling your course, from a landing page builder to email marketing and even affiliate management for joint venture promotions. It’s customizable and integrates with most of the popular third-party apps you might use, including Zapier for even more integrations and automations.
The analytics and reporting available from your Kajabi dashboard are detailed and useful, and you can hook up Google Analytics for more insight. You won’t need to worry about the learning curve too much, because you’ll get a lot of help from Kajabi University with free training to make the most of your LMS.
To see Kajabi in action and judge the learning curve for yourself, check out their demo.
“Kajabi is designed from the ground up for course creators that want the simplicity of all the tools they need to drive 7-figure results, in one app, elegantly integrated.”– Joe Henschel, Kajabi
Resources:
- Kajabi Review
- Kajabi vs Teachable
- Kajabi vs Thinkific
13. Kartra
From $99/month (Starter), $199/month (Silver), $299/month (Gold), $499/month (Platinum) $699/month (Diamond), ; $14-day trial for $1; learn more here.
Kartra calls themselves “the greatest all-in-one platform… ever,” and claims to be a one-stop shop for everything you need to create, market, and launch your online courses. The platform includes checkouts (with both credit card and PayPal payments), a drag-and-drop page builder with hundreds of professionally designed templates, funnels and campaigns, email marketing, memberships, calendars, forms, and affiliates.
Because they are an all-in-one system, you won’t need much of the other software you might need with another LMS. And since everything is in one place, their tracking analytics allows you to see the entire customer journey.
The difference between their pricing packages is the size of your contact list and the amount of traffic bandwidth you use. One note: we couldn’t find their prices anywhere on their website, and had to go searching elsewhere to get a breakdown of what’s included in their plans. The only number we could find on their site was “Kartra starts at under $1,200 per year.”
14. LearnWorlds
From $29/month + $5 per course sale (Starter), $99/month, no transaction fees (Pro Trainer), to $299/month, no transaction fees (Learning Center); 30-day free trial; learn more here.
This unique course creation platform lets you create interactive videos (Learning Center plan) and ebooks. That means learners can skip to specific parts of a video and even answer questions within a video. With interactive ebooks, they can highlight and add notes to their ebooks from within the LearnWorlds platform.
Your LearnWorlds account also includes a “built-in community” for each of your courses. Students can discuss lessons, like and comment on each other’s posts, and answer polls. You can also provide support through these groups.
It also has one of the most advanced assessment features, such asinformal and formal quizzes, assignments, and an integrated workflow for open-ended assignments.
15. Lifter LMS
$120+/year (Individual Add-ons), $360/year (Universe Bundle), $1200/year (Infinity Bundle); 30 day trial for $1; learn more here.
LifterLMS is a versatile LMS that integrates easily into WordPress. LifterLMS has multiple plug-in integrations, allowing you to easily set up forms, downloadable resources, quizzes, and assignments for your course.
LifterLMS is also compatible with several 3rd party payment processors like PayPal and Stripe, and allows you to sell free courses, subscriptions, and course bundles. To promote learning and encourage students, you can set up awards, certificates, and badges for your students who hit major milestones.
You can manage your courses with detailed reports on student activity and gradebooks. LifterLMS also allows you to maintain brand consistency with their flexibility in selecting branding options, typography, and web design.
16. Moodle
Free; learn more here.
This is one of the longest-standing LMS’s on the market, first released in 2001. Moodle is open source software that’s free to download and use.
To see how the open source LMS works, take a look at these Moodle videos and demo sites.
Moodle doesn’t offer built-in marketing and sales tools, but because it’s open source you should be able to add or develop integrations with your preferred sales and marketing systems. Almost anything you need has already been done by someone in the Moodle community who’s willing to show you how. You can pick up free advice in Moodle forums or hire professional Moodle Partners for extra services.
“Moodle is currently working on a number of exciting releases, focussed on better user interface and experience and also meeting the latest need from educators, classrooms, organisations and institutions for enhanced and innovative learning experiences.”– Martin Dougiamas, Moodle Founder and CEO
17. ProProfs
From free (up to 10 students), $79/month (Team), $199/month (Business), to $999/month (Enterprise); 15-day free trial; learn more here.
ProProfs offers a range of products, starting with “Training Maker” which lets you create courses and track student progress.
There are 5 pricing plans – Free, Basic, Professional, Business and Enterprise – each with its own feature set.
The Free plan stays free no matter how many students you have; the other plans increase in price according to your student numbers.
The Team Plan includes up to 100 students, Business Plan includes up to 200, and the Enterprise Plan starts at $999 for up to 300 students (and runs all the way through unlimited students for $4499 per month).
18. Ruzuku
From $99/month (Bootstrapper), $149/month (Up-and-comer), to $199/month (University); 14-day free trial; learn more here.
Ruzuku is a popular LMS with a live webinar feature as well as built-in e-commerce tools that help you sell your courses and collect tuition payments via PayPal, Stripe, InfusionSoft or 1ShoppingCart. It also integrates nicely with Mailchimp for email marketing and student engagement emails.
Ruzuku promises to support your students in buying and using your courses, as well as support you in creating them. Choosing annual billing instead of monthly gets you a discount, depending which plan you’re on. The lowest-priced plan doesn’t include every last feature, but it does allow you an unlimited number of students.
“Ruzuku is best for course creators who love to interact and engage with their course participants in a way that’s social, supportive, and fun.”– Abe Crystal, Ruzuku
Resources:
Read a detailed review of Ruzuku here.
19. Talent LMS
From $29 – $349/month when billed annually; learn more here.
TalentLMS comes with a content friendly interface that allows you to build online courses, create catalogs, and add your videos and resource documents easily. TalentLMS provides individual plans, including a free version for up to 5 users and 10 courses.
With their ILT support, you can set up online or in-person training sessions with ease. Talent LMS features easy HTML, CSS and Javascript customizations to enable you to keep your courses brand consistent.
As you build your courses, you will be able to set up a clear learning pathway for your students. If you are transferring your data from another LMS, TalentLMS allows for easy bulk transfer of users. In addition, you can set up multiple automations to reduce your workload so you can focus on what really matters, creating results for your students.
20. Teachable
From free + $1 plus 10% (Free), $39/month + 5% transaction fee (Basic), $99/month (Professional), to $499/month (Business); free trial available; learn more here.
Teachable does a lot of important things for you – they’ll host your course content, publish your sales pages, process payments [for a small fee] and even pay your joint venture partners or course authors if you set that up through their payment gateway. With quizzes and forums, conversion attribution, email segmentation and built-in affiliate marketing, everything’s kept in one place for you.
Teachable doesn’t charge you for how many students or courses you have. The $39/month plan carries a 5% transaction fee on student tuition payments, whereas the $99/month plan has no transaction fees and a few extra features. Teachable also won’t charge you for courses you make available for free; so if you wanted to run a free mini-course to test the water for a new idea, you can do that here.
“What makes Teachable unique in the learning management space is we believe in focusing on the user experience of people that use our platform. Too many LMS’s try and compete on packing in the most number of features and winning feature matrix wars while we want people that use our software to be delighted.” – Angkur Nagpal, Teachable
Resources:
- Read a detailed review of Teachable here.
- Thinkific vs Teachable
21. Thinkific
From free, $49/month (Basic), $99/month (Pro), to $499/month (Premier); learn more here.
Thinkific is another LMS that doesn’t charge you per student. Instead, all Thinkific plans allow unlimited students and unlimited courses – and none of their plans include transaction fees. Be aware that credit card processing will incur a separate fee of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, no matter what plan you choose.
The main benefit of Thinkific is that it’s designed to make course creation easy for people with minimal technical experience – so your course and its content are hosted by Thinkific, your marketing, sales, payment plans and processing are handled by Thinkific, your affiliate program is managed in Thinkific… you get the idea. That said, there are still plenty of advanced features you can dig into if you like getting your hands tech-y.
Resources:
- A detailed review of Thinkific
- Thinkific vs Teachable
22. Tovuti LMS
Plans starting at $399/month; contact the company for a price quote; learn more here.
Tovuti makes creating online courses “zenfully easy.” Designed for creators, influencers, educators, and experts, they believe that there’s a perfect balance between fun and function. You can use Tovuti to create individual courses or membership sites, or to create a gated community that provides a collaborative learning ecosystem.
Their plan prices are based on the number of learners and functionality you need, and they don’t charge for every learner. Each plan comes with a base feature set, with additional add-ons for things like ecommerce and events. When you request your quote, they give you access to a short recorded demo of the system.
23. Xperiencify
Launch Plan $42/month, Growth Plan $117/month (paid annually); learn more here.
Xperiencify taps into people’s love of games by gamifying their LMS. You will be able to craft an online course with a reward system that pushes students to stay motivated to complete the course. By gamifying the learning experience, your students will be able to stay engaged for longer periods of time and enter flow states.
Xperiencify also has an automatic welcome sequence that ushers your students to your course right after they buy. Students get immediate feedback on their progress and can even compare their progress with other students on a leaderboard.
You will be able to build courses quickly and easily with their course page builder. Xperiencify also comes with integrations so that you can link Zapier and other tools with your online course.
Now Go Choose Your Learning Management System!
There are currently hundreds of LMS platforms out there, but these 23 are the best suited to online course creators.
Now that we’ve taken a look at a few of the LMS available to you, you should have a better sense of the possibilities. To be sure you’re happy with the LMS you’ve chosen, take a free trial or buy a month’s subscription and test it out before you commit to it.
Remember to focus on your #1 priority when you consider how useful each feature of an LMS is for your online education business. This entire decision-making process is designed to make sure you choose the best LMS for your specific needs!
Alright, you’re up! Are you using – or have you used – any of these platforms? Are there any not on the list that you recommend? Let us know in the comments.
And if you’re still not sure exactly what your online course should look like, you can take advantage of our free Hybrid Courses Bootcamp, to help you figure out exactly what you want to teach!
Let’s Start Building Your Online Course!
In our FREE Hybrid Courses Bootcamp, we’ll walk you through how to transform your knowledge and expertise into a profitable online course… one your students will love.
