LearnPress Free vs Pro: Which version is better?

Are you ready to create an online learning platform? Whether you’re just starting out or looking to scale your educational offerings, choosing the right LMS plugin is a crucial step toward success. With the rise of e-learning, LearnPress provides powerful tools to build, manage, and monetize your courses. But with two versions available, it can be tricky to decide: should you use LearnPress Free or upgrade to LearnPress Pro?

This guide breaks down the LearnPress Free vs Pro comparison. We’ll look at the specific LearnPress features in each version to help you pick the perfect one for your needs.

What is LearnPress?

LearnPress is the powerful WordPress LMS plugin designed as a complete learning management solution for educators, learners, and organizations. Built specifically for WordPress, it ensures seamless integration, allowing you to easily create online courses with its online course builder and manage your WordPress education platform. You don’t need any coding skills to get started. Both the free and pro versions give you a strong foundation for your e-learning project. To explore in more detail how to install LearnPress, see its actual interface, and understand the functionality of its add-ons, you can check out the video playlist below for a more visual and comprehensive guide.

Quick Comparison: LearnPress Free vs Pro

Feature	LearnPress Free	LearnPress Pro (Bundle)
Course & Lesson Creation	✅ Yes (Unlimited)	✅ Yes (Unlimited)
Drag-and-Drop Builder	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Payment Gateways	🟡 Basic (PayPal, Offline)	✅ Full Suite (WooCommerce, Stripe, Razorpay, etc.)
Assignments & Grading	❌ No	✅ Yes (via included Add-on)
Certificates	❌ No	✅ Yes (via included Add-on)
Content Drip	❌ No	✅ Yes (via included Add-on)
Multiple Instructors	❌ No	✅ Yes (via included Add-on)
Frontend Course Editor	❌ No	✅ Yes (via included Add-on)
Memberships/Subscriptions	❌ No	✅ Yes (via included Add-on)
Priority Updates & Support	❌ No	✅ Yes (12 Months)

LearnPress Free: A Great Start for No Cost

The LearnPress Free version is perfect for beginners or those on a tight budget. It gives you all the essential tools to launch your first online course. Here’s a detailed look at what you get.

Unlimited Courses, Lessons, and Quizzes

With LearnPress Free, there are no limits on your creativity. You can create as many courses as you want, and each course can have an unlimited number of lessons and quizzes. This freedom allows you to build a comprehensive curriculum without worrying about hitting a paywall.

Drag-and-Drop Online Course Builder

This is one of the best LearnPress features. The intuitive online course builder lets you structure your curriculum visually. You can easily create sections, drag lessons and quizzes into place, and reorder them anytime. This “what you see is what you get” approach makes course management simple and fast, even for non-technical users.

Lesson Management

You have full control over your lessons. For each lesson, you can add text, images, and other media. This allows you to create rich, engaging content for your students. The editor is the standard WordPress editor, so if you know how to write a blog post, you know how to create a lesson.

Basic Quiz Builder

The free version includes a functional quiz builder to test your students’ knowledge. You can create different types of questions, including Multiple Choice and True/False. For each question, you can set the correct answer, assign points, and provide hints or explanations that students see after answering.

Video Integration

Video is key to modern e-learning. LearnPress Free allows you to easily embed videos from services like YouTube or Vimeo directly into your lessons. While you host the video on another platform, it plays seamlessly within your course, providing a smooth learning experience.

Set Course Prices and Basic Payment Options

You can start making money right away with the free version. LearnPress allows you to set a price for each course. It comes with two built-in payment gateways:

• PayPal: A globally recognized and trusted payment method.
• Offline Payment: Allows you to accept payments via methods like a direct bank transfer, where you manually confirm the payment.

Student Enrollment Tracking

Even with the free plugin, you can keep track of who is taking your courses. LearnPress records every student who enrolls, giving you a clear overview of your user base for each course.

Integration with Standard WordPress Themes

LearnPress is designed to be compatible with most standard WordPress themes. While themes designed specifically for LearnPress (like Eduma) offer the best integration, you can still run it on a basic theme like Astra or the default WordPress theme, making it flexible for existing websites.

Manually Add Instructors

As the site administrator, you have the power to assign the “Instructor” role to any user on your website. Once a user is made an instructor, they can create and manage their own courses through the WordPress dashboard, giving you a simple way to build a multi-teacher platform.

View Student Lists for Each Course

From the course editor screen in the dashboard, you can see a list of all the students who have enrolled in that specific course. This makes it easy to monitor class sizes and see exactly who has access to your content.

Set Completion Conditions

You can decide how a student officially finishes a course. The main condition available in the free version is based on progress. You can require a student to complete all lessons and pass all final quizzes before the course is marked as “Finished.”

Allow Free Trial Lessons

To attract more students, you can make the first few lessons of a course available for free. This “preview” feature allows potential customers to sample your teaching style and content before they decide to purchase the full course, which is a great marketing tool.

LearnPress Free is an excellent choice if you are testing an idea or sharing knowledge without needing advanced features. However, its main limitation is in monetization and student engagement. If you need more payment options or advanced features like certificates and assignments, you will quickly outgrow the free version. Upgrading to LearnPress Pro is the solution to unlock these powerful capabilities and build a more robust learning platform.

LearnPress Pro: The All-in-One Powerhouse

LearnPress Pro is not just an upgrade; it’s a complete package. It includes everything from the free version plus all premium LearnPress add-ons. This bundle transforms your site into a professional platform with powerful course management tools.

With this LearnPress PRO Bundle, you will get all the power of LearnPress. Unlimited power to control your online course website.

Course Experience & Management

To enhance the course experience and streamline management on your platform, consider these powerful add-ons for LearnPress:

• Frontend Editor add-on for LearnPress: Allows you or your instructors to edit the course curriculum, lessons, and quizzes directly from the user-facing interface (frontend), without needing to access the WordPress admin area.

• Content Drip add-on for LearnPress: Controls the release of your course content. You can unlock lessons on a fixed schedule (e.g., one chapter per week), after a student completes a specific prerequisite, or on a specific date.

• Co-instructors add-on for LearnPress: Enables multiple instructors to co-manage, edit, and teach a single course, which is ideal for collaborative courses.

• Live Course Add-on for LearnPress: Integrates with online meeting platforms like Zoom to create and manage live classes and webinars directly on your website, boosting student interaction.

• Collections add-on for LearnPress: Create “collections” to group related courses together, helping students easily find and purchase course bundles by topic.

• Coming Soon add-on for LearnPress: Set up a landing page with a countdown timer for an upcoming course. This helps build hype, promotes the course, and collects email leads before the official launch.
• Announcement add-on for LearnPress: Send real-time, important announcements to all students enrolled in a specific course or across the entire site.
• Student List add-on for LearnPress: Allows you to view and export the list of students for each course to a CSV file for easy management and tracking.

Student Assessment & Engagement

Here are several key add-ons focused on improving how you assess, grade, and engage with students on your platform:

• Certificates add-on for LearnPress: Automatically design, generate, and award beautiful, professional certificates to students upon their successful completion of a course.
• Gradebook add-on for LearnPress: Provides a comprehensive gradebook, allowing you to track, manage, and export the academic results of all students across your courses.
• Assignments Add-on for LearnPress: Create and manage assignments. Students can submit their work (text, file uploads), and instructors can grade and provide feedback directly.
• Random Quiz add-on for LearnPress: Create quizzes with questions drawn randomly from a pre-made question bank, ensuring that each student receives a different set of questions for fair and secure testing.
• Sorting Choice add-on for LearnPress: Adds a new “sorting choice” question type to your quizzes, where students must drag and drop answers into the correct order. This diversifies your assessment methods.
• Learnpress H5P: Integrates H5P, allowing you to create rich, interactive learning content like interactive videos, presentations, drag-and-drop games, and more, directly within your lessons.
• myCRED add-on for LearnPress: Integrates the myCRED points system (gamification). You can award points to students for completing lessons, courses, or quizzes to encourage engagement and motivation.

Advanced Monetization Options

Monetize your courses your way. The Pro bundle allows you to accept payments from anywhere with a wide range of integrations. This includes major gateways like WooCommerce and Stripe, as well as regional options like Razorpay (India) and Paystack (Africa), along with many other payment gateways. You can also create recurring revenue by selling course subscriptions with the Paid Memberships Pro add-on.

The following add-ons provide these functionalities:

• WooCommerce add-on for LearnPress
• Paid Memberships Pro add-on for LearnPress
• Stripe add-on for LearnPress
• 2Checkout add-on for LearnPress
• Authorize.Net add-on for LearnPress
• Instamojo Add-on for LearnPress
• Razorpay Add-on for LearnPress
• QPay Add-on for LearnPress
• PayU Add-on for LearnPress
• Paystack Addon For LearnPress
• Upsell Add-on for LearnPress: Suggests related courses to students immediately after they complete a purchase.
• Commission add-on for LearnPress: Automatically calculates and distributes revenue shares to co-instructors.

Update and Support

Your purchase includes 12 months of continuous updates, ensuring compatibility with the latest WordPress versions and access to new features and improvements. You will also receive 12 months of dedicated support from the developers, with quick assistance for any issues or questions you may have.

Who Should Use LearnPress Free?

Choose LearnPress Free if:

• You are creating your very first online course.
• You only need basic course management tools.
• You have no budget and are just starting out.
• You only need to accept payments through PayPal or bank transfer.

Who Should Choose LearnPress Pro?

Choose LearnPress Pro if:

• You are serious about building an online course business.
• You need professional features like certificates, assignments, and detailed grading.
• You want to offer multiple payment options like credit cards (Stripe) or country-specific gateways.
• You plan to have multiple instructors teaching courses.
• You want a smooth and professional experience for both your instructors and students.

Pricing Overview: LearnPress Pro vs Free

• LearnPress Free: $0 (available on WordPress).
• LearnPress Semi-Pro Bundle: Starts at $149
• LearnPress Pro Bundle: Starts at $299 (one-time payment).

The real value of LearnPress Pro is in the bundle. If you bought all the premium add-ons separately, you would spend over $747. The Pro Bundle gives you all of them for a single, one-time price. This includes lifetime access to the add-ons and 12 months of priority support and updates, making it a much more affordable option than subscription-based LMS plugins.

Final Thought: Which Version is Right for You?

The decision in the LearnPress Free vs Pro debate comes down to your goals.

• For beginners, hobbyists, or those testing a course idea, LearnPress Free is a fantastic and capable starting point.
• For professional educators, schools, and businesses, LearnPress Pro is a necessary investment. It provides the complete set of tools needed to build, manage, and grow a successful online learning platform.

Both versions provide a solid WordPress LMS plugin, but if you want to monetize effectively and offer a premium learning experience, going Pro is the clear choice.

Choosing the right LMS is a big step. Whether you start with LearnPress Free or go directly to LearnPress Pro, you are using a flexible and powerful platform. Thanks to its user-friendly online course builder and extensive LearnPress features, it remains one of the best choices for LMS for educators today.

Need help setting up LearnPress? Feel free to reach out—we’re here to help you build your online classroom with confidence!

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