8 Best Moodle Alternatives to Kick off Your Online Courses

Moodle is a free open-source online course-hosting platform. The platform has been quite popular among course creators and educational institutions for several years. However, in recent years, users feel that due to a lack of new features, the platform has lost its charm. Therefore, more and more people are now on the lookout for the best alternatives for Moodle.

This article will take you through the top 8 alternatives in 2022. You can learn about the pros and cons of all of these options and make a decision for yourself in the end.

Taking a look at Moodle

Moodle boasts a solid 213 million users across different fields such as academia and corporations. It is undoubtedly the leading learning platform of today, especially among universities. My own Alma Mater had our professors torture us via Moodle. Just Kidding!

From my personal experience as a student who has used it, Moodle was extremely easy to use. With no complicated UI and no faff. Students and teachers could interact via discussion boards, conduct and mark quizzes, and evaluate assignments all on the same channel. More importantly, the platform was synchronized with our emails so we would get an email notification for any ongoing activity on the platform.

Hands down, the best feature of Moodle is that it is a free open-source platform. However, users complain that in this day and age, that isn't enough. Fair enough. Moodle does lack graphic user interface customization features, lacks flexibility with the software, and requires manual updating. These issues do make it appear dull in comparison to some of the recent Moodle alternatives.

8 Best Moodle Alternatives

1. Teachfloor

Teachfloor is an online platform that specializes in launching online course academies and cohort-based courses. For anyone looking for a dependable online platform to conduct live courses with multiple instructors and scalable courses, then Teachfloor is just the place.

It offers community features such as Peer review, discussion boards, 1-to-1 chats, and instructor reviews. People can easily engage via multiple means on the platform and express their thoughts. Its multi-instructor option enables more than one person to collectively host a course. Furthermore, there is complete freedom to own your product with white-labeling customization ability.

Pros:

Multi-instructor
Live cohort courses with Zoom integration
Community feature (Peer review, discussion board, 1-to-1 chat)
White labeling
Stripe integration
Zapier integration
Email automation
Analytics dashboard

Cons:

No mobile app
Users report a slight learning curve regarding the initial course setup. Once you get the hang of it, it is an easy way forward.

Pricing: Unlimited student 15-day free trial. Pro plan for $69/mo, Business for $349/mo, and Enterprise for a custom price.

2. Google Classroom

Google Classroom is a favorite amongst teachers and students for its ease of use and for the fact that it is free. It focuses on integrating tools that teachers already use, thus making it a familiar platform to use. Since it is part of the G-suite family, it makes it easier for users to manage and sign up simply using their existing Gmail accounts.

Google Classroom has three main areas: classwork, people, and grades. These areas help teachers to keep all the activities organized. All the content, assignments, grades, etc, is organized into proper sections for a hassle-free tracking.

Pros:

Part of the G-suite
Gamification
Easy to set up
Organizational tools

Cons:

Admin's role is not very clear
Lacks customizability
No advanced reporting tools

Pricing: Free.

3. Thinkific

When one thinks of the best moodle alternatives, Thinkific is sure to pop into mind. Its handy drag-and-drop feature and easy-to-navigate UI make for a smooth user experience. For creators looking to spice things up, they get the additional customizability with coding modifications and custom domain names.

Overall, it is a brilliant resource for student management with a detailed profile feature. Moreover, the platform ensures secure e-commerce payment checkout without any card transaction fees. So users rest easy and carry out their business.

Pros:

Drag-and-drop feature
Customizability
Custom domain
Flexible pricing with a free version
No transaction fees
Access to HTML and CSS

Cons:

No chat support
Not an online course marketplace
Email marketing is not integrated into the platform

Pricing: Free plan and custom plans starting from $39/mo to $399/mo.

4. Canva LMS

If you are looking for a comprehensive course creation platform as a moodle alternative, then Canva LMS is the one. It offers great customization freedom to users and works perfectly well for both hybrid and fully online courses. Its special features such as the speed grader make for efficient grading and feedback management. Although it can be a bit overwhelming, to begin with, once you get the hang of it, it is fairly easy to use.

Pros:

Speedgrader
Intuitive UI
Customization tools
Third-party integration
Open API

Cons:

Set up is time-consuming
No auto-save for students
No built-in conferencing tool

Pricing: Free.

5. Blackboard Learn

Blackboard learn claims to offer its users unmatched teaching and management freedom. Hence why it has made it to the list of best Moodle alternatives. It offers simple virtual classroom tools without any puzzling features. Moreover, the platform focuses immensely on organizational features. But perhaps the most interesting thing about this LMS is that it has an extensive partner of over 300 third-party integrations.

Pros:

SaaS deployment
Extensive partner network
Great analytics and reporting tools
Third-party integrations

Cons:

Expensive
Slow Mobile app

Pricing: Check Blackboard for more information.

6. Teachable

Teachable is an online course creation platform that acts also as a course marketplace. It aims towards monetizing the courses and helping course creation businesses thrive. Users can create sales pages and pay affiliates. The best part, the entire setup process can be done in just a day. It is suitable for beginners and offers lots of customization opportunities. Moreover, its unlimited video bandwidth and no course limit, means you can scale your business as you desire.

Pros:

Unlimited video bandwidth
Unlimited courses
Business tools for course monetization
Manage affiliates
Easy-to-understand analytics

Cons:

Transactions fees when students buy the course
Lacks integration options

Pricing: Free plan with base features. Paid plan starts from $29/mo.

7. LearnDash

LearnDash is a unique one amongst this list of best Moodle alternatives as it is a Wordpress LMS. Nevertheless, it integrates pretty well with other apps offering users a wide customization opportunity without any additional coding. People can sue different page builders such as Divi to build their course. Since it is a Wordpress LMS, it can be used across the Wordpress multi-site network. Additionally, users can monetize their courses with white labeling.

Pros:

Integration option
Gamification
Email automation
White labeling
Flexible payment methods
Certificates and badges

Cons:

No free trials
Requires registration for your documentation
Limited built-in membership

Pricing: $159 for one site license with unlimited courses and users.

8. Talent LMS

Finally, on our list of best Moodle alternatives is Talent LMS. It received the Finance Online's Best LMS Software award for 2020. Talent LMS is a fully customizable cloud-based LMS. It offers customization freedom and white labeling with which users can design their own brand, manage the company domain, and have custom HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Furthermore, it is truly global given that it offers support in over 30 languages and has additional features to match the course timings to the local timings of the students.

Pros:

Automatic meeting reminders
Upload SCORM, xAPI, and cmi5 files
Live support in 30 languages.
White labeling

Cons:

cloud-based platform - performance can be impacted due to poor internet connections
Limited course templates
Expensive

Pricing: Free plan covers 5 users and 10 courses. Paid plan starts from $59/mo.

So that was all of our contenders as the best Moodle alternatives for course creators. Hopefully, this list will help you in finding your best match. Do let us know in the comments which of these was your personal favorite.

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