A proven and robust tool to create and deliver educational courses

We've used this for a new course we recently created and it has been working well for our students. They provide video training and solid documentation to help get going. It can be confusing at first, and we've had to adjust our course as we've gone along and learned, but once you get used to how it works then it's fast and simple enough.

Pros

The fact that it's used by large universities in Florida, Michigan and Washington gave me confidence that it is reliable. We like how easy it is to create new lessons and assign quizzes to them. The add-on library is fairly large to help expand its capabilities. It's a popular tool with a lot of resources online to help learn how to make the most of it. There are a lot of built-in options for tweaking how it works.

Cons

It is somewhat complex to use compared to other options. That's partially because it provides so many options. You have to put some time into it to get it setup how you want and understand how it works, so it's not as fast to get going with as some other services would be. It could use more question types for the quizzes. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to view all of a student's essays and quiz answers on one page, however there are custom-made plugins that help with this.

Awesome Support Team

Overall, my experience with LearnDash has been wonderful. It is an easy-to-use tool that is the basis of our eLearning platform

Pros

- Ease of use and set-up - Built-in functionality to present users courses in an organized way - Compatibility with multiple plug-ins and themes - Great value for the price

Cons

- Sometimes the features are a bit restricting

Woocommerce and Product Feature not compatible.

Unfortunately you must make an early decision if you wish to use the features of Learndash or create a profitable product. While LearnDash goes to great lengths to showcase their features. Once you attempt to use these outside of their limited sales pathway many will no longer be available to you. Using the features and scalable processes of woocommerce will remove many features that make Learndash at first glimpse and during superficial reviews attractive. Any experienced UX designers will understand that this is a huge issue. Any user will be disappointed if they can purchase a product not available to them. In many countries selling a customer a product not available to them is illegal and will expose you to legal issues. Very limiting for those wishing to make their product available or sale. Purchase with care. Not as seamless presented throughout the presales marketing.

Pros

Suitable for small, internal, and experimental projects. Lacks the sophistication to create a large, scalable, and sellable products.

Cons

Unfortunately while it is possible to sell courses through woocommerce, doing so will remove the listed features of the learndash product. Most businesses will end up selling through woocommerce to unlock automations and the power of wordpress (ie adding customers to mailchimp, adding the sale to accounting software, directing a customer post sales path etc). Unfortunately once you make a product available for sale through woocommerce many of the listed product features fail. Most notably the course prerequisite feature. Users can purchase any course available in woocommerce regardless of any restriction or settings made in Learndash.

Excellent product - terrible support

The Good : + Excellent functionality for authoring courses with all expected media types supported + Excellent functionality & UX for users taking courses + Full-featured for those starting with a blank slate + Mobile responsive (with our theme) The Bad: - Very hard to integrate with existing customized website (theme, plugins, etc) - GravityForms integration virtually useless - Unable to drive course access or pricing based on WP user role - Apparently no hooks allowing implementer to modify their course enrollment process. The Ugly - HORRIBLE SUPPORT!

Pros

The features/functions of this product are top notch. Particularly if you are building a new eLearning site and are willing to use their theme and their UX OOB, this is very easy to implement and has great features.

Cons

The support experience has been horrendous! My task has been to integrate this LMS into an existing website which is very complex and sophisticated, without turning the existing UX on its head. The Support organization has been utterly useless either re-directing me to other plugins or mis-directing me with information that was simply wrong. The GravityForms integration is so poorly conceived as to be useless for my needs, and Support cannot provide any developer-level assistance at all. I've tried everything to get through to them - even contacting the CEO via LinkedIn - with no success. I'm now on the verge of demanding they cancel my license and refund the fee.

PharmacyTechScholar.com

Setting up an online course, on my own hosted website and with my own branding, has been a great experience. It has allowed me to customize my branding and create a strategy accordingly, which I think is a preferable approach compared to building a course on a universal platform.

Pros

Building my course using LearnDash was simple, even though I had no previous experience in building a webpage. I really like the interface and the ability to customize the branding. My students have had great feedback about the format of the course, especially since I switched to focus mode.

Cons

I'm still learning the software so not I'm note quite sure yet. User management and setting up reporting and email strategies could be better, but there are some add on solutions that may help with this.