The question is what you will end up buying
LifterLMS gets compared a lot because it sits in a particular spot. The core is free, and the product is built to be extended, so a working academy often means the core plus a few paid pieces. That is a legitimate model. It lets you pay only for what you use, and it means the plugin can grow with a membership business.
It also means the sticker on the front says less than usual. Before you decide anything, write down what your academy needs: how you take payment, how you gate content, what students receive when they finish. Then price that list, not the free download.
Do the add-on audit properly
The comparison only means something if the list is real, so build it from your own site rather than from a feature page. This takes about an hour and it is the most useful hour in the whole decision.
- Open the plugins screen and write down every LifterLMS add-on that is active, with the licence it sits under.
- Next to each one, write the job it does for a student or for you. If you cannot name the job, it may not be needed.
- Note the renewal date and the renewal cost for each licence, using the vendor’s current figures.
- Mark the jobs that sell access, the jobs that deliver content and the jobs that run in the background.
- Count how many of those jobs are checkout, memberships, coupons, certificates, commissions or quizzes.
That last count is the one that matters here. Those six are in Learnomy Free, so every job that falls into them is a line you could remove. The jobs that are left, such as drip or cohorts, are the ones to price against Pro.
How Learnomy answers the same list
Learnomy’s free plugin includes a good deal of that list. Stripe and PayPal checkout, memberships, coupons, certificates with a public verification page, instructor commissions, and quizzes with six question types are in Free. Pro is a separate licence for things such as content drip, cohorts, SCORM, xAPI, H5P and AI authoring.
That does not make it better than LifterLMS. It makes it a different shape: more included up front, fewer pieces to choose from. If you enjoy picking pieces, or you need something a particular add-on does, the LifterLMS shape may suit you more.
Rebuilding memberships in Learnomy
Memberships are where a LifterLMS site is most likely to be complicated, and they are the part the importer cannot help with. It does not read access plans, so every membership level, price and rule is rebuilt by hand.
Learnomy memberships are plans you sell one time or on a recurring schedule, including a lifetime tier. A course can be set to members only, or to one-time purchase or membership, so some people buy and others come in through a plan. A plan includes the courses you assign to it, and it can carry a trial period. The Membership module ships switched off, so enable it under Modules before you look for the menu.
Draw your current structure on paper first: which levels exist, what each one opens, and what happens at renewal and cancellation. Then rebuild one level end to end, buy it with the test gateway, and check that a member can open the right courses and nothing else. The memberships guide walks through the screens.
What the LifterLMS importer reads
The importer runs on the same site as LifterLMS and reads it live. It brings across course categories, courses, sections, lessons, quizzes and questions, and with the optional boxes ticked, enrolments and completed lessons.
A few specifics are worth knowing. Lessons arrive flat inside their section, because LifterLMS has no sub-lessons to carry. A lesson with a video embed becomes a video lesson, one with an audio embed becomes an audio lesson, and anything else becomes rich text. Co-instructors are kept, and a single course prerequisite is carried across when it is switched on.
Question types map cleanly for true or false, fill in the blank, short answer, ordering, long answer and multiple choice. Types with no exact match are downgraded or skipped: a code question becomes an essay, and scale questions are left out. The dry run lists every case before you commit.
What the importer leaves behind
Everything commercial stays where it is. Access plans, prices and orders are never read, and imported courses arrive free. Memberships are not imported. Certificates and old quiz attempt scores are not carried over, though learners who passed are marked complete.
A prerequisite based on a track has no equivalent and is skipped. Drip schedules are not read, so scheduled release has to be set up again, and scheduled drip is a Pro feature. Engagements, the triggered messages LifterLMS can send when something happens, are not part of the import.
That last point matters more than it looks. Learnomy sends transactional notifications, such as purchase confirmations and course emails, and it has no email automation or re-engagement sequences. If those triggered messages are doing real work for you, plan for an email tool next to Learnomy rather than inside it.
Quizzes and certificates after the move
Quizzes come across with their passing score, time limit and attempt cap where LifterLMS holds them, and the questions keep their points. Learnomy Free offers six question types and two quiz layouts, so look at any quiz that depended on something more specialised. Extra types and layouts are Pro.
Certificates are rebuilt rather than moved. Pick a design from the certificate library or build one in the drag-and-drop designer, then turn on awarding for each course. Each certificate gets a public verification page with a QR code, so someone outside your site can confirm it is real.
Decide early what to do about people who finished before the move. The importer marks them complete but does not carry their old certificates across, so settle your policy for past completers before members start asking.
Moving, if you decide to
Run any move on a staging copy. The import wizard reads LifterLMS categories, courses, sections, lessons, quizzes and questions, and it brings enrolments and completed lessons too.
It deliberately does not touch money. Access plans, prices and orders are not read, so imported courses are free until you set pricing in Learnomy, and your membership structure needs rebuilding there. Quiz attempt scores are not reconstructed, though learners who passed are marked complete. LifterLMS certificates are built from their own templates and do not come across, so you choose a Learnomy certificate template per course and future completions issue from that.
If your site is mostly memberships, treat that rebuild as the main cost and look at it first. The two-way view is on the Learnomy vs LifterLMS page.
Your first thirty days
Moving a membership site is a sequence, and the order matters because members are paying while you work. This is the order we would use.
- Build everything on a staging copy, with LifterLMS still active so the importer can read it.
- Import courses with content only, and read every line of the dry run.
- Rebuild one membership level, then the rest, testing each with the test gateway.
- Set up pricing for any courses sold outside a membership.
- Add certificate templates, then finish one course as a test student.
- Import enrolments and progress, check a few real members against LifterLMS, then choose a quiet day for the switch and tell members what will look different.
Who owns the data afterwards
After the import, courses and learner records sit in Learnomy’s own tables in your database. The LifterLMS data stays in place and untouched, so for a while you hold two copies and should not delete either.
Keep LifterLMS installed, but stop selling through it, until members have confirmed that their access works. When you finally remove it, back up the database first, because order and subscription history is not copied across and that history is the one thing you cannot rebuild. Privacy requests then run through the standard WordPress export and erase tools, which Learnomy plugs into for the data it holds.
What a normal week looks like
On a membership-led academy the week is mostly about money and access. You look at new members and renewals, check failed payments, and answer the odd question from a member whose card expired.
Learnomy gives a failed payment a grace period, with the length set by you, so access does not vanish the moment a charge fails. Refunds, coupons and plan changes happen from the admin. Pro adds proration on plan changes, dunning retries for failed payments, and revenue and churn analytics, so check whether you need those before you assume the free plan covers them.
The rest is ordinary upkeep: grading, announcements, and updating plugins on staging before production.
What it costs to keep each one running
Both are WordPress plugins, so hosting and maintenance sit on your side either way. The question is what the plugin layer costs to keep current.
With LifterLMS, that is the core plus every add-on you use, each with its own renewal and its own update schedule. With Learnomy it is nothing for Free, and one optional Pro licence, annual or lifetime, if you need drip, cohorts, SCORM and the other extensions.
We are not printing prices. Take the add-on list from the audit above and the figures on the vendor’s site that day, and add up a full year. Then do the same for the Pro features you would genuinely use. If the difference is small, moving is not worth it.
What Learnomy will not do
Learnomy has no affiliate system, so referral tracking needs a separate plugin. It has no email automation, no built-in live video and no single sign-on, and it has no native mobile app, although a REST API with token sign-in lets a developer build one.
The importer reads only LearnDash, Tutor LMS and LifterLMS. If part of your catalogue sits somewhere else, that part is a manual rebuild. Memberships also have to be rebuilt by hand, as covered above. Compare this list with what your site relies on, honestly, before you start.
Who should stay with LifterLMS
Stay if memberships and triggered messages are the business and they work. Rebuilding a tangled membership structure is a project, and the only reward is a tidier bill.
Stay if you chose LifterLMS because you like picking exactly the pieces you need and paying for nothing else. That is a coherent way to run a site, and Learnomy’s more bundled shape would give you pieces you never wanted.
Stay if the add-on list is short. A site with one or two add-ons has none of the sprawl problem. For a side-by-side view of the products, see Learnomy vs LifterLMS, or read what the free plugin includes first.
Time the move around your renewals
The best moment to switch is shortly before your add-on renewals fall due, not just after them. Look at the dates from your audit and pick a window that leaves you a month or two of overlap.
That overlap is your safety net. LifterLMS keeps running while you test, so a problem found late costs you a delay and not an outage. If a renewal is a week away and the rebuild is not finished, renew that one and move later. A calm migration beats a cheap one.
Where this leaves the decision
LifterLMS is a good choice when selling access is the business and you want to build up from a core. Learnomy is a good choice when you want the selling parts already there and a single Pro licence behind them.
If neither sounds right, the Tutor LMS alternatives page covers a builder-first option, and the LearnPress alternatives page covers a lighter free core. Choose by what you will run on a Tuesday, not by the feature grid.