Why a generous free plugin still sends people looking
A long free feature list changes the question. With a thin free plugin, people leave because it cannot do the job. With MasterStudy they tend to leave, if they leave at all, because one thing they planned to use turns out to be a Pro add-on. Sequential drip content is one. Question media is another. Neither is unreasonable to charge for, and both are easy to miss until you are partway through building a course.
So the useful first step is to write down what your first course really needs. Then check each line against the vendor’s own listing, because add-on lists change between releases and we would rather you read the current one than trust ours.
Free tiers side by side
MasterStudy’s listing is specific about what the free plugin carries: a course builder, an advanced quiz builder with eight quiz types, a drag-and-drop certificate builder, monetization settings, and earnings and commission allocation. That is a strong list, and on free quiz variety it beats ours.
Learnomy Free covers courses with sections and lessons, seven lesson content types, quizzes with six question types and two layouts, and certificates with a public verification page. Selling is in there too: memberships, coupons, instructor commissions with a withdrawal queue, and Stripe and PayPal checkout with no platform cut. A per-lesson Available date handles simple scheduling, and WooCommerce stays optional.
The honest read is that MasterStudy leads on free quiz variety, certificates are close, and Learnomy leads on what sits around the sale. Which counts for more depends on your course. The free versus Pro page shows where each Learnomy feature sits, so you can tick off your list.
A fair bake-off, step by step
Two free plugins are easiest to compare by building the same thing in both. Pick one real course, not a demo, and give each plugin the same afternoon.
- Write down what the course needs: lesson types, quiz formats, a certificate, a price, and any recurring offer.
- Install each on its own staging copy, so their catalogue addresses cannot collide.
- Build the course, with its quiz and certificate, and keep a note of every point where you had to look something up.
- Price it and buy it as a student with each plugin’s test route. In Learnomy that is the Test Gateway.
- Finish the course as a student and look at the certificate and the quiz review.
- Open the admin as the person who has to run this for a year, and note what you would dread.
Whichever feels like less friction on that list is your answer, whatever any comparison page says, ours included.
Quizzes and certificates, the two places to look hardest
Quizzes are where MasterStudy argues its case. Eight quiz types in a free builder is a better offer than our six question types, and if your teaching leans on varied assessments from day one, test it first. Learnomy Pro closes some of the gap with matching, ordering, numeric, math and calculated questions, question pools and per-question timers. See the quizzes page for the full list.
Certificates are closer than a feature list suggests. MasterStudy lets you design the layout by dragging elements into place, and so does Learnomy: its designer is a canvas where you drag text and images, and four ready-made templates ship with the plugin. Learnomy also puts its effort into the page behind the certificate: every one has a public verification page, so a third party can check it. Choose on how your certificates will be used. The certificates page shows what a student and a verifier see.
Lessons, video and what students can do
Learnomy lessons come in seven content types in the free plugin: text, video, audio, PDF, download, embed and a scheduled live session. Video plays from a link to a host such as YouTube or Vimeo, and files you upload are served only to people entitled to the lesson. The live type takes a start time, a length and a link to Zoom, Meet or Teams. Protected video is a separate type that appears when the MediaShield plugin is active. See lesson content types for each one.
Around the lesson, students can review a course, ask the instructor a question under a lesson, keep a wishlist and search the catalogue with autocomplete. Pro adds notes and bookmarks. Each of those is a small thing, and together they decide whether a course feels finished.
Instructors, approval and revenue share
If more than one person will teach, the instructor side deserves its own look. In Learnomy a member applies to become an instructor and an admin approves the application. By default instructors can publish their own courses, and you can switch that off for everyone so each submission waits as Pending Review, or require approval for one instructor only.
Revenue share is in the free plugin. A global commission rate applies to everyone, and you can override it for one instructor or one course. Instructors request withdrawals from a queue you review. Commissions already recorded keep the rate they were paid at, even if you change a rule later. Automatic payouts through Stripe Connect are a Pro feature. If you teach alone, one switch turns the whole instructor surface off and hides it from your menus. The instructor payouts page and the course approval docs show the screens.
Quiz rules that matter for real exams
Variety of question formats is only half of a quiz. The other half is how it behaves under pressure. Learnomy Free lets you cap attempts per quiz, and lets an admin or the quiz’s own instructor grant one student an extra attempt without resetting their scores, lessons or certificate. Answers autosave, a question map lets a student jump around and flag items for review, and a dropped connection resumes at the exact question and deadline. A question bank lets you reuse questions, and tab-switch tracking with an optional auto-submit gives graders signals on a timed exam. Read the quizzes page before you decide that six question types is too few.
Memberships and money
The MasterStudy listing is unclear on memberships. It names Subscriptions and Memberships in the Pro add-on list, while its FAQ says memberships and subscriptions are built in. We do not know which is right for the version you would install, so check the vendor before you plan a recurring offer around it.
In Learnomy, one-time and recurring memberships are part of the free plugin, next to coupons and the Stripe and PayPal checkout. You can read how the pieces connect on the payments page.
Learnomy’s companion plugins, and what MasterStudy offers around it
If you already use MasterStudy’s own add-ons or themes, they are a reason to stay, and the vendor’s site will tell you what is current.
Learnomy comes from a team that makes several other WordPress plugins and themes. Each is a separate plugin, each is optional, and they run on one WordPress site with one login, so students do not manage two accounts. Learnomy works fine without any of them.
BuddyNext is the community plugin. With BuddyNext Pro and Learnomy both active, an enrolled student can be added to the course’s community space automatically. A course completion or an earned certificate posts a card to the student’s profile and the community feed. A community membership plan can enrol the buyer in chosen courses and removes that access when the plan ends.
Jetonomy is a forum and Q&A plugin, so discussion can sit next to your courses. WP Career Board is a job board plugin, which puts jobs and resumes on the same site. WPMediaVerse is a media plugin that organises course video, audio and files. We keep to that level for those three, because it is as far as we have verified.
Two community themes, BuddyX Pro and Reign, style course and student pages.
If you want a course site and nothing more, you can ignore all of this. If your academy is turning into a community with discussion, jobs and media, it is the reason to look at the whole family rather than one plugin.
What running either one costs
Both plugins are free to install, so the plugin price is not the real comparison. The cost sits in hosting, in the add-ons or licence you end up needing, and in your time.
- Hosting and a backup you have tested.
- A paid tier of whichever plugin carries a feature you need. Check MasterStudy’s listing on wordpress.org for what its add-ons cover, and our free versus Pro page for ours.
- Stripe or PayPal fees on each sale.
- Time spent testing updates on staging.
- A developer, for anything custom.
A normal week
For a working academy the week is short. Review new instructor submissions if you use approval. Grade what is waiting. Read the transactions list for orders, renewals and refunds. Answer questions that students leave under lessons. Look at the email log for failed deliveries. Update on staging and then on the live site.
Your data, and what uninstalling does
In Learnomy, courses, enrolments, progress, certificates and transactions live in dedicated tables in your own database, and personal data is handled through the WordPress privacy export and erase tools. Deleting the plugin keeps every record unless you turn on the removal switch first, so a reinstall picks up where it left off. If you do switch it on, deletion is permanent. The data management docs explain the switch.
Moving across
There is no importer for MasterStudy. Learnomy’s wizard reads LearnDash, Tutor LMS and LifterLMS, so a move means rebuilding each course by hand. Students are the easy part: paste emails or upload a CSV and Learnomy creates the accounts and enrols them. The migration guide explains what the importer brings and what it leaves.
If MasterStudy is running and your students are learning, leave it. Moving a working course site on the strength of a comparison page is the most common way to lose a week.
What Learnomy does not do for a MasterStudy user
Check the MasterStudy listing for its current quiz types, since the list is longer than our free six question types. We do not have an importer for MasterStudy, no theme bundle, no email marketing, no funnels and no built-in live video. It also has no native app. Those gaps are real, so measure them against your own course before you read anything into the length of a feature list.
If you do switch, the first month
A switch goes best when it is boring. Here is a sequence that keeps the old site safe.
- Back up the database and the uploads folder before you touch anything.
- Build the new site, or a staging copy, with Learnomy and rebuild your single most important course.
- Run the Test Gateway purchase, finish the course and verify the certificate.
- Rebuild the rest of the catalogue in order of revenue, not in alphabetical order.
- Bulk enrol students by pasted emails or CSV, in small batches, and email them before they notice.
- Keep MasterStudy deactivated, not deleted, until the first month of real use has passed.
Read the migration guide for what the importer does for the three plugins it supports, so you know how much of this a different source would have saved you.
Who should stay with MasterStudy
Stay if the quiz builder or the certificate designer already does what you need and your students are learning. Stay if you use its add-ons or themes and they are woven into the site. Stay if the course catalogue is large and rebuilding it by hand would cost more than any feature is worth. And stay if you simply do not have a reason to move: a working course site is not a problem to solve.
Try Learnomy on staging when you want memberships, coupons, verifiable certificates and checkout in the free plugin, a clear path to drip, cohorts and standards in Pro, or the community plugins from the same team on one site.
Where this leaves the decision
Keep MasterStudy LMS if its free quiz builder and certificate designer are the features you will use every day. Try Learnomy on a staging site if you want verifiable certificates, memberships and checkout in the free plugin, with a clear Pro path for drip and standards.
For the two-way view, read Learnomy vs MasterStudy LMS. For the wider field, see the best LMS plugins for WordPress.