Begin with the store question
The usual trigger for this search is not a missing lesson type. It is a sentence on the pricing side of the listing: selling courses is a Sensei Pro feature, and it runs through WooCommerce. For someone who already owns a WooCommerce shop, that sentence reads as good news. For someone who wanted to put one course online and take a card payment, it reads as a shopping list.
So the first decision has nothing to do with LMS features at all. Do you want a store on this site? If yes, Sensei LMS and WooCommerce share a maker, and the pairing is natural. If no, you are choosing between a plugin that needs a store underneath it and plugins that carry checkout themselves, and the second group is where most alternatives live.
What the free tiers cover
A free plugin is only a fair comparison when you know what stops at the paywall. Sensei’s free plugin teaches: courses, lessons and basic quizzes with several question types. The quiz timer and the ordering question type are Pro. Scheduled content drip is Pro. WooCommerce Subscriptions and Memberships integration sits under Pro as well. Certificates arrive as a free extension.
Learnomy Free covers courses with sections and lessons, seven lesson content types, and quizzes with six question types and two layouts. It also includes certificates with a public verification page, memberships that are one-time or recurring, coupons, and instructor commissions with a withdrawal queue. Stripe and PayPal checkout is built in, with no cut taken by the platform.
Pro is where Learnomy puts the heavier course tooling: scheduled drip, cohorts, learning paths, assignments, a weighted gradebook, SCORM and xAPI, H5P, and a front-end course builder. The free versus Pro page lists each one by tier, and it is worth reading before you add any plugin to a shortlist, ours included.
Quizzes and drip, where the tiers differ most
Two features show how the tiers are cut. On quizzes, Sensei’s free tier gives you several question types, while the timer and ordering questions need Pro. Learnomy Free gives you single choice, multiple choice, true/false, short answer, fill in the blank and essay questions. Pro adds matching, ordering, numeric, math and calculated questions, question pools and per-question timers. The quizzes page has the full list.
On drip, both products keep scheduled release in the paid tier. The difference is small and practical: in Learnomy, every lesson can carry an Available date in the free plugin, which covers a simple course that opens on a set day. Releasing by days after enrolment, on a fixed date or after a prerequisite is Pro.
Taking payments without a store plugin
Learnomy treats payments as part of the LMS. Stripe and PayPal checkout runs from the free plugin, memberships and coupons sit beside it, and the money goes from your processor to you. WooCommerce stays available as an optional route, and nothing breaks if you never install it. Read the payments page for how the pieces fit.
That is a different shape from Sensei, and neither is wrong. A store plugin brings a catalogue, tax rules and a big extension market. It also brings things to update, secure and learn. Decide which of those you are signing up for.
Your first sale, step by step
It is easier to judge a checkout by running one than by reading about it. This is the order, and all of it is in the free plugin.
- Run the setup wizard, then open the payments settings and pick a currency.
- Turn on the Test Gateway. It completes any checkout instantly, fires the same enrolment and receipt steps a real gateway does, and records the order at zero so test sales never reach your revenue totals.
- Create a course, price it with a one-time price, and publish it.
- Buy it as a student in a private window, finish it, and check the certificate.
- Switch to Stripe or PayPal test keys, then live keys, and place one small real order.
- Turn the Test Gateway off.
The payment gateway docs compare the routes, including what changes when WooCommerce collects the money.
Tax, receipts and refunds
These three are where a store plugin earns its keep, so it is worth being exact about ours. Learnomy can add one flat tax rate to every paid checkout on Stripe and PayPal, with a label such as VAT or GST. It does not do rates by region. If you need those, route payments through WooCommerce and turn on its own tax setting, which makes Learnomy step back and let Woo do the arithmetic. That is a reason some sellers stay in the WooCommerce family.
Receipts are PDF files, and the purchase confirmation email carries a receipt summary. Every purchase, renewal and refund shows in a single transactions list, where you can refund an eligible order yourself. Closed courses, which you sell outside WordPress, can have access revoked when your outside system reports a refund through the incoming webhook.
Letting people buy without an account
Guest checkout is a setting you turn on, and it is off by default. When it is on, a visitor gives an email address in the billing block, and the account is created only after payment succeeds. An email that already has an account is asked to log in instead, and the number of guest checkouts from one IP address is rate limited. Bank-based payment methods that Stripe settles later work too: the enrolment arrives when the money clears, so a failed payment never leaves a paid-looking order. The checkout docs cover the screens.
Plugins from the same team, and the WooCommerce family
Sensei LMS belongs to a family: WooCommerce, its subscriptions and memberships extensions, and the rest of the Automattic ecosystem. That family is a real strength, and it is the main reason to stay if you already live in it.
Learnomy sits in a smaller family from the same team, and every member is a separate plugin that you install only if you want it. They run on one WordPress site with one login, so a student does not keep a second account. None of them is required for Learnomy to work.
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 the access is removed when the plan ends. Each of those needs both plugins active.
Jetonomy adds discussion and Q&A forums next to your courses. WP Career Board is a job board plugin, so jobs and resumes can live on the same site. WPMediaVerse is a media plugin that organises course video, audio and files. We say no more than that about those three, because that is all we have checked.
On the design side, BuddyX Pro and Reign are community themes that style course and student pages.
If your site already runs on WooCommerce, the Sensei and WooCommerce family covers the store side better than we do. If your site is a community or an academy first, the companion plugins above are the part to weigh.
Trying both on the same site
You do not have to commit to try. Install Learnomy on a staging copy of your Sensei site and build one course. One thing will trip you: LMS plugins usually claim the same catalogue address, and a leftover rewrite rule from the old plugin can make the new catalogue 404. Open the pages settings, read the table of live addresses, and change the course URL base if two plugins are fighting over it. The pages and URL slugs docs list every segment.
Keep the trial small. One course, one price, one test purchase, one certificate. If the checkout feels right and the grading inbox suits you, move a second course. If not, delete the staging copy and nothing on the live site has changed.
Where the course data lives
Learnomy keeps courses, lessons and enrolments in its own database tables, not as posts and not as WooCommerce products. Two things follow. WooCommerce is only a payment route here, and it grants access when its order is marked Completed; there is no course-to-product catalogue sync. And a tool that works on posts, such as a generic export or a post-based search plugin, will not see your courses. The REST API and the built-in exports are the way to reach the data.
If you have built a store around course products, that matters. Count the places where something reads your course list before you decide.
What running it costs
Sensei is free to install and sells its extras, and its own listing shows the current split. Learnomy is the same in outline: the free plugin runs a complete course business, and Pro is a paid licence. The costs that sit outside any licence are the same for both.
- Hosting, plus a backup you have restored at least once.
- Stripe or PayPal fees on each card sale.
- Time to test every plugin update on a staging copy.
- WooCommerce and its extensions, if you choose to route payments through it.
A normal week
Running a course store is a short list of chores. Read new orders and refunds. Answer questions under lessons. Grade whatever waits in the grading inbox. Glance at the email log to check that receipts and welcome emails were delivered. Update on staging first. Place a test order after any change to a gateway or a tax setting.
Moving from Sensei LMS
There is no importer for Sensei LMS. The wizard reads LearnDash, Tutor LMS and LifterLMS, and that is the full list, so a move from Sensei means rebuilding each course and its quizzes by hand. For a handful of courses that is an afternoon. For a large catalogue it is a project, and the honest advice is to leave a working Sensei site alone until you have a reason worth the work.
What does carry over easily is people. Paste emails or upload a CSV and Learnomy creates the accounts and enrols them in bulk. Read the migration guide for what the importer does and does not bring from the plugins it supports.
What Learnomy does not do for a WooCommerce owner
There is no catalogue sync between courses and WooCommerce products, so a course will not appear in your shop grid as a product. Tax by region is Woo’s job, not ours. There is no affiliate integration, and no email automation or funnels. And your data stays in custom tables, so you reach it through the plugin and its API rather than as posts.
If a shop with products, shipping and a large extension market is the centre of your site, stay with the family built for that. If the course is the product, the missing catalogue sync is a smaller loss than it first sounds.
Who should stay with Sensei LMS
Stay if WooCommerce already runs your shop and you want one maker behind both halves. Stay if you rely on region-by-region tax. Stay if your students already know the lesson screens and your catalogue is large enough that rebuilding it by hand would cost more than the plugin ever saved you. And stay if the extension market around Woo covers something you use daily.
Move when the shop is a burden you carry only to sell courses, when you want certificates anyone can verify and a gradebook in one place, or when you want memberships and coupons without extra extensions. Check the Sensei listing on wordpress.org for what its free and paid tiers include today.
Where this leaves the decision
If you run WooCommerce and want one maker behind your store and your courses, keep Sensei LMS. It is built for that, and a longer free feature list will not beat it on your own site.
If you would rather not run a store plugin to sell a course, install Learnomy on a staging site and build one real course with a price and a certificate. For a two-way look, see Learnomy vs Sensei LMS. For the wider field, read the best free WordPress LMS plugin roundup.