Reading the add-on list before you commit
Both plugins start free, so the honest comparison is a shopping list. LearnPress’s own listing sorts its extras into free add-ons and premium ones. The free group covers things like a wishlist, course reviews, prerequisites, a backup and migration tool, and BuddyPress and bbPress integration. The premium group is where most selling and teaching depth sits: extra payment gateways, certificates, content drip, assignments, a gradebook, a front-end editor, co-instructors and commissions.
None of that is a flaw. A la carte pricing suits a site that needs exactly two extras. It gets harder when your plan needs six, because each one is a separate install, a separate update and a separate place for something to go wrong.
Learnomy draws the line differently. Free includes checkout, memberships, coupons, certificates and instructor commissions. Pro is one yearly licence that adds the rest, such as drip, cohorts, learning paths, assignments and the gradebook. Count the extras your course needs before you decide which model costs less.
One real course in each product
Say you teach a ten lesson photography course with a final quiz, and you want a certificate and a monthly payment option.
In Learnomy Free the steps are:
- Create the course and add sections and lessons. Lessons can be video, audio, PDF, an embed, a download, a live session link or plain rich text.
- Build the quiz from six question types and choose a layout.
- Turn on the certificate and design it in the drag-and-drop designer.
- Add Stripe or PayPal keys and set a one-time price or a recurring plan.
- Publish, then test with the built-in test gateway before real money moves.
In LearnPress you build the course in its course builder, which is solid, and sell it with the default payment methods. For the certificate, drip or extra gateways, the vendor’s listing points you to add-ons. Check the vendor’s site for exactly which ones your plan needs.
Time, hosting and skills
Neither plugin asks for special skills to launch. The cost is in upkeep. More add-ons means more things to keep in step with each WordPress update, and more licences to renew on different dates.
Learnomy stores its data in dedicated tables, which helps once a catalogue and a student list grow. That is a design choice we made for scale, not a promise that every host will feel fast, so pick hosting that suits your traffic. A site with a few hundred students runs happily on ordinary managed WordPress hosting.
LearnPress has the longer history, and that shows up in the supply of themes. Its listing names premium education themes and two free ones. If you want a ready-made theme built around its templates, there are more choices there than we can match today. Learnomy has far fewer themes sold specifically for it, so plan to test it against the theme you already use.
Where student data lives
Both plugins run on your own WordPress site, so student records sit in your database and not on a vendor’s servers. The question is what you can do with that data.
In Learnomy, a student can request an export of their data, and an erase request deletes learner data across the tables that hold it. Orders and audit records are kept but unlinked from the person, because tax and accounting rules usually require them. You can also read everything through the REST API with a token, which is handy for a reporting tool or a spreadsheet.
If you rely on LearnPress add-ons, check each one’s data handling separately. An add-on you installed two years ago may store things in its own way, and a privacy request has to cover all of it.
Moving over from LearnPress
There is no importer for LearnPress. Our importer reads LearnDash, Tutor LMS and LifterLMS only, so a LearnPress site is rebuilt by hand or scripted.
For a small catalogue, hand rebuilding is the honest answer. Copy the lesson text, re-upload or re-embed media, and recreate quizzes. A course with a dozen lessons usually takes an afternoon. LearnPress’s own export and import feature is described in its listing as a way to move courses between sites, so do not expect Learnomy to open its files.
For a large catalogue, write a small script. Read the course data out of your LearnPress database and create the matching courses, lessons and quizzes in Learnomy through the REST API, or through WP-CLI if you prefer to run it on the server. Test on a staging copy first. A checklist that has worked for us:
- Export a list of courses, sections and lessons with their order.
- Rebuild one course by hand to learn the shape.
- Script the rest, creating everything as drafts.
- Add students in bulk by pasting emails or uploading a CSV.
- Set prices, then compare three courses against the old site.
- Redirect old course URLs before you switch over.
Community, reviews and a test plan
LearnPress lists BuddyPress and bbPress integration among its free add-ons, plus a wishlist and course reviews. If your academy lives inside a BuddyPress community, that is a point worth weighing.
Learnomy has reviews and ratings in Free, an instructor question inbox on lessons, announcements to enrolled students and email plus in-app notifications with a delivery log. Community features beyond that come from BuddyNext, which pairs with Learnomy on one site and shows things like course completions in the activity feed. We do not ship forums or a wishlist in the plugin itself.
What to test before you decide
A feature list will not tell you how either plugin feels with your own material. Give yourself one evening on a staging copy and check these points with a real course:
- Buy the course with a test payment and read the email the student receives.
- Take the quiz on a phone, and close the tab halfway to see what happens.
- Add a second instructor and follow a sale through to their earnings.
- Deactivate the plugin and see what remains behind, and how clean the data is.
The last one is easy to forget. Knowing how a plugin leaves your site tells you how hard a future move would be.
Who should not switch
Stay on LearnPress if a theme you love is built around it, or if you depend on one of its regional payment add-ons. Its listing names several gateways for specific countries, and Learnomy’s built-in checkout is Stripe and PayPal, with WooCommerce available as a gateway for anything else.
Stay if your site is stable and your add-on bill is small. Rebuilding a working academy only to save a few licence fees is rarely a good trade.
Move if you keep hitting the next add-on, or if you are about to launch and want certificates, memberships and commissions available on day one without extra purchases.