How the free cores really differ
The usual summary is “LifterLMS sells add-ons, Learnomy does not”. That is too neat, so here is the fairer version. LifterLMS’s free listing is generous. It names drip content, prerequisites, course tracks, memberships, certificates and achievement badges, multi-instructor courses, a gradebook and reporting, and a REST API among the things in the free plugin. That is a lot to get for nothing.
The paid side is where it grows: advanced quizzes, assignments, groups, cohorts, private areas, advanced coupons, gifts and the payment gateway add-ons all sit in add-ons or bundles. The listing is also a little unclear about whether Stripe and PayPal come with the core or as add-ons, so read the vendor’s pages before you plan a launch around either answer.
Learnomy’s free plugin covers a different set. Checkout with Stripe and PayPal, memberships, coupons, instructor commissions, certificates with a public check page and a drag-and-drop designer are all in Free. Drip, cohorts and assignments are Pro. The overlap is large, and the choice often comes down to which extras you reach for first.
Access plans against pricing models
LifterLMS sells access through plans attached to a course or a membership. A single course can carry several plans, for example a one-time price and a payment plan. It is a flexible, well-liked model and long-time users know it well.
Learnomy attaches a pricing model to each course instead. A course can be free, one-time, recurring, fixed-term, members-only, available either one-time or through a membership, invite-only, or closed. Closed is for selling somewhere else and granting access here, by email, CSV or a signed incoming webhook. Invite-only courses are never listed for sale, and self-enrolment is switched off, which suits a classroom or a client group.
Neither model is better in the abstract. If you love building several plans per course, LifterLMS will feel familiar. If you prefer to pick how a course is sold from a short list, ours is quicker to set up.
A student’s first week
The student journey is where the two feel most alike, since both give a dashboard, a course page and progress tracking. In Learnomy a student sees an outline with locked and open rows, completes lessons, takes timed or untimed quizzes that save as they go, and receives a certificate that anyone can verify on a public page.
LifterLMS leans into engagement. Its engagement tools and community add-ons are where it is ahead of us, and the vendor’s site describes them in detail. If emails triggered by milestones, badges and social learning are central to your course, test those first. We have transactional emails and announcements, but no email automation sequences.
Running costs in time and skills
Both are plain WordPress plugins and need no special hosting. The ongoing cost is attention.
With LifterLMS you decide which bundle or add-ons to hold, and you keep each one updated. With Learnomy you choose between Free and one Pro licence. Pro is a yearly licence, so it renews, and you should put the date in a calendar.
Skills are similar. Both reward someone who is comfortable in WordPress settings. If you plan custom work, the Learnomy REST API covers courses, lessons, quizzes, enrolments, certificates, memberships and transactions, and LifterLMS also lists a REST API.
Moving over from LifterLMS
Learnomy ships an importer for LifterLMS, and it is worth a staging run. It reads categories, courses, sections, lessons, quizzes and questions. Lessons come across flat inside their sections, because LifterLMS has no sub-lesson level to map. Video and audio embeds become video and audio lessons, a free lesson becomes a preview lesson, and a course prerequisite is carried over.
You can also bring enrolments and progress, so students who completed a course stay completed. Here is what you rebuild by hand:
- Access plans and memberships. The importer does not read them.
- Prices. Courses arrive free and you set prices after.
- Certificates and engagement rules.
- Quiz attempt scores, since only pass and complete status carries over.
- Orders and coupons.
The importer never alters your LifterLMS data, and each run can be undone.
Staging checklist
- Back up, then clone the site to staging.
- Leave LifterLMS active so the importer can read it.
- Run the preview and note any skipped question types.
- Import content, then enrolments and progress.
- Recreate each access plan as a pricing model or membership plan.
- Rebuild certificates and test one purchase with the test gateway.
Money features and one more check
Money features are where owners differ most, so list the ones you will use. LifterLMS’s listing puts advanced coupons and gifts in paid add-ons. Learnomy Free has coupons with percentage or fixed amounts, usage limits and date windows. Gift codes need Pro and its Membership extension, which is worth knowing before you plan a holiday promotion.
For instructors, Learnomy Free splits revenue with a configurable commission and a request-based withdrawal queue, and Pro adds automatic Stripe Connect payouts. Refunds are handled with a ledger, so a refund that reaches an instructor’s earnings is clawed back.
Tax is simple on our side: one flat rate applies to Stripe and PayPal checkout, and anything regional is handled through WooCommerce as a gateway. If you need per-region tax rules, plan for that early.
One more check before you commit
Look at how each plugin treats a student who buys the wrong thing. Can you move them from one course to another, refund part of the price and keep their progress? These rare cases take up a surprising share of support time, and they are easy to test with two dummy accounts on a staging site.
Who should not switch
Stay if you built your business around LifterLMS engagements, group features or an add-on we do not have. Stay if your access plans are intricate and working. Rebuilding them is the longest part of any move.
Switch if you are about to pay for another add-on to get something Learnomy Free already does, or if you want one licence to cover advanced features. If you are starting fresh, run both on a test site with the same sample course and see which one your instructors prefer.