Two editors, two ways of writing a lesson
The first thing you notice when you build a lesson is the editor. Sensei is built around the WordPress block editor. Lessons and quizzes are authored with the same blocks you use for pages, and Sensei Pro adds interactive blocks such as flashcards, image hotspots and task lists. If your team already thinks in blocks, this feels natural.
Learnomy keeps courses in its own tables, so a course is not a WordPress post. Lessons use a separate content editor, and each lesson has a content type: video, audio, PDF, embed, download, live session link or rich text. You do not get the full block library inside a lesson, but you do get a course builder where the curriculum, sections and lesson types are the main objects.
Neither approach is better on its face. Try writing one real lesson in each, with a video, a short text and a download, and notice which editor you would happily use every week.
Selling a course
Sensei’s selling route is its Pro plan connected to WooCommerce, with support for WooCommerce Subscriptions, Payments, Memberships and Affiliates. If you already run a WooCommerce shop, that route reuses your tax setup, your payment gateways and your order screens in one place.
In Learnomy Free, Stripe and PayPal checkout is built in. You paste your keys, set a price on the course and publish. WooCommerce can also act as a payment gateway, collecting money and granting access once the order is Completed, but courses are never WooCommerce products.
That difference decides the type of site each suits. A shop that sells shirts and courses will like Sensei. A site that only sells learning will usually find our setup shorter. See our page on selling courses with WooCommerce for the way the two can still work together.
Teaching tools beyond the basics
Sensei Free covers courses, lessons and quizzes with several question types, including file upload and free response, and a free certificates extension. Learning Mode gives students a distraction-free view of a lesson. The vendor’s Pro plan adds scheduled drip, a quiz timer, an ordering question type, groups and cohorts, and co-teachers.
Learnomy Free has six question types and two layouts, a per-quiz attempt cap, an essay grading inbox and certificates with a public check page and drag-and-drop designer. Pro adds more question types, scheduled drip, cohorts, learning paths, assignments and a gradebook with CSV export.
Both place drip and cohorts in a paid tier, so the comparison is fair there. Where Learnomy goes further is memberships and instructor commissions, which are in Free. Where Sensei goes further is a free file-upload question and its tie to a store you may already run.
A student’s first week and where records live
A student buys through your checkout, gets an email receipt, and arrives on the course page. In Learnomy, the outline shows what is open and what is locked, preview lessons stay readable, and a progress bar updates as they complete lessons. A quiz saves answers as it goes and resumes at the same question after a drop in connection. At the end, a certificate arrives with a page anyone can open to verify it.
In Sensei, Learning Mode strips the page down to the lesson, which many students like. The purchase and account screens come from WooCommerce, so they look like the rest of your shop. If those screens need a style change, you work in the WooCommerce settings and theme.
Where records live
Both run on your own WordPress site. Learnomy stores enrolments, attempts, orders and progress in its own tables and reads them through a REST API with a token. Export and erase tools are built in for personal data requests, with financial and audit records retained but unlinked.
With Sensei and WooCommerce, order data lives in the shop’s tables and course progress in Sensei’s. Privacy tools in WordPress cover both, but you should check each extension you add.
Moving over from Sensei
There is no importer for Sensei. Our importer reads LearnDash, Tutor LMS and LifterLMS only, so you either rebuild by hand or script it.
Because Sensei lessons are blocks, copy the text and media, not the markup. A script can read Sensei’s posts and call the Learnomy REST API or WP-CLI to create courses and lessons as drafts. Prices and subscriptions are the part to plan slowly, since they live in WooCommerce. A staging checklist:
- Back up and clone the site.
- List courses, lessons, quizzes and the product linked to each.
- Rebuild one course and test it as a student.
- Script or repeat the rest as drafts.
- Add current students by pasting emails or uploading a CSV.
- Recreate prices, plans and certificates, then test a purchase.
Support, the long view and quizzes
Sensei comes from Automattic, which brings a steady release pace and the weight of a large company. Plenty of owners value that. Its free plugin also has a block theme made for courses, so a fresh site can look good with little work.
Learnomy comes from a smaller team, and we would rather say so than hide it. What we offer in return is a plugin whose free tier is complete enough to run a business, a REST API that covers the whole data model, and a Pro licence that is a single yearly decision.
Whichever way you lean, run both on staging for a weekend. Pay special attention to the setup path for a new site. Count the steps from install to your first sale, including the store plugin if one is needed, and compare the totals.
Quizzes in a real course
Sensei’s free question types include file upload and free response, which suit a creative course where students hand in work. Learnomy covers that with essay questions and an instructor inbox, and Pro adds assignments for longer pieces of work. Sensei Pro adds a quiz timer and an ordering question. In Learnomy, a per-question timer exists on the Focused layout and the timer auto-advances there only.
If your course ends with a practical exam, try the exact format you plan to use in both, with a student account.
Who should not switch
Stay with Sensei if WooCommerce is the centre of your business, if you want the block editor for lessons, or if you like having the store and the LMS from the same maker. Stay if basic quizzes and the free certificate extension are enough.
Switch if you want to sell courses without running a store plugin, or you need memberships and commissions in the free tier. Learnomy has no built-in live video, so a course built on live classes should look elsewhere.