Launch Your Online Course on WordPress Without the Platform Tax

Default to TutorLMS for new launches. It has the cleanest student dashboard, the best free tier, and a Pro license that’s a one-time payment instead of recurring. LearnDash is my pick when you need deep ProPanel reporting, ProQuiz, or you’re integrating with WooCommerce Memberships. LifterLMS goes on the shortlist when the client wants the social/community features without paying for BuddyBoss separately. I’ll recommend the right one based on your course count, audience size, and integration needs in the discovery call.

Three reasons: ownership, margin, and SEO. Teachable takes 5–10% of every sale on lower tiers. Thinkific charges $99–$499/month before transaction limits hit. Kajabi starts at $149/month with caps on contacts and products. WordPress with a one-time-license LMS plugin runs you under $500/year in hosting + plugins and keeps 100% of revenue. You also get real SEO control, real analytics, and a site you actually own. The trade-off is that nobody on a course platform is going to optimize your Core Web Vitals for you. That’s the part I handle.

Starter ships in 2 weeks. Standard ships in 4 weeks. Enterprise depends on scope but typically 6–10 weeks. Timelines assume your video/PDF content is ready before kickoff. If content production is still in flight, the build runs in parallel — I set up the platform and structure while you finish recording, then drop content in once it’s ready.

Yes. Migration is part of the Standard and Enterprise packages. Process: export your courses, students, and revenue history from the source platform; recreate the course structure in the WordPress LMS; import students with a password-reset email; preserve enrollment dates and progress where the source export allows it; redirect old course URLs to the new ones with 301s so SEO and email links still resolve. Most migrations take 1–2 weeks depending on student count and number of courses.

Yes. Stripe and PayPal are configured by default. WooCommerce handles cart, coupons, subscriptions, and order receipts. EU VAT is handled via WooCommerce’s Tax options for digital goods, with VAT-MOSS or IOSS depending on your business location. US sales tax for digital goods is configured per state where required. If your accounting needs Quaderno, Xero, or QuickBooks integration, that gets scoped in.

Every Standard and Enterprise build includes a Core Web Vitals pass before handover. Average load time across the LMS sites I’ve built is 1.1 seconds. The stack: a lightweight block theme (Marketers Delight or a custom one), aggressive image optimization, server-side caching, lazy-loaded video, and zero page builders adding DOM weight. LMS sites are heavier than blog sites by nature (videos, quizzes, dashboards), but they shouldn’t crawl. The course player loads in under 2 seconds on a 4G connection or it doesn’t ship.

Standard and Enterprise builds include a WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility pass: keyboard navigation, focus styles, alt text on images, color contrast, ARIA labels on the course player and quiz controls. Course platforms get sued more than blogs do — if you sell to US or EU customers, the European Accessibility Act started enforcement on June 28, 2025 and US ADA lawsuits hit 5,114 in 2025. Building accessible from day one costs less than retrofitting after a complaint.

Enterprise includes 90 days of post-launch support. After that, ongoing maintenance is a separate retainer ($150–$500/month depending on site complexity) covering plugin updates, security monitoring, daily backups, and bug fixes. You can also self-manage — every site I ship comes with a Loom walkthrough, written runbook, and access to the same monitoring dashboard I use during the build. Most clients self-manage Starter sites and retain me for Standard or Enterprise.