The combined power of the Internet and education has led to the development of online education fields such as eLearning course websites, online classrooms, distance learning through video conferencing, etc,. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, virtual learning has become the new normal in people’s lives. There is a myriad of online courses that are available online for people from all walks of life.
If you want to create online courses, now is the right time to become an expert and educate others via online courses. All you need is MasterStudy LMS (Learning Management System) installed on your website. As one of the smartest WordPress LMS plugins, it can help you create and sell online courses while providing various tools to manage the course content.
If you are new to WordPress, you should know that creating a WordPress website will take less than 5 minutes and you can install the LMS plugin and its setup with few more minutes.
What is MasterStudy LMS?
MasterStudy LMS is a free Learning Management System that runs on the WordPress platform to create eLearning websites with online courses, quizzes, certificates, and more. The MasterStudy LMS plugin is developed by Stylemixthemes and has all the features you need to create, manage, and sell online courses, integrate with online classrooms, and conduct webinars.
Using this LMS plugin, you can create interactive online courses and lessons with the help of videos, images, and graphs. Not just that, it is also multilingual in nature and thus, helps you with translating the website content for a localized experience.
It is compatible with WordPress 4.6 and above. It is available in both Free in both Pro version. Since the full-power of the MasterStudy LMS plugin is available in the Pro version, we will see the features available in the premium plugin in this review.
Create Responsive Tables in WordPress for Free:
In an eCourse website, your course content could have a lot of content inside tables. A great news is that its easy to create responsive tables in WordPress for free with the Tablesome plugin.
MasterStudy LMS Features for Course Creators
Simplified Online Course Creation
With MasterStudy LMS plugin, you can create various kinds of educational content for online consumers and make it available in the most user-friendly formats. Whether it is about adding lessons or topics to a course or publishing announcements, you can do it all with this feature-rich plugin.
Create New Courses from the Frontend Course Builder
It gives you an ‘Add New Course’ button in the front-end with ‘Admin panel or Profile page’ for Instructors. You add create and edit new courses, new course categories, description, featured image, curriculum, lessons, quiz, and more.
Intuitive Interface for Backend Management
Another striking feature you get with this LMS plugin is its simplified backend panel. It has a super convenient course builder and drag-and-drop tools to make it easy for you to create courses. Alongside this, its LMS settings are easy to navigate, thus helping you understand its function properly.
Complete Course Management
MasterStudy LMS plugin has been designed with features that help in handling the courses once they are life. With this plugin, you can:
- Offer trial courses
- Assess a student’s performance in terms of attendance, course completion, and other parameters
- Offer courses in bundles or packages to earn more.
- Assign co-instructors to share work responsibilities
- Create and award certificates
- Disable access to the subsequent course sections unless the previous ones are completed (also known as a content drip)
- Conduct live streaming for lessons, and more
Advanced Quiz Creation
With pre-defined quiz sections included in your courses, you can enhance learner engagement pretty easily. This can be made possible with quiz options that come under this plugin. You can do the following with interest quizzes in your course:
- Create question categories/types
- Set up automated quiz results
- Allow/disallow quiz retakes
- Set time limits and passing marks
Add Modules Via MasterStudy LMS Shortcodes
Being an online educator, you need to add a wide array of online course modules to your courses. The process of adding key LMS features becomes simpler with MasterStudy LMS shortcodes. You can set the attributes in these shortcodes to use modules and control their appearances. With the shortcodes, you can add elements such as Search Box, Courses Carousel, Courses Categories, Courses Grid, Featured Teacher, Instructors Carousel, Recent Courses, Course Bundles, Certificate checker. and more.
Easy To Sell Online Courses
Next to creating an online, simple to complex, you need to sell it through your website. MasterStudy LMS plugin makes that selling aspect simpler and much easier. You can choose between different pricing models or monetization methods to earn money.
Multiple Ways to Monetize Site
With MasterStudy LMS plugin, you can monetize the educational website in several ways, not limited to selling courses. With this plugin, you can set up different online payment gateways, including Stripe and PayPal, to receive instant one-time and recurring payments.
Alongside, you can do the following using this LMS plugin:
- Sell one or more online courses under membership plans
- Create an ecommerce-like experience for students to buy courses to get access to the restricted content
- Manage payment configurations to receive either one-time or recurring payments
- Earn money through Udemy affiliate program by offering their courses on your site
MasterStudy LMS – Integrations
- bbPress plugin for leaner forums and enable learners to post, view, and engage over topics related to the courses,
- BuddyPress plugin to create a social learner community,
- GamiPress plugin to gamify, and give digital rewards,
- Paid Membership Pro plugin for creating memberships and subscriptions, and
- WooCommerce plugin (Only in Pro) for additional payment methods and checkout.
MasterStudy LMS – Google Classroom Integration
MasterStudy LMS – Zoom Integration
Tip To Increase Learner Enrollment in Your Courses:
New users would have questions in their mind before enrolling into your courses even if you have a free trial. The simplest way to increase learner enrollment in to your courses is to create an FAQ section for each of your courses and if your website is a learning platform like Udemy you would need a self-help knowledge base with answers to common questions asked about your site.
MasterStudy LMS Features for Learners
Intuitive Interface for Learners
This plugin has an interactive interface that makes it easier for the Learners (end-users) to view the details of available courses, including cost, and course type. Having such an interface is crucial to engage the users before they decide on enrolling in a course.
Message Boards
It comes with message boards to create an interactive environment amongst students and course creators. The students, on one hand, can ask questions to the course creator and interact for answers.
Comment Sections
This plugin helps in adding a comment section in the courses for students to ask more specific questions related to the lessons/topics.
Private Messaging System
It also provides a messaging system for interaction between the Learners/Students.
User Profiles for Students
These profiles include details of course progress, quiz scores, and membership plans for students.
Course Wishlist
Many students check for courses and prefer making a list before joining them all as per their preferences. The course wishlist helps them in selecting a course(s) for later purchase.
Also See: the Best LMS Software
MasterStudy Theme
If you buy the MasterStudy LMS theme from ThemeForest, it is a very good deal because you get it for $69, and you get MasterStudy Pro ($55) + WPBakery ($45) + Revolution Slider ($29) = $129 worth of plugins + plus the LMS theme.
Also See: the Best WordPress Education Theme for eLearning
Comparison Table for MasterStudy LMS – Free Vs Pro
MasterStudy Pro Pricing:
Other than the MasterStudy theme that comes with a Theme + MasterStudy Pro plugin that is sold for $69.
- $54.99 – for a Single Site
- $99.99 – for 5 Sites
- $149.99 – for 25 Sites
You get 1-year updates and support for all the plans. Also, there is a 14 days Refund Policy.
MasterStudy LMS – Reviews
MasterStudy LMS Comparison with Other WordPress LMS plugins
1. MasterStudy LMS Vs LearnDash
LearnDash is a popular WordPress LMS plugin that comes with several intuitive features required to offer online courses for higher education and professional training. Both the WordPress LMS plugins are good for creating course websites but with different pros and cons.
LearnDash is costlier, comes with more powerful features such as Test management, Video progression, Automation, and more. LearnDash also comes with many 3rd party add-ons and compatible themes such as Uncanny Toolkit, Instructor Roles add-on, and many more. The WooCommerce integration with LearnDash is much more powerful and gives you more options than MasterStudy.
MasterStudy LMS has a free option that is not available with LearnDash. It has Google Classroom integration and native Zoom webinar integration that is not available in LearnDash.
Also See: the Best LearnDash WordPress Themes
2. MasterStudy LMS Vs Lifter LMS
Lifter LMS is yet another powerful WordPress LMS plugin to create online courses on WordPress sites. It is highly flexible in terms of the type of content you can create. Whether it is a small online course or a degree level program, Lifter LMS plugin does its part to engage users pretty well.
Lifter LMS has more features than MasterStudy such as group and group management, custom fields, private areas, and 3rd party add-ons such as Affiliate WP, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Formidable, Twilo, and more. It is also costlier and charges $99 for the premium version. Since it has more features it has more sophistication and has a bigger learning curve
MasterStudy LMS has better teacher-student interaction features, and it more user-friendly with better UI.
3. MasterStudy LMS Vs LearnPress
LearnPress is a very popular free WordPress LMS plugin that you can use to create and sell online courses through your website. Alongside this, it gives you the option to add/purchase premium features for improved functionalities. It has been designed with fully customizable settings related to creating, editing, and managing courses.
LearnPress LMS has many theme options that you can use to create a professional educational site and priced more or less similar to the MasterStudy plugin. The free plugins allow you to import and export Course content from other LMS Software.
MasterStudy also has similar features to LearnPress but offers Certificates feature that is not available LearnPress free version.
4. MasterStudy LMS Vs Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS is yet another free WordPress LMS plugin packed with advanced features needed for the development of online courses. There is no limit to the lessons you can create for your courses with its drag and drop course builder.
Tutor LMS has advanced reports and purchase history, integrates with Easy Digital Downloads, and compatible with the Gutenberg editor. BuddyPress integration is only available in the Pro version.
Tutor LMS Pro plugin is very costly compared to MasterStudy Pro and also the themes are also costly.
MasterStudy free version gives you many more features that Tutor LMS. So, if you only want a free LMS plugin then you should go for MasterStudy.
MasterStudy LMS – Is It Worth It?
As detailed above, various significant reasons make MasterStudy LMS plugin a better alternative to various other WordPress LMS plugins. It offers a whole lot of features in its free version and even more when upgraded to the premium version. As a course creator, what is most important for you is to decide on the specific features that you want to add to your courses and educational content site before you choose any WordPress LMS plugin.
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