In this article we round up the 10 Best Education LMS (Learning Management Systems) WordPress Themes to help you pivot your education business online. Due to the pandemic, most schools around the world remain shut and education can only continue online via video calls and of course through Learning Management Systems (LMS). The importance of LMS cannot be understated as it acts like an online classroom, bringing in accessibility of video lectures to question practices/quizzes and attendance taking amongst many other needs.
LMS WordPress themes are a unique category of design and management tools for WordPress website that has gone from a quiet niche product to a widely used mainstream tool, and a category of WordPress Theme products that is growing in sales tremendously.
Why are LMS Themes becoming so popular?
For years now, schools and businesses have been experimenting with models of learning that reach beyond the classroom so no matter where the learner is, the course material and the teacher can reach them. It was originally an effort to provide greater educational opportunities while keeping costs in check, and for those companies in the business of educating, it was seen as a way to expand the student population well beyond the limits of the physical campus.
The Remote LMS Education Journey
As they began this journey, they quickly realized how complex managing remote education can be. That complexity begins with the difference in the way each learner progress through course materials and continues with a myriad of resource planning and scheduling issues. Then there is the actual delivery of the course material, the tracking of each student’s progress through that material, and the assessment of each student’s success.
They built systems, retrained educators, grew the technical infrastructure, all with an eye toward their original concept of what remote learning could be and then disaster struck, the covid-19 pandemic shut the world down and one of the most dramatic impacts of that shut down was the inability to educate students of all ages. The world went from university and business education to every level of education across entire societies.
Need for remote LMS platforms
What was complex but becoming more and more effective was suddenly pressed to its absolute limits and those that never imagined a need for remote learning platforms, websites, and distance learning materials were faced with the daunting task of building a remote learning platform and skillset practically from scratch.
WordPress Themes becomes a head-turning solution
Developers have been quietly delivering a range of WordPress LMS Themes that have been helping businesses and various other educators with tools for managing distance learning. These tools help get students registered (Onboarding). They help direct the learning experience for those students. They manage teaching and teacher resources. And, they manage all of the payment processes that are associated with private education programs at any level.
For a better understanding of what LMS Themes do check out this article from Sherry Gray at The Balance Small Business – What Is a Learning Management System?
Most importantly, these WordPress LMS Themes provide anyone with something to teach, the opportunity to effectively deliver that knowledge, and for students at every level to access the education they need for success.
The 10 Leading WordPress Theme Contenders Are?
Our Top 10 best education LMS WordPress themes have also changed dramatically given the challenges and opportunities created by the pandemic. The challenges are being met by a growing number of well-designed themes that help educators administer the entire educational process and it could change the way education is delivered, permanently.
As for opportunities, and this is not being callous, these themes are helping reach a growing population of remote learners that are hungry to learn but unable to spend time in a traditional school setting. This is either because of the lock-downs or simply because they didn’t know that remote learning was a real possibility.
Before we unveil our list, I can tell you, we have no horse in this race. Disclosure: we do not back any of these LMS WordPress Themes for profit and we don’t earn from any of these theme developers. Also, we aren’t even getting discounts.
We have also avoided reviewing anyone else top lists since those may have some built-in biases. Instead, we have based our review framework by first placing emphasis at the number of sales each of these WordPress LMS Themes has (as it means proven and tested) and we then we looked at the features provided by each wordpress theme. Last but not least, we considered the reputation each developer has for customer support (to take care of you in the after-sales journey).
Here are the results:
10 Best Education LMS WordPress Themes
10. Education Center | LMS Online University & School Courses Studying
4.65-Star – 1,918 Sales – 375 Comments
Designed to work at all education levels, this Education Center LMS WordPress Theme provides a wide range of support tools for both formal and informal program types. It also works well across a wide range of course types so you’ll find support for the three Rs and all of the other subjects commonly included in a liberal arts program.
It is suitable for both provide and public-school settings as well as private educat5ion and corporate education settings. This includes both paid and free programs, with membership settings that determine what course(s) will be available to each member and what cost, if any, each will pay for those courses.
Beyond its native capabilities, this LMS WordPress theme also integrates WP Bakery for page building and most importantly, education-related plugins like Course Builder, Advanced Quizzes, Lesson Timing & Schedules, Dynamic Forms, and Course Point, Awards, Certificates & Badges. Together, this delivers a complete LMS Theme well worth considering. It also integrates with WooCommerce (you might want to check out our top 15 best woocommerce addon plugins to enhance your LMS wordpress site) for paid courses.
The developer, ThemeREX is a Power Elite Author on Theme Forest with several products on the Theme Forest platform. This LMS theme was just updated (March 1, 2021), and has been consistently kept up to date with the latest releases of the WordPress and WooCommerce platforms. Support is provided directly by the author and on the Theme Forest support forum.
The cost of this there is $59, with 6 months of included support. That can be extended to 12 months for an additional $17.63.
Take some time and walk through their Live Preview. That will give you an excellent feel for how this works.
9. Eikra – Education WordPress Theme
4.84-Stars – 1,931 Sales – 768 Comments
This minimalist-styled LMS WordPress theme allows both educators and learners to stay focused on the learning process. That focus carries across to all levels of formal education and does equally well in an informal education setting too. It also delivers this experience in both paid and free-program environments.
The intention was to develop a single platform that included everything needed to deliver a rich remote learning experience and by all accounts, they have done an excellent job doing exactly that but what most people are saying is this is more than any single feature. The theme offers a complete feature set that lets you start building without having to chase additional tools.
In the process they have integrated Elementor for page building, Zoom for online classes and one-to-one learning, WooCommerce for payment and price management, along with tools for Curriculum Development, Lesson Planning, Quizzes, Reviews, and Scheduling. It also supports RTL (right to left) languages so you can offer courses in Arabic and other RTL languages
This theme was last updated on Theme Forest in January 2021 and continues to be kept fully up to date with WordPress and WooCommerce. Support is provided through their direct support ticketing system that you can reach from within WordPress or directly on their Theme Forest page.
The cost of this theme is $49 per site and that comes with 6 months of support. You can extend the support by an additional 6 months at the time of purchase for an additional $13.88.
They provide a full demo you can walkthrough.
8. Kingster – LMS Education For University, College and School
4.73-Star – 2,473 Sales – 282 Comments
The first thing that stands out about the Kingster LMS WordPress Theme is the fact that it comes from one of the most trusted theme developers in the world of WordPress and Theme Forest, with several products offered and according to their count, more than 160k customers that actively use their themes and plugins.
This wordpress theme is designed to make it easy to design and deliver courses online for college and university communities, so it is more narrowly focused than some of the others. They’ve included structures for more than 180 majors and minors so in that college setting, it can deliver at a standard that is at least equal to most major universities.
On the technical side, most of the course development and delivery functionality is native so you’ll have little or no need for any additional plugins. This even extends to the page builder they employ. It is a custom-built tool that comes exclusively with GoodLayers themes and is optimized to get the most from those themes. The one exception to this is the payment and pricing process that is delivered through integration with WooCommerce.
It comes with a wide variety of prebuilt demo sites that you can download to get you started. Of course, you’ll still have to build your courses but with these demos, you can jump into that practically out of the box since all of the design structure will be in place.
This theme is priced at $66. That comes with a 6-month service plan that can be extended to 12 months for an additional $20.25.
Support is offered directly by the team at GoodLayers but you can also get pre-sales help directly on the Theme Forest support forum.
You can check out their LMS WordPress Theme demos here. There are 7 in total to walk you through Kingster theme’s functionality.
7. Clever Course – Education / LMS
This is another in the LMS WordPress theme series from GoodLayers and once again, they have delivered a well-designed and widely functional LMS theme for everything from universities to grade schools, company education programs, and private coaching and training programs.
In this case, they’ve spent specific attention on the process of not just delivering but also creating online courses, including quizzes, assessments, progress tracking, full curriculum, and more.
It integrates payment processing with leading services like PayPal, Stripe, Pay Mill, Authorize, net (for credit cards), CloudPayments.eu. It also allows direct payment methods where the LMS admin can clear payments based on the receipts being sent. If you would be targeting students paying through different countries and currencies, the WooCommerce Currency Switcher plugins will help to make payment process a breeze.
While the majority will continue using this theme to support remote learning, this theme is just as comfortable in a traditional learning space where students and teachers are face-to-face and the LMS website simply replaces the traditional textbooks.
This theme employs the GoodLayers page builder, is WPML compatible, is responsive, and is fully up to date with the latest WordPress release.
The cost for a single site license includes 6 months of support for a total of $57. Support can be doubled for an additional $16.88
Support is delivered directly through GoodLayers and is highly rated. You can also reach them through the Theme Forest support forum but this is best used for presales questions. After the sale go to them directly and the service will be quicker.
They have several live demos you can review. They include an Instructor Backend, a Student Backend, a Transaction Backend, and a Test System. You can also watch a video walkthrough of the LMS Theme.
6. Course & LMS WordPress Theme | CBKit
4.85-Star – 4,434 Sales, 1,489 Comments
According to the author of this Course & LMS WordPress Theme, they designed this for ease of use with advanced functionality and especially high performance. Based on the review, they hit the bullseye on all three.
The focus of this wordpress theme is on building comprehensive courses that are both educational and engaging but with an eye toward online schools, coaches, trainers, and especially those offering specific programs like ESL and other courses that are commonly offered on a one-to-one basis. This theme can and is supported but is not specifically designed for colleges, universities, or grade schools.
The design allows for the inclusion of both text and video training, quizzes with multiple question types, certificate awarding, commenting, email notification, and various levels of subscription programs. It is integrated with BuddyPress for community communication and WooCommerce for payment and subscription management.
The built-in page builder is from WP Bakery and this LMS WordPress theme is fully compatible with WPML (WordPress Multi-Language).
It has been recently updated on Theme Forest and is kept up to date within WordPress through the standard update process. Support is offered directly through the author, ThimPress, or through the Theme Forest support forum.
The price for this Course & LMS WordPress Theme is set at $59 per site license and that covers the first 6 months of technical support. That support can be stretched to 12 months for an additional payment of $17.63.
There are 6 complete demos available for your review and they can be downloaded and installed on your site as a great starting point. Start though with the Live Preview and if you decide to buy, you can take time to decide which demo works best for you.
5. LMS WordPress Theme
4.78-Star – 5,5,08 Sales – 3,517 Comments
This LMS WordPress Theme lists itself as the #1 Word LMS theme on the market and while I’m not sure what that’s based on, this is a popular and powerful theme. It has support for all forms of online educations, at all education levels, and this includes support for individual online instructor sites.
Within the functions list, you’ll find lesson management course development, mock test and quizzes, webinar and video support, rank and progress tracking, course calendar and booking support, and more. Much of this has been recently updated in their latest release.
It integrates with many top-rated plugins as well. These include BuddyPress for forums, Event Calendar Pro for scheduling and booking (also see our best wordpress event booking appointment plugins), Visual Composer as the page builder, WooCommerce for product and payment management, and WPML for multi-language support. They also added integration with Google Classroom and ZOOM meetings.
Together, this takes this LMS WordPress theme to the level of a fully functional LMS platform that leaves nothing out of the mix but with all of the plugins, it will be a bit more expensive at the outset to take this route. Still, it remains a very strong contender.
They offer the opportunity to demo a fully functional backend but that does require a quick registration so they can email the credentials to you. You can also review a detailed Live Preview that will provide insights into all of the key functionality of this theme.
The cost of this LMS WordPress theme is $59 for a single site license that includes direct support from the author for 6 months. You can extend that to 123 months for an additional $17.63.
4. Academy – Learning Management Theme
4.61-Star – 6,484 Sales – 3,389 Comments
This Academy LMS WordPress Theme is on the list of top 10 LMS Themes because it is widely used and well respected but the reality is, Theme Forest is discontinuing sales support for this and any other theme that includes built-in functionality they consider to be at risk for hacking. Having said that, it is and will continue to be available directly from the developer, ThemeX.
This is specially designed for small schools or teachers offering specialized courses and tutorial programs and includes course development, scheduling, built-in functions for file and media sharing, progress tracking, registrations, and payment management, quizzing, and rating.
From a styling perspective, this theme uses a more traditional options panel where you’ll be able to accomplish all of your styling requirements but it does not come with a modern page builder. For those that are new to building a website, this could be a real drawback but for those that are experienced, the results will still be excellent.
The cost for this LMS WordPress theme is just $29 for a single site license and that does include 6 months of support but extending that through Theme Forest is probably not a viable option, even though a price is $6.38 is listed.
Their Live Preview is available here.
3. Education WordPress Theme – Masterstudy
4.8-Star – 12,515 Sales – 5,126 Comments
This is one of the most widely used LMS WordPress theme available today and with functionality that covers course building, various forms of quizzing, content delivery management, financial controls both on the income and expense side, links to Zoom, and a solution that requires no additional investment in plugins, it’s easy to see why this Masterstudy Education WordPress Theme is so popular.
Page construction is done with Elementor or WP Bakery, both included as part of the theme installation and both in their free versions. It also links up well with WooCommerce, also installed as part of the theme. It comes fully translated in eight languages, also as part of the installation so you’ll be set.
For community building and teamwork projects, this theme integrates with bbPress and BuddyPress, 2 community forum platforms that allow real-time communication as well as support for private messaging so teachers and students can work one-on-one. Masterstudy even includes a points system so incentives can be built into the curriculum.
This theme has been recently updated on Theme Forest and continues to be fully compatible with the latest versions of WordPress, WooCommerce, and all of the other tools it has been integrated with. It is also fully responsive and functions well on all of the leading browsers.
The cost for a single site license is $69. That gives you a 6-month service period. You can extend that to 12 months by paying an additional $21,68 at the time of purchase.
There is a comprehensive demo, including 15 unique demo versions you can dig into by Visiting MasterStudy.
2. WPLMS Learning Management System for WordPress
4.5-Star – 25,358 Sales – 15,344 Comments
First, this WPLMS WordPress Theme reaches everyone, regardless of the device they are using, and that includes Desktops, Tablets, and Smartphones. Then, it has distinct functionality to meet the needs of students, teachers, businesses, home-schooling parents, colleges, universities, grade schools, and private tutoring programs.
They claim it is the fastest LMS on the market and based on reviews, that appears to be a true claim. It is also designed to work both online and offline so those with limited online access still have access to the learning tools they need.
Course presentations are another apparent highlight of the LMS Theme for students and the course development functionality comes with high praise from educators. It tracks achievements, manages certificates, allows easy co-authoring of content, makes scheduling a breeze, integrates with Zoom, includes a comprehensive helpdesk environment, and provides the tools needed to create a comprehensive knowledge base for support.
Registrations, purchasing, and payment processing are handled through the integration of this LMS theme and WordPress. Building pages is handled with the integration of Elementor. Forms management is done with Gravity Forms.
The LMS Theme and all of the integrated components are fully compatible with the latest version of WordPress and was last updated on Theme Forest in January 2021.
The single license cost is $75 and that comes with support for 6 months. Extend that to 12 months for an additional $23.63. Support is provided directly by the developer, VibeThemes, and through the Theme Forest forum.
Take some time to go through their Live Demo read through some of the articles that talk about how their LMS can be best used.
1. Education WordPress Theme | Eduma
4.87-Star – 29,635 Sales – 10,976 Comments
This is the last on our list, Eduma, and based on both sales and feedback, it is the #1 LMS WordPress Theme on the market today. It is specifically designed to provide all of the functionality required to deliver a complete education solution for every type of remote learning. It is fast and fully optimized for performance so both teachers and students will enjoy a smooth learning experience that avoids the lags that can impact so many other themes and websites.
Building the site is made reasonably easy with WP Bakery and with more than 20 demo sites ready to download, you could be fully up and running very quickly. You just need to focus on your educational content and let the theme handle the rest for you.
The payment and registration process is handled through WooCommerce so you’ll also be able to accept a wide range of payment methods, across various countries with relative ease.
Finally, this theme is fully compatible with every other leading plugin/add-on you could possibly want to include on your LMS site.
All of this considered it’s easy to see why it is so highly rated.
A single site license costs $69, which includes 6 months of service. You can extend that to 12 months for an additional $21.38. Support is handled directly through ThimPress, the developer, or through Theme Forest. For a full demo visit here.
Which is the Best Education LMS WordPress Theme?
There are a wealth of great choices when it comes to LMS WordPress Themes, so narrowing this down to just 10 quite likely leave out some others you may way to consider but, every one of these will do at least as good, making this list a very good starting point for your consideration.
My personal choice is Kingster, number 8 on our list, not because it does any more than any of the others. In terms of function, it is comparable. I lean toward this one because I’ve had direct experience with this developer and their tech support and they’ve never yet failed me. In my book, that is worth more when it comes to getting things done.
But don’t take my word for it. Review the list, check out the demos and maybe even send some presale questions to the various support teams and see which one rises to the top of your list. If you would still like to review more LMS wordpress themes, you may consider hopping over to cloudways, athemes, colorlib and envato for another 40-60 themes probably!
