This article serves as an all-in-one guide for everything you should know about the powerful WordPress plugin, Tutor LMS.
This tool simplifies the process of managing and creating online courses and provides everything a course creator needs.
Whether you intend to use the plugin as an independent instructor, or part of an educational institution or training center, Tutor LMS is packed with features for an eLearning platform.
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What is Tutor LMS? A Review of WordPress LMS Plugin
Tutor LMS is a full-circle WordPress LMS plugin designed to create and sell courses through a simple drag and drop builder. It provides you with everything you need to make challenging quizzes, insightful reports and stats, and engaging lessons.
One of Tutor LMS’s best features is that it provides users with the ability to create courses from the front and backend. It is a first-of-its-kind plugin, allowing users to publish courses directly without diving into the backend.
TutorLMS seamlessly integrates with other add-ons to create a fully-customized educational experience for students and course creators. With Tutor LMS, you can:
- Build, launch, and sell online courses on your WordPress website
- Create interactive courses with certificates, announcements, and quizzes.
- Employ multiple instructors for the course
- Host multiple courses
- Obtain advanced reports on all your course activities
- Build your course with a convenient drag & drop builder
Who is Tutor LMS For?
Tutor LMS is a user-friendly tool for anyone looking to create a fully-functional website. It doesn’t matter if you’re not familiar with coding; the TutorLMS team has designed the plugin to help anyone, including:
- eLearning Platforms
- Individual course creators
- WordPress developers
- Online business owners
- Online Schools
- Private training & schooling institutions
- Human Resources & Corporate Learning
- Private schools & kindergartens
- Certification programs
Tutor LMS Key Features
1. Drag & Drop Frontend Course Builder
Tutor LMS has an intuitive course builder that lets you create courses and add details, such as attachments, topics, summaries, course benefits, and announcements. You have the flexibility to create courses from the frontend and backend. Here’s what you can do with this excellent course builder:
- Create course titles & descriptions
- Select a course category (i.e., marketing, programming, psychology)
- Select the course type and add pricing tags. When you enter the price, your course automatically appears as a product.
- Set the course difficulty level. (Beginner, Intermediate, Expert)
- Add an introduction video and course thumbnail image.
- Add course topics and lessons using drag & drop.
- Add assignments and quizzes.
- Define course benefits and duration
- Determine target audiences for clarity
- Provide an overview of the material
- Create announcements for your students
- Upload course attachments in almost any file format, including video, audio, and other media types.
- List the prerequisites for your course.
To create your course, go to the creator dashboard and click on “Add a New Course.”
As we mentioned above, the builder is easy-to-use and quite intuitive.
Once you’ve added the course description, you can edit the course contents by adding topics, assignments, and lessons.
The course builder offers several other functions that are easy to access and implement.
2. Feature-Packed Quiz Creator
Quizzes are an excellent way to enrich the student experience. They are a fun, challenging way for students to practice their learning and test what they’ve learned. Tutor LMS comes with an excellent quiz creator through which you can create quizzes for your students. With this creator, you can add ten types of questions to your quizzes. These types are:
You can choose from preset questions or add questions manually through the quiz creator.
You can also add a description or automatically highlight each question’s marks and determine whether you want to make this visible for the students.
Additionally, you can randomize the quiz question order, set a time limit, and restrict the number of passing grades or attempts. These features make Tutor LMS’s quizzing system fun and easily one of the most full-featured available.
3. Reports & Analytics
With Tutor LMS, you can view reports and analytics to gain insight into your best and worst-performing courses and make content adjustments to boost outreach.
You can also track your courses’ searches, reviews, stats, and popularity using these advanced filters.
The reports dashboard will also display questions people leave about your courses.
Note that the Tutor Report is only available with Tutor LMS Pro.
This feature shows insights such as student enrolment, course sales overview, and a bird’s-eye view of all students on your platform.
4. Unlimited Courses & Instructors
As a tutor, offering multiple courses to your potential students can help you create an immersive and enriching experience and also provide you the opportunity to diversify your course content and portfolio. You can also add multiple courses to offer holistic content on any topic.
To enable the “Tutor Multi Instructor” feature, here’s what you need to do:
- Visit Tutor LMS Dashboard
- Turn on Tutor “Multi Instructor” in Addons, and you’ll get the option to add more instructors to your courses
5. Assignments
Assignments are an excellent way for tutors to provide learning and teaching opportunities for their students to learn about different events, questions, topics, and ideas. With Tutor LMS Pro’s Assignment feature, you can create an engaging learning experience and assign tasks to students based on every topic inside the course content.
To use this feature, you need to:
- Enable the extension.
- Click the “Create Assignments” button.
- Add parameters, such as attachments, total points, minimum pass points, how many files students are allowed to upload, and maximum size limit.
Additionally, sometimes students may want to resubmit assignments to improve their performance.
In this case, you can delete the originally submitted assignment from the Instructor’s backend panel in the system. Once you’ve deleted the original, the student can submit a new version.
6. Certifications
Course certificates are an essential feature since it allows your student to demonstrate that they’ve completed your course.
Students can record certificates on their resumes and online professional profiles.
Once a student has completed your course, they can download a certificate if you enable this add-on.
Upon course completion, a “Download Certificate” button appears on the homepage. Note that this feature is only limited to the Pro plan of the plugin.
You can add the plugin from the Tutor LMS Pro add-on page. Then, you can add your credentials to the certificate through the Settings tab.
You can select the certificate template, authorized signature, authorized name, authorized company name, and instructor signature on this page. Through the View Certificate option, students can also verify and share their certificates URL, which is publicly accessible.
7. Course Prerequisites
The Course Prerequisites add-on for Tutor LMS Pro allows students to see which courses they must complete before opting for a course.
For instance, a student interested in enrolling in an advanced coding course must complete the introductory one first. Enabling the Course Prerequisites feature allows you to minimize refunds and target the right students.
You can enable the add-on from the Add-ons section in Tutor LMS Pro. To add Course Prerequisites, you need to navigate to your Courses to see the option to add prerequisites. You can then select an unlimited number of required course prerequisites from the dropdown menu.
Once you’ve added a course prerequisite, it’ll appear on the frontend. If a student has already completed the prerequisite course, the course name will have a tick sign in front of it.
8. Lesson & Course Preview
The Lesson and Course Preview is essential to give prospective students a sneak peek into what you’re offering.
Enabling this feature makes some lessons accessible for unenrolled or unregistered users so they can get a glimpse into your course content. It’ll help you attract potential students and possibly convert them into customers.
Once you enable the course preview add-on, you’ll also get the ability to allow the preview option at the bottom of lessons.
Checking the “Enable Course Preview” box will make previews available to anyone who visits your website.
These visitors don’t need to enroll or log in to see your lesson. You can select which courses customers can preview and which ones they can’t.
9. Money Management & Earnings Allocation
Tutor LMS comes equipped with an excellent feature that eases the process of money management, commission allocation, and uninterrupted distribution when multiple entities, such as instructors, are involved.
You have to provide a monetization method, such as a PayPal account, where all transactions related to the sale of courses will go.
To determine which Instructor gets how much, you need to set a commission percentage for everyone within the Earnings section of Settings.
To start the process, you have to enable Earning and define proportions for the Instructor and the Admin. Tutor LMS charges a 20% commission on total earnings. You can also specify individual commission rates for every Instructor for a multi-instructor course.
Tutor LMS doesn’t currently have a feature for automated payouts to instructors; You must manually send all teachers’ payments.
10. Informational Dashboards
Students and instructors need to have informational, dedicated dashboards to track the necessary functionalities they get with the plugin for a user-friendly experience.
As the below image demonstrates, you can monitor your course stats from the dashboard.
This highlights the number of courses completed, enrolled students, total earnings, and active courses.
Your dashboard also shows which courses are the most popular.
Apart from the dashboard’s overview, you can also navigate to other sections, including your profile, wishlist, reviews, quiz attempts, and purchase history, from here as a student and an instructor.
You can then make changes to these various areas from your dashboard.
Tutor LMS Costs
Tutor LMS has two versions: Basic and Pro. The Basic Tutor LMS plan is free, but if you need additional features, you can opt for Tutor LMS Pro, which starts at $149 per month on an annual subscription.
- Tutor LMS Basic plan is free but has limited features.
- Tutor LMS Pro 1-Domain Licence plan is $149 a year or $399 for a lifetime.
- Tutor LMS Pro 5-Domain Licence plan is $199 a year or $599 for a lifetime.
- Tutor LMS Pro Unlimited Domain Licence plan is $299 a year or $999 for a lifetime.
Tutor LMS Free vs. Tutor LMS Pro
The most significant difference between both versions of Tutor LMS is the number of features each plan offers. For instance, the Pro version gives you access to additional functionalities such as certificate templates, course previews, frontend course builder, and insightful reports. The free subscription is excellent for corporate training or a range of courses that don’t require certificates, assignment submissions, or a grading system. If you only need a basic learning management system, you might be able to do without these features; otherwise, you should opt for the Pro version for an extensive course platform.
What’s Included in Tutor LMS Free Plan?
If you’re interested in the free subscription, here’s what it includes:
- Course Builder
- Unlimited Lessons & Courses
- Unlimited Students
- Unlimited Instructors
- Easy Digital Download Support
- Quiz Creator
- WooCommerce Support
- Q&A Section
- Spotlight Mode (distraction-free learning)
- Video Player + YouTube & Vimeo videos
- Course Announcements
- Content Security
- Student and Instructor Dashboards
- Course Ratings & Reviews
What’s Not Included in Tutor LMS Free Plan?
The Pro version of Tutor LMS gives you access to the following additional features:
- Additional Quiz Options
- Grading System
- Certificate Templates
- BuddyPress Integration
- Advanced Reporting
- WooCommerce Subscription Support
- Advanced Prerequisites
- Restrict Content Pro Integration
- Multimedia Attachments
- Paid Memberships Pro Support
- Course Preview Option
- Frontend Course Builder
- Email Notifications
- Multiple Instructors for One Course
- Assignment Submission
- Content Drip
- Manual Enrollments
Tutor LMS Pros & Cons
Like every other tool, Tutor LMS has advantages and disadvantages. It is essential to understand these to make an informed decision as to whether this plugin will suit your needs.
Pros
Here are the points in favor of Tutor LMS:
- Free option available
- Unlimited courses, students and instructors both for paid and free options
- Backend and frontend course builders available.
- Advanced quizzing options
- Flexible quiz creation options
- Insightful reports
- Fully-customizable certificate templates
- Frontend Dashboard for students & instructors
- Possibility to add multiple instructors
Cons
Here’s what Tutor LMS lacks:
- Limited Integrations
- The free version’s features are quite limited.
- A relatively limited number of integrations
- No features for coupons, bundles, or upsells.
Final Thoughts on Tutor LMS
Themeum’s Tutor LMS is an incredibly polished eLearning plugin that allows anyone to offer a full-fledged learning environment.
It’s exceptionally easy-to-use, and creating course content is straightforward. The frontend interface is appealing for everyone who lacks coding experience and additional functionalities, such as reports, increase your ability to scale your offerings.
Of course, Tutor LMS doesn’t come without its drawbacks.
Compared to the powerful Pro version, the free version may sometimes pale in comparison. However, it still has a lot to offer to anyone starting and looking to create a minimalist but functional learning platform.
If the free version appeals to you, you can always upgrade to the Pro subscription plan later. With immense flexibility and customization options, it offers you an incredible range of advantages.
All in all, you should undoubtedly consider trying the Tutor LMS plugin.
