Moodle is a popular Learning Management System (LMS) designed to help teachers and educators set up a curriculum for students to follow.
Moodle is not just for educators and schools. Many corporations and businesses use it as well for corporate or team training purposes, however.
Although Moodle is free and open-source if you install it on your own site, there is also a premium Moodle Cloud option, which costs money but allows for a hosted Moodle site.
However, not all Moodle users are happy with the service it provides.
Many educators report that it is not very intuitive or user-friendly when it comes to building a curriculum or coding, while many learners complain that Moodle just makes for an ugly user experience for students, with outdated-looking designs and a difficult-to-use interface.
Also, Moodle Cloud only allows for up to 1,000 users, which can be expensive for what it costs. If you want to enable more students to join, you will have to use a Moodle Partner.
Moodle does have many plugins you can add for advanced features. However, overall, there are better options when it comes to flexibility and customization.
For those reasons, many educators and corporate training professionals look for alternatives to Moodle. In this article, I will show you the 13 best Moodle alternatives.
Let us get into it.
The 13 Best Moodle Alternatives In 2021
1. Canvas
Canvas, by Instructure, is a Moodle alternative preferred by professors and schools. Many students report that Canvas provides a much better user interface and experience compared to Moodle, with Moodle being hard to follow and use, while Canvas makes it easy for students to follow a lesson plan and message their professors.
All Ivy League schools use Canvas, according to its website, but it is also great for K-12 classes as well as Fortune 1000 companies who need to set up a team training program.
Canvas provides some unique tools, such as Canvas Studio, which allows you to create an interactive video learning experience. Students can view videos streamed to multiple devices, for example, or answer video polls.
Educators can see important analytics for their classes, including who is watching the videos, what they are watching, and how long they are watching it for. This critical data can help educators improve their videos and lessons.
Not only does Canvas provide training for educators on how to use Canvas, but they even provide specialized services, such as animation or video translation, for an added cost.
While Moodle offers educator training, it doesn’t seem to offer some specific services that Canvas does, such as animation.
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2. Blackboard
Blackboard is an educational LMS platform that has a wide range of unique features and services. Blackboard Learn allows students to learn from any device (it is fully mobile responsive), while Blackboard Assist will enable students to get help.
While Moodle allows you to add a plagiarism checker as a plugin, Blackboard has plagiarism checking capabilities built-in with the SafeAssign feature. SafeAssign integrates seamlessly with your educational workflow.
SafeAssign doesn’t just check for plagiarism across the internet. Instead, it uses a wide range of sources to compare a submitted assignment against.
For example, it can compare it to other assignments submitted by other students in the same school. It also compares it to journals and even content submitted to other schools.
Another feature you might like about Blackboard Learn as an alternative to Moodle is the official Dropbox integration. Users can upload and modify documents from Dropbox to appear in Blackboard Learn.
Blackboard is a Dropbox Premier Partner.
I’ve mentioned that Moodle can sometimes be not so user-friendly, but Blackboard aims to combat this with the Blackboard Ally feature.
Blackboard Ally allows students to choose from a variety of interfaces, and it also tests accessibility features to make sure that students can always access the content.
Blackboard also provides a number of essential strategic services, in addition to the educational services it offers. The Blackboard team can help you set up a learning program for your team or school.
Another thing that is cool about Blackboard: It even provides services for the government, including on federal, state, local, and military levels.
It is mainly designed to provide training opportunities to government employees. You can read more about the government services offered by Blackboard here.
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3. D2L Brightspace
A third excellent Moodle alternative is the D2L Brightspace LMS. LMS services are offered for K-12, higher education, and corporate training.
One of the cool things about Brightspace is how easy it makes it for educators to provide feedback to students. You can grade assignments, give audio and video feedback, and provide in-line annotations on submitted works.
Providing parental feedback and engaging with parents and guardians is more streamlined on D2L than on Moodle (though Moodle also allows you to create a parent role). You can share your students’ work directly with their parents, and you can also provide feedback to parents about their children’s performance; parents can engage with the teachers and community.
In addition, you can share lesson plans and assignment schedules with parents, so they know exactly what their children are up to in their studies. Since this will be accessible across all devices, almost all parents will be able to access it from wherever they may be.
D2L also provides a wide range of services, from learning administration management to data solutions consulting, for businesses looking to provide training via D2L.
Overall, D2L is a solid alternative to Moodle with a number of unique features for both educators and businesses.
4. Google Classroom
There’s a reason I did not include Google Classroom higher up in this list, and that is because it is not really an LMS. However, it does allow educators to set up classes, assignments, lessons, and tests.
There are some advantages that make Google Classroom a solid alternative to Moodle for educators. First of all, the learning curve is not as long.
Although Moodle technically provides more features and options for educators, with more flexibility in the long run, it is also more complicated, clunky, and harder to figure out.
Google Classroom is more straightforward, with fewer features, but it also is more streamlined. Getting started is pretty easy, and the interface is easy to figure out.
In addition, Google Classroom integrates seamlessly with Google apps, so if you prepare a lot of your lessons using Google apps such as Google Docs or Drive, Google Classroom might work for you.
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5. Rise
Rise bills itself as an alternative to an LMS for businesses and corporations who want to provide training materials to their students. Indeed, it is not an LMS but a full-fledged training system that lets you build courses with ease.
The interface is straightforward to use, as you can add blocks to create lessons and training modules. One of the benefits of using Rise instead of Moodle for your business training is the library of premade business-related courses you can add for specific employees, depending on their role.
Not only that but there is a built-in image library, allowing you to create beautiful, eye-catching lessons.
You can assign content to different team members, depending on their roles, and you can view analytics detailing exactly how much time a particular employee has spent learning, what they have learned, and so on.
If you find Moodle clunky for business training purposes, consider switching over to Rise.
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6. Accord LMS
Accord LMS generally gets better rankings than Moodle when it comes to ease of use and user experience. In addition, customers are more likely to recommend it to friends and think it provides a better value for money (when considering the paid version of Moodle).
One of the benefits of using Accord LMS is that you can provide customized lesson plans for learners. You can also incentivize learning by providing a gamified system that recognizes achievements, including badges and leaderboards.
You can provide quick quizzes as well as use the built-in survey and quiz builders.
Another reason to use Accord LMS is that you can provide training or e-learning for hundreds of thousands of students at once.
Accord LMS can help you save money, as you only have to pay for active users, at competitive rates.
Prices start at only $0.90/cents per learner when talking about 1,000 learners, with the prices going up for fewer learners and down for more learners (more than 1,000 learners would require custom pricing, so check out the pricing page to learn more and see updated pricing information).
You will get access to an implementation manager to help you implement your coursework or training.
Here’s another benefit of using Accord LMS: The vast number of third-party apps and tools it integrates with. For example, you can integrate with Dropbox, OneDrive, Box, GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, and more.
There is even a real-time identity verification feature.
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7. TalentLMS
TalentLMS comes with a number of features and benefits compared to Moodle, such as a built-in library of courses you can provide to your learners. Also, users generally find it less clunky than Moodle, with many reporting it better met their business’ needs.
TalentLMS makes it incredibly easy to build courses. You can personalize the lessons with your company’s logos and slogans and get detailed tracking analytics on what your employees are doing and how they are engaging with your courses.
TalentLMS, as the name may hint at, is more appropriately geared towards training talent. Whether you need to create a course for compliance training, employee training, sales training, or any other kind of talent training, TalentLMS is an excellent choice.
Pricing is pretty great, too. The free plan makes it a great alternative to Moodle if you are on a budget, even though it is somewhat limited (you can create only up to 10 courses and add only up to five users).
Nevertheless, the other plans are very cheap. Plans start at just $59/month, so check the pricing page to see them all.
8. Absorb LMS
Absorb LMS is a learning management system that comes with several unique features. For example, it includes AI-powered learning, which allows users to find the most relevant information; AI learning can transform the learning experience in a way that Moodle can’t.
Machine learning algorithms can change the game entirely.
Absorb PinPoint can direct users straight to the most important or popular courses and recommend the most suitable lessons for them. It can identify content gaps that learners are searching for, so you can fill that void by creating new courses.
Absorb LMS also provides a wide range of integrations, including Namely and ClearCompany.
The drag and drop editor makes it incredibly easy to build courses using Absorb, so if you find the course building system at Moodle clunky and hard to use, why not try out Absorb? You can add slides, quizzes, and videos to maximize engagement.
You can collaborate with teams when creating your courses and provide tasks to specific team members, allowing you to be more productive overall.
All in all, Absorb is perhaps a better option if you have more complex needs for a larger business or team.
9. Docebo
Docebo is a cloud-based LMS that seems to be a better alternative to Moodle for businesses looking to implement partner training, employee training, or another type of corporate training.
It provides AI-based learning to get the most critical information to your learners (something Moodle does not exactly offer), and it offers unique insights into your coursework.
The machine learning system will adjust automatically based on your employees’ needs, knowledge, and skills.
Social learning plays a significant role at Docebo as well. Docebo aims to make it easy to onboard new learners and foster connections and relationships with peers and expert coaches, making them feel comfortable enough to ask the right questions and get the help they need.
In addition, it fosters a community of coaches who help each other out. Docebo Discover, Coach, & Share is a feature that aims to create an environment of collaboration and team learning, so users can learn from each other and retain information longer.
Docebo has more than 2,000 integrations with tools like Google Drive, Slack, GoToMeeting, WordPress, Twitter, Shopify, LinkedIn, and many others. In addition, it allows you to build courses easily using a drag and drop editor.
Another great reason to choose Docebo is the company updates the learning platform every single month. New features are always coming out to benefit you and your learners, and you can keep track of all those new monthly features and updates on this page.
Docebo’s pricing is not transparent, but you can go to the pricing page to fill out a form and learn more. According to Docebo, the Docebo LMS is best suited for companies with over 300 users or team members.
10. Inquisiq
For a more robust alternative to Moodle for your corporate training needs, consider checking out Inquisiq. It is generally rated higher than Moodle when it comes to user experience and usability, and it aims to solve a number of problems commonly faced by companies and businesses when using learning management systems.
For example, it allows for eCommerce selling of courses, so users can browse your classes and purchase a course they are interested in with a credit card. Additionally, you are able to offer premium classes with coupons to incentivize and increase sales.
Inquisiq focuses on creating a seamless user experience for both instructors and users. All LMS instances can be customized for specific branding.
Inquisiq is excellent if you need to provide training in multiple languages. It offers full support for 14 languages, allowing you to localize the user interface, notifications, and more for a specific language.
When creating a course, you can create an automated workflow and include assignments. Learners can download the assignments and upload them when they are finished, so the appropriate instructors can be notified automatically and grade those assignments.
11. Teachable
Teachable isn’t precisely an LMS, but it is, nevertheless, an excellent alternative for providing courses online. I’ll explain why.
Teachable is a preferred choice by many online course instructors, including those selling courses from home for a part-time income.
There’s a reason for that, which is that it allows anyone to create a course on a Teachable domain for free, though you can get a custom domain if you have a free plan.
The user interface is excellent, and it tends to be easier than Moodle for both instructors and students. More importantly, however, Teachable is the platform you will want to use if you are going to sell courses, though you can also provide classes for free for your students or employees.
12. Mindflash
More than 1,000 businesses in over 170 countries use Mindflash to provide training to their employees, with good reason. Using PowerPoints, animations, videos, and voice-overs, you can create the perfect learning resources and educational flow for your employees.
Mindflash might be a better option for healthcare organizations, governmental branches, or other large organizations that want to provide a fully branded solution. Its white label option allows businesses to present a fully branded LMS, making it a great alternative to Moodle for those types of corporations.
In addition, it provides a wide range of features, like the ability to add quizzes, including multiple choice quizzes, open-ended questions, true/false questions, and more.
Mindflash is a bit more expensive than Moodle, which is why it is better suited for more giant corporations and organizations. You can always request a demo before getting started to see if the platform might be right for you.
13. Eduflow
Eduflow not only has many unique features, but its pricing plans make it a much better option than Moodle Cloud. First, let’s focus on the other features that make Eduflow so great for educators.
One feature that makes Eduflow unique is the ability to allow students to review other students’ work anonymously and provide anonymous feedback.
What this does is foster an environment of immersed learning and the ability for students to develop critical thinking, as well as receive feedback they may not have received from an instructor.
The drag and drop course builder tool makes it super easy for educators to put together courses, with a more intuitive interface compared to Moodle.
However, educators are not the only ones who can benefit from using Eduflow. Despite the “Edu” part in its name, Eduflow is also an excellent tool for corporate training purposes.
For corporate training, Eduflow also encourages social interaction and social learning, so employees and team members can learn from their peers. Just like students can review other students’ work anonymously, so can employees and team members for their peers.
Eduflow also provides a wide range of course templates. Templates exist for science, technology, humanities, corporate training, hiring, and a lot more!
Support is excellent as well, with support teams available in both Europe and the US to cover both time zones.
So, how much does it cost? You can check the pricing page for updated pricing available, as it is subject to change.
However, overall, Eduflow is very affordable. In fact, the free plan allows you to create up to three courses for up to 50 students, with 3 GB of file storage.
Compare that to Moodle Cloud. Moodle Cloud does not allow you to have more than 1,000 users, limiting your ability to expand to a large team.
Wrapping It Up: What Is The Best Moodle Alternative?
There are so many great alternatives to Moodle, and the best option might vary based on the size of your team, your needs, and whether you are an educator or corporate instructor.
However, for most people looking for a simple Moodle alternative, I would recommend Canvas.
It is an open-source learning management system just like Moodle, and most people report that it is easier to set up and use, both on the educator side and on the user side, with an intuitive interface and superb user experience.
