Which community and membership stack is best for you? I break them all down and show you what their sales pages won't say out loud!
The most LMS-like platform here: SCORM, certificates, interactive video, a branded app add-on, and a real community with spaces and badges. From $29/mo, but Starter charges $5 per paid enrolment and strips out most of the good stuff. Pro Trainer at $99 is the real entry.
LearnWorlds is where the "course platform" and "LMS" worlds overlap. Interactive video, SCORM, certificates, assessments, learning paths, and a community with spaces, collections, polls and badges on every plan.
If you're a solo creator with one course and a Facebook group, this is more machine than you need. If you're a trainer, a coaching business with a team, or anyone who's been asked "does it do SCORM?", it's one of the few on this site that says yes.
Just don't buy the Starter plan expecting the brochure.
Three self-serve plans plus Corporate. No free plan. 30-day trial on the core features.
Prices exclude VAT. EU customers get VAT added unless they give a valid VAT number. Worth knowing if you're in Portugal, Spain or anywhere else with a 20-plus percent rate.
The Starter plan is the trap. Everything that makes LearnWorlds LearnWorlds is switched off at $29, and you pay $5 every time someone buys. Pro Trainer at $99 is the real front door.
Starter: $5 per paid enrolment. Flat, not a percentage. On a $20 course that's 25%. On a $500 course it's 1%. Our fee filter is in percentages, so we've entered 0 and said it here instead: if you're selling cheap courses on Starter, this is the worst fee structure on the site.
Pro Trainer and up: nothing. You pay Stripe or PayPal's 2.9% + 30¢ and that's it.
Your own Stripe or PayPal, on every plan including Starter. LearnWorlds doesn't run a processor of its own.
Community is on every plan, trial included. It's organised in collections (groups of spaces), with a #General public space by default, private spaces by invitation, and a course discussion space for every course if you want one. You can restrict the whole community to paying users and redirect everyone else to a sales page.
Posts, comments, polls, upvotes, likes, attachments. An inbox for direct messages that you can limit to admins-only or switch off. Community Manager and Space Manager roles for delegating moderation.
Gamification is badges. Sixteen predefined ones, each with a fixed condition you can't edit: "Extrovert" for 20 posts, "Mentor" for 30 followers, "Civic Duty" for answering five polls, and so on. You can rename them and swap the image. No points, no levels, no leaderboard. We've rated it "Points or badges," and it's badges only.
This is the deep end. Interactive video with in-video questions, ebooks, SCORM and HTML5 packages (Pro Trainer and up), assessments, certificates, learning paths, drip, and an AI course builder. Active learner limits are per month, not total: 1,000 on Starter, 2,000 on Pro Trainer and Learning Center.
Does it send members a digest? No. Community emails are event-based: someone messaged you, mentioned you, invited you to a private space. Each one can be switched on or off and edited. No daily or weekly summary that we could find.
Can you email your members from inside it? On Pro Trainer and up, yes. Mass Email sends filtered broadcasts and scheduled announcements, with a test send and unsubscribe handling. It runs on monthly credits: 2,000 on Pro Trainer, 5,000 on Learning Center. Starter gets zero. There's no sequence builder; it's broadcasts.
One gotcha: you have to white-label your sender domain and enable the GDPR or privacy settings before Mass Email unlocks. Budget an afternoon.
Can you get your list out? Yes, two ways. Native integrations with Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, AWeber, Kit, GetResponse, Moosend, MailerLite and Constant Contact, on every plan, syncing users and leads with an opt-in flag. And the Users report exports as xls or CSV with filters, so you can pull "everyone in course X" or "never logged in."
Members in: Bulk import from an xls or xlsx template, up to 10,000 rows per file, with tags, passwords, custom fields and an optional welcome email. Every plan.
Members out: Users report as xls or CSV, filtered however you like. Community posts and comments: no export we could find.
Courses in: SCORM and HTML5 packages on Pro Trainer and above, which is more than anyone else on this site offers. No Teachable-to-LearnWorlds button, though. A free migration consult is on the pricing page, and a paid migration service exists.
Your own branded iOS and Android app, as a paid add-on on Pro Trainer and above. The help centre is unusually honest about what that involves: Apple and Google developer accounts ($99/yr and $25), a D-U-N-S number that can take 30 days, store review, and store commissions of 15% to 30% on in-app purchases. The add-on price isn't on the pricing page; it says "multiple price options."
No shared LearnWorlds app for members. It's branded or nothing.
The $29 Starter plan charges $5 per paid enrolment and excludes certificates, subscriptions, SCORM, mass email and live sessions. Pro Trainer at $99 is the real starting price. Branded app is a paid add-on with no listed price.
Checked 16 Oct 2026 against the LearnWorlds pricing page, the "Built-in Community" product update, and these help centre articles: Community in LearnWorlds: Collections, Spaces, and Course Discussions Explained; How to Manage the Community Access Settings of your School; How to reward your users (gamification); How to mass email your users; How to edit your community emails; Email marketing integrations; How to Bulk Import Users; How to Export Users Report; Before purchasing a LearnWorlds mobile app.
The course platform with everything in one bill: courses with quizzes, unlimited email and automations, funnels, payments, and a community tab. $179/mo to start, $143 on annual. No free plan, a 2,500-contact cap on Basic, and the community is the weakest part of the package.
The cheapest real course builder with a community attached. $54/mo, or $40 on annual, 30-day trial, 0% fees if you use Thinkific Payments. The community is one feed with 5 Spaces on Basic, the email tool is a few canned sequences, and bringing your own Stripe on Basic costs 5%.
A course and coaching platform, not a community platform. Teachable has paused its Community feature. From $39/mo with a 7.5% fee on Starter, 0% from Builder ($89). Shared student app, broadcast email, native Mailchimp sync.
