How to choose the best Online Course Platform or Learning Management System (LMS) in 2020?

Only this week I was asked by four different people what Online Course or Learning Management System I would recommend using.

The question itself is really easy, but I would call it the "million-dollar" question. I have literally spent almost that amount to find the answer... but that's another story.

I can't say the Covid-19 pandemic has ended, but at least in Valencia, Spain, it feels like that. But "the new normal" has hit people hard. They have had a taste of "working from home" and now more (at least 10M+ more) people are thinking about how they can turn their expertise into an online income and they are searching for a tool that will help them in this journey.

But this question is really similar to "What car do I need to buy? Which is the best one?"

IT DEPENDS!

Where do you want to go? How many passengers will you take? Will you charge for tickets? Will you market your product? Or maybe you are interested only in the product? Do you need development or hosting? How many courses do you plan to have? What features do you want to have and deliver to your students? Do you want to own your solution or are you OK to rent it? Are you tech-savvy or just a beginner? How big is your budget? Will you issue certificates at the end of the course? Do you need to fit into academic e-learning standards? Do you need to track your students’ progress? Will you need to provide students with support or feedback? Do you want to provide support at a personal level or is it OK to give one answer to the whole group? Will you need to provide them with workbook templates and later check their personal progress and give feedback? Etc....

My short answer: the best system does not exist. I say this after testing the most popular 15 solutions on the market just over the last three years and I was building my own LMS in 2008.

I have made a list of the most popular solutions but someone will probably say the list is not complete “because you have not included the solution that I’m using.”

The problem is.... only this week I was invited to try three new solutions I had never heard about before (and each of them says that their solution is the best LMS on the market). You should know that I have done extensive research on LMS systems over the last decade and that I update my knowledge in this sphere every day. Read to the end and you will find the answer why I say the best system does not exist.

Here are a few solutions that I use for my projects or my clients’ projects or that I have tested in the past, or at least spent a few hours studying the features of the solution:

1. GrooveFunnels (read my article about this solution)
2. Kajabi
3. WordPress + Thrive Apprentice
4. ClickFunnels
5. Kartra
6. New Zenler
7. Podia
8. Freshmembers
9. Teachable
10. Thinkific
11. Moodle
12. WordPress + Learn Dash
13. Talent LMS
14. WordPress + WPLMS
15. Classavo.com
16. SanityDesk.com
17. Microsoft LMS365 (Microsoft Teams & Modern SharePoint based LMS)
18. Google Classroom
19. Ispring Learn
20. Udemy
21. Coursera
22. Learn Worlds
23. CornerStone LMS
24. SkillSoft
25. Joomla LMS
26. BitDegree

In this article I won’t go into comparison or my opinion about each of these solutions as this would require much more time and it’s worth a separate article. Plus, my goal here is to give you a starting point to explore the world of LMS.

As you see, there are plenty of choices and there are a lot of reasons why that is so. That’s why it’s hard to say what solution is the best. Which one to choose? It depends on your situation, your needs, your team, your goals, your budget, etc.