Learnomy is a WordPress course plugin that covers the full path from course builder to quizzes, certificates, checkout and instructor commissions, and it runs on your own site with no WooCommerce required. It is a good fit if you want to own your academy and sell with Stripe or PayPal. It is a weaker fit if you need single sign-on, selling courses as WooCommerce products, or a long track record. Wbcom Designs, the company behind Reign, makes Learnomy, and this review says where it falls short.
Everything below was checked against learnomy.app and its documentation in October 2026. Plugins change often, so confirm anything that affects a purchase on the product pages. Where a feature needs a paid licence, check the product page for the current split.
In this guide
- What Learnomy is, and what it is trying to be
- Courses, lessons and student progress
- Quizzes and grading
- Certificates
- Payments, pricing models and drip content
- Assignments and the other paid modules
- Instructors and payouts
- Reign and BuddyNext, as documented
- Requirements
- Building your first course, step by step
- What is missing or still maturing
- Who should pick Learnomy, and who should pick LearnDash, LifterLMS, Tutor LMS or Sensei
- Questions people ask
What is Learnomy?
Learnomy is a learning management system (LMS) plugin for WordPress. An LMS is software that lets you build courses, enrol students, track what they finish and hand out proof when they do. Learnomy does that on your own WordPress site, so the content, the student list and the payment records stay on your server.
The product site states that Learnomy “runs fully standalone” and that it has unlimited courses and students. It also states that no platform fee is taken on any sale. Your payment provider will still charge its own processing fees, so read Stripe’s and PayPal’s pricing pages before you work out margins.
Its pitch is wide rather than narrow. Courses, quizzes, certificates, checkout, memberships, instructor commissions, a REST API and an installable student app all sit in one plugin family. The site has separate landing pages for coaches, academies, schools, corporate training, marketplaces and membership sites. A plugin that serves six audiences can end up average for all of them, so the useful question is how deep each part goes.
One honest note about age. Learnomy’s own reviews page says the 4.8 out of 5 Trustpilot rating from 96 reviews belongs to Wbcom Designs as a company, and that Learnomy is newer, so those reviews do not measure the plugin alone. Treat that rating as a signal about support, not as a verdict on the course engine.
What do you get for courses, lessons and student progress?
You get a drag-and-drop course builder with optional sections, eight lesson content types, preview lessons, per-lesson attachments and a progress bar the student sees at all times. The structure is simple on purpose: a course holds sections, and sections hold lessons. Sections are optional, so a short course can be a flat list of lessons.
Lesson content types
The docs list eight lesson types: text, video, audio, PDF, embed, live, download and protected video. The live type takes a join link, a start time and a length in minutes, and students see a countdown before the session, then a Join button, then a note that the session has ended. Protected video, which hides the source URL, only appears when the separate MediaShield plugin is active. Video and audio lessons are set by URL.
Learnomy does not read a lesson’s duration from a video file or URL. You type the duration yourself, and it feeds the curriculum display and the course total.
How completion works
Each course picks one completion rule. There are four. “All Lessons Completed” finishes the course when every lesson is marked done. “Lessons + Final Quiz” also needs a passing attempt on a course-level quiz, and practice or survey quizzes do not count. “Percentage of Content” completes at a threshold you choose, so students can skip the last few lessons. “Manual Completion” never completes on its own, and an instructor or admin marks each student done.
Under the manual rule, a student can reach 100 percent without being complete. They see a waiting note, no certificate is issued, and the completion screen stays closed until the instructor confirms.
Lessons have their own completion modes as well: manual, minimum time, video percentage, scroll to end or quiz pass. A setting can also lock the next lesson until the current one is finished.
What students see
The course player has a curriculum sidebar with checkmarks for finished lessons and a highlight on the current one. In sequential mode, locked lessons show a padlock. The progress bar shows the percentage of lessons completed and recalculates each time a lesson is marked done. A student account area holds My Courses, profile details, certificates and billing.
The docs also describe an installable account app with offline progress sync. That is a progressive web app, a website members add to their home screen, and it is not the same as a native app from an app store.
How do quizzes and grading work?
Quizzes are built from a reusable question bank, and the docs list auto-grading for objective answers, an inbox for essays, configurable passing scores and attempt limits. You create a quiz, add questions from the bank, then set the passing score, time limit, navigation, feedback timing, display template, access code and attempt limits.
The question types on the product site’s own comparison page are six graded types: true/false, single choice, multiple choice, short answer, fill in the blank and essay. Objective answers grade instantly, and the homepage says partial credit is supported. Essays queue in an admin Grading inbox for a manual score and feedback. The comparison page also mentions timed exams, autosave and resume, and tab-switch proctoring.
Some quiz features need a paid licence, so check the product page for the current split. These include five further question types (matching, ordering, numeric, math expression and calculated), random question pools, per-question timers, rubric grading for essays and three extra player layouts. Quiz placement matters too. A quiz placed inside a section sits between lessons, and a quiz outside any section is treated as the final quiz.
Does Learnomy issue certificates people can verify?
Yes. Learnomy issues a certificate automatically when a course completes, and each one gets a public verification page at a permanent URL. The docs describe four built-in templates, a visual designer for your own, PDF download, a print view, LinkedIn sharing and the ability to copy the verification link.
A student holds one active certificate per course, and opening a course page never issues one. Issuance happens when the completion check passes. If a certificate does not appear, the FAQ lists the usual causes: the Certificates module is off, the course is not set to award one, or a lesson, required quiz or manual approval is still pending.
Some certificate extras need a paid licence, so check the product page. The docs name Open Badges 3.0, Credly integration, and a tamper-evident fingerprint for each certificate with a QR-code verification page. The comparison page notes that the registry for that fingerprint is local, and that anchoring hashes on a blockchain is not available yet.
If certificates are central to your plan, our guide to issuing course certificates on WordPress that people can verify covers the wider decisions, from template design to what to do when a student loses a link.
How do payments, pricing models and drip content work?
Learnomy has its own checkout with Stripe and PayPal, and WooCommerce is optional. The docs describe payment gateways for Stripe, PayPal and WooCommerce as a gateway, coupons with usage limits and date windows, membership plans with billing intervals and trial periods, a transaction ledger with refunds, and a single flat tax rate added at checkout for Stripe and PayPal. Tax rules differ by country, so check your local rules before you set that rate.
Courses take one of eight pricing models. The docs list them like this.
| Pricing model | How a student gets in |
|---|---|
| Free | Enrols with no payment |
| One-time | Pays once for permanent access |
| Fixed-term | Pays once for access that expires after a set number of days |
| Recurring | Subscribes monthly or yearly to keep access (needs Stripe) |
| Members only | Enrols only if their membership plan includes the course |
| One-time or members | Buys the course, or gets it through membership |
| Closed | Cannot be bought on the site; access is granted from an outside system |
| Invite only | Cannot be bought; the owner adds students manually |
Three details are worth knowing before you build. First, the pricing model locks after any student pays. To change it, you duplicate the course and price the copy. Second, you do not enter a Stripe Price ID or a PayPal Plan ID on the course, because the gateway product is created on the first purchase. Third, courses have a visibility setting: public, unlisted (hidden from the catalog but open to anyone with the link) or private (enrolled students and admins only).
Some commerce features need a paid licence, so check the product page. The docs mark gift codes with team seats, and the subscription lifecycle tools (pauses, plan changes with proration, failed-payment dunning, and refunds with instructor clawback), as paid.
Our post on selling online courses on WordPress with Stripe goes deeper on the checkout side, including what to test before the first sale.
What about drip content?
Content drip needs a paid licence, so check the product page. The docs describe three triggers: a number of days after enrolment, a fixed date, or completion of a prerequisite. Separately, any lesson can have an available date that hides it until a set time. That per-lesson date is a simpler tool than a full drip schedule, and it appears in the lesson settings.
What is in the paid modules?
The comparison page lists a long set of extras that need a paid licence. The table below shows what each one does, using the product’s own descriptions. Check the product page for what each licence covers.
| Module | What the docs say it does |
|---|---|
| Assignments | One written assignment per lesson, with text, file or link submissions, an optional due date, resubmission requests and inline grading |
| Gradebook | A weighted gradebook in the reporting section |
| Cohorts | Groups students into scheduled cohorts for one course |
| Learning paths | Ordered multi-course sequences with gating and path-level certificates |
| Spaces and Space Groups | Organisation accounts with rosters, seat packs and invite links, plus sub-groups with scoped managers |
| Frontend builder | A four-step course creation wizard that works without wp-admin access |
| AI authoring | AI-drafted curricula and quiz questions, off by default, with human review required |
| SCORM, xAPI, LTI, QTI, H5P | Standards support for packages, learning records, LMS-to-LMS launching, question import and interactive content |
| White label and WP Fusion | Custom branding in place of Learnomy’s, and CRM tag-based access |
Assignments deserve a closer look, because the request for them comes up often. The docs describe a rubric option that breaks a score into named criteria with weights, and an instructor can override the computed score. They also say reopening a graded submission does not recalculate its score, and that per-criterion numbers are not stored, so feedback is where you explain them to students. That is a real limit, and it is stated plainly.
How do instructors and payouts work?
Learnomy supports multiple instructors with their own earnings, a public application form and a withdrawal workflow. Approved applicants receive an instructor role automatically and manage only their own courses, and ownership checks apply to every API write. Public instructor profiles live at a URL based on the username.
Anyone can apply through a front-end form. Admins review pending applications and approve or reject each one. Commission rules are checked in order: a per-course rule, then a per-instructor rule, then a global default. Instructors see an earnings widget and request withdrawals. Admins review them in a queue and pay approved amounts. Refunds mark the matching commission record as reversed, so earnings reflect settled money rather than gross sales.
Stripe Connect payouts, which send withdrawals straight to an instructor’s connected account, need a paid licence, so check the product page.
For a marketplace with many teachers, read our guide to building a multi-instructor course marketplace on WordPress. It covers the business rules that the software cannot decide for you.
Does Learnomy work with Reign and BuddyNext?
Learnomy lists a BuddyNext integration in its docs, and it does not list Reign as an integration. Both are named on the Learnomy site as Wbcom Designs family products, and that is as far as the Learnomy pages go for Reign.
The BuddyNext integration is on a docs page called Community Companions. It says no configuration is needed beyond having both plugins active, and that the integration code lives in the companion plugin, so Learnomy stays standalone without it. For BuddyNext, the page describes four things.
- Completed courses show as Certifications on a member’s profile, and instructors get a teaching-credentials panel.
- Course completion posts a milestone to the member’s feed, and earning a certificate posts one that links to the public verification page.
- Learnomy notifications are mirrored into BuddyNext’s notification centre without duplicate emails.
- A Learnomy Space or a single course can be linked to a BuddyNext community so members join automatically.
The page names a BuddyNext licence requirement for this, so check the Learnomy integration page and the BuddyNext site before you buy either. The page also documents a similar link to Jetonomy, where enrolling in a course or holding a membership plan can grant access to a matching space.
Reign is the theme layer. Wbcom states that Reign styles BuddyNext, BuddyPress, BuddyBoss Platform, PeepSo and its in-house plugins without add-ons, and Learnomy is one of those in-house plugins. Learnomy itself works with classic and block themes, according to its FAQ, and it only loads its stylesheets on pages that use them. So the honest summary is that Learnomy does not need Reign, and a Reign site is a natural home for it. If you want the whole look to match, the Reign theme page shows what the theme offers: five header layouts, colour tokens and dark mode, set without code.
If you already run Reign with another course plugin and are weighing a change, our walkthrough of moving a course site off LearnDash and Kadence and the post on keeping your Reign site and upgrading the community to BuddyNext cover the practical steps.
What does Learnomy need to run?
The public pages state no minimum WordPress version, PHP version or hosting spec, so confirm those with Wbcom before you install on an old host. What they do say is useful. Learnomy runs on your own WordPress site. It works with classic and block themes. WooCommerce is not required. A paid companion plugin installs on top of the base plugin, so the base plugin is required for the paid features.
Two practical requirements are in the launch docs. First, you need working email. The docs tell you to install an SMTP plugin connected to a real mailbox or sending service, because default PHP mail is often dropped or marked as spam, and they include a Send test email tool and an email log. Second, you need a payment provider account if you plan to sell: Stripe, PayPal or WooCommerce as a gateway.
How do you build your first course with Learnomy?
You can go from install to a tested course in a short working session, using the setup wizard, the course builder and a test checkout. The steps below follow Learnomy’s own launch sequence, with a check at the end of each so you know it worked. If you have not set up your theme yet, do that first with our guide to installing Reign and importing a demo.
Step 1: Run the setup wizard
The wizard opens on first activation and has four steps: welcome, configure, an optional demo academy, and a success screen. In the configure step you set the course catalog URL slug (the default is “courses”), the billing currency and an academy preset. The presets are Simple courses, Courses + quizzes, Train my own team, Paid courses, Membership site, School or team seats, and Custom. Each preset switches on a different set of modules.
Choose “Start empty” unless you want sample data. The demo option adds sample courses, lessons, quiz questions, demo students, sample transactions, a certificate and a membership plan, and you can reset it later. Payments are not part of the first-run setup.
To confirm it worked, open the dashboard and check that the Learnomy, LMS Commerce and Learnomy Settings menus are present. If a menu is missing, the module behind it is probably off, and you can turn it on under Learnomy Settings, then Modules.
Step 2: Check your pages and URLs
Go to Learnomy Settings, then Pages, and open the catalog and account URLs. If one clashes with another LMS plugin, change the Course URL Base or Account URL Base. To confirm it worked, load both while signed out.
Step 3: Create the course
Go to Learnomy, then Courses, then Add New Course. Enter a title, check the slug, choose one category and add a thumbnail (the docs recommend 1280 by 720 pixels). Write a short description for the catalog card and a longer one for the course page. Under Completion and Certificate, pick the completion rule, tick the option to award a certificate and choose a template. Save the draft.
If no certificate template exists yet, the course screen links to the template designer. Make one there first.
To confirm it worked, reopen the saved draft and check that the certificate template is selected.
Step 4: Build the curriculum
Click Manage Curriculum. Add a section, then add two lessons with titles and content. The builder saves automatically. Tick “Mark as preview lesson” on the first lesson if you want visitors to sample it without enrolling.
To confirm it worked, open the course page signed out. The preview lesson should open and the other lessons should show a padlock.
Step 5: Add a quiz
Create a quiz, add a few questions from the question bank, set the passing score and attempt limit, and place the quiz in the curriculum. A quiz inside a section sits between lessons. A quiz outside any section is the final quiz. If you chose Lessons + Final Quiz as the completion rule, the final quiz must be a course-level one.
To confirm it worked, take the quiz as a test student and check that the result is recorded as Graded.
Step 6: Set the price and choose a gateway
In the Pricing and Access panel, choose a pricing model and set the regular price. Then go to Learnomy Settings, then Payments. The docs suggest two safe routes for testing: the built-in Test Gateway, which completes checkouts instantly, records orders at zero tagged as test mode and excludes them from revenue, or Stripe in test mode with test keys. Turn the Test Gateway off before you go live.
Pick your route before the first real sale, because the pricing model locks once a student has paid.
To confirm it worked, a paid course without a configured gateway shows a warning banner. If the banner is gone, the gateway is connected.
Step 7: Buy the course as a student
Open a private browsing window while signed out of admin. Register as a test student, buy the course with the test option, and check that it appears under the account’s My Courses page.
To confirm it worked, check Learnomy, then Students, for the enrolment, and LMS Commerce, then Transactions, for the order.
Step 8: Finish the course and check the certificate
As the test student, complete both lessons. Finishing the last one completes the course and triggers the certificate. Check the student’s certificates page and open the public verification URL.
To confirm it worked, find the same certificate in the admin Certificates list. If nothing was issued, check the three causes listed earlier: module off, option unticked or no template selected.
Step 9: Check that email delivers
Connect an SMTP plugin, send the built-in test email, then resend an enrolment or certificate notification from the email log.
To confirm it worked, the message must arrive in a real inbox, not the spam folder.
What is missing or still maturing?
Learnomy’s own comparison page is unusually direct about gaps. It lists items that are not yet available even with a paid licence, so you do not have to find them the hard way.
- Automatic email reminders to teams.
- Single sign-on through SAML or OIDC.
- Selling courses as WooCommerce products. WooCommerce works only as a payment gateway.
- AI grading, plagiarism checks and peer review.
- Late-submission policies for assignments.
- Blockchain anchoring of certificate hashes. The registry is local.
The same page marks LTI 1.3 support as beta, and says AI authoring is off by default and that every AI draft needs human review. The QTI integration page says question import works and export does not.
A few other limits come from the docs rather than a to-do list. The site uses a single currency, and changing it does not convert existing prices. Lesson duration is typed in, not read from the video. The pricing model locks after the first paid student. A student’s lesson counts toward progress only when the lesson and all its published sub-lessons are finished. None of these is a deal-breaker, but each is worth knowing before you build a catalog of fifty courses.
The bigger question is time. Learnomy is newer than the established plugins below. A newer product has had fewer years of real-world sites, edge cases and third-party tutorials. That is a fact about the calendar, not a flaw in the code.
Who should choose Learnomy, and who should choose something else?
Choose Learnomy if you want one plugin family that covers courses, quizzes, certificates, checkout, memberships and instructor commissions on your own site, and especially if you plan to pair it with a community. Choose another plugin when its specific strength matches your plan better. Wbcom makes Learnomy, so read the right-hand column with that in mind.
| Plugin | What its own site says | Pick it over Learnomy when |
|---|---|---|
| Learnomy (made by Wbcom) | Courses, quizzes, certificates, Stripe and PayPal checkout without WooCommerce, memberships, instructor commissions, a REST API | You want a self-contained academy and a BuddyNext or Reign community around it |
| LearnDash | Drag-and-drop builder, eight quiz question types, drip per membership level, seat-based group enrolment with group leaders, built-in membership tiers, front-end course creation for several instructors, Stripe, PayPal and WooCommerce | You sell team seats to companies and want its group-leader model |
| LifterLMS | Single-screen course builder, memberships, one-time or recurring pricing, certificates, badges, integrations with WooCommerce, Paid Memberships Pro, Stripe, PayPal, Mailchimp and Zapier | You are building around memberships and want that list of integrations |
| Tutor LMS | Course builder, 13+ quiz formats, assignments with file uploads and re-submissions, live classes, content drip, gradebook, certificate builder, subscriptions, memberships, multiple instructors | You want live classes, a gradebook and many quiz formats from one vendor |
| Sensei LMS | Made by Automattic, integrated with WooCommerce, sells courses as one-time purchases, subscriptions or memberships, interactive blocks, a Certificate Builder add-on | You already run a WooCommerce store and want your courses to be products in it |
LearnDash is the stronger pick for company training. Its product page describes seat-based group enrolment where one purchase covers a team and group leaders manage their members. Learnomy has an equivalent in its paid Spaces module, so compare the two on a real roster before you decide. LearnDash’s product page sits on Liquid Web’s site, so check the licence and hosting terms with them directly.
For a broader comparison with fuller criteria, read LearnDash vs LearnPress vs MemberPress vs Learnomy, the best WordPress LMS for course creators building learning communities and the best self-hosted online course platforms.
Is Learnomy a good fit for a course community?
It is a good fit if the community is part of the product, because the BuddyNext link described above passes course milestones into the feed.
On a Reign and BuddyNext site, the documented behaviour is concrete. A completed course appears on the member’s profile, a milestone posts to the feed, and a course can be linked to a BuddyNext community so members join automatically.
If you are building the sales side of that community too, how to build a paid community on WordPress with Stripe covers membership checkout, and our LMS guide for learning communities covers the course side. You can also try the community half through the BuddyNext live demo.
Questions people ask
Is Learnomy a good WordPress LMS?
It covers the full path from course to certificate and checkout on your own site, with a clear docs set. Its main caution is age: it is newer than LearnDash, LifterLMS, Tutor LMS and Sensei, so there is less community experience around it. Judge it on a test course, and check which modules your plan needs against the product page.
Does Learnomy need WooCommerce?
No. Learnomy has its own checkout with Stripe and PayPal, and the product site says WooCommerce is not required. WooCommerce can act as a payment gateway, but its comparison page says selling courses as WooCommerce products is not yet available.
Can Learnomy do drip content and assignments?
Yes, both exist, and both need a paid licence, so check the product page. Drip can release lessons a set number of days after enrolment, on a fixed date or after a prerequisite. Assignments take text, file or link submissions, with an optional due date, rubric grading and requested resubmissions.
Does Learnomy work with Reign?
Learnomy works with classic and block themes, so it does not depend on Reign, and Wbcom states that Reign styles its in-house plugins without add-ons. Learnomy’s docs do not list Reign as a named integration. For community features, the documented link is to BuddyNext.
Can I move courses over from LearnDash, LifterLMS or Tutor LMS?
The docs describe an import wizard for LearnDash, LifterLMS and Tutor, with optional enrolments and progress. The FAQ says a migration imports courses, sections, lessons, quizzes and questions, and can be previewed and undone with WP-CLI. Test the import on a staging copy before you touch a live site.
The short version
Learnomy is a wide, self-contained course plugin with honest documentation and a clear list of what it does not do yet. It earns a place on your shortlist if you want to own your academy and put a community around it. A Reign site is a natural home for it, and you can see what the theme does on the Reign theme page. For the course engine itself, see learnomy.app, build one test course, and let that decide.