Since the economic downturn began I’ve noticed much more interest in open source Learning Management Systems (LMS), and it’s no surprise that when people ask what the options are, the answer is usually Moodle. Now, there’s nothing wrong with Moodle, but it certainly isn’t the only open source LMS out there.
Because there is no licensing cost involved with open source solutions, its easy for organisations to just jump in and set up the first solution that comes along. There is however a cost to installation and support, either financial or time related. Anyone setting up an LMS has a responsibility to research and choose the solution that is right for the learners and the organisation.
As a starting point here are 10 open source alternatives to Moodle. These are deliberately brief descriptions, and I would encourage you to visit these sites and explore each solution in some detail.
Docebo In use in corporate and higher education settings. Offers support for a number of different learning models and is compatible with SCORM 1.2 and 2004. It offers interfaces to external systems such as video conferencing and HR systems.
eFront The base install is quite minimalist, but this is easily extended with modules available from the site. Commercial versions with additional features are also available.
Dokeos A very well featured LMS that also offers content authoring and video conferencing tools. Supports converting Office documents into Learning Paths. Offers user synchronisation with HR management systems such as Oracle and SAP.
Claroline Aimed more at the educational than corporate arena, this system is based around specific pedagogical principles (as is Moodle). Supports SCORM content as well as a built in Wiki and other online content tools.
ATutor Actually an LCMS, ATutor also offers tools for the management of learning. The “A” stands for Accessible and it has excellent support for key accessibility standards as well as support for SCORM, IMS etc.
ILIAS Provides testing and assessment tools as well as collaboration tools such as chat and forums, and distribution technologies like RSS and podcasts.
OLAT A well featured system in its tenth year of development. Recently the winner of the “IMS Learning Impact ‘Leadership Award’ 2009 for best open source learning platform”.
Sakai Aimed at Universities, this project has a clear roadmap and has seem considerable development in the last few years. Backed by the Sakai Foundation which manages relationships with educational and commercial supporters.
.LRN Originally developed at MIT, .LRN claims to be the most widely adopted enterprise class open source LMS solution.
openelms Marketed specifically as a business solution, and claims a diverse customer base that ranges from Merrill Lynch to Queens Park Rangers football club.
Ganesha This LMS developed by Anema, has been around since 2001 and is in use in several large organisations. The site, and the LMS itself, are in French but it can be translated.
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{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for that list Barry. I’ve been looking for a list like this for a while. I’ve encountered a few of these packages before, but to be honest I’m still looking for the Wordpress of the LMS world (I think there’s an opening there!).
I really don’t understand why Moodle gets all the hype it does. On a usability scale, I would give it 2 out of 10.
I guess there have been a lack of open source alternatives.
Moodle is a 2 out of 10 on the usability scale? Only if you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re not willing to put any time into it. Moodle gets the hype it does because it’s better than all 10 of the alternatives listed above. People should explore all avenues, I think. But Moodle is more popular than these others for a reason. Several reasons actually. Moodle is not perfect but we looked at several of the above alternatives and they basically sucked next to Moodle.
Michael, would you believe that I have used LMSs that are to Moodle on usability as Moodle is to Wordpress?
I used to think that Moodle was difficult to use, but I can see that it has inherited many of its more idiosyncratic features as a result of the developers taking as their inspiration a certain widely unloved commercial alternative.
For my money, the adoption and continued integration of Ajax into Moodle will bring usability enhancements that are probably overdue, but where Wordpress is really only about broadcasting content to a uniform audience, perhaps coping with a handful of authors, the multiple identities and permissions in an LMS are always going to present a greater challenge for admins to cope with, no matter how slick the interface.
@ Michael Heraghty – My pleasure, I’m glad you found it useful. I think the inherent complexity of an LMS makes it challenging to keep the UI simple, but there’s definitely room for improving the user experience.
@ Richard MacLemale – I think together, Michael and yourself make a good point – out of the box Moodle may not be the most intuitive system, but put in some effort and you’ll get the results (and I think the same can be said of most of the others too). I’m not sure I’d say that Moodle is simply better than any of the other options – it’s important to do what you did, and appraise a number of options to see which best suits your needs. Too many people head straight for Moodle without first assessing their needs.
@ Dan R – Moodle’s interface continues to improve, but I think I’d differentiate between the user interface experience and the issues of poor workflow. There are only so many things you an fix with the liberal application of Ajax
@ John McNamara – I couldn’t agree more on the features vs solution argument. It doesn’t matter how many features it has if you don’t need them (the same is true of commercial LMS solutions).
There are so many good alternatives over Moodle right now that I am surprised on all the heap it still gets. Moodle is very rich feature-wise but when things come to offering solutions and not just features it is a mediocre solution. Espcially on the UI I would give it 0.5 on a 10 scale.
I have played with most LMS’s the last few months and I would highly suggest to use either eFront (www.efrontlearning.net) or Dokeos (www.dokeos.com). Both are feature rich (by the way, I guess you missed most of eFront functionality on the small review which probably mean these guys did a good job on hiding complexity
).
Both eFront and Dokeos has more features than you probably need and helpful communities to build effective solutions.
Again, don’t count features… compare solutions.
You can count & compare features and tools and gizmos and gadgets all you want, but a skilled course builder can make a cinder block deliver a better learning experience than a PhD who refuses to spend the time & energy learn the greatest CMS in the world (whether Moodle or anything else).
That it was/is designed & developed by educators & a vast community of open-source developers to be learner-centric (as opposed to the tool-centric approach favored by many commercial products) gives Moodle a huge advantage.
Other than that, it’s all in how you know & use a tool.
Hello there,
I just want to add the factor that was one of the deciding ones for me: the moodle community. On moodle.org there is so much support being given quickly and competently (all for free as well!), the documentation on docs.moodle.org is clear and can be understood by a non-techie like me and the community decides on feature implementation of future moodle releases. You can also use twitter to connect with other moodlers and even there I had a minor problem fixed within minutes.
The thing that I find very important is that the support is not only technical but also pedagogical. And if anyone has ever been to a moodlmoot (the name for a moodle user conference) they will have been amazed by the amount of quality sessions dedicated to sound teaching using cooperative principles.
Best regards,
Stephan
Hi there.
Can’t just read and pass by, without thank u all for the clarity and help ur post and comments bring me in my choice.
I was looking for an elearning system to sell a course in emarketing field. The problem with going through each system is so long and u can’t do it properly when u don’t really know the standarts of the field.
By the way, just want to add that, usability is next to everything on the web and if a tool is weak here, there is a huge disavantage. I’ve developped ans sell online tools, so i know a little bit what it’s all about.
And i think moodle just have the advantage of being the first popular solutoin out there.
Thanks for each other input.
Nice day to u’ll.
Hi Barry,
Some things you didn’t mention about some of these systems are important considerations for content providers. For example, openelms requires a Windows server and only works on IE. The .lrn system was built on the openacs architecture and while it is probably very robust, it pretty much requires a dedicated server and is thus an expensive solution for individual content providers. Most commercial hosting companies, running unix/linux servers with apache/mysql cannot offer openacs or .lrn hosting.
@ Tim Chambers – Some great points there Tim, thanks.
Why do you say that OLAT has quite steep server requirements? A comparison: The moodle documentation on the moodle website says that for 1GB RAM about 50 concurrent user sessions can be running. OLAT on the other hand can handle a 1000 concurrent users with 2GB RAM (thats the setup at the University of Zurich). Where did you get this impression from?
Hi Joel, thanks for the correction. I’ve updated the post accordingly.
i believe getting a good LMS system involves making some difficult choices.
Hi Mwafa, you’re absolutely right, and that’s true whether you choose a commercial or open source solution.
To clear one thing up, I wasn’t knocking Moodle’s *usefulness* — I was complaining about it’s *usability*.
@ Richard — Re. “Moodle is a 2 out of 10 on the usability scale? Only if you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re not willing to put any time into it.”
No, I didn’t know what I was doing when I first encountered Moodle, and I was confused. I had to spend a lot of time reading before I could build a decent course. I now train teachers in how to use Moodle.
Moodle, while highly useful, isn’t very usable. Usability is a measure of intuitiveness. When a system is usable, people who “don’t know what they are doing” (a.k.a. beginners) can figure it out quickly.
If Moode was more usable, I wouldn’t have to put so much time into it, and teachers wouldn’t require training.
I like Moodle, but I would love if it was more usable. Until then, it’s leaving the door wide open for a more usable competitor to steal it’s throne.
@ Michael – I have to agree. Any app has a learning curve, but you are echoing a view that I’ve heard many times, that Moodle is particularly unintuitive. It would benefit from the kind of UIX development that Drupal is now investing in.
You forgot Chisimba, which has more features than almost all of the above, plus is optimised for low bandwidth, which saves money and is easy to work with and translate to any language (default English though).
It is in use across Africa and now in the US and Afghanistan amongst others and has a large and very active dev and user community
http://avoir.uwc.ac.za is the place to download. GPL licensed
Hi Barry,
Just a little correction about Dokeos (which I’m lead developer of). The conversion of Office document is to learning paths, not Flash.
Apart from that, I couldn’t express enough the fact that it is a pretty dangerous and difficult task to describe LMSes so shortly
Interesting job! Way to go!
Y.
I want to launch my website as a free e-learning website to cater IT Courses. I’m trying to find the best e-learning platform to deploy my courses. I have tried moodle but it’s interface is not that easy to learn especially for new user, I have conducted some survey composed of 30 participants and ask them to try my demo Courses deployed on my test servers, with Moodle, eFront and OLAT platform installed on them. Before the test, Moodle is my first choice, but after the tests that I made things changed. I found out based on their feedbacks that eFront and OLAT is much easier to use, Moodle is a bit lousy when it comes to usability (sorry, i love Moodle, but it really needs improvements on that criteria). Now I want to know other people experiences in using eFront and OLAT especially on larger deployments.
What would you recommend for a free or cheap lms to sell and distribute different content to different groups?
@ Paul – Thanks for the heads up on Chisimba, I hadn’t heard of it before, but will be watching it’s development with interest.
@ Yannick – Thanks for stopping by, I’ll correct that in the post. It is a big subject to have tried to cover in such a short post, but I do hope it has at least got people thinking beyond the obvious.
@ Mark – Good luck with the project. It’s nice to see some usability testing going on. In Moodle’s defence, I think it can be made more usable, but you do need to put in some effort.
@ pingus – The best recommendation I can make is that you identify exactly what your requirements are and then evaluate a range of solutions to find the most suitable.
hi every body
thank you so much for this list
i`m new in LMS Systems
and i will to choose the best of them for start to change and use it
i will to it has the best features and full of features,easy to use, easy to change
if you can please help me and suggest me the best solution you think
i cant read English very good
and i`m sorry for writing English in bad style
@ Andrew – Thanks for stopping by. The first step would be for you to list all of the requirements that you have for an LMS, and then compare that to the systems available. Good luck.
Hi
We at our organisation run a Phd Course in ecology affiliated to a university. So I want to know which of the above opensource solutions work the best.
Thanks for doing this post Barry. We are currently evaluating Moodle and it’s uses for our upcoming e-learning implementation. As you stated, one must look at what the requirements are before choosing a solution. The approach I have suggested with our implementation is to develop the course logically, and then let us think about how to implement that course online. I think too many organizations try to develop around a solution rather than choosing one that fits what they are trying to accomplish. This approach has us looking at maybe something like Adobe connect for synchronous learning and possibly using Moodle for asynchronous learning only.
I never knew that alternatives are there to Moodle also!
Being new to LMS solutions and being an avid WordPress user I’m also seeking the ‘Wordpress of the LMS world’ per the comment by ‘Michael Heraghty’.
I’ve just started to ‘play’ with Moodle and have found it very simple to install. Over the next few weeks I’ll be installing a few of the other solutions mentioned in this article and having a play with them. Hopefully that will me decide on which solution to move forward.
B.T.W. Thanks for the excellent article Barry.
Barry – great summary of the LMS market place.
And very useful input from all contributors.
If I can summarise:
Moodle is untidy … if the Moodle developers started again, they would probably program it very differently. But Moodle certainly has a ‘head of steam’ behind it. Lots of people use it and that is probably the thing that marks it out above the rest.
For my money, I think I’ll struggle on with the untidy beast!
Hugh
@ Hugh – It will be interesting to see how different Moodle 2.0 is.
I’m a big fan of Drupal, the open source content management system, and one of the reasons that it has developed so well is the willingness of the developers to add features at the expense of compatibility with previous versions. Instead, they’ve focussed on always providing a path to upgrade your content to the latest version.
I understand that Moodle 2.0 will be incompatible with a lot of current plug ins etc. It will be interesting to see if the flip side is a less untidy platform.
Great composition.Thanks for the list. Did any one managed to try Docebo. I was trying to set it up but at many places it is breaking. If any one using Docebo with out any prolem. Please let me know which version you guys picked.
Thanks
Emily
Well this is a very interesting topic here! Thank you Barry for putting all this together.
I have been involved in managing commercial LMS such as Oracle. In fact I haven’t thought before in open source LMS, but since I am thinking of opening a new website that offers online-courses. I wanted to check two important things:
Can I plug and play courseware packages that are interactive and contains narration, of course SCORM compatible directly using the Open Source LMS?
Is it possible to produce reports, like who finished the course, who passed or failed?
I’ve used Moodle as a student of an open university before and I have found out that it is just a tracking tool. I could not play courses or any kind of interactive sessions. I’m not sure is it becoause the university setup or it is just this is how the Moodle works!
Hi Fawaz,
In answer to your questions:
Most open source LMS solutions offer SCORM support, although you would need to check each project to see how complete their implementation is.
Reporting capabilities varies between each LMS, but then I think the same is true of commercial LMS solutions. I’ve worked on many LMS projects and this is probably the weakest area in every LMS I’ve seen.
Hello Barry,
Thank you for coming back to me. I think this topic is widely discussed.
I’ve found the same here http://www.linkedin.com/e/ava/19980588/138953/EML_anet_qa_ttle-0Ot79xs2R...
Thanks…
Barry,
I invite you to check out http://www.LatitudeLearning.com, our open-source LMS. Our open-source LMS is also available on a software-as-a-service at http://www.LatitudeLearning.com.
We’ve extended the open-source philosophy to the SaaS LMS by giving clients their own custom web pages, web parts, and stylesheets.
Carpe Diem,
Jeff Walter
President
LatitudeLearning.com
jeff.walter@latitudecg.com
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the suggestion. I’d be interested to know more about what licence it’s released under, and where I can download it. I did have a look at your website, but a quick scan didn’t answer either question.
Barry
Barry,
The LMS source code is available through a custom license. There is no licensing fee, however, we do require those using the LMS in production to support the reintegration efforts through donating hours of effort or funding.
The LMS is also available on a software-as-a-service basis at http://www.latitudelearning.com. You want to review the LMS’s functionlaity by signing up for a free 45 day trial. You’ll get your own LMS to play with.
Lastly, through our Free LMS for Charity program we give charitable organizations free access to their own latitudelearning.com LMS.
Jeff,
Thanks for the additional comment.
As you don’t publish your licence, it’s hard to say 100%, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be a ‘free and open source’ licence in the normally accepted way. It seems that you have a ‘free as in beer’ option, but it isn’t ‘free as in speech’ in that you are setting conditions regarding the contribution you expect people to make.
If your LMS was truly open source, and I could download it and distribute it freely, then I would review it. As it stands, it doesn’t fit with the other systems mentioned in the this blog.
Barry,
Thanks for your follow up. We started describing our LMS as open source a number of years ago since we don’t charge a license fee and give users access to the soruce code.
The term “Community Source” seems to be evolving to reflect the licensing arrangement for our LMS. However, we find few people are familiar with the term or its meaning. Regardless, I will make sure we qualify our definition of Open Source on our website to reflect the community nature of our licensing arrangement.
Again, thank you for your feedback.
Carpe Diem,
Jeff Walter
President
LatitudeLearning.com
Thanks for the update Jeff. I like the term community source.
It’s my own view that there is room for many different licencing models, as long as people know what they’re signing up to from the start.
Hi Barry,
Thanks for a fantastic post.
Currently I’m looking for a solution to deliver online training. Resources and courses to our clients. The problem I face is we currently run many platforms including Wordpress, Dynamics CRM, Quickbooks, SharePoint and Mailchimp we have just investigated a system which we are going to implement to integrate everyting to work as a whole to provide users with a seemless experience. We need an LMS which we plugin or which has flexibility and support enabling this.
Could you provide me with your thoughts on a system which is most suitable?
Hi Clinton,
I guess if you’re already implementing a system that is going to integrate everything else, you’re faced with two choices. Either pick an LMS that you know will work with whatever it is you’re using to integrate the other platforms, or (my preferred option) choose an LMS based on a proper functional spec and then invest in integrating it with the other tools you use.
Experience shows that you can usually integrate any system with any other – with the big caveat that you could spend a lot of time and money doing so! Have you asked your users what a ‘seemless experience’ actually means to them? It may be that the level of integration required is quite simple.
Barry
I’m looking to build a wp lms plugin, but first I’m defining exactly what is needed and wanted. See if you have any information you can contribute.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/420863?replies=0#post-1588265
@ Jonathan – Would be pleased to add some comments, but that link goes nowhere.
Barry, thanks for your information on Moodle alternatives. I am working with a group of academics who are all mostly new to online learning, and very much interested in its potential for making professional training available to underserved populations. The challenges are great, and we have to start somewhere. Your site is a great help in our search.
Thanks for the kind comments. Good luck with your project.
Hi Barry,
Thank you for your post. I was for 3 years a Moodler and 7 months ago I became an eFronter. Your blog post has a lot of information and help me to choose the right open source lms based on my organization’s needs. I will encourage people that are interested in eFront to visit the http://efronters.blogspot.com There are a lot of information concerning e-learning, instructional design, free e-Learning books and of course eFront.
Have a wonderful day and keep the good work.
Christopher Pappas
@cpappas
I would like to know that..
1.Creating course.
2.Enrolling students into course.
3.Taking exams.
4.Assessing question paper
can it be done by any one of above by the use of API or WebService
and one more thing i need to call the Service from java.
@abc Some of the LMSs in this list offer a web services API, although the functionality offered varies considerably. The best thing is to have a look at the supporting documents for each one and see what suits your needs.
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