LearnDash alternativeA LearnDash alternative with booking and certificates built in.
LearnDash is an LMS plugin for WordPress. You look after the WordPress site, its hosting and its updates, and linking a classroom date to a course takes more plugins. Cademy handles course dates, company bookings, invoices and expiring certificates itself.
What a dated course needs on LearnDash.
LearnDash's guide to linking courses with The Events Calendar lists The Events Calendar, Event Tickets, Event Tickets Plus (a premium add-on), WooCommerce and two free LearnDash add-ons. Its plans include The Events Calendar but do not say which editions. The guide also says “purchasing multiple tickets for different attendees will not grant them access to the course.”
On LearnDash, the WordPress site is yours to run.
LearnDash installs on your own WordPress site. Its requirements page asks for WordPress 6.6 or greater, PHP 7.4 or greater, and MySQL 5.6 or MariaDB 10.1 or greater, and tells you to check that your hosting environment meets them. The plans list no hosting.
Each plan is a yearly license priced by the number of sites, from one to 100, and each one includes Give, The Events Calendar and Kadence with LearnDash. Licenses renew automatically a year after purchase. LearnDash keeps working if a license lapses, but its docs say “a valid license is needed in order to continue to receive product updates, security patches, and support.”
With Cademy, courses go on your website through embeds for a course list, a calendar or a form, or on your branded Cademy booking site. Teams adds a WordPress plugin.
When LearnDash is the better choice.
Stay on LearnDash if
- You want your courses inside a WordPress site you already run, with your own theme and plugins.
- You also take donations or sell event tickets to a community, which Give and The Events Calendar cover on the same plan.
- Someone on your team, or a developer, already keeps WordPress, PHP and plugins up to date.
Move to Cademy if
- Your courses run on dates, with a trainer and a venue.
- Companies pay by invoice with a PO number and send the names of attendees later.
- You report on certificate expiry dates, sorting and exporting by them.
- Nobody on your team wants to look after WordPress plugins for booking.
- You want a real person on live chat for support, without a yearly license to keep it coming.
Setup and the training workflow.
As published on the LearnDash plan page and in its help docs.
| Cademy | LearnDash | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Professional training providers | “#1 LMS on WordPress”, for courses and memberships |
| What a plan includes | Booking, pay by invoice from Pro, certificates, the training CRM, scheduling and the LMS with an AI course builder, hosted by Cademy | LearnDash with Give, The Events Calendar and Kadence. Your WordPress hosting on top |
| Free plan | Yes, with no time limit. Payments through Cademy checkout carry a 5% platform fee | Not listed on their site |
| Where it runs | Your Cademy booking site, or embeds on any website. WordPress plugin on Teams | A plugin on your own WordPress site |
| Classroom dates | A shared calendar of dates, venues and trainers, with Google and Outlook sync and attendance registers | The Events Calendar sells tickets. Linking a ticket to a course adds Event Tickets Plus, WooCommerce and two add-ons |
| Company bookings | The booker buys places, then adds or removes attendees and sees their progress and certificates | Group seats for courses. For events, each attendee needs their own ticket to get course access |
| Certificates | Issued on attendance or completion, with an expiry date set per course and no code. CPD points from Pro | Certificates included. Expiry dates through a code snippet on their developer site |
| Payments | Stripe, PayPal or Klarna, and Apple Pay or Google Pay where available. Pay by invoice from Pro, deposits and installments on Teams | Stripe and PayPal |
Checked November 3, 2026 on LearnDash's own pages: LearnDash plans, Technical requirements, Licenses, The Events Calendar integration, Certificate expiry snippet, Purchase invoices.
Moving from LearnDash and keeping your WordPress site.
You can import your data on any plan, Free included. On Teams our team helps with the move, and Enterprise gets a hands-on migration.
Export your data
Export course and quiz reports from LearnDash's Reports page, and your orders, attendees and contacts as spreadsheets.
Import into Cademy
Those files become contacts, organizations, courses, dates, registrations and orders in Cademy.
Rebuild each course
Add lessons, video and quizzes, plus SCORM 1.2 packages on Teams, then set dates, venues, reminder emails and certificate rules.
Swap the booking pages
Replace the LearnDash course and ticket pages with Cademy embeds, or the WordPress plugin on Teams, and connect Stripe, PayPal or Klarna.
Learners can finish their LearnDash courses before you turn the plugin off, because each Cademy course stays offline until you publish it.
Before leaving LearnDash.
Can I keep my WordPress website?
Yes. Cademy's course list, calendar and booking forms embed on any page, and Teams adds a WordPress plugin, so your marketing pages stay where they are.
Does LearnDash handle in-person course dates?
Through The Events Calendar. LearnDash's integration guide uses Event Tickets Plus, WooCommerce and two LearnDash add-ons to link a ticket to a course, and each attendee needs a ticket of their own to get course access.
What do I get on Cademy in place of a plugin stack?
Cademy Pro is £99 ($129) a month billed yearly, with no platform fee. Booking, pay by invoice, certificates with expiry dates, the training CRM, scheduling and the LMS come in one platform that Cademy hosts and updates for you. Live chat with a real person comes with every plan.
Can I move my learners from LearnDash to Cademy?
Yes. Export your LearnDash reports and your order and contact data as spreadsheets, then import your contacts, organizations, courses, dates, registrations and orders on whichever plan you are on. Teams includes migration help from us. On Enterprise the migration is run by our team.
Move your LearnDash courses and bookings to Cademy.
Tell us how many courses, dates and learners you run, and which plugins you use today, and we will outline what moving to Cademy involves.
No card needed. See every plan on the pricing page.