MasterStudy and Tutor LMS are two widely used Learning Management System (LMS) plugins, ideal for creators who want flexibility, design freedom, and a seamless user experience. They offer rich features suitable for solo creators, educational institutes, and training programs.
StylemixThemes develop Masterstudy LMS. It offers deep integration with Elementor and focuses on monetization tools. You get a visual course builder, Zoom integration, and various monetization options built directly into it.
Themeum develops tutor LMS. It has a clean interface, modular features, and a robust free version. It has crossed over 60,000 active installations and earned a strong reputation for its ease of use and flexibility.
Let's compare Masterstudy LMS and Tutor LMS across features, pricing, integrations, gamification, and more—to help you choose the best LMS plugin for your online teaching goals.
The Masterstudy plugin allows you to create full-featured online course platforms. It is a dynamic plugin that can also work with other WordPress themes. It has an innovative course builder, supports Zoom live streaming, and offers advanced quiz features. It can also be integrated with WooCommerce, PayPal, and Stripe.
The best part about the Masterstudy plugin is its combination of LMS functionality that can be customized from the front end using Elementor, making it ideal for non-technical course builders.
Masterstudy LMS Pros and Cons
While the Elementor integration is great for frontend customization, the plugin is heavy. Let's take a look at a few more pros and cons to get a better idea about this plugin:
| Pros | Cons |
| Comes with Elementor integration, which allows for frontend customization. | It does not support many third-party plugins, except for the ones that are natively integrated. |
| Supports monetization via PayPal, Stripe, and WooCommerce. | You must purchase the upgrade to access certain premium features. |
| Offers built-in live streaming with Zoom. | This LMS plugin might be too heavy for some users to run on their WordPress sites. |
Tutor LMS is a free WordPress plugin that allows users to create, manage, and edit online courses. It features drag-and-drop course building, a modern UI, advanced student progress tracking, quiz options, and extensive integration and scalability support for monetization via PayPal, Stripe, and WooCommerce.
One of Tutor LMS’s core strengths is its modularity. Users can activate or deactivate individual features as needed to optimize performance. You can also schedule content drops based on time-based or progression-based blockers.
Tutor LMS Pros and Cons
Tutor LMS offers a modular approach to course building, along with free and lifetime license options, making it a viable choice. We’ve gathered a few more pros and cons to give you a better idea of this platform’s true capabilities:
| Pros | Cons |
| The UI is modern and intuitive, making it easy to use even for novice users. | Has minimal options for customizing quizzes in the free version of the plugin. |
| The block-based course-building approach enables non-technical users to easily create courses. | It comes with fewer native add-ons than other industry-leading Learning Management Systems (LMSs). |
| Supports multi-instructor features, allowing more than one instructor to create a course in collaboration. | You need the paid version for basic features, such as assignments, reports, and certificates. |
Masterstudy LMS is ideal for users who want complete control over the visual design of their platform and are building it with advanced monetization needs in mind. It suits agencies, coaches, and course creators who want to quickly create branded, client-ready websites.
Its built-in Zoom integration and Elementor support make it especially useful for live training and hybrid learning environments.
Tutor LMS is ideal for individuals, institutes, and small teams with a fixed budget who are aware that they won't require some of the more advanced features available only in paid plans.
Its user-friendly course builder and UI make it the perfect choice for non-technical individuals, as it doesn't require extensive learning before you can start building courses. It’s also great for developers who want a modular system to build on over time.
Masterstudy LMS vs Tutor LMS Course Authoring and Management
Let's take a detailed look at the course authoring and management capabilities these plugins bring to your platform and see if they are suitable for your needs or not:
Masterstudy LMS
Masterstudy has a front-end course builder that supports sections, lessons, assignments, and quizzes. You can add video, text, slides, and downloadable content to these lessons. Instructors can drip-feed content and even set prerequisites for classes or courses.
The dashboard lets you assign multiple instructors and manage student enrollments. The system also tracks time spent on lessons and course progress.
Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS offers a similarly easy-to-use frontend course builder and a straightforward backend for course management and authorizations. Administrators can assign roles, manage content, handle student enrollment and Q&A, provide course previews, and deploy content in smaller chunks for everyone to review.
Content Creation
Both LMSs offer different ways of creating content but have similar underlying features. Let's discuss these features in detail below.
Masterstudy LMS
Elementor or the WordPress block editor handles content creation in Masterstudy. Instructors can add multimedia-rich lessons, embed third-party videos, or upload SCORM content. Masterstudy also supports drip feeds, course announcements, and the reordering of lessons.
You also gain access to content templates, which simplify the process of duplicating lessons and maintaining consistency.
Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS offers a user-friendly UI paired with a block-based lesson editor that simplifies the process. Admins can control and monitor user progress through reports viewed from the central dashboard.
Tutor LMS is highly organized and supports preview lessons, live streaming (in the premium plan), and interactive content add-ons. You can integrate it with Gutenberg to make it work with page builders. And the best part is that you can build complete courses with the free version.
Quizzes and Assignments
Here’s how these WordPress plugins handle the quizzes and assignments required to assess user progress and course quality.
Masterstudy LMS
Masterstudy offers a variety of flexible quiz types, including true/false, multiple-choice, single-choice questions, fill-in-the-blanks, and more. You can also access features like timed quizzes, retakes, randomized questions, and answer shuffling. Assignments can be attached to lessons with manual or auto-grading options.
Quiz analytics help admins understand how students perform across different modules.
Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS supports all the basic quiz question types, including multiple-choice questions (MCQs), open-ended questions, true/false questions, and fill-in-the-blank questions. Tutor LMS's most significant edge is its simplified UI, which makes setting quizzes easy for instructors. They also have access to features such as time limiters, automatic quiz closers, and question randomizers.
Instructors can create and upload assignments in different formats and give feedback directly through the LMS dashboard.
Collaboration and Gamification
Now, let's discuss how these LMS plugins incorporate gamification and collaborative features to encourage increased user interaction with the platform.
Masterstudy LMS
Masterstudy supports group learning and course discussions through comment threads. In terms of gamification, it supports features like badges and certificates. Integration with GamiPress expands the gamification possibilities with points, achievements, and leaderboards.
A messaging system between students and instructors also enhances communication and interaction with the platform.
Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS offers built-in gamification features, including certificates and course completion badges. Leaderboards can also be used to incentivize healthy competition among learners. You can integrate Tutor LMS with GamiPress and BadgeOS to enable point systems, rewards, and community engagement tools.
Students can also engage in Q&A sections, leave comments, and send private messages to their instructors (if they have the premium plan).
Reporting and Analytics
Another key aspect of any good LMS is its ability to handle reports and provide analytics to the program's instructors and administrators. Let's discuss this in more detail for both of these LMS plugins.
Masterstudy LMS
Instructors get access to a dashboard that shows course progress, enrollment data, quiz performance, and earnings. Admins can filter results by user or course and export data.
The reporting system allows you to view quick overviews, but advanced features and more detailed reports can be added by installing a third-party extension on the platform.
Tutor LMS
Tutor LMS creates detailed report cards for each quiz, assignment, and course module that can be automatically or manually graded. It also enables tutors to track the completion rates of modules. All of these are handled through an intuitive central dashboard, which keeps it true to its “user-friendly” theme.
By buying the Pro plan, you can enable filters on report cards and integrate the LMS with Google Analytics for more detailed reports.
Integration Capability
While WordPress plugin-based LMSs may not offer extensive integration support and scalability, we must examine how these plugins handle integrations with external plugins.
Masterstudy LMS
Masterstudy LMS offers integration support with extensions like WooCommerce, PayPal, Stripe, Elementor, Zoom (for live classes), and Google Classroom. It also supports REST API for advanced customization. Further third-party customization is possible via hooks and filters.
Tutor LMS
Tutor is meant to be a basic LMS plugin for smaller teams that don't require many advanced-level features. It still integrates with essential add-ons like Zoom, Mailchimp, Google Meet, BuddyPress, GamiPress, WPML, and WooCommerce.
While both plugins offer a free version, it is essential to examine the differences between their paid plans and their long-term costs.
| Feature | Masterstudy LMS | Tutor LMS |
| Free Version | Yes | Yes |
| Starting Premium Price | 89$/year (for one site) | 199$/year (for one site) |
| Course Builder Type | Drag-and-drop frontend + Elementor | Drag-and-drop frontend |
| Page Builder Integration | Elementor | Gutenberg, Elementor |
| Ideal For | Visual-focused course creators | Creators seeking a more modular and scalable LMS plugin. |
This is a tough one. Masterstudy LMS and Tutor LMS are capable solutions for building full-featured learning platforms on WordPress. You can opt for Masterstudy LMS if you want deeper Elementor integration to customize and control your platform's visuals, plan to utilize the live session feature through Live Zoom calls, and require robust monetization tools.
Tutor LMS becomes a more viable option if you need a modular, easy-to-scale Learning Management System (LMS) that offers a stronger quiz engine, along with a free version that allows you to do more before upgrading to their paid plan.