LearnDash Specialist Advice: WooCommerce Is a Definite MUST for LD Selling

Larry Jacob Internet Marketing specializes in the marketing and building of memberships and online courses.

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Should you use LearnDash’s built-in e-commerce or go with WooCommerce? Great question.

As a LearnDash expert, I work with business owners launching their first LearnDash course site and they definitely need e-commerce. You aren't giving courses away for free, right?

The LearnDash's built-in e-commerce features is an option allowing you to take payments with Stripe, Paypal or Razorpay. It enables you to sell individual courses or give access to a collection of courses via LearnDash groups. What I have seen as an expert LearnDash consultant is that the typical LearnDash course builder needs more than that. WhatI find is that LearnDash's e-commerce provides just isn't enough.

LearnDash is definitely a best-in-breed learning management systems. It does a fabulous job there. It's e-commerce features, however, fall short of what you need as a course builder.

Let me explain.

LearnDash Specialist on Their E-Commerce Feature

The main limitation of LearnDash's e-commerce feature is that you can only sell courses or a group of courses. You cannot sell a course with additional Wordpress content. It doesn't provide that option. Offering a free trial can be done, but it's complicated. Giving people free access to content requires using a clumsy, difficult to use registration option. It's not user friendly. If you want to sell any hard items, like books, t-shirts, caps or mugs, in addition to your courses, you cannot. That is not an option.

LearnDash Specialist of the WooCommerce Alternative

My team and I are LearnDash developers. LearnDash is a big part of our practice. 80% of the sites we build make use of it. Saying that, I highly recommend WooCommerce. For LearnDash e-commerce, it is a much better option. WooCommerce is free.  There are many add-ons for it, like there are for LearnDash. It has a very healthy and vibrant third-party after market. One option, for example, is WooCommerce Subscription.  They charge for this add-on that allows you to charge recurring payments or subscription payments.  The price for that is reasonable and gives you a very complete solution.

As I mentioned, WooCommerce has a BIG after-market of third-party providers. When I am working with a business owner on their online course site and they ask me for a new feature WooCommerce doesn't provide, I start searching for options online. Most of the time, I quickly find something that addresses the requirement. Sometimes it takes some adjustments and customizations, but for the most part, I am able to get customers what they want. It's available using a standard add-on that rarely requires done custom development.

LearnDash Specialist on One More Option

There are occasions, where some of our customers have needed something more. WooCommerce provides a solid platform that you can enhance with some custom coding. If you do run into a situation where you can't get what you need "out-of-the-box," some custom coding usually does the job.

The message is that you can get just about anything you need done completed using WooCommerce and with that, just about any thing you will need for your LearnDash site.

If you do consider using LearnDash with WooCommerce, make sure and get a copy of our Profitable Online Course Builders LearnDash Starter Guide. This short mini-course guides you through configuration steps aimed at improving the customer purchase journey. You can tap into our knowledge adding a best practice experience adding some elegance and polish to your member experience. It's easy to  follow that shows you exactly how to take your site up a few notches.

So if you are working with LearnDash and are getting frustrated with the e-commerce experience and features you are able to offer, consider WooCommerce and I'm sure you'll have success with a LearnDash / WooCommerce combined solution.