Top 5 Best Free Moodle™ Themes – Updated for 2024
Nobody wants to spend time on a site that’s dull, drab, and has you checking the clock time and again before you get to log out.
I’m not gonna lie! The first time I tried making my Moodle site look attractive and professional, it was a tragic disaster that gave me tons of nightmares. I wish I could erase those bad memories.
Now giving up was not an option because I was a STRONG, INDEPENDENT Moodler who could figure things out on my own ..just kidding (I had a deadline hanging over my head)!! But jokes apart, this was the defining moment where I learned how important a theme is on Moodle!!
Fixing Moodle’s Interface
Despite being one of the most widely used LMS, Moodle has often fallen victim to this very complication. The default interface is primitive, and the UX is anything but charming. That’s where a theme steps in.
“A theme is to your Moodle site is what appearances are to classrooms.”
A great theme not only makes your website look better but also improves upon functionality and features while attracting potential learners. It’s innovative and creative.
The best part about Moodle is that you don’t always have to look at paid themes in order to create a site that matches the visuals in your head, an impressive collection of free themes more than cover up the bulk of any design requirements.
But how do you zero in on one theme that perfectly suits all your needs?
Do you focus on a theme that’s high on features and customizability or do you opt for a clean and minimal design? Mobile traffic can no longer be ignored in an age where more people access the net on their phones than on laptops and PCs, which makes responsive design, a must-have.
We hand-picked 5 of the most popular free Moodle themes, that are also the top contenders for being the best of the lot. You simply cannot go wrong with these free responsive Moodle Themes! Take a look 🙂
Take a look at our finely curated list of popular themes: 10 Highest Rated Themes for Moodle in 2017
Checklist for Choosing the Perfect Moodle Theme
Ensure your Moodle theme is visually appealing and offers the best user experience.
- Evaluate Compatibility
- Design and UX
- Accessibility
- Performance and much more!
5 Best Free Moodle Themes [hand-picked from the Moodle plugins directory]
Moove Moodle Theme
Moove is a theme that enhances online learning experiences for students and instructors.
The layout of this theme is designed for online learning, emphasizing your learning activities and content. It offers an intuitive experience to enhance your studying process.
Theme Highlights:
- Straightforward setup, beginner-friendly
- A clean, intuitive layout that prioritizes content clarity and accessibility.
- Possible customization through CSS modification (advanced users).
- Active community support
Almondb – LET’S EARN TOGETHER!
Almondb was created using Moodle’s core theme Boost, and as a result it is both fast to install and easy to configure. With countless customisation options available, the theme features hundreds of building blocks, design elements and fully-coded pages that will rapidly enhance the visual appeal of your Moodle website.
Theme Highlights:
- 50+ pre-made blocks and 13 customizable front page block categories for dynamic layouts.
- Extensive color and font options.
- Custom page layouts and pre-built sections.
- Background image and slider settings.
Adaptable – Customisable responsive theme designed for Universities & Small training companies
What do you get when you take a theme specifically developed for a world-class university and ramp up its features full throttle?
The answer is Adaptable.
Adaptable is the lovechild of the popular theme BCU and the amazing work done on extending the theme by 3bits Elearning Solutions, and predictably incorporates the best of both worlds.
It stands out in the sense that it is the only other theme on this list (apart from Essential) that offers customizable settings via an admin interface, and boy, does it do that with aplomb.
Adaptable presents its users with the kind of marketability that’s usually confined to larger and more robust Content Management systems, like WordPress. It should come as no surprise that Adaptable is home to features like audience targeting and intra-network communications that are apt for a university or large e-learning organizations.
Nested within its many options is the ability to update custom profiles with a script to identify various user roles like teachers vs learners or even various departments so that you can choose to display specific items and options.
A particularly useful and unique feature is the presence of Bootstrap Alerts, a sitewide banner that can be used to send out alerts and messages to all the users, informing them of events like when the site is in maintenance or anything similar. Anyone managing a large Moodle site will tell you it’s but a lifesaver.
Did I mention the jQuery slider that also makes for a pretty news ticker? They have it all!
Theme Highlights:
- 60 custom blocks with different layouts for marketing/branding
- Fully customizable
- Drag & Drop feature for Front Page, Footer, Dashboard and Course page
- Background image uploader
- Bootstrap alerts (sitewide banner) and jQuery slider (news ticker)
Checklist for Choosing the Perfect Moodle Theme
Ensure your Moodle theme is visually appealing and offers the best user experience.
- Evaluate Compatibility
- Design and UX
- Accessibility
- Performance and much more!
Stream – Advanced Theme with Marketing Options
With added customization features, Stream – a Moodle 4+ theme developed by Boost Child – lets you choose your preferred colors and icon styles as well as images for the course header. Furthermore, it also displays courses and categories in card format on its front page.
Theme Highlights:
- Professional and academic feel
- Card-based layout with customizable colors and icon styles.
- Easy installation, minimal configuration needed
- 4.2 stars, growing community forum
Academi – The Most Learner-Centric Theme
If Essential has the look of a blog, Academi carries the charisma of a modern e-learning website.
Developed by Nephzat Technologies, Academi makes for a smooth and suave theme for Moodle that’s perfect for commercial uses. It opts for a more professional look, with a slider in the header of the front page that can be used to present course highlights.
Scrolling down, one can immediately see listed blocks of various Courses and Course categories available on the website. The no-nonsense-only learning feels that Academi brings to the table is almost tangible.
Like Essential, Academi also derives its features from the Bootstrap framework, providing a solid foundation to the core of the theme. Also present is Font Awesome, with its massive collection of icons and typographical fonts.
The CCS is flexible and can be tweaked to suit your business needs, like adding a company logo or personalizing the menu. Academi is 100% responsive and handles various screen sizes with effortless ease.
Other plus points include eye-catching accordions, dropdowns and tabs that are perfect to add generous amounts of content without making it look stuffed.
The footer provided is also customizable and lets you play around with blocks of information that can be widgetized as per requirements. Add to that- customizable social media links and you are all set for some serious Moodle-preneurship.
Theme Highlights:
- Modern-looking responsive theme
- Flexible CSS
- Customizable footer
Apart from these top 5 free Moodle themes in 2024, there are a few other free themes that were widely used in the previous years.
Pioneer – Simplicity and Consistency at its Best
Pioneer is a great theme for those who want to provide a consistent look and feel to their Moodle. Visit any Pioneer website and you’ll see what I’m reaching at.
This theme provides the Scroll Spy feature for teachers – first among Free Moodle themes. When a teacher clicks to turn editing on or off it will return the teacher to wherever they are on the page without any scrolling.
The word Moodle and associated Moodle logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Moodle Pty Ltd or its related affiliates
It provides tutors the option to personalize the look of their courses such that it’s the same throughout the course. This is done using an option that lets you upload a header image that stays consistent on all your course pages. Alternatively, the site admin can also upload an image to be used by all courses.
The theme also allows teachers to personalize the look of their online classroom.
Pioneer allows a teacher to upload an image into the course settings page. And that image is used as the header image across the top of the course.
The front page is thoroughly customizable, right from the color palette to the width and height of the sidebars and even the login form.
The rest of the feature list is pretty much standard, like any other theme on this list. Customizable footer, social icons, marketing spots, featured courses, and integrations with Google Analytics and Google Fonts.. Pioneer has it all.
Theme Highlights:
- Simple yet easily customizable for a personalized look-and-feel
- Teacher Editing buttons in the sticky navigation bar and always visible on the screen.
- Intuitive navigation with 8 custom icons
- Featured Course slideshow, My Courses slider, custom colors, logo, personalized course recommendations using course tags
- 6 custom frontpage tabs
- Activity completion visual display for learners
Campus – Let your Creativity Shine
Campus may very well be the most customizable among the free Moodle themes on this list. Sample this official description of the theme:
“It is the designer’s choice. You can make the theme look great, or just really awful. The theme is designed to have the possibility to reflect the corporate identity as much as possible with providing theme settings to adjust your header to your design needs.”
True to the words, Campus is customizable from A to Z and will look exactly how you want it to. There are as many as 9 different screens for setting for crying out loud! The header is responsive and will let you choose a custom background with a logo to reflect your credentials.
The theme comes with full-screen settings making e-learning so much more convenient.
The word Moodle and associated Moodle logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Moodle Pty Ltd or its related affiliates
One feature that stands out is the MNET authentication support, so you can remotely manage all of your Moodle sites from a single sign-on, with complete access privileges.
The rest is as much as you’d expect out of any of the Free Moodle themes. A variety of fonts to choose from, attractive color schemes, social icons, and front-page slideshows to feature premium content.
Also present are sub-themes for course categories that let you experiment with different looks for different types of courses. If you like them extra personalized, you cannot go wrong with Campus.
Theme Highlights:
- Supremely customizable, flexible theme
- Optimized for MNET authentication
- Sub-themes for course categories
- Frontpage-Slideshow, category slideshow
Essential – Make Moodle Less Moodle-y!
Essential is powered by Bootstrap, one of the most recognizable and reliable frameworks for theme design
Developed by Julian Ridden (the famed Moodleman himself) Essential provides for a very clean and polished front-end aesthetics that appeal to learners of all age groups.
Very enticing, from a marketing standpoint.
The word Moodle and associated Moodle logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Moodle Pty Ltd or its related affiliates
Clean and minimal is not necessarily less, as is clearly evident from a whole lot of settings available through an admin interface, something that’s uncommon among free Moodle themes.
The slider is highly customizable, so are the various labels on the front page and even the entire color scheme of the site. The footer presents you with various ‘Moodle blocks’ that can be filled with widgets and functionality of your choice.
Part of the look can also be credited to Font Awesome, which is present throughout the theme. Cool icons and a ton of fonts to choose from. Definitely, a one-up, given how eye-pleasing Font Awesome is known to be.
Essential is completely responsive, so mobile learning will never be a problem for your audience. Integration with Google Analytics? Check.
Theme Highlights:
- Clean and minimalistic
- Customizable slider, front page, and footer
- Great color scheme
- Header with a slider to highlight items
Checklist for Choosing the Perfect Moodle Theme
Ensure your Moodle theme is visually appealing and offers the best user experience.
- Evaluate Compatibility
- Design and UX
- Accessibility
- Performance and much more!
Final Thoughts
When it comes to picking the right theme for your Moodle website, design flexibility and functionality play a key role. But as always free themes have their limitations.
If you’re serious about creating a scalable e-learning website. But don’t have the bandwidth to build things from scratch or manage and maintain your Moodle site 24X7, you need a Moodle theme that has a lot more to offer. And in such cases, premium Moodle themes are certainly worth a look. 🙂
Find out how to maximize your Moodle site’s potential with the right theme: Free Vs Premium Moodle™ Themes – Who Will Win The Ultimate Face-Off in 2024?
Well, that’s about our round-up of 5 favorite free themes for Moodle! Would you have picked any differently? Let us know in the comment section!
Comparison of the Free Moodle themes Made Easy!
| Parameter | Almond | Moove | Adaptable | Themes by LMSACE | Stream | RemUI (Paid Theme) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design | Clean and modern aesthetic | A clean, intuitive layout that prioritizes content clarity and accessibility. | clean and organized layout with clear navigation | Polished, professional, and academic feel | visually engaging, modern and dynamic aesthetic |
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| Customizability |
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| User experience | Focus on clear navigation and intuitive user journeys. | Clean and organized interface. | Customizable to match different learning preferences. | Clear organization of course materials | Encourages exploration and discovery |
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| Ease of setup and use | Simple installation, user-friendly configuration | Straightforward setup, beginner-friendly | Requires some technical expertise for full customization | Dedicated control panel, moderate learning curve | Easy installation, minimal configuration needed |
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| Additional features |
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| Support | Responsive support from the author | Active community support | Large community, dedicated support forum | Dedicated LMSACE support, active user base support | Responsive author, growing community |
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| Compatibility updates | Active development supports the latest Moodle versions | Regular updates, stable releases | Active development supports the latest Moodle versions | Regular updates, stable releases | Occasional updates, limited to supported Moodle versions |
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| Mobile responsiveness | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
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| Community rating and activity | 4.5 stars, limited reviews | 4.0 stars, active community forum | 4.5 stars, large and active community | 4 stars, dedicated LMSACE community | 4.2 stars, growing community forum |
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| Try out | Check Out 15 Days Free Trial |
Join Us on Facebook
Check out our group on Facebook, ‘Moodle Tips & Tricks’ – the name says it all. We’d love it if you impart some of your Moodle wisdom and contribute to the treasure trove of tips and tricks especially related to Paid and Free Moodle Themes!
FAQs
Which is the best among the free Moodle themes Listed?
Essential and Fordson are the best free Moodle themes in the Moodle directory.
Should I go for a paid or choose among the free Moodle themes?
Moodle can be a little complex to understand. So, free Moodle themes are great to experiment with if you’re just starting out. You can opt for a paid theme as your feature requirement list expands, once you get used to the overall Moodle experience.
How do I check for cross-browser compatibility for themes?
There are many third-party tools to check the browser compatibility for these free themes. Some of them that you could use are Browsera, CrossBrowserTesting.com, Browsershots, etc. IETester is a standalone tool that can also be used for testing out your theme to check if it looks good on all Microsoft browsers.
12 thoughts on “Top 5 Best Free Moodle™ Themes – 2024”
Great article – loved the very first theme you recommended, thanks !
The Academi Theme can be found here https://moodle.org/plugins/theme_academi
Thanks Glenn, I’ve updated the link!
Hi, great article! I only have a doubt, Academi shows in the moodle theme page that is made for 3.1 version…I have moodle 3.2.1, I can use this theme?
Thanks!
HI Vanessa,
Glad to know that you liked the article.
With Academi Moodle theme, I am afraid it does not have a Moodle 3.2 compatible version as of now.
For Moodle 3.2 for now very few themes have provided support. For our own theme Edwiser RemUI (https://edwiser.org/remui-moodle-theme/) became Moodle version 3.2 compatible last month.
I hope this helps you.
Regards,
Rajiv Sathian
I am planning to buy remui theme for my moodle LMS. Will it be safe to shift Moodle from old free theme version to this theme?
It is completely safe if you’re using the latest version of Moodle.
I’m interested in Remui. It lists courses beautifully, but how about course categories? Please advise.
Thanks a lot! Great article indeed!
Thank you, Alan!
If you could share with me, what are the few things you look for, in a good theme?
Regards,
Adarsh.
I am planning to create LMS based academy for my students. What are the advantages with paid option ?
Hi Nitin,
For an LMS based academy, Moodle definitely is a platform you should go for, given its open source nature, and scope of customization.
Most paid themes offer multiple customization options, that let you customize your Moodle site the way you want. And as a result, premium themes like Edwiser RemUI are best suited for a complete K12/Academy experience on Moodle.
That being said, can you share with me your requirements so that I can help you better? 🙂