Edwiser RemUI Vs. Space Moodle Themes compared

Tejas Patil

Finding a perfect Moodle theme is no easy task. There are many options in the market, but few of them manage to deliver according to the specific requirements of someone trying to build a Moodle website. The kind of flexibility, scalability, and functionality that should be there in a modern eLearning theme is missing from the majority of options available in this market.

Fortunately, you don’t need to keep going on that endless search anymore. Because in this article we’re going to compare two such themes that offer all three qualities mentioned above without being extraordinarily expensive. We’ll be comparing the infamous Edwiser RemUI theme with a new theme called Space from Rosea Themes. Let’s start! 

#1. Layout and UI

An Edwiser RemUI homepage

Both Edwiser RemUI and Space take a quite modern approach toward design. Unlike many of the popular themes available in the market that is built on the base of Moodle’s native Boost theme, neither of these two themes uses Boost as their base. Instead, both of them are built from scratch, and they have even redesigned the various default modules included in Moodle (i.e. Calendar, categories, course activity, etc.) for a better user experience.

Customized default Moodle modules in Space

These things collectively make the UI of both Space as well as Edwiser RemUI quite refreshing compared to the other options available in the market. Both themes also include a dark mode feature to aid the students when they’re learning at night (or if they simply prefer darker backgrounds instead of lighter ones). 

Number of layouts

How much flexibility you have while creating the pages of your Moodle site depends to a large extent on the number of layouts offered by a theme. Therefore, it makes sense to take a look at how many layouts both these themes provide. Here’s a look

Edwiser RemUI

• 7 homepage layouts
• Single course index page layout
• 6 course page layouts
• Single course enrollment page layout
• Single login page layout. 

Space

• Single homepage layout
• Single course index page layout
• Single course page layout
• Single course enrollment page layout
• 5 login page layouts

As you can see, Edwiser RemUI offers more layout options than Space for almost all types of pages on your Moodle site. Each of these layouts can be quickly imported into your site with help of a demo importer, which is another functionality missing from the Space theme simply because there’re no multiple layouts to be imported.

Responsiveness 

Both Edwiser RemUI and Space themes are 100% responsive and mobile-friendly Moodle themes, so there’s not really any competition in these departments. You can use either of them and your site will work perfectly on laptops, computers, smartphones as well as tablets. 

In a nutshell, Edwiser RemUI has an edge over Space theme in the number of layouts and designs offered. But when it comes to user experience, both themes are almost on par with each other with their unique and professional design. 

#2. Navigation

The navigation inside an eLearning theme mainly consists of two factors: the ability to navigate between different sections of a course, and the ability to jump between different courses. Let’s see how Edwiser RemUI and Space compare to each other in these areas. 

Navigation inside courses

No course can be completed by a student without jumping back and forth between the different exercises and lessons in it. Therefore, it’s important for an eLearning theme to provide the ability to easily navigate between the various parts of a course. 

Fortunately, both Edwiser RemUI as well as Space include a side panel that can be used to navigate between the various lessons and exercises of a course. Here’s what it looks like in the Space theme:

The side panel of the Space theme also shows you a progress bar that tells how far you’ve come in a course. Now let’s take a look at how this panel looks and works in Edwiser RemUI:

As you can see, it doesn’t have a progress bar like Space but it can be used to jump between the various sections inside a course. So more or less, both themes are identical in this area. 

Jumping between courses

Navigation inside courses is not enough – a professional eLearning theme should also allow learners to jump between different courses with ease. Fortunately, finding courses through the Course Index page or search functionality is quite easy in both Edwiser RemUI and Space. 

In Space, the courses are filtered into various categories on the Course Index Page, as you can see below. You can create those categories either on the basis of topics or on the basis of difficulty level. There’s also a search bar that can be used to find a course even more quickly. 

The courses, when you expand any of the categories, are shown in the grid layout, as shown below:

Edwiser RemUI also shows the courses in a grid layout on its Course Index page, but it also provides the functionality to view them in List and Summary views. It also provides the functionality to filter your courses in alphabet order, and of course, to search them on the basis of a keyword. 

These things collectively make Edwiser RemUI’s navigation functionality to jump between courses better than the navigation functionality of Space. 

#3. Customization Capabilities

The customization features offered by a theme define and dictate how easily or tediously you need to work in order to set up your desired Moodle website. In many cases, they can also restrict how much control you have over the look and feel of your site, so it makes sense to compare both themes on the criteria of customizability too after comparing their UI and navigation. So here we go:

Live customizer

This is an area where Edwiser RemUI has a clear edge over the Space theme. It comes with a live customizer called Visual Personalizer that can be used to design a page from scratch as per your needs. You can create a completely customized design using this drag-and-drop page builder while previewing your changes in real-time. That makes the whole process of developing your Moodle website not only faster but also much more simpler and customized than anything else you may ever find in any other Moodle theme. 

Edwiser RemUI Visual Personalizer

Space theme, on the other hand, doesn’t have a live customizer that can help you build your pages this way while previewing your changes in real-time. It has a front-page builder, but that’s nowhere close to what a live customizer is. 

Customization blocks

Edwiser RemUI wins hands down when it comes to the number of readily-available customization blocks. There are more than 150 customization blocks in this theme that can be used to build a design of your liking against just 27 in Space. Needless to say, there’s no match between both in this area. If you’re using Edwiser RemUI then you’ll have much more choice in what you can and can’t add to your pages in comparison to the situation if you’re using Space. 

Custom CSS and JS support

Edwiser RemUI is fully customizable using custom CSS and JS code. You can add whatever design and functionality you want to add to your theme using these languages if you know how to code. 

The Space theme is also customizable with help of custom CSS, but it doesn’t have custom JS support so you can’t add any new functionality to it. However, you can still make all the appearance-related customizations with help of CSS code. 

Custom color schemes and fonts

Color schemes and fonts make a major part of a brand’s identity, so it’s important for a theme to allow the use of custom colors and fonts. It’s good that both Edwiser RemUI and Space allow the use of custom colors to change the appearance of your Moodle site in line with your brand identity. Both of them also allow you to use custom fonts through the Font Awesome and Google Fonts libraries, so you can experiment with the fonts used on your site. 

Login page customization

Many Moodle site owners also like to customize the login and signup pages of their websites, so that’s also an important customization factor for any Moodle theme nowadays. Space theme and Edwiser RemUI both have customizable login pages. However, there’s a difference in the approach that both themes take to achieve a customizable login page.

Space provides you with a set of 5 pre-defined login page layouts that you can choose and customize in appearance as per your branding colors etc. 

Edwiser RemUI, on the other hand, offers only one login page layout but provides you with total control over the appearance of your login page. With custom color schemes, fonts, CSS, and JS you can design a login page that looks just like you want it to look. If you know a little bit of coding, there’s no limit to what you can do with your login page using Edwiser RemUI’s customization features. 

The customizable login page of Edwiser RemUI

#4. Compatibility and Support

A modern Moodle theme should also be compatible with all the recent versions of Moodle, its popular plugins, multiple languages, and a number of 3rd party services. Here’s how Edwiser RemUI and Space compare in these areas:

Moodle versions supported

Edwiser RemUI supports all Moodle versions starting from Moodle 3.0 up to the latest Moodle 4.1+, which is mainly because it has been in existence throughout the launch of all these versions. Space theme, on the other hand, is relatively newer so it supports Moodle 3.9 – 4.1+ only. 

Regardless, it doesn’t matter much because the legacy versions of Moodle are not supported by Moodle itself anymore, which has prompted the majority of users to update their websites to the latest versions of Moodle, which work well with Space. 

Multilingual support

Both Edwiser RemUI and Space themes come with multilingual support that allows them to be used for publishing course content in almost any language. Both of them also have RTL language support, which means you can easily publish your course content in Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and other RTL languages. 

Customer support quality and reliability

Both themes are quite identical in terms of customer support – reviews of Space, as well as Edwiser RemUI, are largely positive, which speaks a lot about the quality and responsiveness of their customer support. 

However, at the same time, it’s also worth mentioning that while Edwiser RemUI has thousands of downloads and reviews, Space is still relatively new with 1800+ downloads and 98 reviews on Themeforest. So the reliability of those reviews is a little debatable. 

Plugin compatibility

A modern Moodle theme should also be compatible with the various Moodle plugins that have been developed to perform various tasks. Space theme claims to be compatible with popular Moodle plugins (i.e. Kickstart Format, Tiles Format, Edwiser Course Format, Flexible sections Format, etc.), while Edwiser RemUI is compatible with almost all Moodle plugins available in the library. It has also been tested with a larger set of plugins mainly because of its long existence in the space. 

#5. Pricing

This is an area where you won’t see much competition – both Space and Edwiser RemUI cost $69 per year to get started. However, there’s a difference between what you get in both these themes at this price point. While Edwiser RemUI comes with customer support of one year, Space theme comes with customer support of 6 months only. If you want to extend it to a full year, you need to pay $33 extra. 

Edwiser RemUI also has a lifetime plan option that allows you to buy the theme one-time for $207 and then use it on any number of Moodle sites throughout your life. This option is also not available with Space. 

Final Thoughts: Which one to choose?

Overall we can say that both Edwiser RemUI and Space are two amazing Moodle themes that can cater to different use cases. While the former is best suited for situations when you want total control over every aspect of your Moodle site’s functionality and appearance, the latter is better suited for scenarios when you want intuitive UI without the need of playing with too many options. 

Therefore, we’d suggest that you check out the demos of both these themes to determine which one will best suit your requirements. Recently Edwiser RemUI also went through a major update that made it even better and more feature rich. So check out the Edwiser RemUI demo here, and the Space theme demo here, before taking your call. 

Also Read: Edwiser RemUI vs. Edumy: Which Moodle™ Theme to Choose in 2023