Moodle™ vs. Easy LMS: How These Online eLearning Platforms Stack Against Each Other?

So you’re looking for the right LMS platform to develop your eLearning website, but feeling stumped by the sheer number of options that are available in the market. 

That’s not just you!

 It happens with almost every eLearning business owner, mainly because this is one of the most important considerations that can make or break your business even before it begins. 

That’s why we decided to help you with our experience and expertise. In this article, we’re going to compare two of the most popular online eLearning platforms. We’re comparing Moodle™ vs. Easy LMS, and there is a lot to tell you about, so let’s just jump right into it. 

#1.  Target audience 

Before we dive into other details of the LMS, it makes sense to have a look at the target markets of both these platforms. 

While Moodle™ is a platform meant for almost any kind of eLearning needs, EasyLMS is something more tailored towards the needs of corporate training requirements. 

As a result, their features and approaches towards a lot of LMS functionality are very different (you’ll see that in the upcoming sections of this comparison). 

You should keep this difference in mind while choosing any of them for your needs. 

Summary:

  • Moodle™ is designed for all sorts of eLearning businesses, while Easy LMS is designed for corporate and business customers. 

#2. Basics

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As explained above, Easy LMS is a rapidly growing cloud-based LMS software aimed to support small, medium, and large size businesses. 

Moodle™, on the other hand, is an open-source LMS that can be used to set up a school, a university, a course website, or even a corporate training website for your employees. 

This translates into a few fundamental differences between both of them. 

  • Moodle™ is downloaded and installed on your own server while EasyLMS stays in someone else’s ‘cloud’
  • The set of features that you get in EasyLMS is heavily business-oriented, while in case of Moodle™ they tend to be targeted more broadly towards all sorts of eLearning needs

For instance, EasyLMS doesn’t come with SCORM compliance and video conferencing functionality, both of which are essential for all best eLearning platforms in today’s environment, while Moodle™ includes both these features

  • Moodle™ has apps for both iOS as well as Android while Easy LMS has just an Android app. EasyLMS has its desktop apps as well, while Moodle™ has none of them

Summary:

  • Both Moodle™ and Easy LMS come with common eLearning features.
  • Moodle™ is open-source; so it can be installed on your own server, while Easy LMS stays in the cloud.
  • Easy LMS features are business oriented, while Moodle™ has a set of features that can work in all scenarios. 

#3. Interface

Interacting with an LMS must be a low effort for your learners.

They don’t have the luxury of time so your LMS design should do the heavy lifting, help them get where they want to in just a few clicks.

It only takes a few seconds for users to make up their minds. So, create the best possible e-learning experience, that’s natural and flawless (Don’t be boring :). Fortunately, the interfaces of both Moodle, as well as Easy LMS, allow you to do that.

Moodle’s interface may not be the best in the world. But it’s something that can be worked upon.

Whereas Easy LMS has a bit more polished and aesthetic look and feel to it. That is because Moodle™ follows a very minimalistic approach to UI design, leaving pretty much everything in the hands of its users. While Easy LMS tries to make things as well designed as possible. This difference can be experienced in the screenshots given below:

Easy LMSMoodle™
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Winner: Easy LMS

Pro tip:

You can improve Moodle’s UI with the help of professionally designed 3rd party themes

Summary: 

  • Easy LMS has a more polished UI than Moodle™.
  • Moodle™ ‘s UI is very minimalistic, but highly customizable. 

#4. Ease of Use

Since we have just concluded the domain of user interface, let’s discuss ease of use too. Both platforms are fairly easy to use, but once again both follow a different approach to achieve it. 

While Easy LMS achieves its ease of use by putting all the features together in a highly organized and tidy manner. Moodle™ achieves it by separating the core functionality from excess functionality with the help of plugins. 

However, there’s a downside to the minimalist approach taken by Moodle™. While it helps the user in getting started faster, it also leaves a lot to be done by 3rd party integrations, or by manual coding. 

So if you don’t know how to code or have a Moodle™ developer on your side, learning your way around it may be a little more difficult in comparison to Easy LMS. 

Winner: Easy LMS

Summary:

  • Easy LMS is easier to use because of its well-designed UI. 

#5. Ease of customization

Customization of the LMS also plays an important role in determining whether your learners engage with the learning process or get discouraged and bored by it. It offers many unique benefits, like:

  • Increased learner engagement
  • Greater brand recognition
  • Implementation of new functionality
  • Improved user experience, etc.

So it’s a critically important thing to consider when comparing all top eLearning platforms

So, let’s take a look at Moodle™’s customization capabilities first. It allows you to customize almost any part of its functionality or design through the use of plugins and coding. 

You can install your logo, your brand identity, your color scheme, and everything else that you like. And of course – it’s installed on your own domain name and web server, so you can change any part of its functionality too.

Easy LMS, on the other hand, is limited in this regard. It allows you to use your brand identity, logo, and custom domain (by mapping the domain) but nothing more than that. You can’t change any part of the LMS functionality.

Winner: Moodle™

Summary: 

  • Moodle™ is significantly more customizable than Easy LMS. With help of plugins and coding, almost every part of Moodle™ can be tweaked as per your needs. 

#6. Grading 

Grading and scoring is one area where both EasyLMS, as well as Moodle™, have different shortcomings. 

Moodle™, for instance, comes with a full-fledged gradebook that provides extensive control over the functionality of grading. And of course, there are 3rd party grading plugins too that can be used to enhance its grading functionality. But it lacks the feature of automatic grading. 

EasyLMS, on the other hand, doesn’t have the functionality of gradebook. But it comes with an automatic grading feature that eliminates the need of grading your employees manually. 

So basically, there’s no clear winner here. The winner depends on your requirements – if you want more control over grading functionality, Moodle™ is the winner. If you want grading to be completed automatically, Easy LMS is the winner. 

Winner: No clear winner

Summary: 

  • Moodle™ has a full-fledged gradebook that provides you total control over grading functionality.
  • Easy LMS doesn’t have a gradebook, but it automates the grading functionality.

#7. Integration

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Moodle™ plugin directory

This is an area where Moodle™ is unparalleled. 

No LMS platform can come even remotely close to Moodle™ in terms of integrations offered and extensive functionality that can be added because of those integrations. 

Moodle™ ‘s plugin library is very rich with more than 1,900 integrations available for various purposes, while nothing of that scale exists for Easy LMS.

The impact of not having enough extensions and integrations is huge. 

For instance, Moodle™ integrates with your Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 accounts, EasyLMS doesn’t. Moodle™ also integrates with Zoom video conferencing service, while EasyLMS has no such option. 

So it’s needless to say that Moodle™ wins hands down in this round too.

Winner: Moodle™

Summary: 

  • Moodle™ has a significantly higher number of extensions and integrations than Easy LMS. This helps in integrating 3rd party services with your eLearning website. 

#8. Pricing

Being an open-source LMS solution, Moodle™ is completely free of cost. 

You can just download it and get started with it immediately. 

It also has paid offerings for corporate and other customers under its Moodlecloud brand, which is basically a cloud-hosted version of open-source LMS. 

The paid plans of cloud version start from $120 per month for 50 users and up to 250 MB of storage.

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Moodle pricing plans

Easy LMS, on the other hand, is limited to premium and paid options only. Its pricing starts from $50 per month. At that price a user gets up to 25,000 participant sessions, email and live chat support, basic certification, and basic custom branding. 

Easy LMS pricing

Now obviously, that’s a pricey solution for someone who is just starting their eLearning business. Corporate customers may have the sort of resources to pay $50 per month from their first day, but not everyone. And even the corporate customers may seriously consider paying for something whose alternative they can get for free, so Moodle™ comes out as a winner again. 

Winner: Moodle™

Summary:

  • Moodle™ is free, while Easy LMS costs money. 
  • When it comes to Paid offerings, Easy LMS fares well in comparison to the corporate plans of Moodle™

#9. Hosting

Since both Moodle™ and Easy LMS are built using different approaches, their hosting environments are also quite different. Moodle™ being an open-source solution can be hosted on your server, while Easy LMS is a cloud-hosted solution. 

There are pros and cons to both of these hosting models. 

Self-hosted Moodle™ allows you to take care of almost everything on your own. You are responsible for your server architecture, your security, your content – everything. 

Cloud-hosted Easy LMS, on the other hand, doesn’t allow you to manage anything else besides your course content, but that can also be seen as an advantage because it saves considerable time and resources that would be spent on those tasks.

It really boils down to which model you prefer – the model that provides you total control, or the model that provides you maximum convenience. No winner or loser in this department. 

Summary:

  • Moodle™ is a self-hosted platform, while Easy LMS is hosted in the cloud. 
  • No approach is better or worse than each other – it all depends on your preference and needs. 

#10. Implementation Technology

Moodle™ is a platform built using PHP and modular architecture. 

In this architecture, a core application is developed with minimum functionality and other features are implemented using separate modules or plugins. 

Its code is available for everyone to see and analyze, and its self-hosted nature allows you to select the server and tech stack of your choice for your eLearning site.

Easy LMS, on the other hand, is a proprietary solution. So we don’t know much about its tech stack and architecture. They have also not talked about it on their website. So Moodle™ wins very easily in this area too. 

Winner: Moodle™

Summary: 

  • Moodle™ is open-source; so its code is available for anyone to see and customize. One can also choose a number of elements in the tech stack of their website because Moodle™ is hosted locally.
  • Easy LMS is cloud-hosted and proprietary, so we don’t know anything about its tech stack. 

#11. Support

Lastly, let’s take a look at the Support offered by both these platforms. Because if you can’t find help easily for an LMS, there’s no point in using it. 

Let’s discuss Easy LMS first. The company provides extensive documentation to get started with its product in the form of YouTube videos and a help center. 

However, like many other cloud-based LMS solutions they too have not bothered to develop a community of their users. o if you face an issue that is not described in the documentation then finding the solution may be difficult. The email and live chat support of the company is your only rescue in such situations. 

Moodle™, on the other hand, has a solid community of developers and users that are always willing to help each other. Obviously, you can’t expect an uber quick turnaround time for your questions, unlike paid customer support services. But the extensive documentation definitely helps you make the most of your LMS. 

Plus, Moodle™ is also more popular than other LMS platforms, so finding articles related to every situation is much easier. Overall, help is available more readily for Moodle™ than it is for Easy LMS. 

Winner: Moodle™

Summary: 

  • Moodle™ offers extensive documentation with a vibrant community to help you in the situations when you get stuck somewhere; Easy LMS offers just documentation. 
  • If you need support, Easy LMS offers only email and chat support while in the case of Moodle™ you can easily find someone who is willing to help or an article that provides the solution to your problem. 

#12. Reporting

Both Moodle™ and Easy LMS come with some in-built reporting features to help you generate reports that you need to collect various types of stats about your eLearning business. However, there are some differences between the reports of both platforms.

Easy LMS provides fairly easy-to-understand reports that can tell about the courses, exams, and assessments on your eLearning website. You can easily track the progress, results, certification status, and outcome of each on an individual basis or job category basis (i.e. junior employees, mid-level employees, senior management, etc). 

Besides Course-specific reports there are academy-level reports too, elaborating the performance on a group basis. You can use this feature to see how your various departments have performed in a specific test/course. 

Many of these reports are provided by Moodle™ too, but since it’s not a business-focused eLearning platform there is not the ability to group your reports by various departments. Other similar organization-oriented reporting features are also missing. However, a strength of Moodle™ in this area is that many 3rd party reporting plugins are available in the market to expand its reporting capabilities significantly. 

In a nutshell, there is no clear winner when it comes to reporting. Both Moodle™ and Easy LMS have their own strengths and weaknesses. 

Winner: No clear winner

Pro tip:

For better e-learning insights and reporting in Moodle™, the Edwiser Reports plugin is a good option to explore. You can add a wide variety of reports such as student engagement reports, learner reports, time tracking, course engagement, etc to your Moodle™ LMS. 

Summary:

  • Easy LMS has great reporting capabilities, many of which are business-oriented.
  • Moodle™ too has goodhas a good reporting functionality, but it’s not business-oriented.
  • Moodle™ reporting functionality can also be extended with help of 3rd party plugins.

Conclusion: Which eLearning platform is the best?

Overall, the Moodle™ vs. Easy LMS showdown can be concluded in this manner:

CriteriaWinner
FeaturesMoodle™
Ease of useEasy LMS
Customization capabilitiesMoodle™
UIEasy LMS
Grading and scoringNo clear winner
IntegrationsMoodle™
PricingMoodle™
HostingNo clear winner
Implementation TechnologyMoodle™
Help and supportMoodle™
ReportingNo clear winner

It should be clear by now that Moodle™ is the best solution for most eLearning websites and their needs.

But, if you want something more business-specific or more well-designed then you can go for Easy LMS too, as it’s not a bad choice.

And if you still have any doubts, feel free to share them in the comments and we shall be happy to respond to them.