Digital learning has never been more popular nowadays, especially after this pandemic. Every day, more people turn to the web to expand their skill set. They enroll in online classes to broaden their horizons, and look for better jobs. If you’re looking to offer online classes or courses, it can be done relatively easily by using a good online course WordPress theme.
The right tools will let you enable user registration, upload courses, and even conduct tests. And a lot of those features can be found in the best online course WordPress themes. Which option you choose will depend on how you want your school to operate, and whether you plan to charge for lessons or not. The right online course or LMS WordPress theme will help you launch your online academy with relative ease.
In this post, we’ll introduce you to 11 top online course WordPress themes, and help you launch your virtual classroom. Let’s get started!
LMS is a modern online course theme that’s perfect for academies with lots of students and teachers. This theme includes templates you can use to build your courses, which you can break down further into multiple modules.
You can assign specific teachers to each lesson or class, and host discussions in dedicated comments sections. For more in-depth discourse, you can also use the BuddyPress plugin to set up forums where students can chat with one another.
As your school grows, so will your selection of classes. To keep everything organized, LMS includes a powerful search page that offers plenty of filters for class modules. That way, potential students can search for lessons by course type and cost.
Depending on your needs, you can publish lessons for free or sell them using WooCommerce. If you want to go down the latter road, LMS comes with unique shop page designs that are built specifically for WooCommerce users.
Price: A one-year license costs $59.
Next up, Guru is a perfect theme for online academies that want to offer a mix of premium and free courses. With this solution, students can filter through your available classes based on price (which you can customize using WooCommerce).
Students will benefit from this theme as well, since they’ll get an overview of every class they’re enrolled in through individual academic profiles. Instructors also have their own ‘About’ pages, where potential students can see what courses each teacher is running and read about their experience.
What’s more, this theme comes with premium plugins that enable you to create and grade tests. You’ll also get access to course analytics that let you monitor student performance, so you’ll know if any of your instructors need to modify their approach.
Price: A one-year license costs $59.
CBKit is one of the most visually-stunning and feature-filled online course themes the WordPress community has to offer. It includes the free LearnPress plugin, alongside several premium add-ons that you can use to create more complex class structures.
Using this theme and its accompanying plugins, you can publish lessons, create quizzes, score students’ assignments, and much more. All of this is accomplished using a well-built drag-and-drop interface that’s perfect for lesson planning.
With CBKit, you can also sell individual courses using WooCommerce, or use a subscription model thanks to Paid Membership Pro. When it comes to designing your online university, you can choose from multiple pre-built options that help you create everything from one-instructor layouts to internal knowledge bases.
Price: A one-year license costs $64.
With Academy, you get an entire online academic system bundled into a single theme. You and your teaching staff will be able to publish and manage dozens of courses. Additionally, you can break every class down into multiple lessons, each supplemented with its own media attachments.
It’s also easy to review which students are enrolled in each class. Those pupils can upload their own avatars, share their social media profiles with one another, and even rate each class they’ve participated in.
In addition, with Academy, you can set up a subscription model for your online college. The theme includes pricing tables that are designed to work smoothly with WooCommerce, and you can even select which materials users will have access to depending on their plans.
Price: A one-year license costs $49.
Aardvark is a multipurpose theme designed for building community websites. It includes a custom setup for online academies, which enables you to publish courses that users can enroll in.
To offer that functionality, this theme relies on the Sensei plugin, which is a WooCommerce extension. Sensei supports online course creation, enables you to create quizzes, and makes it easy to charge for subscriptions.
Aardvark also includes page layouts built specifically for use with BuddyPress. That makes it a perfect option if you want to set up forums where your students can hang out and chat. Plus, every element this theme offers is easy to customize, thanks to its integration with the WP Bakery Page Builder plugin.
Price: A one-year license costs $65.
Skilled is a gorgeous theme that works well for online classrooms of all kinds. It enables you to publish hundreds of classes, set up prerequisites for each one, grade individual assignments, and much more.
As with the last theme on our list, Skilled is powered by the Sensei WooCommerce extension. However, on top of its base features, this theme also includes detailed course analytics, and makes it easy to charge for classes using WooCommerce.
Students can also leave in-depth reviews for each class, so new users will know which courses are worth their time. You can also use Skilled to create complex time tables if you intend to host live classes, which is a component that not many online academies offer.
Price: A one-year license costs $60.
If you’re looking for an incredibly feature-rich theme, Education Pack should be at the top of your list. Using this theme, you can run an online school with dozens of instructors, each publishing and managing their own courses.
Education Pack provides instructors with their own profile pages as well, which can include student ratings, class lists, and even short biographies. To help students find the perfect courses, this theme also enables users to easily compare options directly. If they’re not sure about a class, a student can bookmark it in their profile and come back to it later.
With Education Pack, you can even publish time-limited events or classes, and let users book their spots by paying via PayPal. The same payment method also works for regular lessons, and you’re free to set your own prices and enrollment limits.
Price: A one-year license costs $54.
Our next pick, MaxCoach, looks particularly stylish when compared with the many dry education themes out there. Plus, it bundles together some of the most useful plugins and tools for digital learning, all in one convenient package.
With MaxCoach, you can publish both free and password-protected lessons. Prospective students can compare courses based on features, length, and price, then add the ones they’re interested in to a wish list before making a decision. Users can join classrooms by paying for memberships or buying individual courses.
On your end, you can keep an eye on your educators’ performance through in-depth analytics. This theme also makes it possible for teachers to create their own quizzes, let students retake exams, and grade every assignment using multiple metrics.
If you want to create an online learning website that supports multiple languages, MaxCoach is a top option. It comes ready for translation, widening your base of potential students.
Price: A one-year license costs $59.
Divi is a multipurpose theme that comes with one of the biggest demo collections we’ve seen so far. Using Divi, you get access to hundreds of pre-built designs, including a few that are perfect for online universities.
This theme’s primary selling point is its custom page builder. The Divi Builder is highly intuitive, which makes it ideal if you don’t have any experience creating websites. Plus, it comes with dozens of ready-to-go modules that you can customize using both the back end and front end editors.
However, keep in mind that Divi doesn’t ship with an online course system. That means you’ll need to use a plugin such as Sensei or LearnPress to create and publish your interactive lessons.
Price: A one-year license costs $89.
Eduma is one of the only online learning themes for WordPress that offers integration with videoconferencing software such as Zoom. That integration is key, since more learners are becoming accustomed to live remote lessons instead of pre-recorded videos.
Whatever type of classes you want to set up, Eduma has you covered with demo layouts for all kinds of academies, ranging from art schools to university hubs. To power its classrooms, Eduma uses the free LearnPress plugin. It also offers multiple monetization options, enabling you to sell both individual classroom passes and subscriptions (using a tier-based model).
Eduma was designed to help you host courses from a variety of instructors. Using this theme, you can enable users to publish their own lessons and set commission rates. What’s more, Eduma supports several popular page builder plugins (including Elementor, Visual Composer, and SiteOrigin), making it very easy to customize.
Price: A one-year license starts at $69.
Last but not least, Bridge is a beginner-friendly multipurpose theme that’s perfect for publishing courses of all types. This theme uses the WPBakery Page Builder plugin to make customization easier, and it includes several designs specifically built for online academies.
With Bridge, you get a custom learning system to help you build your digital classroom. Plus, this theme offers the most extensive video tutorials library we’ve encountered so far. You’ll find easy-to-follow instructions for setting up and configuring every aspect of your online course system.
Thanks to Bridge’s custom shopping pages, you can also use WooCommerce to sell access to all the lessons on your website. The theme even comes ready for translation, which is excellent news if you plan to offer courses in multiple languages.
Price: A one-year license costs $59.
Conclusion
Online course WordPress themes can be incredibly feature-rich tools. The best ones enable you to easily publish classes for hundreds of students, grade assignments quickly, and even monitor your teachers’ performance.
Ideally, you’ll want a theme that also lets you create an online academy to match your specific needs and branding. If you’re looking for sheer breadth of functionality, we recommend checking out CBKit. Because CBKit bundles together some of the best e-learning plugins in the market, it is one of the obvious choices. For online academies that are more community based, Guru is an excellent choice.
Have you tried any of the above themes, and what was your experience like? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!