If you’re thinking about launching an online course, you’ve probably come across LearnDash. It’s one of the most popular WordPress LMS plugins available, powering everything from solo creator course sites to full-blown corporate training platforms. But the sticker price on the LearnDash website doesn’t tell the whole story.
The real question isn’t just “how much does LearnDash cost?” It’s “how much will my entire LearnDash website cost, from start to finish, and what will it cost me every year after that?”
We’re going to break all of that down here. No vague ranges. No skipping over the expenses that catch people off guard six months in. Just a realistic, practical look at what you should expect to spend — and where you might be able to save.
The LearnDash Plugin Itself
LearnDash moved to an annual subscription model a few years ago, and as of 2026, you’re looking at three pricing tiers. The base plan starts at $199 per year for a single site license. The Plus package runs $399 per year and covers up to 10 sites. The Pro package is $799 per year for up to 25 sites with additional features like ProPanel for reporting.
Most small business owners and course creators only need the single-site license. That $199 per year gives you the core LMS functionality — course builder, quizzes, certificates, drip content, and the essential features that make LearnDash worth using in the first place.
One thing to keep in mind: if you let your license lapse, you keep the plugin but lose access to updates and support. That might sound fine in theory, but WordPress updates frequently, and running outdated plugins is one of the fastest ways to break a site or open it up to security vulnerabilities.
WordPress Hosting and Domain Costs
LearnDash runs on WordPress, which means you need a self-hosted WordPress installation. That starts with two things: a domain name and a hosting plan.
A domain name runs about $10 to $20 per year depending on the registrar and the extension you choose. Nothing surprising there.
Hosting is where the range gets wide. You can find shared hosting for $5 to $15 per month. For a course site with a handful of students, that might work initially. But the moment you start getting real traffic or running media-heavy courses with video content, shared hosting starts to struggle. Page load times climb. The admin dashboard gets sluggish. Students notice.
For a LearnDash site that’s actually going to perform well, you should budget for managed WordPress hosting in the $25 to $75 per month range. Providers like Cloudways, SiteGround’s GrowBig plan, or WP Engine give you the server resources, caching, and support infrastructure that a course platform demands. If you’re planning to host video directly on your site rather than embedding from Vimeo or YouTube, you’ll want to lean toward the higher end of that range or consider dedicated hosting.
The hosting decision matters more for an LMS site than it does for a standard business website. Building a learning management website involves dynamic content delivery, database-heavy quiz interactions, and user session management — all of which demand more server resources than a static brochure site.
Essential Plugins and Add-Ons
Here’s where the costs start to add up in ways people don’t always anticipate. LearnDash handles the core LMS functionality, but a fully functional course website needs more than just course delivery.
You’ll need a payment gateway integration. If you’re using WooCommerce (which is free) to handle transactions, you’ll still need a payment processor like Stripe or PayPal. Stripe charges 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction — no monthly fee, but those processing costs add up as revenue grows.
You’ll probably want a page builder for designing your sales pages, landing pages, and course layouts. Elementor Pro runs about $59 per year. Some course creators prefer using the WordPress block editor with a theme like Kadence or Astra, which can reduce this cost, but most people find a page builder worth the investment for the design flexibility.
Email marketing integration is another essential. You need to communicate with your students — enrollment confirmations, drip notifications, marketing for future courses. FluentCRM runs as a WordPress plugin starting around $129 per year. Alternatively, external platforms like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign charge $29 to $79 per month depending on your list size.
If you’re planning to offer memberships or subscription-based access to your courses, you may need a membership plugin on top of LearnDash. Paid Memberships Pro has a free tier that works for basic setups, but the paid plans start at $247 per year for more advanced features.
Security and backup plugins are non-negotiable for any site handling user data and payments. A solid security plugin like Wordfence Premium runs $119 per year. Backup solutions like UpdraftPlus Premium cost about $70 per year. Some managed hosting providers include backups, which can offset this.
When you’re evaluating WordPress plugins for courses, the key is understanding which ones are truly essential for launch and which ones you can add later as your platform grows.
Theme and Design Costs
Your LearnDash site needs a WordPress theme, and the theme you choose affects both the look of your site and how well LearnDash integrates with it.
Some themes are built specifically to work with LearnDash. Jesuspended and LearnMate are popular options in the $59 to $79 range. More general-purpose themes like Astra, Kadence, or GeneratePress also work well with LearnDash — their pro versions run $49 to $79 per year.
If you go with a free theme, you can absolutely make it work, but you’ll likely spend more time customizing it and may run into styling conflicts with LearnDash’s output. The time you spend wrestling with CSS is time you’re not spending creating course content.
For course creators who want a completely custom design, hiring a designer to create a custom theme or heavily customize an existing one typically runs $1,500 to $5,000 or more. That’s a significant investment, but it can make a real difference for brands that need to stand out in a competitive niche.
The Real Cost: Your Time (or Someone Else’s)
This is the line item that almost every “how much does X cost” article ignores, and it’s usually the biggest one.
If you’re building your LearnDash site yourself, plan on spending 40 to 100 hours getting everything set up, configured, tested, and launched. That includes installing WordPress, configuring LearnDash, setting up your payment system, building out your course structure, designing your pages, testing the student experience, and troubleshooting the inevitable issues that come up.
If your time is worth $50 per hour — a conservative estimate for most business owners — that’s $2,000 to $5,000 in time investment. And that assumes everything goes smoothly, which it rarely does on the first try.
The alternative is hiring someone to build it. Freelance WordPress developers who specialize in LearnDash typically charge $2,000 to $8,000 for a complete course website build. Agencies tend to charge more, often in the $5,000 to $15,000 range depending on the scope and complexity.
There’s a middle path too. The hidden costs of DIY website management are real, and many course creators find that a subscription-based web design service gives them professional results at a predictable monthly cost without the massive upfront investment of a traditional agency build.
At NorthMac Services, we offer subscription web design plans that include the initial build, ongoing hosting, maintenance, and support — all in one monthly fee. For course creators, this means you get a professionally built LearnDash site without the $5,000+ upfront cost, and you always have someone to call when something needs updating.
Putting It All Together: Total Cost Scenarios
Let’s look at three realistic scenarios for what a LearnDash website actually costs in year one.
The budget build is for the course creator who’s willing to do the work themselves and keep things lean. You’re looking at LearnDash at $199, shared hosting at about $120 for the year, a domain for $15, a free or low-cost theme around $49, WooCommerce (free) with Stripe processing, and maybe FluentCRM at $129 for email. That puts your hard costs around $500 to $600 for year one, plus 60 to 100 hours of your time.
The mid-range build adds some professional polish. LearnDash at $199, managed hosting around $450 to $600 per year, a premium theme at $79, Elementor Pro at $59, email marketing at $129 to $348 depending on the platform, security and backup plugins at $189, and possibly hiring a freelancer for some of the build at $1,500 to $3,000. Year-one total: roughly $2,500 to $4,500.
The professional build is for those who want everything done right from the start. Full agency or developer build at $5,000 to $10,000, LearnDash Pro at $799 (if you need multi-site or ProPanel), premium hosting at $900 or more per year, full plugin stack at $500 to $800, and custom design work. Year-one total: $7,000 to $12,000 or more.
Each of these scenarios has ongoing annual costs too. In year two and beyond, you’re looking at $400 to $2,000 per year depending on which tier you built at, covering license renewals, hosting, and plugin updates.
Where Course Creators Overspend (and Where They Underspend)
After building dozens of LearnDash sites for clients, we’ve noticed some consistent patterns in where people waste money and where they don’t spend enough.
The most common overspend is on plugins. It’s easy to install 30 or 40 plugins chasing every feature you can imagine. Each one adds cost, complexity, and potential conflicts. A lean plugin stack that covers your actual needs is always better than a bloated one that covers hypothetical future needs. Start with the essentials and add plugins only when you have a specific, demonstrated need.
The most common underspend is on hosting. A $5 per month shared hosting plan for an LMS site is like trying to run a restaurant out of a food truck kitchen. It might technically work, but your customers will feel the difference. Good hosting directly affects page speed, uptime, and user experience — all of which impact whether students complete your courses and recommend them to others.
The other frequent underspend is on the student experience itself. Course creators pour money into marketing and design for the sales page but then deliver courses through a default, un-styled LearnDash template. Your students are paying customers. The experience inside the course — navigation, progress tracking, mobile responsiveness — matters as much as what it looks like from the outside. We’ve written about the key features every WordPress LMS should have if you want to make sure your course site delivers on the essentials.
Making the Smart Investment
A LearnDash website can cost anywhere from $500 to $12,000+ in year one depending on how you approach it. The right budget depends on your situation — your technical comfort level, how quickly you need to launch, and how much of your own time you can realistically invest.
If you’re just testing a course idea and want to validate it before going all-in, the budget build is perfectly reasonable. Get the content out there, see if people buy it, and reinvest from revenue.
If you already know your course has an audience and you’re ready to build something sustainable, the mid-range approach gives you a solid foundation without overextending.
And if your course business is already generating revenue and you need a platform that can scale with you, investing in a professional build pays for itself through better conversion rates, fewer technical headaches, and a student experience that drives referrals.
Whatever path you choose, the key is going in with realistic expectations about the total investment — not just the plugin price tag.
If you’d rather skip the guesswork and have a team handle the technical side while you focus on creating great course content, reach out to NorthMac Services. We build and maintain LearnDash sites for course creators who’d rather teach than troubleshoot.
