Moodle vs Laureate LMS: Which One Is Right for Your Training Organisation?

Choosing the right LMS is essential for efficiency, compliance, and learner experience. While Moodle and Laureate LMS are both widely used, they operate very differently. Here’s a clear comparison to help you decide.

Moodle: Flexible but High-Maintenance

Moodle is a free, open-source LMS known for its flexibility. Thousands of plugins and themes allow deep customisation, making it suitable for schools and universities with varied needs.

However, the real cost of Moodle isn’t the software — it’s everything around it. Providers must rent or manage their own server infrastructure, handle updates, backups, and security, and navigate plugin compatibility issues. Most organisations either hire a Moodle specialist or rely on an external developer to customise features, fix issues, and keep everything running.

Support is decentralised. You are not working with the creators of Moodle but rather a mix of third-party developers, plugin authors, and external contractors. This can lead to delays, inconsistency, and extra cost.

For organisations without strong IT capability, Moodle can quickly become complex, time-consuming, and expensive to maintain.

Laureate LMS: Built for RTOs, CRICOS & ELICOS Providers

Laureate LMS is a fully managed, purpose-built platform designed specifically for Australian training providers. It supports:

• Competency-based or marks-based assessment

• Evidence upload and mapping

• Audit-ready reporting

• Multi-campus and multi-teacher management

• Streamlined enrolments, classes, and assessments

There are no servers to manage, no plugins to maintain, and no technical configuration required. Everything is handled for you.

And unlike Moodle, you work directly with the owners and developers of the platform. This means faster support, direct feedback loops, and the ability to influence future features. No intermediaries, no delays, no unclear responsibilities — just immediate answers from the people who built the system.

Which Should You Choose?

Choose Moodle if you need extreme flexibility, have dedicated IT resources, and have time to manage customisation and maintenance.

Choose Laureate LMS if you want a turnkey, compliance-focused platform where you work directly with the creators — ideal for RTOs, CRICOS colleges, and ELICOS providers that want simplicity, reliability, and efficiency.

Feature / Cost Category	Laureate LMS	Moodle
Students	200	200
Units per student	10	10
Evidence per unit	20MB	20MB
Total annual evidence size	40GB	40GB
Hosting required	Included	Provider pays for server hosting
Hosting cost (40–80GB storage)	Included	$400 – $1,500 per year
Technical support / maintenance	Included	$2,000 – $5,000 per year
Backups, patching, plugin updates	Included	$300 – $1,000 per year
Per-unit cost	$0.50	N/A
Total units per year	2,000	2,000
Total per-unit cost	$1,000	N/A
Total annual cost	$1,000	$2,700 – $7,500
Support model	Direct access to owners/developers	Third-party developers, freelancers, or IT staff
Compliance & evidence workflows	Built-in	Requires plugins & custom setup