Every few months someone in the Ecommerce Paradise community decides to turn what they know into a course, and the first question is always the same. Do I rent a platform or do I build one on WordPress? I have made that call myself. I run a high-ticket dropshipping masterclass and a paid Skool community, and I have paid both kinds of bill. So when the content plan said to write up codeBOX, I followed the affiliate link before I wrote a word, and it landed on lifterlms.com. codeBOX is the company. LifterLMS is the product, and lifterlms.com links out to a codeBOX-hosted brand asset page from its own navigation, so the two names are the same business.
That matters for this article because the thing you are actually pricing is a WordPress LMS plugin, not a SaaS subscription. The core plugin is free. The money starts when you need to take a card payment, and it keeps going in a way that the sticker price on the pricing page does not show you. On 23 September 2026 I pulled the lifterlms.com sitemap and opened every page whose URL contains pric, plan, fee, cost or billing, plus the lifetime licence page, the demo page, the terms of use and 31 individual product pages. Then I did the same to LearnDash, Tutor LMS, MemberPress, Sensei, Teachable, Kajabi and Podia, so the comparison is not just LifterLMS against a memory.
Here is the short version before the detail. The advertised prices are first-year prices. LifterLMS says so itself, in a footnote, in grey, under the plan cards. Year two costs exactly double. If you budget from the number on the button you will be wrong by 100 percent in month thirteen, and that single sentence is the reason this article runs past three thousand words instead of being a table.
Own the course platform instead of renting it
The LifterLMS core plugin is free with unlimited courses and students. The Earth Bundle adds Stripe, PayPal and WooCommerce for $199 the first year and $398 a year after that, and LifterLMS takes no percentage of what you sell.
What LifterLMS Charges, Exactly, On 23 September 2026
The LifterLMS pricing page publishes four options. Three are paid annual bundles and one is the free core plugin. Above them all sits a banner reading “Introductory Pricing: Save 50% on your first year of any new order. Use coupon code: FIRSTYEAR50”.
| Plan | First year | Renews at | Active sites | Support accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LifterLMS Core Plugin | Free | Free | Not stated on the pricing page | None included |
| LifterLMS Earth Bundle | $199 | $398 | 1 active site | 1 user |
| LifterLMS Universe Bundle | $299 | $598 | 5 active sites | 2 users |
| LifterLMS Infinity Bundle | $799 | $1,598 | Unlimited sites | 3 users |
The renewal column is not my inference. The pricing page carries this line under the plan cards, and again under the full comparison table further down the same page: “All pricing is in USD. All renewals are at full price. You can change plans or cancel your account at any time.” The “normally” figures printed above each discounted price are $398, $598 and $1,598 in the same order.
So the three-year cost of running one course site on the Earth Bundle is $199 plus $398 plus $398, which is $995. Universe over the same three years is $299 plus $598 plus $598, or $1,495. Infinity is $799 plus $1,598 plus $1,598, which is $3,995. I am showing the components because the difference between “$199 a year” and “$995 over three years” is the whole decision for a lot of people.
What the free core plugin actually does and does not do
The free plugin is not a trial. The pricing page lists unlimited courses, unlimited memberships, unlimited students and unlimited teachers on the free tier, and the LifterLMS listing in the WordPress.org plugin directory shows it at 10,000 or more active installations. What the free tier does not include, according to the same comparison table, is any of the ecommerce add-ons. Stripe, PayPal, WooCommerce and Authorize.net all sit in the paid columns.
That is the hinge. If you are selling anything, you need a payment gateway, and the cheapest route to one inside LifterLMS is either the Earth Bundle or a single a la carte gateway add-on. Free is genuinely free for delivering training. It is not a way to sell a course without paying LifterLMS something.
The a la carte add-on prices
LifterLMS sells add-ons individually through a WooCommerce store on its own site, and each product page publishes a price. I opened 31 of them. Every LifterLMS add-on among those 31 was priced at one of exactly two numbers, $149 a year or $299 a year, on a licence the pricing page FAQ describes as usable on 1 active website.
| Price | Add-ons I read at that price | Count |
|---|---|---|
| $149 per year | Stripe, PayPal, WooCommerce Integration, Authorize.Net, Mailchimp, Kit, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Formidable Forms, WPForms, Twilio, Sky Pilot theme, Aircraft, Powerpack | 14 |
| $299 per year | Advanced Quizzes, Advanced Videos, Assignments, Advanced Coupons, Continuing Education, Course Cohorts, Custom Fields, Events, Gifts, Groups, Name Your Price, Notes, PDFs, Private Areas, Private Site, Social Learning, Office Hours Mastermind | 17 |
That is 31 products, and I counted the rows rather than estimating them. The arithmetic that follows is the reason the bundles exist. One $149 gateway on its own is cheaper than the $199 Earth Bundle only if you never want a second thing. Two $299 add-ons cost $598, which is the Earth Bundle renewal price plus $200, for two features instead of the whole ecommerce set. Buying a la carte makes sense for exactly one scenario: you want one specific advanced add-on, such as Assignments or Groups, and nothing else.
The demo, and a number that contradicts the pricing page
LifterLMS sells a 30-day demo site for $1. The LifterLMS demo page is unambiguous that the charge does not renew: “And we WON’T automatically charge your card after the 30 days!” It is a hosted sandbox on their servers with every add-on installed, which is a genuinely good way to evaluate a WordPress LMS without building a WordPress site first.
That same page describes what you are getting as “our big, $1,200 / year plan”. The pricing page prices the Infinity Bundle at $799 for year one and $1,598 on renewal. LifterLMS therefore publishes three different annual figures for its top tier across two of its own pages, and $1,200 is not one of the two on the pricing page. I am not picking one. Plan against $1,598, because that is the number the pricing page and the lifetime page both name as the renewal.
The $10,000 Lifetime Licence, And Whether The Maths Works
There is a fourth option that the pricing page mentions only in one line of small text. The LifterLMS lifetime licence page sells an Infinity Bundle Lifetime License for $10,000 as a single payment, with unlimited websites, every current and future add-on, and priority support, and no renewal ever.
That page does its own break-even sum and says “It pays for itself around year six.” Their arithmetic is $10,000 divided by the $1,598 renewal, which is 6.26 years. Mine is slightly different because year one is discounted. Paying $799 then $1,598 a year, the cumulative spend is $799 after year one, $2,397 after year two, $3,995 after three, $5,593 after four, $7,191 after five, $8,789 after six and $10,387 after seven. You cross $10,000 during year seven, not year six. That is a small correction and it does not change the shape of the answer, but if you are signing a $10,000 cheque you should do the sum with the real first-year price in it.
Who should think about it seriously: an agency or a freelancer shipping LifterLMS sites for clients, because the licence covers unlimited active sites. Who should not: anybody building their first course. Seven years is longer than most course businesses survive, and $10,000 is the cost of a decent paid traffic test that would tell you whether the course sells at all. I would rather you spent it finding out.
Not ready to maintain a WordPress stack? Rent instead
Teachable’s Builder plan is $69 a month billed annually, which is $828 a year, with a 0 percent transaction fee. That is more than the LifterLMS Earth renewal of $398, and it comes with hosting, updates and support that you do not run yourself.
Refunds, Renewals And The Terms Nobody Reads
The marketing line is a 30-day, 100 percent money-back guarantee, and it appears on the pricing page, the lifetime page and the demo page. The LifterLMS terms of use add detail that the marketing does not. Refund requests must be submitted within 30 days of the original purchase or subscription renewal. Processing can take up to 15 business days. And refunds on renewals are limited to the most recent renewal transaction only, with nothing available for prior renewals.
That last clause is the one to notice. If a renewal charge slips past you and you catch it four months later, the terms say you are outside the window. Set a calendar reminder eleven months after you buy, which is advice I would give for any annual software licence and which is doubly worth it here because the price doubles at that moment.
The pricing FAQ also says renewals are automatic and cancellable at any time, that there are no setup fees or contracts, and that upgrading between bundles later gives you prorated credit for what you already paid. I read all of those on the pricing page rather than inferring them.
One number LifterLMS reports three ways
The pricing page says LifterLMS is used by “over 10,000 creators”. The lifetime page says the company has “powered over 100,000 learning platforms”. The WordPress.org directory lists the free plugin at 10,000 or more active installations. Those are three different measures and they are not strictly contradictory, because installations, creators and platforms ever powered are different things. I am giving you all three rather than picking the flattering one. If you want a floor you can defend, 10,000 active installs is the number a third party publishes.
LifterLMS Against The Other WordPress LMS Plugins
This is the comparison that actually decides things, because if you are already on WordPress the real alternatives are other WordPress plugins, not hosted platforms. Every figure below came off the vendor’s own pricing page on 23 September 2026.
| Plugin | Entry paid tier | Sites on that tier | Top tier | Cut of your sales |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LifterLMS | $199 first year, $398 renewal | 1 | $799 first year, $1,598 renewal | None published |
| LearnDash | $259 a year (Essentials) | Not stated on the pricing page | $599 a year (Elite) | None published |
| Tutor LMS | $199 a year (Individual) | 1 | $799 a year (Agency, unlimited sites) | None published |
| MemberPress | $199.50 first year, $399 normal (Launch) | Not stated on the pricing page | $499.50 first year, $999 normal (Scale) | 4.9 percent on Launch, 0 percent on Growth and Scale |
| Sensei | $15 a month billed $179 yearly (Sensei Pro) | Not stated on the pricing page | $30 a month billed $360 yearly (Sensei Agency, up to 20 sites or 1 multisite network) | None published |
Read that table twice, because it says something unflattering about the category. LifterLMS Earth at $199 and Tutor LMS Individual at $199 are the same first-year price for one site. In year two LifterLMS charges $398 and Tutor LMS charges $199, because Tutor LMS does not publish an introductory discount on its pricing page, it publishes one price. Over three years on one site that is $995 against $597, a difference of $398.
Tutor LMS also sells lifetime licences at $499 for one site, $999 for up to 10 sites and $1,999 for up to 50 sites. A $499 one-time licence against LifterLMS Infinity Lifetime at $10,000 is a 20x gap, and I am not going to pretend that is a rounding error. The two products are not identical, and LifterLMS has better support and a much stronger community in my experience, but if the only thing you care about is never paying again, Tutor LMS publishes a way to do that for the price of two months of Kajabi.
MemberPress runs exactly the same play as LifterLMS. Its pricing page shows Launch at $199.50 with the footnote “Special introductory pricing, all annual renewals are at full price”, and normal prices of $399, $699 and $999. It also charges a 4.9 percent transaction fee on the Launch tier, which LifterLMS does not do at any tier. On $50,000 of course sales that fee is $2,450, which buys six years of LifterLMS Earth renewals. If you are choosing between the two on price alone, the MemberPress entry tier is only cheap if you are not selling much.
LearnDash is the one that changed most. Its old pricing URL now lands on Liquid Web’s LearnDash page, which publishes Essentials at $259 a year, Pro at $399 and Elite at $599, described as “Simple annual pricing. No per-student fees.” That page does not state a site limit for any tier, so I am not going to tell you what one is. Sensei is the cheapest paid WordPress LMS in this table by a wide margin at $179 billed yearly for Sensei Pro, with a free tier alongside it.
Self-Hosted Against Hosted, With The Real Numbers
Now the comparison people actually want, because the honest answer is not always the plugin. Hosted platforms charge more per month and give you hosting, updates, uptime and a support desk in return. Here is what they publish.
| Platform | Entry plan | Annual equivalent | Transaction fee on entry plan | Top plan I could read |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LifterLMS Earth | $199 first year | $398 from year two | None published | Infinity, $1,598 renewal |
| Teachable | Starter, $29 a month billed annually ($39 monthly) | $348 | 7.5 percent | Growth, $139 a month billed annually, 0 percent |
| Podia | Mover, $42 a month, $504 billed annually | $504 | 5 percent | Earthquaker, $150 a month, $1,800 billed annually |
| Kajabi | Basic, $143 a month billed annually ($179 monthly) | $1,716 | None published on the pricing page | Pro, $399 a month billed annually, $4,788 a year |
Thinkific belongs in that table and is not in it. Its pricing page returned an HTTP 403 to every request I made in this session, so I could not read a single plan price, and I am not going to publish a figure I have not seen. If you want the Thinkific comparison, our Teachable versus Thinkific breakdown covers how the two platforms differ on structure.
The transaction fee column is where high-ticket sellers should stop and do arithmetic. Teachable Starter at $348 a year looks like it beats the LifterLMS Earth renewal of $398. Add the 7.5 percent fee and sell $50,000 of courses in a year, and Starter costs $348 plus $3,750, which is $4,098. Earth costs $398 plus your Stripe fees, which you would pay on any of these. At $50,000 of sales the self-hosted route is roughly $3,700 cheaper, and that gap grows every year you keep selling. At $5,000 of sales the fee is $375 and the two are within $325 of each other, which is not worth restructuring your business over.
Podia’s 5 percent applies only to the Mover plan. Podia’s own pricing FAQ says there are no Podia fees on the Shaker or Earthquaker plans. Kajabi publishes no platform transaction fee on its pricing page at any tier, but its entry plan at $1,716 a year is more than four times the LifterLMS Earth renewal, so it is paying for the fee removal in the subscription instead.
Who Should Buy This And Who Should Not
I have run this decision for my own business, so I will give you my actual reasoning rather than a balanced-sounding non-answer.
Buy LifterLMS if you already run WordPress
The case is strongest when the WordPress site already exists and is already making money. If you run a high-ticket dropshipping store or a content site on WordPress, adding an LMS plugin means one hosting bill, one backup routine, one set of plugin updates and one domain your audience already knows. You keep every dollar your students pay minus your payment processor’s cut, and nothing in LifterLMS’s published pricing takes a percentage of your sales at any tier. For somebody selling a $2,000 programme, that is the whole argument.
It is also the right answer if you are going to sell the business one day. A course running on your own WordPress install with your own Stripe account is an asset with a clean transfer story. A course living inside somebody else’s platform is a login you hand over and hope survives the migration.
Do not buy it if you want to launch this month
Self-hosting is a stack, not a purchase. You need hosting that can handle video and concurrent students, a backup system, a security posture, a theme that does not fight the plugin, and somebody who will apply updates. That somebody is you. If you have never maintained a WordPress site and your plan is to record eight lessons and sell them by the end of the month, LifterLMS is the wrong tool and the $199 is the smallest part of what it will cost you. A hosted platform such as Teachable will have you selling in a weekend, and you can migrate later when the revenue justifies the complexity.
If you do decide to self-host anyway, price the hosting honestly first using our guide to web hosting for membership sites. Cheap shared hosting and video courses do not mix, and that bill is a real part of the total that no pricing page will show you.
Where a community platform beats both
I run my paid community on Skool, and I would not move it to LifterLMS. If what you are really selling is access to you and to other members, the course modules are a supporting feature and the discussion is the product. A WordPress LMS gives you a brilliant course structure and a mediocre community. Our Skool pricing breakdown has the numbers on that side. If you want the easier on-ramps instead, we ranked the best online course platforms for beginners separately.
The honest split I use: structured curriculum with assessments and certificates, self-hosted LMS. Cohort or community where people come back for the conversation, a community platform. Digital product you want live this week, a hosted course platform. Most people building a first course are in the third bucket and talk themselves into the first one.
What I Would Actually Pay, And In What Order
If I were starting a course on an existing WordPress site tomorrow, I would install the free core plugin, build the curriculum, and take the first few sales manually or through an existing checkout while I found out whether anybody wanted it. That costs zero. Then I would buy the Earth Bundle at $199 for the gateways, knowing year two is $398, and I would only move to Universe at $299 if I genuinely needed the email and forms integrations on more than one site.
I would not start at Infinity. The advanced add-ons in that tier, groups, cohorts, assignments, private areas, are things you want after you have students, not before. Upgrading later gets you prorated credit for what you already paid, per the pricing page FAQ, so the cost of starting small is close to nothing.
And I would spend the $1 on the demo site before any of it. Thirty days with every add-on installed, no automatic charge afterwards, is the cheapest way to find out whether you can live with the admin interface. That is a better use of an evening than reading another review, including this one.
One caveat on all of it. Prices in this category move, LifterLMS is running a coupon-code discount as I write, and every figure here is dated 23 September 2026 with the page it came from linked next to it. Re-check the number before you buy. The structural findings, that the advertised price is a first-year price, that the renewal is double, that the gateways sit behind the paywall and that no tier takes a cut of your sales, will outlast the specific dollars.
If you want the fuller feature-by-feature take rather than the money, our LifterLMS review covers what it is like to actually build in.
And if the thing you are trying to monetise is ecommerce knowledge, the foundations matter more than the software. Start with the high-ticket niches list to work out what people will pay to learn about. Get the business formation for high-ticket dropshipping side right before you take a single payment.
Then work through how to find suppliers for high-ticket products, because that is the part students actually get stuck on and therefore the part a course can charge real money to solve. Everything else I publish lives at Ecommerce Paradise.
Still not sure whether to build it or rent it?
The gap between the cheapest option here and the most expensive is $348 a year against $4,788 a year. That is a $4,440 decision made on guesswork unless somebody who has built both looks at your offer, your volume and your technical appetite with you.
Related Articles
If you found this useful, these go deeper on the same decision:
- LifterLMS Review 2026: Best WordPress LMS Plugin for Ecommerce Course Creators?
- Teachable Pricing in 2026: Complete Plan Breakdown and Transaction Fees
- 10 Best Teachable Alternatives in 2026
- Skool Pricing 2026: Plans, Fees, and the Break-Even Math
- Best Online Course Platform in 2026: Ranked by Features, Revenue Control and Student Experience
- Best Web Hosting for Membership Sites in 2026
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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