There are two types of course creator when it comes to platform costs.
The first picks based on monthly price and gets surprised later. The second runs the three-year numbers before signing up and usually ends up on a very different platform than they expected.
If you want to be the second type, this guide is for you.
In this guide I am comparing the real total cost of the major LMS platforms such as Kajabi, Skool, Thinkific, Mighty Networks, BuddyBoss and LearnDash, across different revenue levels, factoring in transaction fees, hosting, and the add-ons that aren’t obvious from a pricing page.
LMS Pricing Overview: WordPress vs SaaS
There are two fundamentally different ways to pay for an LMS. Understanding this split is the most important thing you can do before opening a single pricing page.
WordPress LMS runs on an annual license model. Which means you pay once per year for the plugin or platform. You pay separately for web hosting. The platform never touches your revenue. Whether you make $1,000/month or $100,000/month, your platform costs stay completely flat.
SaaS LMS runs on a subscription model. You pay monthly or annually for access to hosted software. Many platforms also take a percentage of every sale you make, a transaction fee that grows with your revenue. When your business does better, the platform bill gets bigger too.
SaaS looks affordable at first. A $74/month plan feels manageable before you’ve launched. But transaction fees, forced tier upgrades to unlock features you need, and add-ons excluded from the base plan change the math quickly. By year two or three at meaningful revenue, the gap between WordPress and SaaS is often thousands of dollars per year.
The Costs Most Creators Miss
Before you compare any headline prices, know which costs actually matter.
Transaction fees are the most dangerous line item in LMS pricing and the easiest to underestimate before you’re making real money. Even a 2% platform fee on $5,000/month is $1,200/year leaving your pocket for nothing. It feels abstract pre-launch. It stops feeling abstract fast.
Beyond fees, check what’s actually included in the base plan. Some platforms gate quizzes, certificates, drip content, and community features behind higher tiers. What looks like a $49/month platform can quietly become a $99/month platform once you unlock the features you actually need.
If you’re going the WordPress route, hosting is a separate cost to budget for, typically $60–$300/year depending on the quality of your setup. Most SaaS platforms include hosting in their subscription, and most now include a custom domain too, but it’s worth confirming before you sign up.
Finally, nearly every LMS platform, whether it’s WordPress or SaaS, excludes email marketing. Budget $20–$100/month for a standalone tool like ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign unless you’re on a platform like Kajabi that bundles it. It’s not a hidden cost exactly, but it’s one that catches people off guard when they’re tallying up their first year.
WordPress LMS Pricing Deep-Dive
The WordPress cost model is straightforward once you understand it. You pay an annual license fee to the plugin or platform vendor. You pay separately for hosting. That’s it. No percentage of your revenue, no platform cut on every sale. Whether you make $500 a month or $50,000 a month, your platform costs stay exactly the same.
The only transaction fees you’ll ever pay on WordPress are standard payment processor rates. Stripe charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, the same rate you’d pay selling anything online, anywhere. The LMS vendor keeps nothing. Here’s the full cost picture for the major WordPress options.
| Platform | Annual License | Hosting (est.) | Platform Transaction Fees | Year 1 TCO | 3-Year TCO |
| BuddyBoss Pro | $299/yr | $60–$300/yr | 0% | $359–$599 | $1,077–$1,797 |
| LearnDash Plugin | $259/yr | $60–$300/yr | 0% | $319–$559 | $777–$1,497 |
| TutorLMS Pro | $199/yr | $60–$300/yr | 0% | $259–$499 | $957–$1,677 |
| LifterLMS (all add-ons) | $299/yr | $60–$300/yr | 0% | $359–$599 | $1,077–$1,797 |
TCO = Total Cost of Ownership. Hosting range reflects budget managed hosting on the low end and premium managed WordPress hosting on the high end. Stripe’s 2.9% + $0.30 processing fee applies across all platforms but is not a platform fee.
For a full feature-by-feature evaluation of these plugins beyond price, see our WordPress LMS plugin comparison.
The Case for BuddyBoss on Price Alone
BuddyBoss Pro at $299/year covers the community layer with built-in integrations for LearnDash and MemberPress. To build the equivalent stack from scratch, you’d need all three plugins separately:
- LearnDash Plugin (Essentials plan): $259/year
- MemberPress Launch: $359/yr
- BuddyBoss Pro (community): $299/yr
That’s $917/year for the full stack, versus $558/year for BuddyBoss Pro paired with LearnDash alone if membership isn’t a requirement. The integrations between all three are built in and work seamlessly together, but each plugin is a separate license and a separate renewal to manage.
If you only need a standalone LMS with no community or membership layer, LearnDash is your leanest option.
A Realistic Look at Hosting Costs
The $60–$300/year hosting range in the table reflects real choices at different growth stages. Budget shared hosting can run $5/month, but it’s rarely the right call for a course site.
Video content, quiz logic, file downloads, and concurrent learners all put more demand on a server than a standard blog or brochure site. Cheap shared hosting that works fine for a simple website will start showing cracks once you have real traffic and active students.
Managed WordPress hosting handles the technical side for you, including server configuration, security patches, and performance optimization, so you can focus on your courses rather than your infrastructure. It costs a little more, but the reliability difference is real.
Here are three solid options at different price points:
- Cloudways starts around $14/month and runs on cloud infrastructure from providers like DigitalOcean and AWS. It gives you more control than most managed hosts and scales well as your traffic grows.
- Kinsta starts around $30/month and is built exclusively for WordPress, with fast servers, a global CDN, and daily backups included.
- WP Engine sits in a similar range at $25/month and up, with strong caching, automatic backups, and staging environments that let you test plugin updates before pushing them live.
Plan for $15–$25/month if you want reliable performance without overpaying. That’s $180–$300/year, the higher end of the hosting range in the table above, and a worthwhile investment for any course site with paying students on it.
SaaS LMS Pricing Deep-Dive
SaaS platforms bundle software and hosting into one monthly bill. That simplicity has real value, especially in the first few months when you’re focused on building content, not managing infrastructure. But the pricing models vary significantly between platforms, and transaction fees in particular can quietly become your largest annual operating cost.
All figures below assume annual billing. Monthly billing typically adds 20–40% to the annual equivalent.
| Platform | Monthly (annual billing) | Annual | Platform Transaction Fees | Year 1 TCO (at $5k/mo revenue) | 3-Year TCO ( at 5k/mo revenue) |
| Kajabi Basic | $143/mo | $1716/yr | 0% | $1716 | $5,148 |
| Kajabi Growth | $199/mo | $2388/yr | 0% | $2388 | $7,164 |
| Thinkific Start | $74/mo | $888/yr | 0% | $888 | $2,664 |
| Skool Pro | $82/mo | $984/yr | 2.9% | $2,724 | $8,172 |
| Mighty Networks Launch | $79/mo | $948/yr | 2% | $2,148 | $6,444 |
Year 1 and 3-year TCO figures at $5K/month revenue include platform subscription cost plus transaction fee impact at that revenue level. Stripe’s processing fees apply on top of any platform transaction fees.
The Transaction Fee Problem
Transaction fees feel insignificant pre-launch. They become a very real expense as soon as revenue grows.
Take Skool Pro’s 2.9% payment processing rate. At $5,000 a month in revenue that’s $145 a month, or $1,740 a year. At $10,000 a month it doubles to $3,480 a year. At $50,000 a month you’re handing over $17,400 a year in processing fees alone, before you’ve paid for a single business expense.
Mighty Networks is cheaper at 2% on the Launch plan, but the more important detail is that the fee never fully disappears. Higher tiers reduce it to 1% on Scale and 0.5% on Growth, but there’s no path to zero on any plan. At $50,000 a month, even the reduced 0.5% Growth plan rate costs $3,000 a year in platform fees on top of your subscription.
BuddyBoss charges 0% platform transaction fees at any revenue level. You pay your payment processor directly and the platform keeps nothing from your sales.
One thing worth flagging on Skool specifically: the Hobby plan at $9 a month charges 10% transaction fees. It looks like a bargain until you do the math. At $3,000 a month in revenue that’s $3,600 a year in fees, nearly three times what the Pro plan costs annually. Anyone generating real revenue should be on Pro, not Hobby.
Kajabi: The Marketing Platform That Happens to Include Courses
Kajabi occupies its own category in this comparison. That’s because it’s less a dedicated LMS and more an all-in-one marketing platform including email marketing, landing pages, sales funnels, pipelines, community, and courses bundled under one roof.
At $143/month on the Basic plan, you get 1 community and up to 5 products, but no courses. To unlock courses alongside community, you step up to Growth at $199/month, or $2,388/year before you’ve made a single sale. That’s the number that surprises most people when they first look closely at Kajabi’s tiers.
The honest take on Kajabi: if you’re running sophisticated email funnels and want a single platform that handles courses, email automation, and community, the premium is partially justified by what it replaces. If you want courses and community without a built-in email marketing stack, or you’re already paying for ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or a similar tool, you’re paying for features you won’t use.
Thinkific: The Budget SaaS Entry Point
Thinkific’s Start plan at $74/month ($888/year) is the most affordable major SaaS LMS with zero transaction fees on paid plans. It’s a real option for creators who want hosted simplicity and aren’t yet at a revenue level where platform differences create big dollar gaps.
The limitation is real. Thinkific’s community features are basic compared to BuddyBoss, Kajabi Growth, or Skool. If community engagement is central to your course design with peer interaction, cohort discussion, group accountability, then you’ll feel the constraints quickly or end up adding a separate community tool on top.
Skool: Community-First, but Watch the Fees
Skool built its reputation on community design, not LMS depth. For cohort-based programs where peer interaction drives most of the value, it’s a compelling product.
For a detailed look at plan structures and what’s actually included at each tier, see our Skool alternatives guide.
The transaction fee is the critical watch-out. At scale, 2.9% is genuinely expensive, not just percentage-wise but in real dollar terms that grow every time you have a good month.
Skool’s course features are also less developed than dedicated LMS platforms like LearnDash. It works better as a community platform with a lightweight course layer than as a full-featured LMS. Know what you’re buying before you commit.
TCO Comparison: 3-Year Cost at Different Revenue Levels
The individual pricing tables earlier show what each platform costs at face value. This table shows what they actually cost once your business is running, factoring in transaction fees at different revenue levels.
| Monthly revenue | BuddyBoss + LearnDash | Kajabi Growth | Skool Pro | Mighty Networks launch |
| $1,000/mo | $798/yr | $2,388/yr | $1,332/yr | $1,188/yr |
| $5,000/mo | $798/yr | $2,388/yr | $2,724/yr | $2,148/yr |
| $10,000/mo | $798/yr | $2,388/yr | $4,464/yr | $3,348/yr |
| $50,000/mo | $798/yr | $2,388/yr | $18,384/yr | $12,948/yr |
Compare BuddyBoss plans — LMS, community, and membership from $299/year
What the Numbers Actually Tell You
The pattern is consistent across every row in that table. WordPress costs are flat. BuddyBoss + LearnDash stays at $858/year whether you’re making $1,000/month or $50,000/month, your platform bill never grows with your revenue.
SaaS platforms with transaction fees work in the opposite direction. At $50,000/month in revenue, Skool Pro costs $18,384/year and Mighty Networks Launch costs $12,948/year.
BuddyBoss + LearnDash costs $858/year at that same revenue level. Over three years, that gap compounds into tens of thousands of dollars staying in your business instead of going to your platform.
Kajabi Growth is the exception at $12,388/year flat regardless of revenue, but it’s still 1.5x the annual cost of BuddyBoss + LearnDash at every revenue level in the table.
When SaaS Makes Sense Despite the Cost
SaaS isn’t the wrong choice for everyone.
If you’re launching your first course and have no technical background, Thinkific at $888/year gets you live in an afternoon. That zero-friction start has real value. WordPress has a learning curve, hosting setup, plugin management, updates, and backups. If that overhead would genuinely slow your launch, the SaaS premium may be worth it in year one.
The turning point for most creators is somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000/month in course revenue.
Below that threshold, the SaaS premium is often manageable. Above it, the flat cost structure of WordPress saves you meaningful money each year, and that savings compounds for as long as you run the business.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an LMS cost per month?
WordPress LMS plugins like LearnDash and TutorLMS don’t charge monthly, just a flat annual license plus hosting at $15–$25/month. SaaS platforms run $74–$399/month on annual billing. The number that matters most isn’t the monthly fee though, it’s the total annual cost including transaction fees at your actual revenue level. At $5,000/month in revenue, the difference between a WordPress LMS and a SaaS platform with transaction fees can be thousands of dollars per year.
Do LMS platforms take a percentage of course sales?
Some do, some don’t. WordPress LMS platforms like BuddyBoss and LearnDash charge zero platform transaction fees. You only pay standard payment processor rates (Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30). Among SaaS platforms, Skool charges 2.9–10% depending on plan, Mighty Networks charges 0.5–2%.
Is WordPress cheaper than Kajabi for online courses?
Yes, significantly. BuddyBoss + LearnDash costs $858/year including hosting (est.). Kajabi Growth costs $2,388/year with no transaction fees. At $5,000/month in revenue that’s a $1,530/year difference in favor of WordPress. At $50,000/month the gap stays the same for Kajabi since it has no transaction fees, but WordPress still wins on cost at every revenue level.
What happens to LMS costs as your course business grows?
WordPress LMS costs stay completely flat regardless of revenue. BuddyBoss + LearnDash costs $858/year whether you’re making $1,000/month or $50,000/month. SaaS platforms with transaction fees work in the opposite direction. The more you earn, the more you pay. That’s the core reason established course creators migrate to WordPress once they hit consistent monthly revenue.
The Smart Choice Comes Down to This
If community and courses are both central to your business, BuddyBoss + LearnDash is the answer. If you want an all-in-one marketing platform and don’t mind paying for tools you may not fully use, Kajabi makes sense. If you’re just getting started and want zero technical overhead, Thinkific gets you moving quickly.
But if you’re building for the long term, the choice is straightforward. Flat costs, full ownership, zero platform fees. That’s WordPress every time.
Start here- Compare BuddyBoss plans
