Drip Content and Prerequisites in LifterLMS: Control the Pace of a Course
The four lesson drip methods, the course-level drip, lesson and course prerequisites, and how they behave next to start and end dates and…
Read articleLifterLMS is a learning management system (LMS) that runs as a plugin inside WordPress. Install it on a WordPress site and you can create courses, enroll students, sell access, run memberships, and track progress from the same admin area you already use for pages and posts.
That short description leaves out the questions decision-makers ask. What is free and what is paid? Does it take card payments out of the box? Does it fit a training team as well as a solo course creator? Who looks after it once it is live?
This guide answers those questions in plain English. We are an independent agency that works only on LifterLMS, and we checked the details below against the official plugin listing, documentation, and source code in October 2026.
What LifterLMS is, and what it is not
LifterLMS is open source software, published by the company of the same name and distributed through the WordPress.org plugin directory. Once active, it adds its own menus to the WordPress admin: LifterLMS, Courses, Memberships, Engagements, and Orders. Your course content, student records, and order history sit in your own WordPress database.
It is not a hosted platform. No LifterLMS-run server holds your school. You choose the hosting, the theme, and the other plugins. That gives you control over data, design, and running costs, and it makes you responsible for updates, backups, and performance.
It is not a video host either. A lesson takes a video embed URL from a service such as Vimeo, Wistia, or YouTube, so plan for video hosting as a separate line item.
How LifterLMS is packaged
The packaging is easy to misread, so it is worth being precise.
| Layer | What it is | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Core plugin | Free, from WordPress.org | Course builder, lessons, quizzes, memberships, access plans, coupons, vouchers, engagements, reporting, and the Student Dashboard |
| Individual add-ons | Paid, licensed one by one | Single capabilities such as a payment gateway, advanced quizzes, assignments, or groups |
| Bundles | Paid annual plans: the Earth, Universe, and Infinity Bundles | Sets of add-ons, from payments up to the full catalog |
The free core is not a trial. The publisher states that it places no limits on courses, memberships, or enrollments, and that LifterLMS does not charge per student or take a share of your revenue.
The catch is payments. The core plugin ships with one gateway, called Manual, for offline payments such as bank transfers and checks. To take card payments automatically you need a paid gateway add-on. Stripe and PayPal are sold individually and are part of every bundle. Authorize.Net is also available, and so is a WooCommerce integration if you would rather run checkout through WooCommerce. Until a gateway is active, students can only join through free access plans or by paying you offline. The LifterLMS list of supported payment gateways is short and worth reading before you budget, and our tutorial on how to sell courses with LifterLMS covers the setup.
Bundle contents and prices change, so rely on the LifterLMS pricing page rather than on any third-party summary, this one included. At the time of writing, the Earth Bundle is centered on payments, the Universe Bundle adds a theme plus email marketing and form integrations, and the Infinity Bundle adds the advanced add-ons such as Advanced Quizzes, Assignments, Groups, and Social Learning.
What you can build with it
- A paid course or a full catalog, priced with one-time payments, subscriptions, or payment plans.
- A membership site that bundles courses and restricts ordinary pages and posts to members.
- Internal training, such as onboarding or mandatory courses, with quizzes, completion tracking, and certificates.
- Customer or partner education that lives on the same domain as your product site.
- A multi-instructor school, using the built-in Instructor and Instructor's Assistant roles.
- Free courses for lead generation or community education, with no gateway required.
The building blocks you will work with
Courses, sections, lessons, and quizzes
A course is divided into sections, and sections hold lessons. You arrange them in the Course Builder, and any lesson can carry a quiz. Core quizzes use automatically graded question types (multiple choice, picture choice, and true or false) with settings such as a passing percentage, a limit on attempts, and a time limit. Written answers, file uploads, and other question types come with the Advanced Quizzes add-on.
Lessons can be released on a schedule, locked behind a prerequisite, or marked as free previews. Recent releases also added a focus mode that shows lessons and quizzes without the site header, footer, and sidebars.
Access plans
An access plan is the price tag and the terms attached to it: free or paid, one-time or recurring, lifetime or expiring, open to anyone or reserved for members. A course or membership can carry several plans (six by default), which is how you put a single payment next to a monthly option. We cover the detail in LifterLMS memberships and access plans explained.
Memberships
A membership is a product in its own right. It can enroll members automatically in the courses you choose and restrict normal WordPress pages and posts. There is also a site-wide setting that limits the whole site to people who hold a given membership.
Engagements
Engagements are automations triggered by student activity. When someone enrolls, completes a lesson, passes a quiz, or finishes a course, LifterLMS can award an achievement badge, issue a certificate, or send an email.
Reporting and roles
The Reporting screen has tabs for students, courses, memberships, quizzes, sales, and enrollments. Four LMS roles (LMS Manager, Instructor, Instructor's Assistant, and Student) sit alongside the standard WordPress roles, so you can give a training manager control of the school without handing over the whole site.
Who LifterLMS suits
- Organizations already on WordPress, or willing to be, that want courses on their own domain and under their own brand.
- Businesses that need courses and memberships together. Both are in the core plugin and share one checkout and one Student Dashboard.
- Teams that want to start small. You can build and test everything on the free core, then pay for a gateway when you are ready to charge.
- Projects with developer support. LifterLMS is built with hooks and overridable templates and has a REST API and WP-CLI commands, so it can be extended and integrated instead of worked around.
Who should look elsewhere
- Nobody will own the website. A self-hosted LMS needs someone to handle updates, backups, security, and hosting. If that person does not exist and you will not hire one, a hosted course platform is less work.
- You depend on SCORM or xAPI packages. LifterLMS does not play these natively. They are handled through third-party tools such as GrassBlade, so confirm the fit before you commit.
- You expect card payments for free. Budget for at least one gateway add-on or a bundle.
- You need a corporate LMS suite. Requirements such as syncing with an HR system are integration projects on LifterLMS, not switches in the settings.
If you are comparing options, our article on LifterLMS vs other WordPress LMS platforms sets it beside LearnDash, Tutor LMS, LearnPress, and Sensei LMS.
What it costs to run
We do not quote prices here because they change. The cost categories do not:
- Hosting. Logged-in students cannot be served from a simple page cache, so a busy school needs more than entry-level shared hosting.
- Add-ons or a bundle, billed annually, if you need card payments or advanced features.
- Video hosting, unless you are comfortable with a free service.
- Payment processing fees charged by Stripe, PayPal, or whichever processor you use.
- Email delivery for receipts, notifications, and engagement emails.
- Maintenance and development time, in-house or outsourced.
What to do next
If you are still evaluating, install the free plugin on a staging site and follow our guide on how to set up LifterLMS step by step to build a test course. An hour of hands-on use will tell you more than any feature list.
Professional help is worth paying for when the project has parts that are expensive to get wrong: moving students and their progress from another platform, connecting a CRM or HR system, designing a membership structure, or adding features the add-ons do not cover. Our LifterLMS consulting service covers that planning stage. If you already know what you need, get in touch and tell us about the project.
