One of the oldest and most popular open-source LMS in the world is Moodle. In Europe, Moodle has a staggering 65% market share and while it’s not as popular in the United States, it continues to be one of the most influential LMS worldwide.
Open-source and free, Moodle is distributed under the GNU General Public License and it’s the LMS of choice of most European universities. Moodle focuses on the social aspect of learning, helping students interact with each other and their instructors, similar to social networking sites. If your training program involves a lot of collaboration, Moodle will serve you well.
But, open-source LMS is not for everyone. Configuring an open-source LMS such as Moodle to your needs can be a difficult task unless you have a dedicated team for it. Open-source LMS often performs the best within companies and organizations that:
- Have a team that is ready and able to do the heavy lifting in programming and development.
- Are looking for something that comes with a lower (to zero) price tag.
- Need to have complete control over data ownership and security.
Moodle has, and always will be an excellent LMS, but if you’re looking for something ready out of the box, a commercial SaaS LMS could be a better option.