Moodle vs Chamilo

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Our analysts compared Moodle vs Chamilo based on data from our 400+ point analysis of LMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Moodle is a customizable, open-source training solution used by corporate organizations, K-12 schools and higher educational institutions. From interactive lessons for K-12 to complex courses at large campuses, it lets you create tailored learning experiences to suit your students’ unique needs.

You can track student progress using analytics and reports, and integrate with third-party video conferencing tools like BigBlueButton. Out-of-the-box capabilities include course creation, calendars, dashboards, text editing, SCORM compatibility, reporting, learning paths and group management.

Moodle is an excellent choice for small businesses with technical expertise or access to IT resources. Its open-source nature allows for significant customization, making it a cost-effective solution for those who can manage their hosting and support.

User reviews praise its flexibility, user-friendly interface, interactive features and cost-friendliness. However, its sharp learning curve and lack of certain capabilities, like video conferencing, could be improved.

Moodle’s starter plan with up to 50 users costs $130 per year, while more advanced plans range from $400 to $1,730 per year.t

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Chamilo is a cloud-based open-source learning solution designed to improve access to education. It helps businesses develop virtual campuses to facilitate online or semi-online training. It empowers its users with the capability to accommodate over 3,500 connected learners simultaneously.

It comes with powerful inclusions like course catalogs, certificate generation, skill management, configuration and SCORM support. It also provides shopping carts for users to sell their e-learning courses and generate revenue.

It can connect over 3,500 learners, help users prepare training material, strengthen learning methods, install web hosting solutions for free, make use of synchronous and asynchronous communication channels and much more. Due to its cloud compatibility, it is accessible via iOS or Android and support can be extended via documentation and email.
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$130 Annually
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$0 Open-Source
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Product Assistance

Documentation
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Email
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FAQ
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Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
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Product Insights

  • Simplifies Data Exchange: Moodle uses open industry standards to support integration and content usage from third-party sources. It allows authentication via protocols like LDAP, direct database lookup, Shibboleth, IMAP and FirstClass. It also supports content import using SCORM, AICC and IMS Content Packaging standards.
  • Offers Key LMS Features: For those seeking an all-in-one LMS solution, Moodle is an excellent choice. Our analysis indicates that it delivers 82% of essential LMS functionalities straight out of the box, with only 5% of key features missing. Supported features include collaboration, mobile capabilities, reporting and dashboard, user management and gamification, and compliance.
  • Award-Winner: In the 2024 SelectHub Awards, our research analysts awarded Moodle best-in-class honors for assessments, collaboration, compliance, learning delivery, mobile capabilities, user management, gamification, and integrations and extensibility. it also achieved an 'excellent' rating as a user favorite.
  • Easily Accessible: Moodle offers features like text-to-speech tools and accessibility checkers to support learners with disabilities.
  • Provides Greater Customization: You can customize to fit a varied range of learning needs, no matter how specific or unique. Modify the source code or add functionality from a library of over 1,600 plugins.
  • User-Friendly: In our testing, we found that Moodle's interface is modern, intuitive and user-friendly, making navigation effortless. For organizations with learners unfamiliar with LMS platforms and limited training budgets, Moodle offers an accessible solution. The layout is designed to display all key features prominently, and all team members can effortlessly locate and access courses, resources and tools without the need for additional support.
  • Top-Performer: With an analyst rating of 85, Moodle stands out as our top LMS product, comparable to top-tier systems like D2L Brightspace and LearnUpon. It offers a comprehensive set of features, including collaboration, compliance, reporting and dashboard, and user management and gamification, all of which are fully supported.
  • Supports Collaborative Learning: Moodle supports social constructionist pedagogy, a teaching method that focuses on collaboration and active learning. It encourages students to interact with the course material and each other to create a more engaging and participative learning environment. Students can work together on projects, share ideas and engage in discussions and more.
  • Facilitates Community-Building: Attend online conferences broadcast worldwide to gain and share knowledge amongst Moodle users. MoodleMoot Global is an annual event where Moodle enthusiasts from around the world gather to share ideas, collaborate and learn from one another. This event is perfect for both newcomers and experienced Moodle users, and offers a chance to connect with like-minded individuals and contribute to the future of education and lifelong learning.
  • Provides Insights into Key Training Activities: Our testing revealed that Moodle offers extensive reporting features, allowing you to generate custom reports on nearly every aspect of your training. It offers insights into comments, backups, configuration changes, event lists, antivirus failures, logs, live logs, performance overviews, question instances, security checks, system status and theme usage.
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  • Free Customizable Open-Source Platform: Chamilo is an open-source platform that empowers its users to customize their extensions and share their improvements with the online community. It lets educators control the content of their learning sessions to facilitate exciting studies. It is convenient, easy-to-use and easy to learn for students, compared to other online learning tools. 
  • Accessible Course Content: Its course contents are seamlessly accessible for students and teachers. This ease of access minimizes the rate of abandonment by remote learners. It also helps companies improve their chances of meeting their learning goals. It offers an editing tool that enables teachers to generate new content at an economical rate. The editing functionality lets users create self-evaluation processes, add tests and import external contents. 
  • Improved Access to Education: Chamilo allows users to enhance their access to education and knowledge across the globe. Backed by the Chamilo Association, it fosters a steady communication network between service providers and contributors. It enhances collaboration and builds a strong community of educators and trainers to improve course quality and teaching capabilities. 
  • Interoperability: It seamlessly integrates with external IT applications and systems to synergize workflows. It also offers integrations with Drupal and Joomla. For webinar options, users can integrate with open-source solutions like BigBlueButton, LibreOffice, OpenMeetings, Prestashop, Wiris and more. 
  • Less Bug Prone: It performs functions like editing, modifying, creating and deleting an object on the same platform. Its single platform solution lets modules and applications interact in a significantly less bug-prone manner. 
  • User-Friendly: Chamilo is intuitive and easy-to-use for educators as well as learners. Its technical requirements for usage are minimal, and users don’t have to suffer through a difficult learning curve to use its features. Its friendly interface lets teachers develop basic courses with text and multiple-choice questions for advanced courses. Some of its other features include conditional questions, assignments, group collaboration support and forums. Educators have a variety of options to structure their courses according to their preferences by organizing students into classes and pre-decide the lessons to be completed per session. 
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  • Course Development: Create courses from scratch or upload existing ones to the system. The course builder tool allows you to:
    • Add name, category, start and end date, ID number, summary, number of sections, cover image, participants, tags, groups and other specific details.
    • Insert resources like checklists, files, forums, quizzes, wikis and more into sections. You can also set up virtual classroom sessions via BigBlueButton.
    • Add questions, files, competencies, course completion conditions, add-on apps and badges.
    • Generate reports to analyze competencies, log actions, live logs, training activities and course participation rates.
    • Import, back up, restore, copy and reset courses to reuse them.
    • Enable learners to request new courses and download course content.
  • Assignments: Use the assignment activity module to communicate tasks, collect tests and quizzes, and provide grades.
    • Allow students to submit any type of digital content, such as documents, spreadsheets, images or audio and video clips, or type text directly into the text editor.
    • Use assignments to remind students of offline tasks without having to make digital submissions.
    • Let students submit work individually or as a group. When reviewing, leave feedback comments and upload files like marked-up submissions, commented documents or audio feedback.
    • Grade assignments using numerical scales, custom scales or advanced methods like rubrics. Record final grades in the gradebook.
  • Forums: Use forums to encourage students to socialize, make course announcements, discuss learning content, host face-to-face sessions online and more.
  • Checklists: Allow teachers to create checklists and help students track tasks and to-do lists.
  • HTML5 Packages: Upload and add HTML5 Packages (H5P) to the platform. H5P allows you to integrate interactive content like presentations, videos, quizzes, games and more into course materials. Automatically grade questions attempted in H5P activities and record them in the gradebook.
  • Calendar: Log important events like assignment deadlines, upcoming meetings, and course start and end dates and more on the company calendar.
  • BigBlueButton Integration: Integrate with BigBlueButton and conduct live online classes, virtual office hours or group collaborations. Use features like audio, video, chat, slides, screen sharing, a multi-user whiteboard, breakout rooms, polling and emojis in real time. Record sessions for playback later.
  • Feedback: Design surveys with multiple-choice, yes/no or text-input questions to gather participant input. Keep responses anonymous if needed, and decide whether to share results with participants or restrict them to teachers only.
  • Notifications: Track updates and alert users when a new event occurs. Enable triggers for new course additions, upcoming deadlines, published grades, schedule changes and more.
  • Course Tracking: Monitor course progress and the number of activities completed by each learner. View their completed assignments, course start and end times, achievements and other details for each course.
  • Quizzes: Create assessments with various question types, such as multiple-choice, matching, short-answer and numerical questions, and include them in course exams, topic tests, practice sessions and more.
    • Configure options for multiple attempts, randomize question order from the question bank and set time limits.
    • Automatically grade each attempt, excluding essay questions and record results in the gradebook.
    • Customize when to display hints and feedback and correct answers to students.
  • Multi-Device Support: Access the site from any device via the free mobile app for Windows, iOS and Android. It's compatible with mobile layouts and can be used in any browser for a consistent experience.
  • Plugin Management: Manage all plugins from one interface for quick access. Provides plugins for different types of educational needs (e.g., universities). Connect with MS Office 365 and Google Apps.
  • Personalized Dashboards: Organize and access training information like checklists, badges, latest announcements, timelines and course overviews on a customizable dashboard.
  • User Management: Add new users, set user preferences, define user profile fields, upload user pictures and more.
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  • Flexible, Fast and Consistent: Chamilo organizes publication tools like categorization, target group selection, visibility and period of publication on its common interface. This commonality empowers it to be fast, consistent and flexible for its users. Its integrated portals and web services make it suitable for both educational institutions and businesses. 
  • Timed Learning Paths: It allows users to set a minimum time limit per user on a learning path. These time limits ensure that a course will not be considered complete until a pre-decided number of hours to study it has passed. Time-limit features help users meet regulatory compliance guidelines required for eLearning programs. 
  • Built-In Course Authoring: Chamilo’s authoring tool lets users structure their courses, add descriptions, update learning paths and include objectives and methodologies in their classes. Educators can organize their course contents using the learning path tool and guide their students through a specific learning experience. It also helps educators evaluate their students’ performance. 
  • Certificate Generation: Chamilo lets users generate certificates for students that have completed course modules successfully. Its included templates provide all the relevant data needed to automatically generate certificates. Users can also customize these default templates to suit their requirements using the certificates editor tool. 
  • Communication Forums: Chamilo’s forum tool allows users to exchange opinions, ideas and information regarding learning paths. It helps users find answers to questions related to a course without having to endlessly browse through massive amounts of information. Forums let multiple participants engage in discussions in public or semi-public spaces, strengthening learning support and fostering the exchange of ideas. It helps learners chart an informal path within a controlled environment, where they can like and dislike other students’ ideas and opinions. Students have the opportunity to express ideas and share interesting information. 
  • Plans Training Sessions: Chamilo lets businesses plan training sessions for their employees and enhance their performance. It keeps administrators informed about upcoming training sessions and their durations per week or month. Employees can sync their calendars with upcoming training sessions, which are color-coded on a monthly or yearly basis. It helps employees inform administrators well in advance of planned training sessions. 
  • Ranking: Chamilo lets educators add rankings to test results after evaluating them. When ranking mode is enabled, learners can view their scores in a ranking table containing the top scores. It encourages students to attempt a test several times to secure the best possible score. 
  • Visual Reports: Its updated student progress tracker provides learners with data in a visually appealing manner. Student progress is represented in graphical charts, which display data like learning path progress, dates when the course was accessed and time spent studying course contents. Graphs help educators assess their course modules and gauge the number of learners currently studying or connected to the course. 
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Product Ranking

#4

among all
LMS Software

#104

among all
LMS Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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AI-based Capabilities Assessments Collaboration Compliance Content And Course Management ECommerce Learning Delivery Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard User Management And Gamification 21 93 100 100 92 50 80 100 100 100 100 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 4011 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 1 reviews
86%
of users recommend this product

Moodle has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 4011 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

100%
of users recommend this product

Chamilo has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 100% when considering 1 user reviews from 1 recognized software review sites.

4.8 (12)
5.0 (1)
4.1 (398)
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4.3 (3249)
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4.5 (112)
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4.1 (240)
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Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Moodle and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall LMS Software available today and earns best-in-class honors for Assessments, Compliance, Mobile Capabilities, Platform Capabilities and Integrations and Extensibility.

Analysts' Pick Award
Assessments Award
Compliance Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
Platform Capabilities Award
Integrations and Extensibility Award

Chamilo stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Customizability: According to 80% of users who reviewed this, Moodle lets users add custom HTML and CSS, integrate with third-party applications, and select modules related to rubrics and outcomes.
Ease of Use: 90% of users praise its intuitive interface which is easy to navigate, especially for students. Its simple and intuitive features make it suitable for beginners.
Advanced Feature Set: 75% of reviewers highlighted Moodle’s wide range of features, such as course creation, third-party integrations, notifications and feedback, and grading rubrics.
Mobile Compatibility: According to 60% of users who discussed this aspect, Moodle's mobile app is very user-friendly and offers all necessary tools to support on-the-go learning. It lets users access course content, connect with team members, download learning materials and more.
Affordability: 80% of reviewers who discussed costs appreciated that Moodle is free to download and use and offers flexible pricing models for various needs.
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Open Source and Free: Chamilo is a breath of fresh air for organizations seeking a robust LMS without the hefty price tag. Its open-source nature eliminates licensing fees, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious institutions.
User-Friendly Interface: Users consistently praise Chamilo's intuitive design. Its straightforward layout allows both instructors and students to navigate the platform with ease, minimizing the learning curve often associated with new software.
Flexible and Customizable: Chamilo doesn't believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Its highly customizable nature allows institutions to tailor the platform to their specific needs, creating a learning environment that aligns with their unique pedagogical approach.
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Steep Learning Curve: Regarding this, 45% of users said Moodle has a steep learning curve for administrators. They feel its interface can be confusing to explore since it has a lot of features, and users need to know what they’re looking for to use the platform effectively.
Lack of Video Conferencing: 45% of users who discussed this con point out Moodle's lack of built-in video conferencing capabilities, which are increasingly important for online learning.
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Limited Mobile Friendliness: Some users have reported that the mobile interface is not as user-friendly as other learning management systems.
Occasional Technical Issues: Users have mentioned encountering occasional bugs or technical glitches, which can disrupt the learning process.
Smaller User Community: Compared to more popular LMS platforms, Chamilo has a smaller user community, which may result in less readily available support or resources.
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Moodle is an open-source LMS that's really popular among educational institutions like K12 schools and colleges. Its workplace version is designed to address various corporate training needs such as onboarding, compliance training and skill development.Moodle is packed with features – you can create courses, collaborate with learners, grade assignments and more. Plus, it works quickly on mobile devices so that learning can happen anywhere. We love how flexible it is, and it can be customized to your heart's content with HTML, CSS and third-party integrations.Its user-friendly interface is another highlight, and it is known for its intuitive navigation and ease of use, particularly for students. This makes Moodle a suitable choice even for those new to LMS platforms. A strong focus on social constructionist pedagogy emphasizes collaboration and active learning. And with Moodle’s large and active global community, you can get active support and contribute to its ongoing development.While its interface is great for instructors and students, we found that it may be complex for admins, and an extensive feature set can require time and effort to master. The lack of built-in video conferencing capabilities is another drawback, though the solution does integrate with virtual classroom tools like BigBlueButton.Being open-source, Moodle eliminates licensing fees, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious institutions. The availability of free plugins and themes further adds to its cost-effectiveness.Moodle is a fantastic choice if you're looking for a powerful and adaptable LMS, especially for education. Its multi-tenancy architecture supports various business structures and types, making it adaptable to different corporate environments. Its open-source nature, emphasis on collaborative learning, and scalability make it a viable option in the LMS market.

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Want to know if Chamilo is the chameleon of learning management systems, adapting to any need? User reviews from the last year suggest Chamilo is a solid, if somewhat basic, learning management system best suited for smaller organizations or those on a tight budget. Users consistently praise its ease of use, highlighting the clean and intuitive interface that even the least tech-savvy individuals find accessible. One user even compared setting up the platform to using "softaculous," implying a level of simplicity rarely found in learning management systems. This straightforwardness makes Chamilo a popular choice for businesses dipping their toes into the e-learning pool for the first time. However, Chamilo's simplicity can also be its downfall. Users needing advanced features or extensive customization options may find Chamilo lacking. One user expressed frustration with the limited template options and the lack of readily available tutorials for more complex tasks. While Chamilo offers essential tools like course creation and content management, it doesn't boast the bells and whistles of competitors like LearnUpon or Adobe Learning Manager. This isn't necessarily a dealbreaker, as Chamilo's affordability makes it an attractive option for organizations prioritizing value over a vast feature set. Ultimately, Chamilo is a practical, no-frills learning management system that excels in ease of use and affordability, making it a perfect fit for budget-conscious organizations or those seeking a straightforward platform for basic e-learning needs.

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