I'm starting an online training school and need some advice.

[danlovesadobe]

Hey Moz'ers,

I'm looking start an online training website. I feel there is 3 options:

1. Self hosted LMS (Moodle, Litmos etc),
2. Sass solution (Academy of Mine, Pathwright etc)
3. Or DIY with Chargify type payments/subscriptions.

To get started it is easiest to use one of the software as a service options. I get to use my own domain but everything else is via the software provider.

**What potential problems can you see if/when I decided to do my own self hosted option? Will I be able to redirect the pages to my new site and pass along my accumulated page rank with minimal disruption or am I missing something catastrophic?  **

Any advice would be helpful.

[danlovesadobe]

Good advice Matt-POP!

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I totally get what you mean. I think I'll go for the quick start and look to build a bigger LMS system in the background once I have proven my awesome training skills and that people are prepared to buy them.

Thanks again.

[MattAntonino]

Long term, Moodle has better chat integrations, more pre installed language support and generally more features than the others.

If you are familiar with the general ecommerce debate of Magento vs Woocommerce you have the same decision to make here. If you're looking 5 years down the road, Magento almost always smashes woocommerce. If you want to be live by the weekend you want Woocomm.

If you plan to make the swap when you get bigger, sure use a SaaS. But long term, you're going to want Moodle or (if it improves) Litmos.