Moodle vs Canvas LMS: Comparison for Teachers, Course Creators and Trainers

ou must have heard of Moodle LMS and Canvas LMS. Both are flexible open-source LMSs that have been in the e-learning market for some time. 

Now, they are one of the best-known solutions for learning providers, schools, and universities. This fact makes it even harder for learning providers to pick the one that fits their needs better. 

Moodle is known for its customization and flexibility, while Canvas is a pretty intuitive open-source platform with decent course management.

Want to learn more? Check our Moodle vs Canvas LMS review and find out how they are different in terms of course creation, management, learning delivery, and customization.

Moodle vs Canvas: Overview

Moodle Pros and Cons

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Canvas LMS Pros and Cons

#1. Moodle vs Canvas Course Creation and Management: Customization or Flow?

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If comparing Canvas vs Moodle, both systems offer decent customization options and the ability to use different formats via embedding, plugins, and HTML raw code. Yet, their approach to architecture and course structure does vary. Thus, they appear to bring different benefits to the learning providers.

Moodle provides a pretty complex structure that uses blocks and multiple levels to create online courses. 

You can visit different blocks, in particular, Calendar, Comments, and Checklists, or create a separate one. They can all be seen from a customized central dashboard.

How do you develop online courses there or create learning paths? 

In a separate “My Courses” tab, you would be able to add lessons, content types, forums, or other activities as blocks. The flow for module creation is pretty straightforward. 

Yet, there, the issue appears, as the block structure requires you to set settings for each block. The creation of each lesson requires accepting the settings (with multiple sections) after the addition of materials that may harm the course development flow.

This approach offers a huge diversity in course and program creation, allowing instructors to create complex, advanced, and highly customized programs. Yet, with such diversity and flexibility comes complexity and a steep learning curve. 

Canvas LMS offers a comprehensive approach and focuses on the flow rather than customization. 

In particular, it offers important tabs like Dashboard, Courses, Calendar, Recent History, and Commons. That way, you have categories to manage different tasks and spaces. The course management and editing of course materials appear to be more intuitive. How? 

First of all, there is a Commons feature that provides templates for better course development. Compared to Moodle, it allows you to save time on course creation and lesson development.

Secondly, the structure is less complex and detailed focusing on learning paths and pages, not settings. An important feature in this regard is the Mastery Paths, which allow you to create personalized learning paths based on test results, for instance. 

That way, Canvas is more intuitive than Moodle, but is as complex in terms of setting up.

💡Highlight: Due to different focus, Moodle offers complex, customizable courses, but is harder to navigate; Canvas provides an intuitive and friendly user interface and a better flow for course setup and management.

#2. Moodle vs Canvas Content Options: More Variety from Moodle?

What about content options? The diversity and organization of content formats and types are crucial for a customized learning journey. There, we should look not only at the content types but how a user can engage with them. 

Let’s start with Moodle.

‍Moodle offers a robust text editor, powerful embedding options, uploading or recording possibilities, and great format variety. Importantly, you add content by picking the type of content first. 

You can use more than 20 options, from chats and databases to quizzes and books. For content scaling, it offers features for duplication and re-use of pieces. 

Canvas LMS takes a different approach focusing on a powerful Rich Content Editor, where you can add text and media blocks, upload files, and link to other pages or sites. 

Besides, due to the page structure used for lesson creation, it is easy to use search or filters to link to other pages or assignments in the course. The options within Mastery Paths bring great opportunities for the development of personalized learning paths.

Also, it offers a word count as well as the ability to add formulas and include tables. You can use shortcuts to quickly edit content. In addition, there is a Canvas Studio platform for video creation and collaboration. 

Note. Both Moodle and Canvas LMS allow the integration of content authoring tools that are important for corporate actors. 

💡Highlight: Canvas vs Moodle overview shows that, even though they are on par in terms of content embedding, Moodle offers more content formats, while Canvas LMS brings a more intuitive text editor, content studio, and page linkage.

Read more: Best Canvas LMS Alternatives

3. Moodle vs Canvas Engagement Tools: Canvas Allows Better Collaboration?

The capacity of both platforms regarding engagement and collaboration is somewhat similar, especially in terms of discussion and cooperation. Besides, they both have native integration with BigBlueButton, a recognized classroom software for meetings. 

Concerning Moodle, to add a collaborative activity, you will need to resort to content types. From there, Moodle users can start a chat, local discussion boards, or forums, or integrate feedback activity into the course. 

That can be an effective part of peer review or cohort learning activities. Moodle allows you to add different parameters to each space and customize settings for certain communication or discussion. 

Canvas LMS has a more significant focus on collaboration tools.

In particular, you can add separate collaboration activities where real-time editing is possible due to native Docs integration.

Besides, you can use Announcements and Course streams to engage with users via comments or question features. Lastly, it offers separate discussion posts that are effective for setting the flow, providing instructions, and giving guidance. 

Another interesting feature is a podcast feed that works within Discussions or Announcements and allows audio files to be recorded.

💡Highlight: Moodle offers basic collaboration activities with advanced settings, while. Canvas provides more robust tools, including a real-time collaboration, Course stream, and podcast feed.

#4. Moodle vs Canvas Quizzes and Assignments: Convenience From Moodle?

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When analyzing Canvas vs Moodle, assignment is a part where both open-source learning management systems excel. Which offers more? Well, the answer depends on the peculiarities. 

With Moodle, you can create assignments, quizzes, checklists, and online workshops (assignments with peer-review options) and set advanced settings for them.

Other than that, there are various question types, from standard short-answer or multiple choice to numerical or matching. 

There, a powerful feature is the Question Bank. What is it? A separate space for you to create and edit a pool of questions. It is pretty useful for course planning and creation, as you first create a pool of questions based on the content and then can pick them for your lessons. 

Canvas LMS also provides similar functions with advanced settings for quizzes, including practice quizzes, graded quizzes, surveys, and online submissions (inluding files and images). Importantly, it brings in group assignments and peer review for better student engagement.

The assignments synchronize with the Calendar, grading rubric, and other lessons. It means that you can assign assignments to all students, groups, or certain individuals. Advanced settings allow creating Mastery Path for customized learning or personalized learning based on assignment or quizzes scores. 

💡Highlight: Moodle brings more diversity regarding question types and offers a separate Question Bank, adding to assignment management; yet, Canvas is good for group assignments and offers opportunities for personalized learning.

#5. Canvas vs Moodle Reporting: Integrations Matter?

The platforms, being a popular solution for educational institutions, pay significant attention to reporting. Thus, they focus on grading and student attendance. 

Moodle puts a category or course in the center, offering stats about each of them in the form of reports and alerting if someone is at risk of dropping out.

The built-in reports can be divided into 2 types: course completion reports and activity reports. The first is great for overall course analytics, while the latter is crucial for individual progress or engagement. Importantly, the reports are custom.

Also, there are rich options for reporting plugins, from Moodle trackers and grade distribution to live polls and video tracking.

Canvas LMS offers solid features that analyze student analytics and course reporting. 

In particular, the first one allows you to track attendance. With Canvas LMS, you can set a “Roll Call” using a Calendar, or use a seating chart to see who is absent or present on the lesson.

Another feature allows you to track performance and see how students complete online courses. Within courses tabs, you get access to data on activities, submissions, and grades. Besides, you can resort to the dashboard via Analytics Admin access. It offers advanced settings, allowing you to manage the data visualization. 

Lastly, there is a powerful Analytics Hub, where you can access all types of data, from AI-assisted insights to course effectiveness.

Highlight: Moodle stands out with customizable reports and extensive plugins: Canvas provides robust attendance tracking, performance monitoring, and an integrated Analytics Hub for better data visualization and insights.

Read more: Best Learning Analytics Platforms

#6. Canvas vs Moodle Branding Options and Customization: More From Moodle?

Let’s consider which platform, Moodle or Canvas, is better for the customization of courses and space. 

Moodle offers decent customization regarding branding options, allowing you to add logos, and covers, and change basic space design, emojis, and themes.

Moreover, you can change the language of the interface or modify the words that you use for the course interface. 

At the same time, being an open-source LMS, it offers great opportunities for course customization, as you can download plugins and use them to change elements. Nonetheless, it requires code knowledge from the instructors. For learning experience customization, Moodle offers a wide variety of plugins and API access. 

Compared to Moodle, Canvas LMS offers somewhat limited branding options, allowing you to change text color and cover pictures.

What about course customization? You can rearrange tabs and choose what to show, yet it is less flexible in terms of customization.

💡Highlight: Moodle excels, offering extensive customization with themes, plugins, and API access, suitable for tech-savvy users.

Note. If you seek great white-label options and simplicity, we recommend checking other LMSs with white-label options.

#7. Moodle vs. Canvas Integrations

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As both platforms provide outstanding opportunities for the integration of third parties, it is hard to define which one is better. What can be said for sure?

Moodle offers poweful API support for custom integrations and allows the integration of different tools and services.

At the same time, it offers certified partnerships and integrations with other platforms that suit educational institutions, corporate actors, teachers, and course creators. 

The most noticeable Moodle partners refer to: 

• BigBlueButton (main Moodle partner for virtual conferencing)
• Gamoteca (for interactive experiences)
• Intelliboard (for extended data analytics)
• Levitate (an important tool for upskilling programs of corporate actors)
• Myydleware (for synchronization with e-commerce and CRM tools)
• ReadSpeaker (for turning text into speech)
• Zatuk (video streaming)

As a result, it offers great integrations that can advance the learning experience or compensate for the lack of some features, like reporting. 

Canvas LMS is not far from Moodle in terms of integration capabilities.

This open-source LMS provides a variety of content authoring tools and options for engagement or management. For instance, there are integrations with modern and popular tools like Flip, DropBox, Canva, Vimeo, Accredible, and Nearpod. The obvious advantage is native integration with Google Docs for a collaborative learning process. 

As a result, Canvas offers great options for the inclusion of third-party tools that are widely used for content creation and management, interactive learning, and gamification. 

💡Highlight: Moodle allows users to integrate diverse apps and offers strong API support; Canvas focuses on popular tools like Google Docs and Canva, focusing on easy collaboration, content creation, and management.

#8. Moodle vs Canvas Pricing

What can we say about prices?

Moodle's open-source version is free. However, if you want to use MoodleCloud, it offers a free trial and Standard plans.

Moodle Cloud users will have access to all features, unlimited Moodle courses, a mobile app, and a personalized site name.

The paid plans are the following: 

Canvas LMS offers a free trial for teachers and individual creators only. The quote-based pricing applies to organizations, schools, and business actors. 

The cost will be based on the number of users, special needs, integrations, and support. Moreover, the users may “pay for administrative control/access, support, training, or integration support,” as their website suggests.

Moodle vs Canvas: Which One to Choose?

As we reviewed these two popular open-source platforms, we can say for sure that they have their strengths. 

• Moodle excels in customization and flexibility, ideal for tech-savvy users needing extensive control. 
• Canvas offers a user-friendly interface with efficient course creation and real-time collaboration tools, perfect for straightforward setups.

Thus, for institutions wanting to create advanced courses with diverse structures, Moodle is preferable. At the same time, Canvas is better suited for those who prefer more intuitive design, seamless integrations with popular tools, and greater collaboration options.