COMPARED WITH MOODLE
Moodle does more of this than a comparison page usually admits.
Competency frameworks and learning plans. Rubrics and marking guides. An attendance module. Enrolment on payment, with a Paystack plugin written by Paystack. Most of the middle of this chain is already in Moodle, and it costs no licence fee. The difference is not a feature list.
WHERE EACH TOOL STOPS
The middle is there. Both ends are not.
Drawn from Moodle's documentation and the plugins it points at. Moodle is assembled rather than bought, so a gap here means nothing in the documented core or its common plugins covers the step — not that somebody could not write it.
Moodle: Apply to Admit, not published; Pay to Credential, in Enrolment plugins, attendance, rubrics, competencies and certificates; Employer verifies, not published. Alethris: Apply to Employer verifies, in One record per learner.
THE JOINS
The cost is not the licence. It is the assembly.
Three of these are about running the thing. One is about what it still cannot produce.
Attendance, certificates, payment and half the reporting are separate plugins, each with its own maintainer, release cadence and compatibility window. Every Moodle upgrade is a question about all of them at once, and somebody in your academy owns that question.
One product, upgraded for you, where attendance, payments, assessment and credentials were designed against each other rather than fitted together afterwards.
Moodle enrols people. It does not select them. Applications, the decision, the reason and the offer happen in a form and a spreadsheet, so the intake you chose is not part of the record of the cohort you ran.
An application form on your own page, every applicant's answers in a queue, a decision recorded against a named member of staff, and a place confirmed when the offer is accepted or its fee is paid.
Moodle records a competency against a framework, inside the course, for people with a login. An employer cannot read it, and a learner cannot carry it to the next institution.
Competencies recorded with the evidence that demonstrated them, published on a verification page an employer can open, and carried by the learner in a Skills Passport across every academy.
A certificate plugin generates a PDF. There is no address an employer can check it at, no status that changes when a credential is revoked, and nothing that says what the learner was assessed on.
A credential issued from a completed record with a code and a QR, and a page carrying the issuer, programme, status, assessment method and approved competencies — honest about revocation.
SIDE BY SIDE
Where the two actually differ.
Moodle's column is generous on purpose. Most of what a comparison page would claim is missing is in fact there.
| MOODLE | ALETHRIS | |
|---|---|---|
| Competency frameworks and learning plans | Built in | Built in, tied to the rubric criteria that evidence them |
| Rubrics and marking guides | Advanced grading, built in | Rubrics with performance levels, per criterion |
| Attendance | A maintained plugin | Built in, a register for every session |
| Taking a fee in naira | Enrolment on payment, with a Paystack plugin | Card, Pay with Transfer, a bank transfer your staff confirm, or a sponsor |
| Reducing what a learner pays | A coupon plugin, chosen alongside your payment one | A code on the application, or an automatic offer for a window, with caps and a price floor |
| An application and an admission decision | — | On the record, with its author |
| A bank transfer confirmed before it counts | — | Staff record it, and an owner or finance admin confirms it |
| Whether an employer can check a certificate | — | A public verification page |
| What the learner keeps across institutions | — | A Skills Passport they control |
| Keeping it running | Hosting, upgrades, backups and plugin compatibility are yours | Ours |
| Changing what it does | Thousands of plugins, and the source | What the product does, and no more |
WHAT IT COSTS
Free software is not the same as a free system.
Moodle costs no licence fee, and self-hosting it is genuinely free of one. Here is what each side is actually charged for.
| MOODLE | ALETHRIS | |
|---|---|---|
| The software | Free, open source | A plan, by the size of your academy |
| Running it | Hosting, or a managed plan | Included |
| Setting it up | Your time, or an integrator's fee | Included |
| Keeping it up | Upgrades, plugin compatibility and backups | Included |
| Taking money from learners | An enrolment plugin, plus your processor's fee | A share only of money Alethris collected |
| When you collect the money yourself | Your processor's fee | Nothing |
The bill that never arrives as an invoice
When Moodle is the right answer
- You have somebody who runs servers, and they want to. Self-hosted Moodle costs no licence fee and will do more than this page has drawn.
- You need something Alethris does not have and Moodle has a plugin for it. There are thousands, and that is a real advantage, not a consolation.
- Your institution already runs Moodle for other programmes, and one more course is a day's work.
- You require open source, on infrastructure you control, in a country you choose. Alethris is hosted software and cannot meet that.
Moodle has been maintained for over twenty years by people who will still be there when this page is old. That is worth something no feature table shows.
MOVING
Nobody should move a working Moodle.
If it runs, it runs. The case for moving is one programme where the result has to leave the building.
ONE
Keep Moodle for what it already carries
Courses that work, cohorts mid-flight and years of material have no reason to move, and moving them is the expensive part.
TWO
Bring the programme with an employer at the end
The one where somebody outside your institution has to trust the result is the one that needs a record built for being questioned.
THREE
Your curriculum comes with you
Give the Course Builder the syllabus you already teach and it drafts the modules, lessons and outcomes for you to correct.
FOUR
Know what you are giving up
You are trading the source code and the plugin directory for something maintained by somebody else. If that trade is wrong for you, it is wrong.
The question is not what Moodle can do.
It is who keeps it doing it, and whether what comes out the end can be read by somebody who will never have a login.