[codextremist]

Thanks @alexc05! I deleted the old ones. HN was giving me a damn "submission error" message every time I tried to post, but it turned out that I was actually sending each one successfully. Pls reach me at [e-mail] or https://www.linkedin.com/in/felipejordaoapm/

[alexc05]

teh first question I got from one friend who is planning on stopping by the thread when he gets a chance (but I'll ask on his behalf in case he gets busy) is "why not just use moodle?"

It's the most popular open-source LMS out there and "does all the things" (direct quote)

How would your platform differentiate from that one other than charging for hosting? Why not set up a specialized hosting business called "managed moodle" or something and maybe contribute features back to the mothership?

[codextremist]

My main criticism goes to the product itself. The idea of building an LMS came up after talking to several instructors. Although there are many LMSs on the market, many instructors have never considered using Moodle and ended up using paid products. Hotmart and Teachable are examples of paid LMSs that are doing really well.

I think that the added value of those products is that the instructor not only has access to the creation and hosting of his courses, but has also integrated checkout and the ability to create landing pages and promote their courses. My idea is to offer the same product, but for free! The hosted version will only cover our costs. Our business is actually focused on the distribution (https://classpert.com), which we believe is by far the hardest problem to solve.

Now back to Moodle, in fact, I've considered extending it before. They already have a community (including a large directory of plugins) and appears to be used by many instructors and institutions. However, looking from the outside, I don´t think that extending Moodle will be that easy. I´m not an expert in PHP, but I found the codebase messy. Also, the interface is old, ugly and difficult to use and that is a symptom of bad product to me.