Moodle
Ranked 2 of 4 learning management systems by recommenders
Free open-source learning management system that large schools use and that can be customized, though people find its default look confusing and it takes sysadmin work to run.
Free open-source learning management system that large schools use and that can be customized, though people find its default look confusing and it takes sysadmin work to run.
16 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Scales to large schools
“Moodle also scales to pretty large schools, I work on an instance that is over 27k students.”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “ShinyHunters claims data theft from 8,800 schools (Instructure/Canvas)” “Moodle exists and is completely open source. Lots of large institutions use it.”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “ShinyHunters claims data theft from 8,800 schools (Instructure/Canvas)” “Moodle exists and is used by a lot of large schools.”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Canvas (Instructure) LMS Down in Ongoing Ransomware Attack” Useful for documenting projects
“I used to run a moodle on my desktop/laptop just to store project documentation.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Liberty Ad Resistance” “I found Moodle really great for documenting projects.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Personal Wiki with PmWiki” Flexible for many uses
“quite a good software to take exams”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Moodle – Open-source learning management system” “Moodle can to all kinds of things.”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: I need a reminder-brain – how do you do it?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Confusing, unintuitive interface
“Moodle out of the box is pretty confusing and ugly, but I've seen some heavily customized instances that look a lot better”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “ShinyHunters claims data theft from 8,800 schools (Instructure/Canvas)” “its ui is not that great and it is not intuitive when searching courses”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “OneDrive data now has an expiry date” Hard to deploy and maintain
“But you do then have to have a sysadmin capable of managing an enterprise grade LAMP stack.”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Canvas (Instructure) LMS Down in Ongoing Ransomware Attack” “Moodle is complex to deploy and maintain (often requires outsourcing)”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “Show HN: I built a single-binary university LMS that is actually easy to use” Widely called terrible or garbage
“They transitioned because Moodle sucked. Profs hated it, students hated it more.”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “ShinyHunters claims data theft from 8,800 schools (Instructure/Canvas)” “Moodle is also pretty garbage-y if I may say so.”
Comment from 8 Jun 2026 in “OneDrive data now has an expiry date” “The problem with Moodle is that it's terrible.”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier”
Other learning management systems people recommend
The three most recommended other learning management systems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canvas by Instructure | 16 | 66 | 20% | 3 | 9 yrs4 owners | — |
| MoodleThis page | 10 | 6 | 63% | 5 | — | — |
| PrairieLearn | 6 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | — |
| Google Classroom | 6 | 10 | 38% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
17 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“quite a good software to take exams”
“so it was a mess to teleport info”
“its ui is not that great and it is not intuitive when searching courses”
“Moodle is also pretty garbage-y if I may say so.”
“The problem with Moodle is that it's terrible.”
“They transitioned because Moodle sucked. Profs hated it, students hated it more.”
“Moodle also scales to pretty large schools, I work on an instance that is over 27k students.”
“But you do then have to have a sysadmin capable of managing an enterprise grade LAMP stack.”
“Moodle exists and is completely open source. Lots of large institutions use it.”
“That already exists [0], and is actually reasonably popular.”
“Moodle out of the box is pretty confusing and ugly, but I've seen some heavily customized instances that look a lot better”
“Moodle exists and is used by a lot of large schools.”
“Moodle can to all kinds of things.”
“I found Moodle really great for documenting projects.”
“I used to run a moodle on my desktop/laptop just to store project documentation.”
“CSS misconfigurations that caused the app to fall back to Serif font for CJK glyphs”
“Moodle is complex to deploy and maintain (often requires outsourcing)”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.