LMS Development Guide: Insights, Challenges, and Lessons Learned

When you’re dealing with any educational initiative, you’ve got a lot to handle: providing useful content, keeping learners engaged, ensuring accessibility for diverse users, managing their progress — the list goes on and on. The point of LMS development here is to help you keep these tasks under one umbrella (and not burn out while trying to manage all that instead of focusing on what you do best).

Even if you’re already using off-the-shelf LMS solutions, most systems simply aren’t fully equipped to handle complex educational demands connected to customization, security, and scalability. That’s where custom LMSs come into play. In this article, we’ll share how to build a learning management system that aligns with your goals, adapts to the way you operate, prepares your organization for future growth, and helps you retain users on the first try.

“We find it essential to ensure everything works perfectly from the start. In our experience, it’s easier to avoid churn rate spikes than to deal with them after they occur. When users encounter issues during their initial interactions with a product, they quickly lose trust and interest, and winning them back is extremely challenging. Even if it’s an internal product for your own employees, you still need to motivate them to use the system to avoid adoption resistance. So, Brights’ approach is to do it right from the first try.”

— Nata Shved, COO at Brights

As usual, all the insights shared in this article come from our LMS development company’s real experience. Under Brights’ belt are learning management systems for The Earth Prize, Beprofi, Samsung Smart School, and other projects. Now, we are excited to share the knowledge we acquired with you, helping your initiative get the tools it deserves.

Learning management systems developed by Brights

Types of Learning Management Systems

Learning Management Systems (LMS) come in various forms, each serving unique learning and organizational needs. Here, we’ve gathered the core LMS types, explaining what makes each suited to its purpose.

Purpose-based LMS

LMS solutions differ in terms of user needs and the end purpose they serve. The list covers the most common types, though it’s not exhaustive, since learning management system development can also cater to the requirements of healthcare, government, compliance, and other niche types of training.

• Corporate LMS solutions focus on training within companies, covering all kinds of tasks, from onboarding to skill-building. Their purpose lies in helping organizations keep employees informed and aligned with business goals while also tracking progress across teams. Products like TalentLMS and SAP Litmos offer tools for managing such company-wide learning initiatives.

• Educational LMS platforms are typically designed for formal and alternative educational institutions. They allow instructors can handle all coursework, assignments, and interactions with students online. These systems also support in-person learning, facilitate remote learning, and help institutions provide a cohesive educational experience.

• Upskilling LMS support professionals seeking to build new skills and gain certifications, either in their current role or in preparation for a career shift. These are typically self-paced courses that are industry-specific, with the idea of keeping the skills sharp and up-to-date. Popular options include Coursera for Business and Udacity for Enterprise, offering specialized courses that develop employability and expertise.

BeProfi case study

Deployment and hosting

The way an LMS is deployed — whether hosted in the cloud or on local servers — significantly impacts how easily it can be accessed, maintained, scaled, and customized.

• SaaS (cloud-based) LMS is located on the cloud, which means that it is accessible from anywhere, and the provider regularly updates it. This model will suit organizations that require headache-free maintenance, effortless scaling, and accessibility over remote locations.

• Installed (on-host) LMS runs on the organization's own servers and therefore offers full control over customization, data security, and compliance. Usually, this is the preferred option for institutions that need local control over sensitive data or those that fall under stringent regulatory requirements.

Code flexibility and customization

Depending on the budget limitations and customization requirements, organizations often have to weigh the benefits of open-source LMS platforms against custom-built solutions.

• Open-source LMS solutions allow organizations to access and modify the source code, allowing for a certain level of customization. This option is great for organizations with the technical resources to tailor the system and can be convenient if the solution has community-driven updates and plugins. Some of the widely used open-source platforms are Moodle, Open edX, and Canvas LMS.

• Custom-built LMS offers complete flexibility since it’s designed from the ground up to meet your organization’s unique requirements and scale as you grow. Sure, the initial cost is higher in this case. However, a custom LMS ensures the ultimate control over functionality, branding, and security. So, for companies creating a learning management system with specific requirements and long-term plans, this route is the most efficient solution.

Core features of a custom LMS

LMS functionality goes beyond simply delivering content, even if it’s a very basic system. Its task is to provide a structured, engaging, and supportive learning environment, convenient for both learners and educators. Below, we gathered functionality that will most likely be necessary for any LMS software development project.

User management and roles

Educational environments welcome diverse roles, such as students, instructors, and administrators. An LMS has to assign these roles that determine permissions and access levels, ensuring all of these users interact smoothly and efficiently. For instance, admins should be able to set up courses, track user progress, and handle various data. Instructors, on the other hand, need to manage course content and student assessments. When this role-based structure is well-organized, managing a large and varied user base becomes easy.

Features: User registration and profile management, role-based permissions, group and cohort management, user activity tracking, and single sign-on (SSO) integration.

Course creation and management

The creation and management of educational materials are the foundational elements of any LMS. Basically, it enables instructors to design structured, engaging, and flexible learning experiences in various formats, such as lectures, video tutorials, assignments, interactive discussions, and more. The LMS here provides tools for setting up and organizing content, adjusting course flow, and updating materials as needed so that educators can deliver a cohesive learning experience.

Features: Course templates, multimedia content support (videos, documents, quizzes), content scheduling and sequencing, version control for course updates, and content import/export options.

Assessment and certification

Learning should be a rewarding experience, regardless of whether it’s for professional upskilling that requires certification or a fun, hobby-related course. Otherwise, users might simply lose motivation to keep going. Suppose you decide to build your own LMS system that would help evaluate and recognize achievements. In that case, you can use any form of assessment, from regular quizzes to end-of-course certification programs. For instance, a language class can include vocabulary quizzes, grammar exercises, and a final exam to reflect the student’s proficiency.

Features: Customizable quizzes and tests, automated grading, certification generation, progress tracking and reporting, exam scheduling, and proctoring options.

Assessment functionality in Beprofi, an e-learning platform developed by Brights

Learning paths and personalization

Learning isn’t a one-size-fits-all process. Different students can have different memory capacities, learning styles, goals, and knowledge levels, each influencing how they engage with and retain information. A modern, inclusive LMS should cater to this reality and provide personalized learning paths. This can be arranged by organizing courses into pathways, helping students progress logically and at their own pace.

Features: Custom learning path creation, predefined course recommendations, adaptive content delivery based on progress, milestone tracking, progress notifications, and reminders.

Communication tools

If you’ve decided to build your own LMS, you will need to implement communication tools to support students in the learning process. Normally, LMS-based platforms are equipped with messaging tools, forums, and live chats that enable instructors to give feedback on the spot and answer questions. Basically, the system should look like a project-based class where students can post questions on discussion boards or chat directly with instructors to get assistance. These tools bridge the gap in online learning by creating an interactive and supportive community.

Features: Internal messaging and notifications, real-time chat and Q&A sessions, video conferencing integration, and group collaboration spaces.

Challenges of LMS development and how we overcame them

Common challenges of LMS development

It’s easy to talk about overcoming challenges as if projects happen in a vacuum. But in reality, things rarely go as planned. Requirements change, unexpected technical quirks come up, and suddenly, the perfect LMS vision needs a more nuanced approach. Understanding how to build an LMS from scratch means tackling these real-world challenges head-on.

To give you a real view of what this means, we’ll walk you through our experience developing an LMS for The Earth Prize. This global environmental competition for teenage students by The Earth Foundation required a platform that could support young changemakers and match the mission’s ambition. Due to Brights’ track record with LMS development and socially impactful projects, the organization chose us as their tech partner. Here are the challenges we faced and overcame along the way.

Integration complexity

For organizations that have existing software systems, such as CRM or eCommerce functionality, integrating these with an LMS is essential to maintain efficiency. Otherwise, data often becomes isolated within different tools, meaning information like student progress, assessments, or engagement insights aren’t shared across platforms.

For The Earth Prize, the LMS needed to connect multiple third-party tools, each with its own intricacies, in a way that allowed for seamless user interaction. We carefully selected and configured each integration to work in sync with the LMS, providing the client with a single, unified platform where all the data worked together in real time.

Optimizing costs and efficiency

Balancing a platform’s functionality with cost-effectiveness is a common challenge. If you add excessive features, an LMS can quickly become expensive, so we always need to double-check whether certain tools and integrations are really needed.

For The Earth Prize, we started by removing outdated integrations that no longer supported the competition’s goals. At the same time, instead of overhauling tools already familiar to their team (Okta, SurveyMonkey Apply, and Incognito Desk), we adapted them to work within the new LMS to preserve workflow continuity and keep the budget under control.

Scalability and content adaptability

Educational content, student numbers, and engagement demands grow over time, and it’s sensible to think about scalability from the beginning. If an LMS isn’t scalable, it can’t keep up with increased use, which will inevitably lead to performance issues and limit the organization’s reach. Besides, EdTech projects typically need frequent updates to educational materials, so an LMS also needs to be flexible.

For instance, The Earth Prize competition requirements change regularly, so to ensure flexibility and easy content management, we built the LMS using Storyblok. This headless content management system now allows the Earth Prize team to update the website’s content, including educational materials, without fuss or downtime.

Security and identity protection

Data privacy and security are non-negotiable in LMS projects since EdTech projects often handle personal user information. Moreover, compliance with regulations like GDPR and secure data management practices is often mandatory.

When developing a custom learning management system for The Earth Prize, we created a secure login and account management system with strong encryption and access controls. Ultimately, it was about establishing a secure environment that students and administrators could rely on.

Effective communication

Part of what makes learning meaningful is connection between learners and educators. For The Earth Prize project, we had to establish this connection through high quality video content. We chose Vimeo for its reliable playback and secure content delivery. In addition to that, we developed a dependable channel of communication between students and mentors, fostering meaningful interactions and support.

LMS for The Earth Prize competition developed by Brights

Content management and migration

While we didn’t handle content migration on this project, transferring diverse content formats into a new LMS is a common challenge, and a big one for sure. In cases where migration is needed, you need to organize and streamline all materials (videos, PDFs, SCORM packages) to keep things simple for users.

We recommend starting with a content inventory to identify essential materials, then map out how each piece will fit into the new platform’s structure. Standardizing file formats, like converting all videos to MP4 or documents to PDF, will help you avoid compatibility issues. Also, it’s important to test each content type in the new LMS to verify that the materials work correctly. Last but not least, clear user guides or training will help everyone adapt to the new system quicker.

Why develop an LMS with Brights

Choosing the right partner who knows how to build an LMS for your organization can be tricky. It’s completely reasonable to want a team that understands your needs, frustrations, and expectations. Below is not a sales pitch but rather a dive into Brights’ background and fundamental work principles that will help you understand whether we can be the right fit for you.

Extensive experience in the field

“Our journey with LMS development started with developing business-oriented solutions specifically for sales representatives. We built systems where they could go through the automated onboarding process, train based on the given product vision, and learn to work with the product limitations. Moreover, these sales reps' salary raises and financial bonuses also depended on the learning outcomes. Our biggest projects in this niche were for Samsung and Philip Morris International.”

— Nata Shved, COO at Brights

Now, our expertise goes beyond business-focused solutions. For instance, Brights worked with the social sector, developing LMS solutions like The Earth Prize and BeProfi, which we continue to support.

Mindful approach

At Brights, we don’t rush to make any development strategy suggestions without getting to the bottom of what you actually require.

“The first thing we always recommend doing is assessing why you actually need an LMS, which tasks you expect it to perform, how long-term your project is, and what its ultimate goal is. Short-term goals can be solved with off-the-shelf solutions. But if you plan for the future, you have to account for the fact that your business processes, market demands, and other factors change, and you will need a flexible tailored system to deal with that.”

— Nata Shved, COO at Brights

End-to-end development process

As an outsourcing LMS development agency, Brights is here for you from the first conversation, listening to what you need and shaping a solution that works for you. Our process flows from an honest consultation to the meticulous discovery phase, UI/UX design, development, and thorough testing, ensuring everything is in place before launch. And once your LMS is live, we remain by your side, helping it grow and adapt, offering ongoing support as your needs evolve.

Keeping it simple whenever possible

While Brights specializes in custom LMS development, we don’t like complicating the development process when it’s unnecessary. So, if there is a ready-made, simpler, and cheaper solution, we’ll choose that option. That is why our company is an official partner of several headless CMS providers.

For our clients, creating an LMS based on a headless CMS means greater flexibility and faster deployment. In this case, the learning management system can easily integrate with other tools and platforms, allowing you to customize the learning experience without extensive development time. For instance, The Earth Prize project didn’t require any complex functionality but involved dynamic content updates, so we developed the LMS web application using Storyblok.

Conclusion: Costs and key considerations

While the benefits of a custom LMS are undeniable, we get it if you’re still hesitating. After all, tailored software from scratch always takes more time and requires more resources than off-the-shelf solutions. With custom learning management systems, the cost can vary anywhere between $25,000 to $80,000+ if built by an agency like Brights (and even more with companies from the US or Western Europe). So, it all comes down to your budget, customization needs, and plans for scaling. Here is what one of our experts has to say about the matter:

“On average, off-the-shelf solutions will always be cheaper than custom ones. However, the cost still heavily depends on the system’s pricing model, as well as other factors, like the number of learners, the amount of educational content, etc. Ultimately, in most cases, you have to be ready for the fact that ready-made solutions always come with structural limitations in terms of how your LMS functions. And these limitations are often nearly impossible to overcome.”

— Bohdan K, business analyst at Brights

Obviously, this doesn’t mean all educational initiatives require custom LMS solutions. It just means you have to weigh your options and evaluate your customization needs before you rush into making the final decision. And if you feel lost in the process — reach out to Brights for a consultation. We are here to listen, analyze, and help you figure out how to build an LMS that meets your criteria perfectly.