Canvas vs WordPress | TrustRadius

What users are saying about

Score 8.5 out of 10

Based on 197 reviews and ratings

Score 8.6 out of 10

Based on 2813 reviews and ratings

Feature Rating Comparison

Canvas

WordPress

Course authoring

Course catalog or library

Player/Portal

Learning content

Mobile friendly

Progress tracking & certifications

Assignments

Compliance management

Learning administration

Learning reporting & analytics

Social learning

Canvas

WordPress

Role-based user permissions

Canvas

WordPress

API

Internationalization / multi-language

Canvas

WordPress

WYSIWYG editor

Code quality / cleanliness

Admin section

Page templates

Library of website themes

Mobile optimization / responsive design

Publishing workflow

Form generator

Canvas

WordPress

Content taxonomy

SEO support

Bulk management

Availability / breadth of extensions

Community / comment management

Pros

Creativity options for teachers to create a virtual space that still has fun graphics and accessibility options.
Canvas has versatility in viewing options for assignment due dates such as the calendar built in feature as well as the dashboard options to display upcoming and due assignments.
Allowing teachers to create community with each other and collaborate in each-other's space.
Discussion platforms within classrooms for students to communicate with each-other and with their teachers.
Easy messaging portal within each virtual classroom.

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Verified User

Professional in Other

Education Management Company, 1-10 employees

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WordPress is incredibly easy to set up and get running with little to no technical knowledge. Most web hosts will do it for you, since it's so easy.
With thousands of themes available for free and for low cost, WordPress can accommodate any design you can imagine.
The community behind WordPress is generous, and there are loads of educational opportunities both online and in person to learn and connect with other users.

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Owner | Principal

LMK Web Design & ConsultingInformation Technology and Services, 1-10 employees

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Cons

Their integration with Big Blue Button was a bust for distance learning. Would be great to see them collaborate with Zoom or Google Meets.
Their "feature request" process is slow and cumbersome at times because it relies on user "up votes" to get ideas addressed by the developers.
They seem to have a lot of turn-over with their staff. We get a new Customer Success Manager far more frequently than with other vendors.

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Patrick Woessner

Coordinator of Instructional Technology

Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day SchoolEducation Management, 201-500 employees

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WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.

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Verified User

Manager in Human Resources

Events Services Company, 51-200 employees

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Likelihood to Renew

Canvas 9.3

Based on 5 answers

The other LMS tools have fallen behind. One reason is they are not able to update their systems, features, toolsets in a timely manner. While other LMS providers release bug fixes and new features several times a year, schools struggle to install and implement them in a timely manner. It is not uncommon for a school to take 6 months to a year to fully install and implement new releases on other LMS platforms. With Canvas, those features are released every 3 weeks, and there is nothing for a school to do other than choose to turn them on once released. This has allowed Instructure to innovate faster, and get new features and tools to customers quicker. Other factors include great pricing, customer support, and the innovative way in which LTI is implemented in the tool.

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Director - Teaching and Learning Technology

Utah State UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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WordPress 8.4

Based on 37 answers

My rating is based on the knowledge I have of the community that WordPress has had built around it for years now. It's as solid as it comes when you talk about community involvement and expansion. There's no other CMS out there that can match-up with it, hands down.

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Mathew Riexinger

VP of Online Marketing

mriexinger@gmail.comMarketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

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Usability

Canvas 9.1

Based on 7 answers

The functions in Canvas are well integrated and consistent across the application, and mostly intuitive. Overall navigation and setup is streamlined through integrated features and navigation. The feedback we've gotten from our program participants is that it is easy to learn to use. It also integrates well with third party software like Google Docs and Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing software

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Online Instructional Designer

World SavvyEducation Management, 11-50 employees

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WordPress 8.8

Based on 18 answers

I give it an 8 rating because it's a great piece of open-source software that can be customized easily. There is an ease of use and the customizations are a treat. There are a lot of themes to choose from (though paid themes are the best as they provide more support).

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Information Technology & Services Company, 1-10 employees

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Reliability and Availability

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

WordPress 9.5

Based on 3 answers

Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.

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Martin Aranovitch

Founder, WPTrainMe.com - WordPress Training Plugin

WPTrainMe.comE-Learning, 1-10 employees

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Performance

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

WordPress 8.6

Based on 2 answers

Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site.If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.

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Martin Aranovitch

Founder, WPTrainMe.com - WordPress Training Plugin

WPTrainMe.comE-Learning, 1-10 employees

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Support Rating

Canvas 8.9

Based on 14 answers

I do not personally use Canvas support since we have a central office that helps us. However, our central office always has the answers we need and are always able to solve our issues - so I would assume that get great support from the Canvas team on their end. They also offer great training, which uses materials directly from Canvas

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Alumni Development Manager, College of Education

Florida State UniversityEducation Management, 1001-5000 employees

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WordPress 8.1

Based on 13 answers

WordPress itself only has community service so your experience will depend on where you turn. Online, through forums and community boards, support is rudimentary but effective. You can easily turn to your local community and find exceptional individuals who know and use WordPress regularly for more advanced, inexpensive, support. I'm rating this less than 10 because of the lack of any formal support provided by a company.

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Verified User

Consultant in Marketing

Internet Company, 1-10 employees

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In-Person Training

Canvas 10.0

Based on 1 answer

The training sessions were broken down into several days as well as different levels depending upon the knowledge of the user

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Bethany Cleveland, PhD

Adjunct Professor

Auburn UniversityHigher Education, 5001-10,000 employees

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WordPress 7.0

Based on 1 answer

Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.

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Verified User

Consultant in Marketing

Internet Company, 1-10 employees

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Online Training

Canvas 8.0

Based on 1 answer

The online tutorials and videos are very clear and addressed the issues/questions that I had about using the system.

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Bethany Cleveland, PhD

Adjunct Professor

Auburn UniversityHigher Education, 5001-10,000 employees

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WordPress 10.0

Based on 1 answer

It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.

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Web Developer

BeeDragon Web ServicesInternet, 1-10 employees

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Implementation Rating

Canvas 8.3

Based on 4 answers

Once you purchase and sign the contract there is nothing to install or hardware to buy. You can almost immediately start using it and have courses up and going within weeks. We signed in December and had pilot courses online ready to go for the start of school in January

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Director - Teaching and Learning Technology

Utah State UniversityHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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WordPress 9.0

Based on 10 answers

WordPress is not a great solution if you have:1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements.2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure.3) Multiple sites you need to manage.For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution

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Verified User

C-Level Executive in Marketing

Marketing and Advertising Company, 11-50 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Canvas provided the most modern UI, which remains intuitive despite holding a significant feature set. The ability to manage a portfolio of online courses through the blueprinting feature really set this apart from our past LMS's, which provided significant cost savings and investment in hiring personnel. Ease of use and mobile friendly approach provided massive advantages that truly shone through as the pandemic hit and all faculty at all of our locations were required to use the LMS significantly. We are incredibly grateful to have been with Canvas during this time.

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Director, Center for Teaching & Learning; Asst. Profess

Lancaster Bible CollegeHigher Education, 201-500 employees

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We have considered and operated within Shopify and Squarespace. Both serve their purpose for niche clients, but we do recommend WordPress as being the superior option. We find that WordPress is easier to use and offers maximum scalability while the others are more challenging to design, code, configure and launch.

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Verified User

Account Manager in Marketing

Design Company, 11-50 employees

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Scalability

Canvas 8.0

Based on 1 answer

No answer on this topic is available.

WordPress 10.0

Based on 1 answer

WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus.Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc.The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc.The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.

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Martin Aranovitch

Founder, WPTrainMe.com - WordPress Training Plugin

WPTrainMe.comE-Learning, 1-10 employees

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Return on Investment

Canvas has helped us provide a more robust online component to our courses.
Canvas has helped us better adapt to a rapidly changing educational landscape.
Canvas has reduced the time that we have to spend training faculty on how to use our learning management system.

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Verified User

Professional in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 501-1000 employees

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We don't have a web dev on our team currently, but we've referred many clients to a WP developer we partner with and have earned commissions off of those referrals
Faster sites have campaigns that perform better, leading to higher lifetime customer value
We use affiliate marketing tools on our site as well

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Verified User

Director in Sales

Marketing & Advertising Company, 11-50 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

No

Rating Summary

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

Canvas

WordPress

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