WordPress LMS Strategy & Architecture Review — $4,950, 7 business days, written report, recorded walkthrough, and a 45-minute debrief. A fixed-scope review of the decisions that determine whether your WordPress LMS will scale: platform fit, course architecture, learner roles, integrations, accessibility, and a written build-vs-buy call.
Recent LMS-class WordPress work: M.L. Campbell Training Centre (custom WordPress training platform, tenfold attendance growth) · Sayerlack training portal · MA in Learning and Technology, Royal Roads University · prior training-platform work for Privy Council of Canada
This is the engagement to book before you commit budget to the wrong LMS platform, the wrong role model, or a custom build that should have been an off-the-shelf plugin. It is not a sales call dressed up as a deliverable. The report is the same report whether you become a long-term client or take it to your internal team and never speak to me again.
What you get
Six artifacts. Every review, every time. No upsells, no surprise line items, no “we ran out of time on the integrations section.”
- A written architecture report (PDF, 12–18 pages). The framework applied to your situation, with platform-fit reasoning, role and permission diagrams, an integration map, and a build-vs-buy call. Every recommendation is named with a reason, not just a verdict.
- A platform-fit recommendation. LearnDash, LifterLMS, TutorLMS, or custom — named, with the trade-offs that drove the call. If the right answer is “not WordPress,” the report says so. I have walked one buyer off WordPress LMS into a hosted platform when the math said so.
- A role and permission model. Learners, instructors, cohort admins, reporting roles, parent or supervisor access where it applies. The model is documented as a table your developer or implementation partner can build directly from.
- An integration map. CRM, payment processor, email or marketing automation, SSO and identity provider, reporting destinations, and any line-of-business systems the LMS has to talk to. Each integration is rated by complexity and whether an existing plugin handles it or custom work is required.
- A recorded walkthrough (Loom-style, 30–40 minutes). Me reading the report on camera, naming the three decisions I would make first if I were running this project. Share it with stakeholders who could not attend the debrief.
- A 45-minute live debrief call and a written build scope. Scheduled within 5 business days of report delivery. Bring up to four people from your team. The build scope is appended to the report — either an hours-and-rate range against the senior-developer rate, or a fixed-tier estimate after a follow-up scoping call. Take it to your decision-makers without a second sales conversation.
What this review is not
Defining the shoulder of the scope is part of what makes the price honest.
- Not implementation. The review ships a written architecture and a build scope, not the platform itself. Implementation is a separate engagement, named below.
- Not instructional design. I will tell you what the system has to support, not how to write your courses. If your team needs course-design help, that is a different specialist and I will say so.
- Not a sales pitch. The report does not invent complexity to manufacture a build engagement. If LifterLMS plus three plugins solves your problem in a weekend, the report says that. Sometimes the honest answer is “you do not need a $40,000 build.”
- Not an audit of an existing LMS. If you already run LearnDash or LifterLMS in production and want a senior pair of eyes on what is broken, the WordPress Site Audit is the right starting point. The architecture review is for buyers who are deciding what to build, not diagnosing what already exists.
- Not unlimited revisions. One report, one walkthrough, one debrief. Follow-up questions are welcome on the debrief call. Anything beyond is a change order at the headline rate.
Who this is for
- ✅ Education, training, and corporate L&D teams who have decided WordPress is the right home for their LMS but have not yet picked a platform, modelled their roles, or scoped the build.
- ✅ Operators of an in-progress build who have lost confidence in the platform choice or the architecture and need a senior outside review before the next sprint locks decisions in.
- ✅ Government, post-secondary, and enterprise training teams who need an architecture document that survives procurement scrutiny. The report is written to be read by people who were not on our calls.
- ✅ Teams whose budget for the build is in the $18,000 to $40,000 CAD range and who want to spend that money once, on the right thing.
- ❌ Buyers who have not yet decided that WordPress is the platform. The review assumes WordPress is on the table; if you are still comparing WordPress to Moodle, Canvas, Thinkific, or a hosted enterprise LMS, book the free 20-minute discovery call first.
- ❌ Buyers who need the price below $4,950 to make this work. The review does not discount; the right next step is the discovery call so we can talk through whether a smaller engagement makes sense.
- ❌ Anyone looking for a free LMS recommendation. The free version is the published guidance on the blog and the discovery call. The paid version is what you get when I run the framework on your situation, with my eyes, my tools, and my judgment.
The 7 business days
The clock starts when payment is received and the kickoff questionnaire is returned. Seven days is the cap, not the average; most reviews ship in five.
- Day 1 — Kickoff and intake. A written questionnaire goes out the moment payment lands. Learner population, course volume, integration list, identity provider, payment expectations, reporting needs, and any deadlines that constrain the build. We hold a 30-minute kickoff call to fill the gaps the questionnaire cannot.
- Days 2–3 — Platform fit and role modeling. I work through the framework. Platform comparison against your specific requirements. Role and permission model drafted. Build-vs-buy reasoning documented as I go.
- Days 4–5 — Integrations, accessibility, and scale. Integration map built. Accessibility implications worked through against WCAG 2.2 AA. Hosting and scale fit checked against the learner population you named on Day 1. Migration considerations if there is an existing system to retire.
- Day 6 — Report assembly and walkthrough recording. The PDF is finalized. The Loom walkthrough is recorded. The build scope is appended.
- Day 7 — Delivery. Report PDF, walkthrough link, and the written build scope arrive in your inbox before noon Eastern. The debrief call is already on your calendar; we hold it within 5 business days of delivery.
If your team cannot return the kickoff questionnaire within 10 business days of payment, the engagement pauses without penalty. If we lose contact past 30 days, the deliverable still ships against whatever I can produce from the materials provided and the engagement closes. No infinite tails on either side.
What I review on every engagement
These are the headlines. Each one is examined against your specific situation, not a generic template, and the findings show up in the report with the reasoning attached.
- Platform fit. LearnDash, LifterLMS, TutorLMS, or custom. Strengths against your learner volume, course model, billing pattern, and integration list. The recommendation is named with the reason that drove it.
- Course architecture and information architecture. Course, lesson, topic, quiz, assignment, certificate, cohort. How content nests, how learners move through it, and where the platform’s defaults will fight your model.
- Learner roles and permissions. Learners, instructors, cohort admins, reporting roles, parent or supervisor access where applicable. Documented as a table your developer can build from.
- Enrollment and payment paths. Self-serve checkout, group seats, purchase orders, manual enrollment, free preview lessons, drip schedules, and the commerce stack that supports each one.
- SSO and identity. SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect, or username-and-password. Whether your identity provider has a maintained WordPress integration or whether custom work is required.
- Reporting and analytics. Course completion, time on task, learner progress, instructor dashboards, exportable reports, and the line-of-business systems the data has to land in.
- Accessibility for learners (WCAG 2.2 AA). Where the platform’s defaults already comply, where they do not, and what the remediation plan looks like before launch. Government and education buyers, this is non-negotiable.
- Content authoring workflow. Who builds courses, what they need to be able to do without a developer, and where the authoring experience will frustrate your team.
- Integrations. CRM, marketing automation, email, payment processor, identity provider, reporting destinations, video host, virtual classroom. Each rated by complexity.
- Hosting and scale fit. Concurrent learner counts, video bandwidth, database load patterns. Whether your current host matches the workload or whether the build needs an infrastructure conversation first.
- Build versus buy. The honest call: off-the-shelf plugin, plugin plus customization, or fully custom. The reasoning is documented so your decision-makers can see the trade-off without taking my word for it.
- Migration considerations. If there is an existing system to retire, the data shape on the way out, the risks of a botched migration, and what the cutover plan needs to account for.
Why work with me
- MA in Learning and Technology, Royal Roads University. The graduate program that sits behind the architecture work. Instructional systems, learner experience, and the academic literature on how adults actually learn online.
- M.L. Campbell Training Centre. Custom WordPress training platform built, launched, and operated. Tenfold attendance growth across the engagement. The platform is in active production use today.
- Sayerlack training portal. A second WordPress training platform built for the international Sherwin-Williams brand portfolio.
- Prior Canadian government training work. MS Office training delivered for the Privy Council of Canada earlier in my career. Government and post-secondary training environments are a familiar surface.
- WordPress development since 2007. Over a decade of paid WordPress engagements across small business, brand training portfolios, higher education, and Canadian newsroom infrastructure.
- Day job. Training and Development Specialist at Sherwin-Williams supporting the M.L. Campbell professional finishing brand. LMS architecture work happens outside that scope, on independent client engagements.
If your team also needs WordPress and LMS training delivered to internal staff once the platform is built, that is a separate engagement — see team training for WordPress and LMS.
What happens after the review
Roughly half of architecture clients move into the build engagement with me. The other half take the report to their internal team or a chosen implementation partner and execute themselves, which is also a fine outcome. The report is written to support either path.
Build & Launch your WordPress LMS
The implementation engagement starts with a 20-minute discovery call, moves into a written scope, and then a fixed-tier estimate against my $275 an hour senior-developer rate. Typical engagements land between $18,000 and $40,000 CAD depending on platform choice, integration count, and how much of the role and permission model needs custom work. Complex multi-tenant deployments or builds with deep SIS integrations are quoted separately. The architecture review feeds straight into this — the scoping conversation is shorter and the estimate is firmer because the decisions are already documented.
The review is not a precondition for the build engagement. Buyers who already have a written architecture from a competent author can book the build directly. Buyers who do not have one almost always benefit from running the review first.
Common questions
Why $4,950 and not “starting at” something lower?
Because the deliverable is fixed. The same six artifacts ship every time. “Starting at” pricing is what consultants use when the scope is undefined and the price is a negotiation; my scope is defined and my price is not a negotiation. If $4,950 is wrong for your situation, the right answer is a different engagement, not a discounted review.
Can I get a refund?
Full refund within 48 hours of payment if I have not started work. Once the kickoff call is held and the framework is in progress, the engagement is non-refundable. The report itself is yours regardless of what we decide about a follow-up build engagement.
What access do you need?
For a greenfield build, no system access is required — the questionnaire and the kickoff call are enough. If there is an existing LMS in production, read-only access to the WordPress admin and a sample dataset are useful. Hosting and DNS access are not required at the architecture stage.
Is this a path to a build engagement?
Often, but not always. The review ends with a written build scope, which names the implementation work, the rate, and the typical range. About half of review clients move into a build engagement with me; the rest execute internally or with another partner. The report is written to support either outcome.
Does the review fee credit against a build?
Yes. The full $4,950 review fee is credited against any build engagement of $20,000 or more booked within 90 days of report delivery. The review pays for itself the moment the build is signed. The credit does not stack across multiple buyers or carry past 90 days; it is tied to the specific engagement the review was written for.
Which platforms do you cover?
LearnDash, LifterLMS, TutorLMS, and custom WordPress builds. If your situation points away from those toward a hosted platform like Thinkific or an enterprise LMS like Moodle or Canvas, the report will say so and explain why. The recommendation follows the requirements, not the other way around.
What about multi-school or multi-site deployments?
The published review covers one LMS instance. For multi-school deployments, district-wide rollouts, brand portfolios with separate training properties, or multisite WordPress networks, scope and price are quoted separately. Email me with the deployment shape and the questions you are trying to answer.
I am not ready to buy. Can we talk first?
Yes. The free 20-minute discovery call is the right first step if you are not sure the review fits your situation, or if you are still deciding whether WordPress is the right platform at all. Most reviews are booked after a discovery call rather than off the page directly.
Ready when you are
WordPress LMS Strategy & Architecture Review — $4,950, 7 business days, written report, recorded walkthrough, and a 45-minute debrief. Pay up front, return the kickoff questionnaire, and the clock starts.
Or book a twenty-minute discovery call first.
