LessonUp vs Xerte
LessonUp
lessonup.com
Xerte
xerte.org.ukSide by side
| Figure | LessonUp | Xerte |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $7/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| iOS | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 10 | 2 |
| Spec score · Interactive Lesson Makers | 8.8 (#7) | 8.2 (#13) |
| Audience | LessonUp describes its audiences as teachers, teams, schools, colleges, multi-academy trusts, and content partners. | The project describes Xerte as aimed at teachers and tutors, and says it is used in universities, colleges, schools, and other organisations delivering teaching and learning. |
| Documentation | The help center is organized into getting started, AI, classes, accounts, subscriptions, school administration and lesson-creation collections. | Documentation includes student, teacher and system-administrator sections, installation guides and developer material, with the project acknowledging that developer documentation is still being improved. |
| Integrations | Official pages list Canvas, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams for Education and itslearning integrations, with SURFconext SSO for school plans. | The site describes SCORM, LTI, and xAPI support for integrating with learning technologies; xAPI reporting requires a configured Learning Record Store. |
| Limit: learning curve | G2 reviewers report that the interface and many interaction types take time to learn. | A comparative study found a moderately steep learning curve and gave Xerte zero points for an in-product help wizard. |
| Purpose | LessonUp lets educators find, create, and teach interactive lessons in person or online, with insights into student learning. | Xerte is a browser-based authoring suite for creating interactive learning materials. |
| Support | Support is offered through chat and email, with the help center providing instructional articles and videos. | Support is offered through forums, technical and developer mailing lists, GitHub issues and listed commercial providers. |
| System requirements | LessonUp recommends a stable internet connection and current Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Edge browsers. | The release documentation lists Apache or IIS, PHP with PDO, zLib and SimpleXML, optional LDAP, and MySQL. |
| What it does | LessonUp is a web teaching platform for finding, creating and delivering interactive lessons while tracking student learning. | Xerte is a browser-based suite for creating interactive learning materials and online learning objects. |
Plans
LessonUp
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- Start$7 a month
- School$7.50 a month
- School Basic$7.50 a month
- Pro$7.99 a month
- Start$9 a month
- School Complete$9.58 a month
- Pro$10.99 a month
- School Plus$12.92 a month
In their own words
LessonUp
LessonUp helps educators find, create, and teach interactive lessons in person or online, with reports and insights into student learning. Activities include multiple-choice questions, polls, drag-and-drop tasks, word clouds, hotspots, spinners, fill-in-the-blanks, and sorting. Teachers can import PowerPoint presentations and add interactive elements such as quizzes, mind maps, and open questions. A lesson library includes material from other educators and content partners. AI tools can assist with lessons, quizzes, rubrics, assignments, images, summaries, glossaries, and translations. LessonUp lists integrations with Canvas, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams for Education, and itslearning; school plans also list SURFconext SSO. The Free plan saves lesson results and includes some interactive features. Start costs $7 a month per teacher on a yearly subscription and includes VAT; it allows 10 lessons and 20 AI uses monthly. Pro costs $7.99 a month per teacher on a yearly subscription, includes VAT, and allows unlimited lessons and 50 AI uses monthly. LessonUp is available on web, Android, and iOS.
Xerte
Xerte is a browser-based authoring suite for interactive learning materials, aimed at teachers and tutors as well as organisations delivering teaching and learning. Authors assemble content with forms and templates, while developers can use JavaScript and CSS to change its appearance and functionality. The Xerte Online Toolkit has over 70 templates. Output is responsive, standards-compliant HTML5 for modern browsers and devices, with keyboard accessibility, a colour contrast changer, and compatibility with text-to-speech and most screen-reader tools. Projects can be exported as standalone ZIP files for web-server deployment or as SCORM packages. Xerte also supports SCORM, LTI, and xAPI integrations, though xAPI reporting requires a configured Learning Record Store. The software is free and open source, but requires installation on a web server. The described setup uses Linux, Apache, MySQL or MariaDB, and PHP; Windows servers with IIS can also be configured. Community forums are the main support channel, and support there is voluntary.