The LearnHouse alternative for teams who would rather not be on call.
You have read the repository, you like the block editor, and the Docker setup came up on the first try. The open question is not whether your team can run it. It is whether you want to own the upgrades, the backups, the patching and the pager — and whether you want to write the data-processing agreement, the audit trail and the access-review evidence your buyer asks for.
Self-host LearnHouse, or run on Lurno?
Lurno is a hosted multi-tenant learning platform from Augmental Learning. LearnHouse is an AGPLv3 open-source learning platform with a modern block editor, self-hostable with Docker. Choose LearnHouse if you want to own the stack outright and have people who are comfortable operating it — the licence is free, the source is yours to read and change, and running it is your team's job. Choose Lurno if the install is the easy part and the year after it is not: upgrades, backups you have actually restored from, dependency and base-image patching, uptime. Choose Lurno too if your buyer asks for a signed data-processing agreement, a FERPA addendum, an audit log that cannot be quietly edited and access reviews, rather than paperwork you build and evidence yourself. Lurno also runs many organisations from one platform: nested sub-organisations, a branch tree where a role granted at a branch cascades down it, and per-organisation branding and custom domains. LearnHouse self-hosting is free under AGPLv3 with paid cloud tiers; Lurno's published tiers start at $119 a month, and there is no self-hosted edition.
- AGPLv3
- The GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. It is the GPL plus a network clause: if you modify the software and let people use your modified version over a network — your own learners included — they can ask you for that modified source. Running it unmodified for your own institution is the ordinary case and carries no such obligation. If you plan to change it and offer it to others, read the licence with counsel before you plan the fork.
Lurno and LearnHouse on the points that decide it
The features overlap more than the operating model does. This is the operating model.
| Capability | Lurno | LearnHouse |
|---|---|---|
| Licence and price | Published tiers from $119 a month, 15% off billed annually | Self-hosted is free under AGPLv3 — you run the infrastructure. There is also a cloud offering with paid tiers |
| Source codeThis is LearnHouse's real advantage, and for some teams it settles the whole question. | Not published. Lurno is hosted by Augmental | AGPLv3 — read it, change it, fork it |
| Who runs the servers | We do | You do, on infrastructure you choose |
| Version upgrades | One hosted version, upgraded for everyone | Yours to schedule, rehearse and apply |
| Backups and restores | Ours, including the part where a restore is tested | Yours to configure, monitor, and prove by restoring one |
| Security patching | Applied by us, across every tenant | Yours — the application, its dependencies, the base images and the database underneath |
| Uptime and on-call | Ours | Yours. The learning platform becomes a service someone gets paged for |
| Signed DPA and FERPA addendum | Yes | Yours to draft and stand behind — hosting it makes your organisation the party that answers |
| Audit trail, access reviews, breach notification | A audit log that cannot be quietly edited and scheduled access reviews in the product; notification is a term in the DPA you sign with us | Yours to build, staff and evidence |
| Many organisations from one platform | Nested sub-organisations plus a branch tree where a role granted at a branch cascades down it, with that separation enforced underneath the platform | One deployment you operate; how you separate client organisations is your architecture decision |
| Brand and domain per organisation | White-label branding and a custom domain with automatic TLS, per organisation, plus partner sign-on (silent SSO) | Whatever you configure and then operate |
| How you start | By invitation today; self-serve signup is in development | Clone it and run it |
LearnHouse licensing, self-hosting and cloud positioning from learnhouse.app, checked 24 August 2026. Lurno's figures are on pricing.
What actually changes
The install was never the expensive part
A Docker deployment is an afternoon. The year after it is the budget line: the major version that changes how data is stored, the database upgrade, the advisory that lands on a Friday, the certificate nobody renewed, the restore you have not tested since you set it up. Lurno runs one hosted version, and all of that is ours.
- No upgrade window to plan, no staging clone to keep in step, no migration to rehearse.
- Backups, patching and availability sit with us. Your on-call rota loses a service and your engineers get the hours back.
The evidence exists before anyone asks for it
What stalls an institutional rollout is rarely a feature. It is a questionnaire: who processes the data, what happens on a breach, show us the audit trail, prove that access was reviewed. Self-hosting makes every one of those answers something you write and defend.
- A signed data-processing agreement and a FERPA addendum. GDPR consent, DSAR export and erasure, with a two-person rule on erasure.
- A audit log that cannot be quietly edited — each entry linked to the one before it, so an edited or deleted record shows — plus scheduled access reviews. Aligned to ISO 27001 practices.
- Separation between organisations is enforced underneath the platform, not just in the screens on top a later change could forget.
- Multi-language, with full right-to-left support, at WCAG 2.1 AA.
One platform, many organisations
Sub-organisations nest inside your organisation, with a branch tree beneath them: a role granted at a branch cascades down it. Each carries its own branding and its own custom domain with automatic TLS, so a client company sees its academy rather than yours. A corporate academy runs training for 15 client companies from one tenant. A K-12 publisher runs 114 schools on one platform.
- Groups, custom roles and a permission catalogue you can read line by line, rather than a fixed set of role names.
- Depth for accredited work: 53 resource types, 19 question types, 7 assessment types, rubric grading, peer review, portfolios, competency frameworks with evidence, and certificates with a public verification page.
Where LearnHouse is the better choice.
Technical teams who want to own the stack outright and are comfortable operating it themselves. If you already run your own database and storage, have a deploy pipeline, and have someone whose job includes reading advisories, the marginal cost of one more service is small — and what it buys is total control. You hold the source under AGPLv3: read the code before you trust it, patch it the day you need to rather than the day a vendor ships, fork it if the project goes somewhere you would not follow. Nobody can price you out of software you already run.
Control of the data is the other half. You choose the machine, the region and the retention, query the database directly, and export anything without opening a ticket. For teams under national data rules — or a policy written before cloud hosting was normal — that is the requirement, not a preference.
And the product itself is pleasant: a modern block editor and a clean deployment story, from a younger project that has not spent two decades accumulating configuration. For a team that means to build on top of a platform rather than only use one, that counts for more than a long feature list.
So if self-hosting is a requirement rather than a preference, stop here: Lurno is hosted, with no self-hosted edition. Better said on this page than in week three of a procurement. Stay put too if a conformant SCORM or LTI 1.3 runtime gates your rollout — those standards are modelled in Lurno and the runtime is being built. If you want the open-source route with a larger ecosystem behind it, Moodle is the other comparison worth reading.
Included in the platform, not on your maintenance backlog
Run, patched and upgraded by us
One hosted version. Hosting, backups, security patches and availability are ours, applied across every tenant without a ticket from you.
Nested organisations and a branch tree
Sub-organisations for campuses, schools or client companies, each with an internal branch tree where a role cascades down the branch. Groups, custom roles and a readable permission catalogue.
Your brand, your domain
Per-organisation branding, a custom domain with automatic TLS, configurable login backgrounds, renameable terminology, and partner sign-on (silent SSO).
The paperwork a buyer asks for
A signed DPA and a FERPA addendum, an audit log that cannot be quietly edited, access reviews, GDPR consent, DSAR and erasure with a two-person rule. Aligned to ISO 27001 practices. WCAG 2.1 AA.
Grounded AI with a person in the loop
Upload a PDF, DOCX or PPTX and generation cites the document, version and page it used. A check on our side stops the tutor giving answers away. The model drafts grades; an instructor releases them.
SCORM, xAPI and LTI 1.3
In developmentModelled in the product; the runtime is being built. Talk to us early if standards conformance gates your rollout — timing matters more than the feature list here.
The rest of the shortlist
Same structure, same rules: sourced facts, and a section on where the other product wins.
Before the build-versus-buy meeting
Price the year, not the install.
Bring your infrastructure plan and the questionnaire your buyer sent you. We will go through what the deployment costs after week one, and where running it yourself is still the right call.