Honest answers. Not marketing copy.

Open edX is an open-source learning management system originally developed by MIT and Harvard, now stewarded by the non-profit Axim Collaborative - used by universities, enterprises, governments and NGOs worldwide.

It depends on your situation, honestly. Open edX scales well for MOOCs and large open courses, has a strong analytics ecosystem in Aspects, and is open source under AGPL and Apache 2.0 with no licence fees. Moodle is excellent for traditional university course delivery and has the largest plugin ecosystem. Canvas is strong on faculty UX. Blackboard is entrenched in some institutions. We help compare honestly during consultation - including saying when Open edX isn't the right answer.

It is genuinely open source. The full platform code is on GitHub under AGPL and Apache 2.0 licences. There is no proprietary "enterprise edition" hiding the good features - what you pay for with us is hosting, configuration, integration and support, not licence fees. The model is closer to Red Hat than to commercial SaaS.

No. Open edX is a learning management system, not a student information system or HRIS. It integrates with Banner, Colleague, PeopleSoft, Workday, SAP SuccessFactors, BambooHR and similar via REST APIs and SCIM - but it does not replace them. Course delivery and engagement live in Open edX; enrolment of record, transcripts and HR workflows live in your SIS or HRIS. We build the bridge.

edX.org runs on it. So does MIT Open Learning, Harvard's various learning portals, France Université Numérique (FUN), Western Governors University, and a long list of universities, ministries and enterprises across Europe and globally. The platform powers some of the largest MOOCs ever delivered. Adoption is wide enough that "is this a serious choice?" is no longer a real question.

6 to 12 weeks for most engagements. Course-only migrations from a single source land closer to 6 weeks; full ecosystem migrations with SSO cutover, SIS or HRIS integration and multi-tenant setup land closer to 12. Very large multi-campus or multi-brand migrations can stretch to 16 weeks. We scope each one explicitly during discovery rather than quoting a single number.

Course content, enrolments, grade history with timestamps, forum posts, issued certificates, user accounts, and SCORM packages all migrate as standard. Third-party plug-in content, custom gradebook formulas, H5P interactives, and surrounding-system integrations need case-by-case scoping — we deliver a written data inventory after discovery so nothing surprises you three weeks before cutover.

No, and they shouldn't. Migration handles authentication either via SSO (in which case password management stays with your IdP and migration is irrelevant) or via forced reset at first login on the new platform. Anyone offering to migrate hashed passwords between LMSes is doing something you should not let them do.

Every migration includes a documented rollback plan written before cutover. Your source LMS stays intact during the cutover window. If something breaks in a way that can't be fixed within a pre-agreed response window, we revert and reschedule. We have not used a rollback plan in anger, but we have one ready for every project - pretending migrations never fail is how migrations fail badly.

In our Abstract-managed cloud, data is stored under German jurisdiction with our hand-picked and trusted hosting partners. In bring-your-own-cloud, data lives in your cloud account in whichever region you configure (we recommend EU regions, but the configuration is authoritative). In on-premise, data sits on your own hardware and never leaves your infrastructure.

Open edX provides the technical features GDPR requires - user data export, deletion, audit logging. Compliance is a property of how each organisation configures and operates the platform, not of the code itself. We host on EU infrastructure under German jurisdiction with a standard DPA, configure to a compliant baseline, and document any gaps honestly. We don't claim "GDPR-compliant software" because that phrasing isn't how the regulation works.

Uptime targets are specified in the SLA attached to your hosting tier - business-hours, extended-hours, or 24/7. We publish the exact targets, measurement windows, maintenance-window exclusions, and credit structure per tier. We don't headline a single "99.9%" number on marketing pages because that phrasing hides the conditions that actually determine it.

Yes. On-premise installation on your own infrastructure is standard for ministries and regulated-industry clients. Fully air-gapped deployments are also supported. Updates in air-gapped deployments happen as scheduled on-site visits, quarterly by default, because an air-gap that syncs automatically over the internet isn't an air-gap.

Yes. Open edX is portable - we architect deployments so you can start on Abstract-managed cloud and move to your own cloud or on-premise later, or vice versa. Many clients start managed and move to self-managed once their internal cloud-ops capability matures. Portability is a contractual right, not a favour.

Open edX is open-source software, and ISO 27001 certifies operators rather than code. When Abstract hosts the platform, we can provide attestations covering our operational environment. If you self-host or run on-premise, the certification scope covers your operations, not ours. Some tender documents ask for platform-level certification that doesn't exist for any open-source system; we explain this up front rather than wave a misleading badge.

Open edX supports SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, and SCIM — the protocols that Entra ID, Okta, Keycloak, ADFS, Auth0, Shibboleth, Ping and most other IdPs all speak. Integration is configuration, not custom development, for any IdP that speaks those standards. For unusual or proprietary IdPs we build a small bridging layer; we'll tell you at proposal stage whether that adds days or weeks to the timeline.

Yes. SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 packages import via the SCORM xBlock and run inside Open edX courses alongside native content. Articulate, Captivate, iSpring, Lectora and the other major SCORM-output authoring tools all produce packages that import cleanly. Completion and score events are tracked and can be emitted as xAPI statements to a Learning Record Store.

Open edX does not participate in eduGAIN natively, but it can consume identities from a Shibboleth IdP that is registered in a national federation and published to eduGAIN. In practice, your platform can accept logins from any eduGAIN-connected institution via your own IdP or a bridging service. We scope the specific approach during discovery — it depends on whether you're a service provider in the federation or just a consumer of federated identities.

Yes. Open edX emits xAPI (Experience API) statements for learner activity. If you run a Learning Record Store — Watershed, Yet, Veracity, or open source — the statement stream feeds directly into your learning analytics infrastructure. No duplication, no separate export pipeline. Aspects, our analytics layer, also consumes the xAPI stream natively for in-platform dashboards.

Three modules: a Course Expert that answers learner questions grounded in your own course content via retrieval-augmented generation, a learner chatbot for support, and an admin-automation assistant for ticket triage and grading assistance. AI features are optional and can run in privacy-preserving mode where prompts don't leave your tenant. The suite is designed with EU AI Act obligations in mind- full prompt-and-completion audit logging, traceable rationale grounded in Bloom's taxonomy where applicable, per-role usage budgets, and the ability to swap underlying models without re-engineering. Actual compliance for your deployment depends on your specific use case and risk classification under the Act, which we work through during consultation.

Yes to both. Native iOS and Android apps - not a wrapped webview. Offline mode lets learners download course content over Wi-Fi, complete units without connectivity, and progress syncs automatically when they reconnect. The app can be white-labelled with your branding for both app stores, supports push notifications (opt-in, GDPR-clean) and biometric login. We test offline flows in realistic network conditions, not just on fibre in the Berlin office.

Open edX targets WCAG 2.1 Level AA, which is the basis for EN 301 549 and BITV 2.0 in Germany. Screen-reader friendly, keyboard-navigable, with captioned-video workflows. Every deployment includes a written accessibility statement documenting any known gaps rather than claiming blanket compliance — accessibility conformance is a per-deployment assessment, not a property of the software alone. If your tender requires an independent accessibility audit, we arrange that with a recognised auditor; the cost and timeline are scoped separately.

Yes. Open edX emits xAPI (Experience API) statements for learner activity. If you run a Learning Record Store — Watershed, Yet, Veracity, or open source — the statement stream feeds directly into your learning analytics infrastructure. No duplication, no separate export pipeline. Aspects, our analytics layer, also consumes the xAPI stream natively for in-platform dashboards.

There are no licence fees — Open edX is open source. You pay for hosting, implementation services, integration work, and ongoing support. We do not charge per-learner pricing, so costs stay predictable as your platform grows. We publish indicative pricing tiers on the pricing page and quote precisely after a discovery call where we can see the actual scope. Open source doesn't mean free - it means predictable.

No. Per-learner pricing breaks budgets when learner numbers grow unpredictably — which is the typical pattern for MOOCs, NGOs, and grant-funded programmes. We charge for hosting capacity and support tier, not per seat. Your platform can scale from 500 to 50,000 learners without re-opening the budget conversation with your funder mid-cycle.

Yes. The 30-minute discovery call is free. It exists to figure out together whether and how we should work, not to push a contract. You meet the team - bring the actual question you're wrestling with. If the right answer is "stay where you are" or "pick a different partner", we say so on the call.

Yes. Abstract Technology is an Open edX Certified Partner for Europe - listed in the official partner directory at openedx.org/partners/abstract-technology. Our team contributes regularly to the Open edX platform and to the Aspects analytics project; contributions are public on github.com/Abstract-Tech.

Berlin, Germany. Manfred-von-Richthofen-Straße 4, 12101 Berlin. Abstract Technology GmbH is a German company, registered for VAT under DE 8155579. Our team works across Europe, but the legal entity, the contracting party, and the data-controller relationship all sit in Germany.

More than 11 years building, hosting and maintaining EdTech platforms across Europe. We have migrated 38+ institutions onto Open edX and currently host learning ecosystems for universities, enterprises, intergovernmental bodies and NGOs - including UN-system organisations, Politecnico di Torino, Università di Bologna, Munich Business School, the German University of Digital Science, and many others.

Yes. Open edX is open source. You can take a copy of the code, the database, the content (stored in OLX, a plain-text format), and the configuration — and run it yourself, or move to another Open edX partner. Data portability is a contractual right, not a negotiation. We will actively support exit if the relationship doesn't work; long-term lock-in isn't the business we're in.

We deliver projects in English, German and Italian as primary working languages. Contracts and documentation can be issued in any of the three. The platform itself ships with UI support for 15+ languages out of the box, and content can exist in any language you produce it in - so client-facing language is independent of our internal working language.