Quire
Quire and Moodle
Moodle is a free, open source learning platform for schools, universities and companies that want to run and shape their own LMS.
Last checked 1 October 2026. Quire is pre-release.
Who should pick which
Pick Moodle if
- It is open source under the GPL, so you can read, change and self-host it at no licence cost.
- It has a very large plugin ecosystem and a big community, built up over many years.
- It is mature, and you can run it yourself, on MoodleCloud, or with a certified partner.
- It offers a built-in AI subsystem with several providers, including local models through Ollama.
Pick Quire if
- You need many organisations on one installation, with isolated users, themes and data, without buying a separate product.
- You want tenant-level control of email templates, notification digests and AI provider and budget.
- You want an audit trail built to be tamper-evident, and a REST API with an OpenAPI 3.1 description.
- You are moving from Moodle and want a best-effort import with a report of what could not be mapped.
Side by side
| Capability | Moodle | Quire |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-tenancy | Part of Moodle Workplace, which Moodle says is available through certified partners and service providers only. Each tenant has its own users, theme, roles and learning content.Source: Moodle docs: Multi-tenancy | Built into the core product. Tenants share one installation, or a tenant can move to its own database. |
| Course templates | No dedicated template object. Moodle can create a course from another course's content (the templatecourse field on course upload) and can restore from a backup file. Plugins add more.Source: Moodle docs: Upload courses | Course templates are their own object, with sharing between tenants where you allow it. |
| Notification digests | The notification docs describe a digest for subscribed forums. They describe no digest for other notification types.Source: Moodle docs: Notifications | Digests are a per-category setting for notifications, not only forums. |
| Email text overrides | Administrators can override the text of email strings per language through language customisation. This applies to the whole site.Source: Moodle docs: Language customisation | Email templates can be overridden at activity, course, category, tenant and platform level, per language. |
| Logging and audit | Events go to a standard log store or an external database log store. The docs we checked do not describe tamper evidence.Source: Moodle docs: Logging | Audit entries are hash-chained and sealed, with a verifier. |
| API | Web services with tokens, where an administrator picks which functions each service exposes. Protocols include REST and SOAP. Since 4.5 a routing system exists for newer REST routes. We found no OpenAPI description in the docs.Source: Moodle docs: Using web services | REST API for every resource with an OpenAPI 3.1 description, cursor pagination and idempotency keys. |
| AI features | A built-in AI subsystem since 4.5, with providers (OpenAI, Azure AI, Ollama, and Bedrock and Gemini in 5.2) and placements (text editor, course assistance). Teachers can switch AI on or off per course. Providers are set up for the whole site. Moodle has the wider provider choice.Source: Moodle docs: AI providers | AI features with provider and monthly budget set per tenant. |
| Licence and hosting | Open source under the GPL. You can self-host, use MoodleCloud, or use a certified partner. The software is free, hosting and support are not.Source: Moodle: LMS overview | Closed source. Self-host with Docker, or use the hosted cloud. |
Last checked 1 October 2026. Each claim about Moodle links to the page it came from.
Moving from Moodle
Quire can import a Moodle course backup (.mbz) and maps it section by section and activity by activity. It is best effort, not exact. Before and after the import you get a reconciliation report that lists everything it could not map, so nothing is dropped silently. Not importable: gradebook calculated columns and grade history, conditional availability rules, groups, groupings and role overrides, third-party question types and user attempt data. Some other activities are also unsupported. Question banks can be imported separately as GIFT, Moodle XML, Aiken or QTI (2.1 and 3.0, a subset). Import was tested on fixtures built from Moodle 4.4, not on real backups, so try a copy of your course first.
Join the waitlist
Quire is pre-release. Early supporters get 50% off the first 12 months of any hosted plan.