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Multi-tenancy

Multi-tenancy refers to the ability to create isolated entities, known as tenants, within a single Moodle instance. Each tenant operates independently, managing its own users, roles, appearance, courses, and settings. This is particularly useful for organisations that require multiple self-contained business units or client organisations within a single installation.

The standard Moodle distribution does not support multi-tenancy — this functionality is otherwise only available through Moodle Workplace. The MuTMS Multi-tenancy plugin brings the same capability to standard Moodle installations as fully open-source software under the GPL 3.0 licence, with no restrictions on commercial use or distribution.

Use cases

Section titled “Use cases”
  • Corporate training — create separate tenants for departments, regions, or subsidiaries, allowing tailored training programs while keeping management centralised
  • Client training — offer each client a customised learning environment with unique branding and permissions
  • Partner and vendor training — give external partners or vendors secure access to their own training materials without interfering with internal operations
  • Franchise management — let franchisees run localised training programs while enforcing consistent standards across the organisation
  • Event management — run focused environments for recurring events such as annual meetups, updating branding and content each year while keeping past editions accessible with their original look and feel
  • Shared resources — distribute common content such as compliance courses or company announcements across all tenants from a single shared space

Drawbacks

Section titled “Drawbacks”

Multi-tenancy is not always the right solution. Consider the following before committing to this approach:

  • Splitting tenants later is difficult — separating a multi-tenant site into independent sites is a complex process requiring site cloning and significant data cleanup
  • Shared infrastructure — heavy resource usage by one tenant can affect performance for others
  • Limited customisation — tenants have less flexibility than standalone Moodle instances
  • Plugin compatibility — some third-party plugins, particularly enrolment and authentication tools, may require adjustments to work correctly in a multi-tenant setup
  • Security — shared infrastructure means a vulnerability can potentially expose data across multiple tenants