The development of e-learning as an object of management in higher education institutions, as a rule, corresponds to a simple model of transition from the stage of initiative implementation at the level of individual teachers, departments or divisions to the stage of centralized strategic management of the implementation of e-learning tools, processes and methods at the institutional level. Although the development and application of e-learning technologies in the educational process is still an individual innovation, today it is part of the national policy for the development of higher education and affects the assessment of the effectiveness and competitiveness of universities. It means that institutional e-learning development strategy bridges the individual innovation activity of teachers and national priorities in quality and accessibility of higher education. Therefore, the objective of the research is to summarize, compare and study the e-learning development strategies of the higher educational institutions from EU, Russia, Australia and South-Asia to distinguish major types of the strategies, as well as tools and mechanisms embedded to achieve strategic goals. As a result of the comparative analysis of 20 e-learning development strategies of universities authors offer recommendations for the strategy structure depending on the functional and evolutional type of the strategy that were identified in the paper. This research was funded by RFBR, project number 20-010-00571 The Impact of Digital Transformation on Improving the Quality and Innovation of Services”