Buyer's guide
LMS platforms for employee training
Around thirty products call themselves an LMS and mean at least five different things by it. This guide sorts them into the categories buyers actually choose between, says who each category fits, and lists the questions worth asking before anyone books a demo. We build one of these products and say plainly where we are the wrong answer.
How to run the choice
- 1
1. Write down the three things people will actually do
Onboard a new hire. Roll out a policy update and prove people read it. Train the field team on a new product. Three real scenarios beat a fifty-line requirements matrix, because they can be demoed.
- 2
2. Decide the SCORM question first
It splits the market in half. If you own a library of packaged courses, or your industry requires them, you need a platform that plays them — and that removes a large part of the modern list. If you do not, requiring SCORM narrows your options for nothing.
- 3
3. Decide who authors content
An instructional designer with a dedicated authoring tool, or subject-matter experts writing directly in the system? The answer picks the category. Tools built for the first are painful for the second, and vice versa.
- 4
4. Decide where learning lives
A standalone learning portal, a module inside your HR suite, or a section of the company portal people already open daily. This determines completion rates more than any feature on the list.
- 5
5. Compare pricing models, then rates
Per named user, per active user, per tier, or platform fee plus seats. Model the same 300-person company with 20% turnover in each model before you look at the per-seat number.
- 6
6. Ask for a demo of your own three scenarios
Send the three scenarios from step one in advance and ask to see exactly those, with your content. What you learn from a vendor's refusal to do that is also useful.
The categories, and who each one fits
Open-source, self-hosted
Moodle, Open edX, Chamilo. The licence is free, the cost moves to hosting, upgrades and someone who owns them. Enormously flexible through plugins, and heavily rooted in education.
Fits when you have engineering capacity and a hard data-residency or customisation requirement. Does not fit when nobody owns the upgrade.
Enterprise learning suites
Docebo, Cornerstone, SAP SuccessFactors Learning, Absorb. Deep compliance and certification tracking, complex permission models, long procurement cycles, implementation partners.
Fits regulated industries and thousands of employees. Overkill for a 200-person company that wants onboarding to work.
Cloud LMS for small and mid-size companies
TalentLMS, LearnUpon, iSpring Learn. Fast to set up, sane defaults, per-user pricing, most of the compliance depth left out on purpose.
Fits when you need something running this quarter without a project team.
Collaborative, bottom-up authoring
360Learning and similar. Built on the premise that subject-matter experts, not instructional designers, write the courses, with peer review baked into the flow.
Fits companies whose knowledge lives in people's heads. Fails where content must be centrally controlled and signed off.
Authoring tools, which are not LMSs
Articulate 360, iSpring Suite. These build the course; they do not assign it, track it or report on it. They are routinely compared against LMSs, which is a category error that costs weeks.
You may well need one of these and an LMS — check which half of the job a vendor is actually selling.
Academic systems
Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle in its native habitat. Semesters, gradebooks, student information system integrations, assignments and grading.
Top of the search results for `learning management system`, and almost always the wrong tool for corporate onboarding.
Customer and partner education
Intellum, Skilljar, Thought Industries. Built for training people outside the company — customers, partners, franchisees — with self-registration, catalogues and often commerce.
A different problem from employee training. Using one for internal onboarding is possible and rarely comfortable.
Learning inside an HR suite
Learning modules attached to HR platforms. Shallow by comparison, but the employee list is already correct and the login already exists.
Fits when the training need is mandatory-course tracking rather than real learning design.
Learning inside the company portal
Where we sit. Courses live in the same place as company news, the employee directory, recognition and tasks, so learning is not a separate destination people have to remember.
Fits when completion rates are your problem, not course sophistication. Not a fit when you need packaged standards or a compliance archive — see below.
Frequently asked questions
If portal-attached learning is the category you want
Bring one onboarding programme to the demo and we will build it with you — and tell you honestly if another category on this page fits better.