What a learning management system costs and who keeps the proof of training

Some state duties can be met with the state’s own courses. Sexual harassment prevention training is a legal duty in several US jurisdictions. California asks for it every two years. New York asks every year. California lets an employer direct staff to the state’s online courses and be deemed compliant. Those courses may not be loaded into an outside system, such as an employer’s e-learning platform. At the end, employees can save, print, screenshot or photograph the certificate. The Civil Rights Department cannot email a replacement. So an employer that uses these courses needs a way to collect each certificate. Illinois offers self-guided model training that the employer documents internally.

Training that repeats needs a system that re-assigns it and keeps the proof. Re-assigning can depend on the plan. Trakstar Learn offers automatic re-enrolment for compliance or certification renewal to admins and trainers on its Enterprise plan only. Ask every vendor which plan holds that feature. In regulated work, ask whether the vendor gives you a set-up for 21 CFR Part 11, and at what price. Part 11 is the US FDA rule on when electronic records and signatures count as equal to paper. Docebo supports customers in meeting it through electronic signatures, audit trails, and user management and reporting. SkyPrep cannot offer a turnkey Part 11 solution. NTT DATA’s G-Cloud price for SAP SuccessFactors Learning is £1.26 per user per month for 1 to 2,000 users. For that band, its G-Cloud price for Validated Learning is £2.37. That is SAP’s service designed to meet 21 CFR Part 11 and validation requirements.

Staff away from a desk need training that works on a phone, a shared device or a kiosk. Test the product on the device they will use. Confirm’s Learn:Go is mobile-first and offline-ready for 90-second windows on shared devices. Axonify runs the same experience on mobile, tablet, kiosk and desktop. EasyLlama’s Kiosk Links give one shareable link for learners without work email or on shared devices. Then test offline use with your own course. Schoox’s offline download covers lectures only, not exams, polls, on-the-job training or events. Skillsoft learners can take knowledge checks and assessments offline in a downloaded course. They cannot check answers or get a score until they reconnect.

Some buyers want courses more than a system. A library still raises the question of who keeps the record. LinkedIn Learning’s Reporting API gives course completions, hours of content viewed and learner days active, by individual, group or account. Go1 can be bought without an LMS, and its platform offers most of the same functionality as a standard LMS. Ask the vendor what record the library keeps. Through LearnUpon, Go1 gives access to 100k+ courses from 250+ content providers. Count the courses your people will use, not the courses on offer.

Training people outside your company is a different job from training staff. Some vendors sell it as its own plan. LearnUpon for Employees starts at 100 users. LearnUpon for Customer Education starts at 300. Docebo typically suits companies that train at least 250 learners, who may be customers, partners and employees. Learnifier was built for organisations training external audiences. Ask each vendor how it counts a customer who logs in once.

Some buyers want to build skills and career paths, not only to assign courses. Skills tools can sit in a higher plan or package, so ask which plan holds the ones you want. Bridge sells Learn, Talent Suite (LMS and Skills) and Full Suite (LMS, Skills and Performance). Cornerstone’s Elevate+ package adds performance management, a talent marketplace, and AI assistants for talent development. Totara’s Skills page calls Totara Skills ‘Coming soon’, but its help centre documents it. Ask Totara which is right for the version you would buy.

Practising a difficult conversation is a different job from taking a course. Confirm sells Practice separately from $4 or £3 per user per month. In Practice, learners have live voice-based or text-based conversations with AI characters. Practice has a free trial inside Learn:Up for up to 30 days. Risely’s Merlin is an AI coach for managers. In role-play, Merlin plays the other person, such as a defensive direct report or a sceptical VP. The manager practises the approach before the real conversation. Merlin keeps no completion records, so it sits beside a learning system and does not replace one. See how Merlin works.