5Mins.ai turns your documents into short lessons and keeps the training records

Its records keep each person’s history, and reminders reach people where they work

Signatures, course files, HR-system access and data location need answers before you sign

It suits teams that start from documents and learn on their phones

Its customer results measure four different things

Start with the size of the customer base. 5Mins’s home page puts it at 1,000 or more teams in over 80 countries. A file it publishes for AI search tools puts it at 130 or more organisations across over 80 countries. Ask for the number of paying customers.

Some results measure time saved. Ivy Farm has 50 to 60 employees and reports about 20 training days saved. Altruistiq has 80 or more employees. A testimonial from Altruistiq puts its saving at two to three hours. Its longer customer story puts it at five to six hours. Ask what period each figure covers.

Others measure course length. Candyspace has 50 to 100 employees and cut its compliance courses to 19 minutes from 45, a 58% reduction. Paris Baguette has 1,000 or more employees. It cut mandatory compliance training from 5 or more hours to about 90 minutes. Channable has 200 or more employees and cut online training from 24 hours to 4 per quarter. BD has 45,000 or more employees and halved the duration of a training programme.

The rest measure take-up and cost. Liquid Friday has 50 or more employees and reports over 90% of the team activated. AZA Finance has 100 or more employees. It reports individual learning participation up from 30 to 40% of employees to almost 80%. It also reports about 30% saving on budget. Kuda has 600 or more employees and reports onboarding completion rates up 40% and 150% ROI. PayNet has 500 or more employees and reports a 200% increase in engagement from a curated training path. Paris Baguette reports £5.5K of labour cost savings per 100 employees. Each result belongs to the customer named, not to every customer.

Price depends on headcount and plan, and records should leave before the contract ends

5Mins is priced per user per month, billed annually or quarterly. The rate per user falls as headcount grows. Plans start from 20 users, and a team smaller than 20 is asked to get in touch. Annual billing gets the best rate. Quarterly billing is available on all three plans. A mid-contract plan upgrade is pro-rated.

UK pricing includes plans at £200 a month and £250 a month, billed yearly. Ask how many users each covers and which plan it is. The UK price includes the AI Video Creator with 5 videos in Essentials. In Advance, its use scales with team size.

The US price is $750 a month for up to 50 employees. That covers hosting, assigning and tracking your own training, plus the library of 20,000 short lessons. The 51 to 500 employees tier starts from $10 a month for each person. Turning your own training into short lessons is included in that tier, marked with an asterisk. Ask what the asterisk covers. The 500+ tier is Speak to sales. 5Mins aims it at organisations with more than 250 employees. That overlaps the 51 to 500 tier from 251 to 500 employees, so ask which applies to you.

5Mins offers a free trial to explore the platform before committing. Most customers are up and running in 2 to 4 weeks.

Export your records before the contract ends. Learning Records exports the filtered view as a CSV file. Deactivating a user removes their data from admin views and reports. Learning Records can still include deactivated users in the results and the export. For a Terminated status, 5Mins keeps the data for 3 years, then permanently deletes the account and all its data. If a user is deactivated in the directory, their learning history is preserved and can be requested from Customer Success. Under the End User Terms, a learner’s access is revoked if the agreement with the employer ends.

Ten questions to put to 5Mins before you sign

1. Does an admin approve AI-drafted quiz questions before learners see them, or after? Good answer: Before, for every question, with the approval step in the contract.
2. On what date will electronic signatures work on our courses, and which provider handles them? Good answer: A named provider and a date written into the order form.
3. Which plan includes AI Studio, AI Roleplays and the full library, and what does it cost at our headcount? Good answer: One written figure for each plan, with the features it includes.
4. What do the £200 and £250 plans cover, and how many users does each include? Good answer: A written user count and feature list for each figure.
5. The US tiers overlap from 251 to 500 employees. Which tier applies to us? Good answer: One tier, named in writing, with its price per person.
6. Which permissions do you need in our HR system, and which of our systems get completion data back? Good answer: A written permission list matched to the features we switch on.
7. What does our customer agreement promise on uptime and liability, beyond the End User Terms? Good answer: A service level and a liability cap written for the company.
8. Can we get our SCORM files and learning records back when we leave, and in what format? Good answer: We keep our originals, and Learning Records exports as a CSV file.
9. Which lesson types work offline on the app? Good answer: A list by lesson type, including links to outside content.
10. Does uploaded policy text go to OpenAI or AWS, and how long is it kept? Good answer: Named providers, and a retention period in the data processing agreement.

Alternatives to 5Mins.ai, including keeping what you have

If 5Mins is not the right fit, look at LearnUpon or Go1. Risely’s Merlin suits one narrower job, and keeping your current system is a real option.

Signatures on courses are 5Mins’s open question. LearnUpon lets an admin add an electronic signature to a course for compliance training. If a signed course is a firm need today, start there.

On the UK plans, the full 5Mins library comes with Accelerate, the third plan. It holds more than 20,000 lessons and 500 courses. Go1 is a content platform, not a traditional learning management system. Its Premium Pro and Premium Essentials plans have 80,000 or more courses. They come from over 300 providers in 120 or more languages. If the library is what you want, price Accelerate against Go1 at your headcount.

Risely’s Merlin is an AI coach for managers. In roleplay, Merlin plays the other person in a conversation, such as a defensive direct report or a sceptical VP. The manager practises their approach before the real conversation. Merlin also works through real-world scenarios with the manager, such as a team member saying they are thinking about quitting. Merlin is for a manager with a hard conversation coming. It delivers no training and keeps no completion records, so it works beside a learning system. 5Mins has AI Roleplays too, so compare the two if practice is your need.

Keeping what you have is a real option. 5Mins can be integrated with any existing learning system to bring its library into it. With Docebo, 5Mins content arrives in your Docebo system. 5Mins also sends learning activity data and reports back to Docebo. The free trial lets you test the lessons first. The market guide compares every product in this market, including the choice not to buy.