What LMS do you all recommend for small business?

Oct 27, 2023

Hello,

 

I am part of a start-up and we are looking at new LMS options that would be less than 5k per year. We work with other businesses to train their employees - not for internal use. Ideally we would have unlimited course and 250-500 monthly active users. Needs to be SCORM compatible and accessible to screen-readers, as well as up to date on all WCAG

What would you all recommend? 

 

In the long-term, what do you recommend, price aside?

 

Thank you for any and all advice!

2 Replies
Brian Dennis

Moodle is a popular, open source free option. Totara as well. LearnDash is popular in the Wordpress community. And a variety of other LMS options are found through web searches. I would caution to avoid some of the "newer" options as the support community hasn't developed around some of the newest, specialty LMS systems

John Cooper

I agree with Brian, if you want a low cost, fully functional LMS that supports SCORM then definitely consider Moodle. It will support a very wide range of content types including SCORM modules. Moodle is FREE open source code - BUT that assumes you have a server or cloud server to load it on...

If not, there are low cost options like MoodleCloud which offer a hosted Moodle solution. If you do go the Moodle route, note that you may want to factor in a modestly-priced 'theme' to make the UI look a bit nicer - There is a default theme available for free with Moodle but it's a bit stark. 

The downside of Moodle is that it isn't the simplest LMS to implement and the learning curve to get it the way you want it can be steep.

I'm also in tune with Brian about LearnDash. We have a WordPress website and, after doing a couple of LearnDash projects for clients, we have decided to implement it on our own site. I set out the reasons in the following LinkedIn article:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/practical-look-learndash-plug-in-lms-profilelearning

Be carefful though. Like a lot of LMS's that claim to support SCORM materials, the support isn't 'native'. The following quote is from the LearnDash website: "SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 are supported for Articulate, iSpring, and Adobe Captivate by using a third-party add-on"

Hope that helps