Who is getting paid?

You've got the user bit right but swap it round - you can register as many people as you want (for free) they only become an active user when they start using a course.

So you can have 1000 registered even if you are on the basic account.

Manual - not an option!

Line Manager - You've got it! - the LMS is mainly set up for company use and then if you added the e-commerce functionality that might be a great added value. I'm trying to get it to do something that it really wasn't designed to do.

I'd look at Absorb and about 20 others over the last 6 months, including moodle. We've actually used a moodle application called http://www.coursemerchant.com/ - we used it on a client project. It is only a few miles from our office (we've got no connection by the way!) I spoke to them last week apparently they have a new version since we used it.

The more I look it into the less I think we need an LMS which is why we've looked at web tools as oppose to LMS. The speed at which the market is moving means that we want to stay flexible and not invest a lot of money into software. I find the LMS costs are very expensive for what we are trying to achieve. Most people want to buy the course, do the course - thanks! I've seen some LMS costs that are getting up towards that of flight simulators!