Which LMS is best for Rise Courses?

Jan 12, 2019

Hey people! I need an LMS to run courses created in Rise. Here's a list of features. Any recommendations?

e-Commerce: 

  • Learners can purchase course and watch it right away.
  • Paypal or other easy payment system.
  • Direct payments to multiple payees
  • Require course completion in order to see/take assessment.

Admin functions:

  • Advanced reporting
  • Learner data on time spent in each course
  • Automated quiz grading
  • Certificate awarding when student completes course with 75% or higher.
  • Interactive exercises and assessments.
  • Custom branding

SCORM and API compliant.

Quick help (phone or chat).

Cloud hosting

No banners or advertisements

46 Replies
Janette Nicholson

Having just completed an exhausting LMS selection process, I can honestly say that there are far too many considerations to selecting an LMS and that decision should be based on the company and possibly industry needs. Because you can publish your Rise courses to all the typical and standard industry outputs (Scorm, AICC and TinCan), your LMS choices would likely be in the hundreds. 

There's a lot more to LMS selection than whether or not it will play content: budget, number of users, number of subportals, whether the LMS vendor offers 24/7 support, whether you can sync active directory through Microsoft Azure, if you can send a learner link by email once the course is published, whether or not you have to reversion a course with each update, etc. etc.

Even once you have found an LMS, always conduct multiple reference checks with other clients. Ask questions such as how supported they feel, what was their onboarding experience like, what would they change about their LMS, Ask for a sandbox environment so that you can experience what it will be like when you publish courses to it. What's the reporting like? How easy is it to find courses? How does the course library work for users, etc.

It is most certainly hard work - I've spent the last 3 weeks in a "spreadsheet comparison coma" but the good news is that I'm happy with the result!  Never be afraid to put the time in and get what you need. What works for someone else may not work for you and, yes, some of us have found things out "the hard way" by putting in the legwork or making wrong decisions. Never leave a critical decision like this to a vendor that doesn't know your specific situation/business/industry. 

Karl Muller

The advice given by Janette is excellent. 

Take the time and effort to make your LMS selection decision based on your actual requirements and try it out before you enter into an agreement if at all possible. 

Having been through the LMS selection process several times, I don't see the value if Articulate providing a list of LMS's that work with RIse.

The way to do it is to prepare a list of training, business, infrastructure and IT requirements and then do the research to find the best fit. 

In previous jobs the company selected the LMS simply because it was an add-on module to the software suite that they were already using. No consideration was given to any other requirements which was a big oversight. 

Where I'm working now one of the considerations (of many) was the requirement that the LMS should have the ability to communicate with several of our IT systems that are all provided by other vendors.

I've been in the unfortunate situation where a previous employer did not do due diligence and a few years into one LMS found it was necessary to switch to a different one.

The learner data migration was an absolute nightmare. 

So there is no quick and easy way to select a LMS. 

Harry Carter

I deleted my last two posts because they didn't seem to be hitting the nail on the head, based on the replies that were coming my way.

I asked for a list of LMS's that Rise 360 could hook up to without incident. I just want to sell courses, not ream out cylinder heads.

Now, aside from art work, I would expect that an LMS could and would simply perform as it should...meaning interact with quizzes and tests. That's all I need.

I'm seeing things like, LMS's not reporting all of the time, sometimes reporting incorrectly, etc. This shouldn't be, period.  

All motor vehicles are similar in that they perform the same basic function...getting people to their destination. But why don't LMS's perform this way all of the time and why isn't there a list of lousy LMS's and great LMS's...ESPECIALLY from a company (Articulate) that provides a software that is supposed to "talk turkey" with an LMS?

I just want to sell my courses to people, I don't want to spend 10+ years doing homework...I'd need 5 more lifetimes.

So far all replies to my question have been way off the mark or they were matter of fact in that they basically meant "well that's the way it is, too bad"...which never answered my question...at all.

Bottom line is...it WOULD be TREMENDOUSLY beneficial to me and others I'm sure, to be able to peruse a comprehensive list of tried and true LMS's that hook up to Rise 360.

And like I said...come on, true or false, hot spots, drag and drop...minimal variables.

Let me give you a for instance here...

I like TalentLMS except for the nagging and confusing envelope that Articulate needs to reside in if embedded. They have a nagging button message at bottom titled Course completed or Reset Unit and all that good stuff...that is aside from MY stuff. I had a half dozen people start a sample course and they were all confused. They couldn't wrap their head around the idea that that bottom message wasn't a part of what I created.

So yes, it would have been so much better if Articulate had TalentLMS on a list of possible LMS's and some of the pros and cons of them....instead of me investing so much time on it. BTW, the people at TalentLMS wrote that this couldn't be hidden, etc.

Bottom line again is that nothing will come of this because there doesn't seem to be a need from the people who don't see a need, lol.

Regards,

Harry

Jonathan Boehman

Same boat here, Harry. We have prioritized the use of Rise360, as it is so simple to use. Creating eLearning is a secondary function for our group, and it's more important for us to get the content out there quickly and in a way that is usable. 

Many LMSs seem to be playing catch-up when it comes to delivering a friendly mobile experience with responsive content like that exported from Rise.

I would love to hear of some examples from the community where they have had the Rise360 mobile courses display properly and in a user-friendly fashion. 

Margaret Richards

Leila (or anyone else) - Have any LMSes risen to the top for using Rise?  I'm with Harry in that I know how to conduct the research and have done it before but I'm in a time and resource crunch. The part I don't know anything about is monetization (ie we want ppl to pay for our course(s). We are also a small nonprofit targeting a few hundred active users at most at any given time so many vendors are automatically out for us. I am trying to learn to speak API but also have limited time/ bandwidth for that as well. Thanks! 

Carriann Lane

That is a lot. That's for 100 course starts. I had to build it into my
course fee, as I train big groups of professional staff. It replaces my
print fees, however. Manuals cost more. It may not work for all.

Looking forward to hearing others that work!

Respectfully,

Carriann

Carriann Lane
Director, Write Words Inc.
910-635-7724
director@writewordsusa.com

Olympia, WA | Minneapolis, MN

Dr. Ron A. Rhoades

I looked at Firmwater, but it is $499 per month, for 100 user starts per month. BUT ... I'm looking at more limited distribution, at least initially. For use for 150 students at a university the first year, then expanding after the first year. I'm looking to charge a very, very modest course fee to students - to cover the annual costs of the RISE 360 Teams software, and to incentivize other authors to improve the content of the course over time.

It would be helpful for RISE 360 to address this issue. I'm exploring RISE 360, and am very, very impressed with its functionality. But, without ecommerce functionality provided in some manner, I may not be able to use RISE 360, and I may have to move on to another platform (Thinkific?)

One way to do it might be to provide a login for users (students in courses), with a separate password available to each user. Not a perfect workaround, but it might enable sales through campus bookstores. (Often necessary so students may use financial aid awards to purchase course materials.)

There are likely better ecommerce solutions, however. I urge Articulate to explore this issue, and solve it / make recommendations. 

Alyssa Gomez

Hello, Dr. Ron A. Rhoades!

Have you considered Rise.com? While Rise.com doesn't have an e-commerce feature, you can use other channels (such as a web landing page) to collect sign-up details and payment information before giving learners access to courses. For more details on how to set up a paywall for your Rise account, please reach out to the Rise team at sales@rise.com

Taylor Auger

After exploring many options I have settled on Thinkific. I was also able to do some custom CSS to remove any duplicate player bars. The content looks great, native, and best of all leaps and bounds less expensive then and other LMS.  Firmwater works well, but does not offer any kind of gamification.  I was going to do a custom setup with Badgr but it ended up being too much of a pain. TalentLMS was better but still, the experience left something to be desired. 

If you are interested in setting something up similar feel free to shoot me an email at augert@me.com.   Right now I am designing course curriculum, training, website, gamification, etc. for Qube Masters.  www.qubemasters.com

We hope to have over 10,000 users at launch!

Also, to the Rise team, could you please give us the ability to remove the "Course Start Page"? If you did that, it would make Rise the perfect tool.