Best LMS for small business

Does your organization already have a learning management system (LMS) in place? If not, I recommend you implement one as soon as possible. With learning and development (L&D) trending upward, having a dedicated LMS for small businesses could be a game-changer for your company.

There are so many reasons to invest in a solid learning management system. LMS software helps you centralize your organization’s internal learning and training initiatives. They will also improve your employee engagement and enhance your employee’s information retention. Their advanced L&D analytics will also make tracking training compliance easier too.

There are many different LMS options on the market, but some are not ideal for small businesses. In this article, I’ll walk you through the best LMS options for small businesses and explain what they can do.

Tovuti’s LMS software supports customized e-learning, virtual classroom experiences, and virtual events. Their course management features allow you to track lesson completion and create gated lesson plans, so staff have to complete training in a sequential order before proceeding to the next one. You can also use their platform to host quizzes and other assessments to ensure what they’re learning is sinking in.

Their LMS system has a long list of rich features to make the learning experience fun. You can develop your own interactive course content using 44 pre-built modules to help you make your training material engaging, with no limits on the number of courses you create. They also have a Community feature within their online learning platform that functions like a mini social media site. It’s a great place for teams to interact with each other when completing training simultaneously or remotely. As well, they have a Team Leaderboard feature that incentives employees to complete all their training to get featured in the top 5.

Their user interface is bright and colourful, which also creates an engaging experience. Their learning portal appearance is also fully customizable, meaning you can adjust the colour, add your corporate branding, and toggle features on or off depending on how you want your dashboard to appear.

Their system gives you the option of creating different learning groups, to create a streamlined experience for your staff. For example, your administrative staff would need a different set of training than any staff working in safety-sensitive positions. Another useful administrative feature is their system’s ability to automate recurring emails for trigger events (like training expiry dates and annual or quarterly reminders) so you don’t have to chase employees down to maintain your training compliance.

Tovuti has native integrations with over 55 common software applications, as well as an open API. You can also access many more applications by connecting Tovuti to a Zapier account too.

Pricing for Tovuti LMS starts at $775 USD/month for 50 users, plus an additional setup fee. You can also watch a free demo through their website.

KMI’s LMS solution supports any type of course format (SCORM, video, document, webinar, classroom, blended learning, Zoom courses, Google classroom, etc.) and is even capable of e-commerce transactions if you wish to sell your own course content to external users too. Their course authoring integrations with Google Drive and Microsoft 365 also make it easy to develop course materials and publish it with one click through their LMS system.

Their system is touted as a white label product with white-glove support. This means you can easily brand their LMS portal to mesh with your corporate image. You’ll also receive a dedicated Implementation Manager to make sure your platform rollout is a success. Once you’re up and running, you’ll gain access to a graphical dashboard and easy report builder tool, to make sure you’re capturing the data you need around your corporate training program.

KMI LMS supports single sign-on (SSO) and integrates with Google products (Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Meet), Microsoft Office 365, Webex, and Zoom. Their system is also fully accessible on mobile devices, ensuring learning can be completed from anywhere—not just from a desk.

Pricing details for KMI are negotiated on a client-by-client basis but generally start at $2 USD/user/month plus an implementation fee depending on your configuration requirements. You can also watch a free demo through their website.

EdApp is a mobile learning management system used by well-known companies like Coca Cola, Deloitte, Audi, Colgate and Unitar. Their system is perfect for delivering bit-sized courses to deskless workers. To help you get up and running quickly, they have 1,000+ courses in their course library spanning 40 content categories, which you can customize and brand so they look like your own. They serve a wide range of industries including retail, sales, hospitality, automotive, telecommunications, manufacturing, healthcare, education, construction and more.

Grounded in educational research, their microlearning approach creates targeted learning bursts, which are easier for learners to grasp and retain. This approach functions in tandem with their spaced repetition tool called Brain Boost, which automatically spreads out your course content into a series of follow-up quizzes to ensure information was retained—including detailed analytics. They also offer a unique gamified learning experience with 8 different styles of gamified course content to choose from, including true or false, Jeopardy, and image-word match.

EdApp integrates with many common HR software systems and SSO providers, including BambooHR, Cornerstone, Canva, Degreed, Deputy, Google Suite, iAuditor, Okta, SABA, SAP, Microsoft Office, Zapier, and others.

EdApp has a freemium plan for an unlimited number of users, with limited features—a great option for small businesses on a budget who want to test the waters first before committing to a paid subscription. Pricing for their paid plans starts at $1.95 USD/user/month. You can also request a free demo through their website.

eloomi’s LMS software is well-designed for internal corporate training programs like pre-boarding and onboarding, and managing ongoing training and compliance. You can create your own content from scratch, or choose from their pre-loaded courses designed by award-winning subject matter experts to save you time. Their course content includes 20,000+ modules to choose from, covering everything from business skills and workplace essentials to health & safety and cyber security awareness, and more.

Their pre-boarding and onboarding training feature is useful for organizations experiencing high growth as it’s a great way to streamline your introductory training while creating a great first impression for new employees. Using eloomi, you can create a new employee training checklist that walks them through everything they need to learn, and clarifies expectations. For ongoing training, you can automate renewal reminders so no one’s internal training lapses unexpectedly. As well, their detailed training analytics are useful for compliance purposes and are delivered to human resources and compliance departments automatically, as you configure it.

eloomi’s system also includes performance management tools like 360-degree reviews, objectives and check-in tools, checklists, and performance appraisals. This makes their system an excellent choice for any small business needing an LMS that doesn’t already have a performance management system in place. You can also use their system to create checklists for other processes, or run employee engagement surveys too.

eloomi supports SSO and integrates with Natural HR, Sympa HR, and other software applications through their API.

Pricing details for eloomi are available upon request. You can also request a free demo through their website.

TalentLMS supports a wide range of training programs, including employee training (e.g., onboarding, compliance, lifelong learning and remote workforce training), department training (e.g., customer support, sales and marketing), and external training (e.g., customer, partner and extended enterprise training). You can create your own courses using a drag-and-drop building tool that supports text, presentation files and video content, or embed other features like quizzes, tests, assignments or surveys to evaluate learners at the end of each course. You can also use TalentLMS to create custom course certificates to acknowledge training completion too.

To help connect employees who are completing training remotely, TalentLMS supports video conferences, and includes tools to start discussions, send messages, or leave course feedback. In addition, their system includes incentives for training completion, such as badges, points, rewards, and a leaderboard, to gamify the learning experience and make it more fun.

TalentLMS integrates with BambooHR, GoToMeeting, Salesforce, Zapier and Zoom. They also have an API to support additional custom software integrations too.

Talent LMS has a freemium plan that lets you host 10 courses for up to 5 users. After that, pricing for their paid plans starts at $69 USD/month for up to 40 users, with additional options to scale up for larger workforces too.

LearnUpon LMS allows teams to create dynamic content in a range of formats that can be mixed and matched, including extensive, multi-part or bite-sized training using SCORM or xAPI files, video clips or documents. Like most LMS systems in this list, their platform also comes with lots of engagement features, including earning badges and points, a leaderboard, and multimedia banners to highlight important messages. You can also customize their system to award course credits and completion certificates to your employees too.

One thing I like about their platform is the ability to segregate your users into different groups through distinct learning portals. This is helpful to streamline your individual user’s experience, since different types of staff will have different types of training requirements. By only allowing users to see and access the training that’s relevant to them, their user experience will be improved instead of cluttered and confusing. You can also create learning paths that link courses together in a sequence, with guardrails for progression criteria and timeframes for completion.

Other helpful features in LearnUpon’s platform include the ability to automate key tasks like reminders, notifications and pre-scheduled reports. They also have a discussion forum for learners, a robust learner-facing mobile app, and a training dashboard, which updates in real time. On top of all that, their system is available in 20 different languages too.

LearnUpon integrates with many webinar tools, including Adobe Connect, GoToWebinar, Microsoft Teams, Cisco Webex, and Zoom, as well as other commonly used systems like Salesforce, Degreed, and Zapier. Their webhooks and flexible API also support additional custom software integrations too.

Pricing details for LearnUpon are available upon request. You can also request a free demo or a free trial through their website.

Training courses within Easy LMS combine multimedia learning material such as custom text, images, audio, video, and presentation files into one seamless user experience. To measure user engagement, you can also add elements like in-course questions, exams or assessments too. Like many other LMS platforms in this list, their portal is customizable so you can align it with your company branding as well, and it’s available in 24 languages too.

Their Academy feature acts as a central training repository where all employees can access and share training materials easily. From there it’s easy to manage a large number of courses and create learning paths so your employees complete them in an organized way. Administrators also have access to a data dashboard and tools that can track employee progress and analyze their results individually, or in meaningful groups, to uncover training gaps and get a handle on training compliance.

Software integrations with Easy LMS can be attained either through their API or via a Zapier account, which gives access to many other web applications.

Pricing for Easy LMS starts at a flat fee of $50 USD/month. You can also request a free demo or a 7-day free trial through their website.