Absorb is the perfect LMS!

Absorb is so powerful and easy to use. The company itself is great to work with. Their customer service staff is so nice and friendly, and the project manager and account manager I worked with helped me every step of the way. The interface is gorgeous and importing your learners is a snap. I love that Absorb has built-in quizzes that I can create in seconds. I also love that I was able to work with Absorb's designers to customize the branding for our company. Creating certification programs and badges was easy. You can upload or link to practically any type of media. Customized reports can quickly be generated. Grouping learners into categories to deploy specific training is also painless. You can create contest, polls and gamify the learning experience. Ultimately, Absorb is fast, easy, gorgeous and even if you're a staff of one or two (like me) you can easily manage hundreds of learners and dozens of online courses. I love Absorb!

Pros

Fantastic customer support Easy to use design Quick import of new learners Easily upload any type of multimedia Customizable interface for branding Out of the box solution at a reasonable price point No extra IT or web developer support required

Cons

It would be great to: - Quickly switch between Admin and Learner to see a course - Create a "test" user who can take courses over and over again just to test functionality without having to enroll, un-enroll and then re-enroll - Show and disable the contest feature (without having customer support perform this function)

Unexpected Limitations

Overall it's ok. Again we were really disappointed about the department/sub-department functionality. So if you are using Absorb for multiple clients not just internally then beware. It is definitely easier to see how many users we have in the system, who has taken what courses, our popular courses, and course evaluation scores which for us are all important KPI's. overall great value for the price.

Pros

Absorb is really easy to use and navigate. We purchased it for the ability to have "department" or sub-companies. We provide training materials and the platform to our clients so having a multi-tenant LMS was critical. I love the ability to customize colors and layout for various clients. The onboarding process was pretty smooth and the staff is attentive.

Cons

My biggest disappointment was that that the multi-tenancy or segregating by departments did not function as we expected causing us to have to adjust our offering and prices for clients. When assigning courses you can only assign to a whole or sub-department, you can exclude. So if 99 customers get the library and one doesn't, you have to allow 99 clients instead of just restricting one. When restricting departments they can manage only the users and courses within their department. However, this does not apply to the mercury module, Global Resources, Competencies, Categories, Message Templates, Ecommerce, and Public Catalogs. So we had to disable access to department admins for these features otherwise they would see other departments (clients) information which is terrible!!!! So instead we have to manage all of these features for our clients. So every time they want a billboard changed we have to do it for example. It puts a lot more management on our behalf that we weren't expecting. other little things we don't like are: -no course number field -can't control the order modules are consumed ina chapter only the order of the chapters. -can't change the reports on the dashboard or re-order it -resources don't have a thumbnail- makes them look empty/incomplete -no place for text on the home dashboard. -roles are not department-specific -can't change password expiry beyond 7 days -task functionality is way too basic -no ability to integrate tasks or due dates with calendars

Absorb Information

Good. It gets the job done and it gets it done well.

Pros

I really like the mobile app and the e-commerce features. The content libraries provide a lot of good information and training.

Cons

I am old fashioned and prefer in-person whiteboard delivered trainings. I think depending on the volume of training you to need to deliver and how spread out the audience is should be a determining factor for purchase.

Absorb LMS

Pros

Compared to other similar learning management systems, absorb has one of the best user interfaces and visual appeal. Great level of customization for various needs or contexts.

Cons

The biggest issue is cost - it just wasn't viable for my smaller organization in the long run compared to other alternatives.

simple to use, but QA poor and support prioritized by popularity votes on their customer forum site

had it for 3 years. our requirements were basic - no hr integration, no e-commerce, short term users, few courses. yet when we were faced with their sudden requirement for us to move/"upgrade" to their new system that contained functional and design continuity problems from the system version we were using, we were told that our problems would not be fixed due to the fact that not enough other customers had "voted" for the same issues to be fixed. that was a dealbreaker. :(

Pros

easy startup, easy to use (provided everything is working properly)

Cons

Software is AS-IS product. Difficulty getting help with system problems - first tool for them is interpersonal pleasantry, and email with article links to something that may or may not be addressing the reported problem. If there is not an easy out-of-the box solution (addressed by the link they send you by email), it will take many interactions and possibly a video screener of your problem before your issue is investigated. Individual learner issues are typically not investigated.