Absorb LMS Software

Pros

Easy to use with a straight forward interface.

Cons

The system has a bug where in after you have completed the course, taken the test - and if you replay the video; then it displays as you have not completed the course.

Pros

It is very easy to use and clear as to what needs to be accomplished.

Cons

It is a bit difficult to generate a filtered transcript. There are a lot of filters to choose from so it can be somewhat overwhelming.

Pros

The admin features, while limited, are easy to learn and use.

Cons

The reporting and metrics provided by the base system are seriously lacking. In addition, their response time on support tickets when their is a bug in their system can take months or even years to correct with only a standard response that "development is investigating."

Pros

Ease of course creation
Branded dashboards
Recently improved search page
Options for badges and certificates
Course and resource replication easy

Cons

Organization of Course and Resource folders is only alphabetical order
No way to create groups through a CSV upload
Enrollment and Resource availability rules limited for some items (i.e. can't exclude departments in enrollments)

We are able to have people pay for courses.

Pros

The new learner experience they created is going to bring this software to a whole 'nother level. My ratings and this review is based on the new learner experience, not the previous version. It looks good, works well (has a few bugs they are actively working on), and does almost everything we need as a company. There are a few minor "wants" but the support team seems receptive to getting those going.

Cons

The back-end is not totally intuitive, and it's a little buggy. Sometimes you'll save something and it'll go back to the start page. It still achieves everything you need, it's just not super slick/seamless all the time.

Pros

The ad-hoc reporting is the easiest I've seen in any LMS. Very easy to check the boxes of the info you're looking for and download a report. Literally only takes minutes. Can handle very complex learning paths.

Cons

It would be cool if they added a bit more talent management features. Career pathing is just "okay" in Absorb.

Pros

The best of it: its UX and UI. Seamless and beautiful. You can access every function easily whether you are a student, an instructor or an admin. It makes learning a pleasant task.

It gives you an app for iOs and an app for Android users, so it has all scenarios covered. A lot of languages to customize which is fantastic.

Cons

I can't think of a con that is worth mention. I have to acknowledge that It could be pricey. But if you have the budget, go for it!

Pros

I enjoy how I'm able to brand this software to my company. It seemed to have all the checkboxes that we needed and it supports HTML5. Admin functionality is a 5/5

Cons

Reporting reports are a bit limited. They aren't custom like the rest of the platform. Software sometimes freezes up at times

Good option as LMS for medium sized business.

Pros

This software has beautiful interface and "just right" set of features. We were impressed by it as well as our client. They also have authoring tool - very easy to use and nice interface.

Cons

We had long discussions but our client opted for another, free solution. So perhaps, the fact that this software is not free makes it a bit uninteresting for companies that need "cheap and dirty" solution.

Pros

Easy to use and intuitive platform. Works well with most/all file formats. Able to create a wide variety of curricula and training certifications. Fantastic team that works hard to please the end user.

Cons

Some customization (tiles on homepage, style and feel) is limited. Reporting is evolving, but a great tool. Overall a good system.

Pros

Absorb was the first LMS that I worked with that fully supported HTML5. The interface was beautiful from a learner perspective and could be fully branded to your company. It was intuitive and supported all of the training types that we created and purchased. The company was easy to work with and provided support for our needs.

Cons

The backend/admin portal was separate from the user portal. Meaning, it was based on different technology (flash at the time), was actually hosted on a different part of the system and did not seem as unified as other systems I have worked with. It was still very functional, but left some to be desired.

We were able to scale learning across multiple departments by settling on Absorb. It's powerful and will likely be a great long-term education solution for our entire organization.

Pros

There seems to be no bounds for what Absorb can help organizations do when it comes to elearning. As we're scaling our education efforts across the company, this seemed to check all the boxes for multiple departments.

The power and flexibility in the software seems to be unmatched in the industry.

Cons

It's complex and overwhelming. The learning curve is immense. Understandable for powerful software, but onboarding a team to get up and running with this will likely set you back a few weeks. If you're looking for a quick and easy solution, this is not it.

Pros

Ability for our users to become power users and administer the application for their staff. This is helpful for the IT department and allows the users to be in control of their learning.

Cons

We only get one API key so if we need to make any changes or test out changes that we want to make, it takes down our outside facing shopping cart. This can be frustrating, hopefully it will change in the future.

Pros

The user ease and the admin functionality is amazing. We have had ZERO connection issues so for our field it's been awesome.

We introduced Absorb ten months ago and have been able to centralize/track a lot of internal and external learning for staff. These are exciting times and there is so much more to learn!

Pros

My favourite feature is the people behind the software and their willingness to provide meaningful/practical answers for each question I ask. There really are no silly questions and that is most reassuring for novel LMS users!

I had no prior experience with this type of technology so it's been quite the learning curve for me and my organization. Thanks to Team Absorb's reliable customer service, I'm still learning something new each day!

I also appreciate how many ways there are to customize the software for organizations of any size. We're relatively small (under 1,000 learners) but we have some unique features in our reporting structure. I was able to work with Team Absorb to build some behaviours/rules into our LMS that reflect our set-up and match the information coming in the nightly imports from our HRIS.

Cons

Right now, about 98% of supervisor approval requests make it to the supervisor but it would be awesome if 100% of the requests made it through.

It allows us to engage our community through eLearning by showing courses, webinars and lesson relevant to our field of work. It allows us to keep our learners engaged, connected and kept current with ideas and best practices. It allows us the opportunity to represent ourselves as experts in out field.

Pros

Creating and development course content in a straight-forward and simple manner. Enjoy making quick edits and updates to published courses. Ease of importing courses from various types of APIs. Support staff is very attentive and helpful with students and system issues. Administrator back end is very flexible and easy to use. Enjoy using the "impersonate" feature, which can identify problems quickly. Like that the framework of Absorb is still under development, which allows for new innovations, looking for ways to improve and stay relevant.

Cons

Reporting features still need a bit of development to allow for more control and options for what should be saved in the report export document. Giving more options for data being displayed by a student transcript. Some features of pulling data from the metrics can be a bit tricky.

Pros

Ease of use for both administrators and learners.
Extensive out-of-the-box reporting and flexible reporting
Easy to build courses and curricula
Simple user interface
Fast

Speed of delivery of content to customers and users and with the ease of user mgmt, the amount of time I am spent managing the system is kept to a minimum.

Pros

The ease of adding courses, content and attaching relevant material to this cannot be overlooked and for me is easily just one of the items most enjoyed. The built in workflow allows me to take my video production and related documents and attach them to a course that can be distributed to my users in a matter of minutes.

Cons

Nothing really stands out as a negative. One area for improvement would be exporting reports - It would be nice to be able to customize the look and feel of reports in the tool before exporting, and it is a minor issue as a lot of this can be done via the Excel export anyway.

We have saved a very significant amount of time and money switching from Cornerstone to Absorb. And we have gained features, ease of use, faster time to market. As a company that puts customer service above all else, Absorb is our learning engine helping us deliver on that promise to our customers. We have grown our eLearning use by 300% since switching to Absorb mainly because it is very easy for our customers and we can get more content to market faster.

Pros

In no particular order, but all equally important:
- Social media and marketing integration is easy to setup and use
- Dashboards and reports are the fastest and easiest I have seen; reporting highly customizable with just a few mouse clicks
- Rapid deployment and migration; thousands of users, tens of thousands of records were migrated off of Cornerstone and fully functional in less than 60 days - a record!
- Customized look and feel matching our corporate site was ready in one week!
- Super easy for end users to get to training quickly
- Saved over 50% in costs from Cornerstone and saving more everyday in reduced administration costs
- Sales and support friendly and quick to help
- Wide range of content support and did not have to rebuild a single training report
- Flexible API offering unmatched integrations
- SSO and Shopping cart easy to implement and works right the first time

AbsorbLMS does one thing only, and does it right - manage my training. It's not bloated with features and functions I don't need. The administration is easy to learn and quite intuitive/flexible. It just works...and works great.

Cons

After six months of use, I have not come across a "least" like for Absorb. I would like to see more customization options for lower layer pages, but I cannot say this is an "issue" as I am still exploring the many possibilities offered by Absorb. For once, I have an LMS that I have not outgrown, I am still playing catch-up!

Pros

Really enjoy how simple the admin interface is. The team over there does a great job of getting you started with the product and supported as you use it.

Cons

Sometimes there are downtimes and performance issues, but they usually take steps to ensure the same issue doesn't happen twice.