TalentLMS vs OpenSesame

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Our analysts compared TalentLMS vs OpenSesame based on data from our 400+ point analysis of LMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

OpenSesame Software Tool

Product Basics

TalentLMS is an online training tool that facilitates learning through features like course management, progress tracking, reporting and gamification, branching and automation, and third-party integrations. The solution supports enterprise-level learning initiatives with personalized themes and unique sets of courses and audiences.

It supports multiple languages, runs on Amazon's CDN for reliable performance, and provides a user-friendly interface for learners, admins, and instructors alike. It also includes mass action tools, automation options, and a RESTful API for data access. Plus, it offers custom fields and a marketplace for easily accessing additional classes.

User reviews praise TalentLMSs intuitive interface, responsive customer support and course creation capabilities. I tested the product and found that it’s really easy to use, even if you're not tech-savvy. You can create courses, track your team's progress and even add some fun games to keep them engaged.

It offers four pricing options: Core, Grow, Pro and Enterprise, each with a varied set of features. The free plan accommodates up to five users, and paid plans start at $89 per month. You can choose between monthly and annual billing options, and there are no long-term contracts, giving you the flexibility to adapt to your changing needs.

Our Research Process for TalentLMS

I tested TalentLMS through its free plan, diving into everything from course authoring to reporting and gamification. Getting started was easy — just create an account, add up to five users, and you’re off to explore key features like course creation, reporting and integrations.

The interface was super intuitive, with two options: a legacy and a modern version. Both were easy to navigate, with a clean design that helped me quickly access course materials, progress tracking and reports.

I was able to build courses from scratch, upload documents and even use AI to generate content in minutes. The platform supports various content types like tests, surveys, videos, SCORM files and more. I also tested the reporting features, which offered great flexibility, including customizable infographics and training status reports.

For a little fun, I explored the gamification features, where learners can earn points and badges and track their progress on leaderboards. To wrap it all up, I checked out the mobile app, which let me track progress, view achievements and send messages, though it lacked the ability to create courses or generate reports on the go.

Keep reading to get the full scoop on how each feature performs and where the platform shines (and where there’s room for improvement).

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OpenSesame is a comprehensive software solution designed to streamline the management of learning management systems (LMS), making it an ideal choice for organizations looking to enhance their e-learning capabilities. It stands out for its ability to cater to a wide range of industries by offering a vast library of curated online courses that cover various subjects, from business skills to compliance training. One of the key benefits of OpenSesame is its flexibility in integration, allowing it to seamlessly connect with most LMS platforms, thereby enhancing user experience and facilitating easier access to learning resources. Users particularly appreciate its user-friendly interface and the extensive support provided, which significantly simplifies the process of course selection and deployment. When compared to similar products, OpenSesame is often praised for its comprehensive content library and the effectiveness of its customer support. Pricing considerations vary, typically depending on the number of users and the specific courses selected, with options for subscription-based payments that allow for scalability and adaptability to different organizational needs.

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$89 Monthly, Freemium
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$5/Course, Usage-Based
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Product Insights

  • Provides User-Friendly Interfaces: TalentLMS provides a Modern and Legacy interface. In my testing, I found both interfaces to be very well organized, offering a smooth browsing experience for administrators, instructors, and learners. Users can access all key features on a single screen, ensuring easy navigation and efficiency.
  • Offers Needs-Specific Features: According to our analysis, TalentLMS supports features that allow you to sell courses online, create and manage courses, help users communicate in real time and generate insightful reports, fully out of the box. It offers a vast suite of features, including content sharing, course bundles and marketing, reporting dashboards, content creation and two-way messaging.
  • Helps Create Innovative Content: You can address skill gaps with personalized, AI-generated courses made using TalentCraft (only accessible on the new interface). Create a variety of content using AI, including texts, images, lists, step-by-step guides, flashcards, content pages, labeled graphics, charts and MCQs.
  • Saves Money: The solution’s free version supports up to five users and ten courses. Even when using a paid subscription, the various automated and AI functions free up time. You can add new users and features as needed, without having to switch the system altogether.
  • Easy To Use: When I tested the product, I found that the features were neatly arranged and simple to find. The intuitive interface makes navigation a breeze, making it an ideal choice for organizations with a novice user base.
  • Customizable: Our experience with TalentLMS revealed that it's a very customizable platform with an option to personalize every aspect of your training. From language, themes, date and time formats, and the homepage to eCommerce controls, certificates and gamification elements, you can turn the platform into your own ideal training hub, all from a single location.
  • Increases Revenue: Want to boost your income? Join the affiliate plan. Find a unique URL to send traffic to the website and track all visitors/sign-ups/conversions. For every sale originating from a referred user, get a recurring commission added to your account.
  • Offers Valuable Insights: According to our data, TalentLMS supports 100% of reporting features fully out of the box. Its infographic reporting feature provides clear snapshots of training activities. With detailed activity logs, you can capture every action for comprehensive day-to-day records. Microstats and printable infographics keep learners motivated by showcasing their progress, pass rates and earned certificates and badges.
    • Another standout feature from our testing is the Training Matrix, which offers a single-page view of the training status for all learners across multiple courses, using color-coded blocks for easy visualization.
  • Award-Winning LMS: TalentLMS received many accolades in the SelectHub Awards 2024 across various LMS features. It earned honors for collaboration, content and course management, mobile capabilities, platform capabilities, and integrations and extensibility.
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  • Better Integration: Get adaptable courses with SCORM or AICC-compatible courses. Add courses and monitor progress completion. 
  • Greater Ease of Use: Get pre-built integrations for a better interface and reduce IT burden. 
  • Curated Courses: Choose the best learning and training program according to the enterprise’s needs. Improve learning and employee engagement with advice from advisors. 
  • Upskilled Workers: Build soft skills to develop leadership and management qualities. Improve communication, negotiation and project management. 
  • Reduce Workload: Make implementation easier with constant technical support, simplifying the administration process. 
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  • Dashboard: Get an overview of active users, assigned courses, training time, course completion rates and more. Use the Timeline widget to track account activity, monitor each course’s progress status, and add or delete widgets to customize your dashboard.
  • User Management: Create and store users' personal information, such as name, location, bio, sign-in credential, learner type and email.
  • Course Creation: Add the course code, specify the category and pricing, insert intro videos, assign start and end times, set completion rules and include certificates for each course. Fill the courses with text, videos, PPTs, images, assignments, surveys and more.
  • Course Management: Reuse presentations and videos or find external media to build classes. Offer certifications for compliance courses and create learning paths tailored to each user’s requirements.
  • Course Store: Subscribe to TalentLibrary to access over 900 English and Spanish courses in various fields, such as HR, leadership, safety and compliance, personal development and business skills.
  • Gamification: Offer discounts as rewards when learners achieve a set number of points, badges or levels. Reset users' gamification statistics as needed, either for the whole portal or for a specific group or branch. You can:
    • Award users with points for different learning activities.
    • Give badges to highlight milestones in their learning journey.
    • Represent stages in their learning journey with levels.
    • Show users their learning progress in points compared to others with leaderboards.
  • Integration: Integrate directly with third-party apps like WordPress, BambooHR, GoToMeeting, Salesforce and Shopify. Add Zapier to access over 750 additional options like Slack and Zendesk, and use the API and JavaScript integrations for additional extensibility.
  • Security: Protect sensitive data with features like AWS storage, 2FA, DDoS, BCDR, incident response plans and STAR compliance.
    • Restrict registration to specific email domains and prevent multiple logins from different browsers.
    • Disable video transcoding if videos are web-compatible and add a system logo watermark on uploaded videos.
    • Meet the guidelines for various security and accessibility standards, such as ISO 27001, ISO 9001GDRP, PCI Compliance and WCAG-2.
  • Files Repository: Organize, reuse and share files with selected users. Upload and store various types of files in your account, and easily manage and distribute them.
  • Collaboration: Allow instructors and learners to engage in discussions, interact through video conferencing, send group and private messages and stay connected at each touchpoint of the training process.
  • Branches: Create independent sub-portals (branches) for various departments, user types and customers. Customize each portal with its own URL, theme, language, users and courses.
  • Automation: Automate day-to-day tasks to avoid manual admin work and reduce errors. Assign courses to many users simultaneously, send reminders, deactivate users and more.
  • Reporting: Generate data reports to track key metrics like course completion rates, courses not started or passed, courses in progress, and training time for each learner, branch, group and course. Track users and their roles, progress status, scores, and completion dates and times for each course. Create and automatically export custom reports.
  • Learning Activities: Add learning activities like assignments, tests, surveys and ILT training to courses.
  • Blending Learning: Use blended and instructor-led training (ILT) to organize classroom events, manage all aspects of ILT sessions, set up automatic notifications and deliver virtual lessons in real time.
  • Assessments: Build a variety of tests with different question types, such as multiple-choice, drag-and-drop matching, ordering, fill-in-the-blank and open-ended questions. Use them to evaluate learner progress and knowledge retention.
  • Surveys Engine: Build surveys to gain insights into your learners and training. Send surveys, collect responses and analyze results to gather valuable feedback and data.
  • Learning Paths: Set up learning paths by selecting the desired course. They can link courses to create the path and add prerequisites, so learners must complete these courses in any order before proceeding. They can also create alternative paths using the Add an alternative rule option and enable Levels in the Gamification tab to require learners to reach a certain level before accessing a course.
  • TalentLibrary: With a subscription, you can access high-quality content in the form of interactive quizzes, expert-created materials and new classes stored in the online library.
  • Embedded Video Conferencing: Use a built-in tool for conducting meetings via video call and integrate it with popular apps like Zoom, Google Meet and Skype.
  • Mobile App: Allow learners to complete their training on the go using the iOS and Android-compatible mobile app.
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  • Vendor Consolidation: Combine vendors to cut costs and save time. Navigate through comprehensive lists of courses with ease. 
  • Varied Courses: Get access to 22,000+ courses on a variety of topics in various formats. 
  • Certification: Validate skills and competency through professional certifications like PMI/PMP, CompTIA, ITIL, Microsoft, HRCI, Six Sigma and more. 
  • Compliance: Track course completion data with a robust dashboard. Access the latest courses to meet compliance requirements. Ensure adherence to workplace regulations to avoid litigation. 
  • DIE Courses: Train organizations in diversity, equity and inclusion. Access 900 courses on DIE with multiple formats and languages. Take DIE surveys to get actionable insights. 
  • L&D Courses: Learn from a variety of training courses with regular optimization, minimum administration and maximum utilization. 
  • Safety Courses: Implement industry-specific safety courses like OSHA, first aid, ladders and electrical safety to prevent risk and litigation. Get mobile and microlearning formats to learn from anywhere. 
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Product Ranking

#3

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#98

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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AI-based Capabilities Assessments Collaboration Compliance Content And Course Management ECommerce Learning Delivery Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard User Management And Gamification 0 71 100 67 100 100 76 87 96 100 91 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Excellent User Sentiment 1419 reviews
Great User Sentiment 50 reviews
91%
of users recommend this product

TalentLMS has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 91% when considering 1419 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

80%
of users recommend this product

OpenSesame has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 80% when considering 50 user reviews from 2 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (25)
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4.6 (737)
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4.0 (25)
4.7 (542)
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4.4 (24)
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3.3 (91)
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Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated TalentLMS and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Content and Course Management. TalentLMS stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Content and Course Management Award

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Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Ease of Use: 85% of users praise TalentLMS's intuitive and user-friendly interface, which makes it easy for both administrators and learners to create courses and navigate the platform.
Affordability: Over 70% of users regard TalentLMS as an affordable LMS, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.
Excellent Customer Support: 70% of users highlight the responsive, knowledgeable and helpful customer support team that’s quick to address any issues and questions.
Feature-Rich: According to 65% of users, the solution offers a diverse feature set that caters to varied industry-specific requirements.
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Extensive Course Library: OpenSesame boasts a vast collection of over 20,000 courses spanning diverse topics, catering to various industries and professional development needs. This eliminates the need for organizations to create their own content, saving time and resources.
User-Friendly Interface: The platform's intuitive design simplifies course administration, allowing for easy enrollment, progress tracking, and reporting. This streamlines the learning process for both administrators and learners.
Content Curation Tools: OpenSesame empowers administrators to curate customized learning paths by selecting specific courses and organizing them into relevant categories. This enables personalized learning experiences tailored to individual or team requirements.
Integration Capabilities: OpenSesame seamlessly integrates with various Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS), facilitating data synchronization and a unified learning ecosystem.
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Mobile App Limitations: 45% of users who reviewed the mobile app said it has limited functionality compared to the web-based platform, with some users unable to perform specific tasks on the go.
Onboarding and Implementation Challenges: A few users (30%) expressed that the initial setup and onboarding process can be challenging, especially for users who’ve never used an LMS before.
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Limited Customization: OpenSesame's course builder offers limited options for branding and customization, making it difficult for organizations to create a consistent learning experience that aligns with their brand identity.
Reporting and Analytics: The platform's reporting and analytics capabilities are relatively basic, lacking the depth and flexibility needed for comprehensive learner progress tracking and data-driven decision-making.
Integrations: OpenSesame's integrations with other business systems, such as HRIS or CRM platforms, are limited, potentially hindering seamless data flow and workflow automation.
Customer Support: Some users have reported challenges with OpenSesame's customer support, citing slow response times and difficulty resolving technical issues.
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TalentLMS stands out as a user-friendly and adaptable LMS that caters largely to small and midsize businesses. Its intuitive interface, advanced feature set and focus on customization make it a useful tool for employee, customer and partner training.According to our data, TalentLMS supports several key LMS modules fully out of the box. These include: Collaboration: 100 Content and Course Management: 100 Ecommerce: 100 Reporting and Dashboard: 100Its extensive feature set allows you to create and manage content, sell courses online and facilitate real-time communication. The AI-powered course creation tool, TalentCraft, enables you to generate personalized courses that address specific skill gaps quickly.You can use custom certificates to showcase your company’s branding and course completions. Users can quickly log in to the system using SSO, and learn anytime, anywhere on the mobile app.Integrations with tools like Zapier add automation options, and the support team and community resources provide valuable resources and guidance to help you set up. You can also add new users and features as needed to the platform without having to switch systems.I recently tested TalentLMS through its free plan and explored key features like course authoring, reporting, gamification and integrations. The platform’s dual interface options — legacy and modern — made navigation smooth and intuitive, and I appreciated how easily I could access course materials, progress tracking and reports.TalentLMS also impressed with its AI-driven course creation tools and the ability to quickly add a variety of content types, including assessments, SCORM files and multimedia. The platform’s customizable dashboard and notification features made managing courses and users effortless.I dive deeper into my experience in the “See It in Action” section, where I provide more insights on the course authoring process, reporting tools and gamification elements.One area where TalentLMS could improve is its video capabilities. The platform lacks full support for virtual classrooms, attendance tracking, session recording and interactive whiteboards. Additionally, the mobile app could benefit from push notifications to keep learners updated on their training progress.TalentLMS is great for small to medium businesses, with a vast feature set and affordable starting price. It’s ideal for straightforward setups, though costs can increase with more users or added courses, which might be a challenge for larger organizations.

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Unlocking the potential of your workforce is no easy feat, but OpenSesame might just be the key. User reviews from the past year paint a picture of a platform with a unique blend of strengths and weaknesses. OpenSesame shines in its user-friendly interface and extensive course library, making it a breeze for administrators to manage training programs and for learners to access a diverse range of content. The platform's reporting and analytics capabilities also receive praise, empowering organizations to track progress and measure the impact of their training initiatives. However, some users point out that OpenSesame's customization options can be limited, and integration with other HR systems may require additional effort. What truly sets OpenSesame apart is its focus on curation and quality. Unlike some competitors that offer a vast but unfiltered selection of courses, OpenSesame carefully vets its content providers to ensure high-quality, engaging learning experiences. This emphasis on curation is particularly valuable for organizations seeking to avoid the pitfalls of information overload and ensure their employees are receiving top-notch training. Ultimately, OpenSesame is best suited for small to mid-sized businesses that prioritize ease of use, a diverse course library, and reliable reporting features. For organizations with complex customization needs or extensive integration requirements, exploring alternative solutions might be wise. Keep in mind that the eLearning landscape is constantly evolving, so it's always a good idea to check for the latest updates and user feedback before making a decision.

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