Trainual vs Absorb LMS

Last Updated:

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

Product Basics

Trainual is a cloud-based solution designed to automate onboarding and training processes for growing businesses. Its centralized setup helps users document procedures, processes, policies and delegate roles and responsibilities to every staff member. It is fast to install and accessible from anywhere.

It helps companies develop their training manuals, standard operating procedures, playbooks, handbooks and more. It automates the onboarding process by assigning processes and content to new employees based on their roles, department or location. It lets managers add to their teams, create subjects and assign roles. It supports customization with colors and logos.

It automatically notifies staff about any modifications to their completed training packs and ensures that they review the revised content. Employees can easily look for training modules and SOPs using its Chrome browser extension, desktop inclusion or mobile support.
read more...

Absorb is a cloud-based LMS designed to enhance corporate training and education. It caters to organizations of all sizes, offering scalability, a user-friendly interface, and a wide range of features such as gamification, personalized learning paths, content libraries and social learning tools to keep learners engaged.

You can create, manage and deliver diverse training materials, and integrate with various third-party platforms, including HR, video conferencing and CRM tools. Advanced reporting and analytics provide valuable insights into learner progress and training effectiveness, helping you make data-driven decisions that align with business goals.

The Absorb Learning mobile app, free on iOS and Android devices, provides anytime, anywhere access to training. Absorb Intelligence, an AI-powered toolset, uses predictive AI and natural language recognition to connect learners with relevant content, enhance search and microlearning, and streamline administrative tasks.

Users like Absorb LMS for its intuitive design, advanced features, scalability, comprehensive analytics and exceptional customer support, all of which contribute to a positive learning and administrative experience. You can request a quote for pricing information.

read more...
$249 Monthly
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
$16,200 Annually
Get a free price quote
Tailored to your specific needs
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Small 
i
Medium 
i
Large 
i
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Windows
Mac
Linux
Android
Chromebook
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile
Cloud
On-Premise
Mobile

Product Assistance

Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Documentation
In Person
Live Online
Videos
Webinars
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support
Email
Phone
Chat
FAQ
Forum
Knowledge Base
24/7 Live Support

Product Insights

  • Keeps Teams Up-to-Date: rainual notifies staff members about changes made to a previously completed training module. It sends notifications when new content is added to a course or the module undergoes a change and ensures that they review the changes. These notifications keep employees up-to-date with the most relevant changes to completed training modules and accelerates their learning. 
  • Responsive Web Application: ts centralized organizational knowledge is easy to access from the workplace or on-the-go. It is designed to let businesses, team leads and training managers organize SOPs and processes, centralize knowledge, automate training processes and develop training modules for growing, scalable and saleable organizations. 
  • Fully Customizable: Trainual can be fully customized to suit a company’s outlook and branding. Users can add their logos and choose a color scheme to customize their accounts when they first log in. Employees can build their accounts with personalized content by inviting other staff members and selecting a pre-built process or procedure template from the template library. 
  • Makes Training Fun: Businesses can add zing to their training processes by embedding GIFs and images from Trainual’s free stock library. Administrators can also add videos, customized forms and surveys to the training material and arrange it sequentially and by employees’ role and responsibilities. It has a built-in screen recorder tool to record videos, making it easier for employees to get trained. 
  • Affordable: Trainual is an affordable alternative to costly enterprise LMS and is ideal for growing businesses. It empowers employees to put in their best efforts and can capture an organization’s tribal knowledge. It automates onboarding, enhances training and simplifies the hiring process. 
  • Integrations: It seamlessly integrates with third-party productivity tools like Zapier, Gusto, Google Docs, Teamwork, Slack, Asana, Basecamp, Sheets, Dotloop, Dropbox, Linkedin, Typeform and more. Integrations help businesses automate time-consuming onboarding and training processes while enhancing productivity. Its admin panel grants permissions to relevant users for editing and subject updates. It helps organizations crowdsource content and organize tribal knowledge. 
  • Mobile Responsive: Trainual offers a responsive mobile interface for organizations with a varied workforce. Its user interface provides a consistent experience, regardless of the device. It is easy to update, access and track from anywhere. 
read more...
  • Offers Extensive Reporting Tools: When we tested Absorb, we found that it offers a vast suite of reporting tools that provide insights into nearly every aspect of your training program. You can drill down data to view reports on course activity, ILC sessions, assessments, learner progress and competencies, and more. Apply filters, sort data, and download and share reports—all on an easy-to-use, interactive interface.
  • Provides Comprehensive Capabilities: According to our analysis, it supports 100% of our content and course management, mobile and eCommerce capabilities entirely out of the box. It offers content creation and partnership, transaction management, mobile learning and collaboration, discounts and promotions, and more.
  • Creates an Engaging Learner Experience: Our experience with the product revealed that it offers many tools to enhance the learner experience. You can:
    • Customize the dashboard with templates, logos and design elements to reflect your branding.
    • Tailor widgets to meet specific needs and use the Billboard feature to embed videos and links to both external and internal pages.
    • Edit the Tiles to configure and display courses, catalogs, calendars and resources effectively.
  • Provides a User-Friendly Interface: Our testing revealed that the platform is straightforward and accessible. Essential features are conveniently located on the left-hand side, minimizing the need for extensive navigation. You can effortlessly switch between roles — administrator, learner and manager — and enable accessibility tools to enhance data visualization and webpage design.
  • Offers AI-Powered Course Creation: Absorb’s Create AI tool streamlines course development by quickly assembling content from brief descriptions, PDFs or pasted text. The AI efficiently processes and organizes this input, reducing the time and effort needed for course creation. This allows you to deliver high-quality training materials and focus on creative aspects while AI handles the technical details.
  • Personalizes Learning: Absorb Skills provides predefined skills and competencies aligned with employees' job functions across diverse industries and job roles. The platform leverages AI to tailor learning experiences for over 1500 job roles and nearly 200 competencies, supported by a comprehensive library of over 20,000 courses.
  • Award-Winning LMS: Absorb LMS won several awards in the LMS category in the SelectHub Awards 2024. It won best-in-class honors for content and course management, learning delivery, platform capabilities, and integrations and extensibility.
read more...
  • Centralized Knowledge: By centralizing organizational knowledge, Trainual stores all information on the hows and whys of a business in one place. Once a growing business starts to document their expertise, it helps them create operations manuals and memory banks. 
  • Automates Training and Onboarding: Trainual automates cumbersome training and onboarding processes for businesses. It groups content and processes by department, role and location to build templates and automate onboarding. It assigns grouped content to the right staff members and tracks their progress. It also assigns relevant content to newly hired employees. It lets employees access all the information required to handle day-to-day work. 
  • Performance Management: Trainual evaluates employees’ knowledge and expectations from them with simple tests that are created into automated sequences. It monitors user progress and tracks their logins. It also tests prospective and newly hired employees on their commitment and understanding about their organization. Organizations can create tests in different subjects to enhance their teams’ preparedness.  
  • Retains Talent:  It makes it easier for companies to retain talented employees by ensuring that they don’t feel stagnated and unappreciated. It helps businesses nurture talented employees and improve their skill sets by keeping them updated on training in progress. 
  • Powerful SOP Search: Trainual offers powerful keyword searching for SOPs and training materials. Users can search for any topics or keywords across their organization’s training library to find reference materials and SOPs when required. 
  • Makes Live Changes: It lets companies make real-time changes to their documents and save any modifications. Users can develop knowledge flows and subjects, automatically assign content to employees according to their roles, upload pictures, video content or existing documents to make training easier. It also weeds out the possibility of inconsistencies in training material. ;
  • FEATURE: It lets companies make real-time changes to their documents and save any modifications. Users can develop knowledge flows and subjects, automatically assign content to employees according to their roles, upload pictures, video content or existing documents to make training easier. It also weeds out the possibility of inconsistencies in training material. 
  • Industry Compliance: Trainual offers training solutions that are compliant with industry regulations like government, healthcare, manufacturing, law enforcement and more. It offers its users a course marketplace to access and consume content online. 
read more...
  • Content Libraries: Access expert-curated, always-current courses via Amplify content portfolio. It offers three content libraries:
  • Amplify
    • Over 500 foundational courses ideal for small to mid-sized companies.
    • Features essential and mandatory business training.
    • Engaging micro-learning format for quick, impactful learning.
  • Amplify Plus
    • More than 2,000 courses covering basic to intermediate topics.
    • Includes compliance, safety, skills, and continuing education.
    • Versatile formats with bite-sized lessons, full-length courses, and instructor-led training.
    • Available in English and Spanish, with voiceovers in French and Spanish.
    • Accessibility features include closed captioning in multiple languages.
  • Amplify Max
    • Extensive library with over 20,000 courses from over 100 reputable publishers.
    • Covers essential to advanced levels, including safety, business skills, technology, wellness and industry-specific accreditations.
    • Supports diverse learning styles and is available in 90+ languages with localized content in over 40 languages.
  • Search Analytics: Track learner searches with the Search Analytics Report. This feature displays data on searches conducted by both authenticated and unauthenticated learners. Monitor which items learners select from search results, including details such as the item’s ID, name, type and rank. With the correct permissions, access information on the selected items to gain insights into learner behavior and preferences.
  • Salesforce Connector: Enable customers, partners and employees to access and engage with learning materials without leaving Salesforce.
    • Track training engagement and evaluate its impact on sales revenue and service metrics.
    • Display relevant courses on the home screen to upsell or educate prospects about new products.
    • Provide access to essential training across Salesforce Support, Sales and Community environments.
  • Course Catalog: Edit course access based on departments to ensure the right learners have the appropriate permissions. Refine course lists by name, type, vendor, tags, location, type and other criteria. Organize and view courses in various formats, including detailed, list and calendar views.
  • Third-Party Integrations: Connect with third-party apps to streamline learning management across your organization.
    • Integrate with communication tools like Zoom and HR platforms like ADP.
    • Develop custom integrations to facilitate data transfer between the LMS and other applications.
    • Integrate off-the-shelf eLearning content from the Absorb Amplify Portfolio.
    • Integrate LMS logins with existing SSO solutions to improve security and user experience.
    • Use RESTful APIs to manage and expand integrations. Build scalable workflows and connect with various systems, devices and learners both inside and outside your organization.
    • Create real-time integrations that respond instantly to key events. Use webhooks to automate notifications for events like course completions and user registrations.
  • Absorb Engage: Keep learners engaged and motivated with interactive tools. These include:
    • Polls: Gather learner feedback with customizable, open-ended polls. Design questions for fact-based, opinion-based or choice-based responses. Monitor results over time to adapt training content.
    • Collaborations: Create discussion spaces for learners to share ideas on specific topics or courses. Features include document sharing, post interactions and member messaging.
    • Leaderboards: Encourage competition by awarding points for course completions, curricula, instructor-led courses, and competencies. Learners earn points for achievements and interactions, with points being date-stamped and non-retroactive.
    • Billboards: At the top of the Learner Dashboard, display announcements, new initiatives or course promotions with eye-catching video or photo banners.
  • Dashboards: Design multiple dashboards for different departments and customize them with a variety of widgets, including competencies, reports, logins, activity and course enrollment.
    • Admin Controls: Only System Admins can create, edit or delete dashboards.
    • Permissions: Set access and editing permissions for users.
    • Report Handling: Download completed reports or have them emailed to you.
    • Dashboard Templates: Adjust the colors and images of the Learner Dashboard and the Login Page, and add a Public Dashboard.
  • Absorb Analyze: Generate custom reports to gain insights into various aspects of your LMS data, including:
    • Course Enrollment: Track details such as enrollment ID, key, type, status, dates (started, completed, expired), progress, score and more.
    • Course: Analyze course-specific data, including ID, type, name, status, language, tags, enrollment types, certificate details and other settings.
    • User: Examine user information, including ID, names, email, status, roles, job details and location, and sync data from external systems.
    • Department: Review department data such as ID, name, description, and contact information.
    • Reports: Access essential reports on learner activity, competencies, progress, course activity, curricula, evaluations, approvals, certificates, and credits.
  • Course Creation: Choose a theme for your course or build around content like screen recordings, videos, PowerPoint presentations or AI-generated materials.
    • Add and manage different content types, including course materials, instructor-led sessions, course bundles, curricula and categories.
    • Organize courses by ratings, access date, comments, self-enrollment, audience, author, automatic enrollment, average rating, category, certificate details, and more.
    • View detailed reports on learner course starts, ends, scores, departments, and certificates.
  • Course Settings
    • General: Adjust status, title, description, and default language.
    • Syllabus: Customize content, completion order, terms, mobile compatibility and proctoring.
    • Enrollment Rules: Set department restrictions, enrollment rules, self-enrollment options, automatic enrollment, approvals and eCommerce settings.
    • Completion: Define certificates, competencies, credits, leaderboard points, failure and re-enrollment policies.
    • Availability: Schedule access, due dates, expiration, prerequisites and offline access.
    • Catalog Visibility: Customize mobile app visibility, category, images and posters, and make courses mandatory or featured.
    • Course Administrators: Designate individual or department admins.
    • Messages: Manage and customize course notifications.
    • Resources: Add files and notes for learners.
    • Course Uploads: Provide instructions for uploading course materials and certificates.
    • Attributes: Enable ratings and evaluations, and add audience, vendor, goals, external IDs, time estimates and costs.
    • Social: Enable comments and collaborations.
    • Competencies: Reward users with custom designations, like 'CPR Certification,' for completing courses. Set up and assign competencies with unique names and images, which can serve as icons or badges.
    • Competency Levels: Award competencies on a scale from 1 to 10, allowing for incremental achievements and more control over user progression.
    • Access Management: Configure competencies to grant or restrict access to additional catalog content based on user achievements.
    • Reports: Use the Learner Competencies Report to view user achievements, modify data fields, create new competencies, message users, view transcripts or delete competencies.
    • Integration: Edit or add competencies to online courses, instructor-led courses or curricula.
  • ILC (Instructor-Led Courses): Facilitate live or asynchronous training sessions, either physical or virtual. Enrolled learners choose which session to attend. While a venue is optional, it helps specify the training location.
    • Recurring Classes: Schedule classes to repeat regularly with consistent time, instructor(s) and location, similar to Outlook calendar invitations.
    • Waitlist: Manage session capacity by adding learners to a waitlist when sessions are complete. Automatically enroll learners from the waitlist when seats become available or manually override capacity limits.
    • ILC Sessions Report: Access detailed reports on session details, learner enrollments, attendance, waitlists and instructor messaging.
  • Course Enrollments: Access and manage enrollments for curricula, ILCs, online courses and course bundles. Add, modify or delete course enrollments as needed. Re-enroll users in training, un-enroll them from courses, and update user details as required. Access detailed user transcripts, message users directly and review enrollments to track past training activities.
  • Enrollment Keys: Provide enrollment keys to users to automatically assign them to departments and courses, and manage validity and usage limits. Create and customize keys, name them, define access, and configure user details and notifications.
  • Observational Checklists: Use Observation Checklists to evaluate users based on specific criteria, and ensure they have the necessary skills and perform tasks effectively. Ideal for tracking mentoring and on-the-job training, these checklists help reviewers assess and document user performance.
  • Knowledge Checks: Add knowledge checks between courses to assess learners' understanding. Use question types like multiple-choice, true-or-false, matching, sequencing, pick one, pick many, drag-and-drop, fill-in-the-blanks and free text.
read more...

Product Ranking

#46

among all
LMS Software

#12

among all
LMS Software

Find out who the leaders are

Analyst Rating Summary

53
81
0
43
43
71
50
75
Show More Show More

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Trainual
Absorb LMS
+ Add Product + Add Product
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 43 50 0 81 50 67 65 65 57 55 43 71 75 67 100 100 80 100 93 97 91 0 25 50 75 100
0%
0%
100%
43%
0%
57%
40%
0%
60%
70%
0%
30%
33%
0%
67%
67%
0%
33%
0%
0%
100%
67%
0%
33%
80%
0%
20%
100%
0%
0%
0%
0%
100%
100%
0%
0%
38%
0%
62%
62%
0%
38%
63%
0%
37%
100%
0%
0%
60%
0%
40%
93%
0%
7%
60%
0%
40%
100%
0%
0%
55%
0%
45%
91%
0%
9%

Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

36%
0%
64%
79%
0%
21%

User Sentiment Summary

Excellent User Sentiment 1193 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 1162 reviews
95%
of users recommend this product

Trainual has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 95% when considering 1193 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

93%
of users recommend this product

Absorb LMS has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 93% when considering 1162 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

n/a
4.9 (12)
4.7 (503)
4.7 (483)
4.78 (333)
4.5 (284)
4.8 (340)
n/a
4.5 (2)
4.8 (255)
4.6 (15)
4.4 (128)

Awards

Trainual stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

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

User Favorite Award
Content and Course Management Award
Mobile Capabilities Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Easy to Use: Users appreciate the platform's intuitive interface and straightforward design, making it simple to navigate and find necessary information. The user-friendly nature of Trainual reduces the learning curve for both administrators and employees, allowing for quick adoption and implementation.
Customization Options: Trainual provides flexibility in tailoring the platform to specific organizational needs. Users can create custom content, workflows, and branding elements to align with their unique training requirements and company culture. This adaptability ensures that the platform can effectively support diverse training programs and objectives.
Content Creation Tools: The platform offers a variety of tools for creating engaging and interactive training materials. Users can incorporate various media formats, such as videos, images, and quizzes, to enhance the learning experience and cater to different learning styles. These tools empower organizations to develop comprehensive and effective training content.
Show more
Professional Development: Over 90% of users who mentioned the professional training abilities of this system felt it helped with career planning.
Comprehensive Feature Set: Nearly 75% of reviewers appreciate its wide range of features, including customizable course settings, multi-tenancy support, observational checklists, e-signatures and third-party integrations.
Customization: More than 80% of reviewers who discussed the customization features were happy with the options for personalization and branding.
Ease of Use: In just under 80% of reviews that discussed the UI, users highlighted the platform's intuitive interface, stating that it's easy to use for both administrators and learners. The dashboard is noted for its clean design, making navigation straightforward and enhancing the overall user experience.
Excellent Customer Service: Over 70% of reviewers that mentioned support felt the staff was friendly and helpful, and provided workarounds for a multitude of issues. Many reviews mentioned that the project managers and account managers are proactive in assisting clients throughout their onboarding and ongoing use of the platform.
In-Depth Reporting: 60% of users who reviewed its data and analytical capabilities said it offers extensive reporting capabilities with the ability to export reports easily and set up automated reporting schedules.
Show more
Limited Customization: Trainual's customization options for branding and theming are quite restricted, making it challenging for companies to align the platform's appearance with their unique brand identity.
Reporting Features: The platform's reporting capabilities are relatively basic, lacking the depth and flexibility needed for comprehensive data analysis and insights into training effectiveness.
Integrations: Trainual's integrations with other business tools and platforms are somewhat limited, potentially hindering seamless workflows and data exchange with existing systems.
Show more
Insufficient eCommerce: In over 90% of reviews that discussed the system's eCommerce abilities, users felt it wasn’t flexible enough to sell content properly.
Show more

Trainual provides a one-stop shop for businesses to onboard, train, and scale their teams. Users rave about its user-friendly interface and intuitive design, making it a breeze to create and manage training materials. The platform's flexibility shines, allowing businesses to tailor content to their specific needs, whether it's for onboarding new hires or upskilling existing employees. Trainual's strength lies in its ability to streamline the training process, saving businesses time and resources. However, some users note the platform's limitations in advanced features compared to competitors like Lessonly and TalentLMS. Trainual may not be the best fit for organizations requiring complex learning paths or intricate assessments. Additionally, while Trainual integrates with popular tools like Slack and Google Workspace, some users desire more extensive integration options. Trainual's sweet spot lies with small to medium-sized businesses seeking a user-friendly and efficient solution to manage their training needs. Its simplicity and affordability make it an attractive option for growing companies looking to establish a solid training foundation without breaking the bank. For larger enterprises with complex training requirements, exploring more robust platforms might be necessary.

Show more

Absorb is a pretty impressive platform, especially if you're looking for something that's both easy to use and packed with features. It offers an intuitive interface and a clean dashboard with well-organized capabilities, a big plus for both learners and administrators.AI tools help you create courses in minutes and tailor training elements to each user's specific needs. One time-saving tool we really liked is Intelligent Assist. You just have to ask a question like, “How many learners have not been graded?” and you'll instantly get the report or action screen you need.Absorb Pinpoint, their video timestamping expert, uses AI and NLP to transcribe and timestamp video lessons. This allows you to find exactly what you want to learn in a long video without watching the whole thing, another great time-saver.Two more things that really stood out are Absorb’s course creation and reporting modules.With Absorb Create, you can build informational, crisp, good-looking courses using the most user-friendly tools. AI voiceovers, screen readers, themes and fonts, assessments and collaboration, and so many other elements help make course creation an enjoyable, creative and fun experience.We are also fans of Absorb’s insightful universe powered by it’s BI tool, Absorb Analyze. Learners, courses, sessions, certificates, and ILCs — you have a report for all aspects of your training program. You can add multiple filters to drill down to the micro level and schedule them for the future.Absorb’s gamification, user and role management, assessments and collaboration features are equally great and extremely easy to use. And if you need more help, they have Absorb Academy to fill you in on the know-how.The only downside is that it could have some more eCommerce features and built-in virtual classroom tools. Its question bank functionality is limited to only multiple-choice and text-based questions, so it’d be nice to see some variety there. Also, while the interface is undoubtedly a cakewalk to navigate, it could use a bit of color and style, some visual flair to engage learners quickly.Overall, Absorb LMS is a solid choice for anyone looking to boost their training and development efforts. We love that it offers a free trial, a suite of useful features for both small and big businesses alike, and excellent customer support. It has great built-in tools and integration capabilities, and rightly stands out among our top five LMS solutions.

Show more

Screenshots

Top Alternatives in LMS Software


Absorb LMS

Adobe Learning Manager

Blackboard Learn

Brainier

Brightspace

Canvas

Cornerstone LMS

Docebo

LearnUpon

Litmos

Moodle

Schoology

Seismic Learning

SkyPrep

Spoke LMS

TalentLMS

Thinkific

Tovuti

WorkRamp

Related Categories

Head-to-Head Comparison

WE DISTILL IT INTO REAL REQUIREMENTS, COMPARISON REPORTS, PRICE GUIDES and more...

Compare products
Comparison Report
Just drag this link to the bookmark bar.
?
Table settings