What is a learning management system?
Your introduction to LMS platforms
Are you new to or inexperienced with learning management systems (LMS)? This guide will help you understand LMSs, how to use them to deliver training, their key features, and pricing.
It's a great guide for those who haven't bought an LMS before or for those needing a refresher!
Once you finish reading, you’ll be ready to jump into our LMS Buyer's Guide, which takes you through specific steps to help you research, identify, shortlist, and purchase a new LMS.
A learning management system, more commonly known as an LMS, is a learning platform that specializes in managing, distributing, and tracking training content and learners.
An LMS houses your training resources. These resources can include eLearning modules, structured learning programs, and standalone assets such as videos, audio, documents, simulations, and quizzes. Learning administrators, instructors, and managers manage and organize these assets.
In addition to training resources, an LMS allows each learner and administrative team member to have a profile or account. You then deliver your training resources using the LMS, which records the progress, completion, and other data as your learners interact.
Benefits of using an LMS for training
Some of the leading LMS benefits you can expect include:
Streamlined onboarding for new hires
Deliver cost-effective certification programs for clients and employees
More efficient use of time through automating routine training tasks
Maximize training budgets and ROI with targeted learning
More inclusive, accessible training for diverse workforces
Effortlessly scale learning programs as your business grows
Proactive compliance management
Real-time insights into learner progress and activity
Build a culture of continuous learning
Of course, many organizations will see many more benefits depending on their use case. For instance, using your LMS to sell courses will turn your platform into an additional revenue stream or training for future leaders, improving business outcomes.
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What are the core features of an LMS?
Every LMS is different, but almost every LMS on the market shares a common set of features. Some of these features include:
Uploading and managing content, such as eLearning courses or learning assets
Managing users, audiences (groups of users), and permissions
Course management to organize and structure learning content
Instructor-led training to facilitate live online and face-to-face training sessions
Learning paths and certifications to prove competence or compliance
Integration with other systems, such as your human resource (HR) system
Tracking engagement data, completions, and other analytics lets you know how your learners and training resources perform.
Reporting that allows you to gain insights from the platform data and distribute results to your stakeholders
Social learning features to allow peer-to-peer learning
Branded elements for a look and feel that matches your organization
Customization that gives you control over how your content and dashboards are structured
Knowledge base where you can organize and store training documents, manuals, processes, product specs, articles, videos, and more for easy and fast reference
Multilingual support for diverse, global audiences
Notifications and alerts to drive learning engagement by reminding learners of sessions, due dates, and completion requirements
What are some of the additional LMS features?
Beyond the common LMS features, you will find many other specialty features to help set a system apart. Those LMS features you might find include:
eCommerce for selling learning courses and content
Gamification elements such as leaderboards, incentives, games, and points
Advanced security to ensure easy, secure access and user data protection
Content authoring tools for building your learning content, knowledge checks, quizzes, and exams within the LMS
Communication tools such as forums, notifications, mobile apps, and private messaging
AI-based learning algorithms for recommending personalized content based on learner preferences and previous experience
Multi-tenant architecture for creating solutions for multiple distinct customers
Offline learning capabilities when your learners don’t have a connection to the internet
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How do you find an LMS that fits your needs?
For a first LMS, your use case will likely fit into one of three primary use types: training employees or internal learners, training large organizations or across multiple locations, or training external audiences. Each situation can benefit from key LMS features to help you reach your overall learning goals.
Training internal learners
You can use an LMS for internal training initiatives such as onboarding employees, compliance training, skills development, and role-specific training. It will allow managers and administrators to deliver learning to different groups of employees.
Across all internal training use cases, you’ll need an LMS that helps you achieve the essentials—managing, distributing, and tracking your training. To help you build your LMS features requirement list, we’ll break down the top features you’ll need to consider for each training use case.
Onboarding
For onboarding, the top must-have features include:
A customizable learning experience that makes a fantastic first and lasting impression
Flexible user management so you can invite your new hires to the LMS and structure their grouping in a way that makes sense for your organization
Automatic enrollment of your new hires into the learning plan they need to complete
Compliance training
For compliance training, your must-have feature list should consist of:
Training enrollment features that allow for easy compliance renewal processes, including automated reminders, enrollments, due dates, and overdue statuses
Powerful and customizable reporting for audits and internal review
Automatic certificate delivery with certification details
Skills development
The ideal features for training that focuses on skills development include:
Integration with an eLearning content library that will allow you to deliver a massive array of training courses in a variety of formats
Segment training topics into streams, allowing your learners to identify and progress with training that interests them
Role-based training
To help meet the needs for role-based training, key in on the following:
Content and user management you can map to the various roles within your organization
Centralizing information and resources with a knowledge base gives your learners access to training-related documents when needed
When using your LMS for internal training of any type, your organization will benefit from easily accessible training resources for learners, training data showing progress and completions, and automation efficiencies for managers and learning and development (L&D) or human resource (HR) employees.
Training for larger organizations or with multiple locations
With the right features, an LMS can fit the needs of large organizations, such as multinationals, global businesses, or franchises with many locations. These LMSs are often referred to as enterprise LMSs. The LMS usually focuses on scaling and growth, has a more extensive array of features, and offers more customization.
While a large organization will need many of the same features as a small-to-medium-size one, there are a few key features you’ll want to look for, including:
User management to target different groups of employees with tailored learning content
Multilingual support to make learning accessible to a diverse audience
Integration with other systems, such as your HR system, to minimize manual processes
Scalability of performance so hundreds or thousands of learners can be using the LMS simultaneously
Implementing an LMS for a large organization will make training many employees significantly more efficient, saving time and budget. Your learning and development (L&D) team will benefit from an at-a-glance overview of team progress, course completions, compliance, and more personalized learning at scale for better learning results.
Training external learners
While you’ll still require many of the same features you’ll need for training internal learners, such as enrollment automation, flexible content and user management, powerful reporting, and notifications and alerts, be on the lookout for these key LMS features when you’re training external learners, including:
Multi-tenant architecture, allowing you to deliver training to multiple customers from a single instance of your LMS
eCommerce to enable you to sell courses and content to your customers, partners, or membership base
Branding and customization to personalize the learning experience to each customer or partner organization
Launching an LMS for external learners helps you create better-trained, more loyal partners and customers and can help you leverage your training as an additional revenue stream.
It’s also significantly more manageable for your L&D team to deliver distinct training experiences to each customer while cutting down on manual training management.
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What else should you look for in an LMS?
While no two organizations will have the exact same LMS requirements, there are some features or software capabilities everyone, including your L&D team, LMS administrators, and learners, will benefit from.
Options for customization
When we talk about LMS customizability, we’re talking about the ability to amend a variety of elements, such as:
Layouts
Navigation
Features
Branding
Languages
Integrations
If your LMS fits your needs perfectly straight out of the box, lucky you! But most organizations will want to make at least a few tweaks to their new LMS—if not now, then a few months later.
Choosing a customizable LMS will make your life much easier when you want to change things, whether refreshing the look and feel, adding new features, or supporting new types of content. Many LMSs don’t require any coding, making customization surprisingly straightforward.
Integration capabilities
An LMS usually belongs to a broader learning technology ecosystem, and you will get the most out of your platform if it integrates with your other systems, such as your HR system, authoring tool, or CRM.
Selecting an LMS that integrates with your other platforms will help you create seamless connections to share data and minimize administration by allowing the LMS to automatically “talk to” your other tools.
Many organizations will want to integrate their LMS with their HR system, such as Workday or BambooHR.
Many organizations will want to integrate their LMS with their HR system, such as Workday or BambooHR. Choosing an LMS with easy integrations means it can easily “talk to” your HR system, transferring data such as job role, location, training progress, certifications, etc.
This makes it easier to keep track of everything and removes the need to manage this data manually.
User-friendly interface
Think about the websites and software you use every day. Whether it’s Netflix, Spotify, or your favorite news website, you expect them to be intuitive and easy to use. The user interface (or UI) design should give users an intuitive, easy-to-navigate experience, no matter their previous experience using technology, which you need from your LMS.
A great LMS will feel effortless to use, and everything will be exactly where your learners expect to find it, so choosing a platform that’s easy to use and looks good will help your learners hit the ground running.
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Common LMS pricing models
Several different LMS pricing models exist, but some are more common than others. While looking for your new LMS, these four pricing models are the ones you’re most likely to come across.
Seat-based pricing
This pricing model charges a fixed rate per user per month, ranging from $0.50 to $17, depending on the number of users. The average cost is approximately $3 per user per month.
Enterprise-class LMSs typically charge higher rates due to their advanced functionality compared to more basic systems. Additionally, optional features can increase the overall pricing. This model works best for organizations with stable user bases.
Active seat pricing
Here, charges apply only to active users within a billing period. The pricing often ranges between $5 and $15 per monthly active user.
This approach is cost-effective for organizations with intermittent or seasonal training needs, such as customers, partners, contractors, or temporary staff.
Per-course pricing
This structure charges based on the number of courses accessed rather than users. Prices can vary significantly, typically $10 to $300 per course, depending on the complexity of the course content and any certification requirements.
Organizations use this for specialized or compliance-related training, where learners access limited content.
Licensing fee-based pricing
Licensing fees, often annual, provide unlimited access for a fixed number of users or a whole organization. Costs can range from $5,000 to $100,000 annually.
This is common with enterprise-level LMS platforms or custom solutions where the organization requires comprehensive features or has many users.
In addition to the cost of the LMS subscription, your purchase price may also depend on additional one-time needs like implementation, integrations, and the level of support.
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As with any software implementation, there will always be challenges to overcome when looking for an LMS. This can feel overwhelming, especially if you are purchasing and implementing your first LMS or a more complex LMS.
To help, let’s walk through the three top challenges you may face if you are new or inexperienced with LMSs.
Implementation
One of the most significant challenges is the implementation itself. Implementing an LMS means managing many moving parts and people. Numerous stakeholders can have specific needs and use cases your LMS needs to satisfy. This can translate to many layers of stakeholder approvals and rounds of feedback to configure your LMS.
User adoption
User adoption is another common challenge. Just because the LMS exists doesn’t mean people will use it. You must craft a thoughtful, tailored internal communication strategy to gain buy-in and offer compelling content to engage learners.
Data security and privacy
Finally, data security and privacy concern many organizations, mainly if the LMS contains sensitive human resource (HR) data, such as personal information. While data security is critical, most modern LMS vendors will have robust security features to help ensure your user data stays safe.
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The LMS market is always evolving, and vendors constantly develop new features and functionality to align with customer preferences and activities. These are some future trends we’re already seeing right now or are right around the corner.
LMS features with AI enhancement
Artificial intelligence (AI) will transform learning by adapting to a learner's knowledge, identifying and addressing gaps, and predicting forgetting patterns. It will recommend personalized content, ensuring timely reinforcement.
Additionally, AI will generate customized learning materials from source content, streamlining course creation and enabling dynamic, responsive educational experiences tailored to individual needs and progress.
Mobile learning advancements
Today’s learners aren’t tied to their desktop computers, and the LMS must provide a user-friendly and engaging training experience on various mobile devices, from phones to tablets.
The mobile version of an LMS shouldn’t just be a scaled-down version of the desktop experience—it should adapt to offer an equally powerful mobile experience, including straightforward navigation, interactions that use touchscreen technology, and surfacing microlearning assets for relevant learning on the go.
An increase in microlearning
“Microlearning” is short, bite-sized learning activities that improve knowledge retention and complement the ability to deliver initial training information. More and more organizations are building microlearning to complement their formal eLearning modules, as it’s an effective way to help learners access what they need when they need it.
Microlearning can be hosted on the LMS alongside your eLearning courses and should be created with mobile access in mind.
Immersive learning with AR and VR
Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are attracting interest from L&D folks because of the exciting possibilities for integration into training programs.
For instance, a maintenance worker could use AR to overlay instructions onto a piece of machinery they’re trying to fix, or a trainee firefighter could explore a “burning building” in a safe yet immersive environment for a more memorable learning experience.
A focus on more sustainable learning
Sustainability affects every aspect of a business, and learning is no different. An LMS helps organizations switch from paper-based learning to more sustainable digital learning, which can be updated and reused repeatedly without physical resources.
This allows businesses to deliver greener, more environmentally friendly training while improving learning and business outcomes.
Hopefully, this overview has helped you answer the question, “What is an LMS?” and has prepared you for future endeavors in the LMS space.
Perhaps the next step in that journey is to find and select an LMS for your organization. You can evaluate Joy by reviewing its LMS features or joining our waitlist for a free trial release.
The LMS Buyer’s Guide is created to help you, an inexperienced buyer, get up to speed quickly. It uses the same friendly, helpful tone, clear explanations, and essential, need-to-know advice for anyone looking for their first—or next—LMS purchase.
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Social learning and collaboration
Social learning is becoming an increasingly popular strategy to create a thriving learning culture at your organization. This could take the form of live group discussions or asynchronous knowledge sharing.
To support social learning and collaboration, look for an LMS with features such as forums and collaborative workspaces.