Top 11 Free Learning Management Systems for HR / Business - 2023

The best free LMS software for businesses, top vendors, categories, pitfalls, pricing, and more

Rodrigo Vázquez Mellado
HR and B2B software analyst and advisor, tech writer and editor, former conversational designer

Contributing Experts

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The Top Free LMS

Hand picked by our HR Technology experts after product testing, user research, and much debate - enjoy!

Eloomi’s learning management system (LMS) helps you create, deliver and track online courses. The platform is visually engaging and a new employee can start with the platform right away to consume their pre-onboarding content. They can access content by different categories, and topics, or turn on filters for specific skills. You can start with a free demo from Eloomi’s official site.
This LMS offers customization at levels we have yet to see in other platforms. Its AI translation and content creation services are uncommon features you would hardly find in other learning and coaching systems.
TalentLMS is one of the most well-known, affordable, and versatile Learning Management Systems ever.
Bitrix24 is a full-on digital workplace that also happens to have a good learning management module, for free!
Coggno is a well-established eLearning marketplace that also offers an LMS platform for businesses.
Blackboard CourseSites is a free LMS provided by one of the top names in eLearning, both for businesses and learning institutions in all levels.
It’s one of the few LMS platforms specifically designed for mobile/field/frontline workers and it comes from one of the most reputable names in online education.
It’s a very friendly LMS that’s used by individuals, groups, and companies of all kinds to distribute, and even monetize, their educational content.
iSpring Learn is a very complete LMS platform for a great price, with very personal and efficient tech support.
UpsideLMS puts over 16 years of experience into a comprehensive product that is more geared towards enterprises and can be quite cost-friendly.

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Introduction to Free Learning Management Systems

Making an effort to keep your team at the forefront of their game through in-house training programs doesn’t have to be super expensive. Among many other things, 2020 has shown that having a proper learning management system among your software stack is of extreme importance, even if you’re not exactly running a higher education institution. 

If you’re looking for good LMS vendors that won’t break your organization’s bank account or that will at least have a free and unlimited version that you can try before choosing to pay for something, we’ve done a lot of the initial work for you. Through hours of research and interviews with HR professionals in small and medium-sized companies, we’ve narrowed down the best options in the market when it comes to a free LMS. These are some cost-friendly alternatives to software like Docebo, SAP Litmos, Absorb LMS, and Canvas. You can also checkout our article on the best learning management systems.

Our Criteria: Here's how we chose who made the cut

We take research seriously. To make sure we’re offering our readers the very best solutions in a given software category, we are methodical, rigorous, and expansive in our research. We consult with HR professionals, vendors, and industry experts. We cut through the noise to bring you a carefully curated list of vendors, along with other essential information, to help you find the right software platform for your business. 

Here’s how we chose who makes the cut: 

Product: We believe in gaining a comprehensive understanding of a product before we recommend it, so we start by getting to know the software. Whenever possible, we meet with a senior executive (CEO or Head of Product) for a demo and Q&A. We also test the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best-in-class offering. 

User feedback: We go straight to the source and compile feedback on user experience. Real-world input supports our commitment to diligence in our software evaluation methods and the products we recommend. Keeping up with the everyday experience of HR pros also puts new vendors on our radar, and it keeps us close to our community so we can better connect the right products to the right people.

Financial metrics: We are certified finance nerds, so we use all the data we can get our hands on to make selections for our guides. We comb through data for concrete statistics like retention rates, growth, profitability, and scalability. We evaluate the bottom line of each product because we know making a software purchase can put your reputation on the line. 

Best for a use case: Software is never a one-size-fits-all product. Sometimes the best solution is free or cheap. Other times it’s the one that is best for global companies or the one that’s sized right for early-stage startups. Keeping this in mind, we include solutions across the spectrum so our readers can find the best fit for their unique needs.

Here's more detail if you want to read more about how we research vendors. Our dedicated staff writers rely on hard data, impartial experts, and user feedback to ensure our reviews are helpful, truthful, and hopefully a pleasure to read!

Top Free Learning Management Systems

We track thousands of HR Tech solutions. Here are the best free learning management systems as of 2023.

eloomi

Review:

Eloomi’s Learning Management System allows you to create and manage online courses and assessments for your employees. It comes with automated workflows and learning paths, compliance training, ready-made content and pre-built templates, and the ability to measure and track employees’ development. You can also make the learning experience more interactive by adding elements like quizzes, images, videos, and more.

eloomi

Pricing:

Eloomi offers custom pricing, so the best way to find out how much it costs is to request a demo.

Eloomi offers custom pricing, so the best way to find out how much it costs is to request a demo.

Best For

Eloomi is for HR leaders and managers of mid-sized and large businesses to make onboarding easier for employees, engage them through frequent feedback, and track the progress of their personal development.

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SafetyCulture (EdApp)

Review:

EdApp is a learning management system designed for deskless workers. It provides useful features that help create bite-sized interactive lessons that can be accessed by anyone on any device, for free.

Speaking of free, they also provide free content creation services that involve turning old powerpoint slides, pdfs, and other learning materials into engaging and interactive content — all within the space of 48 hours.

SafetyCulture (EdApp)

Pricing:

As far as content creation for educational purposes is concerned, EdApp is completely free. But you can get additional features across two paid subscriptions. Here is a breakdown of their price plans:

  • Free: The free plan provides an unlimited number of course creation and access to a library of 800+ editable courses. It is also free for an unlimited number of users. 
  • Growth: This plan costs $1.95 per active user per month. It offers all the benefits of the free plan with the ability to customize the learner’s journey with achievements, review tests, and certifications.
  • Plus: The plus plan gives you everything in the two previous plans with advanced features such as full API integration support and AI translation. It costs $2.95 per active user per month.

Note that EdApp offers a 30-day free trial period for all paid plans.

As far as content creation for educational purposes is concerned, EdApp is completely free. But you can get additional features across two paid subscriptions. Here is a breakdown of their price plans:

  • Free: The free plan provides an unlimited number of course creation and access to a library of 800+ editable courses. It is also free for an unlimited number of users. 
  • Growth: This plan costs $1.95 per active user per month. It offers all the benefits of the free plan with the ability to customize the learner’s journey with achievements, review tests, and certifications.
  • Plus: The plus plan gives you everything in the two previous plans with advanced features such as full API integration support and AI translation. It costs $2.95 per active user per month.

Note that EdApp offers a 30-day free trial period for all paid plans.

Best For

SafetyCulture’s EdApp works best for small-medium sized blue-collar companies as it is a mobile-first platform. Larger global companies can also benefit from its numerous features, such as multilingual content deployment.

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TalentLMS

Review:

This highly-popular LMS is designed for organizations that want online learning for their employees, partners, and even customers. They strive to get rid of the complexity that comes with creating and distributing learning programs and help you launch courses in record time. Their claim is that people are able to share courses two times as fast as with similar software because of how easy they make it for you to reuse content from other sources.

TalentLMS

Pricing:

TalentLMS is free for up to 5 users as long as you don’t create more than 10 courses. Afterwards, the pricing is as follows:

Starter: $59 / monthBasic: $129 / monthPlus: $249 / monthPremium: $429 / month
Up to 40 usersUp to 100 usersUp to 500 usersUp to 1000 users

Custom enterprise pricing is available for companies with more than 1000 users. 

TalentLMS is free for up to 5 users as long as you don't create more than 10 courses. Afterwards, the pricing is as follows:

Custom enterprise pricing is available for companies with more than 1000 users. 

Best For

Thanks to its many plans, TalentLMS is likely to fit the needs of any company regardless of size, training necessities, and whether they have existing instructional content or not.

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Bitrix24

Review:

Among its many tools, Bitrix24 comes with a knowledge management system. Although they call it an eLearning module, it is in essence an LMS. You can create online training courses, conduct tests, and certify your workforce. It also supports both internal use and external for partner certifications or licensing. This module is offered with their free plan which is for unlimited users and includes an ample variety of other tools.

Bitrix24

Pricing:

The Bitrix24 Knowledge Management System is included in the free plan which is for unlimited users.

Best For

Businesses that want the breadth, if not all of their digital workplace to be provided by a single vendor, in a single portal. 

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Coggno

Review:

What’s interesting about Coggno is that they’re also not just a software vendor, but a whole ecosystem of online courses created by experts in different fields. A good bulk of their offering is directed towards businesses, and their LMS is just a part of the service. If you’re looking for something very basic and access to ready-made courses from third-parties, their Training University program is free for unlimited users. 

Coggno

Pricing:

Coggno is completely free for unlimited users if you narrow your training materials to their complementary course offering. If you want to add original content, their private LMS starts at $19 per user per year for 25 to 200 users. The enterprise version, for more than 200 users, starts at $15 per user per year. 

Coggno is completely free for unlimited users if you narrow your training materials to their complementary course offering. If you want to add original content, their private LMS starts at $19 per user per year for 25 to 200 users. The enterprise version, for more than 200 users, starts at $15 per user per year. 

Best For

Teams that want to leverage a wide course library and prefer not to create their own training materials for the time being. 

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Blackboard CourseSites

Review:

Blackboard is one of the most popular LMS tools out there. Their version for business is not free, although they do offer a free demo. For that reason, their free-forever version, CourseSites, has become popular with small businesses. It is hosted online and the user experience is quite similar to the old WordPress dashboard. Whether you’re familiar with that or not, it’s quite easy to sign up for and start uploading training materials.

Blackboard CourseSites

Pricing:

CourseSites is free forever, for as many users as you need, you only pay for the courses that you might use.

CourseSites is free forever, for as many users as you need, you only pay for the courses that you might use.

Best For

Small businesses and organizations that would like to get a feel for the Blackboard experience without spending a dime. 

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TalentCards

Review:

From the eLearning family of TalentLMS and eFront, comes TalentCards. This training platform is mainly designed for mobile workers and it’s free for up to 5 users. It’s for businesses that need to deliver training to staff members regardless of where their work might take them. For this reason, the learning content in TalentCards is oriented toward highly-engaging and bite-sized lessons. The idea is to provide frontline workers, such as on-site support staff, with training that they can access through the mobile devices they already carry with them.

TalentCards

Pricing:

TalentCards is free for up to 5 users, then it’s $49 for up to 50 users and keeps increasing after that until the custom enterprise plans, which are for companies with more than 500 users. 

TalentCards is free for up to 5 users, then it's $49 for up to 50 users and keeps increasing after that until the custom enterprise plans, which are for companies with more than 500 users. 

Best For

Businesses of all sizes, but especially those with a high percentage of mobile workers, and those looking to enhance their training with microlearning tactics. 

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Myicourse

Review:

The philosophy behind Myicourse is to encourage just about anyone to promote and share their valuable knowledge, which is why it’s free. This LMS platform lets you create a virtual & branded learning institution where you can publish or even sell courses. Content can be set as public and shared with anyone or made private and only viewable by whomever you select. While it’s not entirely aimed at small businesses, it’s proven to be popular with entrepreneurs. Myicourse is fully customizable and therefore a good enough tool for employee training and onboarding.

Myicourse

Pricing:

If you set your content as public, the tool is free for an unlimited number of students and courses. If you set it as private, it’s free for up to 100 students and 100 courses. Additional features like banner ad removal, custom banner ads, and custom certificates are available for a separate monthly fee. 

If you set your content as public, the tool is free for an unlimited number of students and courses. If you set it as private, it's free for up to 100 students and 100 courses. Additional features like banner ad removal, custom banner ads, and custom certificates are available for a separate monthly fee. 

Best For

Businesses with up to 10,000 users and anything smaller than that. Unfortunately, they don’t offer an enterprise plan as of yet. 

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iSpring

Review:

iSpring comes in the form of an eLearning authoring toolkit that lets you create and distribute video courses with ease, or as a full-fledged LMS for all sorts of internal training. The latter, iSpring Learn, offers a 14-day free trial. After that, it’s not precisely free but the value is so good that we just had to include it here.

iSpring

Pricing:

The smallest plan is for up to 100 users, with up to 50 courses, and 1 authoring tool for $3.66 USD per user per month. For larger companies, it can go to as little as $2.82 per user for less than 500 employees.

The smallest plan is for up to 100 users, with up to 50 courses, and 1 authoring tool for $3.66 USD per user per month. For larger companies, it can go to as little as $2.82 per user for less than 500 employees.

Best For

Small and medium-sized businesses looking for a feature-rich LMS with great design, who are also willing to spend a bit but are looking for great value. 

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Upside LMS

Review:

With pricing that’s been reported to get as low as $0.60 per year, per user, UpsideLMS is worth a mention here even if they don’t have a fully-free version. They do offer a free trial though, and are a highly valued and award-winning SaaS LMS. They’re also the makers of Plethora, an eLearning library with over 80,000 courses and videos for organizational training.

Upside LMS

Pricing:

UpsideLMS offers custom pricing depending on your needs and team size. As mentioned above, the price per user per year can be as low a fraction of a dollar, but it’s really a matter of getting in touch with them and they’ll set you up with a personalized quote. 

UpsideLMS offers custom pricing depending on your needs and team size. As mentioned above, the price per user per year can be as low a fraction of a dollar, but it's really a matter of getting in touch with them and they'll set you up with a personalized quote. 

Best For

Enterprises looking for cost and time savings in an LMS that is rich in capabilities, scalable, and extremely reliable. 

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Pro Tips on Top Free LMS

Pitfalls of Choosing a LMS

What are the common mistakes people make when choosing learning management software? To answer that, let’s consider a study done by the Brandon Hall Group, a Human Capital Management research firm. In 2016, they found that 44% of the companies surveyed and using an LMS were considering replacing it. When asked why, the number one reason was frustration with the user experience, both from the perspective of the learner and the administrators. 

Like any software, a good LMS should be intuitive and easy to use for any user. Imagine, it’s your first day at a new company. Everything is new and the last thing you need is awkward, buggy, and hard to figure out software that slows you down as you try to go through onboarding or training. While not exactly a feature, ease of use is one of the top considerations you should make when deciding on a learning management system.

That being said, user experience can be hard to gauge. Unless you have a UX expert among your ranks, our advice would be to narrow down your choice to a few options, and then taking each one of them for a test drive in course authoring and content management. Using the software as you would on a normal day will immediately let you know whether it’s right for you. However, don’t just consider your own opinion. You need to determine if the user interface is friendly and intuitive for your coworkers as well, and the easiest way to do that is to have them test it as well. 

Lastly, like with any software, make sure that you also consider the vendor’s customer support, additional costs, implementation, and integrations. Also, whether its capabilities go well with your future growth plans, as in number of courses, free storage, and number of users.

Benefits and ROI of Using a Learning Management System

The challenge faced by many smbs is training employees on a tight schedule and budget. In-person classes are hard to book, and sending employees away to conferences or seminars is quite expensive. Yet, the benefits of in-house training cannot be overstated. Research from Guthrie Jensen, a consulting group, indicates that 68% of workers consider learning and development to be the no.1 company benefit for them. The same study found that companies that train their employees tend to have a 24% higher profit margin than companies that don’t. 

With all this in mind, one should think of the LMS as the cost-friendly and location-independent alternative to physical training sessions. This is the main benefit of a learning management system such as the options we’ve outlined here, since all of them are free, but it’s hardly the only one. Here are other pros that should help you justify ROI when vetting training solutions.

  • Leverage Data: With built-in reporting and analytics, you can gather information on how people are responding to your training materials, what may be lacking, identify patterns, and make decisions based on that.
  • Personalized Learning Experience: Since most of the learning is happening individually, the learning paths can be customized to the goals, needs, job description, and preferences of each learner, thus boosting employee development. 
  • Accessibility: Distributing training materials through an LMS isn’t just good for remote workers or for employees to learn wherever they want. It can also mean that training becomes more accessible for employees with disabilities.

These LMSs are Free, but What’s the Catch?

Moving forward, let’s take a deeper look at just how free these LMS solutions really are. The following chart should help you understand what’s the catch with each of them.

SoftwarePricing Model
TalentLMSFree for less than 5 users and less than 10 courses. $59 per month for up to 40 users after that.
GoSkillsThe GoSkills LMS is free forever, you just pay for external courses you might want to use.
Bitrix24Their knowledge management system is included in the free plan for unlimited users.
CoggnoTheir Training University LMS is free for unlimited users if you use their courses.
Blackboard CourseSitesFree forever light version of Blackboard for business.
ChamiloFree because it’s open source, but you need to configure your own servers.
TalentCardsFree for up to 5 users, $49/mo for up to 50 users after that.
MyicourseCompletely free and for unlimited users if your courses are public. Free for only 100 students and 100 courses if you set them as private.
iSpring Learn14-day free trial. After that, its price can be as low as $3.66 per user per month for up to 100 employees.
UpsideLMSCustom pricing, free trial, afterwards it’s as low as $0.60 per year, per user.

Key Features of a Learning Management System

In order to determine the key features that a learning management system must have, one should start by reviewing the primary function that it will be fulfilling at an organization. Course building, distributing, and tracking is the most common use for an LMS, but depending on one’s needs, X or Y LMS could also prioritize remote learning, developing materials from scratch, or integrating with different content types. 

A good LMS should work like a master archive where employees can access the company’s online training resources at any time. Instructor-led training could also be facilitated by an LMS. Overall, the primary hope with an LMS is that it’s user-friendly and effective for both the learner and the team that is distributing and updating the company’s content library.

With that in mind, these are the key features for a corporate LMS: 

  1. Reporting & Tracking: Like any sort of relationship, online training is a two way street. It doesn’t end with choosing a learning platform and uploading course content. You have to be able to understand how people are interacting with said content in order to fine tune it as you go. Any LMS should come with some reporting, analytics, and tracking capabilities, such as learner progress, completion rates, time to complete each course, individual learning paths, etc. If they don’t, you can check and see if they’ll support any plugins that would help you get those reports.
  2. Integrations: The learning experience with any LMS is enhanced when it can communicate with the rest of your software stack. Depending on your needs, you might want to make sure that the new tool integrates with your HRMS or ATS.
  3. Assessment tools: While it may be up for debate if every course should come with a test or some kind of learning assessment at the end, it’s certainly better to have this tool than to lack it. Most of the training tools we’ve discussed come with one or another way of evaluating learning outcomes. They can be as simple as a multiple choice quiz or as complex as exams with several types of questions and assignments.
  4. Gamification: Features like points, badges, and leaderboards can be a fun way of increasing employee engagement during the learning process. If your company is already into these kinds of dynamics, it will certainly make your life easier if the LMS of your choice has these built-in tools. It is also worth mentioning that the benefits of gamification in eLearning are widespread.
  5. Compliance Training & Certification: If your business requires employees to remain compliant with government regulations or a corporate policy of your own, this can cover that need. The exact shape and form of these features will vary from vendor to vendor, but they may include a log of all training activity to easily download and present in the event of an audit, for instance.

Demo Questions

Let us insist, the best thing you could do to make sure you pick the right LMS is to test it yourself (and with your team). Assuming that we’ve established that, the next best tips we could offer would be to approach your first encounter with the software, or demo if you book one, with a specific set of questions in mind. 

To do this, you can use the following list of questions as inspiration or download our excel organizer for free. 

  • What are the key features I want to try out and validate?
  • What expectations do we have for this software? What are the key things that it should help us achieve? 
  • How will this solution fit into the rest of my tech stack and therefore what integrations do I need?
  • How will others in the organization use this solution?
  • How will this tool improve the learning experience of our employees? 
  • What are the things that would make me or my coworkers nervous about switching our current processes to this platform? 
  • How are employee data and company learning materials kept safe if trusted to this vendor? 
  • What conclusions can I start to make about the quality of customer support? Is there a help center? Are the support articles clear and easy to read? Did I experience any issues?

What Does the Implementation of a LMS Look Like?

As most of the best LMS software is cloud-based & from SaaS vendors, implementing these tools can be as quick as setting up an account and your company domain. After that, it all depends on the needs of your organization, but you should consider ample time to add users and other admins, manage permissions, upload the training materials and course content you already have, and set up certifications. 

In other words, course building will likely be more time consuming than implementing the software. All of these are made with both the user and admin experience in mind, so often setting up an admin account will be almost as quick as it is for a future learner to set up theirs.

The obvious exception would be an open source system such as Chamilo or Moodle. The initial set-up process will be far more tech-intensive since it’s self-hosted. It will also be more time consuming for a user, since depending on how it’s set up, they may need to download their own version and then log-in to the company portal.

Free LMS FAQs

What does LMS mean?

LMS means learning management system.

What does a learning management system do?

Learning management systems allow your business to train new employees and teams on a variety of skills and topics. An LMS is typically used to efficiently onboard new hires and keep employees engaged, leading to increased productivity and higher retention rates.

How do you use a learning management system?

You use a learning management system to provide numerous functions for employees, including efficient and effective onboarding, skill augmentation, certifications and incentive-based learning. In addition, employers can use an LMS to track employee progress and performance.

What features should a learning management system have?

A learning management system can have the following features: administrative suite for instructors and managers, engaging training modules, tracking and reporting, course creation tools, evaluations, gamification, messaging capabilities, certifications, calendar management, mobile adaptability, and social aspects.

Last advice

We’re always big fans of software companies choosing to make some version of their product available for free. Nevertheless, you should always keep in mind that your organization’s current needs likely won’t stay the same. Even if you’d prefer a free tool today, you should make your decision considering how you might evolve with it as your business grows.

To put it differently, our last piece of advice would be to pick a free tool if you prefer to save money right now, by all means, but do it with a growth mindset. Many of the tools we outlined here offer quite a clear path to more capabilities and advanced features for competitive prices. This should also go into consideration in your decision making, as picking one tool or another and having to replace it in a year or two could be more time-consuming and expensive than going with a mildly-priced solution from the beginning. So to close off, we’d highly recommend taking a look at the full pricing models of each software outlined here and just how expensive they can become if you choose to upgrade.

In conclusion, when selecting your next & free LMS, make sure to keep the following steps in mind: 

  • Have clear objectives. 
  • Define your present & future training needs. 
  • Make a list of the deal-breaker features as well as nice-to-haves. 
  • Make a list of vendor options with all the relevant stakeholders. 
  • Demo them as a team

Best of luck!

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