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.
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. Most of the vendors featured on our site have no commercial relationship with us, we want to feature the best software for our readers regardless. Learn more
We track thousands of HR Tech solutions. Here are the best free learning management systems as of March 2021.
Why we love it
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eloomi really does offer a robust LMS, especially when you consider this is a free offering and seamlessly integrates with their broader employee experience platform.
eloomi
Review
If you have less than 10 courses / users, you can use eloomi's LMS for free. This comes with course authoring, employee onboarding, analytics, compliance awareness and more.
This is a great way to get learning started in your organization for the right price, with a simple to setup and use platform.
eloomi
Customers
Domino’s, Jabra GN, Sophos, Le Creuset, Icelandair Hotels, Delta.
eloomi
Stats
Best For
Smaller companies and teams who want to get started with an LMS but don't have a large budget.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
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GoSkills is a free LMS platform that’s ripe for businesses of all sizes and also offers access to a wide course library for everything from body language to financial modeling.
With a beautiful and intuitive design, it’s surprising that GoSkills is free forever and for as many learners as you like. They offer the option to upgrade and unlock more features or gain access to their library of over 70 award-winning on-demand courses. Their free LMS, however, is simple, easy to use, and includes most of what a small or medium-sized business would need to train employees.
GoSkills
Customers
Hilton, Mars Incorporated, Time Warner Cable, and Konika Minolta.
GoSkills
Stats
GoSkills
Pricing
GoSkills is free forever, for as many users as you need, you only pay for the courses that you might use.
Best For
All kinds of businesses, but especially those that would favor a cloud-based and easy-to-set up LMS with ready-made content.
Worth Checking Out:
GoSkills’ free LMS also offers self-tracking and goal setting, gamification, social learning (see which courses others in the organization are taking), and more.
Why we love it
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Chamilo is an open source LMS with a tight-knit international community of developers, users, and HR professionals built around it.
If you’d like to go the open source route, Chamilo is one of the best-rated learning management and collaboration systems out there. Like with any open source tool, It would require you to do the installation yourself and configure your own servers, which is certainly a cost that needs contemplating. Other than that, the software is free to use and there is a very active community of users that supports the project and offers guidance in the face of any issues. As to the software itself, it’s a powerful and customizable LMS.
Chamilo
Customers
Chamilo
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Chamilo
Pricing
Completely free and for as many users as you like, you just have to consider the costs of setting up and maintenance, since it’s self-hosted.
Best For
Chamilo is used by organizations of various sizes and in all kinds of sectors, ideal for those that prefer the open-source alternative for their LMS.
Worth Checking Out:
Chamilo offers specific features for certification and compliance management.
Why we love it
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UpsideLMS puts over 16 years of experience into a comprehensive product that is more geared towards enterprises and can be quite cost-friendly.
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
Customers
Bridgestone, Gulf, and Doha Bank.
Upside LMS
Stats
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.
Best For
Enterprises looking for cost and time savings in an LMS that is rich in capabilities, scalable, and extremely reliable.
Worth Checking Out:
Among its many features, Upside LMS comes with multi-lingual support. English is the default, but you can change the platform to Arabic, French, Spanish, and much more, with a single click.
Why we love it
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Blackboard CourseSites is a free LMS provided by one of the top names in eLearning, both for businesses and learning institutions in all levels.
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
Customers
Blackboard CourseSites
Stats
Blackboard CourseSites
Pricing
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.
Worth Checking Out:
The mobile version of CourseSites is the Blackboard app, available for Android & iOS, which would also give you a taste of the Blackboard LMS for Business.
Why we love it
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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.
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
Customers
Visma, eLearning Space, and Grouper Knowledge Transfer.
TalentCards
Stats
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.
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.
Worth Checking Out:
As the LMS for mobile workers, TalentCards also features Card Index and Search so people can swiftly find the micro lesson they’re looking for. They also perform their own training research and share it widely.
Why we love it
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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.
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
Customers
Myicourse
Stats
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.
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.
Worth Checking Out:
Their royalty feature lets you pre-set payments in case you need to compensate someone that helped create your courses.
Why we love it
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Bitrix24 is a full-on digital workplace that also happens to have a good learning management module, for free!
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.
Bitrix
Customers
Bitrix
Stats
Used by over 7 million organizations worldwide
Bitrix
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.
Worth Checking Out:
The free version of Bitrix24 also offers a very wide array of other features and tools, from a project knowledge base to a basic eCommerce module.
Why we love it
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iSpring Learn is a very complete LMS platform for a great price, with very personal and efficient tech support.
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
Customers
Villa St. Vincent, Central One, Acer Service, and L’Oréal.
iSpring
Stats
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.
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.
Worth Checking Out:
Although iSpring Learn is a cloud-based solution, they offer optional on-premise installation for businesses that prefer to host the software in an isolated environment.
Why we love it
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Coggno is a well-established eLearning marketplace that also offers an LMS platform for businesses.
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
Customers
Subway, Costco, Avis, and 7Eleven.
Coggno
Stats
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.
Best For
Teams that want to leverage a wide course library and prefer not to create their own training materials for the time being.
Worth Checking Out:
Coggno offers many authoring tools, SCORM friendliness, and key features like an automated training process and reporting.
Why we love it
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TalentLMS is one of the most well-known, affordable, and versatile Learning Management Systems ever.
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
Customers
HarperCollins Publishers, Rosetta Stone, and DeLonghi.
TalentLMS
Stats
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: