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.
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We track thousands of HR Tech solutions. Here are the best free learning management systems as of 2022.
Why we love it
:
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
:
iSpring Learn is a very complete LMS platform for a great price, with very personal and efficient tech support.
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
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
:
UpsideLMS puts over 16 years of experience into a comprehensive product that is more geared towards enterprises and can be quite cost-friendly.
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
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
:
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 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
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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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.
GoSkills
Review:
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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TalentLMS is one of the most well-known, affordable, and versatile Learning Management Systems ever.
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
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: