TalentLMS

Pros

The design of this software is well thought out. Although TalentLMS has many sophisticated features (everything one could possibly need and more), it's designed in such a way to minimize user complexity. As an admin and instructor, I'm able to get things done quickly without much time and effort (with limited technical knowledge). The visual look and feel of an LMS is important to me. Many LMS systems look "techy" and are NOT a pleasure to use. TalentLMS is clean and elegant and provides a great experience for admins, instructors and users. I think of TalentLMS as the Apple computer of LMS systems. Another big differentiator is that TalentLMS enables instructors to create courses quickly without a painful learning curve that kills productivity. Learning content is placed into buckets called learning objects. Any kind of content hosted anywhere can be used. Making changes to courses is a snap. Also, I found the white labeling and customization of TalentLMS to be surprisingly easy. Support documentation is thorough and well written. I was able to quickly customize our learning portal without doing any HTML coding whatsoever in about 30 minutes! No help from technical experts needed. Before deciding on TalentLMS, I reviewed dozens of LMS providers (a hair-pulling experience) and found most to be very expensive, complex, lack-luster on feature and visual appeal. I just don't have the patience or the time to deal with those handicaps! We are very glad to have discovered TalentLMS.

Cons

After about a year, I haven't encountered any problems using TalentLMS. Of course, there's always room for improvement on the way to perfection. There appears to be a little overlap in the learning objects - Content, Web content and videos are really just "content". However, this could be by design. Maybe there should be a universal content object that accommodates all content types. The only videos accepted for the "Video" object are YouTube. However, we use another video hosting platform to protect our content from download, among other reasons. However, this is not a real problem because we just embed our videos using the content learning object, which looks sort of like a WordPress content box. Just copy the embed code from the video provider and paste into the content box. That's it; works great. The only other thing I can think of is that the default HTML video player could use a few more control bar options such as view quality selection and a way to set download video or disallow download video. However, this is not a problem for us because we use embed video codes from our video hosting provider and therefore the provider's video player is used instead of the default HTML player. We control the features of this video player on the video hosting side.

Pros

TalentLMS offers all of the features that we created in our own LMS, plus all of the features we planned to implement and lots more. The best parts are the simple setup and configuration, and the ability to quickly switch between different roles; no more individual accounts for a administrator, instructor, and learner.

As an instructor, building courses is a doddle. Choosing content types and adding material is streamlined and methodical. There is plenty of content types to choose from, and I particularly like the ability to bundle instructor-led training into a course because this fits our certification model perfectly.

Of course, any decent LMS will support SCORM and the xAPI, but TalentLMS goes one further and handles CMI5 packaging and credential handshaking, too. I'm also impressed with the highly configurable gamification settings, which can be tuned to our training market perfectly.

Overall I am impressed with the presentation and usability of the platform. There is, of course, plenty of room for improvement and expansion, but for its affordable price we couldn't want for more in an LMS for our start-up.

Cons

I would like to see more control for language variations. Some of our courses will be provided in multiple languages and it would be great to partition course material by language. We currently use a custom course field to hold a BCP47 language code, but there is little more we can do at the moment to prevent a de-DE user from seeing (by default) content that is for fr-FR, zh-CN, or sl-SI, for example. I would be happy to consult on this request because internationalisation, localisation, and language is my profession.

I have found the WordPress API to be lacking in features and customisation. It would be convenient, even in the simplest of terms, to list courses in horizontal tiles instead of a vertical list, which isn't pretty.

Lastly, it would be great if TalentLMS could provide access to the catalogue for unregistered users (or people that have not signed in) for a selection of courses or lessons. We offer free courses or free lessons to help advertise the service and attract new instructors and learners, so it would be great if we could pick and choose free courses (or courses/lessons marked as "Taster" sessions) to be accessible by anyone without signing in.

Pros

Simplicity and user friendly environment, possibility to add content in different formats, simple administration no special skills are needed to work with the software.

When logged in, one can find a lot of methodological information on how to work and how to create training programs, which really facilitates the work. Although at the very beginning it seemed like we can create a training program quickly (in 2 months) ourselves, but the first program, which will be soon tested and presented on the Lithuanian market, took us half a year. It turned out that the methodological recommendations provided by Talent LMS are relevant and useful.

We still did not try many things on the system (e.g. reports, massive user registration, gamification and other great tools), but we know that we will find the guidance on how to work with them in the recommendations.

From the technical side the management of the system is very simple, there is no need for any special IT knowledge what is huge advantage.

Cons

The majority of our clients read and write in Lithuanian. We have noticed that Talent LMS system language in web browsers is Lithuanian but in other devices, e.g. IPad and phones, it works in English only.

Hopefully it is just a temporary challenge until we have the Lithuanian language on all devices. Since this is our first online training program, we are still learning many things and it is hard to make key observations.

For example, we are currently thinking how to register 200 users at once into one training program if a client provides a list of student contacts. Not all of our clients will be able to register themselves on-line, therefore we will have to do this ourselves. Of course, we found an excel document on how to include students, but we haven`t tried it yet.

Also, before we start, another issue of concern is the protection of personal data in accordance with EU directives. We will have to prepare legal descriptions by ourselves and give them for students to sign so as not to violate the EU law. It would be very helpful if we could get help from Talent LMS for such legal issues. This help could include the prepared and validated descriptions that must be automatically signed by the student who joins the system.

We work with a variety of systems, such as ProsperWorks. It has a convenient integration with G-Suite. Maybe in the future something similar could be done with Talent LMS.

Pros

Let's start with the cost- easily the highest featured for the money LMS out there.
We went with Moodle and really tried to make it work for quite some time. We were on the verge of hiring a Moodle expert to help us take the project live, but instead took one last look at the market. TalentLMS hits the sweet spot between self-hosting a Moodle site for free and paying a lot of money for a high-end LMS.

We wanted an LMS that offered content creation built in, and not in a clunky fashion, but in an intuitive, well designed way. TalentLMS offers this. We also use Wix pages and embed them to produce the content we like.
We wanted to create Branches for each of our centres in order to track compliance and learning scores per centre. TalentLMS offers this.
We wanted easy gamification and a feeling that this is 'fun'. The feedback from our test group was amazing- they loved it and it just works.
We wanted to host it originally, but TalentLMS allows us to map the domains and use our own URLs while still allowing all updates and content to be handled remotely on their servers. Brilliant!

You can customise your LMS- we installed live web-chat functions to help our users. All colours and logos can be personalised. Great!

In reality- how different is every LMS from each other? Talent works for us as its a fantastic price point and ticks all the boxes we need! It's cheap enough for you to try it (free at first!) and decide for yourself. We haven't regretted our decision once.

Cons

The only think I marked down was the Customer Support, but only because I would like something like a live webchat function for admins.
It's perhaps a bit unfair as they have a ticketing function that allows users to create tickets for issues and they respond to you really quickly (less than 30mins in my experience).
However, at the start of our implementation, I'd like to talk to somebody in real-time about issues and problems, so this is the only thing I would change. Using a system like Tawk.to (free!) would have been an idea for them.
We've actually installed Tawk.to on our version of TalentLMS and it's great for our users.

Pros

Great design.
Powerful LMS administration tools...easily accessible.
Intuitive for the learner, instructor and administrator.
Highly customizable, with branches that can be branded for teams, departments or even different products. Easy to replicate learning objects for different users.
Personalization for system and course communication.
Responsive support.
Great culture.

Cons

One of their strengths is a weakness. The platform is cloud-based so updates are easy and keep the platform working effectively with little or no administrative intervention. But some of the updates can affect third party integrations. When updates come through, administrators should be informed of potential incompatibilities and plan for the update. I am confident that updates will be done with advanced notice in the future. They are responsive to feedback too!
One more thing, I wish it could read my mind.