5+Best LMS for Small Business of 2024 (Ranked & Reviewed)
Choosing the Right LMS for small business is vitally important if you want to build a large brand or course with funnels, landing pages, CRM, email, and all the bells and whistles. From customer relationship management, assessment and testing, certification, reporting, and even student interaction, like messaging to progress tracking, the best LMs for small businesses can help you meet your goals. In this guide, I have ranked and reviewed the 6 best LMS for small businesses so that you can pick the one that is best for you.
What is the Best LMS for Small business?
Before you check out our list of the best learning management systems for small business, take a moment to answer these questions. They’ll guide you to the right LMS for you and prevent you from making a blind decision.
Are you intending to sell courses to students or train your own personnel (or your client’s personnel)?
If employee training or certification is your aim, an enterprise LMS is your only choice.
Is your course or community your top priority?
If your community outweighs your video course in importance, consider platforms like Skool, Kajabi, or Mighty Networks.
Do you aim to fully engage your students in the training process? Will you be offering quizzes, assessments, and certifications, or opting for a more hands-off approach?
If the former, platforms such as Absorb, Kajabi, or Kartra will suit your needs.
Are additional features a necessity for you?
While marketing, CRM, landing pages, and user profiles may sound enticing, consider how likely you are to actually utilize them. Many subscribe to platforms like Kajabi with grand plans but never follow through. If your aim is solely to sell courses and cultivate a small community, focus your investment accordingly.
However, if you aspire to build a comprehensive business, platforms like Kajabi or Kartra could be ideal—provided you fully leverage their features.
What is your starting point?
This is a factor we initially overlooked. Are you launching a business from scratch or expanding an existing brand?
If you’re starting anew, consider a platform with website-building and marketing features to establish your brand while keeping costs manageable. Conversely, if you already have an established brand, you may only require a community platform to elevate your existing business.
6 Best LMS for small business
1)Skool – Community-Based Small Business lms
Skool is a simple, powerful best lms for small business that perfectly blends online courses with communities.It’s affordable, easy to use, and advanced enough to provide everything needed for a course, online community, and messaging.The key selling point here is that it’s simple, affordable, and includes everything needed and nothing not needed. With Skool, you can be up and running in minutes without sacrificing much.
Skool LMS Key Features:
Skool offers a comprehensive range of features to cater to your educational needs.
Firstly, it provides a robust Classroom feature, allowing you to effortlessly add videos or entire courses. This enables you to deliver content in a structured and engaging manner, enhancing the learning experience for your students.
Moreover, Skool facilitates the creation of vibrant Communities within your platform. With features such as forums, notifications, followers, and student profiles, you can foster a sense of belonging and collaboration among your learners. This encourages active participation and peer-to-peer learning, enriching the educational journey.
Furthermore, Skool incorporates Gamification elements to incentivize student engagement. Through points, badges, and contribution levels, you can motivate learners to actively participate and progress through the course material. This gamified approach adds an element of fun and competition, driving student motivation and retention.
Additionally, Skool offers an Auto Affiliate feature, allowing you to earn a 40% commission if any student starts their own Skool course or community. This incentivizes not only the creation of quality content but also the promotion and growth of your educational platform.
Lastly, Skool ensures seamless Communication with a community chat feature. This facilitates real-time interaction and collaboration among students and instructors, fostering a supportive learning environment.
What you will love from Skool:
Skool offers a simple and user-friendly community platform, making it effortless to provide ongoing support, coaching, and live events for students. This not only enhances the value of your courses but also opens up new opportunities for earning money beyond the initial purchase. Plus, you can offer different course levels with various payment options, just like we do.
With Skool, you can host complete courses with ease. You can drip-feed content, offer subscriptions, and even create different course levels. For instance, you can lock certain courses behind a paywall or make them exclusive to members.
Skool brings together courses, communities, and resources in one convenient place. You can share videos, engage with students, and store resources—all within a simple and intuitive interface.
Gamification is built into Skool to encourage student interaction. You can create different contribution levels and customize their names, which boosts student engagement. Students earn badges as they participate in discussions, unlocking new content along the way.
Skool stands out with its live events feature, setting it apart from other learning platforms like Teachable or Thinkific. You can schedule live events directly within your community, and students receive notifications. It’s easy for them to join the event with just a click.
Overall, Skool strikes the perfect balance between power and simplicity. It provides everything you need—courses, communities, and communication—in a straightforward and intuitive manner. Students and teams can use it without any training, thanks to its user-friendly design and comprehensive features.
Skool pricing:
Get all features, unlimited courses, and unlimited members—all for one low price with Skool.
Skool costs a fraction of what most other learning management systems charge. Plus, its pricing is straightforward, so you won’t waste time trying to figure out what you need.
If you have your training materials ready, you could be up and running with Skool in just a day.
2)Mighty Networks – communities LMS systems for small businesses
For individuals, influencers, and businesses seeking to build a vibrant community and social network, Mighty Networks stands out as the best LMS for small business.Mighty Networks prioritizes community learning management above all else.
You can create courses, events, webinars, conferences, live streams, private groups, and more with it. Plus, you can monetize everything in multiple ways, making it stand out from other LMSs. Think of it as having your own private version of Facebook tailored specifically for your course.
Key feature :
Micro-events like mini courses, live videos, and groups can be monetized.
Advanced student discussion and participation are facilitated.
Social networking is built into the platform.
Videos, files, attachments, and links are allowed to foster learning and discussion.
A landing page builder is included.
Email marketing is built into the platform.
Advanced community building training is provided.
What you will love from more mighty networks :
Mighty Networks allows you to monetize your community in various ways that other platforms don’t offer. You can easily charge for courses, memberships, private groups, coaching, or even single events. In fact, you could even charge for your community, a group within it, and single events within that group within your community.
When it comes to delivering courses, Mighty Networks’ learning management system gives you complete flexibility. Whether it’s standard courses, mini-courses, webinars, cohort-based courses, memberships, or drip-feed content, it’s the most adaptable best lms for small business available at this price point.
With Mighty Networks, you get collaborative social learning, almost like having your own social media network tailored specifically for your course and community.
You can easily share events, blog articles, photos, videos, or any other content to enrich your students’ learning experience. Additionally, students can communicate with each other, share their progress, or seek help whenever they need.
Hosting value-added events such as webinars, live events, or conferences—whether paid or free—is effortless with Mighty Networks.
These events not only enhance the value for your students but also enable you to charge higher prices for your community and introduce new revenue streams. It’s truly a win-win situation for everyone involved.
Despite its impressive features, Mighty Networks comes at a surprisingly affordable price. In fact, it’s cheaper than similar platforms like Teachable or Kajabi.
Mighty Networks Pricing
Mighty Networks offers great value considering all the LMS features it provides. For just $99/month, you get access to courses, a community, events, analytics, and workflows, giving you everything you need to create engaging learning experiences and run a successful business.
However, the $33/month plan doesn’t offer much value in our opinion. You won’t be able to create courses or track learner progress, which is essential for running your business effectively.
Compared to other educational technology platforms like Teachable, Mighty Networks is actually cheaper, yet it offers far more functionality. It outperforms both Teachable and Thinkific, its main competitors.
In summary, Mighty Networks is a top-notch course platform and the ultimate online community builder. If you’re aiming to build a large, thriving community, Mighty Networks is the obvious choice.
3) Kajabi – The Best All-in-One learning management system for small business
Kajabi stands out as a complete Best LMS for Small Business, perfect for course creators, consultants, and coaches.
With Kajabi, you can manage your website, marketing, funnels, community, contact management, and analytics seamlessly from one dashboard. Although it’s not the most affordable or straightforward option, it’s undoubtedly the best all-in-one platform available.
Key feature :
It offers courses, memberships, communities, and drip-feed content. Customer relationship management (CRM) is included. Built-in marketing tools include funnels, websites, and SEO optimization. Advanced features such as podcasts and mobile apps are available. It provides advanced analytics.
What you will love from kajabi:
Kajabi simplifies everything by putting your entire business under one roof. This streamlines management, growth, and analytics, making it easy to identify inefficiencies or successes and take appropriate action.
With Kajabi’s advanced automations for quizzes, emails, CRM, forms, events, and more, you can set up “when-if” automations to trigger emails, messages, and upsells, allowing your business to grow on autopilot.
It serves as more than just a typical eLearning platform; Kajabi is a business-building learning management system. You can create landing pages, funnels, and email campaigns all within the platform, without needing extra plugins.
Kajabi’s eCommerce features help boost conversions with additional payment options, upsells, and optimized layouts on landing pages and checkout pages.
In addition to standard community features, Kajabi allows you to add a podcast and a personalized mobile app, taking your community engagement to the next level.
With CRM included, Kajabi enables you to manage, tag, and market to different student segments for better ROI, a feature that most learning management systems lack.
Kajabi pricing :
Now, for the sad part.
Kajabi is NOT cheap.
However, it’s a steal considering the value that you get.
For about $200 a month, you get courses, communities, advanced marketing features, a landing page builder, and the best video tutorials and education available in the eLearning industry.
Kajabi actually replaces a lot of other software like email marketing, page builders, and even CRM. Those tools could easily add up to $500+ per month. In that way, Kajabi is actually saving you money.
Considering all of the features you get, Kajabi is more than a fair value.
4) Absorb LMS – The Best Learning Management System Hands Down
Absorb learning management system stands out as the most advanced LMS in 2024. With its social learning tools, student enrichment features, advanced reporting capabilities, and customizable student experience, it surpasses any other tool we’ve ever encountered.
Furthermore, it’s the preferred choice for Fortune 500 companies, universities, corporate compliance training, sales team training, and blended learning environments.
With Absorb, you have the flexibility to offer various types of training and personalize nearly every aspect of your eLearning package. Additionally, you can facilitate third-party training both internally and externally.
To elaborate briefly on third-party employee training: This involves offering online learning programs to employees of other companies.
For instance, if businesses or educational institutions require employee training, such as compliance or sales training, they can enlist your services. You’d provide online learning programs, learning materials, and certification as necessary.
In summary, Absorb is the ideal LMS for upskilling or onboarding employees, training partners, selling training programs to corporate clients, or managing students in higher learning institutions.
Key features:
You get to fully personalize the learning experience with Absorb:
- Add your company’s branding
- Tailor courses by location or department
- Customize the interface to suit different needs
Encourage collaboration and engagement with:
- Social sharing
- Social profiles
- Comments and threads
- Gamification
- Leaderboards
- Badges
- Certificates
Enjoy a top-notch learning journey with:
- Quizzes
- Videos
- Polls
Access comprehensive reporting tools for:
- Tracking student performance
- Evaluating courses
- Assessing learning competencies
- Managing learner to-do lists
Integrate third-party training resources seamlessly:
- LinkedIn Learning
- SkillSoft
- SkillPill
- Biz Library
All these features make Absorb an outstanding choice for creating a dynamic and effective learning environment.
What you will love from Absorb LMS:
- Personalized Training:
Absorb LMS lets you tailor eLearning to fit any learner, regardless of their skills, location, department, or objectives. You have the flexibility to adjust branding, hide features, add new lessons, and use AI to recommend content based on performance. This is great for companies needing to train various groups like students, employees, new hires, clients, and partners spread across different locations.
- Complete Social Learning:
Absorb serves as your company’s own eLearning social network, boosting engagement, fostering achievement, and ensuring accountability. Students can share accomplishments, seek assistance, connect with mentors, earn badges, and participate in polls. It’s more than just a learning system—it’s a platform for social learning.
- Ready-to-Go Internal Training:
With Absorb, you can skip the hassle of creating your own training materials. Access content from third-party providers to meet internal and external training needs. For instance, effortlessly provide new hires with wellness, communication, diversity, and mental health training. This saves time and resources, allowing you to focus on core business activities. You can also integrate content from platforms like LinkedIn Learning or SkillSoft.
- Effortless Onboarding and Skill Building:
Absorb simplifies onboarding, upskilling, and retraining processes for both new and existing employees. Utilize checklists, project management tools, and pre-made training materials. Whether it’s certifying new hires or providing specialized training for IT, HR, or sales roles, Absorb streamlines the process, making it 95% hands-off.
- AI-Powered Efficiency:
Absorb stands out as the only LMS on the list harnessing predictive AI to enhance outcomes for students and administrators alike. The AI recommends relevant content, highlights trending topics, and guides students through courses. For administrators, it assists in tracking student progress, identifying opportunities, and providing solutions to issues. This predictive AI functionality streamlines administrative tasks and optimizes the learning experience for all users.
Absorb Pricing :
Absorb is an enterprise LMS that is more of a social learning platform than it is a typical LMS.
This implies that there is no “one size fits all pricing”. Everything is tailored to your business. Consequently, the cost could be influenced by factors such as the number of employees you have, the features needed, and the intended use of the online learning platform.
A pricing quote will need to be obtained by contacting Absorb and scheduling a free demo. Regardless of how Absorb is ultimately utilized, it is assuredly worth every penny.
5.TalentLMS:
TalentLMS is among the top learning management systems for small businesses. It’s simple to set up and use, offering all the necessary features to create and deliver online courses. Its drag-and-drop interface reduces setup time significantly.
Features like live sessions, tests, quizzes, learning paths, and custom roles are readily available, along with customization options, video conferences, task automation, reports, and third-party integrations. Additionally, if you have a team of fewer than five users, you can even access TalentLMS for free.
What you will love from talent lms:
- Free Forever Plan: TalentLMS offers a forever free plan that accommodates up to five users and allows for the creation of up to 10 courses without any cost.
- Multilingual Support: The platform supports over 30 languages, ensuring accessibility and usability for a diverse user base.
- Course Building: TalentLMS provides an easy-to-use platform for building courses tailored for online sale. This feature streamlines the process of creating and delivering content, enhancing the user experience for both creators and learners.
- TalentLibrary: TalentLMS includes access to TalentLibrary, which offers a vast collection of resources for soft skills training. This feature expands the scope of learning opportunities available on the platform, enriching the learning experience for users.
Talent LMS PRICING:
6. iSpring Lms for businesses
iSpring offers a variety of features like mobile learning, certification, compliance training, product training, onboarding, reporting, integrations, and SCORM support. Their customer support is quick too, with 83% of support cases responded to within two hours—an essential perk for businesses needing help with their LMS setup or usage. you can consider Best LMS for Small Business.
What you will love from ispring:
- Supports SCORM: iSpring supports SCORM, which stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. This allows for seamless integration of content into various learning management systems, ensuring compatibility and ease of use.
- Create Learning Tracks: iSpring enables users to create learning tracks, which are structured paths that guide learners through a series of courses or modules. This feature helps organize content and ensures that learners progress through the material in a logical sequence.
- Receive Notifications Upon Student Completion: iSpring provides notifications to instructors or administrators when students complete courses or modules. This feature allows for timely feedback and tracking of learner progress, enhancing the overall learning experience.
ISPRING PRICING:
LMS for small business: Simple Solutions
If you haven’t made a decision yet about the best LMS for small businesses,
So, Let me clarify this for you.
Here are our top choices for Best LMS for Small Business:
- Absorb: Ideal for large companies or higher education institutions requiring top-notch interactive features, corporate training, and client training content. It’s renowned for its excellence in providing software solutions for corporations, enterprises, universities, and corporate upskilling firms.
- Skool: Perfect for course creators seeking simplicity in course creation and community building. It’s affordable, user-friendly, and straightforward.
- Mighty Networks: Best suited for those focusing on building communities, offering an extensive range of community features unmatched by other LMS platforms.
- Kajabi: Recommended for individuals aiming to create, grow, and market both courses and communities. It boasts exceptional marketing and brand-building features.
- Kartra: An alternative to Kajabi, particularly for those seeking a more affordable option. However, it’s worth noting that Kartra is somewhat limited in its capabilities and lacks flexibility.
Best LMS for small businesses conclusion:
In conclusion, selecting the best learning management system (LMS) for small businesses is crucial for optimizing employee training, enhancing customer engagement, and fostering organizational growth.
It’s essential to prioritize features such as ease of use, affordability, scalability, and comprehensive support.
Whether it’s Absorb for its robust interactive features, Skool for its simplicity and affordability, or Mighty Networks for its community-building capabilities, each LMS offers unique advantages tailored to different business needs.
By carefully assessing requirements and considering factors like budget and future scalability, small businesses can make informed decisions to harness the power of technology and propel their success forward.