Absorb LMS Reviews

Pros

It stands out for its simplicity of use and its pleasant user interface. It offers great flexibility in the design of learning experiences, adapting them to the characteristics of each training process. It has an electronic signature so that participants can demonstrate that they met the requirements of their training process. Integrates seamlessly with any eLearning content library.

Cons

I consider that this is a platform with a lot of potential, the only thing that I think can be improved is to simplify some processes to make the configuration easier.

Pros

I love that this product is customizable according to your organization's needs. The business model is to teach you how to fish so that you own the system and can make branding updates, page templates, email templates, etc. You can customize the Learner Home to your preferences. You're not stuck with an LMS in a box where you have to rely on customer support for everything. In addition, the system is simple to learn administratively. I'm most impressed with its reporting function which has been very complicated in my experience with many other learning systems. Also, the Global Resources field is awesome so you don't have to pretend documents always belong with a course.

Cons

The ILC course feature could use more flexibility. Would be great to have users be able to register for more than one ILC session within a course. I end up duplicating a lot of courses just to add the ability to register for more sessions.

Pros

Good User Interface,
Good Course Management.
Good sync with BambooHR on most things.
Good Learner interface.
Good Customisation options.

Cons

Difficult to manage blended learning.
Some factors in course management could use improvements. (Managing assessments)
Cannot see how many absences from courses that users have.
Some issues with how it syncs with Bamboo(overwriting course information)
Customer Support is non existent. 10+ days to resolve any issues. Most issues I have to try and resolve myself by resetting and that causes me other issue.
Can sometimes be 'buggy' and will introduce random bugs which can be time consuming to fix and result in me resetting the system sync.

Pros

Coming from another software, we loved the customizable features of the software!

Cons

Only honestly the reports feature. There was only ways to run mass reports, or individual person or courses. I couldn't pick various folks and run it all at once. HOWEVER being able to to download to excel file instead of CSV file was a game changer!!

Alternatives Considered

Relias Healthcare LMS

Reasons for Choosing Absorb LMS

Our contract was ending with them and we used them for HR purposes as well.

Switched From

Paycor

Reasons for Switching to Absorb LMS

The product design, the team, the support, and our data transfer.

Pros

Absorb has made the implementation process incredibly easy. User training was broken down into helpful microlearning and many features have been customizable, which my company stakeholders have loved. Having a project manager as a go-to source of knowledge has been fantastic, and the Help Center has given me self-sufficiency that I look for when working with other vendors. We also love that most features are already included in the pricing, versus being nickel and dimed for reporting, mobile interfaces, different learning methods, company branding, etc. We're excited to have Absorb help our company grow.

Cons

I'd love it if Absorb could work on additional API integrations that are included in the price. My company uses several 3rd party content creators (KnowB4, Udemy) and there are currently no connections with them.

Alternatives Considered

Coassemble, Skilljar Customer Education, LearnUpon and Docebo

Reasons for Switching to Absorb LMS

Absorb offered the most functionality for its price. It has not required major additional upsells to get the functionality we were looking for. Any other company either did not have key functionality, or cost more than Absorb to get the functionality we were looking for.

Pros

I found Absorb to be easy to use, from implementation to development. My Project Coordinators and integration teams were phenomenal in navigating the process and when challenges arise. We were able to customize the site to our likening and needs. The features are easy to use and user friendly for everyone. I would recommend this product!

Cons

The only downside that I experience was using one template for internal employees (using SSO) and external partners with e-commerce pricing. There were several issues that came up that we needed to be creative to address.

Pros

Ease of use as both a learner and administrator. ADP integration and automation. Learner and Admin portals load quickly and are responsive. Excellent support and implementation experiences with quick turn around, and constant updates and improvements in the pipe line.

Cons

Limited assessment options when it comes to answer types. Reporting structure takes a bit to get used to. Setup takes quite a bit of time investment, but pays off with future proofing the system.

Alternatives Considered

Litmos

Reasons for Switching to Absorb LMS

Value and robust functionality. Highly customizable. ADP simultaneous integration.

Pros

It is designed for all kinds of learners and organizations no matter you are a large corporation, mid-size business, or small business. It has made it easier to develop and manage training programs for both external and internal shareholders. Its main focus is on lining up learning needs with the demands of the business. It inspires business productivity. It empowers organizations all over the world to deliver training efficiently.

Cons

It is pretty expensive. Its tech support is not able to solve an issue. Sometimes, it does not do reporting at the level that you need it and results in reports that require much more manual work to meet the requirements. Also, dashboards of repotting have various column options that make it difficult to see information in one place. It lacks versioning. Thus, whenever you update a course, you will have to re-enroll all users. It has limited assessment options. So it should more options so that learners will have various paths leading to the same goal.

Pros

Ease of course creation
Branded dashboards
Recently improved search page
Options for badges and certificates
Course and resource replication easy

Cons

Organization of Course and Resource folders is only alphabetical order
No way to create groups through a CSV upload
Enrollment and Resource availability rules limited for some items (i.e. can't exclude departments in enrollments)

Pros

Absorb was the first LMS that I worked with that fully supported HTML5. The interface was beautiful from a learner perspective and could be fully branded to your company. It was intuitive and supported all of the training types that we created and purchased. The company was easy to work with and provided support for our needs.

Cons

The backend/admin portal was separate from the user portal. Meaning, it was based on different technology (flash at the time), was actually hosted on a different part of the system and did not seem as unified as other systems I have worked with. It was still very functional, but left some to be desired.

Pros

1. Ease of use - it's in the cloud.
2. Simplified admin functions
3. Decent reporting tools.
4. Customized landing page.

Cons

1. Responses from Absorb can be slow.
2. Customer service isn't the best.
3. Can suffer from service outages.

Pros

Absorb has such a wonderful client portal to submit feedback. There's an ability to submit feature requests and have other clients talk through the pros/cons and use cases for those items. I've had calls with Absorb developers based on the feedback that I had submitted and those features then went forward into the production environment. It is awesome to see how involved Absorb is in the client community.

Cons

There are not many features that are problematic. I wish there was a more seamless way to allow a learner to take one course in place of another. If a learner submitted a third party certificate for a course that is equivalent to an in-house course, the admin needs to manually award completion for the in-house course. It isn't exactly clean and can lead to some confusion when auditing learner completions to understand which version was completed vs credited.

Pros

We chose Absorb as our first Learning Management System. The design isn’t too complex, which made it easier to transition previously manual instruction to online learning. It is intuitive enough that we can allow non-trainers to create content without needing to be system experts. While we were not initially satisfied with Absorb’s customer service, within the last year (2022), they have become extremely responsive to all requests for assistance and also invite feedback and recommendations for improvement.

Cons

Sometimes the system design has what seems like obvious gaps or things that don’t work as smoothly as we would prefer for learning management. We would also like to see much more effort in the user experience to allow better filtering and course organization.

Pros

My favourite feature is the people behind the software and their willingness to provide meaningful/practical answers for each question I ask. There really are no silly questions and that is most reassuring for novel LMS users!

I had no prior experience with this type of technology so it's been quite the learning curve for me and my organization. Thanks to Team Absorb's reliable customer service, I'm still learning something new each day!

I also appreciate how many ways there are to customize the software for organizations of any size. We're relatively small (under 1,000 learners) but we have some unique features in our reporting structure. I was able to work with Team Absorb to build some behaviours/rules into our LMS that reflect our set-up and match the information coming in the nightly imports from our HRIS.

Cons

Right now, about 98% of supervisor approval requests make it to the supervisor but it would be awesome if 100% of the requests made it through.

Pros

Integrating to Absorb was pretty straightforward. The software is easy to use and the on-boarding we received was exceptional. We have been using the platform for about 2 years now and we are adding new administrators and courses on a daily basis. Our account manager [SENSITIVE CONTENT] is outstanding!

Cons

There are obviously features that are not offered in Absorb that frustrate our admins and we have just signed up for Absorb Analyze to make reporting easier and more robust. It's hard to make enhancements or changes for our organization only on the platform as changes usually go across their entire platform and are system wide.

Pros

Absorb was very easy to install and is easy to use. This product meets most of our needs and the product support has been top notch.

Cons

I do wish Absorb had an easy way to provide training content to the users who did not have accounts.

Pros

We are in our 6th year of using Absorb and have two portals for internal and external audiences. Absorb is powerful and provides a responsive experience for both the User and LMS Admin. There are features of the system we are still exploring as features and improvements are consistently offered.

Cons

We'd like to see more customization in the reporting function, especially when it comes to running mass reports based off more than one course, user, etc. Though this topic has already been addressed as a point of future improvement and releases.

Pros

Ease of use and deployment. Very beginner friendly for people who aren’t L&D professionals.

Cons

Inability to customize front page on the Learner View and reporting/analytics.

Alternatives Considered

Skillsoft

Reasons for Switching to Absorb LMS

Price, customer service, accessibility

Pros

Absorb LMS makes it easy to manage user information with data such as registered users, course evaluations and popular courses.

The flexibility of this platform is a plus with users able to customize it as they see fit.

Very good customer support.

Cons

There aren't many supported third party software options that are compatible with LMS Absorb, integrating more would make this platform even better.

Pros

Oakley moved from a custom-built application to a proven LMS platform in 2009 to address the growing opportunity to train Sales Associates on how to sell our products. We were interested in a brand-right tool to drive sales, and Blatant helped us to easily adapt their system to meet our unique needs. Being a global company, Absorb Anywhere allows us to distribute system administration responsibilities across regions for a truly localized experience. The team at Blatant continues to roll out new features that are highly applicable to our users.

Cons

We have seen no downside to partnering with Blatant on this opportunity. It's important to work with a vendor that you trust, and Blatant is definitely invested in the success of this project. As they continue to grow and expand their operations, we'll look forward to enhancements to the system that will improve our relationship with loyal users.

Pros

The admin features, while limited, are easy to learn and use.

Cons

The reporting and metrics provided by the base system are seriously lacking. In addition, their response time on support tickets when their is a bug in their system can take months or even years to correct with only a standard response that "development is investigating."

Pros

We've been using the Absorb LMS for over 3 years so we've seen it continue to evolve into a tremendous tool. We run classroom courses and offer online courses globally, so ease of use is critical. That's why we went with Absorb in the first place and their new user interface is another huge step in providing users with the best possible experience. We really consider the Absorb team to be like partners in helping us use the LMS to make our business grow by providing a better learning experience to our users. They have worked with us to develop special types of tests and surveys that are critical to our business.

Cons

For our needs, which are probably unique, the reporting is not sufficient. So we had to build a reporting tool that uses the data from the LMS. However, the Absorb Team was really great in working with us to set up the daily data exports.

Pros

It has the ability to encourage learning on the go and remotely, with extensive and versatile training options for staff. It is a very versatile and flexible platform that has everything you need to ensure that corporate learning takes place at an excellent level. It provides high-quality third-party integrations to use content created in another application.

Cons

It has excellent customization options, although for new users it can be a challenge to use them.

Pros

Both the front end and back end are easy to use and navigate.

Cons

How a person can only be attached to one department with one email address.

Pros

Blatant Media developed such a forward thinking interface that it hasn't needed a refresh the last few years. This is a positive, not a negative. I've been both an admin and a user of the system and it's really nice to know everything is going to be laid out the same even after not using it for a few months. Very future proof. The responsive capabilities of the user end are really top-notch as well. Great for blended learning as well as complete "eLearning."

Cons

Support is just okay. I think they outsource their support and it's not always super efficient.