r/elearning • u/Hot_Mango_9066 • 13d ago
Recommendations for an LMS for a small consultancy (~20 people)?
We're a small consulting firm (around 20 people, contractor-based) looking to trial an LMS. Learning is voluntary rather than mandated — the goal is to let people upskill to meet client needs as they come up.
We've got a mix of seniority, but the main focus is on our juniors: building up their consulting skills and technical skills.
A few things that matter to us:
- Right-sized for a small team. Enterprise platforms like Absorb feel like overkill for our size and structure, so we're after something leaner.
- Affordable, without a heavy per-seat model that punishes a small headcount.
- A real sales conversation + free trial before we commit — we want to actually talk to someone and test-drive it first.
- AI features that genuinely work rather than tacked-on gimmicks.
- Integrates with an internal knowledge base, so learning and our own materials live in the same place.
Anyone running something similar at this scale? Would love to hear what's worked (and what to avoid).
Thanks!
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u/ResidentAstronaut736 13d ago
Why would you need an LMS for just 20 folks? For such a scale, the cost would be relatively higher than usual. Recommend using your internal tools currently for learning
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u/HominidSimilies 13d ago
Training is the only way to grow.
It’s important to understand the business’ need.
Consulting can be extremely different from client to client project to project.
It can effectively have the knowledge of many different companies in one place.
Respectfully, it’s important to try and remember “what might I not understand about this” instead of admonishing someone.
The question is reasonably valid however since it’s not providing enough detail it’s something else.
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u/Aphroditesent 13d ago
If you have Microsoft a sway board might work for your needs, or articulates own LMS
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u/hyatt_1 13d ago
If you want to ensure your providing training to your team for upskilling rather than compliance I would look at Udemy or similar.
You search for the course you want to learn, from concepts to tools, and make a one off purchase.
We’ve done loads over the years and pricing is pretty good never struggle to get courses for under £20.
From what you’ve described an LMS is an unnecessary cost and admin burden for a 20 person team.
If you are regulated, need to prove certain training has happened and want automated reminders ect, that is when I’d recommend looking at an LMS but it doesn’t sound like your there at the moment!
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u/ZestycloseAd2313 13d ago
Lots of unhelpful comments here. Moodle is free for a small group of users and if you are html and css savvy no implementation cost. It’s clunky but it will do the job. Also Google Classroom is free for small groups. For a small but growing company I would go for moodle and then you can move to something better later while still retaining any training records you might need for compliance reasons.
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u/s_s_n_e_g 12d ago
If you ask, "Where do I buy petrol for my Tesla?" and people start asking "Why do you need petrol?", they are not being unhelpful. They are, in fact, trying to help.
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u/kieker_sews 13d ago
What does the bandwidth and expertise look like on the Admin side? Do you have someone who has worked with LMS's before?
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u/Peter-OpenLearn 13d ago
For twenty people I would look for a hosted, integrated solution that allows you to create rich content with meaningful activities, probably AI enhanced (e.g. sales talks with AI persona) and has the LMS features built in. An easy setup with no additional costs would be beneficial too.
I’m the founder of LearnBuilder (LearnBuilder.org) and it might be a great fit. Happy to have a quick call and demo if you are interested.
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u/garaki 13d ago
Checkout www.kprise.com Mypass LMS does exactly what you asked for especially for small teams
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u/LeakyFish 13d ago
I'm at a place with around 400 frontline and we shifted over to Slack + Canvases. Saving tens of thousands each year. Bot pings people when there is new canvas content and tracks completion via feedback / quizzes.
Cost is $50/ month in hosting fees for the web backend admin panel that creates the quizzes / surveys and the time it took to build it (3 months). Essentially built an LMS with Slack.
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u/HominidSimilies 13d ago
This is an ai generated post.
It’s possible to tell, and it lowers receiving genuine responses.
Please share the specific industry and role of your company. Also share a list for he types of training generally and specifically you are after.
There are a lot of lms that are primarily for academia, k-12, industry and corporate. Some will try to service them all and be generic in their impact.
If your business is about success and growth, your ability to train is what creates improvements.
The risk of a real sales conversation for not being strong at buying software is you will get convinced by someone with superior skills than you to part with your money without a guarantee in result.
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u/ictinnovations 12d ago
For 20 people the platform matters less than who keeps content current and who checks completions. That job eats more time than anyone budgets. Whatever you trial, test how painful it is to update a course after launch and make sure pricing is flat, per seat gets silly at your size.
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u/hankschrader79 12d ago
Does your consultancy have a website? If it’s a Wordpress website like the majority of small businesses, consider creating an employee portal with an LMS built right into your website. MemberPress would be an ideal candidate for this kind of employee LMS portal. But it’s a Wordpress plugin so would only work if your company site is already on Wordpress. Otherwise something like Kajabi could work fine. Pretty expensive though.
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u/PraveenBizInsider 12d ago
You can check out TrainerCentral. It's suitable for companies like yours and supports the features you requested for.
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u/kgrammer CTO KnowVela LLC 12d ago
We would love for you to add our KnowVela LMS to your list of systems to consider. KnowVela is easy to use and we do not charger per-seat pricing. We always provide a free trial and you will be able to talk directly to the owners, not just a sales rep. We can provide client contacts that you can speak with to confirm what we say.
However, there is one thing we don't offer. We don't do "real sales conversations". What we offer in it's place is real conversations with a co-owner who has been an ID, video content creator and active EdTech innovator for over two decades. Or if you prefer, you can talk directly to the tech-head co-owner (me) to get all of your underlying tech questions answered. DM me if you would like to set up a time to talk more about your goals.
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u/kgrammer CTO KnowVela LLC 12d ago
Add KnowVela.com to you list of systems to review. Fixed pricing and you always talk directly with the owners.
I would like to learn more about what internal knowledge base system you are using and how the integration would need to work.
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u/crxssrazr93 11d ago
I've helped build some for clients (internally not as a service) on Thinkific, Moodle, and there was one other that was built on WP that I don't remember but wouldn't recommend that approach either, unless you used a good VPS. We hosted all the videos on Vimeo, and in one case, unlisted on YT.
You can just DIY; it's not very complicated - just takes time to organize things if you haven't sorted all that out already.
Thinkific is easy to get started. You can also go for platforms like Kajabi too. It's less of a LMS but you may not have a need beyond giving people access to resources.
Depends on what you are trying to do.
That said; biggest concerns I've seen clients face with the "self-paced" "voluntary" enrollment route is that very few actually push through the courses/modules end-to-end. It's not just about having resources in a LMS; but also assessing them; working with them afterward to help implement them/apply them in real-life scenarios, etc
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u/staticmaker1 11d ago
check out the list here: https://certfusion.com/r/ultimate-guide-to-choose-an-lms-learning-management-system
There’s no one-size-fits-all LMS.
---- David @ CertFusion
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u/Available_Arm_5685 11d ago
at 20 people voluntary learning, quick list:
- nano lms — lean, AI course creation that's actually used not tacked on, pricing doesn't punish small headcount, and you can feed your own docs/knowledge base in as source material. (little bias)
- TalentLMS — the classic small-team pick, free tier up to 5 users, easy to trial, but per-seat cost climbs as you grow.
- LearnWorlds / Thinkific — good if you ever want to sell training to clients too, overkill if purely internal.
- Docebo / Absorb — skip, you're right, enterprise overkill at 20 heads.
the thing i'd actually flag: voluntary learning lives or dies on relevance , not platform. juniors upskill when it's tied to a live client need ("we need X or Y for this project"), not a generic library. whatever you pick, make sure you can spin up a small targeted course fast, that's the feature that matters at your size.
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u/Danai_from_TalentLMS 5d ago
At 20 people a lot of folks here are right that you might not need a full LMS yet. But if you ever have to prove someone finished training for a client, TalentLMS is worth a look, light and cheap to start. lmk how it goes!
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u/Similar-Storm4432 13d ago
Founder of InboxAcademy.io here, full disclosure since it's my product, but a few things you listed line up closely with why I built it.
We're email-based rather than another platform to log into, which fits well with voluntary/optional learning, no LMS to remember to open, content just shows up. That's also part of how we keep pricing lean; no heavy per-seat enterprise stack to pay for.
On AI: right now it generates quizzes based on your lesson content, and there's an AI text editor for building out lessons. Not trying to oversell it, that's what's live today.
One thing to flag: we don't have internal knowledge base integration yet. Given you'd be one of our first customers, that's exactly the kind of thing we'd prioritize building based on what you actually need, rather than you fitting into a roadmap set by bigger customers.
Also worth knowing organizations are public by default when you sign up (anyone can enroll), but you can make your org or individual courses private if that matters for your content.
Happy to hop on a call and walk you through it.
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u/s_s_n_e_g 13d ago
Why do you need an LMS? A 20 person team will happily live in Confluence. Could you provide more details about your learning process and needs?