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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Absorb

    Score9 out of 10
    Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
    Absorb LMS aims to empower organizations to train employees with the skills needed to stay modern and relevant in today's fast-paced world. The LMS software focuses on aligning learning needs with business demands.N/A

    Blackboard Learn by Anthology

    Score6.7 out of 10
    N/ABlackboard Inc. is an enterprise learning management systems vendor. Blackboard was founded in 1997 and became a public company in 2004. The company provides education, mobile, communication, and commerce software and related services to clients including education providers, corporations and government organizations. As of December 2010, Blackboard software and services are used by over 9,300 institutions in more than 60 countries. Blackboard Learn is the company's flagship LMS, supporting…N/A
    Pricing
    AbsorbBlackboard Learn by Anthology
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    AbsorbBlackboard Learn by Anthology
    Free Trial
    YesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredOptional
    Additional Details—Must contact vendor for pricing information.
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    AbsorbBlackboard Learn by Anthology
    Considered Both Products
    Absorb Software Inc.
    Chose Absorb
    Absorb support is way better than others and I feel more valued and listened to than the other LMS that I have checked out
    Incentivized
    Chose Absorb
    Absorb [LMS] had [many] of the same features. Many of the vendors had a lower base price with additional pricing for the add-ons. From a cost perspective, the majority of software providers' costs were higher with all of the required addons. For the features required Absorb …
    Incentivized
    Anthology, Inc
    Chose Blackboard Learn by Anthology
    Blackboard Learn compares favorably to the other learning management solutions out there but has a leg up if you are using other Blackboard products. We liked Absorb a lot but it was ultimately more costly for us based on our current infrastructure. Moodle and Canvas are …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    171 Answers
    78%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    145 Answers
    82%
    Delivers good value for the price
    9 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    171 Answers
    72%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    118 Answers
    67%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    4 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    127 Answers
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Features
    AbsorbBlackboard Learn by Anthology
    Learning Management
    Comparison of Learning Management features of Absorb and Blackboard Learn by Anthology
    Feature
    Absorb
    8.5
    172 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Blackboard Learn by Anthology
    8.6
    30 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Course authoring9.0135 Ratings9.024 Ratings
    Course catalog or library9.3151 Ratings9.024 Ratings
    Player/Portal8.6154 Ratings8.021 Ratings
    Learning content8.5127 Ratings6.127 Ratings
    Mobile friendly8.0125 Ratings9.030 Ratings
    Progress tracking & certifications9.4164 Ratings7.024 Ratings
    Assignments9.6142 Ratings9.030 Ratings
    Compliance management9.5136 Ratings9.017 Ratings
    Learning administration8.7168 Ratings10.025 Ratings
    Learning reporting & analytics8.5165 Ratings9.026 Ratings
    Social learning6.291 Ratings9.022 Ratings
    Gamification6.085 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.7129 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    AbsorbBlackboard Learn by Anthology
    Small Businesses
    Tovuti LMS
    Score6.6 out of 10
    Google Classroom
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    iSpring LMS
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Schoology Learning
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Bridge LMS, Skills & Performance Management
    Score7.4 out of 10
    D2L Brightspace
    Score7.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    AbsorbBlackboard Learn by Anthology
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (175 ratings)
    9.9
    (58 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (10 ratings)
    4.6
    (11 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (80 ratings)
    10.0
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    9.2
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.8
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.6
    (161 ratings)
    7.7
    (14 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.9
    (4 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.8
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    9.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.1
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.8
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    AbsorbBlackboard Learn by Anthology
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Absorb Software Inc.
    Absorb is highly intuitive for end users. The resources feature allows for uploads of materials that are not marked as part of any training but rather available for users to review at their convenience. Scheduling reports so they are sent to users via email has been a pain. Reports are duplicated and there is also no start and end date, which causes the portal to continuously push the reports unless they are manually cancelled
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    A school with a well-established technology imprint with their students (for example, ours is a BYOB school where every student has their own laptop and must bring it to school every day and where over 99% of our families have reliable broadband at home) is a reasonable scenario for using The arrogance and intransigence of the sales force is quite disconcerting… They are no longer the only game in town and don't yet realize it. Less well-off schools/families may find it a challenge if students must be on campus or at a public library in order to use the technology. Obviously, during the pandemic, this became problematic for some districts.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Absorb Software Inc.
    • Overall, Absorb LMS is pretty easy to use for learners and especially for admins. It's practical to create and manage course content - it provides the most crucial options and yet is lean enough not to overcomplicate the admin's life. The consistent and customizable "table-view" in most of the admin-areas is very helpful and easy to follow.
    • Using Enrollment Rules, Absorb LMS let you define who a course applies to and how they get enrolled. You can build rules based on learner attributes, such as department, location job role, group, to include or exclude specific audiences. The way Absorb LMS is using enrollment attributes, no other LMS actually can fulfill our requirements easier. Enrollment rules are mainly embedded in individual course options (you can also create scheduled enrollments outside of the courses).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    • Blackboard Learn makes submitting assignments electronically simple and provides a variety of built-in Web-based tools like e-portfolios, wikis, and blogs that our students use to create their own content.
    • Blackboard Learn is intuitive and easy to navigate from a students perspective
    • Blackboard Learn has many integrations available for connecting this LMS to other tools we use at our institution.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Absorb Software Inc.
    • The "And" and "Or" rules for self + automatic enrollment could be spelled out more to clarify who we're enrolling into courses
    • The thumbnail and poster "Upload photo" section is confusing. There should be a "Favorites" folder where we can easily find most commonly used posters and thumbnails
    • more education around Absorb analyze essentials
    • How the Featured courses section ranks courses is confusing on the back-end. I need to switch the primary one to second place to feature the new one first. But if the previous one now becomes second place, what happens to the old course that was in second place? I've noticed the order you select on the back-end for this isn't always reflected on user side
    • Same comment as Featured Courses but for appearance of billboards. Hard to position each in the right order
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    • Blackboard Learn has some limitations when it comes to submissions
    • It is not that user friendly, I had to spend some time to get a hang of it in the beginning
    • I have been struggling a bit with deletion of manually added courses
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Absorb Software Inc.
    We love the ability to have a user-friendly system that integrates well with our different HR interfaces (we have 3 systems that feed data/employees into the system). It makes it easy to track course completions and report out on metrics enterprise-wide. In addition, the ability to provide consistent education to staff who are geographically dispersed is a huge incentive for us, and Absorb LMS does this seamlessly.
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    There are several aspects of Desire2Learn that outweigh the benefits of using Blackboard. I find that the Desire2Learn system is a bit more user friendly and looks more up-to-date. However, the decision to renew systems is not up to me because the entire University uses the same system. Regardless, I think I would choose Desire2Learn over Blackboard because of its improved user interface.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Absorb Software Inc.
    Our company has performed many software implementations over the last few years. Getting Absorb LMS up and running was one of the easiest and most pleasant by far. The process is fairly straightforward, but you are also given excellent support in instances when it is needed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    It is very usable for both faculty and students. The interface is pretty intuitive and most students can use it without a lot of additional training. Faculty do need some training to effectively use the interface, but they usually get it pretty quickly. We have had to create some additional programming to give faculty a way to delve deeper into the content.
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Absorb Software Inc.
    We have never had any major issue with Absorb's availability. Any outages that have occurred have been planned an communicated. Any small issues that occur within the Absorb platform have been addressed efficiently and quickly by support and the development team
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Performance
    Absorb Software Inc.
    We have experienced infrequent issues with things like load times on reporting, or pages timing out, but for the large majority of our time within the system things have worked as they should
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Support Rating
    Absorb Software Inc.
    My client success manager had to reach out once for our company once. Although it was not an Absorb issue (it was an issue on the course vendor side), Absorb offered a resolution while the vendor was fixing the issue. We were very happy with the resolution and feel like Absorb went above and beyond for us.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    My Blackboard support comes from the university I work with. They are responsive--eventually... but it takes them sometimes a week to respond to a reported issue. For example, I reported 2 issues last week and one was resolved and I was contacted about one still open option today. That is too long for a tech issue. I have not contacted any support offered directly by Blackboard, which may be a completely different experience altogether.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    Absorb Software Inc.
    The training was comprehensive - there were existing modules to learn functionality but working with Absorb staff, and receiving recordings of those walk-throughs, made a rapid understanding of the LMS achievable and covered the necessary material that was needed and allowed for specific questions to be addressed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Absorb Software Inc.
    The implementation of Absorb went very seamlessly. We previously had the Oracle LMS and importing user data and getting the new system up to speed was painless. The smooth transition helped leaders and staff gain confidence early in the application/company and we have had a successful partnership with Absorb since.
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    Blackboard's Managed Hosting was top-notch in getting us up and running quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Absorb Software Inc.
    Absorb offers a more flexible and robust experience for managing learning ecosystems. The user interface is more modern and provides a stronger user-centric learning experience. Absorb is at parity for social learning, which most learning platforms struggle with. The admin capabilities within Absorb are stronger than those of each of these providers. The notifications are strong, too.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    Coursera offers a variety of modules in which a team is able to work on then, but [Blackboard Learn] offers more options to understand how are the team members developing and which tasks have offered a harder challenger for them. [Blackboard Learn] also offers a variety of reports that can be generate by a team lead.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Absorb Software Inc.
    Clear and easy to understand. Of course, I would love to have seen these costs during my research of different LMSs, but I understand why they don't share this information.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Scalability
    Absorb Software Inc.
    We have already scaled our LMS from a couple hundred users to 1000 users and have plans to scale even larger. We use the LMS across multiple internal departments. countries and user types. Absorb has made it easy to integrate and scale and we will continue to scale in the near future.
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Absorb Software Inc.
    We work directly with Kirsten Spak, who has continuously
    provided timely and quality help for myself as the lead and our organization.
    Kirsten has helped us ensure that we are going about things as efficiently and
    is always willing to walk through things to demonstrate suggestions and
    functions. As we look to expand our offerings further, Kirsten has helped
    strategize for the best approach, which has helped our workflow and the
    end-user experience. As we are still relatively new users, but using the LMS
    every day, Kirsten has been very patient and provided clear instruction on
    processes when we were unsure of what to do and has been able to troubleshoot,
    with her team, functions that were desired but not availability at the time, to
    provide us with solutions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    No answers on this topic
    Return on Investment
    Absorb Software Inc.
    • We used Absorb LMS to track Annual Safety Training to ensure compliance with inspectors and ensure our teammates understand the risks and how to mitigate them safely. We were never able to track this before and thus, we simply didn't have mandatory annual training.
    • A huge drawback prior to implementation of Absorb LMS was our inability to offer more than our 40 purchased e-courses to our employees. These were mostly safety and equipment based courses, so we didn't have any soft skill development happening. Now we have hundreds of courses available from the Absorb library that cover the safety aspects, but we also have dozens of leadership courses, communication and influence courses, etc. It has been a huge gamechanger for our employees and their development opportunities! When I look at our course library, there are 400 courses, which over 300 being available through Absorb library (the other 80+ were made using Absorb Create).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Anthology, Inc
    • At one of the institutions that I worked for, the ROI was excellent for the number of users we were serving; however, I could not speak to other instances as I was not aware of the overall cost of the contract.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Absorb Screenshots

    Screenshot of Absorb's course details page, accessible from the course catalog dashboard, used to give learners an understanding of the course material.Screenshot of course creation with Create AI Beta.Product screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshotProduct screenshot

    Blackboard Learn by Anthology Screenshots

    Screenshot of A modern and intuitive learning management system (LMS) designed in collaboration with the global education community, providing students and faculty with a more inclusive, flexible, and insightful experience.Screenshot of Fostering a sense of belonging is essential to student success. To truly create an inclusive learning environment requires a holistic approach, and Blackboard Learn leads the market in many critical areas which allow your institution to meet students of all backgrounds where they are. Built to be mobile-first, Blackboard Learn is the only LMS that provides the same great experience on PC, tablet, and smartphone. And we're proud that Blackboard Learn was the First LMS to achieve accessibility Certification from the National Federation of the Blind and all of our interfaces undergo rigorous accessibility testing. Learn also has the best integration with our market-leading accessibility product, Ally, of any LMS. Learn also ensures that every user has an experience which reflects – and celebrates – their unique identity. To take just one example, users can record their name pronunciation, and choose their preferred pronouns.Screenshot of Blackboard Learn supports instructors with multiple formative and summative assessment methods, and features capabilities that reduce stress for students. For example, we’ve recently released features that allow students to use different test-taking strategies and understand their progress through assessments – including a timer that can be hidden – to maximize their result and minimize anxiety. Grading workflows have been designed to increase efficiency for instructors and give more insightful feedback to students. For instance, we’ve recently revamped the overall grade functionality to make it easier for instructors to change weightings between tasks and tailor to individual students. Blackboard Learn also offers deep integrations with hundreds of partners to create even more interactive and engaging courses, including the deepest interaction of any LMS with Microsoft Teams.Screenshot of Blackboard Learn presents insights embedded right into instructor and student workflows - making useful information readily available, and making it easier for instructors to help students where and when they need it most. Learn's progress tracking tools help students and instructors always know how they're tracking to achieve their goals - and where there is opportunity for improvement. Quick actions are tied to these insights, like following up with students in groups or individually. Blackboard Learn also provides built-in value with Blackboard Data Reporting to help leaders understand how the LMS is being used, student performance, and surfacing opportunities for continuous improvement.