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Absorb vs. PiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued) vs. EdCast (discontinued)

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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

    PiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)

    Score8.7 out of 10
    N/ACornerstone’s PiiQ was an SMB offering that included core learning management and performance management systems, based on Sonar6 which was acquired by Cornerstone in 2012, and ultimately discontinued in 2022.

    $8

    per user per month

    EdCast (discontinued)

    Score6.8 out of 10
    N/AEdCast is a Knowledge Sharing platform for Teams and Organizations based on interoperability and collaboration, now from Cornerstone since the early 2022 acquisition.N/A
    Pricing
    AbsorbPiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)EdCast (discontinued)
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    PiiQ Performance
    $8.00
    per user per month
    PiiQ Learning + Content
    $8.00
    per user per month
    PiiQ Learning + Content & Performance
    $15.00
    per user per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    AbsorbPiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)EdCast (discontinued)
    Free Trial
    YesYesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    YesYesNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeRequired$1,000 per installationNo setup fee
    Additional Details
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    AbsorbPiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)EdCast (discontinued)
    Considered Multiple Products
    Absorb Software Inc.
    No answer on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    167 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Delivers good value for the price
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    141 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    167 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    115 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation went as expected
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    124 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Features
    AbsorbPiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)EdCast (discontinued)
    Learning Management
    Comparison of Learning Management features of Absorb and PiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued) and EdCast (discontinued)
    Feature
    Absorb
    8.6
    168 Ratings
    4% above category average
    PiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)
    6.6
    11 Ratings
    22% below category average
    EdCast (discontinued)
    9.5
    1 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Course authoring9.0132 Ratings6.011 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Course catalog or library9.3147 Ratings6.811 Ratings8.01 Ratings
    Player/Portal8.6151 Ratings6.810 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Learning content8.5124 Ratings6.611 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Mobile friendly8.0121 Ratings7.98 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Progress tracking & certifications9.4160 Ratings6.210 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Assignments9.7138 Ratings6.711 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Compliance management9.5133 Ratings5.89 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Learning administration8.8164 Ratings6.611 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Learning reporting & analytics8.5161 Ratings6.911 Ratings9.01 Ratings
    Social learning6.389 Ratings00 Ratings10.01 Ratings
    Gamification6.185 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.7126 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    AbsorbPiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)EdCast (discontinued)
    Small Businesses
    Tovuti LMS
    Score6.7 out of 10
    Tovuti LMS
    Score6.7 out of 10
    Tovuti LMS
    Score6.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    iSpring LMS
    Score9.6 out of 10
    iSpring LMS
    Score9.6 out of 10
    iSpring LMS
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Bridge LMS, Skills & Performance Management
    Score7.4 out of 10
    Bridge LMS, Skills & Performance Management
    Score7.4 out of 10
    Bridge LMS, Skills & Performance Management
    Score7.4 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    AbsorbPiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)EdCast (discontinued)
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (171 ratings)
    8.6
    (40 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.6
    (10 ratings)
    3.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (75 ratings)
    8.5
    (37 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Availability
    9.2
    (6 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    8.8
    (6 ratings)
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.6
    (157 ratings)
    9.2
    (36 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.3
    (5 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    6.5
    (9 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.9
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    7.9
    (6 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    9.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.1
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.8
    (5 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    AbsorbPiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued)EdCast (discontinued)
    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
    Discontinued Products
    Well suited for:
    • A busy environment where you want learners to be self-sufficient and to be able to access learning solutions at a time that suits them.
    • For anyone who wants to access learning using different platforms such as iPad, mobile, PC, etc
    • Anyone who needs a more in-depth learning solution rather than an overview of key learning points.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    It is a simple and easy-to-use interface. It can sync easily with your mobile app if required. My company uses Edcast for different purposes i.e. for learning resources to grow us within the organization.
    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
    Discontinued Products
    • Enables employees to draft work goals and collaborate with their supervisors on a final version - improves mutual understanding right up front.
    • Combines performance goal ratings with competency ratings and provides a blended score. Simplifies the goal weighting so you don't have to do any calculations.
    • 9-box matrix provides useful definitions and descriptions so managers can prepare development notes or plans for individual employees.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • learning
    • skilling
    • career mobility
    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
    Discontinued Products
    • Would be good to have have a virtual "top level" (eg board) user built in to allow senior execs without a direct manager to be able to be set up with KPIs instead of having to create a dummy user
    • Reports have difficulty downloading if pop ups disabled or in some browser environments
    • When competencies are updated while a cycle is open, any changes don't effect that open cycle but only future ones. Would be nice to be able to have the option to apply changes to existing "open" cycles
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • Add new courses is bit confusing.
    • searching new skills.
    • Keeping track on previous work.
    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
    Discontinued Products
    It's not that CSB isn't a decent performance management system, but we have decided to go with just one vendor (Workday) for an HRIS/performance management/payroll system so we can directly relate pay to performance. We are more interested in having just one system that "talks" to the other pieces instead of having to work with several vendors. It reduces the hassle of having to communicate with different support teams, having different contracts, and so on.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Discontinued Products
    There are specific things within the goals and competencies that are user-friendly. For example, the rating slider isn't great in my opinion. You can slide in between ratings which can create some odd scoring (if you use scoring). It seems a better solution would be a drop down where you select your rating. There are also some glitches in the system and have been told Cornerstone is aware of them but are focused on delivering new features. There are workarounds, but that doesn't seem to be a great answer.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Discontinued Products
    So far 100%.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Discontinued Products
    The saving process slows it down. It doesn’t auto save. If you leave a page, it will sometimes warn you, but not always. When you hit the save button, a window pops up that says creating/saving packets. It feels very archaic.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Discontinued Products
    My assistant could better address this issue. My perception is that there is not immediate assistance, and that there can be a wait for help. That is not a negative, just a perception. I have not used support in two years.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Discontinued Products
    We bought training provided by 3rd party – it was fabulous.
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Discontinued Products
    I think we could have done a better job of rolling out the tool to our managers. We were under a tight timeline. In the training, we showed them everything and said go do it by this date. Looking back, I would have done it in pieces: for example, 2 weeks to write goals, 2 weeks to get sign-off from direct reports. I just let them go at it. Since then we’ve moved to agile development environment and are applying the technique to everything. In future would only do through change sprint. It is a big change I didn’t take it seriously enough.

    I had a team of 3 project managing. You need a champion from every department to make sure you’re getting it right and to make sure what’s happening is communicated. It’s not something you can do without input from department heads
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Discontinued Products
    Lesson.ly has been great to work with but it is a very clear and simple, user-friendly system that anyone can pick up with very little training as it is self-explanatory. It also has a great mobile interface and lots of different features that are easy to add for the admin but really impactful for the user.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    It's easier to use then BambooHR and it is simple and self-explanatory. So being part of this organization I always prefer Edcast.
    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
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Discontinued Products
    No answers on this topic
    Discontinued Products
    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
    Discontinued Products
    • It's tool and it's only as good as the person wielding it. The investment in PiiQ was accompanied by a quarterly cadence and manager feedback training. We feel like our employees are given regular feedback and bonuses are tied to objective accomplishment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Discontinued Products
    • It increase the efficiently of resource.
    • It helps to groom employees
    • It helps to update according to the market demand
    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

    PiiQ by Cornerstone (discontinued) Screenshots

    Screenshot of PiiQ Performance Employee ReviewScreenshot of PiiQ Learning on DevicesScreenshot of PiiQ Manager/Employee Check-insScreenshot of PiiQ 9-box Talent MatrixScreenshot of PiiQ Learning Publish New ContentScreenshot of PiiQ Learning Searchable Library & Self-registration