Absorb LMS vs. Google Classroom

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Absorb LMS
Score 9.1 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
Google Classroom
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$0
per month
Pricing
Absorb LMSGoogle Classroom
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Education Fundamentals
$0
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Standard
$3
per student/per year
Teaching and Learning Upgrade
$4
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Plus
$5
per student/per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Absorb LMSGoogle Classroom
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional DetailsEducation Fundamentals Version - 30-day free trial for qualifying institutions.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Absorb LMSGoogle Classroom
Considered Both Products
Absorb LMS
Chose Absorb LMS
Much more easier set-up, internal content creation and content uploading.
Chose Absorb LMS
User experience and user interface wise Absorb LMS is superior. I have experience using Canvas at the university and it's plane, simple with nothing else to do but a file container. Activities are pretty simple too. Moodle was used a lot during the pandemic but they don't have …
Google Classroom

No answer on this topic

Features
Absorb LMSGoogle Classroom
Learning Management
Comparison of Learning Management features of Product A and Product B
Absorb LMS
8.7
163 Ratings
5% above category average
Google Classroom
7.5
60 Ratings
9% below category average
Course authoring9.2128 Ratings8.652 Ratings
Course catalog or library9.3142 Ratings7.739 Ratings
Player/Portal8.4147 Ratings6.938 Ratings
Learning content8.9120 Ratings7.841 Ratings
Mobile friendly7.9117 Ratings7.457 Ratings
Progress tracking & certifications9.6155 Ratings7.344 Ratings
Assignments9.7134 Ratings7.358 Ratings
Compliance management9.8129 Ratings7.134 Ratings
Learning administration9.3159 Ratings7.446 Ratings
Learning reporting & analytics8.9156 Ratings7.042 Ratings
Social learning6.286 Ratings8.651 Ratings
Gamification6.184 Ratings4.48 Ratings
Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.8121 Ratings9.612 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Absorb LMSGoogle Classroom
Small Businesses
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 9.5 out of 10
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 9.5 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 9.5 out of 10
Schoology Learning
Schoology Learning
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
AITalent LMS
AITalent LMS
Score 9.3 out of 10
Schoology Learning
Schoology Learning
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Absorb LMSGoogle Classroom
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(166 ratings)
8.2
(80 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.1
(9 ratings)
10.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
8.9
(70 ratings)
8.2
(11 ratings)
Availability
8.9
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.4
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.6
(152 ratings)
1.9
(14 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.6
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.5
(4 ratings)
2.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
8.0
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
4.5
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.4
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.0
(5 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
9.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.6
(4 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Absorb LMSGoogle Classroom
Likelihood to Recommend
Absorb Software Inc.
Absorb LMS has been incredibly well suited to our business needs. It is a robust platform with a wide ranges of tools, which make it easy to implement whatever training is desired. While there are many tools and options, the system itself is not overwhelming. The team we have worked with at Absorb (Jordan Wolf and Steve Ernstes) made onboarding, implementation, and continued customer support a breeze. The amount of support we received when we did encounter small issues was amazing.
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Google
Google Classroom allows teachers to post for daily lessons and assignments. It also allows teachers to be able to communicate with students easily outside of class. Students are able to stay connected and know where to find all information and resources easily in a streamlined manner for all of their classes.
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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).
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Google
  • Student-teacher communication - I love using Classroom for this because my students can always go back and check what was on Classroom by looking through the stream. This way they don't have to go dig through emails to find what they're looking for.
  • Posting to multiple classes - I can post the same announcement or assignment to multiple classes at once without having to repeat the process or send separate emails.
  • Streamlining grading - when students turn work in on Classroom, it all goes to one place and then when I'm grading I can open their documents directly from Classroom or my Drive folder. This way, I'm not looking through emails and Google Doc shared files for their assignment.
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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
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Google
  • The content management of the Classroom is not that good. The sub-section for notes, syllabus, or discussion is missing.
  • It doesn't have parental control feature.
  • It converts the excel output into a normal file. All the formulas and pivots got changed into plain text.
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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.
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Google
Testing is particularly important in online learning, and Google Classroom falls far short of other learning management systems in this regard. Security is also a concern: while account control is reasonable for the account used with Google Classroom, the person controlling a particular account is often able to, for example, forward or download proprietary materials.
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Usability
Absorb Software Inc.
The system is very flexible, allowing admins to build dashboards that offer different UX and UI for different roles. The increase in usability is great for engagement and one-click actions. In addition to the dashboards, the admin interface is intuitive and allows managers to easily access reports for their teams.
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Google
Simple design and seamless integration with Google tools and drive, but missing some key features. However, since it is limited in overall functions and ability to truly personalize / customize, it is quite user friendly and easy to set up and get going, other than sending out the code to your course or dropping students in via their gmail account. Users of Google Forms and sites will find the layout similar in design.
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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
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Google
We have had very little trouble in accessing Google Classroom. Our issues, if any, have risen from our server and not the Google servers.
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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
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Google
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.
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Google
Since this platform is provided by Google, the technical support is better than any others, and we are not required to bother about the space constraints for adding the contents. If we have a good uninterrupted internet facility we can access Google Classroom without any delay or lag. They have app support in both Android and iPhone.
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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.
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Google
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.
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Google
It was relatively easy to implement due to the simplicity of the platform. Even our more technology challenged teachers found it easy to get started with Google Classroom.
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Alternatives Considered
Absorb Software Inc.
Absorb LMS is feature packed with small but smart elements (can have a username that isnt an email, can change the core language used in the platform, can change the font and layout) that offer greater security and accessibility for learners.
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Google
I haven't tested or evaluated another digital classroom website or application. I feel like Google Classroom is convenient for many reasons such as compatibility to Google docs, slides, etc. I also love the ability to link to YouTube and other sites. I don't know if there would be a site that is easier to maneuver.
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Absorb Software Inc.
Seems very expensive for limitations we have experienced.
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Google
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.
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Google
It is very easy to push out this program across our buildings. Teachers are able to use it without much trouble.
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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.
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Google
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).
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Google
  • Students are able to continue learning in a remote environment
  • Parents have a single, consistent organization structure to make it easy to track assignments and progress for multiple children
  • Much better solution than the quickly assembled Zoom-and-gloom of the previous spring when school abruptly went remote with no planning
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ScreenShots

Absorb LMS 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.Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of Screenshot of