Absorb LMS vs. Skilljar by Gainsight

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Absorb LMS
Score 9.0 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
Skilljar by Gainsight
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
Skilljar’s Customer Education LMS Platform is a solution to educate, engage, and retain everyone a business interacts with. An external LMS for customer and partner education, it is a Gainsight solution since the 2025 acquisition.N/A
Pricing
Absorb LMSSkilljar by Gainsight
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Absorb LMSSkilljar by Gainsight
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeRequiredNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Absorb LMSSkilljar by Gainsight
Considered Both Products
Absorb LMS
Chose Absorb LMS
At the time of selection, we went with Absorb as they were one of the few that could handle online transactions for courses.

We are in the process of migrating to Skilljar and will be discontinuing our subscription to Absorb in 2018.
Skilljar by Gainsight
Chose Skilljar by Gainsight
Skilljar support is unparalleled compared to the above LMS platforms. They also allow us for more customization options than the above. We migrated from Absorb LMS and recently moved from Docebo LMS to Workday Learning for internal training.
Chose Skilljar by Gainsight
Skilljar Customer Education Software has a solid reputation and has more integration possibilities tan Absorb LMS and Docebo Learning.
Chose Skilljar by Gainsight
Skilljar is the best LMS for Quorum’s training needs. While Skilljar is missing a few features offered by their also highly-rated competitors, Docebo and Absorb, they offer a cheaper and more simple pricing model. They also offer a better user experience and more features than W…
Chose Skilljar by Gainsight
Over the past 12 years I've had the opportunity to evaluate, implement, and administer a half dozen Learning Management Systems (LMS), including Intellum, Cornerstone, Absorb, Adobe Connect, Oracle Learning, and Workday, and without question, Skilljar has beat them all at …
Chose Skilljar by Gainsight
Skilljar is much easier to use but also could improve certain features, like the file types. But the interface is much easier than Absorb and the team is much easier to work with.
Features
Absorb LMSSkilljar by Gainsight
Learning Management
Comparison of Learning Management features of Product A and Product B
Absorb LMS
8.6
159 Ratings
5% above category average
Skilljar by Gainsight
9.3
26 Ratings
8% above category average
Course authoring8.5125 Ratings10.022 Ratings
Course catalog or library9.3138 Ratings9.025 Ratings
Player/Portal8.3143 Ratings9.021 Ratings
Learning content9.0116 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile friendly7.6113 Ratings10.020 Ratings
Progress tracking & certifications9.6151 Ratings8.026 Ratings
Assignments9.9130 Ratings10.019 Ratings
Compliance management9.7125 Ratings8.517 Ratings
Learning administration9.5155 Ratings10.024 Ratings
Learning reporting & analytics8.6152 Ratings9.526 Ratings
Social learning6.584 Ratings9.014 Ratings
Gamification5.681 Ratings8.53 Ratings
Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.8117 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Customer Training Tools
Comparison of Customer Training Tools features of Product A and Product B
Absorb LMS
-
Ratings
Skilljar by Gainsight
9.7
3 Ratings
0% above category average
Customer Feedback Collection00 Ratings9.03 Ratings
Customer Training Library Curation00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
User Permissioning00 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Absorb LMSSkilljar by Gainsight
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
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 9.5 out of 10
Enterprises
Axonify
Axonify
Score 10.0 out of 10
Absorb LMS
Absorb LMS
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Absorb LMSSkilljar by Gainsight
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(156 ratings)
9.5
(78 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.2
(9 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Usability
7.7
(61 ratings)
10.0
(53 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
8.5
(5 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(143 ratings)
9.0
(52 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.6
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.5
(4 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
8.2
(3 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
4.6
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Ease of integration
6.4
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.2
(5 ratings)
-
(0 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 LMSSkilljar by Gainsight
Likelihood to Recommend
Absorb Software Inc.
As a way to deliver eLearning content and track completion, I think Absorb handles our 7000+ users competently. In addition, their support team was always extremely helpful and responsive. When we went through the process of integrating Absorb with Skillsoft Business Advanced library, Absorb's team was very knowledgeable and helpful. I think teams needing more streamlined checklist-style OJT skills tracking will be disappointed by Absorb's feature. It takes 4-5 clicks for a user to trainer to sign off on one skill.
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Gainsight
Skilljar is fantastic for structured onboarding processes. If you're
looking to streamline and standardize the onboarding experience for your
customers, especially for software or complex products, this platform
is a gem. It allows you to create step-by-step courses guiding users
through functionalities, reducing confusion and accelerating their
learning curve.When you need versatility in content delivery, Skilljar is spot-on.
Whether it's video tutorials, interactive quizzes, downloadable
resources, or live webinars, the platform accommodates various formats.
It's perfect for accommodating different learning styles and ensuring
engagement.
For scenarios that demand highly complex simulations or immersive
learning experiences, Skilljar's capabilities might fall short. While it
supports interactive elements, extremely sophisticated simulations
might require additional specialized software or platforms.
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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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Gainsight
  • Unlimited courses, learning paths, quizzes, pages, plans, and certifications
  • Ease of use for students, administrators, and content creators
  • Customer Success and Service are top notch. The CSMs are genuinely committed to helping you achieve your metrics and goals
  • Asking for and listening to customer feedback for enhancements
  • Developer Center where people with little to no coding experience can learn how to use and apply HTML templates and code snippets to customize your site
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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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Gainsight
  • Would love to see parent/child courses so that when something is updated in the parent course that change is automatically reflected in the clones of that course.
  • Features that allow for the translation of content to allow access to content across languages.
  • Re-onboarding process when the usage of Skilljar changes hands within out company in order to address knowledge gaps.
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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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Gainsight
I like what you are using and how we are doing it. Also, changing systems is a lot of work
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Usability
Absorb Software Inc.
I have never built/managed an LMS platform before and I find it very user friendly and capable of doing 98% of what I need it to do. We have been in the system almost a year and one of the struggles I had using the reporting tool has already been resolved and updated!
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Gainsight
The learning curve for Skilljar is not too steep, and I've renewed our contract twice now. I've been able to add additional administrators and get them up to speed on platform functionality within a day. Plus, Skilljar provides awesome resources to help you learn how to use is. The Help Center has articles for almost everything, and when in doubt, their amazing CSMs (like ours, ...) provide exemplary support/advice.
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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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Gainsight
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
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Gainsight
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Absorb Software Inc.
We absolutely loved both our sales representative, Mike Kuphos, and our Implementation manager, Joe Zizian. Joe has continued to be a great resource, even since we went live with our LMS and were moved into the maintenance stage! I sent over a quick question recently when I was stuck in the platform... within hours, he responded with a video walking me through how to do what I was having trouble with. I truly cannot say enough wonderful things about Joe and the level of customer service he has provided throughout implementation and beyond. I haven't really had to use alternate support methods.
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Gainsight
I have opened several support cases in the past and at times felt like little was being done to resolve the issues I was having. For example, when searching the use against a training credit, Skilljar said the code was fully used, yet only 1 had been used. The support team seemed to not have interest in learning why this was happening and ensuring it does not happen again. The issue was resolved with this particular case, but I have no idea if it was the only training credit having this issue. At times I feel like the issues we encounter do not seem as important to the support team
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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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Gainsight
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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Gainsight
Do a good job of preparing your internal teams (IT, Salesforce, etc.) about the work they will have in the process
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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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Gainsight
Skilljar provides stronger customization features, more code snippet options, more styling tools, and more effective integrations. These include Credly, Salesforce, and SCORM. Additionally, the catalog is all part of the same system, making it easy to manage. The analytics tools are also more robust, and the customer service is much more helpful and responsive
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Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Absorb Software Inc.
Seems very expensive for limitations we have experienced.
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Gainsight
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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Gainsight
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.
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Gainsight
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Absorb Software Inc.
  • Our ROI is yet to be determined as we haven't fully rolled it out yet. We hope that this will improve our customer loyalty and advocacy, set us apart from competitors, and appeal to prospects as something that is extremely valuable. ROI measurements will include customer participation, satisfaction from learners and their managers and any new customers who quote the platform as a reason they chose us.
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Gainsight
  • Our customers seem to be getting onboarded efficiently. Giving our customers a good experience helps us retain them longer.
  • So far, we are still not able to come up with solid metrics that it provides evidence of ROI. If Skilljar could somehow come up with clear, actionable metrics about customer success and how that relates to ROI then I think it would be vastly better. To be fair, we roll the cost of using Skilljar in the overall price, otherwise, we would charge customers and have a revenue stream to measure.
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ScreenShots

Absorb LMS Screenshots

Screenshot of a company's unique identity with a training interface that is custom-designed for the brand.Screenshot of a company's image and values with a training interface that is tailored to the brand's specific needs.Screenshot of the course creation workflow, that offer a diverse set of formats, including instructional videos, quizzes, and assessments.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 learners' progress insights, used to make data-driven decisions with the reporting capabilities of Absorb LMS.Screenshot of course creation with Create AI Beta.

Skilljar by Gainsight Screenshots

Screenshot of the Skilljar Dashboard, where all needed tools are accessed through a single interface.Screenshot of The training portal, which is the URL where published courses will be located, and where trainees can register for, access and complete training.

This URL can be set up as a custom domain using a website, like training.yoursite.com. Or a Skilljar domain can be used, like yoursite.skilljar.com. The look of the training portal can be customized to match a company's brand and colors.Screenshot of some of the analytics to measure  and track learner progress, in the analytics suite where content success is analyzedScreenshot of content that can be offered with Skilljar’s authoring tools. Multiple learning pathways based on user role, skillset, or use case can be created, as well as native video and audio with embedding from external hostsScreenshot of the built-in assessment & certifications engine that enables users to showcase their expertise, along with built-in assessment tools and verifiable badges and certificates.