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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

    Thinkific

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AThinkific Plus is a scalable learning platform that’s designed to be easy to use for teams and customers. Thinkific Plus offers enterprise-grade features that scale with the needs of enterprises, and the service includes a people seriously dedicated to helping users to reach their goals.N/A
    Pricing
    AbsorbThinkific
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    AbsorbThinkific
    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
    AbsorbThinkific
    Considered Both Products
    Absorb Software Inc.
    Chose Absorb
    All sites provided at least a basic LMS platform, and Talent was probably the closest in terms of features and like-for-like comparison. Ultimately, none of the others had the same level of course creation and it would either have meant outsourcing or spending a significant …
    Incentivized
    Thinkific
    Chose Thinkific
    Better than Absorb and TalentLMS but, in my opinion, worst than LearnWorlds.
    Incentivized
    Chose Thinkific
    This review is only for the course building functionality. We moved to Articulate 360 for the course building portion of the program because it's way more feature rich and have been please with it's capabilities. We've yet to investigate other LMS options because we've been so …
    Incentivized
    Chose Thinkific
    I think that Thinkific has a lot of the same features as many other products, except these features are all found in one central location (for the most part) vs having to use several different apps and platforms. While there are some things that other platforms do better, like …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    98%
    Would buy again
    171 Answers
    88%
    Would buy again
    46 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    99%
    Delivers good value for the price
    145 Answers
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    40 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    98%
    Happy with the feature set
    171 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    49 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    95%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    118 Answers
    87%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    93%
    Implementation went as expected
    127 Answers
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    40 Answers
    Features
    AbsorbThinkific
    Learning Management
    Comparison of Learning Management features of Absorb and Thinkific
    Feature
    Absorb
    8.5
    172 Ratings
    3% above category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    Course authoring9.0135 Ratings00 Ratings
    Course catalog or library9.3151 Ratings00 Ratings
    Player/Portal8.6154 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning content8.5127 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile friendly8.0125 Ratings00 Ratings
    Progress tracking & certifications9.4164 Ratings00 Ratings
    Assignments9.6142 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance management9.5136 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning administration8.7168 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning reporting & analytics8.5165 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social learning6.291 Ratings00 Ratings
    Gamification6.085 Ratings00 Ratings
    Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.7129 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    AbsorbThinkific
    Small Businesses
    Tovuti LMS
    Score6.6 out of 10
    iSpring Suite
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    iSpring LMS
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Bridge LMS, Skills & Performance Management
    Score7.4 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    AbsorbThinkific
    Likelihood to Recommend
    9.1
    (175 ratings)
    9.3
    (54 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    8.7
    (10 ratings)
    8.6
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    9.1
    (80 ratings)
    8.8
    (44 ratings)
    Availability
    9.2
    (6 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    8.8
    (6 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.6
    (161 ratings)
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    7.9
    (4 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    6.6
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    7.8
    (3 ratings)
    3.6
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.0
    (3 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.0
    (6 ratings)
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    Professional Services
    9.6
    (2 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.1
    (5 ratings)
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.8
    (5 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    AbsorbThinkific
    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
    Thinkific
    I think Thinkific is very well suited if you want more control and not a ton of competition. It is very well suited if you want to create courses because it does an amazing job with providing course outline examples for you to stay organized and so forth. The only thing I would say where the courses might be less appropriate is if someone is expecting it to be like an udemy where people can see a ton of different course creators all in one place with course recommendations. Thinkific is not that type of platform and I LOVE that. On Thinkific, it almost feels like our site is our own ya know. I tried out other platforms and it just felt like you were competing with so many other people and could see other courses. Felt like being on a platter served with others. Thinkific just feels more unique in the sense it feels like when people come to your page, they are only seeing your page.
    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
    Thinkific
    • Enables course creators to deliver high quality courses very fast
    • Offers unlimited hosting for videos included in the subscription price
    • Provides an easy to use administration interface that's powerful and accessible
    • Easy to scale subscription tiers on B2C plans, cost effective highly scaleable B2B plans (Thinkific Plus) ideal for companies who want to start a customer education program
    • Amazing support and account management team - great mindset and people in the teams.
    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
    Thinkific
    • auto formatting of some course building content, does not format well on phone vs desktop
    • filter by group functionality for website based content, it's mostly filter by enrollments
    • the plug and play web building is convenient but really we need a UX/UI designer to build a super good looking website. Plug and play builder works but doesnt look SUPER sharp if done by someone with no dev skills or coding ability
    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
    Thinkific
    I'm very likely to renewal as long as Thinkific stays focused on helping small businesses like myself to stay in the know of new and more effective ways to use digital learning tools to help our students get better success. I will also stay with Thinkific if they do not intend to hike up the prices and keep the different price plans suit all businesses regardless of the size.
    Incentivized
    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
    Thinkific
    Under Site Builder, when trying to add a new section, so many templates appear; however, preview is not shown, which makes it super difficult and time consuming to identify a template that suits the purpose. Customization of certification designs is a bit difficult too. There are limitations to the type of quiz questions I can create - for example, there's no option to have fill in the blank questions.
    Incentivized
    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
    Thinkific
    I've never had any issues with accessing Thinkific but I can see when it has been a problem for others. When I get updates on when they are doing maintenance to their platform I tend to make sure that is not the day I plan to be working on my school so as not to get frustrated
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Thinkific
    When it comes to the performance of Thinkific for me I find that it's good but could be better. I tend to think that the larger the files and videos you upload on your courses may add to the impact of it's uploading (not sure if that's actually true or not). But overall the performance of Thinkific via my tablet and desktop is very good when I have a fast speed broadband speed
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Thinkific
    I rate Thinkific a ten because of its excellent customer service, ease of use, high-quality product, fair price with excellent ROI, and because they keep making improvements. Using Thinkific solved the problems of piecing together our course with various WordPress plugins, iframes, and payment processing software. It's easy to create a course website for people who can't write code.
    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
    Thinkific
    It was good and easy to understand
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Thinkific
    I highly recommend utilizing the bulk importer for video content early on, as it saves a massive amount of time during the initial setup phase. Another insight is to set up your custom domain and email integrations (like Mailchimp or HubSpot) at the very beginning of the implementation
    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
    Thinkific
    ClickFunnels is great for funnels, but as of now, it does not do well with e-learning. Maybe they'll change that in ClickFunnels 2.0. But for now, I use Thinkific because I need a place where the students can come into their own dashboard, find all the courses they have purchased on a single place and be able to track their progress.
    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
    Thinkific
    Great use easy and simple
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Thinkific
    The opportunities to scale your online course business with Thinkific is endless. They provide a great range of plans with features, integrations and support to suit the needs of any business as different levels. The key here is knowing where to start with the budget you have and then knowing when it's time to scale up and the tools and resources it will require.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    Thinkific
    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
    Thinkific
    • No email marketing makes it more difficult to collect leads.
    • Price can be a barrier at time for small businesses who don't have revenue.
    • Easy to use and helps with my business needs vs platforms like Squarespace.
    • Community building through workshops and webinars Thinkific host.
    • Access to educational resources and mobile app.
    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