Absorb LMS vs. Thinkific

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
Thinkific
Score 7.9 out of 10
N/A
Thinkific 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
Absorb LMSThinkific
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Absorb LMSThinkific
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 LMSThinkific
Considered Both Products
Absorb LMS
Chose Absorb LMS
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 …
Thinkific
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 …
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 …
Features
Absorb LMSThinkific
Learning Management
Comparison of Learning Management features of Product A and Product B
Absorb LMS
8.9
153 Ratings
9% above category average
Thinkific
-
Ratings
Course authoring8.5120 Ratings00 Ratings
Course catalog or library9.6133 Ratings00 Ratings
Player/Portal8.9137 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning content9.2111 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile friendly7.6107 Ratings00 Ratings
Progress tracking & certifications9.8145 Ratings00 Ratings
Assignments9.8124 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance management9.8119 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning administration9.6149 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning reporting & analytics8.8146 Ratings00 Ratings
Social learning7.578 Ratings00 Ratings
Gamification6.975 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.7112 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Absorb LMSThinkific
Small Businesses
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 8.9 out of 10
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 8.9 out of 10
iSpring LMS
iSpring LMS
Score 8.9 out of 10
Enterprises
Axonify
Axonify
Score 10.0 out of 10
Articulate 360
Articulate 360
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Absorb LMSThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
9.1
(156 ratings)
8.2
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.5
(8 ratings)
7.3
(2 ratings)
Usability
7.8
(59 ratings)
7.7
(40 ratings)
Availability
9.1
(4 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
8.8
(4 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.7
(142 ratings)
9.3
(7 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.2
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.1
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
7.2
(3 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Configurability
9.1
(2 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
(4 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Professional Services
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
8.4
(3 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
8.4
(3 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Absorb LMSThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
Absorb Software Inc.
My (internal) project build team consisted of three people - one with experience setting up an LMS previously, and two with no experience. I have experienced 'out of the box' builds before and they are rarely intuitive and/or easy to navigate and set up. This was not the case with Absorb LMS. The eLearning modules and face-to-face support provided was thorough and there was a lack of unneccessary complexity to setting up the platform. My novices now know there way around every inch of the platform and love using it. This was not our first LMS, but it may well be our last. The functionality (from reporting for admins to ease of access for learners) far exceeds our previous experiences and we have a product that looks great, works seemlessly and that we are very proud of.
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.
Read full review
Pros
Absorb Software Inc.
  • Customizing the user interface was fairly simple and our learners WANT to use the platform because it looks so nice.
  • Admins have so many tools at their fingertips to pull reports, create new users, author new courses, and more!
  • Absorb LMS has been the solution to so many problems we had experienced in our previous LMS: ease of use, course library, course authoring, tracking, reporting, etc.
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
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
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.
Read full review
Usability
Absorb Software Inc.
It is very intuitive, not just from an admin perspective to manage courses and track completions, but also from a learners' perspective. It is very easy to find courses, search for courses, and track personal course progress. The interface is well designed, which makes it simpler for our audience to navigate the portal and find what they are looking for
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.
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
Read full review
Performance
Absorb Software Inc.
Absorb LMS's performance is very reliable and consistent. Pages load quickly. Report are generated within a reasonable amount of time (even with significant amounts of data), etc. Nothing seems to slow it down.
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
Read full review
Support Rating
Absorb Software Inc.
[...] is a ROCK star- having her as part of our support team has been a game changer. She is a true problem solver at heart and has an unique ability to retain who we are as a company and match that with what can help us most. She has been a game changer for our internal admin team and is supporting us through a business review to help guide us in the best direction on our constant growth.
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.
Read full review
Online Training
Absorb Software Inc.
Absorb was able to provide an initial training of the platform, covering all our basic needs. Additionally, there are Absorb learning modules available for further learning that can be accessed at anytime. There is also the ability to review Absorb's extensive resource library to find the answers to questions/troubleshooting. Beyond that, we opted for the Premier Support so our organization has access to a dedicated Customer Success Manager.
Read full review
Thinkific
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
Thinkific
The implementation period took time like it would in earning and using any new tool. It was more about being organised, having better time management processes in place and having people you were able to reach out to if you were every able stuck. The other key ting with the implementation period was giving yourself a realistic time scale to get the job completed.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Absorb Software Inc.
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 amount of time building the courses which was not ideal as we would still be paying for the service during this time. Absorb had the best course creation software of all evaluated which is why we chose it, although it was also by far the most expensive of those evaluated.
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.
Read full review
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
Absorb Software Inc.
Seems very expensive for limitations we have experienced.
Read full review
Thinkific
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
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.
Read full review
Professional Services
Absorb Software Inc.
I believe this question speaks to additional professional service hours that we had built into our contract to work with a set of staff members for purposes of changes or enhancements to our specific instance of Absorb. Again, I have nothing but positive things to say regarding our dealings with people at all levels of the organization. The PMs, the technical experts, the help desk staff are all friendly, knowledgeable, helpful and efficient
Read full review
Thinkific
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
Absorb Software Inc.
  • Lighter administrative load, we went from 20-30 support tickets per month to 1 or 2.
  • Our course setup and configuration time now takes less than 5 minutes. In our previous system it took us close to 15 minutes to publish a course.
  • We have been able to push administrative responsibilities to department level administrators, because of the ability to have department level admins, who only have access and control of their department users and content.
Read full review
Thinkific
  • I have to work harder to insure I get a monthly return on my investment.
  • A positive is once I create a course, I market it over and over each year.
  • Being able to mix hosting a live masterclass with course modules allows me to offer more value to my customers, which is good for my business.
Read full review
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.