Item: Tovuti LMS
Rating: 7
Author: Jeremy Meyer

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use it to train members of an open-source software community. We need an online learning platform to host, manage and help with the authoring of high-tech training to be available on-demand to aid with project success, and we need details of all trainees for our marketing efforts.

Pros and Cons

turn video into interactive training courses
provide basic reporting of course progress, etc.
manage menus and simple layouts

Some of the features are not customizable, as advertised, for example, embellishments on videos to make them interactive. There are a few areas where styling is difficult.
The documentation is quite poor, it is not easy to find answers to more detailed questions.
Some of the features are a little non-intuitive and not consistent, so it is often hard to remember or understand the thinking behind them. For example, "Events" are under "Community" in the menus. The difference between "portal", "landing page" and "dashboard" could be more consistently defined.

Return on Investment

Bit early to tell, we dont' have enough content.

Usability

The administration seems much harder than it should be. Documentation is not as good as it could be. The support is very good, but I shouldn't need support to help me with things. For example, a support ticket was solved by telling me "your event is not showing up because you didn't give it a category".. that may well have been covered in my training at some point, but that kind of information should be easy to find in the documentation.

Support Rating

The pre-sales team was very helpful and responsive and then stopped responding to my mail as soon as I had signed the contract, not even a reply from the last couple of emails sent. The post-sale teams are engaged and quick to respond and really good. Unfortunately, I need to use them more than I should, and sometimes the reply is "we don't support that feature", but the support from the support team is excellent.

Alternatives Considered

Tovuti LMS had transparent pricing, which was very reasonable, was responsive to questions, offered a faster go-live time, and had some authoring tools to help get material online faster.

Key Insights

Do you think Tovuti LMS delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Tovuti LMS's feature set?

Did Tovuti LMS live up to sales and marketing promises?

Did implementation of Tovuti LMS go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Tovuti LMS again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

For simplicity of deployment of a learning management system, with simple skinning and not vastly customized menus/styles, Tovuti LMS is well suited. In areas of high customization, with very specific and highly tailored behavior, Tovuti would be less well-suited. The styling is harder than it should be, and customization is not supported in that once you make changes to styles, you are told you won't get support help.

Products Replaced

Key Differentiators

Price
Product Features
Product Usability

There was not one most important, but a slow go live time was a show stopper for other products.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

More detailed look at the customization and API capability (this is being improved, currently)

Good product, good support, a little less featured than it could be with overly complex admin and disappointing documentation.

Overall Satisfaction with Tovuti LMS