User Reviews Overview
About Absorb LMS
Absorb is a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) engineered to drive business productivity and deliver a top-tier learner and admin experience. Absorb LMS is a powerful and flexible software that allows its customers to...
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- Industry: Consumer Goods
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Robust and easy-to-use learning platform
Pros
It offers a very pleasant experience when browsing its interface and viewing the content of the learning programs. Its search tool is very precise to quickly find the required courses. It provides a lot of versatility with its mobile app, which allows you to log in from anywhere and at any time. The evaluation process is very intuitive and simple to carry out.
Cons
So far, the only thing I think it can add is a better level of personalization of the learning processes, however, this is a versatile and very complete platform.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organisation Management
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Finally, an LMS that is Simple and Customizable
We use Absorb for an external audience - volunteers - and they have no complaints. They find it simple to use and don't require an official onboarding process.
Pros
I love that this product is customizable according to your organization's needs. The business model is to teach you how to fish so that you own the system and can make branding updates, page templates, email templates, etc. You can customize the Learner Home to your preferences. You're not stuck with an LMS in a box where you have to rely on customer support for everything. In addition, the system is simple to learn administratively. I'm most impressed with its reporting function which has been very complicated in my experience with many other learning systems. Also, the Global Resources field is awesome so you don't have to pretend documents always belong with a course.
Cons
The ILC course feature could use more flexibility. Would be great to have users be able to register for more than one ILC session within a course. I end up duplicating a lot of courses just to add the ability to register for more sessions.
- Industry: Hospital & Health Care
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
simple to use, but QA poor and support prioritized by popularity votes on their customer forum...
had it for 3 years. our requirements were basic - no hr integration, no e-commerce, short term users, few courses. yet when we were faced with their sudden requirement for us to move/"upgrade" to their new system that contained functional and design continuity problems from the system version we were using, we were told that our problems would not be fixed due to the fact that not enough other customers had "voted" for the same issues to be fixed. that was a dealbreaker. :(
Pros
easy startup, easy to use (provided everything is working properly)
Cons
Software is AS-IS product. Difficulty getting help with system problems - first tool for them is interpersonal pleasantry, and email with article links to something that may or may not be addressing the reported problem. If there is not an easy out-of-the box solution (addressed by the link they send you by email), it will take many interactions and possibly a video screener of your problem before your issue is investigated. Individual learner issues are typically not investigated.
Top Absorb LMS Alternatives
- Industry: E-Learning
- Company size: 2–10 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Effortless Success
We have had an absolutely wonderful experience with Absorb thus far. There were a few temporary hiccups along the way with our account manager. This has all been fixed since. The absolute best part of the experience besides the software is our Client Success Manager, Taylor. I do not know if we could have stayed with Absorb as long as we have without him. He is the ultimate reason we have chosen to stay so long.
Pros
There are so many great things I can say about Absorb. The absolute best feature of the software itself is the individuality it allows us to create for users. We have some standard courses that clients are interested in, however, the biggest pull is allowing us to make the experience feel custom to them. Our customers can easily navigate their own portals effortlessly. Customizing the templates and organization of courses is the personal touch that makes this software so great.
Cons
There are a few key features that I have noticed are not a part of Absorb software that could really be useful. The templates and options on how it is set up are pretty standard, however, certain options such as the calendar for example. Our clients love the calendar. However, you cannot really edit the calendar for full customization. I think if all of the template options had more range in customization it would be a bit better.
- Industry: Professional Training & Coaching
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Absorb LMS
We had such a fantastic start up team on our project with Absorb. We had a lot of ideas/goals for our LMS and our team seemed to help us meet most of our goals/expectations! Absorb is user friendly and allows for some real great content building in dashboards and online courses! Our learners love the look/design.
Pros
Coming from another software, we loved the customizable features of the software!
Cons
Only honestly the reports feature. There was only ways to run mass reports, or individual person or courses. I couldn't pick various folks and run it all at once. HOWEVER being able to to download to excel file instead of CSV file was a game changer!!
Alternatives Considered
Relias Healthcare LMSReasons for Choosing Absorb LMS
Our contract was ending with them and we used them for HR purposes as well.Switched From
PaycorReasons for Switching to Absorb LMS
The product design, the team, the support, and our data transfer.- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
Easy, Fluid Implementation; a Game-Changer for Our Company
Pros
Absorb has made the implementation process incredibly easy. User training was broken down into helpful microlearning and many features have been customizable, which my company stakeholders have loved. Having a project manager as a go-to source of knowledge has been fantastic, and the Help Center has given me self-sufficiency that I look for when working with other vendors. We also love that most features are already included in the pricing, versus being nickel and dimed for reporting, mobile interfaces, different learning methods, company branding, etc. We're excited to have Absorb help our company grow.
Cons
I'd love it if Absorb could work on additional API integrations that are included in the price. My company uses several 3rd party content creators (KnowB4, Udemy) and there are currently no connections with them.
Reasons for Switching to Absorb LMS
Absorb offered the most functionality for its price. It has not required major additional upsells to get the functionality we were looking for. Any other company either did not have key functionality, or cost more than Absorb to get the functionality we were looking for.- Industry: Civic & Social Organization
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
One of the easiest system that I have developed and deployed
Pros
I found Absorb to be easy to use, from implementation to development. My Project Coordinators and integration teams were phenomenal in navigating the process and when challenges arise. We were able to customize the site to our likening and needs. The features are easy to use and user friendly for everyone. I would recommend this product!
Cons
The only downside that I experience was using one template for internal employees (using SSO) and external partners with e-commerce pricing. There were several issues that came up that we needed to be creative to address.
- Industry: Construction
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 1-5 months
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Review Source
very simple to learn and to use
Pros
the simplicity for the end user and for the training coordinators
Cons
some inconsistences in the user fields. they enforce to create more custom fields than necessary
Alternatives Considered
DoceboSwitched From
Cegid TalentsoftReasons for Switching to Absorb LMS
the simplicity for the end user and for the training coordinators- Industry: Education Management
- Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
- Used Weekly for 1+ year
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Review Source
Absorb LMS Review
Pros
Absorb LMS makes it easy to manage user information with data such as registered users, course evaluations and popular courses.
The flexibility of this platform is a plus with users able to customize it as they see fit.
Very good customer support.
Cons
There aren't many supported third party software options that are compatible with LMS Absorb, integrating more would make this platform even better.
- Industry: Insurance
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
New to Absorb
[SENSITIVE CONTENT] have answered any and all questions or concerns I have had. This is my first experience with Absorb and it has been pleasant thus far.
Pros
The ability to create your own courses and pull in outside courses as well.
Cons
With every software there are things that could be updated. It's the nature of the technology beast. But being able to edit an employees profile and see their course data all in one area would be better than having to go into separate areas.
- Industry: Farming
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Absorb, the flexible, powerful yet easy to use LMS!
We use the LMS for the management of both internal and external training. It has been uneventful in the setup and management for both organizations. We have observed a few lacking capabilities in out of the box reporting to be able to report on these programs in a holistic way. However, with their APIs and direct database connections we have succeeded. While system availability and performance has been stellar, we have experienced some delays in customer support addressing our needs. They do respond, at the moment it is just taking a little longer than expected. While migrating to their system can be quite busy and a little laboring, the process was easy to follow and not too problematic for us. Our users have commented upon their migration as quite refreshing with the newer interface, layout and feel. Our overall experience has been good and we are looking forward to the new capabilities and features Absorb is continually to invest in. Happy & Productive Learning!
Pros
Ease of use, no matter a user or administrator. Quick and responsive page loading, and simply ability to export data reports. Advance API and direct database access capability for growth and in-depth training program management and reporting. Customizable interface and deployment options with integration to other content provider libraries. Simple enrollment & curriculum rule writing and deployment.
Cons
Some difficulties in the management and deployment of blended learning within these challenging COVID times. Would like to see more out of the box higher level training program reports for a department, group, or training center. Could use some more options for defining departments, roles and user privilege's within the system.
- Industry: Airlines/Aviation
- Company size: 10,000+ Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
LMS Focused on Client Satisfaction
Absorb LMS is exactly what we needed to streamline our training deliver consistently and reliably. Learners love the ease of use and our admins love the reporting. Absorb also offers content integrations which we are utilizing to deliver leadership training.
Pros
Absorb has such a wonderful client portal to submit feedback. There's an ability to submit feature requests and have other clients talk through the pros/cons and use cases for those items. I've had calls with Absorb developers based on the feedback that I had submitted and those features then went forward into the production environment. It is awesome to see how involved Absorb is in the client community.
Cons
There are not many features that are problematic. I wish there was a more seamless way to allow a learner to take one course in place of another. If a learner submitted a third party certificate for a course that is equivalent to an in-house course, the admin needs to manually award completion for the in-house course. It isn't exactly clean and can lead to some confusion when auditing learner completions to understand which version was completed vs credited.
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Review Source
Absorb: Solid But With Some Shortcomings
(note: this review is based on our experience using Absorb 4).
At ARRIS, Absorb powers ARRIS Academy, our centralized location for all things training serving both internal employees as well as external customers. The platform has performed very well, maintaining consistent up time and performance while serving the diverse needs of our organization. Using the eCommerce integration and curricula, we have successfully launched certification programs so that customers and employees can demonstrate their proficiency in our products and thus demonstrate a marketable skill. We have also utilized the curricula feature to easily mass-enroll our employees in mandatory trainings; based on this success, we are exploring other forms of automated enrollments, particularly for onboarding new employees. Working with Absorb has been a great experience. Overall, the customer service is top notch. The team has worked with us to provide SSO and learner import solutions which not only reduces the overhead in Admin time but it also provides a more seamless user experience.
In my first year at ARRIS, we have rapidly grown in our reliance of Absorb, turning it into a company-wide hub of training needs. As such, we have experienced a lot of 'growing pains' as we discover the limitations of the current version of the platform. In particular, the reporting capabilities leaves a lot to be desired. There's no way to run a report on courses which also includes sub categories. In addition, a report on employees and their training records cannot be produced on a single page; one has to click within each employee to see what she/he has done.
Admin permissions is another area that is lacking. In order for somebody to create courses intended for a specific audience, he/she has to have the ability to affect all courses. It would be ideal to grant only very specific permissions for given category and also prevent he/she from performing specific actions for a given course. These are just a few of things that contribute to a lower score in ease of use as it does make the job of an admin more difficult than it needs to be.
As good as customer service has been, there have been times where there have been lengthy gaps between emails or phone calls and our delayed upgrade to Absorb 5 which brings down the score a bit. We are excited to see what the capabilities are of Absorb 5; we hope for many enhancements that improve the experience for all users.
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Review Source
Great LMS solution
Absorb is a solid LMS and a great solution compared to any alternative we examined from a cost/benefit perspective. Things that are cons are more than made up for by the pure breadth of functionality available for the price, and they're very very good at taking customer feedback and making improvements to their product. I'd be comfortable recommending them to any business looking to start up a new LMS or replace an aging in-house system.
Pros
Nice interface and excellent feature set - great coupon tool, course bundles, shopping cart functionality, multi-module courses, lesson plans, forced pre-requisites, monitoring and reporting (SCORM and AICC), scheduling tool, assessments and surveys, discussion boards, linking resources to courses, multi-tiered and customizeable user/admin management, certificates, waitlist management, and customizeable automated email notifications. Integrates with our web-based training platform (Adobe Connect), supports both self-paced and instructor-led courses, responsive to customer requests, able to go from zero to fully-functional LMS in a matter of days. Great value.
Cons
Can be a bit clunky and non-intuitive, difficult to set up and classes as individual objects (each course requires the set-up of a separate instance, even if you want a 1:1 ratio between setup and delivery), finance-based reporting (and reporting in general, actually) is just OK (but getting better), Flash interface that requires pop-ups is a recurring complaint, needs better user account flexibility (i.e. ability for users to manage their information, change their password, etc.) and security (everything is stored/visible in clear text).
Response from Absorb
Thanks for the review! As of 2013 Flash and popups are gone with the new HTML5 interface. We have also added additional security options as well as learner password management. We're looking forward to your continued feedback!
- Industry: E-Learning
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Extraordinary features!
My overall experience with Absorb LMS is amazing. As a user and a teacher, Absorb LMS organized my task. It provides awesome features that made me gain time and effort, such as tracking participants' attendance and performance. The electronic signature has also personalized the experience for all users and is a unique feature. Though Absorb LMS still needs improvements in some areas, It is still one of the best software I used for E-learning and virtual classroom management. Highly recommended!!!!
Pros
* Very easy and friendly to use especially for beginners. * Absorb LMS is a great software to create and publish a course. * It tracks the participants' performance and provides reports.* Very responsive customer service. * It has an electronic signature.
Cons
* Configuration process is a bit difficult for beginners. * Integration options are limited. * Reporting service can be tricky sometimes. * Difficulty in managing blended learning
- Industry: Music
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Absorb Review
Pros
We are in our 6th year of using Absorb and have two portals for internal and external audiences. Absorb is powerful and provides a responsive experience for both the User and LMS Admin. There are features of the system we are still exploring as features and improvements are consistently offered.
Cons
We'd like to see more customization in the reporting function, especially when it comes to running mass reports based off more than one course, user, etc. Though this topic has already been addressed as a point of future improvement and releases.
- Industry: Music
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
I appreciate Absorb as a business partner
I appreciate the personal relationships we have at all levels within Absorb. Along with consistent communication and asking us what would make this product better.
Pros
Absorb has made it easy to use their tool for both our internal and external customers. The ease of use provides the learner with a positive user experience. With each new release, the tool becomes more and more of an asset.
Cons
Reporting functionality isn't as intuitive as the rest of the tool.
- Industry: Information Technology & Services
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Customer Love Quote!
With Covid19, Absorb LMS has been invaluable! We were able to continue training our staff remotely while keeping them safe at home.
Pros
Introducing an LMS to PPT employees was seamless with Absorb. The platform is very intuitive for the first time user.
Cons
Integration to our business processes is an on-going project. We are always discovering new tools and ways to use Absorb to improve procedure and increase productivity.
The only add-on that would be helpful at this point is the ability to track competencies earned outside of the platform.
- Industry: Nonprofit Organisation Management
- Company size: 501–1,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Leadership Development
Our experience with Absorb has been outstanding! Through this process we have run into several issues and questions. All of the support team has been great to work with. The help desk tickets we have submitted have all been resolved in 24 hours or less. Amazing!
Pros
The Absorb platform has been great for getting us up to speed quickly and ease of use for our learners. We are moving a lot of what we had been doing for leadership development from an in-person only option to a more blended approach.
Cons
There is a learning curve, as with anything, for us to understand some of the terminology and functions. We do not have anyone on staff who does this full time, so we are all learning slowly.

- Industry: Machinery
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
Great product that focuses on being good at one thing... Online learning.
Pros
Absorb was the first LMS that I worked with that fully supported HTML5. The interface was beautiful from a learner perspective and could be fully branded to your company. It was intuitive and supported all of the training types that we created and purchased. The company was easy to work with and provided support for our needs.
Cons
The backend/admin portal was separate from the user portal. Meaning, it was based on different technology (flash at the time), was actually hosted on a different part of the system and did not seem as unified as other systems I have worked with. It was still very functional, but left some to be desired.
- Industry: Insurance
- Company size: 11–50 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Absorb Review
Overall we are happy with the platform and ability to customize it for our clients.
Pros
Courses run more smoothly for our users than our previous platform.
Cons
The standard reporting leaves a lot to be desired.

- Industry: Investment Banking
- Company size: 51–200 Employees
- Used Daily for 6-12 months
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Review Source
High Potential LMS
Pros
It has the ability to encourage learning on the go and remotely, with extensive and versatile training options for staff. It is a very versatile and flexible platform that has everything you need to ensure that corporate learning takes place at an excellent level. It provides high-quality third-party integrations to use content created in another application.
Cons
It has excellent customization options, although for new users it can be a challenge to use them.
- Industry: Health, Wellness & Fitness
- Company size: 201–500 Employees
- Used Daily for 2+ years
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Review Source
Help Desk Excellence
As always the help desk staff at absorb are great at answering and mitigating questions that I have. Keep up the good work.
Pros
Both the front end and back end are easy to use and navigate.
Cons
How a person can only be attached to one department with one email address.
- Industry: Management Consulting
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Review Source
Absorb LMS - Flexible and User-Friendly
Pros
We have been using Absorb LMS for 4+ years. The product is excellent and the Absorb team is very cooperative in working with us to customize the LMS for our unique needs. It has evolved into a collaborative partnership, rather than a typical vendor-client relationship. We have users around the world, and the user-side LMS has proven to be stable and easy to use. The admin-side has a wide range of features, and it is relatively easy for people to learn the basics. We use the LMS to deliver classroom courses, e-learning and bundles. We have established special access roles for instructors which has streamlined operations. Absorb is releasing a major upgrade which we are testing. The upgrade adds great features, and we are eager to migrate to the new version.
Cons
We provide our clients with very specific project tracking and reporting functions that have become part of our competitive advantage. These functions go beyond the capabilities of the Absorb LMS and the needs of typical LMS users. We have had to develop customized modules that import data from the LMS.
- Industry: Hospital & Health Care
- Company size: 1,001–5,000 Employees
- Used Daily for 1+ year
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Review Source
Good user interface with excellent customer support
Have been able to increase training compliance and empower SMEs to use the platform more regularly
Pros
User interface is intuitive. Customer support staff is professional and responsive.
Cons
Difficult to personalize learning pathways