Best Learning Management Systems for Small Business
For training your own staff, TalentLMS is where a lot of small teams start: a free plan for up to five users that you can stay on indefinitely, then $119 a month, billed yearly, for a team of up to 40, with a 4.7 Capterra rating from 600 reviews. If your people work a floor or a route rather than a desk, Connecteam is free for up to ten users and $29 a month for the first 30, with courses sitting in the same app they open for scheduling.
The Starting Price column can't be read on its own, because these tools bill in different ways. Five charge one flat monthly rate for the account, five charge for every user or every active user, MoodleCloud bills by the year, and Trainual only quotes. That is how TalentLMS's $119 can cover 40 people while 360Learning's $8 covers one. The other divide is purpose: LearnWorlds and Thinkific are built for selling courses to the public, not for tracking your staff's training.
Our picks
- Best for a team of up to 40 on one bill: TalentLMS. $119 a month billed yearly covers the whole band, with a free plan for up to five users first.
- Best for crews who don't work at a desk: Connecteam. Free for up to ten users, then $29 a month for the first 30, backed by 5,309 Capterra reviews at 4.6.
- Lowest price per learner: ProProfs Training Maker. $1.99 per active learner a month after a free plan for up to ten, with 500-plus ready-made courses to assign.
- Best for writing down how your business runs: Trainual. Turns process and policy documentation into training, rated 4.8 from 509 reviews, 90 percent of them from small businesses.
- Best for selling courses under your own brand: LearnWorlds. A white-labelled school on your own domain from $24 a month billed annually, plus $5 per paid enrollment on that tier.
At a glance
| Option | Starting Price | Pricing Basis | Free Option | Built For | Capterra Rating | Capterra Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $119source | Flat monthly ratesource | Free plansource | Employee trainingsource | 4.7source | 600source | |
| $6.91source | Per active usersource | Free trialsource | Employee trainingsource | 4.7source | 195source | |
| $8source | Per active usersource | Free trialsource | Employee trainingsource | 4.7source | 509source | |
| $1.99source | Per active usersource | Free plansource | Employee trainingsource | 4.8source | 25source | |
| $5source | Per usersource | Free plansource | Frontline and deskless teamssource | 4.7source | 6source | |
| $29source | Flat monthly ratesource | Free plansource | Frontline and deskless teamssource | 4.6source | 5,309source | |
| $9.71source | Per usersource | Free plansource | Employee trainingsource | 4.8source | 68source | |
| $80source | Flat monthly ratesource | Free trialsource | Customer and partner trainingsource | 4.6source | 179source | |
| Custom quotesource | Demo onlysource | Employee trainingsource | 4.8source | 509source | ||
| Flat annual ratesource | Free trialsource | Schools and universitiessource | 4.3source | 3,387source | ||
| $24source | Flat monthly ratesource | Free trialsource | Selling coursessource | 4.7source | 194source | |
| $40source | Flat monthly ratesource | Free trialsource | Selling coursessource | 4.4source | 207source |
Flat account price or a price for every person
Flat pricing makes the bill predictable. TalentLMS charges by user band, so the jump comes when you pass 40 people rather than with each hire. Easy LMS goes further, with a flat $80 for unlimited participants and a cap of 3,000 exams or course starts a month, which suits training many customers, franchisees or seasonal staff occasionally and costs more when a small group trains constantly.
Per-person pricing starts lower and grows with the team. 360Learning's $8 and ProProfs' $1.99 are charged only for people who actually log in that month, which helps when headcount moves. GoSkills charges $9.71 per licence, so everyone you train is a paid seat. iSpring Learn looks cheap at $6.91 per active user, but its published tiers start at 100 users ($8,286 a year), so a ten-person shop has to ask for a price.
Course-selling platforms versus staff training tools
LearnWorlds and Thinkific are for a business whose training is the product. LearnWorlds' $24 Starter plan takes $5 from every paid enrollment until you move to the $79 Pro Trainer tier, so sales volume decides which plan is cheaper. Thinkific's $40 Basic plan includes payments and one community, but its 4.4 rating is the second lowest here, with support responsiveness the common complaint, and it is meant for selling to outsiders rather than tracking your own staff's compliance. MoodleCloud sits apart again: built for schools and universities, $170 a year for 50 users, with a dated interface that is its most common complaint.
How much weight the Capterra ratings carry
The ratings only run from 4.3 to 4.8, so the Capterra Reviews column does more work. SC Training's 4.7 rests on six reviews under its new name, and ProProfs' 4.8 on 25. Connecteam's 4.6 comes from 5,309 reviews and MoodleCloud's 4.3 from 3,387, which makes those two scores far more settled even though they are lower.
The options in detail
TalentLMS
TalentLMS is where a lot of small teams start: you can sign up without a credit card, build courses with its AI course creator, and stay on a free plan for up to five users for as long as you like. Paid plans are priced by user band rather than per seat, so a team of up to 40 pays one predictable bill ($119 a month billed yearly, $149 month to month) and the next band is a step up rather than a gradual climb. Capterra reviewers rate it 4.7 across 600 reviews, the deepest review base of the dedicated LMS tools here. Worth knowing before you budget: the 1,000-course TalentLibrary is a separate paid add-on, not part of the plan price.
iSpring Learn
iSpring Learn is aimed squarely at corporate onboarding, compliance and certification tracking rather than at course selling. You are billed only for people who log in during the month, which is forgiving if headcount moves, but the published tiers begin at 100 users ($6.91 per user a month, $8,286 a year), so a ten-person shop is priced out of the published rates and has to ask. Capterra reviewers give it 4.7 from 195 reviews, praising the course builder and support while noting thin reporting detail and limited branding control. The 30-day trial needs no credit card.
360Learning
360Learning is built on the idea that the people who know the work should write the training, so course authoring and peer feedback are shared out rather than owned by one administrator. The entry Team plan is $8 per user a month for up to 100 users, and the company says there is no minimum commitment and you pay only for active users, which suits a business whose headcount moves month to month. It rates 4.7 on Capterra from 509 reviews; the recurring complaints are administration getting fiddly at scale and slow resolution when something breaks. A 30-day free trial runs before any commitment.
ProProfs Training Maker
ProProfs Training Maker is the cheapest way onto this list: a free plan covers up to ten learners for good, and the first paid tier is $1.99 per active learner a month, capped at 100 active learners. It leans on a ready-made catalogue of 500-plus courses (compliance topics like harassment training among them) so a small business can assign something useful on day one instead of authoring from scratch. Capterra scores it 4.8, but from only 25 reviews, so treat that number as thin evidence next to the thousands behind Connecteam or Moodle.
SC Training (formerly EdApp)
SC Training, the platform that used to be EdApp, delivers training as short mobile lessons rather than long desktop courses, which is the right shape for staff who work a floor or a route instead of a desk. There is a free version for up to ten learners with AI lesson generation and an editable course library, and the paid Premium tier is listed at $5 per user a month. Its Capterra rating is 4.7 but from only six reviews under the new name, so the older EdApp reputation is doing most of the work. Note that its own pricing page was unreachable when this table was built, so the price here comes from Capterra's listing.
Connecteam
Connecteam is a workforce app first and an LMS second: courses and quizzes live in its HR & Skills hub alongside time off, documents and onboarding, so training is one tab in the app your crew already opens for scheduling. Small teams get an unusually generous deal, with everything free for up to ten users and the paid hub starting at $29 a month for the first 30 users. It carries 5,309 Capterra reviews at 4.6, far more field evidence than anything else here, though reviewers regularly gripe about notification volume and slow app loads. If you want deep course authoring or SCORM, this is the weakest fit on the list.
GoSkills
GoSkills pairs an LMS with its own library of accredited business courses (Excel, project management, leadership), so the pitch is that you assign proven content rather than write your own. A free Basic tier lets you invite learners and sample ten lessons from every library course; the LMS Pro plan at $9.71 per licence a month unlocks unlimited course building with SCORM and xAPI upload. Reviewers on Capterra give it 4.8 from 68 reviews and consistently call it easy to use. The catch is licence-based pricing: everyone you train is a paid seat, which adds up faster than the flat-rate options here.
Easy LMS
Easy LMS charges a flat fee with unlimited participants, and meters you on activity instead: the $80 Basic plan allows 3,000 exams or course starts a month. That shape is unusual and it matters, because it makes the bill predictable when you train a lot of people occasionally, such as customers, franchisees or seasonal staff, and expensive when a small group trains constantly. Capterra reviewers rate it 4.6 from 179 reviews and describe it as simple and good value, with the trade-off that it does less than the bigger platforms. A free trial runs with no credit card.
Trainual
Trainual solves a different problem from the rest of this list: it is a place to document how your business runs (processes, policies, role handbooks) and then assign that documentation as training, which is why it shows up in almost every small-business shortlist for onboarding. Capterra reviewers score it 4.8 from 509 reviews, and 90 percent of them are small businesses, the highest concentration here. The trade-off is commercial rather than technical: prices are not published, every plan routes through a demo, and the pricing page notes a one-time implementation fee of $1,000 for its guided setup.
MoodleCloud
MoodleCloud is the hosted version of Moodle, the open-source LMS that schools and universities have run for two decades, and it is the cheapest serious option here if you are willing to work in an academic-feeling interface. Plans are sold by the year rather than the month: Starter is $170 USD a year for 50 users and 1 GB of storage, with larger bands above it. Moodle's Capterra score is 4.3 from 3,387 reviews, the lowest average on this list, and the most common complaint is exactly what you would expect from a long-lived academic tool: a dated, confusing interface. There is a free trial but no free plan.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is for the small business whose training is the product: a white-labelled school on your own domain, a checkout, interactive video and an AI course builder. Starter is $24 a month billed annually ($29 month to month) but charges $5 on every paid enrollment, so the real decision is whether you graduate to the $79 Pro Trainer tier where that fee disappears. Capterra reviewers rate it 4.7 from 194 reviews, with the common note that the lower tiers feel limiting and the features people want sit further up the ladder. A 30-day trial gives access to the core platform first.
Thinkific
Thinkific is the other course-selling platform here, and the more consumer-facing of the two: a drag-and-drop builder, payments, and one community included on the $40-a-month Basic plan ($54 month to month). It is a comfortable place to publish a first paid course without technical help, which is exactly how the vendor pitches the entry tier. Its Capterra score, 4.4 from 207 reviews, is the lowest of the paid platforms on this list, and support responsiveness is the complaint that comes up most. Use it to sell training to the outside world, not to track compliance for your own staff.
How we researched this
The list leans toward tools for training your own staff, since that is what small businesses usually mean by an LMS, with course-selling, customer-training and academic platforms kept in and labeled in the Built For column. Quote-only platforms aimed at larger companies, such as Absorb LMS, Litmos and Docebo, were left out, with Trainual standing in for the ask-for-a-price model. LearnUpon was cut because its plans start at 100 users, Coassemble because it now sells an API-first developer product from $250 a month, Tovuti because it publishes only a yearly price for 100 learners, and Zoho Learn because its prices could not be read from its page.
Starting Price uses the vendor's yearly-billing monthly rate where one is shown. It is blank for Trainual, which publishes no prices and mentions only a $1,000 setup fee, and for MoodleCloud, which states only a yearly price. SC Training's price comes from its Capterra listing because its own pricing page could not be reached. Ratings are all from Capterra so they compare on one basis. Prices were read on September 3, 2026, and several change with the user band and billing toggle, so price your actual headcount on the vendor's page, and check for add-ons such as TalentLMS's separately sold course library.