The Best Learning Management Systems for UK Organizations (& How to Choose)

The stakes are always high with any training investment. You want your new tools to produce results, whether that’s improved productivity or delivering training quickly and efficiently. 

Learning management systems promise to do both, and plenty more. The shift to more flexible work environments accelerated the need for this kind of remote-friendly training solution. They offer consolidated training materials, better knowledge retention and employee engagement, and increased ROI on training programs.

But despite the wonderful systems and technologies on the market, 42% of organizations that use an LMS are thinking of replacing theirs. Don’t let yours be one of them.

You want a platform that’s user-friendly and makes collaboration easier. You want a platform that helps you upskill your workforce quickly and efficiently. In short, you want the highest return on investment. 

So we created this list of the top LMS platforms for UK businesses. We’ll also explore some of the most common questions faced by companies trying to choose, and how to answer them. Or, you can simply download this handy checklist. 👇  

What is a learning management system? 

An LMS lets you create, manage, and deliver tailored training to your organization. These software systems offer both a library of courses and resources, and a testing environment to ensure that team members are constantly updating their knowledge and skills. 

For L&D professionals, this makes designing and delivering courses more efficient. You always know who needs what training, and the platform keeps them on track.

Learners have an individualized program, tailored to their role, their performance, and their prior knowledge. 

And the organization can be sure that the entire workforce is developing and attaining the skills and knowledge needed to keep you ahead of the pack.

Why use an LMS?

Before you decide which to select, take a moment to confirm whether an LMS is the right choice for you.

Traditional, instructor-led training and presentations are fast becoming outdated, especially with the transition to remote and hybrid work. Even before the transition to remote work, only 12% of employees applied skills from L&D programs to their jobs. So, organizations are adopting LMSs in record numbers to create robust and scalable online training programs.

An LMS is a key enabler for just-in-time learning, a method that employees prefer because they can access the right knowledge when they need it. It empowers employees to source personalised information by requesting a quick course or asking a question to internal SMEs and immediately apply the learning to their tasks.

You save training costs while still upskilling employees through internal knowledge sharing and collaboration. A learning platform plays a key role in this type of collaborative learning.

Specifically, an LMS can help you address several training problems:

• Your training is a one-way stream of information (such as slide decks and videos) that you send to employees without follow-ups or discussions.
• Your employees don’t engage with training. Or even if they are, you have no way to track this.
• Your training materials are not useful or relevant.
• You have identified skills gaps and want to create a content library of new, relevant training materials.
• Your employees are remote (or hybrid) and need elearning courses.
• You need to create or buy compliance training courses and keep track of which employees have taken them.

Why not use an LMS?

If you’re a young company with just a handful of employees, you may not need an LMS just yet. In this case, you could build learning experiences through a microsite until you develop a need for more extensive training materials. 

That said, even small businesses can benefit from an LMS for storing and securing data, personalized online learning, and saving the costs of hiring external instructors.

9 excellent LMS providers for UK organizations

Choosing the right LMS can be a challenge — that’s why we have so many resources on the topic. You need one that suits your organization and your in-house learning style. And obviously, it must be available in the UK. Each of the following options fit the bill. 

All the LMS tools on this list are cloud based. This is essentially a non-negotiable for courses to be accessible and updatable from anywhere.

1. 360Learning

360Learning is the AI-powered, end-to-end learning platform of choice for UK organizations. It empowers learning & development teams to drive business impact by identifying skills gaps, capturing knowledge from experts, and delivering it to learners when they need it most.

It combines the benefits of a learning experience platform (LXP) and LMS, coupled with collaborative learning academies, with an easy-to-use interface and automation to make L&D more efficient. Key features include AI-assisted authoring, automatic enrollment, audit-proof reporting, and automated compliance training.

But what really separates 360Learning from the rest is the focus on collaborative learning. The tools let your subject-matter experts easily share knowledge — without any software expertise — and team members can engage with and learn from these courses alongside their peers and colleagues. 

You get a hybrid platform for both external and internal employee training, customer training, and partner enablement. You also have comprehensive data and analytics, a built-in certification engine, and a clean, easy user experience.

360Learning also includes best-in-class AI-powered authoring, to make building courses and certifications faster than ever. AI helps you spot and close skills gaps, and build the modern, high-performance organization you need.

Book a demo for a 30-minute tour of the platform.

2. Docebo

Docebo’s Learn LMS is a learning management system with tools for personalized learning, social learning capabilities, and robust reporting and analytics.

UK companies choose Learn LMS to streamline employee training and development and ensure compliance with industry regulations. Its scalable nature makes it suitable for businesses of all sizes, and its user-friendly interface can boost engagement and retention. 

Docebo integrates well with other business systems and supports multiple languages. This makes it a good option for companies operating in different countries and with diverse workforces.

Book a demo with Docebo to learn more.

3. Thrive

Thrive is another comprehensive LMS popular with UK companies. It’s known for being easy to use and makes learning fun for teams, with points and badges to be won as learners progress.

Thrive is built primarily for internal training, with less of an emphasis on customer education and external partners. But for in-house training, it’s a real asset. 

One reviewer describes the tool as being “an LXP that’s eaten an LMS” — it offers the social learning experience of an LXP, with the structure and content management of a full LMS. 

For UK companies that need a powerful learning tool (and content library) that employees will actually enjoy using, Thrive is worth looking into. 

Book a demo of Thrive.

4. TalentLMS

TalentLMS is designed to simplify your online training programs thanks to customizable course creation, gamification, reporting, and integrations with your existing tools and platforms.

Use TalentLMS to train employees, partners, or customers efficiently, and ensure consistent and scalable learning experiences. Its user-friendly interface and mobile compatibility make it accessible for learners anytime, anywhere. 

The platform is very flexible, and lets businesses tailor training to specific needs. Reports then provide insights into learner progress and program effectiveness. 

Crucially, users state that the base-level features are of a high caliber, and require few add-ons or enhancements. This makes it quick to get started and easy to use, even for L&D pros who aren’t technical by nature.   

Request a demo to learn more. 

5. WorkRamp

WorkRamp is a popular LMS based in San Francisco but used by companies in the UK and around the world. It is known for being easy and intuitive to use, with good customer support should you need help.

Like most tools on this list, WorkRamp connects and integrates with a range of other business software like Salesforce. This is hugely valuable in sales enablement training — a critical need for most businesses — even if getting the connection up and running can be tricky. 

Overall, it’s the course authoring that users love most. That, and an active community for L&D leaders to share ideas with and learn from. 

Contact WorkRamp to book a demo.

6. Skilljar

Skilljar is “the leading training platform purpose-built for external education.” It’s specifically designed to help you onboard and train customers to use your products and services confidently, to their full potential. It also integrates with your CRM so you can easily make these training pathways part of your sales and customer success approach.

Companies use the platform to create product certifications, learning sites and help centers, and share training resources with customers. Many users report high quality customer support, and Skilljar’s own training materials and videos add real value. 

Skilljar is obviously best suited to organizations that need excellent external training programs. If you want to upskill customers and help them get the most from your products, it’s worth a close look. 

Request a demo of Skilljar

7. Absorb LMS

Absorb LMS lets you build personalized training programs for employees, customers, and partners. It also has an eCommerce component which lets you sell your learning and training programs directly to consumers. 

Absorb LMS is aimed at companies with “a few hundred learners right through to hundreds of thousands of learners.” These courses can be instructor led or asynchronous, and the solution includes nice gamification to keep users engaged.

Absorb’s course builder logic can feel different from other LMS platforms. But once you’re past this (relatively light) learning curve, you have a highly customized learning management system that fulfills most organizational needs. 

Get a demo of Absorb LMS

8. Accord LMS

Accord is another US-based LMS that serves clients all over the world, including the UK. And among its many useful features, its biggest differentiator is price. The solution positions itself as “a cost-effective enterprise class learning management system to organizations of all sizes.” Free trials are available, and plans start at less than £1/month.

You can automate many of the most repetitive tasks to make authoring and delivery far more efficient. This includes building courses, quizzes, and surveys using SCORM, video, online documents, and live classes. 

An LMS that combines plenty of features, easy-to-use interface, and very competitive pricing, Accord LMS is a particularly good fit for growing and scaling businesses. 

Get a free demo.

9. Litmos

Acquired by CallidusCloud in 2011, SAP in 2018, and by Francisco Partners in 2022, Litmos has seen a few iterations. But throughout these changes, it has continued to be a leading LMS solution for modern UK businesses.

Litmos facilitates a range of learning styles and methodologies, including online, in-person, mobile, and social learning. There’s a useful instructor-led module to deliver top-down training, and good tools to track learner performance and see whether your program is having an impact. 

The platform is particularly well suited to compliance training and corporate upskilling. Users can customize the branding and dashboards, and access a large library of ready-to-use content.

Start a free trial here.

Learning management system FAQs

There’s a lot to love about the modern LMS landscape, but choosing the right tool can be difficult. Here are some of the common questions organizations may ask themselves, and some answers to help you decide. 

1. What is my learning philosophy?

Every organization has different learning philosophies, but we categorize them broadly into top-down training and bottom-up training.

Top-down training

Top-down training puts decision-making in the hands of a few leaders at the top. Those few executives decide which training to create and deliver. It might work for companies that have rote processes and routine tasks, like retail and manufacturing. 

Bottom-up training

Bottom-up training is popular with companies that prioritize innovation and individual growth. This type of training is made up of peer-led and self-directed learning. 

In peer-led training, employees collaborate through knowledge-sharing activities like brainstorming sessions, coaching relationships, and peer reviews. 

Self-directed learning empowers employees to identify their own learning needs, create learning goals, design their learning pathway, and evaluate learning outcomes — all with the help of a facilitator.

An LMS with a focus on collaboration could be a big hit with employees that embrace a bottom-up learning philosophy.

2. What’s the best way to deliver training?

Most learning content is delivered via virtual instructor-led training (VILT), offline training, interactive courses, or through a blended-learning approach that combines synchronous and asynchronous online courses.

VILT involves live interaction in the form of webinars, group workshops, or lectures. Some LMSs make VILT sessions easier to organize because they integrate with webinar-hosting tools like Zoom or Google Meet (more on integration capabilities later).

If the majority of your web-based training is live and instructor-led, choose an LMS that makes live training easier to deliver: this could be in the form of distribution and availability of resources, or offering a forum to come together after and share insights.

You may prefer offline training, where learners can download the content and access it at a later time even if they don’t have internet connectivity. An LMS with offline access is perfect for a remote and distributed workforce that cannot be online at the same time. Plus, it helps employees learn at their own pace, which gives them control over how much content they are ready to consume, and improves knowledge retention. 

A blended approach marries asynchronous and synchronous collaboration so that learning is quick, engaging, and digestible. If your organization prioritizes social interaction and collaboration, choose an LMS that supports blended learning.

3. How should I come up with new ideas & training content?

Creating or sourcing the right training content is obviously crucial. Here you’ll find a big difference between the different LMS options. 

There are two main ways to build your training courses:

1. Crowdsource training topics with a learning needs analysis tool — a bottom-up approach
2. Build a skills ontology and skills assessment to identify skills gaps, and have subject-matter experts create the content to close any gaps. 

Both are important, and your tools should make both as smooth as possible. For the first, look for an LMS with bottom-up needs assessment features:

• A learning needs tool. At 360Learning, for example, employees declare and upvote learning needs, enabling our L&D team to prioritize training and providing a bespoke experience.
• A relevance score. When learners finish a course, they are prompted to react to the relevance of the course in one click.
• An authoring tool. An authoring tool lets anyone create a digital course and publish it in select formats. Here's an example of 360Learning's authoring tool in action.

Your chosen LMS should also make skills assessments and audits simple, and help automate much of the content creation process. AI-empowered platforms will first help you find those skills gaps, based on industry benchmarks and real-time results from your learners. 

And then authoring tools let you build entire courses in minutes with as little as a topic suggestion, audience, or learning objective. 

Today, building and updating tailored courses doesn’t have to be a heavy lift. The tools should do all the hard work for you. 

4. How digitally savvy is my workforce?

Not everyone in your company is a digital native. Before you introduce a new tool, study the digital skill sets of your employees through a survey or a meeting with the groups (trainers and employees) that will use the LMS. 

If your company employs a mix of older and younger generations, you want an LMS that is user friendly across age groups. Employees cite poor user experience as a significant barrier to satisfaction with their LMS technology. Search for a tool that has an intuitive user interface, 24/7 customer support, automation, and search functionality.

If your employees are comfortable with digital learning, an LMS with advanced features like customization and mobile learning will engage modern-day learners.

5. What is my LMS budget?

Most companies underestimate the cost of an LMS by 60%. LMS providers usually have pricing tiers, but a host of unforeseen costs like add-on support services and online asset libraries can break the bank.

Here are the five most common pricing plans you will encounter:

• Pay-per-learner: Your monthly cost is based on how many learners actively use the LMS. This is best for small to mid-sized companies with a set number of learners.
• Pay-per-active-user: You’re charged based on how much you use the LMS in a billing cycle. This plan is also useful for companies that want to spread out training for different groups throughout the year, or that need solid onboarding but not continuous training.
• Pay-per-course: Pay each time learners take a course. Ideal for companies who need their employees to take external industry training.
• License fee/subscription: Get a license to use the LMS for a month or a year or on an ongoing basis as a subscriber. It usually comes with a set number of features, support, and users. This is best for enterprise companies that have a high number of users.

To set a realistic estimate for your budget, use a comparison tool like Capterra to lay out pricing plans and the solutions they come with. 

6. Which features are must haves, or just nice to have?

The right LMS for your organization likely isn’t the one with the longest list of features. Be choosy and identify the specific tools that will really make a difference. 

Highly desirable features include: 

• An authoring tool: Specifically, choose an LMS with a built-in authoring tool so that any learner can create, upload, and iterate learning material in minutes without having to worry about format or compatibility.
• SCORM compliance: Most LMS platforms are Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM) compliant, which means that the technology format of courses you purchase from third-party vendors is readable by the tool. If you already have courses you plan to migrate to the LMS, this is a must-have feature.
• Management capabilities: An LMS can help managers define user roles, assign individual courses, and monitor their reports’ course progress.
• Reporting and analytics: LMS analytics give you insight into the quality of learner interaction, like participants’ average scores, completion rates, and satisfaction. 82% of organizations view reporting and analytics as a must-have feature on their list, so if you fall in this bracket.
• In-course feedback: Features like ratings, comments, discussion forums, and reactions are useful for course authors to gather feedback and keep content updated. 
• Co-authoring functions: Multiple subject-matter experts (SMEs) can collaborate on a course through in-course chats, comments, and reviews. This is best for companies that want to use their internal experts to share knowledge.
• Gamification: Game design principles measurably improve learning outcomes. An LMS with gamification makes learning more fun and more social.
• Talent management: Individual learning paths help to close skills gaps and improve performance. If you have identified performance gaps and need to provide training for reskilling and upskilling learners, choose an LMS that helps you devise learning pathways.

7. Does my training exist in diverse content formats?

According to research, 75% of employees prefer to learn through video than from written documents or articles. Show, don’t tell, is the new learning mantra, and video makes this possible. 

Not all LMSs can manage multiple content formats, such as documents and slide decks, quizzes, videos, webinars, podcasts, games, simulations, and leaderboards. You need an LMS that will support these new digital formats and make learning a fun experience.

8. Is the LMS easy to integrate with my existing software?

Businesses commonly work with software like Slack, Zoom, Salesforce, BambooHR, Coursera, Google Drive, and Genially. But 52% of L&D professionals cite the inability tointegrate their LMS with other software as a big barrier. So look for an LMS that integrates easily with the tools you rely on and that facilitates learning in the flow of work.

Suppose your sales team uses Salesforce. When you integrate your LMS, you can deliver training to your customers and partners and measure performance in Salesforce. And your sales team doesn’t need to leave the CRM to access their learning. 

9. What are my mobile learning needs?

70% of learners say they are more motivated to learn when using a mobile device rather than a computer. But a number of LMS platforms are only optimized for desktops and laptops. If your employees prefer to learn on their mobiles or tablets, they may find this too limiting. 

Organizations of all sizes benefit from a mobile-friendly LMS, but it’s especially useful if you are a large enterprise with extensive training content and in-the-field employees. (Ensure that the LMS mobile app is available on both iOS and Android.)

10. Does the LMS vendor offer onboarding and training?

It’s obviously crucial that employees can use the LMS tool confidently. Onboarding can help them get up to speed quickly and start learning. 

But perhaps more importantly, proper onboarding keeps them engaged with your learning program for longer. With a comprehensive onboarding and training process, your learners make better use of the product and are able to navigate the tool independently. 

This is even more pronounced in For large and mid-sized organizations, especially if the LMS will be used across departments. You don’t have the time to sit people down individually and walk them through the new tools. 

11. Is the LMS scalable with my business?

An LMS is a long-term investment that you hope will serve your training needs as they evolve. As a small startup, your LMS may not play a central role in your content offerings, but as you grow, your users, certifications, and training material will expand. 

Similarly, if you’re a mid- or large-sized org with plans to offer personalized learning in the future, select an LMS that has AI tools to cater to individual learning needs.

Inquire about future upgrades, additional features, and the vendor’s overall investment in R&D to see if they will be able to support your growing training needs.

12. What is the ROI of an LMS?

The ROI of your investment in an LMS depends on your end-users — your learners. Choose an unwieldy tool that learners dislike, and you waste precious resources. 

Best practice is to tie it to a goal. If your goal is to improve employee retention, look for an LMS that makes training easily accessible and engaging for employees.

The industry average for course completion rates is at a disappointing 20–30%. But data gathered by 360Learning,, shows an average of 91% course completion rate across 2,300 companies that use the platform. If your goal is to boost course completion rates, look for an LMS that fosters collaboration.

Collaborative learning is crucial to LMS success

The global LMS market is expected to reach $28.1 billion by 2025. In the UK, too, the market has been growing steadily. Among the myriad options, however, the LMS platforms that are future-ready are the ones that have made huge strides in collaborative learning.

As you make your final selection, consider the LMS platforms that intentionally bring learners together to develop with one another, and that spotlight your internal subject-matter experts. This learning strategy is not only more efficient for course authors and managers, it’s proven to work best, too. 

Learn more about collaborative learning and its benefits today. Hopefully you’ll find the perfect LMS for your organization.