Primarily based out of Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, Soak up focuses on serving small and medium enterprise dimension clients. It signifies that it has honed its product to the very best requirements and might be extra responsive than different platforms as it may well have studying up and working in days, quite than weeks.
Soak up has workplaces worldwide, with a presence in 34 international locations, and 23.5 million customers. Amongst its over 1,500 clients it counts Dale Canergie, The Hole, Johnson & Johnson and World eTraining.
Options
Soak up LMS is a studying administration system that’s cloud primarily based. It has plenty of options to higher interact and educate.
One such function is learner engagement. Soak up LMS has options to foster comprehension, and retention of information. This begins with an interface that’s intuitive for ease of navigation. There’s a design that’s progressive for each desktop and cell platforms. A connection is fostered through a social connection as learners create social profiles, can fee programs and have a digital interplay with different learners. Lastly, a wide range of content material is supported, together with paperwork, movies and webinars.
Completion of the training is tracked, after which rewarded with the issuance of badges or certificates. These certificates might be customized, appropriate for a obtain or print. These awards might be tracked and accessed from the transcript of the consumer. Learners are then capable of even showcase these awards on their social profile!
One other function of Soak up is to interact learners and improve their expertise. Customized billboards might be created to “Characteristic programs and packages.” Leaderboards will also be used for the promotion of competitors amongst learners. For additional engagement, polls and surveys might be built-in into the expertise. There may be additionally the accessible operate to interact learners additional along with your group’s social media accounts. Learners will also be stored updated with information articles to maintain them updated.
Plans and pricing
Soak up takes the opaque path to pricing. On the location, potential clients want to offer their information, together with an e mail and telephone quantity, and some easy questions on the potential use case. In flip, the corporate will contact them for a customized quote. There isn’t any pricing on the Soak up web site.
Looking out round, we did discover a ballpark for the pricing, but it surely will not be totally updated. Realizing that, we nonetheless would think about Soak up to be one of many costlier choices on this area. A small enterprise would want to buy an $800 licensing price, after which $16 for 12 months of use by every lively learner. There may be additionally an extra $3200 setup price for coaching and help. For these costs, the content material could be hosted by Soak up, and a customized web site will get created.
There are additionally different choices, comparable to to have Soak up combine into current purposes. An alternative choice is for totally hosted pricing for as much as 500 customers at a value of $14,500 on an annual foundation. Lastly, an upgraded help plan might be added for an extra price,
Help
Premium help is included, however an Elite plan goes for $5000, and an Enterprise plan has a value of $25,000 yearly. Nevertheless, it’s unclear what differentiates these plans.
For these on the lookout for extra primary help, there may be the Soak up LMS Assist Desk that has plenty of assets that everybody can entry. There’s a part for bulletins that people can use to maintain updated with new developments with Soak up. There may be additionally a Data Base that has each informative articles, and FAQ’s. It’s quite in depth, masking a variety of subjects, comparable to “Person Acceptance testing,” “Configuring eCommerce,” and “Automation With Surveys” among the many many articles. There may be additionally a Group listed for dialogue of subjects round Soak up, however at this level it’s extra of a possible because it simply signifies “Nothing to see right here but.”
Person critiques
There are smartphone apps for each the iOS and the Android platforms, which is actually good to see. Nevertheless, each are fairly low rated.
On the iOS Soak up Studying app, there are solely 12 rankings, and the rating is a low 2.6 out of 5 stars. Customers have a number of points, such because the app not working in any respect after an replace, movies not enjoying, and random signal outs when utilizing the app.
Over on the Google Play retailer, as soon as once more the Soak up studying app is low quantity with solely 11 rankings, and an nearly as low rating of two.9 out of 5 stars. Person complaints cowl that it’s simpler to make use of the content material on a pc, that in panorama mode that the titles occupy nearly all of the display screen obscuring the video, and that general it’s a “Horrible expertise,” and that this firm wants to higher help the app.
Closing verdict
Soak up LMS has loads of the suitable options for a cloud primarily based studying administration system. We’re impressed with the social media facets, the customized certificates and awards, the properly accomplished assist heart, and the number of content material supported. Nevertheless, different areas give us pause, which embrace the critically glitchy apps, the opaque pricing (that’s costly with additional analysis), and the upper price for help past the fundamental. In our last evaluation, whereas the features are enticing, the entire isn’t larger than the sum of the components, and potential customers ought to fastidiously think about Soak up LMS amongst all of their choices.