TalentLMS is a learning management system (LMS), solely used for employee training. Trainual, on the other hand, is an LMS alternative. It’s a business playbook — meaning it trains your team and serves as a searchable, 24/7 resource for company knowledge, policies, processes, standard operating procedures (SOPs), team structure, employee roles and responsibilities, and more.

Of course, there is quite a bit of overlap between the TalentLMS and Trainual platforms. But there are even more significant differences between them — influencing how they will each support you and the founders, managers, and operational leaders in your org.

👉 So, which is better: Trainual or TalentLMS?

If you’re looking for a one-sentence answer, you’ll want to go with Trainual. 

TalentLMS is restricted as a simple training platform. Trainual offers businesses significantly more beyond training. You can document your entire operational structure (including roles and responsibilities; an employee directory; and org and role charts) using time-saving features like an AI content generator; over 300 robust templates; a chrome extension that captures your processes as you do them; a Google Doc importer; and more. 

Plus, they have many additional resources, like setup support, and an award-winning customer service team that’s only an email or chat away. Sound like what you’re looking for? Start a free 7-day trial now.

Trainual vs. TalentLMS: What’s the same?

Trainual and TalentLMS are two of the leading software solutions for small-to-medium-sized businesses that need to provide employee training. Both equip organizational leaders with the tools they need to build out onboarding and offboarding flows, and document other company information.

They both also offer a broad array of features to help businesses streamline their training processes. You’ll find similar experiences with the following features, available in both Trainual and TalentLMS:

• Unlimited documentation. This is the most important feature in your business playbook. After all, your playbook is the manual that outlines how your business does what it does. And the one thing you need for that: space to document all of it. 
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• Built-in e-signatures. Both platforms allow you to go digital with policy acknowledgment. Helping you collect the proof you need that your team read and understood every important guideline that keeps them safe, accountable, and aligned.
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• In-app screen recording. Nothing helps break up a big block of text better than a video that lets your team sit back, relax, and soak up the information in a different way. Both competitors have in-app video recording options. You can create a quick intro video before diving into an SOP, or you can even record your screen as you show how to carry out a process in real time.  
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• Bulk-content assignment. Making sure everyone has the training they need is easiest when you can dish it out in bulk — based on the groups each employee is a part of. You can add an employee to a group (like Customer Support) and they’re automatically assigned everything they need for their role in both Trainual and TalentLMS.
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• Unlimited testing. These serve as great retention checkpoints as your employees onboard and train. Both platforms offer multiple testing options.
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• Public content sharing. Using Trainual or TalentLMS, you can make any policy, process, or piece of company knowledge available to people outside of your account in your content settings. Meaning, you can share important documentation with freelancers, contractors, candidates, new hires, colleagues, customers — anyone! 
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• Custom branding. If you’d like the added touch of picking accent colors, fonts, and other options that reflect your brand, you’re in luck! Both competitors offer easy ways to make your platform unique to your equally unique business.
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• Single sign-on (SSO) options. Both platforms offer multiple SSO options, so your team can securely log in to their account with a click. 
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• Due dates. Make sure your team completes new hire, annual, or other intermittent training on time by assigning completion due dates in either software.
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• Content owners. When you assign an owner to each policy and process, they can make sure that the information in there stays up to date. Trainual and TalentLMS both offer owner assignment options so subject matter experts in your org can make sure documentation stays helpful. 
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• Custom domains. Get easy access to your account using a custom domain that’s unique to you and your team in either platform.
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• 1000+ app integrations. You want your new software to play nice with the other tools you use. And both platforms have plenty of connection possibilities, including Zapier, which can act as a go-between for your business playbook and tons of other tools. 
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• Mobile apps. If your team ever works out in the field, you’ll want to give them access to processes, policies, and SOPs for information on the go. Both platforms have iOS and Android apps, so employees can search for business knowledge to quickly find the answers they need 24/7. But you get a bonus in Trainual: Your team can complete and e-sign content wherever they are, too!
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• In-depth progress tracking and reporting. In both systems, you can see your entire team’s progress at a glance and in-depth training reports for individual employees. But remember: TalentLMS only gives you custom reporting when you subscribe to a higher-tiered plan. Plus, only Trainual offers advanced progress filtering and exporting — giving you the ability to pull content with certain completion scores, statuses, test requirements, or even what’s been assigned using select groups.
  

Now with the big similarities out of the way, let’s take a dive into the larger variations between the two that may make one better suited for your small-to-medium-sized business than the other.

Features only in Trainual

Trainual is a comprehensive solution for entrepreneurs and leaders who want to grow and scale their businesses. Of course, this isn’t done by generating reusable onboarding and training materials alone. It’s by making people-centric decisions, aligning employees on their responsibilities and expectations, and documenting SOPs and processes so your company runs like a well-oiled machine. Trainual’s features — uniquely crafted for small-to-medium-sized businesses — make it the perfect tool for just that. Companies that choose Trainual have anywhere between less than 10, and up to 5K employees (though most teams using it have between 10 and 250 employees).

Let’s go over the features that this TalentLMS alternative has over its competition.

AI that generates policies and processes in Trainual.

Think of a process or policy you’ve been meaning to document but just haven’t had the time for. Now picture your first draft generated for you almost instantly. That’s the power of the “Compose” button in Trainual: one of the many AI capabilities in the software. 

Trainual Compose does all the heavy lifting for you by transforming your short blurbs into fully-baked steps. All you have to do is type short bullet points of the details you'd like your policy, process, or SOP to include.

Then sit back, relax, and watch Trainual *compose* your entire first draft for you. All you have to do is read it, make edits as needed, and hit “Publish.” 

With Trainual, you get a significant edge of having a playbook and content that writes itself. 

Robust templates in Trainual.  

In TalentLMS, you’re stuck creating most of your documentation from scratch. Since this can be very time-consuming, consider the massive time benefit you’ll get from choosing a platform that offers powerful template starters that help get your documentation up and running in no time.

Trainual provides 300+ robust and fully-built templates — including policies, processes, and roles (descriptions and responsibilities included). This gives the ultimate jumpstart you need for your documentation and content. Just give them your personal touch, and they’re ready to share with the rest of your team.

👉 Check out some of Trainual’s most popular templates:

• Anti-discrimination Policy
• Customer Escalations Process
• Customer Payment Collection Process
• Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) Policy
• Equal Opportunity Policy
• Feedback Training Process
• Noncompete Policy

Note that if you’re willing to nearly double the cost of your subscription in TalentLMS, you can get access to some general pre-built courses. Unfortunately, they can’t be edited to contain the specific training you need for your unique business. 

Team connection in Trainual

When your small business composition is constantly changing (via hiring, promotions, role changes, and so on) you need to help your team members keep it all straight. So it’s no surprise that many small-to-medium-sized businesses look for more than training documentation in their system. 

While TalentLMS is solely a documentation platform, Trainual offers more long-term strategies to success — AKA, systems that invest in your people and answer all their questions about who they work with. Here are some built-in resources Trainual uses to foster team connection:

• Role and responsibility documentation in Trainual.
  Only half of employees experience role clarity in the workplace. In other words, half of your team tackling their jobs today don’t really know what they’re being held accountable for on a day-to-day basis.
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  If you choose TalentLMS, you don’t get a solution for that. But one thing’s for sure: You need somewhere to keep your team informed on what they (and their peers) own.
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  Trainual has a built-in role and responsibilities builder. Allowing managers and operational leaders to not only define roles across the organization, but assign responsibilities and training based on each person's role and strengths.
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  The best part? This information is visible to the whole team in different areas of the platform — ensuring role clarity and accountability across all departments. 
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• Trainual employee directory.
  Over half of employees say they’d trade some compensation for more meaningful relationships with colleagues.
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  The Trainual employee directory is a one-stop shop where team members can get to know each other both professionally and personally. Showing each employee who they work with, how they’ll work together, and what they have in common. Plus, giving everyone visibility into each other’s roles and responsibilities — increasing accountability and avoiding any confusion about who owns what across your org.
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• Trainual org chart.
  Organizational charts (org charts) show every person’s position in your company and who reports to who. In Trainual, this chart is interactive, so you can click on anyone in the chart to see more details. Like the person’s bio, role, responsibilities, and more!
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• Trainual role chart.
  Trainual is the only software on the market with a built-in role chart. Even better: It uses AI functionality to auto-generate a full role chart for you in one click.
  A role chart maps out team members, reporting structure, and responsibilities by role (not by person like an org chart). In other words, it’s a quick snapshot of all the roles in your organization — who falls under each role, which roles report to each other, and what each role is responsible for.
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  A role chart can fill in any gaps in your org chart because there’s a perfect place for everyone — no matter how many departments they have their hands in. You can even use it to plan for future growth by adding roles that don’t exist yet.
  

One-of-a-kind, customized customer care with Trainual

You have to choose the highest-tiered plan to receive live chat support or “priority” support in TalentLMS. (Which you’ll probably need since LMSs are known to be finicky.) 

Trainual’s top-notch customer experience team provides every customer with a multitude of resources and ongoing support. Here are just a few of the unique levels of support they provide:

• Trainual setup support.
  Not sure where to start? Don’t let that keep you from diving into SOP documentation. Trainual gives every Scale account over a month of personalized, 1:1 setup help. Including (but not limited to) help building, customizing, transferring, and organizing your content for you. After meeting up with your setup support specialist over the course of 4-6 weeks, you’ll get your account up and running significantly faster.‍
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• Trainual University.
  The Trainual platform is ridiculously easy to use. But there’s just so much you can do in there! Not to worry — it’s all outlined in a free Trainual platform certification program that teaches content creators about all the features and functions of the platform in an easy-to-follow (and digest) format. So you can make sure anyone helping you build out your account has learned all the software need-to-knows. Bonus: When you graduate, you get some sweet swag to show off.‍
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• Live webinars, workshops, and Trainual Q&A sessions.
  Trainual’s support coaches host live sessions several days a week to help the training and documentation leaders in your org as they first start to build content in your account (and continue to level things up). Webinars include everything from first-timer need-to-knows to best practices for after you know your way around the ropes.‍
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• Trainual’s award-winning customer support.
  That’s right — Trainual has over 50 “Best Relationship” and “Best Support” awards from G2 since 2019. Most of which are in Standard Operating Procedures, Knowledge Management, Training Management Systems, and Onboarding categories. And it’s no mystery why. They have a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) of 97.5 (out of 100!). Which is pretty impressive considering the average in the industry is 78. Plus, their typical chat and email response time is under 10 minutes. So if you’ve got a question, you can bet they’ve got an answer (and fast).‍
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• 1:1 success coaching in Trainual.
  If you need it, Trainual’s got it. Customer success is their top priority, and they’ll work with you to your heart’s content. ‍
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• Trainual’s DIY resources.
  Trainual keeps an up-to-date online help center and to-the-point training videos and tutorials. 

If you choose TalentLMS, there’s a chance you’ll be left out to dry. Their level of resources and ongoing support doesn’t even come close to the level of customized care Trainual offers every customer. So If customer care is important to you, Trainual is the clear winner here.

Google Doc importer in Trainual.

You may have existing documentation in Google Docs that you’re looking to organize and store in a searchable, structured platform. If you choose TalentLMS, that’ll require a lot of copying and pasting. Not to mention saving every image, and embedding them one by one into your new platform. 

The good news: If you’ve got a bunch of Google Docs you’d like migrated over to your new software, you’re already halfway there with Trainual. With the Trainual Capture Chrome extension, you can transform your Google Doc into a Trainual process or policy in a couple of clicks! Yup, images included.

Trainual’s process-capturing tool.

Ever wish your processes could just document themselves? When you use the Trainual Capture Chrome extension, you can literally capture what you're doing as you do it — making process documentation nearly 2x faster.

All you have to do is click start, run through your process, and click finish. And just like that, your step-by-step process will be 100% documented — complete with screenshots and written descriptions for every action you took. 

Trainual’s content-surfacing tool for your internet browser.

With the Trainual Chrome extension, your team can surface the exact processes, policies, and business knowledge they need — right where they're working. (We're talking anywhere on the web.)

Link how-to information to any webpage, and a help icon will appear when your employees navigate to that webpage. When your employees click it, the exact information they need to carry out the online process on that page will slide right out. They can reference it right on the webpage they’re working on, helping them carry out online processes over three times faster.

You can add your payment collection process to your billing platform, PTO guidelines to your benefits homepage, customer FAQs to your chat software — the options are endless. 

Giphy and stock photos. 

If you don’t want your training to be a snooze fest, you need to include some engaging elements throughout every piece of content. Fortunately, you can add fun GIFs and stock photos quick as a flash right in the Trainual app — as these options are readily available in the text editor toolbar.

Cutting-edge tech in Trainual: NFC tags. 

If you choose Trainual, you can leverage adhesive tags equipped with cutting-edge near-field communication (NFC) technology. AKA, tech that allows for two-way communication with phones.

With a quick tap of your phone to an NFC tag, you can pair the tag with an important SOP, policy, or process. Then anyone (like a team member, customer, or prospect) can tap the tag with their own phone and pull up the content in a fraction of a second.

You can stick tags anywhere:

• Around the office. Think office equipment that’s complicated or needs instructions to operate.
• In the field. Stick tags on the company vehicle dash, mobile supplies, and other out-of-office equipment.
• At events. At a conference or trade show? Put tags on your booth table, brochures, or even the back of your phone to teach about your products or services.
• On products. Adhere tags to your devices used in clients’ homes and businesses for quick troubleshooting tips in a tap. 

Now that we’ve got a good idea of the feature differences between Trainual and TalentLMS, let’s analyze the cost differences.

Pricing comparison between Trainual vs. TalentLMS

The cost-effectiveness of either of these systems will depend on your company’s needs. The cost of Trainual is based on the plan tier you choose and the number of employees you add. On the other hand, TalentLMS offers a set price for each plan tier, where each tier has a limited number of employees you can add. Both platforms offer discounted prices if you choose annual billing as opposed to monthly billing. 

👉 View Trainual’s pricing.

View TalentLMS's pricing model by visiting talentlms.com/prices.

After comparing plan options side by side, you’ll find that Trainual takes the cake with the features it offers for its price. But let’s get into the specific plans you’ll want to go with depending on your goals and ideal price point. 

If you just want the basics.
Winner: Trainual’s Train plan. 

The cheapest plan you can get between these two platforms is TalentLMS’s free plan. But before you get too excited, understand that the free TalentLMS plan has very minimal features (like, next to nothing). And you can only create ten courses and have five people in the account. You may be able to get by on this plan for a few weeks, but it’s only a matter of time before you need to invest in a paid plan that actually gets your team on the same page and helps you delegate your own responsibilities. So you’ll want to take a close look at the features that each software offers in their tier options.

When looking for a “basic” playbook builder, you’ll definitely get the most bang for your buck with the Trainual Train plan — largely due to its robust reporting features. At the end of the day, your software needs to keep employees informed on business changes and (more importantly) help you hold them accountable for following current policies and procedures. And the only way to make sure everyone is progressing through their assigned content, passing their assigned quizzes, and staying up to date is through advanced reporting.

Believe it or not, advanced testing, tracking, and reporting options are available in Trainual’s lowest-tiered, cheapest plan: the Trainual Train plan. Trainual helps you deep dive into each employee’s onboarding and training progress, as well as how well they’re keeping up with company updates. Individual employee reports show what’s overdue, in progress, not started, and completed — plus comprehensive breakdowns of content completion and test progress — all in one snapshot. 

While the reporting capabilities in the Trainual Train plan are extensive, they’re easy to navigate. And a must-have if you’re seeking a low-tiered plan.

If you want all the bells and whistles.
Winner: Trainual’s Scale plan.

When you choose the Trainual Scale plan, you get playbook-building add-ons beyond built-in screen recording, a mobile app, and custom branding (available in select TalentLMS plans). You get all those features, plus a roles and responsibilities builder; a team directory; role and org charts, over 300 customizable templates, personalize setup support, content-generating AI, a process-capturing tool, and more — features that aren’t available in even the priciest TalentLMS plan. 

Small-to-medium-sized business leaders with 10 to 250 employees typically want to have as many features as they can get their hands on. After all, they’re looking to free up their time so they can lead their business to success. And their best bet to get there is investing in a documentation system with features that help them save time, prioritize their people, and hit the ground running (so they can delegate their responsibilities ASAP). So, they opt for Trainual’s top-tiered plan that delivers the most impactful features at an outrageously reasonable price. 

Now that you understand the feature and pricing differences between Trainual and TalentLMS, you have everything you need to make an informed decision about which platform to go with.

Which platform should you choose?

When deciding between Trainual and TalentLMS, you need to understand what benefits and features each provides, that’ll help you and your team reach your growth potential.

Choose Trainual if:

• You’re looking for an easy-to-use platform to store policies, processes, business knowledge, and employee information.
• You’d like to document every role in your org and their associated responsibilities.
• You’d like to provide your team with an interactive org chart, role chart, and employee directory in the same place they’re consuming their training.
• You want to help your team connect and get to know each other better.
• You’re looking to use robust template options to help you kickstart documentation.
• You value outstanding customer support in the products you purchase.
• You’d like your employees to surface content in the physical spaces they work in with a quick tap of their phone.
• You’d like to document online processes as you do them, and add the documentation to your software with one click.
• You’d like to use in-app AI that writes policies, processes, and other business documentation for you.
• Your team would benefit from getting automatic browser slideouts that guide them step-by-step as they carry out online processes.
• You want to keep your team engaged while they learn with in-app GIFs and stock photo libraries.
• You want to get your new software up and running fast with free setup help.

Choose TalentLMS if:

• You prefer using an LMS that’s compatible with Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM).
• You’d like to use your system for e-commerce and plan to charge customers for access to the courses you create.
• You’re only looking to document policies, processes, and business knowledge in this software.
• Your team knows every detail of each others’ roles and responsibilities and wouldn’t benefit from having a resource with that information.
• Your team is familiar with reporting structure by person and by role (or this rarely changes).
• You already have a virtual role chart, org chart, and employee directory.
• You’re tech-savvy.

Ultimately, Trainual has way more valuable features, provides better customer support, and has been intricately built (by a small business, for small businesses) to help you keep your whole team informed and connected. 

Are you an entrepreneur, founder, manager, or operational leader looking to scale your business? Sign up for a free 7-day Trainual trial today.