Trainual vs. Whale: More Than Documentation — Which One Actually Trains Your Team?

If you're weighing Trainual vs. Whale, you're probably looking for more than just a place to write things down. You need a system to train your team consistently, hold people accountable, and keep everyone aligned as you grow.

At first glance, both tools offer a way to document company knowledge. But here’s the real difference: Whale helps you capture what’s in people’s heads. Trainual enables you to turn it into repeatable, role-specific training — complete with testing, tracking, and real accountability.

Trainual isn’t just documentation. It’s your training, role, and responsibility management system — built to get up to speed and stay up to date so they are empowered, aligned, and productive.

And the proof? 🏆 1,000+ G2 awards for things like “Best Support”, "Best Usability", “Best Relationship”, and more across SOPs, Training Management, Onboarding and Knowledge Management.

So yeah, you’re in good hands. 👊

Let’s break down how Trainual stacks up against Whale — what’s the same, what’s different, and which one fits your team best.

Trainual vs. Whale: How they stack up

🧠 Knowledge documentation

Whale is solid for writing down your policies and SOPs. You can organize them, assign them to users, and link them together. But that’s where it stops.

The same fundamentals are baseline in Trainual, plus everything you need to make them stick. 

Yes, you can document everything — but you can also turn that knowledge into something usable, repeatable, and tied to real people and roles. Build step-by-step guides with images, videos, tests, and interactive flowcharts, or even create standalone docs and training pieces you can organize later.Use templates to fast-track the process. Then connect it all to roles, responsibilities, and training paths — so the right people see the right info at the right time.

Need to make updates or clarify something? Comment directly on content — just like you would in Google Docs — to collaborate and refine in real time. And with Trainual’s Delegation Planner, you can even map responsibilities across your team and balance workloads based on strengths and bandwidth.

Because documentation isn’t the goal, understanding, accountability, and execution are.

🚀 Training and onboarding

Whale helps you assign content to groups of users. Not bad.

Trainual lets you create full-blown onboarding and training experiences. Set up automated training paths by role, team, or department. Add due dates, track completions, collect e-signatures, and keep everyone moving in the right direction — at the right time. Sweet!

Now that’s more like it.

Oh, and Trainual offers 500+ built-in courses for HR, compliance, cybersecurity, and more. So you don’t have to start from scratch.

📊 Tracking and reporting

Whale gives you basic stats. Like who’s seen what.

Trainual gives you full visibility into your team’s training and accountability. See who’s completed their content, who’s overdue, who’s aced their quizzes, and who still thinks “SOP” stands for “Some Other Problem.” View individual training records, filter by team or role, and export reports in a click.

Plus, the updated Home page gives managers a real-time dashboard with adoption insights — logins, searches, completions, and open feedback — so you can spot issues early and keep training momentum high.

Oh, and e-signatures? Trainual lets you require sign-offs on key policies and training — so you’re not just hoping people read it. You’ve got proof. That’s next-level accountability.

🔐 Access and permissions

Both tools let you organize content by groups and manage permissions. But Trainual goes further — with content version history, content approvals, role-based visibility, and even public sharing for contractors, candidates, or that intern nephew who still hasn’t figured out where the coffee filters are.

🤖 AI-powered help

Whale’s got an AI assistant that can generate SOPs, create quizzes, and even turn videos into step-by-step guides. 

Trainual’s AI tools blend seamlessly into your training system — helping you auto-generate content from scratch, fix grammar, adjust tone or length, translate into multiple languages, and build quizzes in all formats (multiple choice, open response, even video).‍

And even better? No more answering the same questions over and over. Trainual’s AI-powered search understands context — so your team can ask questions in plain English and get instant, accurate answers pulled from your actual content. And if that’s not enough, the new AI assistant goes a step further — sticking with you in a sidebar so you can keep the conversation going, ask follow-ups, and get clickable sources without ever leaving your workflow.

It’s the perfect balance of AI speed and human smarts — helping you create training that feels personal, polished, and built to last.‍

👉 See how Trainual's AI trains your team

Which one is right for you?

👉 Choose Trainual if...

• You’re looking for an all-in-one system to document, train, test, and track company knowledge.
• Accountability matters — and you want e-signatures, quiz results, and training progress at your fingertips.
• You want to keep your team aligned with role charts, org charts, and a built-in Delegation Planner to balance workloads.
• You’d benefit from a platform that comes with award-winning support, a thriving customer community, and 1:1 onboarding help.
• You want one platform that does it all — and still plays nice with your favorite tools (like your HRIS, Loom, Slack, Zoom, and hundreds more).
  

👉 Choose Whale if...

• You’re focused on documenting, not training — and accountability isn’t your top priority (yet).
• You’re okay keeping tests, sign-offs, and progress tracking in another tool (or in your head).
• You want something lightweight to create and share SOPs without the bells and whistles.
• You’re a smaller team just starting to get your knowledge in order — and that’s enough for now.

Trainual = the whole package

Whale might help you document your SOPs. But Trainual turns that documentation into a repeatable system for training, accountability, and growth.

👉 Want to see Trainual in action? Book a demo now.