Home > LMS Software > Cornerstone OnDemand > Cornerstone OnDemand vs Absorb LMS

Cornerstone OnDemand vs Absorb LMS

Last Updated: November 18th, 2024

Our analysts compared Cornerstone OnDemand vs Absorb LMS based on data from our 400+ point analysis of LMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

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Product Basics

Cornerstone OnDemand is a cloud-based talent and performance management product. Together with its subsidiaries, it helps companies cater to their people development and management needs, handling the employee lifecycle from start to end. Five modules support recruiting, learning, performance and content management. It can be accessed from anywhere at any time, regardless of the user’s location or device type.

Absorb is a cloud-based LMS designed to enhance corporate training and education. It caters to organizations of all sizes, offering scalability, a user-friendly interface, and a wide range of features such as gamification, personalized learning paths, content libraries and social learning tools to keep learners engaged.

You can create, manage and deliver diverse training materials, and integrate with various third-party platforms, including HR, video conferencing and CRM tools. Advanced reporting and analytics provide valuable insights into learner progress and training effectiveness, helping you make data-driven decisions that align with business goals.

The Absorb Learning mobile app, free on iOS and Android devices, provides anytime, anywhere access to training. Absorb Intelligence, an AI-powered toolset, uses predictive AI and natural language recognition to connect learners with relevant content, enhance search and microlearning, and streamline administrative tasks.

Users like Absorb LMS for its intuitive design, advanced features, scalability, comprehensive analytics and exceptional customer support, all of which contribute to a positive learning and administrative experience. You can request a quote for pricing information.

$6/User, Monthly

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$16,200 Annually

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Tailored to your specific needs

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Chromebook

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Chromebook

Cloud

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Mobile

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Product Assistance

Documentation

In Person

Live Online

Videos

Webinars

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Videos

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Phone

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24/7 Live Support

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Product Insights

Attract the Right Talent: Showcase brand values and company culture via interactive media. An intuitive application mechanism, along with creative media, helps attract more quality job seekers and brings the right talent.
Identify the Best Fit: Talent managers have a comprehensive view of the talent pool. They can receive suggestions and analyze candidates based on set requisition criteria to identify the best fit applicants.
Simplified Hiring Process: Create automated workflows that simplify hiring procedures. Leverage detailed insights in a central place for candidate requisition purposes.
Effective Employee Onboarding: Talent managers can create customized onboarding portals for hiring. Having a tailor-made, self-paced and interactive content platform helps eliminate challenges associated with onboarding.
Data-Driven Decision Making: Track employee performance and visualize data with configurable analytics to make faster and more informed decisions.
Optimized Employee Training: Provide a modern and optimized learning experience with automated assignments, optional and recommended content, powerful searching, self-driven browsing for employee development and more.
On-Going Performance Development: Engage, inspire, motivate and coach employees to improve performance, achieve organizational alignment and build business agility.
Easy Deployment: Easily deploy content in any form, like interactive assignments, quizzes, videos and more, using self-developed content or content curated by Cornerstone OnDemand.

Offers Extensive Reporting Tools: When we tested Absorb, we found that it offers a vast suite of reporting tools that provide insights into nearly every aspect of your training program. You can drill down data to view reports on course activity, ILC sessions, assessments, learner progress and competencies, and more. Apply filters, sort data, and download and share reports—all on an easy-to-use, interactive interface.
Provides Comprehensive Capabilities: According to our analysis, it supports 100% of our content and course management, mobile and eCommerce capabilities entirely out of the box. It offers content creation and partnership, transaction management, mobile learning and collaboration, discounts and promotions, and more.
Creates an Engaging Learner Experience: Our experience with the product revealed that it offers many tools to enhance the learner experience. You can:
- Customize the dashboard with templates, logos and design elements to reflect your branding.
- Tailor widgets to meet specific needs and use the Billboard feature to embed videos and links to both external and internal pages.
- Edit the Tiles to configure and display courses, catalogs, calendars and resources effectively.
Provides a User-Friendly Interface: Our testing revealed that the platform is straightforward and accessible. Essential features are conveniently located on the left-hand side, minimizing the need for extensive navigation. You can effortlessly switch between roles — administrator, learner and manager — and enable accessibility tools to enhance data visualization and webpage design.
Offers AI-Powered Course Creation: Absorb’s Create AI tool streamlines course development by quickly assembling content from brief descriptions, PDFs or pasted text. The AI efficiently processes and organizes this input, reducing the time and effort needed for course creation. This allows you to deliver high-quality training materials and focus on creative aspects while AI handles the technical details.
Personalizes Learning: Absorb Skills provides predefined skills and competencies aligned with employees' job functions across diverse industries and job roles. The platform leverages AI to tailor learning experiences for over 1500 job roles and nearly 200 competencies, supported by a comprehensive library of over 20,000 courses.
Award-Winning LMS: Absorb LMS won several awards in the LMS category in the SelectHub Awards 2024. It won best-in-class honors for content and course management, learning delivery, platform capabilities, and integrations and extensibility.

Enable an Integrated Ecosystem: Select from a range of pre-built integrations and quickly plug in to the most suitable choice. Having an integrated and holistic ecosystem helps support organizational needs effectively.
Applicant Experience: Recruiting tools include applicant tracking and an easy-to-configure website that help improve the overall experience of applicants.
Learning Management: Offers numerous learning experiences. Consists of informal learning, delivery method management and reporting, all in one place.
Machine Learning: Recommends content to learners, helping them improve self-driven development via quality content.
Robust Partner Ecosystem: Helps extend the life of systems existing at partner organizations, minimizes disruption, and maintains effective localizations and customizations.
Audit Insights: Supports administering and auditing employee record changes. Audits are carried out with minimal risk and aim to align talent management to the organization's talent strategy.

Content Libraries: Access expert-curated, always-current courses via Amplify content portfolio. It offers three content libraries:
Amplify
- Over 500 foundational courses ideal for small to mid-sized companies.
- Features essential and mandatory business training.
- Engaging micro-learning format for quick, impactful learning.
Amplify Plus
- More than 2,000 courses covering basic to intermediate topics.
- Includes compliance, safety, skills, and continuing education.
- Versatile formats with bite-sized lessons, full-length courses, and instructor-led training.
- Available in English and Spanish, with voiceovers in French and Spanish.
- Accessibility features include closed captioning in multiple languages.
Amplify Max
- Extensive library with over 20,000 courses from over 100 reputable publishers.
- Covers essential to advanced levels, including safety, business skills, technology, wellness and industry-specific accreditations.
- Supports diverse learning styles and is available in 90+ languages with localized content in over 40 languages.
Search Analytics: Track learner searches with the Search Analytics Report. This feature displays data on searches conducted by both authenticated and unauthenticated learners. Monitor which items learners select from search results, including details such as the item’s ID, name, type and rank. With the correct permissions, access information on the selected items to gain insights into learner behavior and preferences.
Salesforce Connector: Enable customers, partners and employees to access and engage with learning materials without leaving Salesforce.
- Track training engagement and evaluate its impact on sales revenue and service metrics.
- Display relevant courses on the home screen to upsell or educate prospects about new products.
- Provide access to essential training across Salesforce Support, Sales and Community environments.
Course Catalog: Edit course access based on departments to ensure the right learners have the appropriate permissions. Refine course lists by name, type, vendor, tags, location, type and other criteria. Organize and view courses in various formats, including detailed, list and calendar views.
Third-Party Integrations: Connect with third-party apps to streamline learning management across your organization.
- Integrate with communication tools like Zoom and HR platforms like ADP.
- Develop custom integrations to facilitate data transfer between the LMS and other applications.
- Integrate off-the-shelf eLearning content from the Absorb Amplify Portfolio.
- Integrate LMS logins with existing SSO solutions to improve security and user experience.
- Use RESTful APIs to manage and expand integrations. Build scalable workflows and connect with various systems, devices and learners both inside and outside your organization.
- Create real-time integrations that respond instantly to key events. Use webhooks to automate notifications for events like course completions and user registrations.
Absorb Engage: Keep learners engaged and motivated with interactive tools. These include:
- Polls: Gather learner feedback with customizable, open-ended polls. Design questions for fact-based, opinion-based or choice-based responses. Monitor results over time to adapt training content.
- Collaborations: Create discussion spaces for learners to share ideas on specific topics or courses. Features include document sharing, post interactions and member messaging.
- Leaderboards: Encourage competition by awarding points for course completions, curricula, instructor-led courses, and competencies. Learners earn points for achievements and interactions, with points being date-stamped and non-retroactive.
- Billboards: At the top of the Learner Dashboard, display announcements, new initiatives or course promotions with eye-catching video or photo banners.
Dashboards: Design multiple dashboards for different departments and customize them with a variety of widgets, including competencies, reports, logins, activity and course enrollment.
- Admin Controls: Only System Admins can create, edit or delete dashboards.
- Permissions: Set access and editing permissions for users.
- Report Handling: Download completed reports or have them emailed to you.
- Dashboard Templates: Adjust the colors and images of the Learner Dashboard and the Login Page, and add a Public Dashboard.
Absorb Analyze: Generate custom reports to gain insights into various aspects of your LMS data, including:
- Course Enrollment: Track details such as enrollment ID, key, type, status, dates (started, completed, expired), progress, score and more.
- Course: Analyze course-specific data, including ID, type, name, status, language, tags, enrollment types, certificate details and other settings.
- User: Examine user information, including ID, names, email, status, roles, job details and location, and sync data from external systems.
- Department: Review department data such as ID, name, description, and contact information.
- Reports: Access essential reports on learner activity, competencies, progress, course activity, curricula, evaluations, approvals, certificates, and credits.
Course Creation: Choose a theme for your course or build around content like screen recordings, videos, PowerPoint presentations or AI-generated materials.
- Add and manage different content types, including course materials, instructor-led sessions, course bundles, curricula and categories.
- Organize courses by ratings, access date, comments, self-enrollment, audience, author, automatic enrollment, average rating, category, certificate details, and more.
- View detailed reports on learner course starts, ends, scores, departments, and certificates.
Course Settings
- General: Adjust status, title, description, and default language.
- Syllabus: Customize content, completion order, terms, mobile compatibility and proctoring.
- Enrollment Rules: Set department restrictions, enrollment rules, self-enrollment options, automatic enrollment, approvals and eCommerce settings.
- Completion: Define certificates, competencies, credits, leaderboard points, failure and re-enrollment policies.
- Availability: Schedule access, due dates, expiration, prerequisites and offline access.
- Catalog Visibility: Customize mobile app visibility, category, images and posters, and make courses mandatory or featured.
- Course Administrators: Designate individual or department admins.
- Messages: Manage and customize course notifications.
- Resources: Add files and notes for learners.
- Course Uploads: Provide instructions for uploading course materials and certificates.
- Attributes: Enable ratings and evaluations, and add audience, vendor, goals, external IDs, time estimates and costs.
- Social: Enable comments and collaborations.
- Competencies: Reward users with custom designations, like 'CPR Certification,' for completing courses. Set up and assign competencies with unique names and images, which can serve as icons or badges.
- Competency Levels: Award competencies on a scale from 1 to 10, allowing for incremental achievements and more control over user progression.
- Access Management: Configure competencies to grant or restrict access to additional catalog content based on user achievements.
- Reports: Use the Learner Competencies Report to view user achievements, modify data fields, create new competencies, message users, view transcripts or delete competencies.
- Integration: Edit or add competencies to online courses, instructor-led courses or curricula.
ILC (Instructor-Led Courses): Facilitate live or asynchronous training sessions, either physical or virtual. Enrolled learners choose which session to attend. While a venue is optional, it helps specify the training location.

Recurring Classes: Schedule classes to repeat regularly with consistent time, instructor(s) and location, similar to Outlook calendar invitations.
Waitlist: Manage session capacity by adding learners to a waitlist when sessions are complete. Automatically enroll learners from the waitlist when seats become available or manually override capacity limits.
ILC Sessions Report: Access detailed reports on session details, learner enrollments, attendance, waitlists and instructor messaging.

Course Enrollments: Access and manage enrollments for curricula, ILCs, online courses and course bundles. Add, modify or delete course enrollments as needed. Re-enroll users in training, un-enroll them from courses, and update user details as required. Access detailed user transcripts, message users directly and review enrollments to track past training activities.
Enrollment Keys: Provide enrollment keys to users to automatically assign them to departments and courses, and manage validity and usage limits. Create and customize keys, name them, define access, and configure user details and notifications.
Observational Checklists: Use Observation Checklists to evaluate users based on specific criteria, and ensure they have the necessary skills and perform tasks effectively. Ideal for tracking mentoring and on-the-job training, these checklists help reviewers assess and document user performance.
Knowledge Checks: Add knowledge checks between courses to assess learners' understanding. Use question types like multiple-choice, true-or-false, matching, sequencing, pick one, pick many, drag-and-drop, fill-in-the-blanks and free text.

Product Ranking

#51

among all
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#12

among all
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Analyst Rating Summary

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User Sentiment Summary

84%

of users recommend this product

Cornerstone OnDemand has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 84% when considering 1252 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

93%

of users recommend this product

Absorb LMS has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 93% when considering 1162 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (21)

4.9 (12)

4.1 (464)

4.7 (483)

4.3 (211)

4.5 (284)

4.3 (157)

4.8 (255)

4.2 (399)

4.4 (128)

Awards

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Reporting: The reporting feature is simple to use and intuitive, with several options to choose from, according to 90% of reviews on reporting.

Robust Learning Module: It constantly stays up-to-date with the latest and effective learning trends to provide a better user experience, as indicated by 100% of reviews mentioning learning features.

All-in-One Solution: Cornerstone OnDemand is a complete solution for all performance management needs of companies in all industries, according to all reviews on this aspect.

Regular Updates: The platform consistently releases updates to serve users better, according to all reviews on software updates.

Professional Development: Over 90% of users who mentioned the professional training abilities of this system felt it helped with career planning.

Comprehensive Feature Set: Nearly 75% of reviewers appreciate its wide range of features, including customizable course settings, multi-tenancy support, observational checklists, e-signatures and third-party integrations.

Customization: More than 80% of reviewers who discussed the customization features were happy with the options for personalization and branding.

Ease of Use: In just under 80% of reviews that discussed the UI, users highlighted the platform's intuitive interface, stating that it's easy to use for both administrators and learners. The dashboard is noted for its clean design, making navigation straightforward and enhancing the overall user experience.

Excellent Customer Service: Over 70% of reviewers that mentioned support felt the staff was friendly and helpful, and provided workarounds for a multitude of issues. Many reviews mentioned that the project managers and account managers are proactive in assisting clients throughout their onboarding and ongoing use of the platform.

In-Depth Reporting: 60% of users who reviewed its data and analytical capabilities said it offers extensive reporting capabilities with the ability to export reports easily and set up automated reporting schedules.

Customer Service: All reviews on customer service indicated that the response and resolution times are slow.

Learning Curve: According to 80% of reviews on this feature, there’s a steep learning curve and adapting to the system is time-consuming and complex for new users.

Mobile App: It has a slow and underdeveloped mobile app compared to the web platform, according to all reviews referring to this feature.

Insufficient eCommerce: In over 90% of reviews that discussed the system's eCommerce abilities, users felt it wasn’t flexible enough to sell content properly.

Cornerstone OnDemand’s cloud-based talent and performance management solutions deliver robust learning capabilities alongside comprehensive performance tools. Slow customer service, a steep learning curve and an underdeveloped mobile application are some of the most repeated cons among user feedback. However, users thought highly of its regular updates and simple, intuitive reporting. Those, along with the learning and performance features make it a good option for companies with a high priority in those particular areas.

Absorb is a pretty impressive platform, especially if you're looking for something that's both easy to use and packed with features. It offers an intuitive interface and a clean dashboard with well-organized capabilities, a big plus for both learners and administrators.AI tools help you create courses in minutes and tailor training elements to each user's specific needs. One time-saving tool we really liked is Intelligent Assist. You just have to ask a question like, “How many learners have not been graded?” and you'll instantly get the report or action screen you need.Absorb Pinpoint, their video timestamping expert, uses AI and NLP to transcribe and timestamp video lessons. This allows you to find exactly what you want to learn in a long video without watching the whole thing, another great time-saver.Two more things that really stood out are Absorb’s course creation and reporting modules.With Absorb Create, you can build informational, crisp, good-looking courses using the most user-friendly tools. AI voiceovers, screen readers, themes and fonts, assessments and collaboration, and so many other elements help make course creation an enjoyable, creative and fun experience.We are also fans of Absorb’s insightful universe powered by it’s BI tool, Absorb Analyze. Learners, courses, sessions, certificates, and ILCs — you have a report for all aspects of your training program. You can add multiple filters to drill down to the micro level and schedule them for the future.Absorb’s gamification, user and role management, assessments and collaboration features are equally great and extremely easy to use. And if you need more help, they have Absorb Academy to fill you in on the know-how.The only downside is that it could have some more eCommerce features and built-in virtual classroom tools. Its question bank functionality is limited to only multiple-choice and text-based questions, so it’d be nice to see some variety there. Also, while the interface is undoubtedly a cakewalk to navigate, it could use a bit of color and style, some visual flair to engage learners quickly.Overall, Absorb LMS is a solid choice for anyone looking to boost their training and development efforts. We love that it offers a free trial, a suite of useful features for both small and big businesses alike, and excellent customer support. It has great built-in tools and integration capabilities, and rightly stands out among our top five LMS solutions.

Screenshots

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FAQ

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