Google Classroom vs TalentLMS

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

Product Basics

Google Classroom is a free online learning platform that integrates with G Suite applications. As part of Google for Educators, it has a wide breadth of capabilities. Educators can create courses, assign homework, give grades and feedback, build exams, provide supplemental reading materials, share resources and more. Students can complete assignments, reach out to their instructors, ask questions, collaborate with others and more. It was used by over 100 million people and developed in collaboration with educators. There’s a free and paid version of the product. The paid one has greater functionality, notably the ability to host many hundreds more in a web conference.
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TalentLMS is an online training tool that facilitates learning through features like course management, progress tracking, reporting and gamification, branching and automation, and third-party integrations. The solution supports enterprise-level learning initiatives with personalized themes and unique sets of courses and audiences.

It supports multiple languages, runs on Amazon's CDN for reliable performance, and provides a user-friendly interface for learners, admins, and instructors alike. It also includes mass action tools, automation options, and a RESTful API for data access. Plus, it offers custom fields and a marketplace for easily accessing additional classes.

User reviews praise TalentLMSs intuitive interface, responsive customer support and course creation capabilities. I tested the product and found that it’s really easy to use, even if you're not tech-savvy. You can create courses, track your team's progress and even add some fun games to keep them engaged.

It offers four pricing options: Core, Grow, Pro and Enterprise, each with a varied set of features. The free plan accommodates up to five users, and paid plans start at $89 per month. You can choose between monthly and annual billing options, and there are no long-term contracts, giving you the flexibility to adapt to your changing needs.

Our Research Process for TalentLMS

I tested TalentLMS through its free plan, diving into everything from course authoring to reporting and gamification. Getting started was easy — just create an account, add up to five users, and you’re off to explore key features like course creation, reporting and integrations.

The interface was super intuitive, with two options: a legacy and a modern version. Both were easy to navigate, with a clean design that helped me quickly access course materials, progress tracking and reports.

I was able to build courses from scratch, upload documents and even use AI to generate content in minutes. The platform supports various content types like tests, surveys, videos, SCORM files and more. I also tested the reporting features, which offered great flexibility, including customizable infographics and training status reports.

For a little fun, I explored the gamification features, where learners can earn points and badges and track their progress on leaderboards. To wrap it all up, I checked out the mobile app, which let me track progress, view achievements and send messages, though it lacked the ability to create courses or generate reports on the go.

Keep reading to get the full scoop on how each feature performs and where the platform shines (and where there’s room for improvement).

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$4.80/Student, Annually
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Product Assistance

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Product Insights

  • More Efficient: Save time through automation, the replacement of paper and manual processes. Grade quickly through the Docs app, which allows teachers to comment upon and return assignments rapidly.
  • Cut Down on Plagiarism: Prevent plagiarism with tools that scan for matching phrases or text online, find missing citations, do a cross-reference of books, look for paraphrasing and more. Provide this for learners who can check their work before they turn work in. Download originality reports and keep work so instructors can catch peer-to-peer copying.
  • Engaged Students: Integrate with virtual reality allowing users to explore famous landmarks, natural events and more. Explore spaces made by instructors and use mobile technology, the Expeditions app, while in VR to get further instructions and navigate the world. Let the app act as a roadmap while they explore. Pair the VR with mobile devices, access 360 views of virtual landscapes, work with several content partners and get a free course to teach individuals how to use VR provided by partners.
  • More Centralized Info: Use the complete G Suite, including Sheets, Meet, Drive, Docs, Forms, Calendar, Jamboard and more. Create and collaborate across several mediums while instructors can make various administrative processes more efficient.
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  • Provides User-Friendly Interfaces: TalentLMS provides a Modern and Legacy interface. In my testing, I found both interfaces to be very well organized, offering a smooth browsing experience for administrators, instructors, and learners. Users can access all key features on a single screen, ensuring easy navigation and efficiency.
  • Offers Needs-Specific Features: According to our analysis, TalentLMS supports features that allow you to sell courses online, create and manage courses, help users communicate in real time and generate insightful reports, fully out of the box. It offers a vast suite of features, including content sharing, course bundles and marketing, reporting dashboards, content creation and two-way messaging.
  • Helps Create Innovative Content: You can address skill gaps with personalized, AI-generated courses made using TalentCraft (only accessible on the new interface). Create a variety of content using AI, including texts, images, lists, step-by-step guides, flashcards, content pages, labeled graphics, charts and MCQs.
  • Saves Money: The solution’s free version supports up to five users and ten courses. Even when using a paid subscription, the various automated and AI functions free up time. You can add new users and features as needed, without having to switch the system altogether.
  • Easy To Use: When I tested the product, I found that the features were neatly arranged and simple to find. The intuitive interface makes navigation a breeze, making it an ideal choice for organizations with a novice user base.
  • Customizable: Our experience with TalentLMS revealed that it's a very customizable platform with an option to personalize every aspect of your training. From language, themes, date and time formats, and the homepage to eCommerce controls, certificates and gamification elements, you can turn the platform into your own ideal training hub, all from a single location.
  • Increases Revenue: Want to boost your income? Join the affiliate plan. Find a unique URL to send traffic to the website and track all visitors/sign-ups/conversions. For every sale originating from a referred user, get a recurring commission added to your account.
  • Offers Valuable Insights: According to our data, TalentLMS supports 100% of reporting features fully out of the box. Its infographic reporting feature provides clear snapshots of training activities. With detailed activity logs, you can capture every action for comprehensive day-to-day records. Microstats and printable infographics keep learners motivated by showcasing their progress, pass rates and earned certificates and badges.
    • Another standout feature from our testing is the Training Matrix, which offers a single-page view of the training status for all learners across multiple courses, using color-coded blocks for easy visualization.
  • Award-Winning LMS: TalentLMS received many accolades in the SelectHub Awards 2024 across various LMS features. It earned honors for collaboration, content and course management, mobile capabilities, platform capabilities, and integrations and extensibility.
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  • Different Roles: Adjust access on the platform allowing administrators to create other roles for parents, students, educators and more.
  • Web Conferencing: Create a unique link for each video session and send out a private link for classes. Use the IETF security standards for Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol and Datagram Transport Layer Security. Record and live stream with the expanded paid product.
  • Integration: Integrate with many school administration apps, curriculum building, communication, education enhancement and more. Use apps like Aeries, Aladdin Schools Connect, Classcraft, Pear Deck, Pearson Education, Quizizz, Squigl, Writable and a wide variety of others. Have programmers connect their app with the platform and access technical support, company-wide initiatives and marketing support.
  • Mobile: Use the mobile app that works on iOS and Android where learners and instructors can access the program from multiple devices.
  • Jamboard: Provide a smart display for tablets, smartphones or smart boards. Pull in images, make notes with the stylus and handwriting and shape recognition tools and more. Operate with Meet or during an in-person class.
  • Enterprise Option: Use the teacher center and Google for Education for more control, better security, device management, data loss prevention, a S/MIME for Gmail, Gmail logs and admin reports in BigQuery, a security sandbox and more. Set up a university-wide email system with Gmail.
  • Stream: See posts, comments and other materials when they log into the program. Upload content and respond to comments while students can collaborate with their peers and comment on posted materials.
  • Class Management: Facilitate classes through an organization with features such as a content library for assignments, slides, class papers, forms and other resources. Lock due dates, set a timer on access for materials, reuse content, add YouTube videos and more.
  • Accessibility: Accommodate students with impairments such as hearing, vision, physical disabilities and processing disorders. Use voice access, screen readers, closed captioning and more so learners can access information in a way that helps them. Adjust the content to make it more visual, auditory and more to match individual learning styles. Download an accessibility conformance report to analyze the effectiveness of the program.
  • Security: Use a system that supports the standards and compliance for the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Software & Information Industry Association, ISO/IEC 27018:2014, HIPPA, GDRP and more. Host information on secure servers, let administrators watch over data security and get audited by a third-party to ensure data protection.
  • Grading: Allow instructors to add comments, grade, enter commonly used feedback, apply rubrics and automatically notify students when their assignment is ready for them.
  • Educator Groups: Unite local educators so they can collaborate and help one another online and in-person. A local volunteer organizes the group and the members unite for teaching, workshops, advice and more.
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  • Dashboard: Get an overview of active users, assigned courses, training time, course completion rates and more. Use the Timeline widget to track account activity, monitor each course’s progress status, and add or delete widgets to customize your dashboard.
  • User Management: Create and store users' personal information, such as name, location, bio, sign-in credential, learner type and email.
  • Course Creation: Add the course code, specify the category and pricing, insert intro videos, assign start and end times, set completion rules and include certificates for each course. Fill the courses with text, videos, PPTs, images, assignments, surveys and more.
  • Course Management: Reuse presentations and videos or find external media to build classes. Offer certifications for compliance courses and create learning paths tailored to each user’s requirements.
  • Course Store: Subscribe to TalentLibrary to access over 900 English and Spanish courses in various fields, such as HR, leadership, safety and compliance, personal development and business skills.
  • Gamification: Offer discounts as rewards when learners achieve a set number of points, badges or levels. Reset users' gamification statistics as needed, either for the whole portal or for a specific group or branch. You can:
    • Award users with points for different learning activities.
    • Give badges to highlight milestones in their learning journey.
    • Represent stages in their learning journey with levels.
    • Show users their learning progress in points compared to others with leaderboards.
  • Integration: Integrate directly with third-party apps like WordPress, BambooHR, GoToMeeting, Salesforce and Shopify. Add Zapier to access over 750 additional options like Slack and Zendesk, and use the API and JavaScript integrations for additional extensibility.
  • Security: Protect sensitive data with features like AWS storage, 2FA, DDoS, BCDR, incident response plans and STAR compliance.
    • Restrict registration to specific email domains and prevent multiple logins from different browsers.
    • Disable video transcoding if videos are web-compatible and add a system logo watermark on uploaded videos.
    • Meet the guidelines for various security and accessibility standards, such as ISO 27001, ISO 9001GDRP, PCI Compliance and WCAG-2.
  • Files Repository: Organize, reuse and share files with selected users. Upload and store various types of files in your account, and easily manage and distribute them.
  • Collaboration: Allow instructors and learners to engage in discussions, interact through video conferencing, send group and private messages and stay connected at each touchpoint of the training process.
  • Branches: Create independent sub-portals (branches) for various departments, user types and customers. Customize each portal with its own URL, theme, language, users and courses.
  • Automation: Automate day-to-day tasks to avoid manual admin work and reduce errors. Assign courses to many users simultaneously, send reminders, deactivate users and more.
  • Reporting: Generate data reports to track key metrics like course completion rates, courses not started or passed, courses in progress, and training time for each learner, branch, group and course. Track users and their roles, progress status, scores, and completion dates and times for each course. Create and automatically export custom reports.
  • Learning Activities: Add learning activities like assignments, tests, surveys and ILT training to courses.
  • Blending Learning: Use blended and instructor-led training (ILT) to organize classroom events, manage all aspects of ILT sessions, set up automatic notifications and deliver virtual lessons in real time.
  • Assessments: Build a variety of tests with different question types, such as multiple-choice, drag-and-drop matching, ordering, fill-in-the-blank and open-ended questions. Use them to evaluate learner progress and knowledge retention.
  • Surveys Engine: Build surveys to gain insights into your learners and training. Send surveys, collect responses and analyze results to gather valuable feedback and data.
  • Learning Paths: Set up learning paths by selecting the desired course. They can link courses to create the path and add prerequisites, so learners must complete these courses in any order before proceeding. They can also create alternative paths using the Add an alternative rule option and enable Levels in the Gamification tab to require learners to reach a certain level before accessing a course.
  • TalentLibrary: With a subscription, you can access high-quality content in the form of interactive quizzes, expert-created materials and new classes stored in the online library.
  • Embedded Video Conferencing: Use a built-in tool for conducting meetings via video call and integrate it with popular apps like Zoom, Google Meet and Skype.
  • Mobile App: Allow learners to complete their training on the go using the iOS and Android-compatible mobile app.
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Product Ranking

#7

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LMS Software

#3

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Analyst Rating Summary

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Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

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AI-based Capabilities Assessments Collaboration Compliance Content And Course Management ECommerce Learning Delivery Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard User Management And Gamification 0 71 100 67 100 100 76 87 96 100 91 0 25 50 75 100
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User Sentiment Summary

Excellent User Sentiment 4017 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 1419 reviews
92%
of users recommend this product

Google Classroom has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 92% when considering 4017 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

91%
of users recommend this product

TalentLMS has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 91% when considering 1419 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

5.0 (14)
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4.5 (1386)
4.6 (737)
4.7 (2352)
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4.4 (24)
4.4 (265)
3.3 (91)

Awards

Google Classroom stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated TalentLMS and concluded it earns best-in-class honors for Content and Course Management. TalentLMS stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award
Content and Course Management Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Affordable: Over 80% of viewers who mentioned price were happy with the cost.
Integrates with the G Suite: Users who mentioned the integration with Google Docs, Slides and other products were pleased in 80% of reviews.
Uploads Efficiently: Over 70% of reviewers felt that uploading ran smoothly.
Easy to Use: The majority of users who mentioned the UI were happy with its capability in just under 70% of reviews.
Multimedia Support: More than 60% were happy with the various formatting and multimedia support in the system.
Excellent User Communication Tools: Users who mentioned the messages, notifications and other communications functions were pleased in more than 60% of reviews.
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Ease of Use: 85% of users praise TalentLMS's intuitive and user-friendly interface, which makes it easy for both administrators and learners to create courses and navigate the platform.
Affordability: Over 70% of users regard TalentLMS as an affordable LMS, especially for small to medium-sized businesses.
Excellent Customer Support: 70% of users highlight the responsive, knowledgeable and helpful customer support team that’s quick to address any issues and questions.
Feature-Rich: According to 65% of users, the solution offers a diverse feature set that caters to varied industry-specific requirements.
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Glitchy: More than 80% of users who mentioned the speed of running the program felt it was glitchy.
Lack of Customization: Reviewers who mentioned customization felt the options were lacking in more than 70% of reviews.
Not Enough Admin Control: Over 60% of reviewers who discussed the user admin function felt functionality was lacking.
Lacks Features: In over 50% of reviews that mentioned the feature set, users felt they were missing features.
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Mobile App Limitations: 45% of users who reviewed the mobile app said it has limited functionality compared to the web-based platform, with some users unable to perform specific tasks on the go.
Onboarding and Implementation Challenges: A few users (30%) expressed that the initial setup and onboarding process can be challenging, especially for users who’ve never used an LMS before.
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Google Classroom is an eLearning solution that’s widely used in education because of its price point. While the base version is free, there is a paid enterprise package with expanded functionality. Reviewers like its simple UI, integration with the G Suite, support of multimedia options and good base functionality with grading, assignments, exams and more. They also felt it encouraged engagement and collaboration while saving time and money. On the flip side, reviewers felt the platform lacked options for customization and didn’t come with enough features. The platform isn’t a full-service LMS. It delivers lessons, shares files and has some higher function feedback functions, but doesn’t have the advanced administrative, reporting and other options of more robust solutions. This is an excellent option for small to medium-sized organizations that need to facilitate training. Make sure you understand the functional differences between the free and enterprise versions.

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TalentLMS stands out as a user-friendly and adaptable LMS that caters largely to small and midsize businesses. Its intuitive interface, advanced feature set and focus on customization make it a useful tool for employee, customer and partner training.According to our data, TalentLMS supports several key LMS modules fully out of the box. These include: Collaboration: 100 Content and Course Management: 100 Ecommerce: 100 Reporting and Dashboard: 100Its extensive feature set allows you to create and manage content, sell courses online and facilitate real-time communication. The AI-powered course creation tool, TalentCraft, enables you to generate personalized courses that address specific skill gaps quickly.You can use custom certificates to showcase your company’s branding and course completions. Users can quickly log in to the system using SSO, and learn anytime, anywhere on the mobile app.Integrations with tools like Zapier add automation options, and the support team and community resources provide valuable resources and guidance to help you set up. You can also add new users and features as needed to the platform without having to switch systems.I recently tested TalentLMS through its free plan and explored key features like course authoring, reporting, gamification and integrations. The platform’s dual interface options — legacy and modern — made navigation smooth and intuitive, and I appreciated how easily I could access course materials, progress tracking and reports.TalentLMS also impressed with its AI-driven course creation tools and the ability to quickly add a variety of content types, including assessments, SCORM files and multimedia. The platform’s customizable dashboard and notification features made managing courses and users effortless.I dive deeper into my experience in the “See It in Action” section, where I provide more insights on the course authoring process, reporting tools and gamification elements.One area where TalentLMS could improve is its video capabilities. The platform lacks full support for virtual classrooms, attendance tracking, session recording and interactive whiteboards. Additionally, the mobile app could benefit from push notifications to keep learners updated on their training progress.TalentLMS is great for small to medium businesses, with a vast feature set and affordable starting price. It’s ideal for straightforward setups, though costs can increase with more users or added courses, which might be a challenge for larger organizations.

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