The need for the best LMS in the market grows with each day, especially with the big switch to eLearning. A detailed LMS offers the right tools and details to make learning much more interactive and engaging.
While the market is saturated with plenty of learning management software to use in delivering the best eLearning experiences, not all of them are equipped with everything your organization needs.
Canvas is one among the many LMS that offers much convenience and success. It is a popular open-source learning management system designed for instructors who want to revolutionize education.
Canvas is low-risk, scalable, high speed, secure, and with excellent customizations and support.
However, Canvas has its drawbacks too. To start with, the LMS can be a bit buggy and the e-portfolio part is also clumsy.
Not only that; the software’s reporting isn’t as accurate as it should be. It often generates worrying situations that bring about inconvenience for course instructors.
So whether you’re a tutor, instructor, trainer, or learner looking for an LMS that works for you and your company/institution and Canvas doesn’t address your needs, here are the 15 top alternatives to explore.
15 Best Canvas Alternatives
1. Moodle
Moodle is an open-source LMS supported by a community of developers.
Moodle is highly configurable and gives administrators and tutors a secure and safe platform with plenty of integration.
This is a strong tool that helps you deliver the best learning programs/courses for your students.
With Moodle, you have the freedom to deliver dynamic learning programs at any time as a tutor.
Its personalized dashboard ensures a safe authentication process, massive enrolments, and self and peer assessments with open, standard support.
You’ll also get to use its multilingual capabilities, multiple outcomes and rubrics, and tracking functionalities.
The customizable design and layout have embedded external resources to handle your responsibilities and permissions.
Unlike Canvas and most other Moodle alternatives which are limited in resources, Moodle comes packed with plenty of learning resources. Distributed under the GNU license and supported by a global community of developers, Moodle is highly flexible and configurable.
2. Mindflash
Mindflash LMS is excellent for global and blending training, launching initial programs, and offering large programs.
Cloud-based e-learning is what Mindflash offers. It is the ideal platform for intuitive training at home, in the field, or at the office.
Mindflash offers dynamic training courses for employees, contractors, and partners – great for you if you are a leader looking for a tool to use for compliance training, onboarding, employee training, etc.
Its content conversion features are just perfect. You can create your new course or import it from another source and customize it to your preference.
Use Mindflash to create personalized learning paths for your teams.
It also comes with features for reports and dashboards, quizzes, API and SCORM, and more.
What gives Mindflash an edge over Canvas is that it allows you to manage large-scale training programs. Mindflash offers templates that help to expedite course creation. You also get free storage for all your data.
3. TalentLMS
TalentLMS is great for blended learning curriculums. It is ideal for instructor-guided e-learning or self-paced e-learning.
If you’re a tutor, TalentLMS will let you create courses through its authoring tool or import from another source. After that, you can set customized learner paths and let them access the course at their own pace.
TalentLMS offers a hassle-free learning experience and scalability. It is designed with solid management of course catalogs, marketplace, authoring, branding, and is also content-friendly.
It has robust program development tools that adjust to different e-learning programs.
It also features personal messaging tools and discussion forums. In addition, you can schedule real-time webinars and offer face-to-face teaching sessions.
Automated grading helps to assign homework without any difficulty.
TalentLMS is integrated with student analytics to provide detailed reports. This helps you determine the courses to be improved and students who need additional help.
It will also define your roles, grading system, mobile accessibility, and training metrics.
Talent LMS has excellent ILT support, registration management, display transcripts, web conferencing, and data export and import testing.
The platform supports e-commerce, exam engines, multi-organization structure, notifications, and training metrics.
Talent LMS is an excellent Canvas alternative offering blended learning with no coding experience needed. It goes beyond training to offer users a homepage builder and eCommerce support.
With Talent LMS, you’ll have eCommerce support and gamification at your disposal. The software is compatible with all learning types and integrates with more than 200 applications.
4. SkyPrep
SkyPrep is an excellent platform for small and large organizations. It provides a simple solution for employee, customer, and partner training.
This award-winning LMS is recognized for its outstanding customer support and ease of use. It’s a cloud-based solution that allows you to manage, deliver, and track training with no difficulty.
Its intuitive interface enables you to create training programs without much effort. The courses and reports you create will help in enhancing learning experiences through game-based learning. You’ll also manage to evaluate learner performance.
SkyPrep helps you onboard your staff, train your customers on various products, and fulfill your compliance requirements.
At SkyPrep, you get to create unlimited course materials with advanced real-time reporting, distribution, and customization.
Compared to Canvas which only allows you to create, share, and collaborate, SkyPrep lets you customize your working space with white labeling options and branding, then sell your courses online.
The tool also provides a resource center and user tracking functionalities to improve your experience. Its user management tools are more aggressive than Canvas’.
SkyPrep has some of the most powerful integrations.
Its interface is multilingual, just like Canvas’s to help improve your communication and train different people through sub-platform hierarchies. The bonus part is that you get enterprise-grade security too.
5. Docebo LMS
Docebo LMS supports different environments without causing any integration issues.
It is home to personalized and automated learning experiences.
It supports onboarding and enhances customer growth through e-learning. You have all the facilities you need in a single tool.
Unlike Canvas, Docebo supports gamification, However, they both support APIs, white labeling, customization, and language and localization.
It automates admin tasks and offers much scalability, re-training, and certification.
With so many pages, you can coach, share, and notify trainees instantly.
The content mark place allows customers to import and create courses and HTML pages, effortlessly.
It comes with ITL classrooms, an advanced reporting structure, high-performance rates, and excellent extensions.
The robust integration mechanism, audit trail, Salesforce integration, and powerful user experience make it a strong Canvas contender. Docebo also boasts of robust test engine gamification mechanics and eCommerce integration – something that Canvas doesn’t have.
Docebo is a modular solution offering instructor-led training, which is different from Canvas’s self-service solutions. Learners can access their online lessons round the clock and receive certifications once they’re done.
6. Blackboard
Blackboard is a fantastic LMS suitable for learning, group discussions, and testing and assessment.
Ideal for K-12, Blackboard ensures competent personalized learning.
It is designed with innovative studying technology that allows you to adapt to new standards and upgraded learning in order to deliver an upscale learning experience for students.
Blackboard ensures your students have enhanced cloud profiles and portfolios.
They can preview, safe-assign, and create a calendar of discussions or meetings as pop-ups.
Like Canvas, this platform is designed with a powerful data management system and collaborative integration mechanism.
However, Blackboard has more training options than Canvas. They include YouTube tutorials, downloadable resources, and customized programs. Its new upgrade is filled with enormous perks including an open content tool, surveys, and course evaluation, among others
With a robust content editor, blackboard drive, grading enhancements process, and group management, you have your teaching facilities in one place.
You also have a retention center, program enrollment, active collaboration, dynamic content, and excellent social learning at your disposal.
7. Schoology LMS
Schoology LMS is designed for enhanced collaboration between students and instructors. It is equipped with assessments and quizzes to help learners improve.
Instructors find it easy to develop and spread learning resources on this platform because of its flexibility. And students can share their practice across locations thanks to its supreme versatility.
The teaching tools help instructors to design assignments on time. With tools like annotating and highlighting, it’s easy to communicate and collaborate,
Tutors can provide personalized learning experiences and access data analytics.
Schoology’s interoperability, asynchronous learning, and assessment management tools are outstanding.
You can use Schoology for employee training, content library, gamification, synchronous learning, and mobile learning.
With SCORM compliance, assessments and testing, curriculum management, and automated grading systems at hand, you have all it takes to ensure an interactive learning experience.
Its classroom suite offers more grading options compared to Canvas. Schoology also beats Canvas with the gamily/guardian access feature and auto-rostering feature that uses infinite campus.
8. iSpring Learn
iSpring Learn is a fast and user-friendly LMS for onboarding, sales, product training, compliance training, certification, and channel training.
iSpring is designed with essential LMS features at very reasonable rates.
The corporate training platform can boost your competitive knowledge by automating and controlling best practice delivery.
iSpring Learn enables learning beyond the classroom. It lets learners study anywhere through any electronic device. The good thing is that the platform will keep track of learners’ activity to enhance productivity.
With iSpring Learn, each instructor has a systematic learning path. Unlike what happens on Canvas, iSpring can customize the path structure to fit every learner’s needs.
iSpring Learn stands out as a better Canvas alternative because it gives you SCORM support, different supported formats, and unlimited storage space.
It allows you to send invitation emails, import data from CSV files or through the REST/SOAP API.
It is also developed with a self-registration feature.
iSpring Learn lets you group students and set various user roles to mirror their actual corporate structure in the LMS. It’s easy to access detailed reporting.
The event calendar lets you organize activities like workshops, live training, and webinars. iSpring is integrated with Microsoft Teams and Zoom to facilitate your web meetings.
9. D2L Brightspace
Brightspace offers systematic course content for personalized learning experiences.
It’s been used to create engaging learning experiences for the modern workforce with much success.
Brightspace is suitable for schools, colleges, and global organizations looking to provide personalized digital experiences to learners.
It gives you the ability to design effective courses with engaging content and assessments.
It is designed to simplify class administrations, customize applications, and provide a robust environment for learning.
There’s nothing as pleasant as a vast learning repository like what Brightspace provides. To add to that, you have a digital portfolio and an assignment grader too, which is way better than what you get with Canvas.
The pulse, binder, and virtual classroom ensure learners have a unique experience, including video assignments.
Its interface is pretty scalable and customizable. Bightspace gives you more tools than Canvas. You’ll find a built-in accessibility checker, HTML content editor, accessibility interest group, a nonvisual access partnership program, and integration with Pearson and Cengage textbook publishers to enhance your experience.
10. Knowmax
Knowmax LMS is suitable for enterprises and SMBs that need something more than LMS and Quiz management.
Aside from the LMS tools that Canvas has, Knowmax can also be used as a repository for the comprehensive knowledge and learning needs of a company.
Knowmax aids in the fast onboarding of employees and agents, which helps to cut down the training time and outcomes.
With Knowmax, you can improve your overall learning curve and time to proficiency for your agents. It contains modules like visual how-to guides, decision trees, and learning, training, and assessment components.
It’s only at Knowmax you’ll create digital education to expand skills. It comes with quizzes and challenges that enhance process knowledge with detailed reporting.
It offers unlimited diversified content and batch creation, with real-time notifications on new updates.
Personalize learning phases and white labeling options—Foster a knowledge sharing and collaborative culture for effective problem-solving.
Knowmax ensures real-time reporting, robust course analytics, assessment, and user profile.
What differentiates Knowmax from Canvas is customer experience. Knowmax delivers a satisfactory customer experience that includes responses from smart bots and live agents.
11. Absorb LMS
Absorb LMS is meant for simple learning modules. It is built with an excellent interface design that humanizes tasks.
Absorb LMS provides digital learning features for students and professionals.
The platform is straightforward, with excellent features like informative reporting.
If you need a platform that takes intuitive actions, go for Absorb LMS. Aside from being innovative, HTML5-based, and responsive, it also supports various hardware devices.
It can import SCORM content from a third party and supports ILT training. Absorb LMS also comes with course assembly tools for creating quizzes, exams, and assessments.
You can include YouTube videos in courses without any difficulty.
Absorb LMS offers more tools compared to Canvas. You’ll find hierarchical user management tools, badges and certifications, deeper gamification features, an online course academy, and much more.
12. Joomla LMS
Joomla LMS, just like Canvas, is a worldwide self-registration and enrollment platform, but it runs on Joomla.
It offers scalable and flexible virtual learning platforms to learners and tutors.
Joomla is meant for organizations that want to train staff, sell courses, and teach students. It is a highly secure platform.
Joomla LMS has a configurable LMS front page, user-friendly URL, multi-language user interface, a calendar view, course chat, a forum, and more.
The system supports SCORM1.2, 2004, AICC compliance, and local and global user groups.
You can import-export users, customize user profiles, create online courses fast, control the course display, manage access levels, and design media-rich resources.
It’s also easy to create surveys, check the number of attempts, add media files to questions, print quiz results, view quiz statistics, and use 14 different types of questions.
Joomla LMS also has a chatting users list, course chat, forum, email, course announcements, and automatic email notification.
Unlike what Canvas offers, Joomla ensures multi-faculty or teacher usage and the ability to apply various learning techniques. It also provides learning paths for structuring course content and an extended certificate functionality.
13. Edmodo LMS
Just like Canvas, Edmodo LMS provides an excellent collaborating learning environment where students get to interact more.
This platform is dedicated to helping parents, admins, teachers, and students improve their learning skills.
You can connect learners with people who will help them reach their full potential.
Edmodo is the largest learning network for administrators, teachers, and K-12 students. It engages users throughout their learning programs.
Edmodo features online classroom discussions with a network for connecting all stakeholders, including parents, administrators, and students.
While Canvas focuses on enterprises, Edmodo is most suitable for educational institutions.
When you register, you’ll find a free administrator account to activate and speed up your learning programs.
When students get good scores in the assessments, they are awarded badges.
Edmodo also creates polls and a community network to enhance communication and learning for the learners.
You can personalize the app according to your requirements, and the system will measure the progress.
Compared to Canvas, Edmodo offers both open and tagged libraries and has a digital portfolio for each student’s work.
14. ProProfs LMS
ProProfs LMS can be utilized by enterprises of all sizes.
This is one of the easiest cloud LMS for corporate training programs such as sexual harassment training, HR, compliance, and more.
ProProfs LMS is clean, intuitive, and lightweight. It’s easy to set up employee training within minutes.
The system offers pre and post-training support for people with all levels of experience. Its workplace training solutions include surveys, advanced reporting, collaboration tools, and a quiz-making tool.
ProProfs has a library of pre-developed templates and courses you can customize with branding.
Just like Canvas, you have access to a secure and centralized virtual classroom where you can manage the group admins, learner groups, tracking, and course assignments in a single place.
ProProfs also includes a Q&A community where students share knowledge and peer-to-peer social learning.
The quizzes are beautifully designed for engagement during an assessment. It makes it easy for you to evaluate knowledge retention.
ProProfs, like Canvas, supports reporting and analytics to help you gain insights on course engagement levels, participation, knowledge gaps, and completion rates.
What makes ProProfs better than Canvas is its simplicity, vast resources, and automation.
15. Adobe Captivate Prime LMS
If you’re a fan of video tutorials with entertainment such as gamification, try using Adobe Captivate Prime LMS in your programs.
It offers affordable pricing for customized learning experiences.
Adobe Captivate Prime LMS is a next-generation LMS that combines and aligns online and local training to enhance employee skill sets. This is an excellent alternative to Canvas.
It is a basic, simple platform with much flexibility for automating routine tasks and customizations.
Adobe Captivate Prime LMS assigns learning plans and synchronizes users for an upscale experience.
It surpasses Canvas by engaging learners with gamification, mobile-friendly learning, video streaming, and personalized dashboards.
The system tracks each student’s learning progress to provide detailed information through a strong reporting framework.
Adobe Captivate Prime is a speedy and secure platform with 24-hour customer support. It also allows you to create powerful API integration, a sub-instance for LMS, and a strong accessibility feature.
Tools that make it a better Canvas alternative include fluid media player capabilities, en-suite LCMS, gamification, built-in LRS with xAPI compliance, and AI-based social learning.
Summing Up
Digital education has shaped learning experiences in recent years. The Canvas alternatives listed here are designed with innovative features and functionalities to improve the learning process for both tutors/trainers and learners/trainees.
If you are looking for an LMS platform that supports onboarding and gamification, Docebo will help you achieve your goals.
But if, on the other hand, you need a simple, feature-packed, cost-efficient LMS, iSpring Learn is the software for you.
Schoology is another LMS platform you should consider if you are an instructor seeking to create and spread learning resources without difficulty. It is the only versatile platform where your students will share practice across different geographical spaces.
For large-scale companies, try Moodle LMS, Joomla LMS, and Absorb LMS for enterprise versions with more advanced features.
These alternatives will give you insights into learners’ performances and become the catalyst in the productivity of your business.
Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing. I started my first e-commerce company in college, designing and selling t-shirts for my campus bar crawl using print-on-demand. Having successfully established multiple 6 & 7-figure e-commerce businesses (in women’s fashion and hiking gear), I think I can share a tip or 2 to help you succeed.