How to choose an LMS without being sold one.

Why this guide exists

Almost every guide to buying a learning management system is published by someone who sells one. That doesn't make them dishonest. It does mean there is one conclusion they can never reach — that you don't need to buy anything — and it means their comparison tables tend to be organised around the features they happen to have.

Red6 resells nothing. No partner badges, no licences, no referral commission from any vendor. So this guide can say the thing the others can't, which is also the most useful thing in it: a large proportion of organisations shopping for a new LMS don't need one. They need the one they own to be configured, connected and run properly.

One — Do you actually need a new one?

The most expensive procurement decision is the one made to solve a problem the new system won't fix.

Dissatisfaction with an LMS is real and usually justified. But it's a symptom with several possible causes, only one of which is “we bought the wrong software”. Before you shortlist anything, work through these five.

• Has anyone owned this system in the last two years? Not on an org chart — actually owned it, with time allocated. A platform nobody administers degrades in a way that looks identical to one that isn't fit for purpose.
• What has been switched on? Most organisations use a fraction of what they've licensed. Ask your vendor for the modules on your contract and compare against what's live. It's free, and it's frequently the whole answer.
• Is the complaint about the platform, or the data going into it? “Our reporting is useless” is usually a data problem. A new LMS will produce equally useless reports faster.
• Is the complaint about the platform, or the content? Replacing the delivery mechanism doesn't improve what's delivered through it.
• What specifically can this system not do? Write it as capabilities, not feelings. A short list of genuinely absent features is a real case for change. A long vague one is a management problem in a software costume.

Replacing a badly-run system with a well-chosen one gets you a badly-run new system in about eighteen months.

Two — What you're really buying

The quote covers one of four cost layers. The other three are real, they're yours, and they're usually larger.

Every organisation that buys an LMS acquires an ongoing operational job — enrolments, user lifecycle, course maintenance, compliance reporting, release testing. It's almost never budgeted. It gets absorbed by someone who already has a job, and two years later the platform is judged a failure.

Three — The costs that never appear on the quote

Published industry guides report implementation fees from around £1,700 to £6,900; roughly £2,200–£2,950 for a single Salesforce connection, or 10% of the entire subscription for the same thing; £390–£430 a month for premium support; £2,150–£2,600 to put your own branding on it; and around £340 a month per additional portal. Thirty-six month commitments with no early exit are common. (Source guides quote in euros and dollars; converted at rates current on 27 August 2026 and rounded.)

Single sign-on, HR connections and API access are frequently gated behind higher tiers rather than sold as add-ons — so the cost arrives as a whole tier upgrade rather than a line item.

Four — Running a demo that tells you something

A standard vendor demo is a rehearsed performance in a pristine environment with invented data. Send every vendor the same script in advance, built from your actual work. Then watch for four things: “that's on the roadmap” (treat anything not on screen today as absent), the sales engineer's beautifully configured environment (ask how long it took to build, and whether that's included), perfect demo data (yours isn't), and the learner-side bias — you'll spend far more hours in the administrator interface than any learner spends in theirs.