The 19 Best Learning and Development (L&D) Tools

Every organization should use learning and development (L&D) tools to succeed and expand. With the use of L&D tools, staff members can participate in continuous learning, acquire new skills, stay up to date with best practices and trends in the field, and become more skilled in their roles.

Learning and development (L&D) is a core area of HR management. L&D professionals need to ensure that employee skills and performance align with a company’s goals and objectives – both in the short and long term. To have a good learning and development strategy, they create training programs – offline and/or online courses that help to develop needed hard and soft skills. 

If you’re new to learning and development or looking for a way to enhance your performance, you might need employee training tools. Here, we’ve collected the 19 best training and development tools that we think you’ll find useful. Check out these knowledge-sharing tools and choose the one that best suits you and your team.

The 19 Best Learning and Development Tools for 2024

1. iSpring Suite
2. Articulate Storyline 3
3. Adobe Captivate
4. iSpring Learn LMS
5. TalentLMS
6. Docebo
7. Valamis
8. Stream LXP
9. NovoEd
10. iSpring Page
11. OttoLearn
12. Gnowbe
13. Microsoft-Teams
14. WebEx
15. GoToWebinar
16. RecRoom
17. Slack
18. Troop Messenger
19. Workplace

Types of Learning and Development Tools

Course Authoring Tools

The essential aspect of building an online L&D program is eLearning content creation. An authoring tool allows you to create courses and assessments for your employee training. 

With eLearning authoring tools, you can create interactive courses that will help you enhance the learning experience, increase employee engagement, and make your corporate online learning effective. You can employ some of the best content creation tools to help train your employees.

Learning Management Systems (LMSs)

An LMS is a learning and development platform that lets you deliver training programs to employees, track their progress, and evaluate results. Suppose you’ve developed an eLearning course. How do you deliver it to your learners? That’s where an LMS comes into play.

Learning management systems are L&D platforms that help you keep all training materials in one place, enroll learners in online courses, get analytics reports on their progress, and much more.

Learning Experience Platforms (LXP)

An LXP is similar to an LMS, but here, learners have more control over what they learn. Unlike a learning management system, a learning experience platform (LXP) focuses on individual employee involvement. This means it’s not trainers who decide what skills and knowledge employees need to acquire, but the employees themselves.

With an LXP, you might create and nurture a culture of learning that is a solid foundation for ongoing employee skills and knowledge development.

Micro-learning Platforms

Micro-learning platforms are simplified learning and development platforms that let you create micro-courses and quizzes, and send them to learners. Not all companies might need a full-fledged LMS or LXP.

If you don’t have hundreds of employees, and you’re not going to create complex training programs and receive detailed analytical reports, then you might find microlearning platforms useful and convenient. They allow you to build bite-sized content and deliver it to your learners quickly.

Virtual Instructor-Led Training Tools

These are training and development software for conducting webinars. Education has always relied on face-to-face training, and the digital era is enabling new ways to provide it.

You might be familiar with tools like Skype and Zoom – they allow you to connect with learners who are thousands of miles away from each other. Although this type of software is extremely popular as a communication tool, these programs have some limitations in terms of training. They might lack advanced eLearning features, such as project management tools or progress tracking functionality. 

Communication Tools

Communication is an essential part of learning. Learners need to exchange their thoughts on new knowledge, discuss learning topics, and share ideas. Traditional means of communication, such as email, are not always effective for these purposes. Social media might do the trick, but not all learners want to use their personal accounts for this type of exchange.

Special L&D communication tools act as professional collaboration networks where learners can engage in relevant discussions and maintain contact with instructors and peers. 

Best Learning and Development (L&D) Tools in 2024

1. iSpring Suite

Type: Course authoring tool

G2 Rating: 4.6

Price: $770 per author/year

iSpring Suite is a fully stocked authoring tool with an intuitive interface. It works as a PowerPoint add-in. You can enhance your existing PowerPoint presentations with interactive eLearning content and create courses from scratch using the features of both PowerPoint and iSpring Suite.

Here are some of iSpring Suite signature features:

• Assessments. Create quizzes and surveys with 14 question types, including hot-spot, drag-and-drop, and Likert scale questions, to check how well employees have acquired and retained new knowledge. You can also collect their feedback on a training course.
• Screencasts and video lectures. Create compelling training videos with the robust built-in video studio to let employees learn from experts whenever and wherever they find it convenient.

Also read: The Ultimate Guide to Lecture Capture

• Dialogue simulations. Build conversation modules for your eLearning courses to help employees develop their communication skills, or create storytelling-based courses to engage your learners.
• Interactions. Use a set of ready-made interaction templates to create glossaries, catalogs, timelines, references, and FAQs that will make your employees’ collaborative learning experience more entertaining.

Get a 14-day free trial to see iSpring Suite in action.

2. Articulate Storyline 3

Type: Course authoring tool

G2 Rating: 4.6

Price: $1,399 per year.

Articulate Storyline 3 is another robust authoring tool that allows you to create interactive eCourses. This online course provider has lots of great content creating capabilities. These include powerful animation and interaction options that help engage learners.

If your company has a learning and development department with advanced course developers as part of the team, then Articulate Storyline 3 might be the right fit. However, in other cases, you might find this L&D software too complicated and confusing.

3. Adobe Captivate

Type: Course authoring tool

G2 Rating: 3.9

Price: $33.99 per author/month or $1,299 per author/year.

Adobe Captivate is an authoring tool that allows you to create advanced eLearning content and close skill gaps that employees might have. One of the unique features of this tool is its ability to build Virtual Reality projects. You can also create interactive videos and publish courses as iOS or Android apps for mobile learning.

Adobe Captivate is a powerful digital adoption platform, but it will only be a good fit for very advanced developers. Beginners may find it too complicated, especially for basic classroom training purposes.

If you want to delve deeper into this authoring tool’s capabilities, read our detailed comparison of Adobe Captivate vs. Articulate Storyline 3 vs. iSpring Suite.

4. iSpring Learn

Type: Learning management system

G2 Rating: 4.6

Price: Plans start at $3,66 per user/month, billed annually, for up to 100 users.

iSpring Learn is an easy-to-use cloud-based learning management software. With it, you can implement any training scenario, from new hire onboarding and subject training to refresher training.

iSpring Learn offers many features and has an intuitive interface that allows you to use all the capabilities trouble free – even if you’re a beginner.

iSpring Learn can boast such capabilities as:

• Learning tracks. Build step-by-step training programs and automate the learning process.
• A built-in authoring tool. Create simple adaptive online courses and quizzes right in a browser.
• A bundle offer with iSpring Suite. Create advanced interactive courses with dialogue simulations and quizzes, video tutorials, and screencasts – all with the powerful course authoring toolkit that’s included at no extra cost.
• Reporting system. Receive advanced reports on learner progress and use other assessment tools to measure course effectiveness.
• Integrations. Provide instructor-led training via Zoom or Microsoft Teams; iSpring Learn has seamless integration with both.
• Mobile app. Enable asynchronous learning by enabling learners to take courses on their mobile devices – even when they’re offline.
• Gamification. Motivate learners with leaderboards, badges, and points.
• 24/7 technical support. Whenever you have questions about the LMS, you can reach out to iSpring engineers, who are actual people, not chatbots.

Test all these features yourself by getting a free, fully functional 30-day trial of iSpring Learn.

5. TalentLMS

Type: Learning management system

G2 Rating: 4.6

Price: Paid plans start at $59/month, billed annually, allowing up to 40 users.

TalentLMS is an intuitive learning management system that offers all the essential features you might expect from an LMS. There is a built-in authoring tool that allows you to create online courses with quizzes and surveys.

One great option that TalentLMS offers is its e-commerce capabilities, which enable you to sell your training courses and become part of the community of online course providers. However, it might be more relevant for freelance instructional designers than L&D managers.

6. Docebo

Type: Learning management system

G2 Rating: 4.4

Price: Upon request

Docebo is a multifunctional LMS that allows you to create and manage online learning and buy courses from their Marketplace. This feature might be an advantage for companies that can’t afford to spend much time creating online courses from scratch.

Besides, Docebo LMS has excellent social learning capabilities, such as QA threads within learning modules, curated content sharing, and user-generated content. In other words, it can function as a professional social media network for users. However, Docebo does not provide authoring features.

Also read: The 11 Best HR Tools for Streamlining Your Workflow in 2023

7. Valamis

Type: Learning experience platform (LXP)

Price: Upon request

Valamis is a learning experience platform that offers LMS capabilities and the option to sell educational materials via its ecosystem. One of the platform’s advantages is that learners can discover relevant eLearning content and purchase lots of different training programs right on the platform. This means you don’t have to limit your training to the course material designed by your company.

Valamis also has an AI algorithm that recommends relevant eLearning content based on employee learning preferences and business objectives, such as compliance training and project management training.

8. Stream LXP by Learning Pool

Type: Learning experience platform (LXP)

Price: Upon request

Stream LXP is a learning suite by Learning Pool that offers most of the functions you might want for your online learning. The advanced search function allows employees to discover engaging learning modules and gamification features that motivate them to study more. The LXP also has some basic authoring capabilities for creating simple online courses.

9. NovoEd

Type: Learning experience platform (LXP)

Price: Upon request

NovoEd focuses on providing collaborative learning. With this LXP, learners can comment on and discuss modules, receive points, and create private workspaces for designing collaborative projects. Analytical reports can help you see how effective your training programs are for the business.

10. iSpring Page

Type: Micro-learning platform

Price: $470 per author/year

iSpring Page is a cloud-based authoring tool that allows you to create minimalist courses that look perfect on any device. You can make a course the same way you create a post on Facebook:

• Type in or paste the text.
• Add images and training videos.
• Build quizzes to check how well learners acquire new knowledge.

The interface is modern-looking and intuitive. iSpring Page supports collaboration on courses; you can have your colleagues help you with content creation or ask a subject matter expert to make their edits while the content is still under development. For example, your team members can add images or videos as you write the text.

iSpring Page recently rolled out iSpring AI – a robust AI assistant that helps you write, edit, and enhance learning content while improving course design as well. 

11. OttoLearn

Type: Microlearning platform

Price: Plans start at $250/month, billed annually.

OttoLearn is a micro-learning platform for creating and delivering bite-sized content quickly. It allows you to provide learner-centered training by allowing the learner to choose which topic they should study and how deeply they should delve into it.

This training software will automatically assign the needed activities to each employee, ensuring they become engaged in online learning by showing them their progress and status on a leaderboard.

12. Gnowbe

Type: Micro-learning platform

G2 Rating: 4.8

Price: Plans start at $29 per user/month.

Gnowbe is similar to the other micro-learning platforms. It allows you to build micro-courses, create quizzes and surveys, and receive reports on learner progress. Gnowbe also provides you with ready-made templates, which makes content creation much easier.

13. Microsoft Teams

Type: Virtual instructor-led training tools

G2 Rating: 4.3

Price: Free basic plan. Paid plans start at $4 per user/month, billed annually.

Microsoft Teams aims to recreate a feeling of being together during an offline meeting in a digital environment. With Microsoft Teams, participants can react to the course with emojis to help an instructor understand their attitude and understanding of the eLearning content.

The tool is especially beneficial for large meetings; it allows up to 1,000 participants to interact and up to 20,000 users to view a video lecture or course.

Video conferences can be transcribed automatically in real time, and you can download a transcript afterward. Microsoft Teams also has a digital whiteboard where learners can create projects, draw, and brainstorm together.

By the way, iSpring Learn LMS has integration with this tool, and the two make a great pair for your L&D projects.

14. WebEx

Type: Virtual instructor-led training tools

G2 Rating: 4.3

Price: Starts at $14.50 per month.

WebEx is a CISCO tool for webinars, conferences, and other online meetings. WebEx cares about the learner experience and makes sure everyone can hear what you’re saying with its noise reduction feature. Besides automatic meeting transcription, WebEx can provide learners with real-time translation.

This tool helps engage learners by enabling them to send emojis using their body language. For example, hold your thumb up, and the thumb-up emoji will appear on your screen. This functionality also makes the learning process more inclusive.

15. GoToWebinar

Type: Virtual instructor-led training tools

G2 Rating: 4.2

Price: Plans start at $59/month, billed annually, for up to 250 participants.

GoToWebinar is a virtual instructor-led training tool specifically designed for holding webinars and enhancing their quality. Some of its most remarkable features are creating polls, surveys, live Q&As, and receiving reports on learner engagement. You can explain your presentation by drawing right on the screen during your presentation.

You can use this data to track the strong and weak points of your content and fix the flaws accordingly. GoToWebinar also allows you to award certificates to your attendees for completing the training program. 

16. RecRoom

Type: Virtual instructor-led training tools

Price: Free

RecRoom was initially designed for building and playing online games. However, during the pandemic, Cass Coomber, a K–12 teacher, started using this software to teach lessons digitally. Some of the lesson videos went viral, and many learners worldwide appreciated the new learning format. So why not use RecRoom for corporate training?

With RecRoom, you and your learners can choose a digital game location, build whatever environment you want, and hold training sessions. Engage participants by using game objects like a blackboard where you can write ideas down and illustrate them, encouraging discussion in the group.

You can build any employee training program you want. For example, create a digital office and teach a fire safety course. Alternatively, use this tool for effective team building and digital collaboration. 

Check out Cass Coomber’s YouTube channel to see how it works.

17. Slack

Type: Communication tools

G2 Rating: 4.5

Price: Free basic plan. Paid plans start at $7.25 per active user/month, billed annually.

Slack is a quick and straightforward corporate messenger with all the features you might expect from a tool of this type. Slack’s strong suit is providing a data privacy guarantee that’s critical for companies of any size.

18. Troop Messenger

Type: Communication tools

G2 Rating: 4.6

Price: Plans start at $2.5 per user/month.

Troop Messenger is another great communication tool that offers unlimited messaging history and self-destructing “burnout” chats. Audio and video messages are available. You can also invite people (experts, for example) from outside the company to the selected threads and channels.

19. Workplace

Type: Communication tools

Price: Plans start at $4 per user/month.

Workplace is a Facebook communication tool that inherits many of Facebook’s features. Here, you don’t just get a messenger, but a corporate social media platform where employees can create posts and surveys, leave comments and reactions, and much more. This might become the perfect learning and development tool for learner communication in your company.

How to Choose the Right L&D Tools for Your Company

Selecting the right learning and development (L&D) tools for a company is an important decision that can affect the expansion of your business and your employees’ skill growth.

Now that you know the best training and development tools available, it’s time to choose the ones that will satisfy the company’s training needs. To do this, consider taking the 3 steps below:

Step 1. Assess the needs of your learning and development strategy

Think about your eLearning goals and objectives, the preferred format of learning content, and your audience. Let’s say you need both large, detailed online courses and micro-courses. In this case, choose a tool that allows you to create both.

Here are some things to consider:

• Which employee skills do you want to improve or develop?
• How can you match your company’s culture and goals with your learning and development strategy?
• How do you assess the success and impact of your learning and development programs?
• How do you evaluate the L&D requirements of your staff members, taking their positions, levels, interests, and goals, both now and in the future, into account?

You can specify the goals, objectives, and results of your L&D initiatives by providing answers to these questions. For example, if your learners love computer games and regularly play them together after work, it might be a good idea to integrate gamification into training. Hence, you might prefer an LMS with gamification features, like RecRoom.

Step 2. Consider resources

Consider how much your company can spend on eLearning. Assess the budget and other key resources your organization has available for eLearning projects. Take both upfront expenditures and recurring costs for things like content creation, licenses, and support services into account.

You can choose eLearning solutions that not only fulfill your learning objectives but also give your staff a consistent and cost-effective learning experience by keeping an eye on your budget and prioritizing smooth integration capabilities. The appropriate tools should not only be within your means, but also complement one another to increase the overall efficacy of your eLearning projects.

Step 3. Test-drive your short-listed knowledge sharing tools 

Once you have a list of the best L&D tools for your company, test them. Most of the tools mentioned above have free trials. So, see them in action and decide which ones work best for you.

Involve employees who will be using the tools in the testing process. Gather their feedback regarding the usability, engagement, and relevance of the content.

You can explore all the features offered by the tools, including content creation, interactive modules, discussion forums, quizzes, and progress tracking. Ensure they align with your learning objectives.

If you need to create interactive online courses quickly and easily, iSpring Suite might be the best fit. Download the 14-day free trial of iSpring Suite and launch effective learning and development right away.

FAQ on the Best Learning and Development Tools

Here are answers to the most popular user questions about L&D tools. 

What is the role of a learning and development department?

The major role of an L&D department in a company is to address business metrics with training to help the company grow. Their duties cover three major areas:

• Determining training needs. L&D specialists use surveys, performance reviews, or skill evaluations to determine the organization’s skill and knowledge gaps.
• Creating training programs. They create workshops and training courses to fill in particular skill gaps and developmental needs.
• Delivery of training. They plan and conduct in-person or online training sessions to guarantee that employees receive excellent, up-to-date training.

How do you create a winning L&D strategy?

There’s no single strategy that will be successful for all companies because each one has unique needs, requirements, and conditions. However, there are some general factors that you need to consider for your L&D strategy to be successful. You can learn about them in our in-depth article on learning and development.

Why are learning and development apps important?

Learning and development apps offer convenient, on-the-go access to educational resources from any device, enabling continuous skill enhancement and learning at a comfortable pace. They cater to employees’ personalized learning needs and provide interactive, engaging experiences. 

Can using learning and development tools make an organization better?

Using learning and development tools can definitely make an organization more efficient. These tools help enhance employee skills, knowledge, and performance, resulting in increased productivity, innovation, and employee satisfaction. On top of that, they contribute to talent retention and make the organization more competitive and adaptable to a dynamic business environment.