Open eLMS Reviews

After spending several weeks working with Open eLMS AI, I found that it did not meet my expectations as a course developer. Some of the valid concerns mentioned in previous reviews seem to have resulted in a few improvements, including being able to remove their menu logo, fixing a few editor settings, and increasing the number of drafts allowed in each tier. While support was pleasant and fast in answering all of my questions, the tool still has many limitations and performance issues.

(1) On several occasions over the last month, I've been unable to log into the tool even when trying to do so from different networks and devices and even after clearing my cache. Today, for example, I've been unable to log in all day, even when attempting to register a new trial account to see if it was just me. This doesn't instill much confidence when it's a recurring issue.

(2) There's a lot of trial and error in adjusting the course length and wordiness settings to get AI to extract the right amount of information you need. However, each draft attempt quickly adds up in a month based on your plan limits. So unless you are a pro at adjusting these settings and use them regularly, expect a lot of wasted drafts.

(3) There is no way to adjust or preview your original course settings or learning objectives once you generate a course. You can't even revise the original course title until after you export the course, and certain characters like parentheses can't be entered in a title. If you aren't happy with the duration, wordiness, or focus of the generated content and need to regenerate it, none of your original course settings will be saved, so you'll need to make a note of them each time as a reference which is a huge pain.

(4) It's not explained anywhere in the tool that you only need to add learning objectives when you don't have a document to upload. Otherwise, the learning objectives field is essentially ignored when using a PDF since it scans the entire document to generate the course content. However, if you want to extract only a few topics from a document but not everything, I was informed you need to first cut and paste content from it into a Word document and then revise and change the emphasis to certain areas that you want the AI to focus on before uploading it. This is not what I would call smart AI since it requires too much manual effort to narrow down the content focus of a document for the tool.

(5) The editor's UX/UI is unintuitive and looks very outdated. The tool also lacks sufficient help resources within it other than one video. To help course designers better understand how the platform works and be aware of its limitations, the tool needs to provide individual help tips or links to a knowledge base that explains the specific settings through info buttons next to each one.

(6) Viewing courses on a mobile device is quite difficult as you can't easily interact with some buttons that are small and you can't zoom in easily on text. Hence, these courses are not truly responsive like most modern elearning. Also, as another reviewer mentioned, the transcript button won't work on mobile Safari browsers and there is no explanation when it happens. Support indicated that to make the button work, learners need to change their mobile browser settings and allow pop-ups which is problematic since you can't enforce this as it is a security concern for many.

(7) Open eLMS courses aren't as accessible as other elearning tools. For example, if your users need to use their keyboard and a common screen reader, like NVDA, to navigate through a course, they will not be able to easily access previous topics through the main menu.

(8) Another big issue is that there is no previous button for users to easily navigate backward to previously visited sections (it only adds a previous button to screens within the same topic). So, once users have advanced to a new topic by clicking Next, there is no way to go back one slide unless you go through the main menu which is clunky and not intuitive. Also, Open eLMS' current design requires the learner to initially navigate course content in sequence in order for the menu to work properly. If you attempt to add buttons that allow learners to access topics out of sequence, the menu will not show them as visited until they visit them in sequence. However, this restrictive navigation design does not allow for branching or for learners to pick the topics they want to visit first. Even PowerPoint allows navigating slides out of sequence and even allows the previous button to return to the last visited slide (even if out of sequence). The most popular elearning tools, such as Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline, also allow this. This is referred to as "History Navigation" or "Last Slide Viewed" and is an industry standard.

Overall, Open eLMS AI needs serious improvements in its performance, ease of use, and versatility. Once these are made, I would be happy to update my review.

The audio plays on the first slide only but on mobile devices. Moreover, courses cannot be edited after they are created, and there are no instructions on how to embed them on a website

I took some time and went through this platform and I must say that this A.I. course creator is the best that I've used. I own about (7) A.I. course builders and none of them are this easy to use and professional looking. I used several courses while working and most of them looked outdated compared to eLMS. I just finished taking about 6 Nationwide Medicare Certifications from billion dollar companies and my courses I created in eLMS puts them to shame.

I bought Academy LMS close to 2yrs ago and I was trying to find an A.I. builder that I could use with my Wordpress Course Site.

eLMS exports in Scorm format and LifterLMS is an addon in Academy LMS and through LifterLMS, I can import all my courses from eLMS flawlessly that I exported.

Also, I was able to go into the edit function and upload my own Logo and link to my website instead of eLMS' logo and website link. So YOU CAN remove eLMS branding, when you purchase the software. I bought 3 codes so, I don't know what happens if you have 1 or 2 codes, but I know with 3 codes I could use my own branding, without downloading the software.

So, I had to double back to include that in this review.

Now, I have a paid ChatGPT account and I use it along with eLMS and it yields amazing results.

No course creator is perfect, especially A.I., however eLMS comes very close.

Those of us that use A.I., we use it to help us speed up our workflows and we CAN at anytime include the info we want to use in place of, or along with the content it created.

In conclusion, support answered me back within a couple of hours or less and answered my questions.

If you know of another A.I. editor that does what eLMS does or better "beautifully", and exports courses in the SCORM format, that also includes a built-in quiz from the data it created from your prompts, please tell us here.

eLMS is well worth the spend, and I'll be a customer for life. I need a FAST workflow. If you want to create your course manually, you shouldn't be using eLMS. Online Course Host & Academy LMS can facilitate that with ease and excellence.

I'm always looking for innovative ways to create professional courses. Unfortunately, I would not use this tool with clients even if it was free as it is quite bad!

1) Confusing name– This is a course builder (not an LMS) through they sell a separate product with a similar name but without "AI" in the title (huh?). They essentially took their old course creator from 5 years ago, rebranded it and appended AI to it.

2) Gaudy design aesthetic– The video characters look very outdated, the slide layouts are crude, and the animated images are cheesy and unnecessary. Just look at some of their own examples- https://openelms.ai/examples

The last example on that page shows a video character (founder?) with green screen artifacts around his head instructing the user to click on a green button that does not exist on the screen. This character is still in the app and is referencing an older interface.

3) Poor AI generation– I tested the AI by uploading a PDF brochure from their Open eLMS site. I then entered my learning objectives to focus on "What makes Open eLMS different" since there was a section dedicated to it in the PDF. However, much of the AI-generated course covered topics and quiz questions that were not the focus of my learning objectives. So, clearly, their AI is not great at extracting critical information from documents which is supposed to be one of its main selling points. It even struggles with generating relevant images. Unfortunately, regenerating new drafts to address this did not resolve the issue and I quickly reached my plan limit.

4) Terrible Editor– I spent days dealing with and reporting over a dozen issues with their editor which is terribly outdated and very unintuitive:
- Several video settings won't work (e.g., turning off video characters, adjusting video animations)
- Cannot easily change the color of a button without having to upload your own. Who has button images saved on their computer with the specific color they need? You can't even place a button over a text box.
- The previous button does not appear when you need to navigate back through topics/sections even though you can navigate forward through the same screens with no issue. However, the previous button appears only in subsections (huh?). This is not an industry standard and is quite confusing for new users.

5) Inconsistent limitations– Creating new screens/sections after you generate a course will require an upgrade. However, you can create as many new sub-screens as you like using the copy function in the editor. You can also copy menu sections and add new screens this way. So why allow this as a workaround instead?

6) Courses are not keyboard-accessible or screen-reader-accessible– Accessibility is a fundamental aspect of good design and user experience. For example, a visually impaired user can’t use the Tab and Enter keys on their keyboard to cycle through and select buttons or navigation elements (which most common websites allow). Also, screen readers can't read the slide content other than the course title which is another industry standard this platform doesn't meet.

7) Not suitable for viewing on mobile devices– The course design is not responsive since the layout does not adjust to your screen. This makes the course content and buttons (especially the ones at the top of the screen) difficult to see and interact with as they appear tiny on a phone. Another issue is that the transcript button does not work in Safari since it is programmed to act like a pop-up in Safari rather than a separate tab. However, most major browsers block pop-ups by default for security reasons. You also can't pinch and zoom easily unless you place your fingers only over an image in the course since doing so over a text box will not work.

8) Stuck with their logo– The highest tier still offers no option to remove the logo (though there is a manual workaround that does it).

9) Good luck with support– Their platform offers no direct link to request help. The easiest way to do so is by email, even though the email address is not advertised and can only be found on your AppSumo purchase details page. You then have to register a separate account just to be able to view/respond to their emailed ticket status notifications (which isn't explained). Once you submit a ticket, be prepared for three different confirmation emails that they received it (why?). Next, prepare to have most of your concerns dismissed or be treated like a nuisance for pointing out bugs/issues and erratic connectivity with their platform. Then, if you insist on a resolution, you'll be escalated multiple times before finally being ignored without explanation (though it's likely because they don't like constructive feedback).

If there's a response to this review, I hope it will not be as dismissive or rationalize their poor decisions.

If any Sumoling wants to reach me with any questions about my experiences with Open eLMS AI, please see my contact info in my profile.

The support is fast and helpfull. Easy to use and with exellent results. But the limitations are the parts I don´t like. I unterstand that a lifetime deal comes with a kind of limitations and I agree with it. I wish that I could buy more Credits to finish my courses. Unfortunately there´s no LTD with the possibility to upgrade the credits. The only way is the Enterprise Subscription with a high monthly fee, even limited. Probably I come back later. Good luck guys. Keep on rockin´