Frontline employees are busy, distributed and constantly on the move, making it particularly difficult to onboard, train and upskill these employees. That’s where mobile learning platforms come into play. Today’s mobile learning management systems make it easy to create mobile-first learning content and disseminate it to distributed frontline and field employees.

The need for mobile learning is higher than ever today, meaning there are a number of mobile learning platforms to sort through if you’re looking for the best solution for your organization. 

Below, we share and compare the top 10 options to help you find the right fit.

What is a Mobile Learning Management System (LMS)?

Simply put, a mobile Learning Management System is a learning platform designed to be accessed via mobile devices like smartphones (primarily), tablets and other devices frontline employees use every day. mLearning platforms are different from eLearning platforms in that they’re mobile-first. While some can also be accessed from a laptop or desktop computer, they’re primarily designed for mobile learning.

A mobile LMS allows you to offer structured learning paths that are personalized, interactive and eminently accessible—so frontline employees can learn anytime, anywhere. They can tap in whenever and wherever they have time to learn, accessing educational content and learning materials, completing assignments and connecting with instructors, managers and fellow employees right from their phone or tablet.

While your company may have some unique needs, the best mobile learning technology includes a few key features:

• Accessibility on smartphones (both iOS and Android) and tablets.
• Microlearning capabilities for quick, focused lessons that easily fit into the daily schedule of frontline and on-the-go employees.
• Push notifications and reminders to help overcome the myriad distractions that come with mobile learning on the front line.
• Offline capabilities for employees who may not always have access to a reliable, quality internet connection.
• A user-friendly interface designed for mobile usage.
• Integration with other systems including additional LMS, HRIS, productivity, analytics and any other tools in your stack.

Benefits of mobile learning

For both companies and individual employees, there are a ton of benefits to incorporating mobile learning. For one, it’s what employees prefer: our State of Frontline Employee Training report found a huge majority (84%) of employees want training to be accessible on their personal devices.

From a learning and development perspective, mobile learning can yield…

• Higher engagement with learners able to access bite-sized microlearning content whenever they have time in their day and highly personalized learning paths relevant to each employee’s day-to-day.
• More flexibility with learning that’s available anytime, anywhere and at the learner’s own pace.
• Increased cost efficiency with reduced overhead versus traditional training methods like in-person, classroom and instructor-led training.

On the training and development side, mobile learning helps increase…

• Scalability across locations and teams.
• Consistency with standardized learning experiences for diverse teams.
• Deployment speed with quick implementation of updates and new training programs across frontline teams.

Training operations can benefit from mobile learning with improved…

• Analytics and real-time tracking of learner progress and performance.
• Customization with easy adaptation and personalization of content to fit various training needs.
• Ease of updates via instant deployment of new and updated training content, without waiting for scheduled sessions.

▶️ 5 steps to develop an effective employee training program

Top mobile learning platforms for efficient training

With the need for mobile learning growing every year, it’s no surprise there are so many platforms aiming to snag that spot in your stack.

To help you find the best option for your organization, we pulled together the top 10 mobile learning solutions, including details on who each solution is best for, key features and use cases and pricing information (where publicly available).

Axonify

Best for: Frontline workers in retail, hospitality, grocery, finance, distribution and logistics—and any high-volume training environments

Your frontline employees are always on-the-go—they need a mobile LMS that’s accessible wherever, whenever, from any device. Here at Axonify, our LMS platform is built for frontline workforces. Whether you’re in retail, logistics, hospitality, telecom or otherwise, Axonify’s AI-powered enablement platform offers a proven method for boosting frontline performance in ways that directly impact the most crucial metrics for your business.

With Axonify, employees can get answers to common questions, job aids, training content and other resources, right from the systems they already use (including POS systems, handheld devices, tablets and personal smartphones).

With more than a decade of experience, we’ve got mobile learning down to a science. Our platform is built for microlearning, with bite-sized 3–5 minute mobile courses that maximize engagement.

Axonify customers can create hyper-personalized learning paths—thanks to our adaptive learning algorithm—and offer a mobile app experience tailored to the needs of their frontline workers.

Our mobile learning platform also includes a robust analytics suite that ties knowledge and learned behavior directly to real business results. You can track completion rates and learning engagement, of course, but Axonify also tracks over 5,000 additional datapoints and combines them with business data—using Machine Learning— to tie learning enablement to tangible business results.

Axonify pricing: Custom pricing based on organization size; contact us for a custom quote

Ready to educate, engage and empower your frontline workforce? Axonify is the #1 platform for frontline performance. Schedule a call to learn more and get your custom-built quote today.

Qstream

Best for: Sales teams in healthcare, life sciences, and financial services

Qstream is a microlearning platform that specializes in enabling primarily sales teams across the healthcare, pharma, medtech and financial services industries. The platform relies heavily on the spaced learning method—wherein in-depth learning content is presented, then reinforced in regimented increments, with set breaks in between—and knowledge reinforcement.

Qstream also draws on gamification and recognition to boost engagement and encourage a little healthy competition among employees, via immediate scoring and feedback and leaderboards. Plus, L&D teams can access performance data and microlearning analytics to help validate and improve learning programs.

Qstream pricing: Custom pricing, typically higher-end for large enterprises

Arist

Best for: Text-based, asynchronous mobile learning experiences

Arist is unique in that it isn’t a separate mobile learning app. With Arist, you can push training directly to the tools your team already uses (including Microsoft Teams and Slack), and your employees can get the knowledge they need without leaving their normal workflow.

Arist focuses heavily on automation to proactively push courses to learners based on data from any source you integrate with, triggering training based on events like promotions and new hires. The platform also lets users create entire courses using AI, so it’s easy to get set up. Both of these features help to personalize the learning content pushed to learners—and its timing. 

It’s important to note: the app is largely limited to text-based content.

Arist pricing: Subscription-based model starting at a moderate cost

Centrical

Best for: Gamified microlearning for performance management

Unlike many on this list, Centrical doesn’t bill itself as an LMS or mobile learning platform. Instead, it’s built to be what they call a “performance experience platform.” The semantics reflect a big focus for Centrical on microlearning for performance management, a focus showcased by targeted features for real-time performance insights and AI coaching.

Centrical also leans into the gamification side with:

• Leaderboards
• Game narratives
• Points, coins and badges (there’s even a virtual store for spending coins)
• Team competitions and personal challenges
• Peer and manager kudos

Centrical pricing: Enterprise pricing

SparkLearn

Best for: Small to medium-sized businesses

SparkLearn is a great fit for smaller businesses with training needs on the simpler side, particularly those without dedicated learning and development or corporate training team. It’s a mobile-first app that takes the files you’ve already created—anything from presentations, documents and webinars to sales playbooks and employee handbooks—and uses AI to turn them into learning content.

SparkLearn is also one of few mobile learning platforms built specifically for small and medium-sized businesses, and that’s reflected in the more accessible pricing structure. With that said, pricing can add up quickly if you have more than 10 employees or need to upgrade to access certain features like offline content access, whitelabeling, HRIS integration or support for podcasts, badges and certificates.

SparkLearn pricing: Free plan available for up to 10 users; paid plans start at $75 for the Essential plan for up to 25 users.

TalentCards

Best for: Smaller teams or niche training requirements

TalentCards offers a simple, mobile-first interface, built for microlearning. Learners can access the mobile app on their personal smartphones and download content for offline learning. The name is a nod to the flashcard-style learning modules.

The platform supports a variety of multimedia formats, though the AI authoring tool focuses on text and images only. Speaking of AI, course generation is somewhat more simplistic here than in other platforms: you can type in a training topic and the app will create a course with 20 cards, images, and a 5-question quiz.

TalentCards draws on both gamification and spaced repetition to help make training a daily habit for deskless workers.

TalentCards pricing: Free for up to 5 users; paid plans start at $50/month for up to 50 users

Mindtickle

Best for: Sales enablement and onboarding

Mindtickle focuses squarely on revenue teams: revenue leadership, sales, sales enablement and marketing. The sales training features are focused on ramping reps faster and upskilling via personalized sales training. It uses bite-sized, mobile-friendly microlearning for busy sales reps, as well as assessments and certifications to help reinforce knowledge retention.

Beyond training, Mindtickle’s platform offers additional unique features like an AI copilot and a sales content management system, plus AI role-plays and conversation intelligence for in-the-field performance feedback and insights and continuous learning.

Mindtickle pricing: Custom enterprise pricing

Mobile Coach

Best for: Coaching and behavior change through nudges and AI

Mobile Coach isn’t a mobile training platform in the same way most of the other platforms on this list are. Instead, the team works with large organizations to build an automated chatbot designed to help nudge employees through the onboarding process.

Learners can interact with the bot via SMS, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Facebook Messenger, and more. Chatbots proactively send reminders for key onboarding tasks, check-ins, motivational messages, and questions to gather information. Bots can also help connect new hires with the right human help when required.

Mobile Coach pricing: Premium pricing, aimed at large organizations

eduMe

Best for: Organizations looking for lightweight mobile learning

eduMe is a lightweight solution that works best in tandem with a more full-featured LMS and workforce communication tool. When deployed this way, learners can access eduMe content and training right from within the tools they already use. That includes Workday, most notably, but eduMe also integrates with Microsoft Teams, ADP and even proprietary systems. Learners can also access learning content via SMS, email and QR code.

eduMe’s AI features make it super quick to create new learning content—from scratch or based on existing materials. The platform also focuses on a more modern, “TikTok-style” microlearning content to boost engagement.

eduMe pricing: Custom pricing based on users; often bundled with Workday

Opus

Best for: Flexible, interactive mobile learning experiences for restaurants and hospitality groups

Opus is built for blended learning, with interactive and video-based training available on employee smartphones and cultivated moments for managers to coach in an in-person forum. It’s also one of few platforms that offers a mobile app specifically for managers and admins, too. Opus offers uber-collaborative learning content creation, with real-time multi-user collaboration, user roles and permissions, commenting, version history and more.

You can automatically assign training based on location and role and integrate with popular HRIS tools. Plus, it’s easy to scale training with more than 500 full course templates and auto-translate that supports more than 100 languages.

Opus pricing: Custom pricing for larger organizations

The best mobile learning platform meets employees in the flow of work

The best solution for you depends largely on the size of your organization, your industry and any other specific training needs you may have.

But there’s one key feature your mobile learning platform has to have: the ability to integrate frictionlessly into your employees’ existing workflow.

The best learning content in the world will languish if it doesn’t fit seamlessly into your employees’ day-to-day work routines. That’s why you need a platform that meets employees where they already are and enables you to provide a flexible, accessible and—crucially—engaging user experience.

Ready to educate, engage and empower your frontline workforce? Axonify is the #1 platform for frontline performance. Schedule a call to learn more and get your custom-built quote today.