Free v. Commercial/Enterprise?
Free LMS’s are typically open-source content. What this means is that the source code is able to be modified to ensure that the content becomes highly customizable for each organization and its specific use cases for the content. Obviously, it makes sense that this is desirable because the platform is free, however, these systems tend to be more complicated than the commercials options. If you are a highly tech savvy company or organization and you have the resources and time to spend on customization and working with the source code, then this option is extremely viable and can yield some promising results. It also is prudent to note that the free LMS solutions typically come with little to no support so if a problem does crop up - there is a chance that the solution may be out of reach without some intense problem solving and sophisticated users.
Commercial software typically comes with User Support, a shorter lifespan to deployment, while not as highly customizable as a solution with open source code - the commercial solutions are working harder and harder to seamlessly leverage your brand and provide a nice user experience. Of course, these solutions cost money, and depending on the system and how many users will be accessing the system can become very, very costly.
Locally Hosted v. SaaS?
Installed LMSs refer to where the software is hosted. Will it be installed at the location of the company’s servers or through software as a service model which is typically hosted by the vendor and therefore accessible from anywhere. While there is some debate on the security of SaaS vendors, there have been no concrete findings that one solution is more secure than the other, so try not to take that into consideration when choosing a vendor. An installed solution makes a lot of sense if a company or institution has the proper people in place (IT, etc.) to make the proper upgrades to the system, handle customization, and anything to do with scalability.
The benefits of having and LMS vendor that works as a Saas (software as a service), means that anything relating to system upgrades, freeing up bandwidth, and providing any additional support is overseen by the vendor and frees up time and resources on the company or organization’s end that is using that vendor as a provider.
Content Creation, Third Party, or LCMS?
Something more to consider when making the decision on purchasing an LMS for your organization or institution is whether or not there is flexibility with who creates content. In certain cases, an LMS is specifically to distribute content that has been made in another system - the LCMS (Learning Content Management System), and then is hosted within the LMS.
Some LMSs come with the ability to author your own content and use content that has already been created through linking the content to documents, videos, etc. and then distributing them to another system. Additionally, there are LMSs that do not even allow the authoring of individuals content within their system and instead rely on the use of third party data to provide content for training and educational purposes.
Whichever system you ultimately choose in terms of how courses are created - it is important to understand SCORM and Tin Can standards, because this is how data can be uploaded when determining a new LMS vendor that you would like to use, as well as whether or not content from third party sites would be able to interact well with your system.
Ability to Integrate?
The importance of integration cannot be overlooked. Most likely your organization already uses many different programs for operations - from calendars, to emails, to conference calls - even social media. Ensuring that your LMS will integrate with the appropriate programs to provide seamless interactions for your employees and students will be very important as you begin to scale your training.
