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CYPHER Learning vs Totara Learn comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 19, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CYPHER Learning
Ranking in Learning Management Systems (LMS)
2nd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Totara Learn
Ranking in Learning Management Systems (LMS)
8th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Learning Management Systems (LMS) category, the mindshare of CYPHER Learning is 1.3%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Totara Learn is 1.1%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CYPHER Learning1.3%
Totara Learn1.1%
Other97.6%
Learning Management Systems (LMS)
 

Featured Reviews

Gieshala (Gigi) Mims - PeerSpot reviewer
Teacher/ AI research educator at Senatobia Municipal School District
Boosts student engagement and simplifies course management with creative tools
The best features of CYPHER Learning that I enjoy most include the course management system, gamification, blogging, and debating tools that cater to increasing creative thinking, creative writing, and problem-solving. Gamification and these specific tools make it easy for my students to navigate and manage numerous courses within one class while keeping up with my standards for my curriculum, where my students can see their mastery and performance on assignments. I find it extremely beneficial because our curriculum in schools is data-driven. This allows me to easily obtain data from the content-specific standards assigned to each assignment. I can assess what concepts I need to review and identify what the students have mastered. This transparency also enables the students to see their own progress.
SK
Developer, Tech Lead at iT corner
Plug-and-play LMS and allows for separate instances for different organizations or departments
The look and feel is not good. Totara Learn needs to improve its look and feel and make it easier to use and more user-friendly. The interface is okay, but sometimes it's messy. Totara needs to improve the UI part as well and make it easier to use for the admin side. AI capabilities are in beta phase. I think they have implemented some AI features in the model, but right now, I'm not aware of what AI features have been implemented. So, Totara also needs to implement some AI things in the model, like suggesting courses according to users' needs or interests.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Learning and development within this company have reached new heights."
"This platform not only allows you to transmit the content in an agile and interactive way, but you can also interact with the students and keep them up to date. It is a platform that provides communication with the student, not only academically but also personally."
"One of the most valuable features is the ability to use private external portals through which we can sell our courses, which is enormous. This feature is one of the primary reasons we stitched from our previous LMS, as it allows us to grow and create customization. We can customize the portals within CYPHER Learning for specific clients, and that's huge."
"Overall, I am very positive about the platform."
"CYPHER Learning has very much improved our onboarding processes and learning curve."
"It's just fully managed online and manages the whole process from the start of the student engagement all the way through their training, communicating with them via the platform, and completion of their training. It's one of the few platforms that just works."
"With class folders in place, it is possible to follow up on the children. I know when students have seen the material that has been uploaded to the platform and, thus, understand if they are following the classes."
"CYPHER Learning was the key enabler in transforming our traditional classroom-based training services to a fully digital online service providing more options to our customers and, at the same time, providing better insights to us."
"The tool's deployment is not complex."
"The multi-tenancy features of Totara Learn are the most useful for training efficiency."
 

Cons

"One thing that has been a problem is that CYPHER Learning doesn't save the students' work while they are doing it. For example, if you are on a Google Doc, and you close your Google Doc, then you come back, the work that you did has been saved. However, in CYPHER Learning, if for some reason the student clicks out of CYPHER Learning and goes back in, whatever they typed isn't saved. That is an area that they need to improve. A lot of my students may write an essay, but if they are two paragraphs in and their iPad crashes or something, when they go back, they are like, "All my work is gone." So, this would be an area that I would recommend for improvement in CYPHER Learning. It needs to auto save, and it doesn't auto save. That is definitely a weakness."
"There is further work to be done on the translation accuracy of international languages."
"eCommerce integration is crucial for us. They have two separate reporting styles. You can view information within the courses themselves, and you can view information on the eCommerce orders. The reporting within the courses and the eCommerce orders are separate, causing difficulty."
"There are some analytics issues that need to be resolved, including the item analysis."
"The list of students needs to be organized according to gender. The list of students in the product contains both male and female students, whereas, in our grading system, we list the male students followed by the female students."
"There could be improvements in the dynamic and accessibility tools for the youngest students. For example, I create or attach links from other pages, and I use activities and games, such as roulettes, that encourage student participation."
"I would also like to see improvement to the mobile app, because our students are mobile-first. In our day-to-day interaction with students, if they can do everything on their mobile phones, that would be what they would appreciate the most."
"They are not the cheapest solution, but they are not the most expensive."
"Totara Learn needs to improve the look and feel, and make it easier to use, more user-friendly."
"The challenge was understanding the entire solution, particularly its capabilities for managing training within a distributed organization. As part of a group of companies, some with training hubs and others working differently, the need for different tenants arose. This helps organize the training offerings centrally, addressing the challenge of a multi-tenant solution, which wasn't fully grasped initially."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have compared pricing with different vendors and found that CYPHER Learning was the most reasonable."
"We are on a plan where we pay for 1,000 users every month. The pricing structure is pretty straightforward. It just depends on what you need. We are currently going with a monthly model because sometimes there are still months during the year where we will have a lot less students on the system, and we took that into consideration."
"The system is not cheap but it's affordable. The pricing is fair... The cherry on top was that we received all the functionality with the simplest plan, the one with the minimal number of users. It couldn't be any better."
"When I first started, I wanted the enterprise package. We had to build up our student base to get up to the number of students that we needed to be in that enterprise package. Then, we had a 100% return on investment within the first year of using the program."
"I'm an instructional designer, and from a build or a designer standpoint, it would be nice to have a more user-friendly resource folder to access artifacts to pull into course modules. The second feature that I would love is that while editing any page inside CYPHER Learning, there should be more functionality to design it well."
"It has helped us save from 90% to 100% of our costs. The most valuable thing that we have earned in the last three years is time, e.g., my personal time versus my work time. There is more harmony."
"The main reason we went for it was cost, which was very reasonable."
"The price was fair for all the features we received."
"It's not expensive. It's user-based."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Construction Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for NEO LMS?
The pricing for CYPHER Learning is on par with other solutions. I've been a single user of the system for a while and priced out several other options, and it's probably standard pricing if not may...
What needs improvement with NEO LMS?
Improvements can be made by adding more analytics such as detailed breakdowns of which parts of the course learners struggle with. Integration of external tools like syncing progress with a calenda...
What advice do you have for others considering NEO LMS?
CYPHER Learning has one of the best gamification features, and milestone and progress badges can easily be seen through the platform to boost learner engagement. The platform also supports differen...
What needs improvement with Totara Learn?
The look and feel is not good. Totara Learn needs to improve its look and feel and make it easier to use and more user-friendly. The interface is okay, but sometimes it's messy. Totara needs to imp...
What advice do you have for others considering Totara Learn?
For people who need a highly scalable, multi-tenant LMS on a low budget, this is a good option. It's a very good option in the market, low-priced, and a very good LMS. Overall, I would rate it an e...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Totara Learn?
It's not expensive. It's user-based. If you want to plug in, you can use that plan. It's not expensive. I think it's around $100 or something if you want to use it. You can buy the system and imple...
 

Also Known As

MATRIX LMS, NEO LMS
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Millions of users across business, academia, and entrepreneurs - worldwide.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CYPHER Learning vs. Totara Learn and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.