LMS features deserve weight only when two things are true: your team will use the feature in its first year, and it’s included on the tier you’re being quoted. A long feature list tells you what a platform can do. It doesn’t tell you what your onboarding and compliance programs will touch before the first renewal, or what sits one plan above the price in your inbox. This guide sorts a typical feature list into four piles, shows where “included” has a ceiling, and gives you the follow-up question for the SSO, SCORM and accessibility checkboxes.
Key Takeaways
- A feature earns year-one weight only if you can name the course, the people and the month you’ll first use it.
- SSO, API access and AI authoring are often tier questions: SkyPrep puts API and SSO on Premium and above, and Continu puts its AI on Professional.
- Feature counts disagree with themselves: 360Learning says “80+” integrations on its homepage and “50+” on its features page.
- “SSO” should resolve to SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect, “SCORM compliant” to named editions, and “accessible” to a WCAG version and level.
Run the year-one test on material you already own: an AI LMS that drafts a course from a policy document shows which authoring features your team would open in week one.
The LMS Features Every Platform Has
Six learning management system components show up on every vendor’s list, because without them the product isn’t an LMS. They don’t separate vendors, so don’t score them. Test them in a trial instead, where the differences inside each one show up.
| Core feature | What it covers | Where platforms still differ |
|---|---|---|
| Course delivery and hosting | Uploading and playing courses, video, PDFs and SCORM packages | Which SCORM editions play and record a score |
| Course management | Organizing, versioning and retiring courses | Whether editing a live course keeps old completion records |
| User and role management | Accounts, groups, admin and manager roles, bulk import | Whether a manager sees their own team without admin rights |
| Assignments and due dates | Enrolling people by rule and setting deadlines | Whether rules fire automatically on department or start date |
| Completion and compliance reporting | Who finished what, when, and who’s overdue | Whether a leaver’s history stays in the report |
| Mobile access | Taking courses on a phone | A phone browser, or an app someone has to install |
Reporting hides the most variation, because each LMS report measures something narrower than its name suggests. If your director is still asking what these six add up to, what an LMS does covers the basics.
Which LMS Features You’ll Use in Year One
One rule sorts the rest of the list. A feature belongs in year one if you can name three things: the course it serves, the people who’ll take it, and the month you’ll first switch it on. If you can’t name all three, it isn’t a year-one feature, however good it looks in the demo.
That rule gives you four piles.
| Pile | The test | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Year one | You can name the course, the people and the month | Weight it in scoring and test it in the trial |
| Later | You can name the course, but not a month in the first 12 | Score it lightly and don’t pay extra for it now |
| Tier question | You need it, but it may not be on the quoted plan | Get the plan named in writing before you score |
| Shelfware | No course, no people, no month | Give it zero weight, whatever it’s called |
Shelfware is software you pay for and never open. It’s a verdict on your plan, not on the feature. A content library is shelfware for a team writing its own policy training, and a year-one feature for a team that plans to buy ready-made courses.
What usually lands in year one for onboarding and compliance
For a team running onboarding and annual compliance, year one means the features that remove chasing. That’s enrollment by department or start date, due dates with reminders, a manager’s view of who’s overdue, and certificates that expire and reassign the course. Add SCORM playback if packages are moving from a previous platform, and a completion history import if the auditor will ask about last year.
Where the shelfware hides
Some of the biggest lines on a feature list serve audiences or programs you may not have yet.
- Content libraries. Docebo’s Content Marketplace offers more than 30,000 courses from OpenSesame and Go1. That’s year one only if buying generic courses is in this year’s plan.
- Selling courses. E-commerce matters when training is a product. Continu lists it on its Professional tier, not its entry tier.
- Portals for customers and partners. These count only if an external audience is in the year-one plan.
- Skills tools. Docebo quotes Skills Intelligence separately, as 365Talents, so it isn’t part of the LMS price anyway.
If your answer to “which customers or partners will we train this year?” is none, the portals are shelfware for you.
AI authoring is year one on two conditions
AI drafting belongs in year one when you have source documents to turn into courses and someone who’ll review every draft before learners see it. Without both, it goes in “later.”
It’s often a tier question too. Continu lists Continu AI on Professional. Tovuti sells WayPoints AI, its AI course authoring, as an add-on with its own fee. SkyPrep’s pricing table puts its AI features, including a question generator and an assessment builder, on its Enterprise Learning Suite.
A listed feature isn’t always a released one. 360Learning’s own pages mark several AI Content Builder features, including suggested activities and audio mode, as coming soon. Ask to use every AI feature in the trial, on a document of your own. Which AI features in an LMS save hours covers what to test once “does it have AI” gets a yes.
Where “Included” Doesn’t Mean “On Your Tier”
A checkbox says a vendor sells a feature. It doesn’t say which plan carries it, how much of it you get, or whether it costs extra. The examples below are as the vendors published them in September 2026.
| Vendor | Feature on the list | Where it sits |
|---|---|---|
| SkyPrep | API and SSO | Premium and above, not the Lite tier |
| Continu | SSO through SAML 2.0 | Growth, the entry tier |
| Continu | Continu AI, multi-language support, e-commerce | Professional |
| Continu | API access, webhooks, an additional sandbox | Enterprise |
| Docebo | Integrations and API | Enterprise includes up to 6 integrations, 2 sandboxes and 100 API calls a minute. Elevate includes up to 4 integrations |
| Docebo | Skills Intelligence | Quoted separately, as 365Talents |
| Tovuti | AI course authoring (WayPoints AI) | An add-on with its own fee |
| 360Learning | Single sign-on | Listed as “Single sign-on (SSO)*”, with an asterisk the pricing page never defines |
Two patterns repeat. SSO, API access and AI features are the lines most often placed above an entry tier. And “included” can come with a number attached: Docebo’s Enterprise tier includes up to six integrations.
The trap is scoring a feature you saw in the demo and then signing for the tier below it. The missing feature comes back as an upgrade quote after the contract is signed. Put a plan name next to every tier question before the scoring meeting, and carry any upgrade into the price comparison. What an LMS costs shows how far the base prices already spread before upgrades.
Counts are marketing, named connectors are the purchase
Integration totals don’t agree even within one vendor’s site. 360Learning’s homepage says “80+ more” integrations while its features page says “50+”. Docebo says “hundreds” of integrations on one page and “400+” on two others. Neither number tells you whether your HR system connects on the plan you’re buying.
Replace the count with two questions. Which named connectors are included on the quoted tier? And which features shown in the demo aren’t in this price? What an LMS integration involves covers the connector side before IT joins the call.
What “SSO,” “SCORM Compliant” and “Accessible” Commit a Vendor To
Three checkboxes sound like standards but don’t name one. Each has a follow-up question that turns the word into something a vendor can be held to.
SSO: ask which protocol
Single sign-on for an LMS runs on a named protocol, and vendors in this category cite one or both of two. SAML 2.0 is an OASIS standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between your identity provider and the LMS. OpenID Connect is an authentication protocol built on OAuth 2.0 that, in the OpenID Foundation’s words, “removes the responsibility of setting, storing, and managing passwords.”
A precise answer looks like Continu’s security page, which names SAML 2.0 and supports sign-in starting from either the LMS login page or the identity provider’s dashboard. Ask every vendor for that much detail, then two more things: has it been set up with your identity provider by name, and which plan includes it?
Provisioning: SSO doesn’t create or remove accounts
SSO decides how people log in. It doesn’t create accounts for new hires or close them for leavers. That job is provisioning, and its standard is SCIM, defined in IETF RFC 7644 as a protocol for creating, changing, finding and deleting user and group records across systems.
Without SCIM or a native connector to your HR system, leaver accounts stay open in the LMS until someone removes them by hand. Meanwhile they clutter reports, and on per-user pricing they can take up seats. Continu publishes SCIM provisioning without saying which tier includes it. That’s the line to get in writing.
SCORM compliant: ask which editions, and which direction
SCORM has two versions in use, SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004, and 2004 went through four editions. “SCORM compliant” without an edition says little.
Moodle’s SCORM FAQ says SCORM 2004 isn’t supported natively. Cornerstone’s Course Asset Connector takes SCORM 2004 in its 3rd edition only. Continu’s pricing page says “SCORM 1.2 and 2004” while its integrations FAQ says “SCORM 1.2 and xAPI.”
The other half is direction. Playing a package you bring isn’t the same as exporting a course you build. 360Learning’s pages describe delivering SCORM, xAPI, cmi5 and AICC courses and say nothing about exporting them.
So ask two questions: which editions the player tracks for completion and score, and whether courses built on the platform export as SCORM. SCORM 1.2 vs 2004 covers when the edition changes the result, and what a SCORM file contains shows where a package states its version.
Accessible: ask which version and which level
Without a version and a level, “accessible” can’t be checked. The word points at the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and WCAG 2.2, the current W3C Recommendation, defines three conformance levels, A, AA and AAA, not one pass mark. Content that conforms to 2.2 also conforms to 2.0 and 2.1, but a 2.1 claim doesn’t cover 2.2.
Tovuti’s compliance page gives the kind of answer to look for: WCAG 2.1 AA, alongside a VPAT for Section 508. Then ask whether the claim covers the learner screens, the admin screens or both.
The platform’s conformance won’t make your courses accessible, either. Captions, alt text and color contrast in the courses you build stay your job.
A Worked Example: Sorting One Vendor’s Feature Sheet
A 400-person company runs new-hire onboarding and an annual compliance refresher, with one L&D manager and one coordinator. IT requires SSO, HR runs BambooHR, and about 30 SCORM 1.2 packages are moving from the current platform. The vendor’s feature sheet has 20 lines, all ticked.
| Feature on the sheet | Pile | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Course upload and hosting | Year one | The 30 packages move in month one |
| Completion history import | Year one | The auditor asks about last year’s refresher |
| Enrollment rules by department and start date | Year one | Every new hire, from the first month |
| Due dates and reminders | Year one | The refresher has a deadline |
| Manager reports | Year one | Managers chase their own overdue people |
| Certificates with expiry | Year one | The refresher is annual |
| Built-in course authoring | Year one | Two policy courses need rewriting before the refresher |
| Mobile browser access | Year one | Staff without desks take the refresher on a phone |
| SSO | Tier question | IT requires it, and the quote doesn’t name the plan |
| HR system sync | Tier question | A native BambooHR connector or SCIM, and on which plan |
| AI course drafting | Tier question | Useful for the two rewrites, if it’s on the quoted plan |
| Learning paths | Later | Worth it once onboarding grows past a few courses |
| Gamification | Later | Useful after the first completion data exists |
| Discussion boards | Later | No course in the first year calls for one |
| Offline mobile app | Later | Browser access covers the first year |
| API access | Shelfware | No developer time in this year’s plan |
| Content library | Shelfware | All training is the company’s own policy |
| Selling courses | Shelfware | Training isn’t a product here |
| Customer and partner portals | Shelfware | No external audience |
| Skills intelligence | Shelfware | No skills program planned |
That’s 8 year-one lines, 3 tier questions, 4 for later and 5 shelfware. Two vendors with 20 ticks each now compare on 11 lines: eight to test in the trial and three to price. The shelfware gets no weight, even if one vendor’s version is better.
If a vendor answers a tier question with “that’s on our top plan”, the line moves into the price comparison and out of the feature score. The completion history import also belongs in the LMS implementation plan, because moving records is a project, not a checkbox.
Compare Vendors on the Lines You’ll Use, Not the Lines They List
Take the next feature sheet a vendor sends and sort every line into year one, later, tier question or shelfware before anyone scores it. Put a plan name next to every tier question. Turn SSO, SCORM and accessibility into a protocol, an edition and a level. Then score only the year-one lines, and carry the tier answers into the price.
For the check to run on each line in a trial, use the LMS requirements checklist. For questions that make a vendor show each year-one feature on screen, use the LMS demo questions. The sort itself fits step three of choosing an LMS.
Mini Course Generator is our product, an AI course creator with an LMS, so here’s how its own sheet sorts, with the plans on the pricing page.
- Custom plan lines: SSO for learners, the REST API and Headless LMS.
- Connections: Zapier, Make, webhooks and AI assistants through its MCP Server, with no native HR system connector and no SCIM.
- Exit: courses export as PDF or SCORM packages at any time.
- Not on the sheet: multi-tenancy, sub-accounts, a reseller tier and branded mobile apps.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main features of an LMS?
Six features, or components, make a platform an LMS: course delivery and hosting, course management, user and role management, assignments with due dates, completion reporting, and mobile access. Every vendor has them, so test them rather than score them. Beyond those six, weight a feature only if you can name the course, the people and the month you’ll first use it.
Which LMS features matter most for compliance training?
Due dates with reminders, certificates that expire and reassign the course, manager reports on overdue people, and completion records that survive course edits and leavers. Test the edit case in the trial, because audits ask which version someone completed.
What does “SCORM compliant” mean on an LMS feature list?
It means the platform plays SCORM packages, but not which kind. Ask which editions it tracks, SCORM 1.2 and which SCORM 2004 editions, and whether courses you build on it export as SCORM.
Is SSO the same as automatic user provisioning?
No. SSO controls how people log in, through SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect. Provisioning creates and removes accounts, through SCIM or a native HR system connector. Each can sit on a different plan, so ask about both.
What’s the difference between LMS features and benefits?
A feature is what the platform does, like sending a reminder before a due date. A benefit is what changes for you, like no longer chasing overdue people by email. Score features in the trial, because a benefit shows up only if the feature gets used.
Sources
- OASIS SAML V2.0 standard
- OpenID Foundation: How OpenID Connect Works
- IETF RFC 7644: System for Cross-domain Identity Management, Protocol
- W3C WCAG 2.2: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2
- SkyPrep pricing page (tier comparison table), September 2026
- Continu pricing page, security page and integrations FAQ, September 2026
- Docebo pricing, integrations and Learn LMS pages, September 2026
- 360Learning pricing page, homepage, LMS features page and AI Content Builder page, September 2026
- Tovuti pricing page and compliance page, September 2026
- Moodle SCORM FAQ
- Cornerstone Course Asset Connector developer documentation
- Mini Course Generator pricing page and FAQ, September 2026
