#LearningManagementSystems (LMSs) are painful – painful to purchase, to manage, and to gain experience with.

Now, I am not specifically talking about USING an LMS as a participant, I am talking about the strategic side, the side where you need to purchase, install, and manage the content and the users.

I recently had to acquire an LMS for a client with a very specific need. No LMS fit the bill. My client has one learning product that they expect 5,000 unique, one-time-users to access, who are not part of their organization. The content includes video and is in a SCORM package.

The least expensive route with the least amount of restrictions, was around $950 per year, has file size limits, charges extra for SCORM, and required me to rebuild the entire learning in order to host it (it was built in Storyline). The most expensive were the most common – tens of thousands of dollars based on monthly user count and you get to pay more for more things that I would consider basic usage.

The biggest thing I hated was the refusal to publish pricing. I don’t want to talk to a sales person, I just want to research. If you can’t fit my budget, I am not going to waste my time.

And then I think about all the #InstructionalDesigners that claim to be #LearningStrategists that have not experienced managing an LMS or even know how to source an LMS. How can you claim to be a strategist if you can’t discuss deployment? Worse – how does an #InstructionalDesigner or an #eLearningDeveloper gain the experience of working with an LMS if it is dependent on an organization purchasing super expensive software?

This is where my breadth of experience in multiple industries comes in handy – I decided to solve the problem myself. And by solve, I am talking about finding an inexpensive LMS, one flexible for any client, AND make it available for anyone who wants to learn the basics of LMS-ing. Also, make it inexpensive enough for anyone to afford it.

It isn’t the total solution that solves a fortune 500 company’s problems, but it is a step in the direction that I believe a lot of people in the #LearnignAndDevelopment industry need. I purchased a Virtual Private Server and I am hosting #Moodle installations.

I’ll let you do the research on Moodle. I am offering to give people the opportunity to learn about LMSs and providing people with outside-the-box needs with another option. And it is stupid cheap because I just want to pay for the server. VPSs are expensive.

I will host and setup your Moodle instance (they are a bit complicated to setup if you don’t have web tech experience), you do the rest. The only size limit is the amount of disk space you purchase, per year – $100 per GB, per year and a one-time setup fee (it takes about 2 hours to setup and test everything).

#TrainingDevelopment is expensive enough, with having to purchase software, equipment, etc. Hopefully this reduces some of the pain.

Here’s the link: Miravoy.com