Trainual Reviews

Pros

There are many things that I like the most about this software that have to do with features, but I think the features would not be useful if the platform wasn't designed with a foundation of a solid understanding of how small businesses function and scale. So, to start with, I love the philosophy and approach of Trainual as a company and the team as humans. Trickling down from there, the platform is designed that way - it is clear it is flexibly designed, but kept intuitive, and thoughtfully updated with feature requests that have the greatest impact across their users. The organization of the content makes it easy to jump right in to get something created along with the template gallery helping to streamline it all.

Cons

I have two suggestions that are specific to how we use the platform, and I have submitted these are requests so I know they are in the hopper: 1) make the directory accessible through the mobile app. Often times when we hire new people, that is what we want them to be able to access and they are doing everything from their phones before they are in our workplace. 2) update the time stamping to track each time a subject/topic/step is completed for each employee. More Specifically, when you have to provide documentation to the department of labor for unemployment claims they may request evidence of the days/times that you asked someone to complete and then review a policy. In trainual, only the reviewed date is saved so you lose the evidence of the initial completion date. We have been in this pickle twice, and I would like to not to have to track all completions and reassignments outside of Trainual for compliance reasons.

Pros

Onboarding Time is saved and efficiency is increased as our staff receives continuous training and development thanks to our efforts. Simple interface! The addition of Loom is fantastic. Loom also offers excellent onboarding training materials.

Cons

One potential drawback is that training doesn't make extensive use of gaming techniques, which appear to be crucial in retaining today's workforce.

Pros

This has helped with putting all our policies and porcedures in one place.

Cons

I cant really think of any cons, except we had a lot of work to do to get all the information loaded in Trainual.

Pros

This software is a great idea and has several successful functions. It allows businesses to save time by having a program that is able to store several videos and passages that explain how to complete certain tasks or use different applications. It allows businesses to update information as new things arise or update, which is extremely effective for a business as times change frequently.

Cons

Formatting is difficult to use. For example, users are not able to edit their own typefaces or sizes of text, which is necessary when trying to organize things effectively. Also, when copy and pasting text, the format totally changes and does not resemble what was copied. This adds several minutes onto accomplishing a task, as you have to go back in and change the formatting several times in order to get it to look the way that you want.

Functions are difficult to use. For example, we have been using the embedding feature through Vimeo. This took several hours to try to get all of the videos embedded because the page kept crashing and would not load the videos. The videos were about 30 seconds to 2 minutes long, so not long at all. I had to log out and in several times to get some of the videos to load properly. This took several hours of time which was extremely frustrating and inconvenient. This is an essential feature for our business as we are teaching employees how to complete different tasks or use certain applications.

The customer service chat function is difficult to use. I appreciative the quick response from agents I have spoken to from Trainual, but it is often times difficult to type out issues in a chat. I think it would be much more effective to have a Customer Service number in which users can call and be able to talk and explain their issues.

Alternatives Considered

Lessonly, Waybook and Totango

Reasons for Switching to Trainual

Trainual seemed to have better formatting and functions at the time than other competitions we had looked into. It also seemed to be efficient and effective for sharing and teaching others how to use it's functions.

Pros

I cannot recommend Trainual enough. As a company, we started using Trainual when we were around 50 employees. Two years later, the size has doubled. Having our processes documented neatly in one place has been invaluable and has made the process of onboarding and training new hires seamless. In addition to using it for new hires, it's a useful tool for seasoned employees to refer to when a question regarding a process arises. (The search bar is great!) Trainual holds the online copy of our Employee Handbook, meeting notes for different departments, SOPs, and much more. We appreciate the public share feature, which allows you to share a subject via a link with those who do not have a Trainual account.

Cons

A feature that was requested by one of our team members is an audio version of Trainual for those who are dyslexic.

Pros

I like the ability to segment training modules/lessons and dictate the order at which the user goes through them.

Cons

I would like the user permissions to be a little more flexible. I have some team leads that need to be able to monitor new users as they go through the training, but I do not want to give them access to edit content.I would also like a better way to add an mp4. Maybe I'm just not doing it the right way, but currently, I am putting in text like "Training Video 1" and attaching a URL to the video. It would be nice to imbed the mp4 just like a YouTube video.

Pros

Trainual has been incredible for documenting all things you think you will just remember. And better yet keep it organized for those who come after us within a company

Cons

The one thing I will say - for a small company, starting can be tricky. Trainual has been designed for companies of all sizes and there were some kinks to work out for a company as small as ours.

Alternatives Considered

Workplace from Meta and Google Docs

Reasons for Choosing Trainual

Trainual had all elements that were missing from other platforms.

Reasons for Switching to Trainual

Trainual was easy to use and had lots of help and resources

Pros

It's very easy to use and is very thorough! We can send it out prior to onboarding so that new hires can start training from the moment they sign their offer letter.

Cons

I don't really have anything I don't like about Trainual.

Pros

This is exactly what we have been looking for. It houses all of our SOP's in one place and allows management to track who has completed it.

Cons

The ongoing cost is not ideal but we find it is worth the expense.

Pros

The content features allowed us to successfully deploy a mobile onboarding experience.

Cons

Some of the features we have not used yet and I am not sure if we will need them.

Pros

We have high turnover and being able to make initial training part of the hiring process have helped us weed out applicants who are not serious. It also provides a great way to get people to complete training before being eligible for raises and promotions. I like how I can track the progress of my team, and quiz them to ensure comprehension, as well as the different media I can implement to help drive home certain points.

Cons

The pricing model that does not include all of the features unless you pay the premium right off the bat. It takes a long time to get all of the systems into Trainual, and I am not able to release it right away to my team so I didnt want to pay the premium if they were not going to be able to access the features right away. I will probably upgrade to the premium later on and revamp my lessons, but I am a bit conflicted about having my team go through re-training at that point just to see some flashy new features that I would have liked to implement at the beginning.

Alternatives Considered

Teachable and Google Drive

Reasons for Choosing Trainual

Because of the ability to track and quiz applicants and team members and make a more user friendly portal for them.

Switched From

Google Drive

Reasons for Switching to Trainual

It seemed to be the best fit for our company and it was recommended by moving companies in another market that use it.

Pros

I love the responsiveness of the support team and the structures they have in place for deploying the platform. It's a clean, well-though-out platform with a good balance of structure and flexibility to meet most organizations' needs.

Cons

There are a lot of features still in development, and a lot of pieces changing. Dark mode was released, but doesn't work yet with the brand styles. There is a "Team" tag separate from the "role" and "title" fields, but it doesn't have any functionality yet. Sometimes the colors are off, or the whole page shows as code instead. It's nothing a refresh can't fix, but there's definitely a feeling of making sacrifices for the sake of being part of a vision.

Alternatives Considered

Process Street

Pros

Trainual is an excellent tool for training and learning industry best practices because it ensures that all employees have received all relevant instructions, handouts, and training programs designed for their roles. I'm grateful for all the ways I can create the system to speed up the integration process with the rest of the team and get new employees up to speed faster. The tools are great because management can evaluate employee performance completely verbally. The ability of senior management to manage the organizational structure, as well as to organize the relationships between the different departments and to establish functional partnerships between them, is a precious asset provided by Trainual.

Cons

Trainual is adaptable to the needs of any organization, has a user-friendly interface, is generally easy to use, is pleasant for employees, and offers enough customization options to ensure that all relevant information reaches employees promptly.

Pros

Most useful is the simplicity and ability in sending specific trainings to specific members. If someone is struggling in one area we simply reset their training and go back over it with them. We are looking forward to teams so we can begin doing this by group as well!

Cons

Really need to be able to categorize members into multilayered teams for ease and precision in what is being sent to train on.

Pros

The support behind it is superb - [sensitive content hidden] is an email away and answers questions and provides back-office support whenever requested.

Cons

The product is very much tailored for small businesses, so it can be challenging to scale its use across organizations with multiple operators (such as franchisees).

Pros

My favorite part of Trainual is how easy the interface is to use. I think that it is very easy to navigate the home page and figure out where everything is. The quiz interface is also very easy to use. It is also great that there can be videos added to the training sections.

Cons

There really is not too much that I dislike about Trainual as a whole. I guess in my case I wish that I did not have to ask for access to different subjects that are not private in nature. However, that is probably just something that we have set up internally and can certainly be adjusted.

Pros

Honestly, I like how modern it looks the most. Previously, our company used Zoho and it had a lot of features, but it didn't look smooth. When you're trying to learn something new, you need as few distractions as possible. With Trainual's polished look, you're able to focus. On the administrator side, you can create everything you need without any training. Just take a moment to plan out your training, and you'll be alright.

Cons

The only gripe I have is the assessments. Zoho had a lot of options for the question types, and in Trainual I was hoping for the same. I adapted many of the questions that I migrated over, so it's okay, but having different question types helps break up the monotony. We have to ask a lot of questions in certain training modules, so this really helped, but this technical limitation hasn't actually held us back in practice. We continue to love Trainual.

Pros

I can create one training video with screen narration and push it out to my different teams rather than having to train each person individually.

Cons

It's definitely hard to get started making content. But that is more on the user than the service. Make sure you set aside time to work on this!

Pros

It is not hard to learn how to use, it is fun to create training programs. There are many things you can do with this software.

Cons

Some of the embedding features are hard to understand and can be complicated if you are not tech friendly. It can be slightly hard to grasp how the courses can be set up, Such as understanding subject, topic, steps and how they work together.

Pros

Passing knowledge onto our customers is of the utmost importance to us, thus our team members need to be provided with quick access while they're working live to access these situations with quality solutions. Having Trainual open and accessible during the work day is key to achieving that!

Cons

I honestly cannot say a bad thing about Trainual. My only point of improvement would be to allow for a directory that does not need to be accessed teamwide for its creation.

Pros

As a remote company, Trainual provides a one-stop platform for all training material. I like that I can add written materials, videos, and images/documents to create a cohesive and user-friendly training resource. Using Trainual allows our company to keep training consistent and gets our new hires trained much more quickly. Instead of pulling a team member for one-on-one training for the basics, we can get them started on Trainual, then transition to on-the-job training much more effectively.

Cons

There are certain features that would make assigning tasks more efficient but with the proactive updates, I expect Trainual will come up with a solution soon enough. I would like to see where I can create profiles with the subjects needed for each role, then assign users to the role instead of assign each individual subject.

Pros

its great for documenting SOP's so that new staff have a step by step process on how to complete a task. No more micromanaging each new recruit, this will save you thousands of dollars in wages. Trainees are a liability and not productive until they're trained up correctly. Trainual will get them there much faster.

Cons

Sometimes completing our core values test can glitch. New employees can lose everything they've written and have to start again.

Pros

I love how easy it is to use. They come out continuously with updates that help the ease of use, I think. I like the option of incorporating tests/quizzes. It's easy to add in different media formats as well.

Cons

Trainual has great bones and structure. They are constantly evolving and implementing improvements which I appreciate, however, I do wish for a more complex or more functions in the testing/quizzes and a way to organize topics into Categories or Folders (which I know is something they are working on).

Pros

Trainual is easy to use. Once a subject is published, searching and learning from that subject is quick and efficient.

Cons

Trying to assign subjects sometimes gets confusing. But once you learn, it’s simple.

Pros

I like the search function to find tasks. I also like the presentation or layout and structure of templates/design.

Cons

I struggle with finding the best place to search for what I am looking for whether it is a process or training. This may be due to us still in stages of fleshing out the content