Not all popular LMSs can boast of having a smartphone app in their arsenal. That’s why it’s interesting to examine them and compare them to LMSs without one.

LMS SkillzRun has an app in its rates. Learning on your phone is a good solution that everyone involved in education has been talking about for years now. But what they often forget is the need to not just teach online, but also make money from it. Whether LMS SkillzRun is able to satisfy not only corporate L&D specialists, but also founders of online schools who are looking to monetize their expertise – let’s find out in this review.

SkillzRun: overview, features, pros, cons and reviews

What is SkillzRun

SkillzRun – Ukrainian LMS that allows you to create mobile applications for training staff, clients or students. It has solutions for the corporate and educational sector. The website also states that it is suitable for use in languages, general education, IT and design, retail, HoReCa, health and beauty, recruiting and manufacturing. This LMS is designed for online school owners, HR managers, experts, producers, methodologists and authors of government/public projects.

Among the features of the platform the following are stated:

• Mobile app. What the entire positioning of this LMS is based on. Everyone who signs up gets the standard SkillzRun mobile app for iOS and Android for its users. To learn exactly how this works, the user has to dig through a lot of instructions and watch videos on how to customize the platform. Depending on the tariff, the app can be standard looking, or branded, with specific functionality if the need arises. This app is where user training takes place. Of course, there is also a desktop version of the LMS.

• Webversion. It’s the same LMS as the app, but available for use on any device via a browser.

• Flexible architecture. This platform allows you to work with learning materials of different formats and develop courses of different duration, access and content. There is an unlimited number of lessons with functionality that can be turned on or off, tools for assigning users to groups. But the advantages of the claimed flexibility of the architecture are broken by the complex interface.

• Theory. A block that can be filled with learning materials in different formats: videos, links, text files. To check what you have learned and consolidate your knowledge, the application offers about 10 variants of exercises – from tests to homework and exercises with audio, photo and video. Only PDF text files can be added to lessons. At the same time, LMS Softbook supports PDF, RAR, ZIP, TXT, XLS, XLSX, DOC, DOCX file extensions.

• Practice. An option that helps to speed up the learning process. It contains several options: a flashcard for learning words, phrases or terms with a glossary where what has been learned is stored. There are also exercises to consolidate knowledge, which have already been mentioned above.
• Gamification. A way to motivate users to learn more and perform tasks better. Available in three variants: points system, where the user is awarded points for completed tasks; ranking, where the system constantly counts points and generates a leaderboard; missions, where you can choose one of ten missions and set users to compete for a gold, silver or bronze medal while completing tasks.

• Interaction. In this LMS, you can create various events, webinars, meetings, or appointments online, with a Zoom or Google Meet link in the app, and hold scheduled and customized sessions. Notifications can be sent to users about all of this. And they can also be automatically notified of events, as well as news and feedback received from teachers.

• Monetization. Payments for courses and other products can be received directly in the LMS and its application if payment systems are integrated into it. But what these payment systems are and where exactly they can be connected is not clear at all, because even the instructions on the site do not give an answer to it.

• Back office. This is the web-based version of an LMS used by LMS administrators or owners. It is where learning content is created and customized. It also manages user cards, access, tracks learning and achievement statistics, and so on. Any changes a user makes in the backoffice are immediately displayed in the application it is associated with. Its layout is displayed in backoffice while working on courses. But it is not always displayed correctly. And to figure out where to find that application and how to pass it to your users, you need to find and read a large list of instructions, which is posted on the SkillzRun website.
• Customization. The platform can be customized in two levels within the capabilities that the plans provide. The basic level allows you to work in a ready-made SkillzRun application. Advanced – provides the user with his/her own mobile application, which can be designed in the company’s corporate style, as well as supplemented with functions necessary for training users of a particular company.

SkillzRun specializes in solutions for two categories:

• corporate sector
• education sector

A category of users from the corporate sector can use this LMS for onboarding new professionals, training partners, training and testing employees.

Specialists from the educational sector will find in this LMS tools and means for organizing and conducting training, evaluation and analysis of the knowledge gained. 

Advantages SkillzRun

The main advantage is the mobile app as the main training platform, which can be fully populated and customized in the backoffice. An interesting solution that clearly comes from the education sector is flexible architecture. This is the division of courses into levels – an approach that supports the gamification intent. Gamification is also among the advantages of SkillzRun. It has three options and the purpose and tools for the user are clearly described. Also the backoffice of this LMS has an interface available in four languages: English, French, Russian and Ukrainian. The level of customization, namely a separate application with individual functionality for users of expensive tariff also qualitatively distinguishes this LMS.

Disadvantages SkillzRun

To start working in SkillzRun, you have to go through all the instructions and hints, because the chaos in the rubrication, non-obvious naming and placement of sections greatly slow down the process of work. Perhaps that’s why the first thing a client sees when entering the platform is a video called “Backoffice Overview”. So, the main disadvantage of SkillzRun is its complex interface. For example, to create a course, you must first understand the division of the backoffice sections, and then select “Select”, choose the type of training to be created and find the “Create Course” button in that category. Before you do that, you need to remember that the word “subject” here means course. Compared to this, the intuitive interface and unobtrusive prompts available on LMS Softbook seem like a real gift of fate.

It is also completely unclear which payment systems work on the platform and how to integrate them on SkillzRun to receive money from students for courses and other offers. In a special section on LMS Softbook, all available payment systems are gathered in one category and contain the necessary hints and instructions on how to connect to the user’s school. It is so simply embodied that even a child seems to figure it out. 

Other shortcomings of SkillzRun include mixed user profile and access settings, student enrollment specifications, backoffice layout that is a bit “off”, errors in service field names, and russisms.

SkillzRun cost of use

LMS SkillzRun is available at three tariffs:

• Free
• Standard
• Personal

Rate «Free» includes 60 days of free access, mobile app, all features of Standard tariff, full functionality, support chat, one subject, access for three users.

Rate «Standard» contains a mobile app, unlimited subjects, topics and lessons, and package rates:

• up to 100 students – $40/month
• up to 500 students – $149/month
• unlimited – $199/month

Rate «Personal» costs from $300/month and includes your own mobile app in Google Play and App Store, personalized design, custom functionality development and a named domain in the web version.

Such tariffing is somewhat losing against the background of Softbook LMS. In it, none of the tariffs has restrictions on the number of students, courses and lessons, two of the three tariffs contain integration of payment services and email distribution services, and the cost of tariffs is half as low and has an annual economy version. 

SkillzRun Reviews

The SkillzRun website has positive reviews from «Diya. Business», several founders and representatives of various companies with descriptions of their cases. A search outside this site showed that there are practically no reviews of this LMS on the web. 

This brief review on the Ukrainian LMS SkillzRun leads to the conclusion that its main target audience, as stated on the website, is the corporate and educational sector. That is, the platform can be useful for companies that are looking for a tool to develop their staff or to expand teaching capabilities and have separate specialists for this work. For the owners of online schools SkillzRun, who are looking for a platform to focus all their work on it and turn it into a company center for selling and conducting courses it is too complex, has not quite clear interface. On the LMS SkillzRun you will have to spend time wandering through the sections and pages of the platform, familiarizing yourself with the functionality and reading a large number of instructions to learn how to work in it.