Relias: Limitations and Top Competitors

Relias is an online training platform that offers a wide range of educational solutions for the healthcare industry. The Relias platform provides courses for various sectors, including talent acquisition advertising, validated assessment, professional development, and behavioral health. Understanding the pros and cons of your options when looking for the best learning management software to use is key to ensure your staff and organization are well-trained and compliant with regulations.

In this article, we’ll analyze the leading Relias alternatives and competitors to Relias’ learning management software (LMS) by leveraging data sourced from G2.com, a peer-to-peer review platform renowned for its comprehensive evaluations of business software and services, along with insights from Capterra reviews and details extracted from company websites. Our comparative analysis of Relias and its top counterparts, will highlight differences in features and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses inherent in each solution.

What is Relias?

Relias is a leading provider of workforce education and enablement solutions, empowering healthcare organizations and their staff with integrated tools and best-in-class learning content.

According to Relias, their main solutions include:

• Award-winning content: Extensive course library with over 9,000 total courses built by experts.
• Strong Community: Relias’ communities connect providers, allied health professionals, and learning administrators, reinforcing the value of learning for all healthcare workers.
• End-to-end support: The Relias support team provides end-to-end support to customize, implement, and integrate their solutions into existing platforms and systems.
• In-house experts: Provides education, guidance, and industry insights.
• Technology: The Relias platform includes content delivery tools and integration capabilities.

Relias Pricing

The company does not list pricing on its site. According to SaaSworthy, Relias does not offer a free trial and premium plan quotes are available by request only.

Relias Limitations

There are limitations to Relias’ capabilities, as noted by G2 and Capterra reviewers:

1. Hidden Contract Terms: They substitute in deceptive long-term auto-renewal of expensive contracts for a functional product or customer service.
2. Outdated reporting: We use Relias pretty heavily in our company and the administrator side is miserable. The reports are old and hard to use. The user list is frustrating. Looking at a user’s training plan is next to impossible.
3. Lack of engaging courses: Sometimes courses are too lengthy and not written for simplicity of learning. Courses are often dull and learners don’t enjoy them.
4. Difficult to navigate the platform: Extremely difficult to navigate. Searching courses & seeing what staff is enrolled in courses is difficult.
5. Limited technical support: Escalated requests that require a ticket take a LONG time to be followed up on, and sometimes have been dropped without prompting.

4 Best Relias Alternatives

Using information publicly available on G2 and Capterra, these are the top learning software alternatives to Relias. The details below include quotes, plus the pros and cons of each solution.

1. MedTrainer Learning

MedTrainer is one of the best healthcare learning software alternatives to Relias and is used by thousands of organizations. Reviewers give both Relias and MedTrainer courses very high ratings. Here are some of the MedTrainer features G2 reviewers call out:

Unlimited Access to 1,000 Healthcare Courses

MedTrainer offers full access to their entire library of nearly 1,000 healthcare-specific courses, including nationally-recognized continuing education courses. Unlike Relias, where customers have voiced concerns over the long-term costs of extra courses, MedTrainer offers a solution. With MedTrainer, implementation begins as quickly as 2 business days and there are no extra fees to access the course library. The quick turnaround time to get you up and running makes it accessible without stretching your budget. With continuing education credits included in the library, there is a huge savings for your organization (or its licensed clinicians). MedTrainer’s streamlined pricing structure offers immediate access to fulfill CE licensure, accreditation, and regulatory compliance requirements. Unlike Relias, where purchasing course bundles is often necessary for specific staff training on regulations, MedTrainer provides automatic access to these courses, eliminating the need for additional purchases. Customers transitioning from Relias to MedTrainer save approximately 30% annually on average, as Relias’ additional courses are reported to be costly.

Tailored Training for Your Organization

MedTrainer’s course authoring tool allows users to swiftly create tailored training materials, quizzes, and multimedia content to meet their organization’s needs. An unlimited amount of existing training materials can be easily integrated into the user-friendly platform using various methods, including direct SCORM file upload or by requesting a course conversion through a Customer Success Manager. Whether you create or upload courses, all MedTrainer Learning features are available, including automated reminder emails, course completion tracking, and customizable reports.With MedTrainer’s simplified pricing, you have unlimited freedom to use these customizable features, leaving you stress free as you don’t have to worry about additional costs.

Cohesive Integration

MedTrainer combines learning, compliance, and credentialing seamlessly, providing your organization with the necessary infrastructure to scale your business and fulfill multiple compliance requirements. The all-in-one platform also offers integrations with HRIS systems such as UKG, ADP, Paylocity, and Workday so new employees are automatically added to MedTrainer. You can even automate the assignment of required courses to eliminate the tedious tasks associated with new hire onboarding.

Engaging Healthcare Courses

MedTrainer focuses on best-in-class training and education catered only to  healthcare users. Whilst Relias has 9,000+ courses, they are not all healthcare specific and you can find yourself tied to a contract that isn’t tailored to your needs. MedTrainer is built for the healthcare industry with courses designed to be quickly updated to meet changing regulatory and accreditation requirements. MedTrainer courses are created by subject matter experts and maintained by a team who stays up-to-date with regulatory changes, ensuring quick action following policy updates. MedTrainer also offers short refresher courses to keep your staff engaged and compliant with training material.

2. Healthstream

Healthstream was founded in 1990, and is an established company in the healthcare LMS industry. Like MedTrainer, Healthstream reviewers call out the company’s easy-to-use platform and great customer support. Customers also note that just like MedTrainer, Healthstream’s LMS reporting has insights on the completion rate of courses and scoring systems to view student engagement. According to Capterra’s feature evaluation, Healthstream is unique in the sense that it has asynchronous learning and gamification software. However, G2 Healthstream reviewers say the courses are very expensive and that the platform is not user-friendly for administrators. They also mention that pulling reports accurately can be complex, especially when employees are taking multiple courses or require annual recertifications.

3. CareAcademy

CareAcademy says its mobile-first platform makes it easier for caregivers to finish lessons and build skills to stay compliant with less oversight and effort. Capterra reviewers say the reporting on the platform is difficult. They note that users have to export the entire list of people who took classes, then delete and sort to get the information they need. The CareAcademy support team is always ready to help, but the software is clearly meant for a very small niche of caregivers. Reviewers note that the platform has glitches that result in users having to complete a course more than once and that the coursework is very heavy with limited quizzes to test their knowledge.

4. Cornerstone

Cornerstone says it is an LMS software that enables organizations to deliver, manage, and track global training to employees, partners, and customers. The platform is not healthcare specific but rather generalizes its courses to cater to different working sectors. According to G2 reviews, Cornerstone’s customer support functions very poorly and the platform has not moved at the pace of other LMS providers. Reviews highlight the extreme difficulty in using Cornerstone’s interface as an admin and the constant confusion experienced trying to learn the system with little to no help available.

MedTrainer – Your Top Healthcare LMS Alternative

The competitors above all offer learning services and functions to a point. MedTrainer is an all-inclusive learning platform that offers a complete solution and is the best alternative to Relias.

MedTrainer Learning is an enterprise cloud-based software with the largest proprietary course library of healthcare content curated specifically to meet the requirements of regulatory and accreditation organizations. With nearly 1,000 courses, the MedTrainer Course Library offers easy management of required training from one simplified system that includes over 300 CEs, regulatory compliance, healthcare industry specific, and Spanish language courses.

To learn more or see MedTrainer in action, request a demo or find out more about MedTrainer’s all-in-one compliance platform.