Comparison

Gamfi and an LMS

An LMS handles one process: delivering knowledge and documenting it. It does that well and stops there – and an organisation does not hold its HR team to account for courses completed, but for how many people stayed and how quickly they started working on their own. This page is about that difference.

See a demo How to justify it when an LMS is already there

We compare a category of system, not the product of a particular supplier – which is why no name appears here. The order of the sections follows the order of the work: content first, then the people who use it, and at the end what happens once a course is finished. The crosses in our column are a deliberate choice of scope, not a gap to close. As at 3 August 2026.

What we compare	An LMS	Gamfi
1. Content and training
The learning format for an employee	partly.A catalogue of courses to click through	yes.A game-like path with things unlocking one after another
Who decides what an employee learns	partly.An administrator assigns the courses	yes.You assign the mandatory ones, the rest is theirs to pick from the catalogue
Competition on knowledge between people	no.Does not run competition on knowledge	yes.One-on-one duels and a Hall of Fame
What an employee sees on entering the system	partly.A search box and a list of courses	yes.Recommended and recently watched material
Writing training content and quiz questions with AI	partly.Depends on the supplier	yes.AI writes the training content and the questions with you
Uploading your own courses as SCORM	yes.You can upload SCORM packages	yes.You can upload SCORM packages
A library of ready-made courses in the platform price	yes.Thousands of courses in the subscription	no.You buy courses separately from a content supplier
Selling training to buyers outside the organisation	yes.Runs a course shop and payments	no.We do not sell courses externally
Learning with no internet, from material downloaded to a phone	partly.Some suppliers let you download a course	no.We work in the cloud, with no offline mode
Booking rooms and trainer schedules	yes.Runs the room, the trainer and the schedule	no.We do not handle classroom training logistics
Data for an audit or an inspection	partly.The report has to be prepared on request	yes.It builds up on its own, ready on the spot
Certificates and keeping track of recertification dates	yes.Tracks the dates and orders the training again	yes.Tracks recertification and invites people to the next course
2. Who can use the system
Access for someone with no company email and no computer	partly.Usually needs a company account and mailbox	yes.Works through the app, SMS and a personal email address
Accounts opened and closed from the HR system	yes.Opens and closes accounts from the HR system	yes.Opens and closes accounts from the HR system
Covering a partner and franchise network	no.Covers only the organisation's own employees	yes.Covers partners and franchisees too
3. What happens once a course is finished
Bringing the knowledge back in the months that follow	partly.Reminders have to be set up separately	yes.Comes back to the topic with a quiz all season
Tying knowledge to an individual's target	partly.Some suppliers have a targets module	yes.Shows the target and learning progress on one screen
Tying training to a competency framework	yes.Links courses to a competency framework	yes.Links competencies to the role and the gap to close
Review, competencies and learning in one view	partly.Usually separate talent modules	yes.One view for the employee and their manager
Reviews and conversations about an employee's results	partly.The review is sometimes a separate form once a year	yes.Bases the review on the target and the result over the whole period
Onboarding a new joiner as a whole process	partly.Runs the training for a new joiner	yes.Runs the manager and HR tasks and the documents as well
The picture of a new joiner after three months	partly.Shows which courses they finished	yes.Shows turnover and time to working independently
Dashboards for the board and a regional director	partly.Reports on training	yes.Reports the result of the work per region and branch
Sales motivation in the same system	no.Does not cover sales targets and bonuses	yes.Runs contests and bonuses on the same data

does it · partly or depends on the supplier · does not do it

What learning looks like in Gamfi

The market calls this category LXP, a learning experience platform, as opposed to an LMS, which is a system for delivering it. This is the part no table shows, and the part that decides whether people come back. Everything below works today; it is not a plan for next year.

The path as a game

A map that shows the next step

Instead of a list of courses an employee gets a map: the next stops unlock once the previous ones are finished, and along the way stand courses, missions, duels, events and materials. The person running the programme builds that map themselves, story layer and all – AI can generate the map background.

Duels

Two people answer the same questions

Two people get the same set of questions from a chosen category and play for points. Whoever wins the most goes into the Hall of Fame. The second kind of duel runs not on knowledge but on the sales result from your system.

Missions

A mission ends when the job is done at work

A mission leads through specific steps at work and closes once they have been carried out. An employee can start it themselves, when they are ready.

Points and rankings

Points grow for learning and for days in a row

Experience points come in for material completed, tests passed and runs of consecutive days with some learning. Separate rankings for employees and for managers, by month, quarter and year.

The Academy

A Netflix-style interface, and a catalogue to choose from inside it

An employee comes in and sees recommended material, recently watched items, their own bookmarks, events and paths – instead of a search box and a list of titles. You assign the mandatory training, and beyond that everyone puts their own path together: they browse the catalogue, pick what interests them and start when they want to. Both in the same place, so mandatory learning does not push out the learning people choose.

AI on the author side

The author does not start from a blank page

Training content, quiz questions and whole question banks are written with the help of AI – as are the graphics and the path backgrounds. An assistant in the admin panel walks the administrator through the configuration, so preparing a programme does not take a week with an authoring tool.

Competencies and review

One path from a competency gap to the conversation about results

The competency matrix shows what is missing in a given role, learning closes that gap, and the conversation about results rests on the target and the progress over the whole period. The employee and their manager look at this in one view, so nobody lines up three systems before the annual review.

Live training

Live training stays on as a recording

Events with registration and attendance, a live stream, a recording available afterwards and materials pinned to the event. Anyone who could not make it catches up without asking anybody for a file.

What an LMS does well – and where it stops

We are not building an LMS and we are not claiming it is bad. What we are claiming is that each of its four strengths ends in the same place: at delivering the content.

A library of ready-made courses

Thousands of courses available from day one.Where it stops: a catalogue is measured by the number of courses, not by the number of people who used them. You pay for a thousand and open twenty.

Producing and versioning content

An authoring tool, an approval flow, a course in several languages.Where it stops: a well-made course is still a course. Whether it changed the work in a shop, an LMS will say nothing about, because it does not have that data.

Documentation prepared for an inspection

Expiry dates, repeat training, a report for the inspection.Where it stops: this is an area where the goal is to prove the training took place. Justified – but you cannot turn it into an argument for the board.

Classroom training

Rooms, trainers, groups, schedules.Where it stops: a name on the attendance list is not a competency. Once people leave the room, the trail ends at a signature.

Why an LMS on its own is no longer enough

The LMS category came about when the job was to make knowledge available and prove that somebody had taken it in. The market named the change that came next the move from LMS to LXP – from a system that delivers training to a platform that walks a person through learning and ties it to their work.

A completed course is not a change at work
A report from an LMS says how many came in and how many passed the test. Whether anybody works differently than before the training is shown by data about the work – and that is not in it.
Deliberately without a figure. The statistic that goes round, that 'only 10–15% of what is learned in training transfers to the job', has academic criticism aimed directly at it and is repeated without the original study.
An LMS handles one stretch of the employee journey
Onboarding means tasks for the new joiner, their manager and HR, documents and the first results. An LMS takes the training out of that and leaves the rest in four other places.
Half the workforce has no company mailbox
A system a shop worker cannot get into from their own phone will change nothing – however good the content is. An LMS serves the part of the organisation that hears everything first anyway.

Arguments for the board

How to justify buying Gamfi when the organisation already has an LMS

The board asksWhy do we need another training tool?: You answerThis is not a 'training' line item. We move turnover in the first months and time to working independently – your finance team already knows what one new joiner leaving costs.
The board asksDoes rolling out the platform have to cover the whole organisation?: You answerA pilot in one region. One area, one number, one quarter – and a control region alongside it for comparison.
The board asksDoes that mean we will be keeping a second employee database?: You answerOne employee record, not two. We pull people from the HR system, and accounts are wound down when someone leaves.
The board asksWhat do we do with the LMS we already have?: You answerIt stays where it works. The course library and the compliance records stay with it, and we write the split down before the start.

The answers for your security and IT teams – sign-in through company accounts, permissions, data held in the European Union – are on the Security and trust page, ready to pass on.

When Gamfi is not the right fit

You only need a catalogue and a record of completions
We would add a layer you will not use.
You want to sell training to buyers outside the organisation
That is a different business model from ours.
Your training rests on the classroom or on producing content yourselves
That is a different category of tool from ours.

The questions we hear most often about Gamfi alongside an LMS

We have an LMS. Is Gamfi meant to replace it?

It does not have to. At some of our customers the LMS stays with the course library and the compliance records, and we take what happens after the course: onboarding as a process, bringing knowledge back in the rhythm of work, tying it to a target and a result. The employee record then sits in one system and we pull people from it, so that you are not keeping two databases. If, on the other hand, your LMS mainly serves to account for completions, it is worth working out what is left once you switch it off.

How do we check what your SCORM support is worth?

Ask for an import of your own package at the demo and for a look at what comes back in the report: the pass alone, the score, time in the course, answers to questions, resuming where it was left off. Write the answers into the contract together with acceptance on that package. It is worth checking every supplier this way, not only us.

Will you run our health and safety training and the other mandatory courses?

Yes, and this is a strong side of ours. You run the material, the test and the certificate with us, the platform tracks recertification dates and invites people to the next version of the course by itself, and every event is recorded in a log that cannot be changed after the fact. So you have the documentation for an inspection ready on the spot, without collecting it from across systems. A qualified electronic signature on a document and a whistleblowing channel we deliver as part of the rollout, once the legal model is confirmed.

Who creates the training content?

You do, or we do to order – that is a separate service at a separate price. You will not buy a catalogue of ready-made courses from us.

See in one region how much of the onboarding is still there in the work after three months

See a demo