Gusto LMS and Gusto learning management system alternatives

Yes, but a narrow one. Gusto calls it Gusto Learning, and it lives under People, then Learning, in the admin account. It is a catalog of ready-made compliance courses that you assign, track and renew. Gusto's own LMS page says the built-in LMS "is currently focused on compliance training including anti sexual harassment training, HIPAA, diversity and inclusion, and data and security training."

The courses are not Gusto's. Gusto's Learning Management System Terms describe the service as the ability to order and assign "e-learning courses developed and provided by Gusto's LMS partner, EasyLlama, Inc." So the content is EasyLlama's, the records and billing are Gusto's.

What the admin gets, per the Gusto Learning Help Center article:

• Assign a course to any number of team members with a deadline, then click Purchase
• Email and dashboard To-Do notices for learners, and a "Send reminder to all" action
• Course progress with an Overdue status, plus downloadable certificates, some with expiry dates
• Bulk certificate renewal, which shows "upcoming charges" before you enroll and pay
• English and Spanish versions with captions, for US employees and for US and non-US contractors with a Gusto profile

What it does not cover is the training only your company can write. Neither the LMS page nor the Help Center describes uploading your own course, building a quiz on your own procedures, or playing a SCORM file you already own. Gusto also notes the courses carry no continuing education credit.

Gusto Learning is not a plan feature with a monthly fee. The Help Center is explicit: "All Gusto plans have access to the courses, but each course has its own price," and course fees land on the monthly invoice under a "Gusto Learning" line. Gusto only charges "for participants who start a course," so removing someone before they open it costs nothing.

The per-course price itself is shown inside the account when you review a course, not on Gusto's public pricing page. That page lists the plans you need first:

So the real cost of compliance training on Gusto is the course fee times the people who start it, every time a certificate is renewed. For a single annual harassment course that can be cheap and painless. It gets harder to budget once you add HIPAA, security and D&I courses for different groups, because each one is a separate price and a separate renewal.

For comparison, EasyLlama sells the same catalog directly at $24.95 per course, per learner, per year with a 10-course minimum, or $59.95 per user per year for its whole library. Our EasyLlama vs Traliant pricing breakdown covers both catalogs in detail.

Gusto's LMS page lists six training integrations next to its native app: "EasyLlama, Engagedly, Ethena, Trainual, Traliant, and Travitor." That list comes from the archived September 2025 copy of the page, since gusto.com blocks automated readers; confirm the current list in Gusto's app directory. We read each vendor's own pricing page on 8 October 2026.

Three of the six are compliance catalogs. They add more courses to what Gusto Learning already does, but they do not solve onboarding or role training on your own content. Engagedly and Trainual do build your own material, and both bring a larger commitment: a $7,500 annual floor on Engagedly, and a required implementation fee on Trainual.

This is where Gusto Learning is strongest. Gusto states that completing its assigned harassment course "fulfills any state harassment prevention training requirement in all 50 states," and that discontinued versions of a course still meet current requirements for anyone already assigned. For a small team in California, New York, Illinois or Connecticut, that is the course you need, inside the payroll system you already use.

The gap shows up with training the law says you must tailor. Gusto's Help Center points out that since July 1, 2024 California employers must provide workplace violence prevention training, that "you must customize this training to your company's specific needs," and then says plainly: "We cannot help with the customized course." It refers you to EasyLlama.

A customized course is the kind of thing an LMS with authoring is built for. In CompanyLMS you write the site-specific part of the course (your hazards, your reporting steps, your written plan), add a short quiz, assign it to everyone at that location and keep a dated completion record per employee. Our compliance training software comparison covers how other platforms handle the same requirement.

Gusto already handles the paperwork side of onboarding: offer letters, I-9 and W-4, direct deposit and checklists. What it leaves open is everything a new hire has to learn, and everything you later need to prove they learned: the opening procedure at the store, the lockout steps on line 3, the client intake process, the product training for a new sales rep.

That is the job of a standalone LMS. In CompanyLMS a manager builds a course from a template, video or PDF in minutes, adds a quiz, groups courses into an onboarding path for a role, and assigns it the day the person starts. Completions, scores and certificate expiry sit on one record per employee and export to CSV for an audit or an insurance renewal.

Cost is predictable for a small business. CompanyLMS Team is $4 per active learner a month ($3 billed annually) with a 25-learner minimum, so a 25-person company pays $75 a month on annual billing. Business is $7 ($6 annually) with a 10-learner minimum and adds role-based paths, compliance and certification tracking with reminders, and the skills matrix. People who did not train that month are not billed. Full plans are on the pricing page.

The honest limit: CompanyLMS has no Gusto app listing today. You export the employee list from a Gusto report and import it by CSV, or connect SSO and SCIM on Enterprise, and completions stay in CompanyLMS rather than flowing back into Gusto.

Stay with Gusto Learning if your training is a handful of state-mandated compliance courses and you like paying per course on the payroll invoice. It is the least work of any option here.

Add a compliance catalog such as EasyLlama, Traliant or Ethena if you need more topics than Gusto's catalog covers, or want an annual per-learner rate you can budget instead of a per-course charge. All three publish prices.

Add a standalone LMS if your problem is your own content: onboarding by role, procedures, product knowledge, customized California workplace violence training, or certifications you issue yourself. That is where CompanyLMS fits, at a per-active-learner rate you can read before talking to anyone.

Many Gusto companies end up with both: Gusto Learning for the mandated harassment course, and an LMS for everything specific to the business. If you are also comparing the other payroll suites, our BambooHR LMS alternatives and Rippling LMS alternatives pages cover how their training modules are priced.