External reviews are not included in the AWS star rating for the product.
Our organization has multiple divisions. We started with the iQ Retail division, which develops Retail ERP software solutions. Each division within our organization offers different software solutions. We train people on how to use our software through CYPHER Learning, which is available internally and externally.
CYPHER Learning is a SaaS solution.
We used to offer classroom-based courses only, but we found that travel costs and time restraints were becoming too much for our students. We were looking for a more affordable / accessible way to reach more students, and CYPHER Learning helped us do that.
CYPHER Learning's features effectively boosted our efficiency. We are now able to offer a wider range of services at a competitive cost. Being a Global company with 13 branches, being able to reach global initiatives, is a great advantage.
The timing for rolling out CYPHER Learning was very beneficial, as we relaunched one of our divisions with a new type of learning just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This allowed our instructors to train and teach remotely.
As a corporate university, we use CYPHER Learning to provide internal training for our employees and external training for our clients / partners. This hybrid training model is vital to our ever evolving organization.
The hybrid training platform helps us attract top talent by showcasing our capabilities and providing support and knowledge to our clients in an interactive and engaging experience.
The solution can be used to assist in pre-certifying resellers online before they enter the market.
CYPHER Learning helped us expand our training efforts. Before CYPHER Learning, we only offered classroom training, which required learners to travel to one of our training facilities. We can now offer online training, which eliminates the need for travel. This has substantially decreased the cost of training, making it more accessible to more learners.
CYPHER Learning saved us around 30 percent of our administrative work through the app that easily adapts to different markets.
CYPHER Learning is a user-friendly platform that makes it easy for me to manage my instructors and track my learners. My instructors can provide feedback to learners on the same day. We work with a variety of clients, and we can provide them with an analysis of how their learners are performing. As an administrator, I have an overview of what our clients think of our platform.
The reporting has room for improvement. I would like more reporting options.
Screen sorting can be improved by providing more filtering options.
I have been using CYPHER Learning for almost seven years.
CYPHER Learning is stable and we are notified well in advance of any planned downtime for upgrades or maintenance.
CYPHER Learning is scalable. We current have about 550 people signed up to use the solution.
The technical support is good and responds to our issues within two hours.
Positive
The setup is straightforward. The deployment took around two weeks and required me and two others to complete.
The implementation was completed in-house.
We have seen a return on investment through administrative time-saving and global reach.
CYPHER Learning's price is slightly higher than other solutions.
I give CYPHER Learning an eight out of ten.
We have multiple organizations. Our iQ Retail division uses CYPHER Learning extensively. A few other divisions use the solution on a much smaller scale. In total, five or six divisions use the solution.
For someone looking to grow in a growing environment, CYPHER Learning is worth checking out. CYPHER Learning provides the flexibility to grow with us, whether we have multiple platforms or need to migrate to a new system.
CYPHER Learning offers a variety of learning approaches.
For the most part, the customer support is very responsive. There were a few occasions when we weren’t getting the answers that we needed so we contacted our company rep, and he jumped right in, so the process got moving very quickly all of a sudden. Mostly, we have been able to find what we need in the knowledge base, and when we can't, we usually get a pretty good response from customer support.
The main benefit of using the solution is that we can reach a worldwide audience we couldn't before. In the past, we relied on in-person events, but with CYPHER Learning, we have people worldwide using our platform. We can reach a wider audience and constituent base than before by many multiples.
For example, we will be working with an East African organization that works with businesses across the same region, and they'll be using our platform as they are English-speaking. Previously, we could never even consider reaching such an audience. The National University of Singapore also uses our courses to teach their MBA students; the solution opened a new world for us to reach potential users. We're a non-profit organization, so we're not out to make money,
we're out to make a difference, and the platform helps us to do that.
With CYPHER Learning, we can make a tremendous difference primarily through the combination of compelling courses and a good platform. Of course, the courses need to be good, or the platform wouldn't necessarily matter.
Another benefit of using the solution is the ability to add dubbing or voiceovers to our courses.
The platform can adapt to that by having the instructions in many other languages. This opens up our audience and gives our courses a greater potential reach.
One of the most valuable features is the ability to use private external portals through which we can sell our courses. This feature is one of the primary reasons we stitched from our previous LMS, as it allows us to grow and customize the portals within CYPHER Learning for specific clients, and that's huge.
The ability to create learning pathways is of great benefit, as is the capacity for us to provide certificates of completion at the end of a particular course or learning pathway.
Our customer support rep has been fantastic, especially as we were up for renewal. He was very responsive and able to bring in the staff required to work on our renewal. The primary sales representative we worked with was also excellent; how they stepped up and worked with us made a big difference in our decision to renew our contract for another five years.
CYPHER Learning's features are enormously helpful to our process and efficiency; we did a comprehensive analysis before we moved from our last LMS, and the features, customization, available APIs, and support made a huge difference for us.
The search function needs to be improved; it isn't currently working correctly and has no value to us at this point, but it should be of great value. To my knowledge, CYPHER Learning is presently working on this issue.
The content player within CYPHER Learning could use some improvement, particularly in how it scales – the player is not responsive to the browser window being resized, so content is often cut off which is a big frustration. We want a fully responsive content player. That's one area where our previous solution was fantastic, so it needs to be worked on at CYPHER Learning.
We've been using CYPHER Learning for around two years.
The solution is very stable; we've never had an issue outside of a bit of downtime here and there.
For the most part, the customer support is very responsive. There were a few occasions when we weren’t getting the answers that we needed so we contacted our company rep, and he jumped right in, so the process got moving very quickly all of a sudden. Mostly, we have been able to find what we need in the knowledge base, and when we can't, we usually get a pretty good response from customer support.
Positive
We previously used Docebo LMS and switched because we found CYPHER Learning to be a more complete solution. What we didn't like about Docebo is that many features and capabilities are paid add-ons, so the cost kept increasing. The CYPHER Learning team was also fantastic in setting up a sandbox for us to play in and answering any questions we had. We felt that CYPHER Learning provided a cleaner, more navigable admin interface which made it easier to work within the LMS. We looked at many different companies, but they stood out to us by being accommodating and ensuring all our questions were answered. Docebo's customer support was another reason we switched- many of our support tickets were left unresolved for several weeks or even months and their support team seemed to lack a solid understanding of their own product.
Another reason we switched is that Docebo doesn't do a good job with external portals, and CYPHER Learning does an excellent job. We handle the sales of our CYPHER Learning courses externally through a purpose-built website, and Docebo had no option for APIs, which was frustrating. CYPHER Learning does a much better job supporting us; they have been very accommodating, and though we ran into some difficulty during the initial configuration of the API, their tech team worked with us to ensure the API worked out.
There were both straightforward and complex elements to the deployment. Moving from one platform to another that functions differently involves some complexity. Still, we were extremely pleased by how quickly the CYPHER Learning team answered our questions and how readily the solutions team assisted us. Part of our switch from Docebo to CYPHER Learning included some hours with their customer support and tech teams, many of which we didn't use as the deployment was relatively straightforward. We figured out the solution and got rapid answers from customer support for questions when they arose.
We implemented the solution in-house, with support from the CYPHER Learning tech and customer support teams.
Our organization is a nonprofit, so we're not out to make a high ROI; we need to make enough to develop new courses, maintain ongoing ones, and so on. However, we wouldn't have signed with CYPHER Learning for five years if we didn't think we could make it work from an ROI standpoint. CYPHER Learning gives us the ROI required to sustain our organization via the solution's pricing and capabilities.
During the negotiation for our five-year contract, CYPHER Learning did an excellent job of being fair and upfront with us. We have to budget for the future and know what the solution will cost us over the next five years. That's fantastic, and the company was very accommodating and worked well with us.
Everybody always wants the price to be lower, but realistically, if the price were significantly lower, that would make us happy in the short term, but it may put CYPHER Learning out of business in the long term. In our case, the deal we came to was a win-win.
The only issue I have with the pricing is that there's a new component called CYPHER Care, and we only use a few elements of it. So, we had to buy CYPHER Care without requiring the complete feature set, but I understand why they need to simplify the pricing. I'd rather it be simplified than the complexity that Docebo threw at us.
I rate the solution an eight out of ten.
We use the product for hybrid training; we have many blended learning courses. For example, we require users to go through four courses in the platform, after which they can enroll in a webinar where they can get involved in a discussion on the subject matter. The blended learning model is significant for us. Another example is that we have in-person seminars where we would have around 100 CEOs. Before going to the workshop, they must complete several courses as a
prerequisite, after which they can attend the two-and-a-half-day seminar. Following that, other courses open up, allowing continued learning and application of the skills.
The platform's automation for triggering actions - whether that be completion actions, enrollment actions, etc. is extremely beneficial to us- we use automation to recommend the next courses in a series, send notification emails, and provide completion certificates. We don't currently use the badges etc., as we don't consider them essential.
We don't utilize the product's capacity to recommend courses or assignments to learners based on their job titles or competencies as we design our own learning pathways. The recommended course feature isn't significant for us.
CYPHER Learning hasn't reduced our training costs, as we don't use it for that. However, it reduces training costs for our clients as they can use our courses to learn without paying to get us there.
To someone looking for an LMS but who has never heard of CYPHER Learning, we would recommend the platform to them, and we have. We may already have sent some clients in their direction, and one of the best sales tools would be to have potential clients go into our system and see how robust, powerful, and capable it is. We've recommended the solution to people before and will continue to do so. Based on our experience over the past 2 years, CYPHER Learning is a platform that we recommend.
Before purchasing the solution, I advise potential customers to understand the pricing, including what it will be moving forward, so they can build that into their long-term projections. Secondly, understanding the platform's capabilities and whether they work for you is essential. The best way to do that is to ask for a sandbox that you can play around in to see if the product does what you think it does and whether it meets your company's requirements. Tech vendor salespeople
are pretty good, but the reality tends to be not quite as rosy as the picture they paint. So, some due diligence is required regarding understanding the capabilities.
I am a computer science teacher and I use it to help facilitate my class. I'm not a typical "sage on the stage" teacher, I'm more like a "guide on the side." I use CYPHER Learning to fully implement my curriculum for my students.
Automation helps save time when it comes to the assessment of assignments. I can set up some assignments so that the platform automatically grades students. I can spend more time developing content and not so much time grading. Taking the time to set it up properly helps with that automation, and the students get immediate feedback so they know exactly how well they've done. I can then look at the analytics, once they've done those assignments, and gauge who's doing well and who needs a little bit more help. It's very important and helpful.
I throw in a survey-type self-assessment for my students. I can go through each lesson and I can see how well they think they did versus how their actual grade matches up. I can identify students or classes to go back to and say, "Maybe we're going to take a little bit more time on this content." I can do that one-on-one or in a small group as well. It's essential in helping me to identify who needs help or who's ready for more advanced lessons or assignments.
CYPHER Learning is also very efficient when it comes to helping me understand how well my students understand concepts, by using the assessments, analytics, and feedback. My students can interact with me within the system to let me know if they have questions. I can engage with them as they're working and field questions or clear up anything that they may have an issue with.
Another benefit of the platform is classroom management. When my students know exactly what they need to be doing, it cuts down on the extra time that could lead to poor classroom management. It's all about them buying in at the beginning and getting my students to invest in the system. They know what they're supposed to be doing. CYPHER Learning has been very beneficial in that way.
An aspect that is also extremely important is the fact that teachers can track student progress on a competency basis through a mastery grid. As an organization, that's one of the things our administrators look for when they come into the room, the objectives and the competencies, and what teachers are doing to help students achieve competencies with their pedagogy in the classroom.
CYPHER Learning helps me to provide self-pacing for students in my class. Because the system enables me to add videos and resources such as PDFs, a lot of that content is me in the video, so they don't have to go to outside sources. I can take care of those students who are proficient by giving them those materials, and that allows them to move along at their own pace. And for those students who need extra time on things, I have that time to spend with them while others move ahead. It helps me to reach everybody.
The system also helps reduce administrative work because it offers analytics and spreadsheet downloads. If I need to see grades for students, I can see them all at once or pull grade reports for individual students. I can look at individual grades from the different classes that I've set up that cover different competencies. I can print all of that out and share it with parents. Everything is right at your fingertips.
There are cost savings because it's all digital. There's really no need for printing. I can convert documents to PDFs or do videos. It really helps because it's online. I have to be out of school tomorrow, but I don't have to make copies of things for students or the substitute teacher. I just outline what my students are doing online and the substitute and the students know exactly what they need to be doing.
The mastery grid CYPHER Learning is the most important feature. With my curriculum, in Mississippi, we are required to keep up and track as our students master specific objectives and standards. With CYPHER Learning, that process is built-in. I can customize it to my liking, and I have all of that data right at my fingertips. It's amazing.
Similarly, the competency-based learning is also extremely important because, with my curriculum, in the state of Mississippi, funding is a key factor. We have to keep up with how well our students are doing on specific competencies and standards. I've got all of the data and the system backs it up. It's very critical.
Tagging assignments with competencies goes along with the mastery feature. When I'm looking at that mastery list, I can see assignments, lessons, a group of lessons, or a specific quiz I have tagged and I can immediately see which assessments match specific competencies and determine if I need to change things up or develop something a little bit more.
Gamification is another feature that I've recently really gotten into and I have found that my students really enjoy getting points and badges. That reinforcement is critical. One of the things that my school stresses is positive reinforcement for our students. With gamification, my students get that instant gratification. They get specific scores when they do specific tasks within CYPHER Learning and it lets them know. It's a really big motivator for my students.
The gamification aspect is extremely easy to use, as long as you have an idea of what you want to do. The system is very intuitive and you just create your game and your points. Another thing I like about it is that you can retroactively add points for something. You might think, "Hey, I want to give points for a specific task that has already been done." You can go back, create that point system or badge, and it will retroactively award the student who's already done that assignment as well as capture those who have yet to begin.
It's also very easy for students to use gamified learning materials. They just do the work; what they would already be doing. It doesn't take any extra effort for them to be involved in it because it's built into the assignments or the lessons. As long as they're doing their work and engaging with the system, they are rewarded for their participation.
And the reward automation is a time-saver for me. It's a set-it-and-forget-it feature. The system continues working after you set it up and you know that the students will be rewarded. The system is going to make sure that the students are aware that they are participating in it.
The platform is also really good in terms of integrations with other technologies. I use and integrate a lot of video content, with SCORM features, to create automated assignments. There are other websites out there, but CYPHER Learning makes it possible to have everything in-house for me and my students. It's a one-stop shop.
I'm able to manage all of my needs for all of my students on my own. From year-to-year, as I create content, I am able to tweak things or reuse assignments, which cuts down on the amount of time I have to spend on preparing.
While the number of apps available for integration with CYPHER Learning has increased over the years, I would love to see this number continue to grow. I believe this would help solidify its position amongst other learning management systems as a viable option for educators and schools.
I've been using CYPHER LEARNING since 2010 or 2011.
I'm extremely impressed, from year to year, with the things that they are doing as far as keeping up with how the platform should look and what it should offer. It's always ahead of where other LMSs are.
They have been very responsive to my needs. There is an online support system that you go to if you're having an issue.
Positive
The initial setup was completely straightforward. When I began using CYPHER Learning it was as simple as getting the URL and sharing it with my students. I don't think it could get any simpler than that. Because I'm in a computer lab, I have my students save that web address in a bookmark.
There is minimal maintenance. For any issues that are encountered, CYPHER LEARNING is very responsive.
I have absolutely seen a return on investment. It shows students their percentage of completion and I'm getting more students to do more work. They see what they have to do. They'll say, "I'm at this percentage of completion, and this is my mastery so far." The buy-in is worth it to get that from students.
Some of the previous solutions I used were free, but I feel that it's worth it to pay for CYPHER Learning and get that autonomy and creativity and personalization. I feel that students want and need something that is not just the status quo. They want to be able to engage with something that speaks to them, so they're not just trying to check a box on an objective. It actually gets them involved in the process of learning. It gets a student to say, "Ok, this is something I have to do, but I'm really enjoying what I have to do. I get to interact with my teacher and with other students." That was something that some of the other platforms were lacking.
The pricing is worth the peace of mind that it gives teachers, due to the ability to create an experience for their students. It's not just about the assignments they have to do. Teachers can create a narrative and a direction for their students and have them immersed in that environment. Learning is something that all students have to do, but why not make it fun? Why not be able to offer an experience that is engaging and that allows them to participate and add to that narrative?
I had worked with several different LMSs because, in the state of Mississippi, when you're going to teach my specific subject, you go through training on different LMS platforms. I found that a lot was lacking in those platforms and that CYPHER Learning gives me more autonomy, creativity, and personalization in my class compared to Blackboard, Google Classroom, or Moodle. Now, the state of Mississippi uses Canvas, but I still prefer to use CYPHER Learning.
One of the main things that I really loved when I initially started out with CYPHER Learning was that it was different from everything else out there. They keep up the user interface and it's like an encompassing community for my students. That way, they're not having to go to a lot of different websites for much of what they're doing. I can set it up to minimize distractions and the need to go to different websites to do assignments.
Also, CYPHER Learning serves as an extension of myself, my teaching philosophy, and the experiences that I want to give to my students. When they're working through a lesson, in a sense, they're sitting down and working with me personally, and that's something that I strive to do ahead of time. It may take a few extra minutes, and maybe hours, upfront, to capture that opportunity for my students to be working with me, but it's worth it. So the platform is just an extension of me and I'm able to get all the creativity out there and encourage my students to be as creative in how they interact and engage. I can promote the joy of learning.
Another factor was ease of use. A lot of the other platforms that I used didn't have the intuitiveness that I have with CYPHER Learning. It made me want to explore and use as many features as possible to get the most out of it for my students.
I feel that CYPHER Learning is always ahead of the curve when it comes to educational technology. It's really helpful that they have a roadmap of things that they are looking to implement. They're keeping up with the trends in education. And we are also able to provide feedback directly to them. They're constantly working to improve the platform. I couldn't ask for anything more specific because I feel they're already on top of it. But if there were something that they needed to add, they're always open to suggestions.
My advice would be to look into the ability that CYPHER Learning offers for teachers to create their own paths for their students; the autonomy, creativity, and personalization provided by CYPHER Learning. Also, consider the automation and being able to create content or assessments that work for you and don't add to your time. There are only so many hours in the day for educators, administrators, or people in the industry. It's a platform that works with you to see you through to the goals that you envision.
CYPHER Learning houses everything I need to function, day-to-day, in my classroom.
We use it to provide online courses for distance learning students.
We have both teachers and admin staff who work with the platform. Teachers can see student submissions and our admin staff can manage our course content and eCommerce.
We can customize our ordering system so we can have the data that we need to communicate with our students, their families, and our staff.
We can collect surveys, using the LMS platform, from our students on how their courses are going.
The ordering process is automated. When students register for a course, their course is set up automatically. We can manually register them when needed, as needed.
CYPHER Learning has helped by providing a variety of activities to help students get engaged, developing their independence and higher-order thinking skills. The quizzes and tests help keep our students engaged in developing their skills. I would rate the importance of this as 10 out of 10 for our organization.
CYPHER Learning has helped us save time on intervention strategies for students, especially those who need guidance.
We provide a great program and having a top LMS system is essential. Our students love the platform, from what we hear. One of the things that they love about our courses is the LMS system's ease and use.
The navigation is easy to use.
It is very easy for educators to communicate with students using the CYPHER Learning messaging system, which is imperative for our organization.
There are many applications available as add-ons. There are so many that we have not used all of them, but are happy to know we have more than we currently need.
It can maintain an infinite database of our students.
The solution is top-notch for tagging classes and assignments. The tagging is great for ensuring that the content is compliant with standards.
Work more closely with Cypher customers when launching new versions of the platform before going live.
I have been using it for 12 years. Our company started delivering programs in 2010, and we started using CYPHER Learning in 2013.
CYPHER Learning is definitely a stable solution. We have experienced less than 1% downtime.
The platform is set up so there are no capacity limits. Our program can grow as much as we want it to grow. We don't have any constraints around how many more courses we can offer or how many students we can add. There are no constraints around that.
The scalability is infinite. There aren't any limitations on what we can or can't do.
Their tech support is top-notch. When there is an issue, we are always able to find a workaround that meets our specific needs. The tech support team help us with that. An example is using the reporting feature. If there is something that we need in a report and we can't get all the data in the default template of the report, then we can work with the tech support team who will show us how to customize it.
I would rate the technical support as 9.9 out of 10. It is almost perfect.
Positive
Before we moved to the CYPHER Learning platform, we tried another vendor and it didn't work.
We used another vendor in the beginning, which was low cost. We were a brand new company then, so we used what we could afford at the time. We switched because CYPHER Learning has everything. We were going to have to keep adding to what we had with the previous solution, so it was going to become cost-prohibitive.
I had an IT specialist, who was looking at our current system, recommend CYPHER Learning. He did a little research, and said, "This is the one you need." When we started using them, he was more than right.
The initial setup is easy.
It took just one day to get it up and running. We were up the day that we started using it.
It is so user-friendly. You can create a course, and have that course up the same day. Though, it does depend on how much content is in your course.
One admin was initially needed for the deployment, which does depend on the size of the deployment. Now, we have four admins working on it. There are also teachers who upload content.
When I first started, I wanted the enterprise package. We had to build up our student base to get up to the number of students that we needed to be in that enterprise package. Then, we had a 100% return on investment within the first year of using the program.
Our time saving increased by 70%, going from manual to automated.
The solution has definitely helped us reduce our administrative work. It gives us the ability to provide distance learning for students who are not all in the same area, which is valuable.
The amount of time that we need to use the LMS system to quantify things is minimal.
CYPHER Learning has 100% helped us save on costs related to printing materials, textbook acquisitions, and license fees. It is instant for our students when we update or come up with a new version of our programs because we use this platform. If we need to modify a quiz, update a course, or add new material, all our students receive that instantly. There is no reprinting. There are no out-of-pocket costs for us. Also, there isn't a time delay for students.
CYPHER Learning has helped reduce the number of staff needed to manage our learning management system (LMS). It would likely triple our staff and admin if we weren't using it.
We do a monthly subscription.
It is priced competitively. Their pricing is one of the best in the industry. They are not the cheapest solution, but they are not the most expensive. The value that they provide, for what we pay, is invaluable. There are no add-on costs.
We have been using it for so long, and we wouldn't use a different platform. It is the best platform out there. It has become part of our daily environment, where we use it all day long.
The solution's ability to bridge our student's learning gap is at the top of the industry.
I talk with other schools who discuss their platforms. They always want our platform.
Don't waste a lot of time evaluating other programs. This is the best one out there.
We have plans to increase our usage of CYPHER Learning.
I would rate this solution as 10 out of 10.