LMS With Content Library: Should You Buy Content With Your Platform or Separately?

Should you buy a content library with your LMS, or should you buy it separately?

The reality is that most LMS and LXP platforms are now bundled with content. But why did that happen?

It helps to look back at how things were with computers and consoles. If you bought a Spectrum or a Commodore 64, you got the hardware and not much else.

For those of you who can remember buying one, there was quite a bit of overwhelming disappointment amongst the joy. You might have had one game. Or you spent time typing pages and pages of code just to get something that worked.

That model changed. Consoles started bundling games. Then with the internet, the delivery of content changed quite significantly.

You now buy a subscription and get content delivered the same way TV and movies are delivered. A games pass. A streaming service.

The LMS and LXP market followed the same path. What’s now widely referred to as an elearning library or a content library is delivered in the same way. It’s become something that’s almost expected when you buy a platform.

But your LMS or LXP doesn’t necessarily always come with content. And for a lot of companies it will be an additional cost, often a cost that hasn’t been fully budgeted for. But how do you budget for it and where do you start?

Not every LMS or LXP provider has content available either. There are still platforms out there that don’t have a content library for you to select from. In that case the decision’s made for you.

It might also be that your platform has some content, but it’s not right for you. Or it has some content, but you need more. The problem is when you don’t have the content you need. It doesn’t need to be like this. Even if you have content bundled, you can still speak to a company like us. At Real Projects we’ve got additional elearning content libraries that you can add straight into your LMS.

So the real situation you find yourself in is this: you might buy some content with your LMS, some separately, or a combination of both.

What a bundled content library actually gives you

Most people will think they know the answer to that. It’s going to give you a load of content that you can put into your LMS or LXP, and you’re going to be away.

That might be a load of compliance content, it could be some content on soft skills, and that might solve the problem that you have, either a lack of content or it’s going to fill some subject gaps.

But is that what a bundled content library actually gives you? Is that what you need?

One of the things I see missing quite often is really good quality metadata. And why do you need metadata? If you can’t find anything in search, it’s often because the metadata within the content library is poor. At Real Projects we’ve invested time into our process and data to ensure that each course comes with excellent metadata. Why? So that when you want to search, map skills, or create learning paths, our content actually works.

The thing I talk about a lot is going into a bookshop. The one thing you can normally do pretty quickly is find things. And the reason you can find the book in the bookshop or the library is because it’s really well indexed.

What you need when you’re getting a content library is really good metadata. If you’re getting junk back in search, you’ll see it first hand. You need to do your research and see what the metadata is actually like before you commit.

Everyone is talking about impact, ROI and behaviour. But is anyone telling you how to do it? You need good data to get really good results, so you can build all of the learning pathways that you need, do all the skills mapping that you need, and do all of the linking with the content that you need. This is why we’ve spent time making sure you get the data that you need.

It’s more than just getting the content object. It’s about integrating it with your own infrastructure.

The other thing you have to be aware of is the headline figure. You’ve heard it before: our library includes this number of objects.

But what you’re actually getting might be some elearning courses padded out with worksheets, audio files, and a load of infographics. Infographics don’t take long to create. A good graphic designer can produce them in a day. So what value are you actually getting from them?

I’ve always wanted to give people a clear list of what they’re actually getting, not a number padded out with assets that cost very little to produce. Is that really what you want to be paying thousands for?

Not at Real Projects. We want to make sure you’re paying for quality. Every course in our library is a proper SCORM-packaged elearning course, not filler.

You might get a high object count from a bundled library, and that number can look impressive. But what I want to know is what you’re actually getting, and whether it’s going to deliver the impact and return on investment you need.

Then I can work out how many objects I’m getting against the number of people I’ve got, against what the licence is, and work out the cost per user. And actually, the cost per user on a content library works out really well.

One of the things that doesn’t get talked about enough is that a bundled content library should give you great value for money.

For organisations with up to 250 users, the full library works out at around £11 per person per year. At 500 users it drops to £10. At 1,000 users you’re at £7.50 per person. Beyond that it gets even cheaper. At 3,500 users you’re under £4 per person per year.

That’s access to 800+ courses, in nine languages, for less than the cost of a single classroom training day per person.

The bigger the organisation, the better the value. That’s worth knowing when you’re making the case internally for a content library.

It’s then down to you and your team to deliver that as part of your learning strategy.

Why bundled content rarely covers everything you need

How can a bundled elearning library deliver everything for everybody? It’s just not possible.

The criticism you see, that it hasn’t got everything or it’s got too much, that’s just the nature of it. It doesn’t reflect how you actually use a library, and it’s not how you develop a learning strategy. Ignore the hype.

It’s like the posts you see on LinkedIn where someone says they couldn’t find anything they wanted to watch on Netflix. Did you go and look on Disney Plus? Did you try Hulu? The likelihood is you never see that post. Why? Because that post didn’t generate the agreement it was looking for.

The leaders doing this well are doing something different. They’re using multiple platforms. They’re thinking strategically, mapping skills, looking at career paths, and using previous usage data to understand what they need now and in the future.

Just because a library has three hundred courses doesn’t mean it’s got everything you need. You might already have some of it covered.

The reality is that an elearning library is part of your strategy. What is it that you actually need? Think strategically.

This is what we do at Real Projects with our partners. If you don’t need everything, we work with you to find what does. Equally, some customers want access to the full library. Think of it as content insurance. The courses are there when they need them.

You don’t need every staff member to complete every course. Think back to Netflix. You don’t sign up and feel like you have to watch everything on the platform.

You need to do the content mapping. Does this library support what you need? Does it fill some gaps? Is it better than what you’ve currently got?

If you buy a library of three hundred or four hundred courses, it doesn’t mean you’re going to use them all. But it might mean it’s got some of the things that fill the gaps you have. That’s how it works.

It’s like Spotify or Amazon Music. You’ve still got some music on CD or vinyl. It’s not going to have everything.

And your requirements are going to be constantly changing. You’re going to want new things. You’re going to want different things. That’s where you want a provider who has a road map, and you want to be part of that road map.

That’s one of the things we do at Real Projects. We make sure our customers are part of our road map. We speak to our partners and our customers to find out what they need so we can build their requirements into what we’re building next.

But it can never fit exactly what you need, because what you need is going to be different from another customer in a different sector or a different country.

It might be that you need to buy one library. It might be that you need two. You still might not get full coverage, and it might be that you end up with a bit of library, a bit of custom, a bit of PDF, a bit of audio, a bit of everything.

That’s about building a strategy around what you need.

It’s slightly naive to think that one library is going to fit everything. That’s where you’ve got to be smart with your budget, who you’re working with, and what they’re doing.

Make sure your library costs don’t go up every year. Do your due diligence on the contract. Go through the list. Don’t expect it to fit everything, that’s just not how it works. If you can’t see the contract or there isn’t one, that might just be another red flag. At Real Projects we want a contract. It explains what you’re getting.

When buying content separately makes more sense

You don’t necessarily need to buy the library that comes with your LMS.

Content that’s SCORM compliant, or xAPI, should be able to go into your LMS regardless of where it came from.

And if you’ve got a good LMS provider, they should accept content from everybody. If they don’t, you’ve got a problem. You need to be speaking to your LMS provider and asking why they’re only accepting their own content. A good LMS provider shouldn’t be gating you like that.

I’ve worked with LMS providers who make it difficult to get someone else’s content onto their platform. Some don’t even accept SCORM. If you’re not sure, speak to us. The Real Projects team will do the tests for you. We send some files to the LMS provider to check that content goes in cleanly, and we get a feel for what their service level is like.

Why does it make sense to buy content separately? It might simply be that your LMS provider hasn’t got the content you need, and you need to look around.

It’s the same as anything else. You buy a car, but you don’t buy all the accessories from the main dealer. You go and look around because there might be better options, better features, better value elsewhere. It’s the same model with elearning content.

You’ve got to look at the commercial options available to you. This isn’t about just buying whatever looks good and assuming it’ll plug straight in.

You’ve got to think about what your commercial strategy is, what your learning strategy is, and how this fits into it. A good team should be able to get any elearning library up and running. And most elearning libraries are going to be working with a lot of different platforms anyway.

What to look for in a standalone elearning content library

First of all, is it going to fit into your LMS? Have they got the right files, the right format, the thumbnails, good metadata?

That’s the very first thing to check, even before you start looking at course lists. Because if it doesn’t work technically, you’ve wasted a lot of time. I’ve wasted a lot of time with LMS providers that can’t cope with a few basic SCORM files. Speak to us if you’ve had problems with this. We will help you.

Check the technical piece first and make sure it works. It’s an easy win. A good provider won’t have a problem sending you a SCORM file and some metadata so you can test it. You don’t need to fill yourself full of NDAs to do that bit.

What else are you looking for? Pricing should be clear and easy to get. No mucking about. You should be able to get a price quickly.

And you should be able to see the course list without signing contracts and NDAs just to access it. If there are big barriers to seeing either of those things, that’s a red flag.

Once you’ve got the course list, put it into a spreadsheet. These are the things I want. Send it over to the supplier and ask them to map it. What have you got that’s similar to this?

Then from that, you want to see some demo content. Not their top five best ones, but the courses you’ve actually identified. The ones you’ve asked about.

I’ve been to Learning Technologies and been given the top demo from LMS providers and I can tell you I’ve been completely underwhelmed. Another time I got on a demo machine and before I could even move the mouse the sales team were onto me. I wasn’t allowed to look at the content myself.

The other key thing, and I talk to people about this a lot, is really good quality metadata. Title, durations, categories, short descriptions. I’ve already spoken about metadata but it’s overlooked so much. It’s as important as the courses themselves. Without decent data you can’t provide a decent user experience.

More and more I’m hearing about AI plugins and AI layers that go into your content files to surface better search results. But if your metadata is good, you shouldn’t need that. Really good metadata means you get really good results.

Good content management is a fundamental part of any library you’re considering.

That’s exactly how we approach it at Real Projects. Metadata quality is everything. It’s not just about a title and a duration. It’s about metadata that works and also matches the data within your LMS.

A unique identifier. Categories. The skill detail. The path. Seat time. The description. Learning objectives. The subject. Course features. Languages. The authoring tool it was built in. The product ID. When it was published. When it was last modified. All of that.

The reason that matters is so you don’t end up with a separate sheet in Airtable trying to manage content that isn’t being managed properly somewhere else because you don’t know what the latest versions are.

We tell you when our courses are modified. That’s how we do it.

It’s also about the thumbnails. Do you want them with our logo on or our logo off? Clear titles so you know exactly what each course is.

All files carrying the same project number so you know when they come in, you know how to find them, and there’s no confusion. No different numbers all over the place. So you can manage your library properly.

It’s also about proper pricing transparency. You shouldn’t be guessing what your price is or wondering what’s coming next. You should be able to get a price quickly and clearly.

It’s about getting a decent course list that you can see without signing fifty NDAs or sitting through a four week discovery call. Here’s the list. That’s it.

And if you want to see demo content, you can see it. It’s not blocked off behind an LMS demo. If you want to see the content, you can see the content.

That’s what makes the difference. Removing the barriers so you can see what you’re getting and make a decision quickly.

The cost question: bundled vs separate

A lot of LMS providers aren’t producing their own content. They’re buying it in from other people and adding it on.

So you’re not getting it as an added value proposition. You’re paying for it, one way or another.

When you’re looking at a bundled option, you’re certainly not getting the content for free. What you can look at is whether you’re getting it cheaper than if you’d bought it separately.

When you’re looking at buying separately, there’s a different cost. But what you can do is look at the pricing model.

Comparing pricing models used to be a challenge, but it’s easier now. Take the different pricing models, put them into something like Claude or ChatGPT, and get that to do the analysis for you. Obviously check your numbers, but it’s a lot easier now to compare cost per person across different libraries and different providers.

The reality is it comes back to your budget. What is your budget, and what do you need to get?

You can speak to providers and negotiate on price. But the bundled price isn’t always what it seems. Sometimes LMS providers have deals with three or four content providers that you wouldn’t get elsewhere, and that’s worth looking at.

But don’t just look at the headline price. If it’s not got the content you need, or it’s got a lot of content that isn’t relevant, then the price isn’t delivering the value you want.

Value comes back to things like total cost of ownership, return on investment, and what you’re actually getting. It’s not just about bundled versus separate. It’s about what you’re getting and how that’s going to deliver your learning strategy.

What most L&D teams end up doing

What you find with a lot of teams is that they’ll have an LMS, and it will come with content.

And what you’ll read about at the moment is that the content isn’t effective. You’ll also read from people. You know the ones. The thought leaders who probably don’t even use an LMS, saying you don’t need content, or that a no-content strategy is the way forward, or don’t create any more content. They’ll also be the ones who won’t let you comment on their post.

That doesn’t really work. Not for fast-moving areas like cybersecurity, cybercrime, or compliance.

What tends to happen is that the first focus is buying the LMS. Teams don’t necessarily think about buying content and an LMS at the same time. The priority is the platform. If the LMS comes with content, that’s a bonus. And some of that is market driven.

I speak to a lot of people who’ve got their LMS, they’re in a long-term contract, and they’re now looking for content to cover the gaps. They might end up doing a bit of custom and a bit of library. That’s common.

The thing you’ve got to think about strategically is total cost of ownership. It’s great to read articles about behaviour, impact, and ROI. But the people writing those articles aren’t dealing with your organisation and your budget. That’s your money. That’s what you’re working with.

Most teams will buy an LMS and buy some content. What they sometimes find afterwards is that the content isn’t really what they wanted.

And then there’s a surprise when they go out into the market and find that some of the content they actually need is expensive. There’s also an issue where people just don’t look very far when they’re searching for content. They don’t always know where to look.

So they end up going back to what they had before, or waiting for a provider to approach them.

If you’re at the point where you’ve got an LMS and you’ve got gaps, and you’re not sure where to look, that happens a lot. You might be at Learning Technologies or Training Magazine and people are looking for content.

It might be that you’re getting towards the end of your LMS contract, or you’ve never even thought about the fact that there’s a different option.

You can come and speak to us. We’re easy to find and we’re easy to work with. Give us a list and we can help map our content against it. A Word document, a Google Sheet, something on a notepad, that’s all you need.

At Real Projects we’ve got 800+ courses across compliance, cybersecurity, information security, soft skills, travel, and more. They’re available in nine languages, with SCORM packaging, thumbnails, and metadata ready to go into your LMS or LXP.

You can see the course list without an NDA. You can get pricing quickly. You can see demo content before you commit. No massive discovery process.

We work with the large content aggregators, we’ve got brilliant reviews and scores, and we’ve done projects for organisations like M&S, GSK, and AstraZeneca. Platforms like Ticketmaster and easyJet have used our library. We’ve worked with Encyclopaedia Britannica.

We distribute through HowNow, OpenSesame, Course Source and a host of others. The chances are we already work with your platform.

You don’t need to wait for us to find you. Get in touch and we’ll come back with examples and pricing within 24 hours. We can also set you up with an enablement platform so you can have a proper look before you commit.

Questions and Answers

Does my LMS have to come with a content library?

No. Not every LMS or LXP comes with a content library. Some offer it as an add-on, some have partnerships with content providers, and some don’t offer content at all.

If your LMS doesn’t include content, you’ll need to source it separately, which is a straightforward process if you know what to look for.

Can I use content from a different provider in my LMS?

Yes, as long as the content is SCORM compliant or xAPI. Any good LMS should accept content from any provider that meets those standards.

If your LMS is restricting you to their own content only, that’s worth raising with your provider.

How do I compare the cost of bundled vs separate content?

Work out the cost per user across both options. Take the total licence cost, divide by the number of users, and compare.

If you’ve got multiple pricing models to compare, you can put them into a tool like Claude or ChatGPT to do the analysis — just make sure you check the numbers yourself afterwards.

What should I check before committing to a content library?

Start with the technical fit. Ask for a sample SCORM file and some metadata and test it in your LMS before you go any further. A lot of people leave that to the end and then find things don’t work. Do it first. If there’s an issue, a good provider will fix it.

Then look at the course list, the pricing, and the quality of the metadata. If a provider makes it difficult to see any of those things without signing an NDA, treat that as a warning sign.

At Real Projects we’ve made the process as simple as possible. We’ll send you a sample SCORM file with metadata so you can check everything works in your LMS straight away. The course list is available without an NDA. Pricing is clear and you can get it quickly.

If you’ve got a specific requirement (a number of users, a number of courses) we’ll work with that. Send us your list and we’ll map our library against it and come back within 24 hours with examples and pricing. We’ll also set you up with an enablement platform so you can see the content properly and make decisions.

No lengthy discovery calls. No NDAs before you’ve seen anything. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to get into the content and see how it works.

Is one content library ever enough?

Rarely. Your requirements will change over time, and no single library is going to cover everything for every team in every sector.

Most organisations end up with a mix. Some library content, some custom, some other formats. The goal is to build a strategy around what you actually need, not to find one solution that does everything.