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Cornerstone Learn vs Paylocity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Cornerstone Learn
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Learning Management Systems (LMS) (7th), Virtual Training (5th)
Paylocity
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (26th), Talent Management (48th), Cloud HCM (30th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Cornerstone Learn and Paylocity aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Cornerstone Learn is designed for Learning Management Systems (LMS) and holds a mindshare of 8.5%, up 4.1% compared to last year.
Paylocity, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud HCM, holds 0.4% mindshare, down 0.6% since last year.
Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Cloud HCM
 

Featured Reviews

Vibha  Mishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlined compliance training and efficient session creation empower diverse industries
Creating a session requires just one click, which makes data ready efficiently. Reporting-wise, Cornerstone is the best. It allows internal content management, playlist creation, using external links for learning, and supports various AI training. All the compliance training, code of conduct, and audits are handled through Cornerstone, making it beneficial.
RP
Has a comprehensive and intuitive knowledge base, and time saving payroll administration features
Paylocity is not great at communicating customer support related issues such as account manager changes. They claim to provide concierge level of support, but it has not been great. Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust. At present, I can't send attachments, add hyperlinks to videos, or embed questions in videos. Also, the number of notifications regarding benefits needs to be increased so that new employees get reminders more than once.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a one-stop shop solution, where you can actually log in using your Windows username and password, and the single sign-on can be configured with this LMS."
"Stability and scalability are good. They have four releases every year of which learning is a big portion of that. They're constantly refining and defining and they're embedding a lot of new technology into it all the time."
"If you want to make the job easier, go for Cornerstone Learning."
"It is a complete suite of solutions and features. Compared to other solutions which are more niche solutions, which may be as good as Cornerstone or even better in certain parts of it, like discerning user experience. You will not find another solution that has the same completeness of features in all different areas of learning."
"The most valuable features of Cornerstone Learning are how extensive the configurable the solution is."
"The Meeting feature is similar to a conference call facility that can be used for virtual meetings."
"Cornerstone Learning's most valuable features are the keyword search, filters, and add-to-favorites option."
"The solution is very stable."
"My favorite feature is payroll administration, which has been awesome. You can import as many batches as you want to and run them synchronously or asynchronously. Since I work in a finance company with commissions, bonuses, and distribution, it's great to be able to do that. I can upload multiple things. Also, I can upload different sets of commission lists into the same payroll batch and upload the time card imports and overtime imports if I want to and separate them. I can create multiple batches around an individual or one one set of audit backing, and then I can approve them or leave them open. The way that Paylocity has set up their payroll system is really good and saves us a lot of time. It's very specific and helpful."
 

Cons

"The recruitment module needs to be improved in Cornerstone Learning."
"In general, some of the portal pages have an outdated look and feel."
"Its dashboard and analytics must be improved. Currently, we get the data, but we don't get anything from the insightfulness perspective. Analytics is where it requires a lot of work. We definitely expect some good dashboard features, which are currently lacking in this solution. From a technical perspective, they need to open access to all HTML tags. It currently doesn't support many HTML tags, which makes it challenging to create HTML pages."
"Cornerstone Learning can improve reporting. If they had a harmonization of the administration UIs it would be great."
"Cornerstone Learning could be improved with more e-learning content."
"The existing test functionality is really old-fashioned, basic, and limited."
"Even though the system has a number of features, design wise the user interface is a little bit complicated. It is hard for the user to navigate properly. Because the system has so many features, it has a lot of tabs and links. Sometimes, people get confused as to where to go and search."
"In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the dashboards and reporting."
"Some of the Paylocity systems are limited. For example, I can't create custom offer letters. I can create generic offer letters with a logo, but I can't edit them or create sections. It does not read like a MS Word document and needs to be more robust."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution offers competitive pricing."
"It is a premium product, and it is on par with its competitors. It isn't out of scale with what the market is demanding. We're always looking at ways of trimming costs, but we haven't had a lot of flexibility with pricing and/or options with Cornerstone. So, its price is decent. There are ad hoc engineering costs when we are required to use a Cornerstone resource. Additionally, when we choose to integrate with third-party platforms, there is a setup and maintenance fee for these data integrations. They need to be built into our ongoing budget as we expand our offerings."
"The pricing of Cornerstone Learning is reasonable, but my knowledge of the cost is limited. I've had some discussions about licenses. I suppose we've had to push them a little bit to be more flexible about the licensing. For example, someone said they could only give us licenses in a batch of 500, but we found out that it wasn't true. We were able to negotiate a different amount."
"The solution's pricing depends on the specific requirements."
"I was not involved in the financial negotiation for our contract with this company, but in the past, I have seen the fees run between $10 USD and $11 USD per user."
"The solution cost approximately $47,000 annually."
"This is a cost-effective solution."
"Quality always comes at a cost. I would not rate it as expensive. It provides value for money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
22%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
9%
Retailer
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Is Cornerstone Learning reliable for content organization?
I think the organizational management of Cornerstone Learning is great. My organization uses this learning software and the way different content types are managed is very useful for our training ...
Does Cornerstone Learning provide you with good reports?
Cornerstone Learning provides great reports for your training programs and the performance of your employees on them. What's more, you get skills graphs which my company finds the most valuable for...
Why would you recommend Cornerstone as a platform for virtual training?
Hello, I think that Cornerstone is more than suitable for virtual training. For one, it gives you a really big array of tools and customizations to be able to deliver your employees high-quality t...
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Also Known As

Cornerstone Learning Suite, Saba Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Advantage Sales and Marketing
POLYWOOD, University Clinical Healthcare, New England Authentic Eats, Revere Plastics, Stonewall Kitchen, Circuit Transit, Powerhouse Retail, Mountainside Fitness, Crafton Tull, Noble House Hotels & Resorts, Gurley Leep Automotive, Taco Johns
Find out what your peers are saying about Moodle, SAP, CYPHER LEARNING and others in Learning Management Systems (LMS). Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.