What is Totara?
Totara is a fully customisable enterprise learning platform that helps organisations develop people, improve performance and deliver learning across employees, customers, partners and other audiences. Designed for complex organisations, it offers the flexibility to create learning experiences that fit the way your business works.
What makes Totara different
Is Totara an LMS?
Yes. Totara is an LMS at its core, but it goes beyond traditional learning management. Totara Learn supports training, compliance, certifications and collaborative learning, while Totara Perform adds performance management in the same platform. Unlike many off-the-shelf LMSs, Totara is designed to adapt to the way your organisation works.
How is Totara different from Moodle?
While Moodle is widely used in education, Totara is designed for workplace learning. It provides enterprise features such as multi-tenancy, certifications, performance management and flexible audience management, making it well suited to organisations with more complex learning needs.
Frequently asked questions
Is Totara open source?
Yes. Totara is built on open-source technology, giving organisations the flexibility to customise the platform and integrate it with their existing systems. It’s trusted by more than 1,500 organisations worldwide, from healthcare providers to government agencies, with TotaraGov offering a FedRAMP-authorized LMS for the US public sector.
Who uses Totara?
Totara is used by more than 1,500 organisations worldwide, from healthcare providers and government agencies to global enterprises, higher education institutions and non-profit organisations. Its flexible architecture makes it suitable for organisations that need to support employees, customers, partners or other audiences from a single platform.
Where is Totara based?
Totara is headquartered in London, UK, with offices in the US and New Zealand. Through its global partner network, Totara supports organisations around the world.
Can Totara be customised?
Yes. Flexibility is one of Totara’s biggest strengths. Organisations can configure the platform to reflect the way they work, from branded learning experiences to automated workflows and integrations with existing business systems.
What is the difference between Totara Learn, Perform, and Engage?
Totara Learn is the learning management system and now includes the collaborative and social learning capabilities previously available in Totara Engage. It supports course delivery, compliance training, certifications and collaborative learning. Totara Perform complements Learn by helping organisations manage performance through goals, check-ins, appraisals and continuous development. Together, they provide a connected approach to learning and performance.
Can a corporate LMS improve employee retention?
A corporate LMS can contribute to employee retention by making learning and career development more accessible. When employees can build new skills, explore development opportunities and see a clear path for growth, they’re more likely to feel invested in their role and future with the organisation.
Totara supports this by helping organisations deliver personalised learning, connect learning with performance, and provide employees with ongoing development throughout their careers.
Is Totara suitable for regulated industries?
Yes. Totara is used by organisations operating in regulated industries, including healthcare, financial services, government and manufacturing. It helps manage mandatory training, certifications, reporting and role-specific learning requirements, giving organisations the flexibility to meet compliance obligations while supporting workforce development.
What’s the difference between an LMS and an LXP?
An LMS is designed to deliver, manage and track learning, making it well suited to structured training, compliance and certifications. An LXP focuses more on helping learners discover content, share knowledge and take greater ownership of their development. Many organisations need both approaches rather than choosing one over the other.
Totara Learn combines the strengths of an LMS with collaborative and personalised learning capabilities in a single platform. This means organisations can manage mandatory learning while also supporting knowledge sharing, self-directed learning and social collaboration without introducing another system.
Is Totara a talent experience platform (TXP)?
A talent experience platform (TXP) is designed to support the wider employee experience, bringing learning together with other aspects of talent development. Totara takes a different approach. It focuses on helping organisations build capability through enterprise learning and performance, while giving them the flexibility to configure the platform around their own people, processes and goals.
How do LMS platforms integrate with sales enablement tools?
Many learning management systems, such as Totara, can integrate with sales enablement platforms and other business systems through APIs and integration technologies. This allows organisations to connect learning with existing sales workflows, making it easier to assign training, track completion and understand how learning supports sales performance without requiring employees to switch between multiple systems.
Does Totara use AI?
Yes. Totara includes AI-powered features that help learners, administrators, facilitators and content creators work more efficiently. AI can support tasks such as drafting content, generating images, creating SMART goals, recommending learning and producing knowledge checks, while reducing manual effort and fitting naturally into existing workflows. Organisations also have full control over which AI features they enable, allowing them to adopt AI in line with their own policies and governance requirements.
Can AI help create courses faster?
Yes. Totara’s BuildAI feature helps organisations create courses faster by transforming existing documents or natural-language prompts into structured learning content. Every course remains under human control, with review, editing and approval taking place before publication.
Can organisations control how AI is used in Totara?
Yes. Organisations decide how and when AI features are used within Totara. Administrators can enable AI capabilities that support their learning strategy while ensuring content is reviewed before publication. This gives organisations the flexibility to adopt AI at a pace that suits their governance requirements and internal policies.
