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Cornerstone Learning 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 Learning
Ranking in Talent Management
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
29
Ranking in other categories
Learning Management Systems (LMS) (7th), Virtual Training (4th)
Paylocity
Ranking in Talent Management
37th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Benefits Administration (23rd), Cloud HCM (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Talent Management category, the mindshare of Cornerstone Learning is 2.6%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Paylocity is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Talent Management
 

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

"The most valuable features are the Playlists, Learning Assignment Tool, Earner Experience Platform, Machine Learning, and Reporting 2.0."
"The reporting feature is fantastic, and I also like the dynamic learning assignment feature. It is interactive and user-friendly. It is also highly stable, automated, and customizable."
"It's better than the previous learning solutions we had. We liked that it was global. We liked that you don't have to be logged into the company network to be able to use it. Those were really big benefits for us."
"There are new releases every three months that keep up with industry standards and meet the needs of the customer."
"The most valuable features of Cornerstone Learning are how they organized the management of the different content types is good. They are done in different ways which is a benefit. Additionally, the reporting 2.0 and playlist functionality are very good."
"Combining everything together, our on-time completions have gone from the mid-sixty percentile to over 99% on-time completion."
"The most valuable features of Cornerstone Learning are the welcome page and the learner's home. It is user-friendly and graphically appealing."
"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."
"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

"In the next release, I would like to see improvement in the dashboards and reporting."
"In general, some of the portal pages have an outdated look and feel."
"Could use more robust reporting or more flexibility and scalability around the reporting side."
"Cornerstone Learning could improve the curriculum function by giving it more flexibility. I'm managing the solution and I adding content to the system, and overall, the backend of the system looks a bit dated. Cornerstone Learning has focused a lot on the user experience and less on the backend operational administrative experience. This could be improved overall."
"Cornerstone Learning can improve reporting. If they had a harmonization of the administration UIs it would be great."
"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."
"There are some configuration elements that require Cornerstone engineering resources. It would be nice if we could self-serve. I would like the ability to manage the user interface or the navigation and layout of the pages that are displayed to end-users."
"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."
"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

"The price of Cornerstone Learning depends on many factors, such as size and negotiations."
"I would rate the price at four on a scale from one to five because it's a very expensive product."
"I rate the price of Cornerstone Learning a four out of five. There are not any additional costs other than the standard licensing fees"
"The solution's pricing depends on the specific requirements."
"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."
"This is a cost-effective solution."
"I'm not aware of the costs. It must have been something for which we paid. Every single employee in the company had some kind of access to Cornerstone because that's how they got to their training."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
57%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
Manufacturing Company
4%
Educational Organization
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
Retailer
7%
Real Estate/Law Firm
5%
 

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
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