We asked experts in the industry to rank key LMS requirements and see which they ranked as most important.
When it comes to selecting a new learning management system, like with any new tool, it can quickly become overwhelming.
You go into the process with a very set list of features that you need, and a clear objective for your platform.
But once you go through a few demos, you can quickly become bewildered by sales teams and peer-pressured into getting an LMS with all the bells and whistles, just because it’s trending.
At BuildEmpire, we believe in creating a learning platform that is specific to your needs, not the needs of the wider L&D community.
So, we took it back to basics to ask what the key LMS requirements are.
What are we asking?
Every year, we look at the biggest L&D trends.
But what we don’t cover are the core fundamentals that are needed in an LMS each and every year.
Some trends come and go.
Core functionality is forever.
It’s easy to forget that you need your LMS to automatically assign new users to your onboarding course content when you see a jazzy new feature.
So, alongside our L&D trending features, we are also sharing the core LMS features you need every year, no matter who you are.
Key LMS requirements: ranked
We took what we thought were some of the biggest LMS requirements for 2026 and asked you to rank them.
They included: security, design, mobile readiness, social learning and personalisation.
We asked you to rank them from 1 to 10 with 1 being the most important LMS requirement and 10 being the least important.
Here’s what the data told us:
| LMS Requirement | Avg Rank |
| Security and compliance | 2.4 |
| Design and integrations | 2.8 |
| Analytics and reporting | 3.6 |
| Microlearning and learning in the flow of work | 4.4 |
| Personalisation and learning pathways | 4.6 |
| Core audience management and segmentation | 6.0 |
| Generative learning content | 6.0 |
| Social learning and community | 6.6 |
| Learner engagement and gamification | 7.4 |
| Mobile and offline readiness | 7.8 |
There are some clear priorities from these results.
TL:DR
Across respondents, security and compliance emerged as the dominant LMS priority, followed by design and integrations and analytics and reporting. These capabilities show the strongest cross-respondent alignment and appear to be decisive evaluation criteria.
Mobile/offline access, gamification, and social learning consistently ranked lowest, indicating they are viewed as secondary or non-critical in LMS selection for this group
Top LMS requirements
Security and compliance was ranked number #1 the most out of all our of listed LMS requirements. It was also never ranked below #7. This makes it a strong consensus item and it’s probably one that is often looked over, especially by LMS providers.
Design and integrations were consistently voted in the top 3 most important of LMS requirements. This is really interesting as it highlights that its seen as strategically important, rather than just basic LMS hygiene.
And finally, analytics and reporting came up consistently in the upper-mid placement from respondents and was rarely seen as low priority.
What’s the trend here? Well, in a way we’re going against trends.
Our top ranked LMS requirements for 2026 seem to be LMS bread and butter.
It could be that getting these basics right is more important than ever.
Low priority LMS requirements
Consistently pushed to the bottom of LMS requirements were mobile and offline readiness that showed up in #7-10 by everyone questioned.
Note this may not be a trend, but just could just be an indicator of the people questioned who don’t need to worry about mobile learning.
Two others that showed up consistently in the lower half of priorities were social learning and learner engagement.
Again, there’s a degree of nuance here. What might be important to one L&D team might not be at all important to another. But things like security and user interface are always important.
Overall, foundational platform capabilities show strong consensus across respondents, while newer or more innovative features display greater variation in perceived importance.
What the experts said
We put a general call out to get this data, and to also request some quotes on why these requirements are important.
Franscesc Felipe at Berthold ranked analytics and reporting as the most important LMS requirement because: “Data visibility is needed for learners because leaders need to be able to confirm their take-up of skills, readiness for accreditation, and performance change at scale.”
Andrew Swiler, Founder at Answer Maniac agreed, adding, “Future AI recommendation engines will not care about gamification; they will rank learning platforms based on the verifiable effectiveness of the content inside, making data integrity the primary asset.”
Meanwhile, Rafay Baloch, CEO and Founder of REDSECLABS had this to say: “A learning system should check who people are, control what they can do, show protection by watching activities closely and passing regular checks.
‘A bad LMS treats your data like it doesn’t matter. That’s not teaching. That’s inviting trouble.’”
Rick Elmore, CEO & Founder at Simply Noted felt that core audience management tools were the key LMS requirement for L&D teams,
He said this about it: “Core audience management and segmentation are the single most important LMS requirement for 2026 because every effective learning experience starts with knowing exactly who the learner is.
“We know how personalisation only works when you deeply understand your audience whether that’s customers, sales teams, or internal staff. An LMS that can accurately segment learners by role, experience level, behaviour, or goals enables targeted training instead of one-size-fits-all content. Without this foundation, features like analytics, personalisation, or engagement tools lose impact.
“As workforces become more distributed and skill needs change faster, organisations need learning systems that adapt to individuals at scale. In 2026, the LMS platforms that win will be the ones that treat learner data as a strategic asset, not an afterthought.”
Wrapping up
Thank you to all of our contributors to this piece.
We wanted to wrap it up with a note from Nick Leffler, Instructional Designer and Founder of techstructional who had this really poignant remark: “I added another one and put it at number one. That’s because it’s more important than anything else on the list and what every LMS should be focused on first and foremost.
“Ease of access to learning content is essential because LMSs have a horrible reputation for being clunky and difficult to access content. And it’s true!
“Content should be easy to search, navigate, and link to from various sources (including from within an application) without issue. That includes all content, including videos, job aids, and any other type of training content and/or help content. If you have an issue or need to learn how to do something, there should be one place to stop, not two or three.”
We hadn’t included ease of access as a feature persay (though we did include UX and design). However it raises a really important question.
Which is more essential? How your users use your platform or what your users platform use on your platform?
We think we know which one we would choose.