Tag Archives: market share

11th Annual LMS Data Update

The fall 2023 US LMS market share data referenced in this post is available for purchase. Additionally, a complete historical data set of all LMS usage data dating back to 2013 is also available for purchase.

For the 11th year, Client Stat has tracked and trended the Learning Management Systems (LMSs) in use by higher education institutions in the United States. Our methodology involves identifying all LMSs used at scale to actively teach courses. LMSs used by individual instructors or for individual courses, decommissioned LMSs, or LMSs clearly used for sales or demonstration purposes are removed. We use institutions with 500 student enrollments as our threshold benchmark for public reporting purposes. Schools below this size tend to vary widely in technology usage and skew results. These institutions, for example, disproportionately focus on the trades, the arts, theology, commercial truck driving, mechanical repair, or applied medical fields that don’t lend themselves well to online instructional delivery.

Post-pandemic enrollments are shifting

Each year we also update our enrollment data with the latest available from IPEDS. Within our data set, this year’s latest provisional data shows a steep drop-off in enrollments among the smallest institutions and a significant consolidation at around 500 student enrollments. Many of the smallest schools ceased operations, merged, or consolidated to survive during the pandemic.

For-profit institutions are disappearing

Besides the smallest schools, there is another segment of higher education institutions that is also collapsing – for-profit institutions. There are better sources to learn more about what is happening in this space and why, but no LMS vendor has been immune to losses in this category. Note that when these institutions shut down, the students can reappear elsewhere – for example Kaplan’s former enrollments are now incorporated into Purdue University Global’s. Ashford University is now University of Arizona Global Campus. For LMS vendors that charge per student enrollment, the loss of a for-profit institution as a customer does not necessarily mean a complete loss of the related revenue.

Canvas continues to dominate

Despite the uncertainty and changing landscape, Instructure’s Canvas continues to pick up new institutions at a consistent, steady clip. Similarly, D2L Brightspace does too even though it has slightly dipped due to the for-profit losses noted above. Blackboard Learn, Moodle, and Sakai all continue pre-existing downward trends. Of LMSs in the “Other” category, Schoology (acquired by PowerSchool) and Jenzabar’s LMS product are the most popular. No schools appear to be implementing net-new home-built or custom LMSs.

Noting that some smaller schools still do not use a LMS, Instructure Canvas continues to lead by more than double its nearest competitor by both number of institutions and enrollments. Blackboard Learn maintains second place by institutions and enrollments. D2L Brightspace continues to approach Moodle for third place by number of institutions while maintaining a healthy lead over Moodle by number of enrollments.

Interested in using this data set for your own research? The fall 2023 US LMS market share data referenced in this post is available for purchase. Additionally, a complete historical data set of all LMS usage data dating back to 2013 is also available for purchase.

LMS Data – Spring 2023 Updates

The spring 2023 US LMS market share data referenced in this post is available for purchase. Additionally, a complete historical data set of all LMS usage data dating back to 2013 is also available for purchase.

Every spring and fall for the past decade, Client Stat has benchmarked LMS market share data in the US. The spring analysis detects changes in LMS that happen over winter break. The fall analysis detects changes that happen over summer. As is consistent with previous years, this year there have been fewer changes over winter when compared to typical summer shifts. Overall, the data shows the pace of change to be generally slowing.

Instructure Canvas continues to lead with a market share almost double that of its nearest competitor by number of institutions (and more than double by number of enrolled students). The footprint of this solution continues to grow. D2L Brightspace also continues to grow and narrow its position in relation to Moodle which continues a long, steady decline. Brightspace has already surpassed Moodle by number of student enrollments to claim the #3 spot by this measure. Blackboard Learn also continues a decline that, consistent with general trends, appears to be slowing.