Firmwater

What Firmwater is

Firmwater is an LMS built for training companies rather than for a single employer. Its homepage headline calls it the LMS for training companies, and the pitch is to "Easily sell and deliver your courses to individuals, teams, or entire organizations." The company behind it, Firmwater Inc., lists an address in Toronto, Ontario, and the homepage says "We've been doing this for 20 years and have a true appreciation for the challenges you face."

Two ideas run through the product. The first is multi-tenancy: one training provider runs many branded LMS sites, one per client organization, from a single back end. The second is selling: Firmwater connects to Shopify so a training company can sell courses, seats and subscriptions and have buyers start training straight after checkout. The homepage puts its scale at 2,000+ client sites, 400k active users and 2MIL+ course completions.

The site describes two kinds of customer. One is training providers "delivering courses across multiple client organizations, including in HR, security, health & safety, workforce development, and more." The other is training companies "selling courses to individuals and businesses through Shopify-powered eCommerce." The homepage adds that the platform works "Whether you’re training internal employees, customers, or partners."

Branded LMS sites for every client

The multi-tenant LMS is the core of the product. According to the homepage, Firmwater lets a training provider "create an unlimited number of branded LMS sites, each serving an independent user community with its own business rules and data, and manage them all through one clean, simple interface." For a company that delivers safety training to many client firms, each client gets its own branded site and its own users, while the provider maintains one set of courses.

The menu summarizes the rest of the feature set in one line each: User Management to "Create unique user experiences for every client and learner," Content Management to "Maintain complete control of your courses and content," Learner Engagement to "Track career advancement and recognition for learners," Reporting to "Use data and analytics to measure training activity," and Integrations to "Extend functionality and share data with other apps."

Content and course building

Firmwater does not try to be an authoring tool. The homepage puts it plainly: "You provide the content; we provide the delivery system." It says "Firmwater supports all authoring tools capable of publishing to (SCORM)," and the menu promises SCORM compliance to "Keep content accessible on any platform."

Courses are put together with the Course Builder, which "lets clients assemble multiple modules and files into a coherent learning experience." The company describes its approach as modular, which it says makes courses "easier to maintain and update for different user groups, and to correct technical issues." A customer quote on the homepage shows why that matters for a provider with many clients. Angela Gougeon, Founder and President of Online jPrep Inc, says Firmwater lets jPrep make changes "to a master module through a single interface, and have the updates cascade down to all client courses automatically."

Selling through Shopify

Firmwater has partnered with Shopify, which the homepage calls "one of the world’s leading eCommerce platforms." Training companies design their storefront in Shopify, post courses for sale and take payment there, while the Firmwater Shopify App "provides tight integration with native Shopify features as well as numerous third-party extensions." Courses can also be sold "from any website with embedded checkout buttons," so a company does not have to move its main site to Shopify.

The sell-courses page lists what a training company can offer:

• Individual purchases with instant access, and bulk seat purchases for businesses.
• Managers who get "instant access to distribute seats and monitor progress."
• Single courses, complete programs, bundles of several courses, and tiered offerings "for different budgets, industries, or learning needs."
• Subscription plans "with flexible access periods," giving subscribers "access to an entire course library," with businesses able to reallocate seats.

The same page walks through the checkout. Buyers choose courses and the number of seats, then enter payment and contact details in Shopify's checkout. The Company field entered at checkout becomes a Location in the LMS, which groups that company's orders and users. The order confirmation page links straight to the LMS, which captures the buyer's name and e-mail from checkout; new users set a password and go straight to their courses. Seats can then be assigned through three methods: "adding existing users, inviting new users by email, or generating invitation QR codes for enrollment." The company argues that faster starts after purchase improve completion rates and customer satisfaction.

Behind the store, one course library feeds every product. The page says a provider can "Reuse the same courses across bundles, packages, and subscriptions" and "Manage updates from one centralized course library," so an update reaches every bundle that contains the course. Marketing runs through Shopify's own tools: promoting bundles and discounts, e-mail follow-up, and turning first purchases into repeat customers.

A company blog post on selling courses through Shopify gives practical advice in the same vein, from building product pages that answer a buyer's questions (how long a course takes, how long access lasts, whether it leads to a certification) to awareness through industry groups, ads and affiliates, calls to action, and post-sale follow-up such as collecting reviews and recommending further courses.

Support and customers

Service is a big part of how Firmwater sells itself. The blog post says "We care too much about our customers’ businesses to have them wade through forums and chatbots for help," and the homepage testimonials all stress the team. Bradley S. Craig, Owner of Between Two Homes, says his company "has been with Firmwater since late 2015" and that its customer service "beats any company I’ve worked with in the past by leaps and bounds." Russell Willmon, CEO at Defencify, contrasts it with large LMS providers where "you’re just a small fish in their big pond, and you get forgotten." Hal Richman, COO at Blue House Energy, calls Firmwater a caring and "very responsive company."

The site also offers interactive LMS tours, case studies, guides, videos, white papers, documentation and technical support, and a live demo can be booked from any page.

Pricing

Firmwater has a Pricing page in its main menu, and the company invites prospects to "Book a no-obligation consultation directly with our team today" or book a live demo.

Who it suits

Firmwater fits training companies whose business is selling the same courses to many client organizations: compliance, HR, security, health and safety or workforce development providers that want each client on its own branded site. It also suits providers that sell to both individuals and businesses and want Shopify to handle the store, payments and marketing while the LMS handles seats, enrollment and progress. A provider that already builds courses in a SCORM authoring tool gets a delivery system that does not ask it to rebuild content. A solo creator with one course and no business buyers may find the multi-tenant design more than they need, since the product is built around clients, seats and branded sites.