Illumeo
Pro
Con
Verdict
The Illumeo platform offers nearly 12,000 hours of CPE for 28 kinds of certifications through on-demand courses and live webinars, as well as a comprehensive CPE compliance tracker, micro-certifications, and plenty of interaction with instructors. The downside is that their webinar schedule is fairly rigid in the middle of workdays, so if you can’t make their designated webinar times, you won’t be able to take advantage of those offerings. The price is just right at $299 a year for an unlimited individual membership and $199 a year per person (or lower in volume) for an unlimited enterprise membership (which includes a bevy of firm/company features).
Intro
Illumeo’s platform offers an incredible variety of on-demand courses, a good number of live webinars, and an easy-to-use platform, but their webinars aren’t flexible and aren’t always available on-demand.
Courses/CPE – Thousands
The platform currently has nearly 1,300 on-demand courses available, with more added every week. Courses are available on the online platform, and they offer CPE for an incredible 28 types of certifications, including CPA, CFP, CIA, and CMA, among many others, for a total of over 10,000 CPE credit hours altogether.
They offer more than 100 webinars a year on a wide variety of topics. Length varies from 1-2 hours, however, the webinars are only on certain days and times (typically Tuesday/Thursday at 11:00am PT/2:00pm ET). If that doesn’t work with your schedule, you’re out of luck with Illumeo ‘live’ webinars.
Platform/Features – Efficient
Illumeo’s platform is simple but incredibly effective. Both the website and courses are mobile-friendly, and the webinar platform, which is LogMeIn’s GoToWebinar, offers browser-based participation and a mobile app (that works most of the time), so you can truly use Illumeo from anywhere. All courses offer ratings and reviews and there are lots of both, so you can see what others have thought about a course before you decide to take it. Illumeo has received very positive vetted reviews from firm/corporate users on Capterra. Checking your CPE certificates is a breeze with their activity tracker and comprehensive compliance monitor, which also tracks how much CPE you’ve earned and how much CPE you still need for the year/reporting period based on your designation type (e.g. CPA, CMA, etc.) and authoritative body (e.g. state CPA society) requirements. Their compliance monitor covers all 50 states for CPA plus about a dozen other designations in accounting, audit and related areas.
Illumeo’s competency assessment capability has over 200 benchmark jobs to compare to and a number of assessment models to choose from. Their ‘course recommendation engine’ suggests courses for you to help you easily create a customized development plan. Likewise, their compliance monitor recommends courses which help you complete your CPE requirements. The platform really helps you find courses you need for career development and CPE needs.
Illumeo offers 27 micro-certifications, including in Sarbanes-Oxley, Internal Controls, Excel, Rev Rec, AP, and Cyber Security among others. There is a free individual ‘trial’ membership that lets you sample 12 (CPE-free) courses, and Illumeo webinars are always free. You can earn CPE with those webinars, but only if you show up live — they aren’t available on-demand, that’s what their pre-recorded courses are for. Although most of their webinars do have an on-demand CPE course equivalent in their regular course library.
Finally, Illumeo manages to offer instructor interaction even with on-demand courses. We have not seen anyone else offer this. If you have a question about a course, any course, you can simply ask the instructor. Response times are quick and it's included in the regular subscription fee.
UX – One of the best
Illumeo’s user experience is one of the best on the market. Once you log in, you can easily find courses and webinars, access your development plan, assessments, compliance monitor summary, completed activity, CPE certificates, certificate programs, or other offerings. Illumeo also provides how-to videos to help you understand how to use their platform, though it’s so easy to use you probably won’t need them. All of the platform’s capability is available for smart phones, tablets and any kind of PC or Mac. It’s truly universal.
Cost - Affordable
The platform offers three levels of membership: free, individual, and enterprise. The free membership includes 12 pre-selected, on-demand courses (no CPE), unlimited free CPE webinars, one competency self-assessment, and the activity tracker. The individual subscription package includes unlimited on-demand courses from their subscription library, unlimited webinars, unlimited competency self-assessments, their CPE compliance monitor with unlimited designations, certificate program discounts, and full email/phone support for $299 a year. The enterprise package is for firms and companies and offers everything from the individual subscription and ‘manager-driven’ 360º competency assessments, company-wide Compliance MonitorTM reporting, certificate program discounts, priority support, and a wide variety of team/firm capabilities including full user management and reporting, single sign-on and 'core' LMS integration for $99 to $199 per person a year depending on volume, duration of contract, and entity type (they have special, even lower, non-profit and government pricing).
Team/Firm Capability – Best
The platform offers top of the line team and firm features, including their wide variety of courses that go well beyond just CPE for CPAs to really cover all audit, accounting and corporate finance professionals, dozens of CPE varieties, blended learning (live and online) with over 200 instructors available for live training, custom company courses, unlimited custom user groups/tagging, unlimited custom curricula (course combinations), collaborative development plans, managed, 360 degree employee competency assessments with automated course recommendations, hierarchical user management, full reporting, and dashboards.
Illumeo offers corporate LMS integration and SSO (single sign-on), internal (client) course creation and CPE for client built-courses, and creation and calendaring of internal CPE events/webinars.
Summary
Illumeo is one of the top CPE solutions for both individuals and companies/firms. With nearly 1,300 on-demand courses, weekly live webinars, and an easy-to-use platform, it’s a great choice for anyone looking for CPE. And we mean anyone, since Illumeo provides 28 different kinds of CPE. Unfortunately, their webinar scheduled times are limited, their chosen webinar platform (GoToWebinar) isn’t perfect, and they don’t offer limited course packages for lower cost, although their “all-in” pricing is extremely competitive as it is. Overall, the benefits more than outweigh the drawbacks, making Illumeo a strong option to consider for CPE as an individual or a company/firm, and truly a best value solution overall.
