One LMS for salon groups, beauty schools and brand academies

Map the business before you build courses

Start with structure, not content. Make each salon or shop a branch, each franchisee or partner salon an organization, and roles such as stylist, barber, associate, front desk and educator into groups. A franchise owner then manages their own people without seeing the salon across town, while HQ sees the network (more on that split under franchise training).

Teach technique on video, then check it

Film the demo once. The Recording Studio captures camera, screen or both in the browser, and interactive video adds chapters, overlay notes and timestamped questions. Ask which section comes next in a foil pattern, and a wrong answer rewinds to the step that was missed.

Hands-on skill still needs an educator's eye. Aveda's salon education guidance puts the classroom to hands-on split at about 20:80, so let the platform carry the theory. Take attendance at model nights by QR code, then grade a written assignment against a rubric (AI suggests a grade, the educator approves). In exams, image hotspot questions ask a stylist to click the right zone on a head diagram, and video answer questions let them explain a technique on camera for the educator to watch.

Safety refreshers and state CE rules

Salon groups carry two kinds of required training. First, workplace safety. OSHA's guidance on hair smoothing products tells salon employers to train workers on formaldehyde hazards, and the formaldehyde standard requires that training at initial assignment and at least annually for exposed staff. Give that course a 12-month certificate validity: the certificate flags as expiring soon in its last 30 days, an automation email goes out, and retaking the course renews it. Assign it with a due date, and managers work from the overdue report.

Second, license renewal CE, which each state sets. Since September 1, 2025, Texas requires 4 hours at renewal for licensees with under 15 years (1 hour of sanitation, 1 of human trafficking prevention and 2 of related topics), and barbers now fall under CE too. Florida requires 10 hours, including 3 of sanitation and sterilization and 1 of HIV/AIDS. Illinois requires an hour of sexual harassment prevention at renewal. LMS Advisor can deliver those courses, hold learners to a lesson minimum time and issue certificates, but it is not a CE ledger and no board has approved it. The registered provider reports rosters itself, and Texas providers must file completion reports within seven days.

Schools: online theory and mock boards

Texas lets schools deliver up to 50% of a course's hours as distance theory, which is 500 of the 1,000 hours for a cosmetology operator or Class A barber, and TDLR expects those hours tracked with the same verification method as attendance. Alabama's rules effective May 15, 2026 allow distance learning for up to 50% of total course work. LMS Advisor gives you sequential lessons, lesson minimum time, attendance and completion exports, and your board decides whether that meets the rule. Keep your clock-hour student system for official hours. For written boards, draw mock exams from question pools and proctor them. The trade school guide covers other career programs.

Brands: certifying pros you do not employ

Brand academies train stylists who work for someone else. The Exams module has its own candidate portal, so a stylist can be invited by email and certified without a course enrollment, and a salon owner can confirm the certificate on its verification page. Tiered programs are common: Redken's career path, as one industry example, requires each level before the next. LMS Advisor does not enforce course prerequisites, so build tiers as ordered learning paths and control enrollment through WooCommerce, the API or an admin. See certification programs for exam setup.

How the options compare

Where LMS Advisor is not the right fit

We do not do booking, POS, payroll or commission. There is no ready-made cutting, color or barbering video library and no publisher curriculum, so you record or import your own (AI can draft lessons from your SOPs for an educator to approve). Stylists get an installable web app rather than a store app, and lessons need a connection. We are not an LTI consumer, so publisher tools such as CIMA cannot run inside the platform, we do not track license renewal dates or CE hours across providers, and there is no skills matrix or store leaderboard. Exam certificates do not expire, so use course certificates for anything that renews.