Mindsmith
Mindsmith is an AI-native eLearning authoring tool that turns documents, slides and videos into interactive lessons. Instructional designers assemble 30+ interactive elements in the browser, then publish by link, SCORM, xAPI or LTI in 70+ languages.
What is Mindsmith?
Mindsmith is an eLearning authoring tool that describes itself as AI-native: instead of bolting a generator onto a slide editor, it puts the AI that writes, designs, grades and translates inside the editor itself. The publisher frames the workflow in four steps: Generate, Author, Share, Analyze. Generate. An agent turns presentations, videos, lesson plans, subject-matter expert material, SOP documents or existing Mindsmith lessons into a course aligned with learning objectives. Storyboards keep the author in control, and you can tell the agent to follow the source verbatim or let it rewrite. Custom skills tune the agent to your own practice. Author. The editor is tile-based and drag-and-drop, with a library of more than 30 interactive elements: multiple choice, AI-graded short answers, flashcards, matching, ranking, sorting, timelines, charts, hot buttons, carousels, interactive video, branching scenarios, conversations and simulations among them. Teams work together in real time with visible cursors and inline comments, and brand colours, fonts and logos can be applied throughout. Share. A lesson goes out as a direct link, a dynamic SCORM package that updates without re-export, static SCORM 1.2 and 2004, xAPI, LTI, an API, an iframe, a PDF or a web export. Colleagues can review it without an account, and learners never need one either. Analyze. Completion rates, score breakdowns, answer distribution and per-learner results are built in, with PDF export. Around that core sit translation into 70+ languages with automatic device-language detection, DeepL glossaries and XLIFF round-trips for human review, a single SCORM package serving every language; custom AI avatars, animated video and ElevenLabs or OpenAI text-to-speech narration; an MCP connector that lets you drive Mindsmith from Copilot, Claude or ChatGPT; and accessibility work claimed against WCAG 2.2, with NVDA, JAWS and VoiceOver support. Everything runs in the browser, with nothing to install on either side. Enterprise buyers are offered SSO/SAML, multiple workspaces, custom permissions and an SLA, alongside a SOC 2 claim. Founded in 2022 by Zack Allen and Ethan Webb, the platform launched in 2024 and claims 16,000+ eLearning designers.
What it does
- Generate an interactive lesson from a document, presentation, video or SOP
- Assemble it from 30+ interactive tiles: quizzes, flashcards, branching scenarios, timelines, charts, simulations
- Publish by shared link, dynamic SCORM, xAPI, LTI or iframe
- Translate an entire course into 70+ languages in one click
- Track engagement: completion rates, answer distribution and per-learner results
- Add voice or text AI conversations, text-to-speech narration and animated video
- Drive lesson creation and editing from an external agent through the MCP server
When to use Mindsmith / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Mindsmith is the right fit.
When to use Mindsmith
- Instructional designers and L&D teams producing course content at volume
- Corporate training teams running onboarding and upskilling programmes
- Compliance, safety and regulatory trainers in industrial settings, as with construction group Laing O'Rourke
- Higher education teachers who want interactive rather than static courses
- Multilingual organisations that need a single SCORM package to serve every language
When not to use Mindsmith
- Organisations whose training falls under HIPAA, FISMA or GLBA, which the terms explicitly exclude
- Anyone under 18, since the privacy policy rules out collecting data from minors
- Buyers who want to trial a paid plan before committing: there is a free plan and a 30-day money-back guarantee, but no free trial
- Teams needing more than 10 self-serve seats, who have to go through sales
- Users who want a mobile or desktop application, as everything runs in the browser
How to use Mindsmith
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account on the Mindsmith web app; the free plan requires no credit card and includes 450 one-off AI credits
- Work entirely in the browser, with nothing to install for authors or learners
- Upload a source document: a presentation, a video, a lesson plan, an SOP or expert material
- Let the agent draft a storyboard, then the lesson, choosing whether it follows the source verbatim or rewrites it
- Refine the result in the tile editor and add or reorder interactive elements
- Invite colleagues for real-time collaboration and inline comments
- Translate the course from the translation manager built into the editor toolbar
- Publish: switch on link sharing, export a SCORM or xAPI package, connect your LMS or embed an iframe
- Review the analytics and export them to PDF
- Optionally drive lesson creation and editing from Copilot, Claude or ChatGPT through the MCP server
Pros & Cons
Pros
- The AI lives inside the editor rather than in a bolted-on side panel
- Dynamic SCORM keeps the LMS pointed at the live version of the content, with no re-export
- A single multilingual package covers every language, with the learner's device language detected automatically
- An unusually wide interactive library (30+ elements), including voice conversations, simulations and branching scenarios
- A permanent free plan with unlimited sharing, subject to a compulsory 'Built with Mindsmith' badge
- Nothing to install, and neither learners nor reviewers need an account
- Documented accessibility (WCAG 2.2, screen readers) and an explicit clause stating that user inputs are not used to train models
Cons
- No free trial of the paid plans: only a free tier and a 30-day money-back guarantee
- Credit-based AI: monthly credits do not roll over and unlimited generation is reserved for Enterprise
- Self-serve stops at 10 seats; beyond that sales must be involved, and Enterprise is a bespoke annual contract with a minimum licence commitment
- The privacy policy dates from August 2023 and was generated with Termly, far behind the March 2026 terms
- No Article 27 EU representative, no DPO, no public DPA and no subprocessor list; the privacy contact is a co-founder's personal address
- The Vanta trust portal is advertised but unreachable without an account, and the terms exclude HIPAA, FISMA and GLBA use
- No mobile or desktop app, no public API documentation despite an advertised API, and two different legal entities and addresses across the legal pages
Pricing & Plans
Mindsmith offers a permanent free plan at 0 USD. The lowest paid tier, Professional, is listed at 39.00 USD per author per month, billed annually at 468 USD; Business is listed at 65.00 USD per author per month, billed annually at 780 USD; Enterprise is quoted on request under an annual contract with a minimum licence commitment. The displayed figures are the annualised rates: a 'Save 20%' toggle indicates that a monthly billing option exists, but its rate is not rendered in the page's static markup and therefore remains unknown. All prices are per author, learners are always free and unlimited, and educators receive 30% off. Additional credits are sold at 1 USD for 50 credits, self-serve on the Business tier. There is no free trial; a 30-day money-back guarantee applies and subscriptions can be cancelled at any time from the billing portal.
- 450 AI credits at sign-up (one-off)
- unlimited content and sharing
- compulsory 'Built with Mindsmith' badge
- link
- embed and SCORM sharing
- lesson creation and editing
- basic chat and email support
- up to 10 members
- 2
- 000 AI credits per author per month
- badge removed
- text-to-speech narration
- custom branding and theming
- own logo
- scenario generation
- engagement metrics
- 5
- 000 AI credits per author per month
- self-serve credit top-ups
- real-time collaboration
- version history and staging
- PDF export of metrics
- ElevenLabs integration
- priority support
- unlimited AI generation
- SAML/SSO
- multiple workspaces and custom permissions
- multilingual modules
- SLA
- dedicated priority support
- custom seat count
- content generation and editing in 30 languages and SCORM export
- translation into any language on paid tiers
- xAPI reserved for Enterprise
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Mindsmith handles your data.
GDPR overview
Mindsmith never claims GDPR compliance in so many words. Its privacy policy does devote a section to the legal bases it relies on under the GDPR and the UK GDPR, namely consent, legal obligations and vital interests, and it lists the rights it recognises: access, a copy, rectification, erasure, restriction, portability and objection, plus withdrawal of consent at any time and the right to complain to a member-state authority, the UK ICO or the Swiss FDPIC. Requests go through a Termly form or by email. What is absent matters just as much: no Article 27 EU representative is designated, no data protection officer is named, and the privacy contact is a co-founder's personal address. The policy itself is dated 18 August 2023 and was generated with Termly, nearly three years before the March 2026 terms. A Vanta trust portal is advertised but requires authentication.
Who owns the data?
The privacy policy lists what Mindsmith collects: email addresses, names, job titles, usernames, passwords, contact preferences, billing addresses and card numbers. Payment details are held by Stripe rather than by the publisher. Signing in through a social network hands Mindsmith your name, email address, friends list and profile picture. The site's own Content and Marks remain the publisher's property, while you stay responsible for whatever the AI produces on your behalf, including third-party and intellectual property rights. Mindsmith states that it has not disclosed, sold or shared personal information with third parties in the preceding twelve months, and undertakes not to sell or share it in future.
Reuse rights
Mindsmith processes personal data to create and authenticate accounts, deliver, improve and administer the service, communicate with users, prevent fraud, keep the service secure and meet legal obligations. For visitors in the EEA and the United Kingdom it relies on consent, legal obligations and vital interests as legal bases. Technical data is gathered automatically: IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language, referring URL, country and usage logs, through cookies, web beacons and pixels covered by a separate Cookie Notice. Do-Not-Track signals are not honoured. Clause 14 of the policy states that user inputs are not stored, saved or recorded in order to train artificial intelligence models. Data may change hands in a merger, asset sale, financing or acquisition. On the output side, the terms make the user responsible for the compliance of AI-generated content, including third-party and intellectual property rights.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Mindsmith makes exactly one statement about where data lives: European hosting, in the 'Global ready' block of its homepage. No country, region or cloud provider is named anywhere on the site, and no hosting architecture is described. The publisher is a US company established in Utah, so a transatlantic flow is implied but never documented. Payment data is not held by Mindsmith at all: card details are stored by Stripe. No subprocessor list is published, and the Vanta trust portal that might detail the infrastructure cannot be opened without an account, so nothing can be corroborated from outside. A DNS lookup on the domain resolves to an address in Amsterdam operated by Amazon, but that record is an anycast CDN edge node, not a storage location: it says nothing about where customer data actually resides and must not be read as a hosting country. In short, European hosting is asserted, not evidenced. Buyers with a data residency requirement should ask in writing for the hosting region, the provider and a subprocessor list before contracting.
Where Mindsmith works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Mindsmith.
- Two legal identities and two addresses coexist across the legal pages: 'Mindsmith Learning, Inc.' at 3400 N Ashton Blvd, Ste 410, Lehi UT (terms, March 2026) and 'Mindsmith, LLC' at 800 W University Parkway, Orem UT (postal block of the August 2023 privacy policy). Establish which entity you are contracting with before signing
- The compliance paperwork lags the product: a privacy policy nearly three years older than the terms, no Article 27 EU representative, no named DPO, no public DPA or subprocessor list, and a co-founder's personal address used for data subject requests
- SOC 2 is claimed on the homepage but cannot be verified publicly, since the Vanta trust portal requires authentication. Treat it as a claim, not as an attestation
- European hosting rests on a single homepage line, with no country, region or provider named: thin ground for a data residency requirement
- The terms exclude HIPAA, FISMA and GLBA use, impose AAA arbitration in Utah and waive class actions
- Costs are hard to forecast: AI credits do not roll over, unlimited generation is Enterprise-only, and the monthly billing rate is not published in plain HTML
- Leaning on the agent to produce whole courses can erode instructional judgement, and the terms leave the user responsible for the compliance of AI-generated content, including third-party and intellectual property rights, so generated material still needs human review
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Very low to get started. Sign-up is immediate, no credit card is required, and 450 AI credits are granted on the spot. Nothing is installed: authors, reviewers and learners all work in the browser, and neither learners nor reviewers need an account. The publisher claims no design skills or complex tooling are needed. Effort appears at the edges: pushing SCORM, xAPI or LTI packages into a learning management system is a standard but technical step handled on the LMS side, and SSO/SAML is Enterprise-only. Mindsmith says a partner developer can complete a product integration in about a day.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Mindsmith
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Alternatives
Tools that compete with or complement Mindsmith.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free trial?
Does anything need to be installed?
How many seats does each plan include?
Is there a cap on the number of learners?
Do unused AI credits roll over?
Which languages are supported?
How do I deliver a course to my LMS?
Is my content used to train AI models?
What security credentials does Mindsmith advertise?
Is there an affiliate programme?
Should you pick Mindsmith?
Mindsmith is a serious, actively developed product with a clear position: AI-assisted eLearning authoring for people who build courses for a living. Its distinctive points are real. Dynamic SCORM keeps a learning management system connected to the live version of a lesson instead of a frozen export. A single multilingual package serves every language, with the learner's device language detected automatically. The interactive library is unusually wide, more than thirty elements including voice conversations, branching scenarios and simulations, and the AI sits inside the editor rather than in a side panel. Everything runs in a browser, and learners need no account. The main reservation concerns not the product but the paperwork around it. The privacy policy is dated August 2023 and was generated with Termly, nearly three years before the March 2026 terms, and it predates features the site now sells. No EU Article 27 representative is designated, no data protection officer is named, and the privacy contact is a co-founder's personal address. There is no public DPA and no subprocessor list, and the Vanta trust portal that would carry the SOC 2 evidence cannot be opened without an account. Two legal entities and two addresses appear across the legal pages. None of this proves a problem, but a procurement team will want answers. The pricing model deserves attention too: AI credits do not roll over on monthly billing, unlimited generation is an Enterprise privilege, and the monthly rate itself is not published in plain HTML. For L&D teams and instructional designers the fit is good. For anything touching HIPAA, FISMA or GLBA, the terms rule it out.
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