Migrate From Arlo Training Management System: 2026 Guide

Arlo is well-liked in the industry. If you are considering a move, it is almost certainly not because the product is bad.

It is usually because you have outgrown it, or because the pricing model has started working against you. Arlo charges a subscription for admin licences plus a fee for every registration processed, which means your platform cost rises in direct proportion to how well your business does. Combine that with reporting limits, restricted control over your checkout and registration pages, and e-learning that sits behind paid add-ons, and there is a point at which the arithmetic changes.

Migrating from Arlo training system is technically well supported. There is a public API, CSV exports and a documented import path. There are also two specific limits, a 200 record export cap and an XML-only authenticated API, that will shape how you plan the extraction. And because Arlo customers typically embed their course catalogue and booking flow directly into their own website, this migration carries a risk the others do not: you can damage your organic traffic and your online sales if you handle the URLs carelessly.

Budget six to ten weeks for a mid-sized provider.

Should you move off Arlo?

Some honest reasons to stay.

If your volumes are modest, the per-registration model is cheap. If you value a product that works reliably without much administration, Arlo is genuinely good at that. And if your complaint is that the e-learning is thin, remember that Arlo is a training management system first, with content authoring and SCORM hosting sold as separate modules. That is a design choice, not a defect, and our explainer on LMS versus TMS covers why the categories differ.

The reasons providers do move:

Cost scales with volume. Published pricing runs roughly 132 US dollars a month for the entry tier up to around 302 for Enterprise, with about 2.15 US dollars charged per paid registration and around 1.07 per free registration. E-learning authoring and SCORM hosting are additional monthly fees, with SCORM hosting also charging per enrolment. For a provider processing thousands of registrations a year, run the calculation. Some find the total is competitive. Others find they are paying a transaction fee on their own success.

Reporting hits limits. According to Arlo’s own reports documentation, custom fields only appear on reports tagged as Advanced, advanced reports are capped at 75 fields by default, and the attendance register caps at 30 sessions per course. For simple operations these limits never surface. For complex programmes they surface constantly.

Limited control over the customer-facing experience. Reviewers consistently mention restricted flexibility on branding, checkout and registration form design, limited SEO control over course pages, and no support for tiered pricing structures. Interface labels are English only, which matters if you operate multilingually.

Operational friction. Editing a registration often means deleting and re-entering it. There is no bulk registration across multiple sessions. Per-session notifications are not available. Individually small, cumulatively expensive if your team does these things every day.

Feature gating. SSO and SAML, advanced reporting, automated certificates and unlimited read-only users sit on the Enterprise tier. If you need one of them, you may be paying a large step-up for a single feature. Our piece on single sign-on benefits and security is worth reading if SSO is what is driving your tier.

If none of that describes you, staying is a perfectly reasonable answer.

Arlo’s data model, mapped

Arlo’s structure is clean and will feel familiar. Note the terminology gap between the interface and the API: the UI mostly says course, while the API calls the same object an Event.

The hierarchy is Course Template, then Course or Event, then Event Session, then Registration, with Contacts belonging to Organisations.

Waitlists are the item most often forgotten. They represent customers who want to buy from you and have raised their hand. Losing them in a migration is losing revenue, quietly.

How to export your data from Arlo

Arlo publishes real developer documentation, which puts it ahead of several competitors. There are two APIs, and they behave very differently.

The Pub API is public, unauthenticated and read-only. It returns JSON and exists to feed website widgets. Also, it exposes Events, Event Templates, Presenters, Venues, Online Activities and event search. It is useful for pulling your catalogue structure quickly, but it contains no customer data.

The Auth API is the one that matters for migration. It uses OAuth 2.0 with scopes, is designed for server-to-server use, and covers Contacts, Organisations, Registrations including custom fields, Event Sessions, Orders, Credit Notes, Payment References, Leads, Tags and Lists.

One detail worth knowing before your developer starts: the Auth API returns XML, not JSON. Most modern tooling assumes JSON, so factor in a little extra time for parsing. It is not a problem, just not what people expect.

Rate limiting is enforced and returns HTTP 429 responses, so any bulk extract needs to paginate politely rather than hammer the endpoint.

The 200 record export limit

This is the constraint that catches people out. Exporting contacts and organisations from the interface is capped at 200 records per page. If you have four thousand contacts, that is twenty separate exports, and stitching them together by hand is both tedious and error-prone.

The documented workaround is to use the Reports module instead, which exports to CSV and can be scheduled. For anything beyond a few hundred records, use reports or the API. Do not attempt the migration through paged UI exports.

Remember also that custom fields only appear on reports tagged as Advanced, and that advanced reports have a default cap of 75 fields. If you carry a lot of custom data, you may need several reports joined on a key rather than one comprehensive export.

A useful trick: read the import documentation

Arlo documents its CSV import templates thoroughly in its data migration overview, covering course templates, scheduled courses, contacts, presenters, organisations, registrations including historical ones, and certifications. Those templates are effectively a published map of Arlo’s own schema.

Reading the import documentation tells you what fields exist and what shape they take, which is exactly what you need for your mapping table. It is the fastest way to build an accurate field list.

Extraction sequence

• Pull reference data first: Contacts, Organisations, Presenters, Venues and Course Templates
• Pull scheduled data: Events, Event Sessions, Registrations with custom fields, and waitlists
• Pull commercial data: Orders, Credit Notes and Payment References
• Pull Certifications, checking expiry dates carefully
• Cross-check API totals against Reports exports, and investigate any variance before proceeding
• Capture webhook and Zapier configurations, because those are integrations you will need to rebuild

The part that is riskier for Arlo customers than anyone else: your website

Most Arlo customers are commercial training providers. Their website is their shop. Arlo supplies web controls, a WordPress plugin and embeddable widgets that put the course catalogue, individual course pages and the booking flow directly on the provider’s own domain.

That means changing platform can change:

• The URL of every course page you have, some of which may have been ranking in Google for years
• The structure of your catalogue pages and their internal linking
• Your booking flow, and therefore your conversion tracking, analytics goals and any advertising conversion events
• The markup that produces your rich results in search

Handled badly, you lose organic traffic and paid campaign tracking at the same moment you switch systems. That is a bad week.

What to do, before cutover rather than after:

• Crawl your existing site and export every course and catalogue URL. Do this while Arlo is still live.
• Pull your top-performing course pages from Google Search Console. Rank these by traffic and revenue so you know which ones must not break.
• Build a redirect map from every old URL to its equivalent on the new platform. Where there is no equivalent, redirect to the nearest relevant catalogue page rather than the homepage.
• Deploy redirects the same day you cut over. Not the week after.
• Rebuild your tracking and verify that conversion events fire correctly on the new booking flow before you take real money through it.
• Recheck structured data so your course listings continue to produce rich results.

If your replacement platform offers a native website integration, that materially reduces the rebuild. SimpliTrain’s WordPress integration exists for this reason.

One more Arlo-specific detail: reviewers have reported widget caching producing blank pages. If you have workarounds in place on your current site, document them, because you will not remember why that odd bit of code exists once the widget is gone.

What usually does not transfer

Email and certificate templates. Rebuilt, not migrated. Screenshot them all first.

Report configurations. Every saved report is configuration and will need rebuilding. List the reports the business genuinely runs on, which is always a shorter list than the reports that exist.

Website integration. Web controls, the WordPress plugin and any custom styling are replaced entirely.

Zapier connections and webhooks. Inventory and rebuild each one against your new platform’s integration options.

Salesforce sync state. If you use the Salesforce connector, note that reviewers report it creating duplicate contacts requiring manual cleanup. Clean your data before migrating rather than carrying the duplicates across.

Historic order and payment detail. Technically extractable, but many providers archive rather than migrate, keeping historical financial records in their accounting system where they legally belong. Decide deliberately.

Audit trail and email history. These stay behind.

Timing your exit

Arlo publishes its pricing, which makes planning easier than with most competitors. Annual payment carries roughly a 10 percent discount, so many customers are on annual terms with a fixed renewal date. That date is both your deadline and your leverage.

Two calculations worth doing before you decide:

Total cost comparison. Add your subscription, your registration fees at actual annual volume, and any e-learning add-ons. Compare against a flat-rate alternative at your current volume, and again at the volume you expect in three years. The per-registration model is what makes this comparison different from a normal seat-count exercise, and it is often the whole business case. Our note on calculating training ROI covers how to frame it internally.

Feature gating. If you are on Enterprise purely for SSO or automated certificates, note which single feature is driving the tier, because that changes what you actually need to replace.

For cutover, pick your quietest delivery month rather than your financial year end.

Cutting over without disrupting live courses

• Set a booking freeze date after which new registrations go into the new system only. Because your website is your booking channel, this also means switching the embedded booking flow, so coordinate it with whoever manages your site.
• Load history first. Past courses, completed registrations, historic contacts and certifications.
• Load the forward schedule second, with registrations, presenters, venues and waitlists. Waitlists specifically, because they are easy to drop and they represent pipeline.
• Reconcile orders and payments as a separate workstream with finance involved, particularly anything unpaid, part-paid or subject to a credit note.
• Run a delta load immediately before cutover to capture registrations and changes made since your forward-schedule load.
• Run in parallel for two to three weeks, with Arlo read-only for new bookings.
• Decide which system owns each course spanning the cutover date. Usually a small number, each needing a named decision.
• Switch the website on cutover day, with redirects live and tracking verified.

There is more on sequencing in our guide to switching training management software without disruption.

The plumbing that breaks quietly

Email deliverability. Configure SPF and DKIM for the new sender two weeks before go-live and test against real external mailboxes. Arlo customers should pay particular attention here, since deliverability complaints already appear in Arlo reviews, meaning some providers have workarounds in place that will not carry over.

Accounting integration. If you sync to Xero or similar, the connection has to be rebuilt and the first period reconciled by hand. Plan for one messy month-end and staff it.

Calendar invitations. Already-issued invites will not update themselves. Decide whether to reissue and warn people first if you do.

Customer and organisation portals. If your corporate clients log in to view their bookings, they will need new credentials and clear communication. Draft that email before go-live, not on the day.

Validating before go-live

• Contact and organisation counts reconciled against source, duplicates handled deliberately
• Registration counts per course matching exactly, including waitlists and cancellations
• Every future course present with correct dates, times, timezones, session structure, presenter and venue
• Waitlists intact, with position order preserved where your new system supports it
• Certification expiry dates verified individually if you operate in a regulated field
• Order and payment totals reconciled with your accounting system
• Every high-traffic course URL returning a correct redirect, verified with a crawler
• Conversion tracking firing on a real test booking
• A full end-to-end test: book through the public website, receive confirmation, attend, mark attendance, issue certificate, raise invoice

Have someone who did not build the configuration run that last test.

How long it takes

Six to ten weeks overall. The data side is faster than most migrations because the API and import templates are well documented. The website and booking-flow rebuild is what sets the real timeline, and it is the part most often underestimated.

Mistakes specific to Arlo TMS migrations

• Exporting contacts through the interface. The 200 record cap makes this unworkable at scale. Use reports or the API.
• Expecting JSON from the Auth API. It returns XML. A small thing that costs a day if nobody mentions it.
• Treating the website as a follow-up task. For a commercial provider it is the highest-risk part of the whole project. Start it at the same time as the data work.
• Dropping waitlists. They are demand you have already generated.
• Migrating duplicate contacts. If you use the Salesforce connector, clean first.
• Forgetting the per-registration maths. It is usually the core of the business case, and it needs doing at future volume, not just current volume.

Frequently asked questions

Where to start

Before anything else, do the arithmetic. Take last year’s total registrations, multiply by your per-registration fee, add your subscription and any e-learning add-ons, and compare that number against a flat-rate alternative at the volume you expect three years from now. If the gap is small, staying is the right answer. If it is large, you now have the business case and everything else in this guide is execution.

Book a demo to see how SimpliTrain’s flat-rate model compares at your actual registration volumes, and to work through the mapping table above against your own Arlo setup.