Cornerstone OnDemand licensing is the set of terms under which Cornerstone sells cloud learning, talent management, content and workforce intelligence software to employers. The contracting parties named in Cornerstone’s web terms are Cornerstone OnDemand, Inc. and its subsidiaries.[1] The company now brands its portfolio as Cornerstone Workforce AI and sells it in packages named Learn+, Elevate+, Intelligence+, HCM+ and Extended Enterprise+.[2] Customers on earlier names, including Cornerstone Galaxy, CSX, Saba, SumTotal and TalentLink, may hold contracts and service level agreements written for those names.[3][4]
Cornerstone does not publish a price list or a master subscription agreement. Its public licensing facts come from a packages and pricing page, a content subscriptions page, a set of service level agreements for its customer success packages and product lines, and a few policy pages. The deeper articles in this set cover each in turn.
Editions
The packages page presents three outcome-based packages and two additional solutions.[2]
| Package | What the page lists | Licensing unit stated |
|---|---|---|
| Learn+ | Learning, a curated content subscription, Role Readiness Academies, AI experiences and assistants for learning | Per employee per year |
| Elevate+ | Everything in Learn+, plus performance management, talent marketplace and AI experiences and assistants for talent development | Per employee per year |
| Intelligence+ | Workforce intelligence, People Graph with live workforce signals, Skills Architect, open headless access across systems | Tiered band by total employee count |
| HCM+ | Skills-centered talent management suite covering hiring, performance, development, mobility, succession, compensation and workforce data | Per employee per year |
| Extended Enterprise+ | Learning for customers, partners and external audiences, with self-registration, ecommerce, payments and content | Not stated on the page |
| Readiness Agents | AI agents bought individually by outcome; require Intelligence+ | Tiered band by total employee count |
See Cornerstone Learn+, Cornerstone Elevate+, Cornerstone Intelligence+, Cornerstone HCM+, Cornerstone Extended Enterprise+ and Cornerstone Readiness Agents. Content is sold separately as Content Subscriptions in Silver, Gold and Platinum tiers.[5] See Cornerstone Workforce AI packages, Content Subscriptions and per-employee licensing.
Cornerstone’s Trust Center describes Cornerstone Learn (Learning Management, Learning Experience, Extended Enterprise, Guide, Content) and Cornerstone Elevate (Performance, Succession, Talent Marketplace, Recruiting, Compensation) as the single-architecture platform formerly known as CSX and Cornerstone Galaxy.[3] See The platform formerly called CSX and Cornerstone Galaxy is now named Learn and Elevate. Other lines retain their own pages and documents: Saba, SumTotal, TalentLink, Saba TalentSpace and SkyHive.[3]
Metrics
Cornerstone names a unit for only part of the portfolio.
- Employee per year. Learn+, Elevate+ and HCM+ are “licensed per employee per year, so cost grows in direct proportion to your headcount.”[2] See Employee (per year, Workforce AI packages).
- Total employee count band. Intelligence+ and Readiness Agents “use tiered pricing bands based on your total employee count, so your cost is fixed within a band rather than scaling per person.”[2] See Total employee count band (Intelligence+ and Readiness Agents).
- Named Lead Administrator. The customer success packages cap the number of administrators who may contact Cornerstone Global Product Support at 4, 5, 6 or 10 by package.[6][7][8][9] See Named Lead Administrator (customer success package).
- Named contact. TalentLink’s SLA provides support for “up to four named Customer contacts.”[10] See Named Customer contact (TalentLink support).
The page does not say who counts as an employee, whether the count is of all employees or of those with a learning account, or how often the count is reset. Those definitions would be in the customer’s order form.
Counting and floors
No floor, band boundary or per-employee price is published. The packages page says Cornerstone “will align the right package and/or agent” to the customer’s regulatory, population, desired outcome and budgetary needs, and that customers can upgrade or add solutions, packages or agents at any time.[2] See Cornerstone selects the package from regulatory, population, outcome and budget needs and Customers can upgrade or add packages and agents at any time. For a customer, the practical point is that two lines of one contract may be counted differently: per employee for Learn+, Elevate+ or HCM+, and by band for Intelligence+ or agents, each against a total employee count.
Programs
- Workforce AI packages and agents. Packages and agents can be bought with or independently of each other, Readiness Agents require Intelligence+, and AI experiences and assistants are included within relevant packages.[2] See Cornerstone Workforce AI packages and agents.
- Content Subscriptions. A platform-agnostic content offer in three tiers. See Cornerstone Content Subscriptions.
- Customer success packages and SLAs. Four support packages and the service level agreements that sit under them. See Cornerstone customer success packages and Cornerstone Service Level Agreement and service credits, and the article on customer success packages and service level agreements.
- XaaS Pilot Program. A 90 day pilot for public sector agencies with IL2 and IL4 options.[11] See Cornerstone XaaS Pilot Program.
- Upgrade for Saba and SumTotal customers. Product pages invite those customers to upgrade to Cornerstone Workforce AI.[12][13] See Upgrade of Saba and SumTotal to Cornerstone Workforce AI and Cornerstone legacy product lines and acquisitions.
Contract documents and compliance
Cornerstone’s SLAs say they are “subject to the terms and conditions of Customer’s agreement with Cornerstone” and do not become operative until implementation is signed off, training is complete for all products purchased and the portal is live in production.[6] See The SLA applies only after implementation sign-off, training and go-live. The documents retrieved contain no clause that lets Cornerstone audit a customer’s use of its software. The only audit-related text found is the arbitration clause in the web site terms, which concerns site use. The customer’s master agreement may differ.[1]
Three policy documents add compliance facts. Cornerstone’s client privacy policy says the client organization is the data controller and Cornerstone a data processor.[14] See Cornerstone acts as data processor for client portal data. The export controls page, updated 24 August 2023, classifies Cornerstone (CSX), SumTotal, EdCast and SkyHive as EAR99, Saba Cloud as 5D992 and Saba meeting as 5D002, and states for TalentLink that there is no development in the US.[15] See Export classifications differ by product line. The web site terms limit the site to personal, non-commercial use and require individual arbitration.[1] See The Cornerstone web site is licensed for personal, non-commercial use and has an arbitration clause.
How the documents fit together
A licence manager reviewing a Cornerstone contract has three layers to reconcile. The first is the customer’s own agreement and order form, which fix the package, the quantity and the term and which Cornerstone’s SLAs say take priority.[6] The second is the commercial model on the packages page, which tells the reader which unit to expect for each line: employees per year for Learn+, Elevate+ and HCM+, and bands of total employee count for Intelligence+ and agents.[2] The third is the set of support documents, each tied to a customer success package or product line, which set response times, availability and credits.[4] Names change faster than contracts, so the Trust Center mapping from CSX and Galaxy to Learn and Elevate is the first thing to check when an old order form is read against a current package.[3]
Out of scope
This article does not give prices or the content of order forms, master subscription agreements, data processing agreements or subprocessor lists. The Trust Center holds some of these as view-only documents for named products and was not retrievable in full. The article does not cover products such as Talespin beyond noting that a separate SLA exists, and it does not cover non-US entities’ terms.