Brainshark pricing, features and alternatives

The short answer

Buy Brainshark if you hire reps in cohorts, run structured onboarding with defined milestones, and launch products or messaging often enough that you need a record of who can deliver the new pitch. The practice and certification workflow is the product, and it fills a gap that content libraries leave wide open.

Skip it if your managers will not score practice submissions, because practice without feedback teaches reps that submissions do not matter and the programme dies quietly inside a year. Skip it too if your real problem is reps failing to find the right content, which is a different purchase: a content-first platform such as Highspot or Seismic starts from the library rather than from the drill.

Where Brainshark fits

The first thing to settle is what you are buying today. Bigtincan acquired Brainshark in 2021, and the product now appears on bigtincan.com under Readiness and on G2 as Bigtincan Readiness, formerly Brainshark. If you are searching for Brainshark pricing, you are searching for a Bigtincan quote, and the quote may well arrive packaged with Bigtincan's content platform rather than as the standalone tool you had in mind. Ask which contract covers what before you compare it against anything.

With that out of the way, the fit is specific. Brainshark is a sales readiness tool rather than an enablement content library, which puts it in a different lane from most of what sits in our sales enablement software directory. It is built around training, coaching, certification and rep practice. The buyer is usually an enablement or sales training leader, and the thing they need is harder to fake than a quiz score: a manager watching a rep deliver the pitch before a customer does.

It works in training-led organisations, and the size test is cohort size rather than headcount. Teams that hire in groups, run formal onboarding against milestones, and certify reps on each product or messaging change get a return on the programme overhead. Teams that hire three reps a year and onboard them informally usually do not: the cost of writing and maintaining the programmes outweighs what the certification record is worth to you. Track the ramp period for each cohort before you buy, because that is the number the business case has to move.

Manager time is the dependency that decides whether this works, and it is the one that gets waved away in the business case. Practice submissions are worthless unless somebody scores them, and that review time has to come out of a manager's week rather than out of a slide. During the evaluation, time how long one manager needs to review ten submissions, then multiply by your cohort size and your review cadence. That product is the real cost of the programme, and it sits next to the licence rather than inside it. Ask references about manager adoption specifically, not about the software.

The last piece is whether readiness data connects to anything. The hard question for any tool in this category is whether trained reps sell more, and answering it means tying certification records to CRM outcomes such as ramp time or win rate. Ask which fields that requires and who maintains them, because the connection is usually a reporting project rather than a checkbox. Certification also needs something to certify against, so write the sales playbook first: a drill with no agreed right answer produces scores nobody trusts.

What Brainshark replaces cleanly: ad hoc onboarding run out of a shared drive, pitch certification done by a manager's memory, and the spreadsheet tracking who has been signed off on which product. What it does not replace: the sales content library reps search during a live deal, and the manager habit of reviewing and coaching. One of those is a second purchase. The other cannot be bought.

Brainshark pricing

Bigtincan publishes no prices for Readiness, and our September 2026 check of bigtincan.com found nothing that puts a figure against a learner. We also found no attributed third-party price data for this product that we would rely on, which is a shorter sentence than it sounds: it means there is no benchmark on this page, because inventing one would be worse than leaving the gap visible. Size the contract on the reps you will train each quarter rather than on total headcount, since a 300-person company that onboards two cohorts a year is buying a smaller programme than the headcount implies.

Five things set the number, and the packaging question is the one that most often changes it.

1. Learner count, and how it is counted. Establish whether you pay for everyone with a login or only for reps enrolled in an active programme, because the gap between those two definitions is most of your bill.
2. How you add a hiring cohort mid-contract. If recruitment goes well in month four, you need to know the price of the extra learners before you need the learners, not after.
3. Which coaching and AI scoring features are in the base package. These are the pieces most likely to be add-ons, so ask for them priced separately rather than described as included.
4. Whether the quote is standalone Readiness or a bundle with Bigtincan's content platform. Ask for both numbers. A combined rate can be the cheaper answer if you genuinely need the library, and the more expensive answer if you do not.
5. Term, and what happens at renewal. A multi-year commitment on a programme whose success depends on manager behaviour you have not yet proved is a different risk from a one-year commitment.

There is no price table on this page because there is no published price and no third-party figure we trust enough to print. Get four things in writing: the per-learner rate, how a mid-contract cohort is charged, which coaching and scoring features sit outside the base package, and the standalone price next to the bundled one. Our sales software evaluation scorecard turns this page into something you can hand a vendor, and how we review software explains why a quote-only product with thin review data gets a shorter page than a vendor that publishes rates.

What Brainshark gives up

You give up buying the product you searched for. Brainshark is sold as Bigtincan Readiness, so the roadmap, the support model and the packaging belong to Bigtincan, and the quote may arrive bundled with a content platform you were not shopping for. Ask directly how Readiness is packaged and supported today, and what sits in a separate contract, because the answer changes what you are comparing against Mindtickle or Allego.

You give up knowing the price before you talk to someone. Nothing is published, and we found no third-party figure for this product we would stand behind, so budgeting starts with a sales conversation rather than a number. Hold a second quote from a competing readiness vendor at the same time rather than in sequence, and treat the first proposal as an opening position.

You give up the content library. Brainshark's focus on practice is the reason to choose it, and the direct consequence is that teams who also need a searchable sales content hub end up buying a second tool or a broader platform. Decide which problem is costing you more this quarter: reps who cannot find the case study, or reps who cannot deliver the pitch. Buying for the wrong one of those is the most common mistake in this category.

You give up the result unless managers change how they spend their week. This is the honest limitation and it is not a software defect. Brainshark records the submission and holds the certification record; a manager still has to watch, score and coach. Without that, you have bought a video archive and a compliance log. Commit named managers to a named cadence before signing, and use our sales coaching one-on-one template to make the review a standing agenda item rather than an intention.

You give up recent independent evidence. Our sources hold little current third-party review data on Brainshark, which is partly a consequence of the rename: reviews now accumulate under the Bigtincan name. That pushes weight onto references, so ask for two customers at your cohort size who have been live more than a year, and ask them about manager review rates rather than about features.

You give up a confirmed free trial. Nothing in our sources establishes one. Ask instead for a pilot built around one real onboarding cohort and one manager group, which is the only shape of evaluation that tests the dependency that matters.

How Brainshark compares

Every option below quotes rather than publishes, which is the norm in enablement and readiness and the reason this table has no price column worth scanning. The split that decides the shortlist is readiness against content. Brainshark, Mindtickle, Allego and Second Nature are built around whether a rep can perform; Highspot and Seismic are built around whether a rep can find the asset, with training features added. Picking across that line is how teams end up with an expensive tool solving the problem they did not have. Read the last column twice, because each of these fails in a different place, and the only question is whether it fails where your programme lives.

What to test in a Brainshark pilot

Nothing in our sources confirms a free trial, so ask for a pilot and scope it around one real onboarding cohort and one manager group. The point is not to see whether the software works. It is to find out whether your managers will use it, and to produce a manager-hours number you can defend in the business case.

1. Confirm first which product and which contract you are piloting, since Brainshark is sold as Bigtincan Readiness and may be quoted alongside the content platform.
2. Have a rep submit a real pitch and a real objection response, and have a manager score both, start to finish, without help from the vendor. Watch where they hesitate.
3. Time one manager reviewing ten submissions. Multiply that by your cohort size and your intended review cadence, and put the result in the business case as manager hours per quarter. This is the number that kills or carries the programme.
4. Build one complete onboarding path during the evaluation, then change the messaging halfway through and update the module. How painful that update is predicts whether your programme stays current after launch.
5. Check whether completion and certification data reaches managers without somebody running a separate report. If it needs a report, somebody has to own running it every week.
6. Ask how certification data can be tied to ramp time or win rate in your CRM, and which fields that needs. Then check whether those fields are populated today, because the answer is usually no.
7. Track review rates across the pilot rather than completion rates alone. If managers stop reviewing in week three, fix that before buying more seats rather than after.
8. Get the commercial answers while the pilot is live: per-learner rate, mid-contract cohort pricing, which coaching and AI scoring features are add-ons, and the standalone price next to the bundle.

Brainshark questions buyers ask

What is Brainshark used for?

Brainshark is used for sales training, coaching, certification, and rep practice. Enablement teams use it to onboard reps and confirm they can deliver new messaging.

How much does Brainshark cost?

Brainshark, now Bigtincan Readiness, does not publish pricing. Quotes depend on learners, features and term. Size the contract on reps you will train each quarter.

Is Brainshark part of Bigtincan?

Buyers often search the two names together. Ask the vendor how Brainshark is packaged and supported alongside Bigtincan today before you compare quotes.

What are the best Brainshark alternatives?

Mindtickle and Allego are the closest readiness alternatives. Second Nature is another practice-focused option in the sales coaching category. Highspot and Seismic are content-first platforms with training features.

Is there a free trial for Brainshark?

Our sources do not confirm one. Ask about a pilot with a real onboarding cohort so you can measure manager review rates.

What happened to Brainshark?

Brainshark is now sold as Bigtincan Readiness. Bigtincan acquired it in 2021, and the product appears on bigtincan.com under Readiness and on G2 as Bigtincan Readiness, formerly Brainshark. If you are shortlisting it today, you are shortlisting a Bigtincan quote.

Who bought Brainshark?

Bigtincan bought Brainshark in 2021. The practical question for a buyer is packaging rather than ownership: ask whether you are quoted standalone Readiness or a bundle with Bigtincan's content platform, and get both numbers before comparing against Mindtickle or Allego.

Related

If Brainshark is on your shortlist, the comparison worth running depends on the job. Mindtickle is the closest readiness alternative, Allego covers coaching and readiness in one tool, and Second Nature is the option when rep practice is the entire draw. If content findability is as big a gap as training, price Bigtincan and Highspot against the readiness tools rather than alongside them. The full set sits in our sales enablement software directory, practice-led tools also appear in sales coaching software, and our sales onboarding plan template is the programme design that has to exist before any of these is worth buying.

Brainshark sits in our Sales Enablement Software directory.