What the provider offers

First Media is a project-based eLearning agency based in Louth, Lincolnshire, operating for more than 25 years. Work is delivered as commissioned custom eLearning modules, interactive training video, microlearning, mobile learning, animation and gamified modules. The company works across healthcare and NHS, financial services, retail, media, sport, government, transport and technology, with named clients including the Financial Times, ITV, The FA, Bosch and Amazon. Importantly, First Media has no proprietary learning platform. It builds into the client's own LMS, which is a deliberate commercial stance rather than a limitation.

Who it may suit

First Media suits mid-market and enterprise buyers who already run a learning platform and want a production partner rather than a software vendor. It is a good fit for organisations with an existing source-material library, an internal subject-matter expert network, and a preference for fixed-price, milestone-based project work. The published price bands make it one of the easier agencies in the UK to budget against at the outset.

Who may need a different type of provider

Buyers looking for a bundled platform plus content, a managed learning operations service, or guaranteed multilingual delivery across many markets are likely to be disappointed. The published pricing is in pounds sterling and the delivery evidence is concentrated in the UK, so a buyer needing a large global rollout may want to compare against a localization-specialist partner. The agency is also not a substitute for a dedicated compliance or regulated-content consultancy.

Capabilities and specializations

Authoring runs on a mix of Articulate Storyline, Articulate Rise, Adapt, H5P and Elucidat, alongside an in-house framework referred to as FM Framework and the ability to build directly inside LMS front-ends. That tool-agnostic stance matters: it suggests the company is comfortable working inside a client's stack rather than pushing its own. Interactive training video is a distinct service line, which means media can be commissioned without a separate production supplier.

Evidence supporting the key claims

The evidence base for this review comes from the company's own published pages, including the bespoke eLearning service description, the interactive training video page and a case study index. Commercial terms, price bands and delivery cadence are taken from published service information rather than from private quotes. The main limitation of the evidence is that it is all first-party. There is no independent performance data, and the case studies are self-selected.

Questions buyers should ask

  • Ask how the design phase is structured and what happens if the storyboard is rejected, since the published 8 to 10 week design phase for a single module is the single biggest driver of schedule risk. Ask whether the bronze, silver and gold interactivity tiers are defined in writing and which components differ. Ask what source material the company expects from the client, and at what point it becomes the client's responsibility if material is late. Ask whether the case studies shown are comparable in scale to your programme, and request the underlying metrics. Ask how accessibility and WCAG conformance are handled in the build, and whether a conformance report is delivered with the course.

Limitations and uncertainties

Pricing is disclosed as bands rather than as a price list, and the specific rate for a given scope will still need a quote. The evidence base is entirely first-party. The agency's own published client list is strong in UK enterprise and public sector names, but there is no way to verify delivery quality, retention impact or business outcomes from public sources. As with all agencies, published timelines assume timely client feedback, which is the most common cause of delay in practice.

Comparison with relevant alternatives

Compared with Hungry Minds, First Media publishes comparable or better transparency on commercial terms and has a longer operating history, while Hungry Minds is stronger on compliance-specific capability and accessibility conformance. Compared with Capytech, First Media publishes a single project price band while Capytech publishes differentiated turnaround tiers. Compared with larger groups such as Aleido, First Media is a boutique with less capacity for very large multi-market programmes.

Basis and date of the assessment

This assessment is based on published first-party information retrieved on 22 October 2026. No client interviews, site visits, hands-on testing of delivered courses or private quotes were conducted. No numerical score is published, since a defensible scoring method with published weights has not been established. This is a research-based profile, not a recommendation.

Commercial relationships

First Media has no commercial relationship with the publisher of this guide. It is an independently researched editorial review, funded by the publisher's own research and covered by no sponsorship arrangement.

Evidence sources

Next step

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