A Cloud Guru (ACG) is a cloud learning provider that states they have helped 2,000,000+ people and more than 4,000 organizations level up their cloud skills. Founded in 2015, ACG was started by brothers Sam and Ryan Kroonenburg who recognized cloud learning through traditional training providers was expensive, outdated, and a pain to consume. With the acquisition of Linux Academy in 2019, ACG combined the strengths and benefits of both companies to create A Cloud Guru…
$0
per month
Articulate 360
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
Articulate 360 is an e-learning platform for creating workplace training. Users can build engaging courses with AI-enhanced authoring, simplify collaboration, and quickly share content. A subscription includes robust onboarding resources and access to a community of 1.5M pros.
$1,124
per year
Pricing
A Cloud Guru (Linux Academy)
Articulate 360
Editions & Modules
Free
$0.00
per month
Personal Basic
$31.59 ($379.00)
per month (per year)
Personal Plus
$41.59 ($499.00)
per month (per year)
Business Basic
$41.59 ($499.00)
per month (per year)
Business Plus
$58.25 ($699.00)
per month (per year)
Articulate 360 Standard - Academic - Teams Plan
$1,124
per year
Articulate 360 Standard - Personal Plan
$1,199
per year
Articulate 360 AI - Personal Plan
$1,449
per year
Articulate 360 Standard - Teams Plan
$1,499
per year
Articulate 360 AI - Teams Plan
$1,749
per year
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
A Cloud Guru (Linux Academy)
Articulate 360
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Yes
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
Contact Sales for Enterprise Pricing.
https://acloudguru.com/solutions/business
If you’re new to Articulate 360, you can try it out free of charge for 30 days. After the trial period is over, you can subscribe to one of our packages.
Articulate 360 is available on the Articulate website and through Articulate Authorized Resellers.
If your organization is technical-based and offers its employees different online courses to enhance their knowledge, then A Cloud Guru will be perfect for you. There are multiple courses available from different cloud platforms. The platform is easy to use and navigate and does not require much knowledge. Even if you do not have basic technical knowledge, the courses available in A Cloud Guru are designed in such a manner that a non-technical person will understand the concept easily.
For the way that we use it, we embed a lot of SME videos. We call them "talking head videos," but they're really interviewing the experts and having that as something, leveraging those so people can learn, as we say, tips from the pros. So I mean it does that pretty seamlessly. I think the only thing that's a little more time and effort on our part is adding the closed captions. That takes a little more going in and out of Storyline to create a VTT file. I mean, it's like we had to create a reference guide on how to do it because, because it was so complex for having to add closed captions to our embedded video. So if there's a way to make that a little easier, that'd be great. I know everybody would be happy.
So Articulate does very well with usability, so it's a very easy product to use. I've had to onboard an employee who was able to learn the program within a month, I think was amazing, and they were able to create the first course within five months of working at the company. So if that's not a testament to how easy it is to use, I don't know what is.
The most hiccups that I've recently experienced are honestly involved with AI and just my trying to learn AI and figure out how we can maximize that for our business case. The AI voiceover is what I'm specifically curious about and trying to learn more. So in regards to the AI, there's still some shuffling needs to be done. SSML that needs to be added for it to read correctly. There is a very large amount of voices and dialects, which I think is beneficial. It was also a little overwhelming in trying to play around with it and find that right part. So just continuing to look through the community and find the guidance that I need to essentially make the audio, make the voiceover work better and read the words correctly. For example, one of my most popular courses that I sell is Record Your Time and it kept reading, it records your time, and I could not figure out how to make those words. We've submitted a ticket, you guys have been very helpful, but we can't really figure out how to make those little nuances work with the complex English language.
I haven't seen any other platform for developing learning materials that is as comprehensive or as reliable as Articulate has proven to be for our use. Because our group has a number of PowerPoint power users, the PowerPoint integration with Articulate is particularly beneficial.
Storyline specifically has a bit of a learning curve. There are a lot of creative ways to develop your course, but you have to have a good understanding of triggers and variables. It is nice that there are a ton of webinars that help with these features. The UI is the main selling point because it really is similar to PowerPoint.
The support team of A Cloud Guru is quite quick. There are scenarios where A Cloud Guru was not working in my organization. We reached out to their support team and they quickly resolved the issue. Also, if any individual is facing issues accessing A Cloud Guru, their support team is quick to resolve the issue.
I rate the overall support for Articulate 360 with a 9. On the one hand because of the smooth and accurate support from Articulate's support team (usually within 24 hours) and on the other because of the commitment / use of a community (e-learning Heroes) where I have all kinds of insights from other helpful users.
The online training options given by the online tutorials, forums, and "E-Learning Heroes" community are simply awesome. Examples galore, easy to understand descriptions including step-by-step guides, images, occasionally videos, and the "Articulate Insiders" sub-community give you more materials to learn about Storyline than you are likely to be able to read.
Outside of having to dedicate a powerful enough PC for the installation and having to update Flash in our browsers there really isn't much pain involved in using Articulate. For the most part this is an easy to implement and roll-out product. The installation occurs quickly and smoothly with no additional steps needed.
The main differentiator was the contents as we were interested in a cloud platform other similar platforms did not have the below: it is very good to establish cloud learning development plans and then track them and manage them for the team. The platform supports learning tracks, exams, and sandboxes with all major cloud providers guarantees that you don't get an accidental charge as a result of [the] testing and exploring the cloud
So I started off, the very first authoring tool I ever used was Captivate over 10 years or 15 years ago, that kind of thing. I think that was just because that was the tool that the team was using at the time. That was my first experience ever with an authoring tool. I found the learning curve to be very extreme, and it was kind of hard to, I mean, you get there, but that was really the first authoring tool that I really had my hands on that I used for a little bit. Then ultimately in that role, I ended up doing much more instructor-led training. So I got further away from self-paced training. Then I wasn't really using it when I knew I was coming back to that online self-study realm. And they actually asked me, what tool is it? What tool do you want to use? I want to go Storyline this time. So I had talked to other companies and organizations, honestly, I've even seen in job openings, they're asking for Storyline experience specifically. So I was like, okay, industry, this would be a smart move for me too. They're asking for specifically storyline.
We're just now launching our first program that was created in Articulate 360, so I'd be able to provide you with a better answer in January when the program goes live. We've completed our beta and pilot and so far, we've received great feedback from our learners who have participated in the program. We've set our baseline with this program and look forward to growing our knowledge of Articulate 360 and creating enhanced future programs.
