Adobe Captivate vs. Adobe Learning Manager vs. Studio 360 (discontinued)

Captivate is well suited for instruction designers who want to build attractive, personalized, interactive, energetic lessons. It's also a good choice for someone who wants to build something innovative because Captivate gives the developer so much control over so many aspects.

But if someone wanted something built quickly, generically and didn't care about holding the viewer's attention, then Captivate might be an expensive tool. That person might be more satisfied with a cheaper and easier to learn authoring tool.

Incentivized

It's good if you have a good use case for that feed. I do know that you have to incorporate it in a process in isolation. It's not you don't realize the full value, so you have to incorporate it into an overall improvement process. I would say the pro cases are marketing optimization with respect to campaigns. And I would say that the areas it's not well suited is in distilling attribution. So if you were to take all of the improvements that it suggested, the numbers exceed revenue, which isn't real, but that's a hard problem to solve. Nobody's really solved that problem well. So distilling the attribution piece would be good. And it is well suited for marketing campaigns in the ideation phase of so

Incentivized

Articulate Studio is constantly surprising in terms of what it can do. It is like a "Swiss Army Knife" of functionality. I've used it to build portfolios, whole interactive websites, authoring videos and I often discover novel ways to make it useful on a pretty regular basis. What would be a situation where you would not want to use Articulate Studio? Well, even though you can use it to author video and to publish websites, it's not a replacement for a video editing package or a web platform like WordPress, but there are times when it will do certain things in an astoundingly simple way superior to other tools.

Incentivized

• Quickly adding in graphics, text, and interactive buttons.
• Has extensive variables and branching for additional customization, beyond the competition.
• Has 360 degree capability which competitors don't offer (I have not used this feature).
• High degree of customization and personalization.
• True responsive screen display on all devices, viewable as you are creating the training. This is different than some competitors - some just shrink the screen, but Adobe Captivate allows actually removing or moving or changing items at different screen sizes.
• If you like Flash, it has Flash output, although it's going away in 2020. Personally, I think this is an outdated technology.
• Many advanced capabilities. I chose this product due to the capabilities.
• Comes with assets, templates, people, head shots, and full body—excellent.
• Adobe Captivate is the authoring tool. It integrates with Adobe Captivate Prime - which I highly recommend if you want to truly take advantage of all of its features in reporting, administration, compliance, and social learning. (I didn't use Prime because you essentially need 100+ students to affordably use Prime.) If you look at my chart of what Captivate is capable of, I can't say that Captivate has a lot of the reporting features because they are part of Prime/SCORM, although, with Captivate's customization, you might be able to do most of them if you are up to it, but I did not.

Incentivized

• Rich and engaging learning experiences that capture employees' attention.
• Is multi-device capable so our teams can take classes where it's most convenient for them during the day, especially if they don't have an assigned static workstation?
• Allows us to personalize compliance training based on where our employees are at in the organizational chart, competencies, and requirements.

Incentivized

• They made it very easy to understand how to add new content to the courses, including images, videos or audio, of course, you are still able to do text-based content as well.
• Creating quizzes has never been easier. The ability to add controls to each question and what actions each answer creates, whether an additional question or passing to the next section. Customizing these actions are very easy to learn and add to your course.
• Being able to use your own scoring mechanism is awesome! I like SCORM but there are many options to use including a custom one of your own. This ability allows you to pass your students over to a proprietary system that enrolls them in the next course, or use the built-in utilities to provide the next course or quiz, the choice is yours!

Incentivized

• Clunky interface, it takes a lot of extra clicks to get places compared to other Adobe apps and competitor's eLearning software.
• Would be nice if it was part of creative cloud, or at least in the group of apps you can add through Creative Cloud.
• More regular and meaningful updates. Compared to flagship apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, etc. Captivate is like the read headed step child. Competitors excel at providing regular updates with clear change documentation. How are we still using Captivate 2019 in 2022?
• The interface feels like it is still stuck in the 90s, would be nice if it was more modern and better in-line with flagship adobe offerings.
• Variables and associated menus are a nuisance to work with vs some of the clever drop down and content-sensitive options in Articulate Storyline.

Incentivized

• High initial set-up cost and licensing fees for all employees at one go
• Once a courses been enrolled by employee, there's no function to remove those courses by themselves.
• Mobile version not working very well and some contents not able to load, e.g. Leaderboard, Level.

Incentivized

• The audio editor is awful. Sometimes when you cut a section, it actually takes a different section that you selected. Especially when in zoom mode. You have to then undo the action, and re-do. Also, scrubbing through the audio is difficult. If you're exporting audio, it can glitch during the process. I avoid using the audio editor whenever I can.
• After all these years, it's still a buggy program. You can be doing your recordings, and a sudden message appears saying that something went wrong and needs to close. I've done re-installs, contacted support, and I constantly clear the temp folder. Still happens. Also, it's a good idea to export your audio, and there have been times the program freezes up on me, and the audio file (in the .ppta file) gets corrupted and all audio is permanently lost.
• The program can get slow when publishing, previewing or opening the audio editor.
• The included Engage program is pretty good, but it needs more customization options. And I think they can add more modules that provide a little more engagement.

Incentivized

We have hundreds of courses that were created in Adobe Captivate. It will take us a while to convert to Articulate. We'll need a license for another year and/or until Adobe comes out with a true update to the software.

Incentivized

Currently, our company uses this program and another competitor for our learning management software. We like the adaptability of this program and appreciate the customer service that Adobe provides, however the other program is starting to turn out to be a better value for our company as they improve their compatibility.

Incentivized

There is very little chance that this software wold not be renewed. It has become an integral part of our standard software for elearning development.

Incentivized

Adobe Captivate does take some getting used to. There are features that are much more convoluted than they need to be, but overall it is a great product with a some excellent features. Being in a pretty small market, Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline dominate the space. They are not the same software, but allow for eLearning authoring. Each has their benefit and their downside, but, for me, Adobe Captivate edges out Storyline.

Incentivized

In general, the user experience in Adobe Learning Manager is very satisfactory. The layout of the interface, the structure and the order of the available functionalities make it very intuitive and usable. The adaptation to mobile devices is very convenient since most of the participants connect through these electronic devices.

Incentivized

This is very useable software even for novice eLearning authoring users. People with some PowerPoint experience should be fine with this software and even Excel!

Incentivized

On a few occasions, I've logged in to issue a test to a staff member and my course would just spin. I've had to reschedule several test attempts due to this. In my opinion, the issue was not resolved by Adobe

Incentivized

The performance of Adobe Captivate Prime is also extremely good. The user interface is fast and easy to load. The complexity is not nearly as bad as some of the other programs on the market. Speed was not impacted.

Incentivized

It is difficult to get in touch with Adobe Captivate support. With a seemingly limited number of resources, mostly outsourced, getting in contact with someone to help troubleshoot an issue is challenging. Typically wait times are long, and the desired path to resolution is to use an existing knowledge base or a self-help guide. It is certainly not a user-friendly experience.

Incentivized

I think they have a competent, friendly and "resolving" team. I have only ever been met with a willingness to assist any and every query I have come across. Roy who is one of the technical people is amazing, and so is my Customer Success Manager, Hema! I do not know what I would do without them.

Incentivized

I've never really had any major issues with the product (Other than the registration loop error)and my ten out of ten rating is based on the assistance I got when we initially set up the extension in Power Point. I found the support folks to be professional, helpful and friendly

Incentivized

Training by my staff was quick. Could have been a bit longer. Had to pick up on things myself

Incentivized

I'm only aware of the problems Adobe Captivate had with SumTotal LMS and Upside LMS, requiring extensive contact with both internal and external support staff to fix the problems. We had no problems at all with Articulate.

Incentivized

Trial period was great, and It let me plenty of time to try the different feature of the platform. However, when we decided to move forward, the ADOBE team was slow and not reactive at all. Actually after 2 years, I am still waiting for answers which is quite unacceptable.

Incentivized

I think that Articulate360 is more user-friendly and has a cleaner, more updated look. If you can edit a PDF, then you can use Articulate 360. Adobe Captivate may be more challenging for the designer, but it has more features. We chose Adobe Captivate because we want the option to create interactive learning environments. Adobe Captivate plays well with the other Adobe design products including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Premier. Additionally, Adoe Captivate is highly compatible with Cornerstone, our preferred Learning Management Systems.

Incentivized

360 keeps up the Adobe learning manager. It even outclasses it in certain parts, but with a huge stalwart tech giant like Adobe, it is hard to keep up. Many of the features are present, but there's always that final touch missing. And it is always trying to play catchup.

Incentivized

Articulate Studio is very much a leader in the e-learning space. It stacks up well against other tools designed to quickly and easily build and update CBTs by managers and super-users versus needing to invest time and effort in dedicated e-learning developers. Process improvement initiatives and cross-functional departments are empowered to develop their trainings themselves and identify areas for future development.

Incentivized

The product's overall scalability and flexibility is extremely good. I wish that the other products our company uses were this flexible! The product is easy to deploy across multiple departments and teams as needed.

Incentivized

• Adobe Captivate has allowed our instructors to engage students in ways we never have before.
• Instructors who have used Adobe Captivate in our organization have reported higher levels of engagement with their courses and their students, theoretically leading to improved assessment of student performance.

Incentivized

• We are a small organization, so for now, we aren't quite sure if our ROI is working. But are confident in how this system will help us grow.
• Our consumers have been truly delighted about the LMS and view us at a much more professional level now.
• High level of security is very positive.

Incentivized

• I only see positive impact since it is a very easy to use tool for rapid learning. The only point is to know what is possible to develop using this tool to avoid any kind of frustration afterwards.
• Another positive impact is that we don't need a diversified development team. There is no need of technical professionals, and a creative instructional designer is enough to develop effective learning content using Studio.
• The third positive impact is that Studio makes possible to realize short-term projects, mainly when there's already a PowerPoint presentation.

Incentivized