Based on 144 reviews and ratings
Articulate 360
Based on 108 reviews and ratings
Highlights
Adobe Captivate and Articulate 360 are both Corporate Learning Management Systems with a focus on eLearning content authoring. They are both most commonly used by large businesses and enterprises but have some users across company sizes.
Adobe Captivate focuses on providing more advanced eLearning authoring tools, including support for VR, improved accessibility, and interactive content. Its goal is to facilitate highly engaging and interactive content for creators with the proper experience. In contrast, Articulate 360 provides sub-applications designed to support all levels of creator experience and expertise. This can make Articulate ideal for larger groups with creators across the skill spectrum.
Features
Adobe Captivate and Articulate 360 differentiate by their ideal skill level, with features tailored to each target audience.
Adobe Captivate excels at providing knowledgeable creators with the widest range of content creation capabilities. In particular, Captivate prioritizes supporting interactive content, including branching content paths within courses. This focus allows creators to make highly engaging content for end-learners. It also offers strong reporting capabilities within courses.
Articulate 360 differentiates by making content creation more accessible to a wider range of creators and users. Its sup-applications, such as Storyline and Rise, provide options to serve creators at various skill levels. Rise in particular serves less experienced creators and has a much lower learning curve. Articulate also emphasizes its accessibility across mobile devices and for disabled folks.
Limitations
Adobe Captivate and Articulate 360’s respective specializations also come with some limitations worth considering.
Adobe Captivate’s advanced capabilities come with a steep learning curve. Many reviewers argue that the platform is intimidating for beginners and takes time to learn how to make the most of the tool. This curve often means that Captivate is not ideal for rapid eLearning development. Captivate is also priced separately from the rest of the Adobe suite, which limits the cost benefits of bundling some Adobe products.
In contrast, Articulate 360 may lack some of the more advanced features that Captivate offers. Additionally, collaboration for creator teams within the platform is still limited and difficult to use according to many reviewers. Updates to the product have also been known to create new errors in preexisting courses, so users should be conscious of possible change management that may be necessary. The pricing can also be high if the organization is not making courses at volume.
Pricing
Adobe Captivate offers 3 pricing systems for new buyers. Users can subscribe to Captivate for $33.99/month, or purchase a perpetual license for $1,299. Students or teachers can purchase Captivate for $399 instead. Adobe also offers a free 30-day trial.
Articulate 360 is priced differently for companies, freelancers, and academics. For companies, the Teams Plan costs $1,299/user/year, with additional collaboration and support features available. The Personal Plan costs $999/user/year. For academics, the Person Plan costs $499/user/year and the Teams Plan costs $649/user/year.
Provided by the TrustRadius Research Team
Published on July 29, 2020
Likelihood to Recommend
Adobe Captivate
Articulate 360
Feature Rating Comparison
Learning Management
Course authoring
Course catalog or library
Player/Portal
Learning content
Mobile friendly
Progress tracking & certifications
Assignments
Compliance management
Learning administration
Learning reporting & analytics
Social learning
Pros
Adobe Captivate
- 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.
Articulate 360
- Ease of use/ability to learn how to use features
- Clean and simple design output makes it easy for learners to navigate through courses
- Freedom to create what your imagination can dream up
- Community Support from e-learning heroes is great! Any issues are normally resolved with the community within a day and articulate staff still follows up.
- 360 is always being upgraded and improved with character bundles, image/video content, and new feature roll-outs.

Cons
Adobe Captivate
- Adobe struggles in its customer support. Knowledgeable Captivate support technicians to teach and troubleshoot would elevate this powerful tool.
- As mobile learning journeys away from Flash, developing strictly in HTML5 is a becoming a must. Captivate has an HTML5 inspector to review your project for potential flash-based issues, but development in HTML5 only is not as intuitive. I waste valuable time and effort making adjustments after the fact.
- Many of my SMEs (subject mater experts) submit drafts in PowerPoint. Captivate has a PowerPoint import option, but transforms each slide into an image, removing any ability to edit the content after import. The issue alone is enough to drive me to alternate authoring tools. Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to distribute and teach all of our SMEs to use Captivate.
Articulate 360
- Storyline is a bit heavy for some computers to handle—both the design side and even the viewer side. Outputs can occasionally be glitchy.
- In Rise I would like to see more customizability, like choosing different fonts and locations of images and things like that. It's very cookie-cutter, which is actually great for newbies because it is difficult to make it look bad.
- It would be cool if Rise had a "page logic" option so you can jump to different pages based on button logic. Pretty pie-in-the-sky.
- The quiz functionality in Rise leaves a lot to be desired, but the quiz function in Storyline is SCORM compliant.
Likelihood to Renew
Adobe Captivate
Articulate 360
Usability
Adobe Captivate
Articulate 360
Support Rating
Adobe Captivate
Articulate 360

Alternatives Considered
Adobe Captivate

Articulate 360

Return on Investment
Adobe Captivate
- Adobe Captivate has helped us lower training costs without the need for external training.
- The program allowed us to create in house training without the need for third party collaboration.
- End users could communicate about training needs and Adobe Captivate made it easy to update current training modules.
Articulate 360
- I spend less time developing courses, and more time engaging learners with Articulate 360. Not only has our development timeline shortened because of Articulate Review and Rise, but we are also putting out better, more engaging content.
- The subscription model of Articulate 360 paid for itself almost immediately by providing access to some awesome stock content in the Content Library. We used to spend hundreds of dollars buying content that is now included in our membership to a tool we were already paying for.
- The greatest return on our investment has come in the form of time. Stakeholders love Articulate Review. It's easy to check the progress of the course creation, see what issues have been addressed by the development team, and provide feedback-- cutting back on everyone's least favorite thing: MEETINGS.
Screenshots
Adobe Captivate
—Pricing Details
Adobe Captivate
General
Free Trial
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
Adobe Captivate Editions & Modules
Edition
Subscription | 33.991 |
---|---|
Pereptual License | $1,2992 |
Student & Teacher Edition | $3992 |
Upgrade | $4992 |
- per month
- one-time fee
Additional Pricing Details
—Articulate 360
General
Free Trial
Free/Freemium Version
—Premium Consulting/Integration Services
—Entry-level set up fee?
Articulate 360 Editions & Modules
Edition
Teams | $1,299.001 |
---|
- Per Year