Adobe Captivate vs. KnowBe4 Compliance Plus

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

We have used the phishing simulation to see which users will fall for basic phish attempts and that gives us much insight. This saves us time and allows us to focus on those vulnerable users to create custom training campaigns. We will continue using a variety of modules, videos, quizzes, and games available to level up our staff knowledge.

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 Personally, I think this is an outdated technology.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

• Easy to find training modules
• Modules are short enough to keep user attention span
• Material within those modules are easy to understand
• The quizzes aren't stressful to the point of fearing to fail
• Content stays fresh, modules retire and new ones that are updated are released

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

• perhaps some pre-built content packages as template starters would be helpful
• some better explanation of what features exist in which places and how they work
• content customization of what topics I want under my eyes and which I do not - to cut down on the selections ("Do not show this again" or "Hide this" or "Save as a Favorite")
• more functionality to save content topics into personal collections for later use

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

We do simply love all the products . This is the best platform we have ever used . Employees like the variety of all the module. We love the fact they are offered in so many languages. The in house produced series is so interesting. The employees no longer feel like it’s arduous.

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

Easy to use for both the admins and the users

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

Our Customer Success Manager is amazingly helpful and responsive. She meets with us every month to go over new features and help us with campaigns. Also, when we email her with questions, she usually turns around an answer in a couple of hours and never longer than a day. KnowBe4 Compliance Plus has dedicated people who really take care of their customers after the sale.

Incentivized

Great modules geared to adults

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

It was goood. It required tech support from both sides but it was not hard

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

Cost was the main barrier to entry for the other products we evaluated. KnowBe4 Compliance Plus was priced more competitively by a significant amount. Also, other platforms didn't offer the same breath of compliance training compared to KnowBe4 Compliance Plus. Ultimately we chose KnowBe4 Compliance Plus for the value and also the amount of compliance modules they support despite not being the most polished.

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

• Within 1 week after releasing privacy awareness training modules to our staff, I started receiving comments and questions about our services, processes, interfaces, and policies related to privacy concerns in the course of normal project conversations - that I have NEVER before gotten at this company. That made it all worth it.
• Our users' failures with phishing (email) scams has begun to decrease significantly since we provided some phishing awareness modules. More items are being reported and less users are being misled.

Incentivized