Adobe Captivate vs. LearnUpon

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

I think LearnUpon is a great LMS for an organization that focuses on internal learners, aka, employees. It's very easy to create courses, enroll learners, and mark attendance. For an association such as mine, more support would be helpful for appropriately setting up the store to reflect member and non-member accounts. In addition, it's difficult to do outside-the-box functions like transfers and refunds.

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 Personally, I think this is an outdated technology.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

• Integration with video conferencing platforms (primarily Zoom).
• Timing out releasing of course materials and exams so students can't get eyes on something an instructor is not ready for them to see yet.
• Customization of our store front and courses with regard to branding and graphics.

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

• There are issues with users who have an account in more than one LearnUpon portal. If a user has an account in an existing LearnUpon portal, and they want to create an account in another LearnUpon portal, then they have to be invited to the new portal by an Administrator. but the user has no way of knowing that its a LearnUpon portal until they can't sign up. Its very confusing for the learner.
• An email address is required in order to set up an account. We serve many providers who don't have email addresses for all of their staff, so this is a huge issue for us.

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've been a customer for six years and I don't see that changing anytime soon. We're very happy with LearnUpon.

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

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'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

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

LearnUpon's interface and immersive experience blows the competition out of the water. LearnUpon understands the "big picture" of online learning and how to provide a system that is easy and fun to use for users at any level. LearnUpon's knowledge of their own platform, and their impeccable client support is unparalleled. LearnUpon understands our business and learning needs better than any competitor. Now that I'm using a different platform at another job, I miss LearnUpon every day!

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 have not implemented it yet due to unforeseen issues with a different vendor, but we have launched two pilots and it has been very well received.
• The expected outcome is a lot more revenue because the catalog we have in our current LMS (Absorb) is very poorly designed and ineffective.
• Another expected outcome is that people will be excited to learn more and be better ambassadors for our company.

Incentivized