Adobe Captivate 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.

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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.

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• 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 Personally, I think this is an outdated technology.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.

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• 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!

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• 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.

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• 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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Independently Invited by TrustRadius

A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info