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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Adobe Captivate

    Score5.9 out of 10
    N/AAdobe Captivate is an elearning authoring and course design tool (or LCMS). It supports mobile HTML5 content. Captivate’s users are commonly midsized businesses to enterprises. Adobe Captivate includes some prebuilt assets as well as customizable workflows.

    $33.99

    per month

    Thinkific

    Score8.9 out of 10
    N/AThinkific Plus is a scalable learning platform that’s designed to be easy to use for teams and customers. Thinkific Plus offers enterprise-grade features that scale with the needs of enterprises, and the service includes a people seriously dedicated to helping users to reach their goals.N/A
    Pricing
    Adobe CaptivateThinkific
    Editions & Modules
    Subscription
    $33.99
    per month
    Student & Teacher Edition
    $399
    one-time fee
    Upgrade
    $499
    one-time fee
    Pereptual License
    1,299
    one-time fee
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Adobe CaptivateThinkific
    Free Trial
    YesNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Adobe CaptivateThinkific
    Considered Both Products
    Adobe
    No answer on this topic
    Thinkific
    Chose Thinkific
    This review is only for the course building functionality. We moved to Articulate 360 for the course building portion of the program because it's way more feature rich and have been please with it's capabilities. We've yet to investigate other LMS options because we've been so …
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    87%
    Would buy again
    75 Answers
    88%
    Would buy again
    46 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    92%
    Delivers good value for the price
    69 Answers
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    40 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    84%
    Happy with the feature set
    72 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    49 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    87%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    48 Answers
    87%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    53 Answers
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    40 Answers
    Features
    Adobe CaptivateThinkific
    Learning Management
    Comparison of Learning Management features of Adobe Captivate and Thinkific
    Feature
    Adobe Captivate
    9.1
    31 Ratings
    6% above category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    Course authoring8.030 Ratings00 Ratings
    Course catalog or library9.018 Ratings00 Ratings
    Player/Portal8.024 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning content9.024 Ratings00 Ratings
    Progress tracking & certifications9.026 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning reporting & analytics9.019 Ratings00 Ratings
    Social learning10.014 Ratings00 Ratings
    Gamification8.02 Ratings00 Ratings
    eLearning Content
    Comparison of eLearning Content features of Adobe Captivate and Thinkific
    Feature
    Adobe Captivate
    8.4
    1 Ratings
    1% below category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    Multi-Lingual Support7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Structured Learning10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Historical Metrics8.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Cloud-Based Content10.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation & Integration7.01 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Adobe CaptivateThinkific
    Small Businesses
    Coursera
    Score7.6 out of 10
    iSpring Suite
    Score7.5 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    365 Data Science
    Score9.5 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Pluralsight
    Score9.4 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Adobe CaptivateThinkific
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.6
    (128 ratings)
    9.3
    (54 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    7.0
    (9 ratings)
    8.6
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (8 ratings)
    8.8
    (44 ratings)
    Availability
    1.8
    (1 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    7.3
    (1 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    5.8
    (18 ratings)
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    2.7
    (2 ratings)
    6.6
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    5.5
    (1 ratings)
    3.6
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    8.6
    (2 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    8.2
    (1 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Adobe CaptivateThinkific
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    I think Thinkific is very well suited if you want more control and not a ton of competition. It is very well suited if you want to create courses because it does an amazing job with providing course outline examples for you to stay organized and so forth. The only thing I would say where the courses might be less appropriate is if someone is expecting it to be like an udemy where people can see a ton of different course creators all in one place with course recommendations. Thinkific is not that type of platform and I LOVE that. On Thinkific, it almost feels like our site is our own ya know. I tried out other platforms and it just felt like you were competing with so many other people and could see other courses. Felt like being on a platter served with others. Thinkific just feels more unique in the sense it feels like when people come to your page, they are only seeing your page.
    Incentivized
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    Pros
    Adobe
    • 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
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    Thinkific
    • Enables course creators to deliver high quality courses very fast
    • Offers unlimited hosting for videos included in the subscription price
    • Provides an easy to use administration interface that's powerful and accessible
    • Easy to scale subscription tiers on B2C plans, cost effective highly scaleable B2B plans (Thinkific Plus) ideal for companies who want to start a customer education program
    • Amazing support and account management team - great mindset and people in the teams.
    Read full review
    Cons
    Adobe
    • 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
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    Thinkific
    • auto formatting of some course building content, does not format well on phone vs desktop
    • filter by group functionality for website based content, it's mostly filter by enrollments
    • the plug and play web building is convenient but really we need a UX/UI designer to build a super good looking website. Plug and play builder works but doesnt look SUPER sharp if done by someone with no dev skills or coding ability
    Incentivized
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    Likelihood to Renew
    Adobe
    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
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    I'm very likely to renewal as long as Thinkific stays focused on helping small businesses like myself to stay in the know of new and more effective ways to use digital learning tools to help our students get better success. I will also stay with Thinkific if they do not intend to hike up the prices and keep the different price plans suit all businesses regardless of the size.
    Incentivized
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    Usability
    Adobe
    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
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    Thinkific
    Under Site Builder, when trying to add a new section, so many templates appear; however, preview is not shown, which makes it super difficult and time consuming to identify a template that suits the purpose. Customization of certification designs is a bit difficult too. There are limitations to the type of quiz questions I can create - for example, there's no option to have fill in the blank questions.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Adobe
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    I've never had any issues with accessing Thinkific but I can see when it has been a problem for others. When I get updates on when they are doing maintenance to their platform I tend to make sure that is not the day I plan to be working on my school so as not to get frustrated
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Adobe
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    When it comes to the performance of Thinkific for me I find that it's good but could be better. I tend to think that the larger the files and videos you upload on your courses may add to the impact of it's uploading (not sure if that's actually true or not). But overall the performance of Thinkific via my tablet and desktop is very good when I have a fast speed broadband speed
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Adobe
    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
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    Thinkific
    I rate Thinkific a ten because of its excellent customer service, ease of use, high-quality product, fair price with excellent ROI, and because they keep making improvements. Using Thinkific solved the problems of piecing together our course with various WordPress plugins, iframes, and payment processing software. It's easy to create a course website for people who can't write code.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Adobe
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    It was good and easy to understand
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Adobe
    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
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    Thinkific
    I highly recommend utilizing the bulk importer for video content early on, as it saves a massive amount of time during the initial setup phase. Another insight is to set up your custom domain and email integrations (like Mailchimp or HubSpot) at the very beginning of the implementation
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Adobe
    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
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    Thinkific
    ClickFunnels is great for funnels, but as of now, it does not do well with e-learning. Maybe they'll change that in ClickFunnels 2.0. But for now, I use Thinkific because I need a place where the students can come into their own dashboard, find all the courses they have purchased on a single place and be able to track their progress.
    Incentivized
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Adobe
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    Great use easy and simple
    Incentivized
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    Scalability
    Adobe
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    The opportunities to scale your online course business with Thinkific is endless. They provide a great range of plans with features, integrations and support to suit the needs of any business as different levels. The key here is knowing where to start with the budget you have and then knowing when it's time to scale up and the tools and resources it will require.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Adobe
    • 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
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    Thinkific
    • No email marketing makes it more difficult to collect leads.
    • Price can be a barrier at time for small businesses who don't have revenue.
    • Easy to use and helps with my business needs vs platforms like Squarespace.
    • Community building through workshops and webinars Thinkific host.
    • Access to educational resources and mobile app.
    Incentivized
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