Articulate 360 is an e-learning platform for creating workplace training. Users can build engaging courses with AI-enhanced authoring, simplify collaboration, and quickly share content. A subscription includes robust onboarding resources and access to a community of 1.5M pros.
$1,449
per year
Volusion
Score 4.8 out of 10
N/A
Volusion is a cloud-based ecommerce solution from the company of the same name in Austin, TX. It features an intuitive dashboard, built-in marketing and promos, SEO, templates, and tools to customize look and appearance.
$29
per month
Pricing
Articulate 360
Volusion
Editions & Modules
Articulate 360 AI - Personal Plan
$1,449
per year
Articulate 360 AI - Teams Plan
$1,749
per year
Personal
$29
per month
Pro
$79
per month
Startup
$179
per month
Business
$299
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Articulate 360
Volusion
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
Optional
No setup fee
Additional Details
Those new to Articulate 360 can try it free of charge for 30 days. Articulate 360 is available on the Articulate website and through Articulate Authorized Resellers.
Articulate 360 is great for online courses, courses for an LMS, courses that use media, text to speech audio, interactive items. Courses can be translated into other languages quickly. You can bring in outside media into the course pretty easily. The layouts are professional looking and blocks can be copied easily and repeated as needed.
Volusion is a good company if you're starting out. The problem is that, if you want more complexity out of the program, you're kind of stuck. Also the regular time out errors and slow downs can be very frustrating. Packages that miss overnight deadlines because your system stops working can cost you customers. In today's highly competitive market, that's just something that's hard to put up with. If you have a lower volume of business you might be able to work around these issues.
Unrivaled Power and Customization. After 15 years in the training industry, Storyline 360 remains my favorite tool because it is, simply put, the most powerful authoring tool I have ever used, giving me complete creative control.
Advanced Interactivity. I love being able to 'overengineer' content using Triggers, Variables, States, and Layers, which allows me to build the most sophisticated and deep functionality.
Superior to Basic Tools. Storyline's capability to build detailed branching scenarios and realistic simulations sets it leaps and bounds apart from basic tools like PowerPoint, which is essential for high-impact training.
Templates are pre-built for a good end user experience. I've gone through the process of building custom sites as well as tweaking both free and paid templates that Volusion's design team provides.
Their support team didn't use to be as helpful, but in recent years have answered nearly all questions I've had. Their support section within the database provides detailed walkthrus as well.
Order processing is easy once you've been trained on the system. We got to a point where nearly the entire process was automated from initial purchase through shipping.
API calls use the previous call as a reference, even if you weren't the one we made the previous call. Can lead to data gaps, so you often have to set a manual date range to look back to make sure you aren't missing any data.
I haven't seen any other platform for developing learning materials that is as comprehensive or as reliable as Articulate has proven to be for our use. Because our group has a number of PowerPoint power users, the PowerPoint integration with Articulate is particularly beneficial.
When you spend so much time with a product like this and not only have you witnessed its growth, but you almost feel like you are next those that make the decisions of building features a certain way, you can't help but want to stay and be a part of their continued growth. It's simply a great product. Can it improve? By all means! But it will only improve because of users and avid resellers like me.
Usability is where Articulate shines. Anyone who has ever built a PowerPoint can open the tool and quickly understand how to use it. The more complex aspects of the tool are also very user-friendly, but you can build great content without ever going into advanced variables or JavaScript.
I rate the overall support for Articulate 360 with a 9. On the one hand because of the smooth and accurate support from Articulate's support team (usually within 24 hours) and on the other because of the commitment / use of a community (e-learning Heroes) where I have all kinds of insights from other helpful users.
You have to wait on hold for at least 45 minutes every call—the tech support person never knows the answer right away so they put you on 10 minute holds only to come back and say they're still looking for answers. The chat function could take days to get a response. Our "Dedicated Account Manager" never checks in or answers, nor are they ever in the office when we call. It's like they try to be as unavailable as possible until you forget why you even called in the first place. Insane.
The online training options given by the online tutorials, forums, and "E-Learning Heroes" community are simply awesome. Examples galore, easy to understand descriptions including step-by-step guides, images, occasionally videos, and the "Articulate Insiders" sub-community give you more materials to learn about Storyline than you are likely to be able to read.
Outside of having to dedicate a powerful enough PC for the installation and having to update Flash in our browsers there really isn't much pain involved in using Articulate. For the most part this is an easy to implement and roll-out product. The installation occurs quickly and smoothly with no additional steps needed.
It is best to use the built-in features and recommended services for the most turn-key experience (ie. Skipjack for payment processing so that it can all be done from the Volusion backend).
I have not used any other elearning development software other than Articulate 360. Though, I have seen demos of other products and while they are great, they still don’t seem to be as great as Articulate 360. This opinion also shows up in other places like product reviews and instructional design groups on Facebook.
While k-eCommerce was very glamorous to us because it integrates with our main workflow, it just didn't have some of the marketing features that are so integral to the way we do business online. The set-up costs were also way too high. Volusion is so affordable and feature heavy, it makes it very difficult for any shopping cart provider to compete. You can find others who are competitively priced and have similar features, but they simply aren't as robust (at least for the way we use it)
Honestly, when you're in the dashboard, the UX is simply horrendous. I mean, everything that should be 1-2 clicks away is 4-6 clicks away, and each pages takes at least four seconds to load. You just find yourself wasting a lot of time waiting for things to load. This should be more simple.
