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Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate

Overview

What is Adobe Captivate?

Adobe 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.

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Recent Reviews

Captivate review

9 out of 10
October 07, 2022
Incentivized
I use Adobe Captivate to build customized eLearning for companies. Sometimes the units are for a wide audience such as for new hire …
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Awesome elearning

9 out of 10
October 07, 2022
Incentivized
Captivate is powerful and builds great eLearning. It has a bit of a learning curve, but your end products will be well worth it. Our …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 8 features
  • Course authoring (29)
    10.0
    100%
  • Progress tracking & certifications (25)
    10.0
    100%
  • Learning content (23)
    9.0
    90%
  • Player/Portal (23)
    8.0
    80%
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Pricing

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Subscription

$33.99

On Premise
per month

Student & Teacher Edition

$399

On Premise
one-time fee

Upgrade

$499

On Premise
one-time fee

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Demos

Adobe Captivate - Software Simulations and Video Demos

YouTube

Create your first video demo with Adobe Captivate (2017 Release)

YouTube

Adobe Captivate Animated Text - brief how to and samples

YouTube

Adobe Captivate Tutorial - Pan, Zoom, Picture-in-Picture - Captivate Training in Los Angeles

YouTube

HOW TO Record Video Demo with Adobe Captivate

YouTube

Demo PowerPoint to Captivate Demo

YouTube
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Features

Learning Management

Features of LMS and LCMS systems, related to designing, administering, and consuming learning content in an educational, corporate, or on-the-job context.

9.4
Avg 8.5
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Product Details

What is Adobe Captivate?

Adobe Captivate is an elearning authoring and course design tool (or LCMS). It allows users to rapidly author responsive, interactive learning eLearning content, as well as mobile HTML-5 learning content. Users can test courses with the preview LMS feature, and track the performance of learners as they complete quizzes and other tasks. Adobe Captivate includes some prebuilt templates and learning assets, but users also have the option to custom code their own complex learning workflows. Adobe Captivate integrates with SCORM-compliant LMS systems, including Adobe Captivate Prime.

Adobe Captivate Video

What is Adobe Captivate?

Adobe Captivate Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Mac
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Adobe 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.

Reviewers rate Course authoring and Progress tracking & certifications and Social learning highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Adobe Captivate are from Enterprises (1,001+ employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(271)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(51-75 of 127)
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October 05, 2022

Be captivated

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Adobe Captivate to create training content and add training material to our LMS. We do not use it daily, but we use it often enough for our team to be familiar with how to use it. The only issue I have is how it can be a bit complicated for beginners.
  • Never crashes
  • Easy once you get familiar with it
  • Lots of resources
  • More explanations of functions
  • Free
  • Part of the cloud
Adobe Captivate is great for simplicity and access. I wish it was free. It is great for video training, material editing, and documents. Not suitable if you are not familiar with the software, although there are resources. I wish there was a more in-depth tutorial within the tool to make it easier to learn.
October 05, 2022

Adobe Captivate review

Marisa Pedro | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I'm currently using Adobe Captivate to develop an e-learning course that will replace the course that we used to do in person. Adobe Captivate was chosen because it will allow for an instructional video, software simulation, and quizzes/assessments to determine learning.
  • Very customizable. There is not a color or font that I can't change.
  • Quizzes and assessments.
  • Ability to upload video and content.
  • I like the software simulation, but it's really only good for point-and-click and typing software simulations. In terms of movement within the software, it doesn't do well. I can understand it would be difficult, but it was still something I wished for while I'd been building.
  • There are some features that are very hard to find. I stumbled upon the skin editor. I stumbled upon the object manager. I can't tell you how many negative comments I received about the skin before realizing I could change it. I can't tell you how much time I wasted going slide by slide to change objects only to find that I could do it in one go with the object manager.
  • Audio and video editing. I create all my video content in Camtasia and then export it to MP4 to load into Adobe Captivate.
The software is great for creating a very curated, specific training that will meet your needs. It would not be appropriate if you need to create something quickly. It took me some time to learn the software... and I'm still constantly going to the help site to learn how to do other things.
Cliff Holverson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company decided to use Adobe Captivate to begin creating eLearning content for our customers to supplement our instructor-led and video training. We hope to utilize self-paced learning to introduce concepts to our clients before they enter the IL training space so they can get the most out of their time with a live instructor. To this end, we have created several courses that cover the basics of our software. Each course uses the "software simulation" portion of Adobe Captivate, along with some knowledge check questions.
  • Software simulation
  • Branching
  • Customization
  • Templates. There seem to be "themes," but Adobe Captivate has a terrible time saving any sort of object preferences which makes it really difficult when a set of courses need to follow branding guidelines. I have to create a basic course and set up all my colors and whatnot and start every course using that.
  • Ease of use. It is like pulling teeth sometimes to get Adobe Captivate to do things. You may be able to get it to do it, but it'll be like a dozen or more steps which make creating courses incredibly tedious.
  • A bigger focus on software simulation. Adobe Captivate isn't designed for simulation, I get that, and I am happy it does as much as it does. However, it could be better to capture actions and things within a program. For instance, click and drag options and hot-key combinations.
I would more than likely recommend Adobe Captivate, however, with the caveat that it is a complex program that the average user might not just b be able to pick up and run with. I have prior experience using other programs to build eLearning content, so I was able to figure enough out to get a basic course, but without instruction from other folks, I feel I would have been dead in the water. If someone was NOT creating software simulations, or if it was web-based software (Adobe Captivate seems to do very well capturing actions in a browser), then I would maybe recommend it more.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Adobe Captivate to design courses written by curriculum developers.
  • Interactive functions and movement
  • Effects
  • HTML for use in browser
  • Timeline is great
  • Text function is sometimes blurry when exporting graphics into Adobe Captivate stage
  • Not as much cross use between other programs besides adobe
There are so many different uses for the course and gamification and making the most of software if you know how to use it.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Use it for building web-based training. SCORMed for a Moodle LMS. Business problems are it has fallen behind in functionality. Looking forward to seeing what Charm has to offer in the pretest today. We need to program a lot of behind-the-scenes functionality to do our quizzes and interactions the way we need to. We would like to add animations from ANimate, but the OEM file doesn't work well in Adobe Captivate. Layering a GIF file is complicated too. The VR capability is extremely limited and clunky. Hoping Charm will integrate more with other Adobe CC products like AE, AN, CH, PR, etc. Also, hoping 508 accessibility ALT text, CC, and the tab order is much easier than Adobe Captivate 2019. It would be nice to have MP4 CC editable and use the industry standard file type to import the CC test into Adobe Captivate instead of hand typing it. We do gov contracts, and 508 is super important. We would love to meld animation into Adobe Captivate, but AE doesn't seem to export a format for Adobe Captivate. Hoping Charm will help here. My ISDs want to jump off to Articulate, so keeping my fingers crossed for Charm.
  • Advanced Actions
  • Reading active text on screen
  • TTS and Closed caption with Notes
  • Text input
  • Masters
  • Color input
  • Bullets animation (as like in PPT) in one text box, not one each bullet.
  • Import animations from AE or CP easier. OEM files don't play well with layers or advanced actions.
  • Accessibility, 508 compliance could be easier.
  • Import Closed captioning created in Premier using the standard industry file format.
  • VR and 360 function is not 508 compliant.
  • Option to Keep ALT text if updating an image instead of having to replace it. Retyping it is annoying.
  • Option to Keep CC applied to a video file if it needs updating. Retyping it is annoying.
  • Move asset button away from the library panel. We click it when the library window closes.
  • Make updating images as easy as it is for InDesign. Replacing images in Adobe Captivate is difficult. Took me 3 years to figure it out. And it doesn't always work using the "replace" button in the library.
  • Make updating PPT easier. It only works some of the time. And relinking it doesn't always work. It is very clunky and touchy when sharing files with other users.
Adobe Captivate 2019 is well suited for standard web-based training. We do mostly page-turners. Branching has gotten easier but still can be complicated to program. Then If you want to do anything fancy like animations, it is less accommodating. Advanced actions only go so far - AE and AN don't play easily in Adobe Captivate. We want to move into more current trends for designing WBTs but find Adobe Captivate right now cannot handle the new trends in design and animation. Hoping Charm will bridge this gap.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I am a curriculum developer developing training for all departments in our company. We use Adobe Captivate to do proactive as well as reactive and interactive training for all personnel.
  • It is intuitive in creating knowledge check questions.
  • Animations can be added with ease.
  • Audio is not only easy to add, but extremely easy to edit.
  • Training is user-friendly.
  • Adding layers to slides to add interaction can be a bit cumbersome to create.
  • Drag and drop experiences tend to be slow to respond when adding them to knowledge check questions.
The best scenario is with straightforward training with basic animation and interaction. It is less appropriate where more user interaction is needed, and animation is more complex for systems that our mechanics and pilots use.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As we become more and more involved in the learning management system of creating content and assessments, this is the direction we are going. We use various platforms and believe it would be beneficial to use a primary one.
  • Differientiates
  • Personalize
  • Organize Content
  • I believe the new Adobe Captivate is providing what I have wanted to see.
With so many LMS to choose from, I feel that Adobe Captivate is a one-stop shop. All items can work together so that we can create content seamlessly.
October 05, 2022

Great Product

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I develop courses in Captivate based on SME content.
  • Imputing graphics.
  • Interactivity.
  • User friendly.
  • Accessibility.
  • Simplifying advanced actions.
  • Upload to LMS easier.
Accessibility is proving difficult, and that is my clients main focus. All other things are fine.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Adobe Captivate to create web-based training for nurses. Most of the training that nurses go through is hands on. However, nurses must also achieve continuing education credits each year, as well as refresher training for state license and federal requirements. I build training, web-based and videos, to assist the nurses in meeting their requirements.
  • Flexibility in interactions.
  • Action Scripting.
  • Conversion from PPT to Adobe Captivate.
  • More modern user interface.
  • More plug & play interactions. For example, pre-made click & reveal buttons.
Adobe Captivate is great at providing conceptual, procedural descriptions, and compliance content. Adobe Captivate is not well suited for hands-on training, like inserting a needle into a patient's arm. However, if you record the hands-on procedure and embed it into Adobe Captivate, you can create a successful learning solution for nurses.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Adobe Captivate to create internal eLearning product training for our service workforce. I am a designer of content and developer.
  • The immersive feature. Able to change the screen to fit the relevant content.
  • Slide templates to customize for your training topic.
  • Able to preview before publishing.
  • Adding a designed PowerPoint. Some characters, images and animation do not transfer well if they do at that.
  • Asset libraries don't have some types of job people characters.
  • Training! It would be nice to have a search button on how to do something.
Adobe Captivate is well suited for soft skills training but not well suited for technical skills training or kinestetic type training.
October 05, 2022

Adobe Captivate review

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Create eLearning for all departments.
  • Ability to create complex interactions
  • Access to Adobe stock images
  • Access to training materials for Adobe Captivate
  • Adobe Captivate can be very complex which causes some to give up developing in it.
It can be difficult to learn as a first-time user of development software, which causes developers to look for other software.
Kharla Graham | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adobe Captivate is one of the "bread and butter" programs we use for our curriculum development and instructional design within the airline industry. With so many facets to the company as a whole, Adobe Captivate allows me to hone our curriculum to fit our customers instead of the many limitations of other products.
  • Software simulation
  • PowerPoint conversion and export
  • Media (specififcally music) additions
  • More intuitive layout
  • Better processing
  • Bug fixes more quickly
  • Collaborative work
I love Adobe Captivate for the Software Simulations Option. While it could be improved, it is the best so far.
October 05, 2022

Adobe Captivate Review

Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a curriculum developer, Adobe Captivate was used to create eLearning content for all departments that would then be loaded and presented in an LMS system.
  • It allows a variety of animation options that assist in creating more engaging training material.
  • Content would lock up. A blank slide would pop-up when trying to complete the training in LMS.
  • Unable to preview one slide at a time; We had to preview the entire presentation in HTML.
Adobe Captivate is great for creating content, offer many options for animation, slide creation and use of videos.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our team develops eLearning modules to teach on how to use global applications. Using Adobe Captivate helps us deliver engaging courses that help users learn more efficiently. Creating courses is easy and we can integrate videos and other animations very quickly. I enjoy developing quizzes that are easy to add and developing templates within Captivate is easy. Additionally, adding to our company LMS is simple and quick.
  • Interactions
  • Quizzes
  • Adding to LMS
  • Adding Voice Over
  • Developing more graphics within the platform
  • Editing Videos more easily
It's well suited for eLearning that you want to add animation to and detailed graphics. I feel editing videos are a bit harder and adding captions can be very time-consuming.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I create eLearning for corporate and operating company employees.
  • It allows me to create my own ideas without using templates.
  • It works well with other Creative Cloud software so that I can create beautiful slides.
  • It does what you tell it to do. If it doesn't behave the way you expect, it's almost always a user error. Once you learn how to use it, you have lots of control.
  • It's a steep learning curve for new users.
  • Learning curve is so steep, those who aren't tech savvy won't even try to learn.
  • It doesn't upload PowerPoint well (not that I'd do that, but some would like to).
Captivate is well suited to creating branching and scenario-based learning. It allows you to use interactions if you can imagine them. It's powerful.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Adobe Captivate to create eLearning content and courses for technical training. Captivate enables us to create and deliver relevant training to a variety of audiences.
  • It makes producing SCORM-compliant content relatively easy.
  • It does not allow for multiple videos within a slide.
  • It requires programming expertise for intermediate to advanced functions.
  • It can be clunky and non-intuitive.
  • It does not feature dynamic text resizing.
  • The current version does not integrate with other Adobe products.
While Adobe Captivate can be difficult for beginning to intermediate content developers, I would recommend it to advanced eLearning developers interested in elevating their training content.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We primarily use Captivate to develop and publish all of the quarterly and supplemental training for our pilots. Captivate addresses our needs for an all-in-one tool to build, publish, and manage our content in a repeatable and standardized process when tied into our in-house LMS. The products we build with Captivate are seen by 14,000 pilots every 3 months and on average there are 10-15 modules built for each quarter and Captivate has been the key in keeping that ball rolling for us.
  • Standardized templates
  • Powerful layout and editing features
  • Integration with other Adobe tools
  • Easy integration with multiple LMS solutions throughout the industry
  • User interface
  • We need the ability to pull both raster and vector graphics directly into the software from their native applications, ie Photoshop and Illustrator.
  • An easier method to create text lists that can be animated individually without creating separate caption boxes
Captivate is excellent for creating standardized training for large teams or multiple work-groups. When put in the hands of skilled developers and programmers the sky is the proverbial limit. However, the learning curve is steep for many. If your work-group is less experienced with advanced editing, content creation, or programming, Captivate may not be the best solution.
Jason Ceballos | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are in charge of creating eLearning and maintaining records of training for 14,000+ on a quarterly basis. Captivate has helped to deploy a very reliable operation of training and recurrent training that has made our development process really easy to navigate and to establish standards across our fleets and departments.
  • Assessment Management
  • Audio and Timeline Management
  • Animations
  • Image integration management
  • Better voice over functionality
  • Multi platform preview
Extremely well suited for eLearning development, storytelling, interactive video training, audio management and overall to offer a great well reliable experience to the end user. Captivate has a great and easy integration with different Learning Management Systems which ultimately facilitates and takes the learning experience of our users to the next level.
Gabriel Nance | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We train a LOT of systems that are constantly changing to a virtual workforce across the globe. Captivate makes it easy to create software training videos that are engaging and interesting (well, I have to do the "interesting" part). We also use the screens, use cases, and scenarios from the software training videos to create simulations to allow users to practice what they've just watched.
  • Software training videos.
  • Software training assisted simulations.
  • Software training unassisted simulations.
  • "How to" explainer videos.
  • More animations - current animation offerings are very limited when compared to Powtoon or Vyond.
  • More slide transitions - current slide transition offerings are very limited when compared to Powtoon or Vyond.
  • More robust asset library for images, video clips, and background music (current offerings are very limited when compared to Powtoon or Vyond).
I recommend using Captivate for formal and straightforward "step-by-step" walkthroughs of software training videos as well as assisted and unassisted software training simulations. It's less suited for less formal (aka more fun) educational videos (though I've had to use it to create "how-to" explainer videos and, while it works, I had to do a lot of the heavy lifting and get creative to determine workarounds).
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used for e-learning courses production by the development department
  • The published content is produced as a standard product that we can mount everywhere.
  • It is easy to use.
  • Has a library of preset content types.
  • Speed. It's slugish on all computers I has used it, Mac and Windows, the UX feels so slow.
  • Outdated UI, looks and behaves like a 10+ years app.
  • A better way to control what we see at a certain point of the timeline.
It is very well suited for content creation for multimedia e-learning courses, it includes lot of premade layouts so it's fast to start something from scratch. It has some powerful undocumented integration with JS so it's possible to build some very powerful activities but it requires expert knowledge.
June 04, 2021

Good, but not great

Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Adobe Captivate to develop virtual training for end users.
  • It's interactive
  • It is more engaging than PowerPoint
  • Closed captions need more improvement. One specific issue is that they react significantly to unseen formatting from Microsoft and make it hard to edit/change them without having to take an additional step to paste all text into notepad to clear formatting first. It's way too laborious.
  • I wish copying variables and formatting was easier when I'm creating an interactive "click on these buttons" type of experience. I feel like I have to recreate it every time.
  • When playing back the videos there is a lot of quirks that are causing issues for the end user experience; formatted items aren't appearing on the screen, timing is delayed...I don't understand why or how those things happen, but when I completely delete and redo them, then it works. It's delayed the rollout of this training by 2 months already.
I think there's just way too much clunkiness about Adobe Captivate. It took me about 3 months to get used to its quirks.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We looked at many options for e-learning content creation with an important criteria being the ability to work with existing software and LMS delivery systems. Captivate also offered interactive features for user interactions and the ability to stream video. We appreciate the ability to same the same course design to export to older systems as SCORM files and to new web delivery as HTML5 files.
  • Ability to save for multiple LMS platforms such as Moodle, SCORM and HTML5.
  • Easily streams videos from external hosts or internal servers.
  • Offers interactive features and branching options to engage user participation.
  • Available templates and icons are available to streamline design.
  • Tests work better and are better integrated when created outside of Captivate using other LMS software.
  • Difficult to share without publishing for others to review or preview.
Works well to easily create interactive content with video and audio. Publishes as a final unit ready to integrate into different LMS systems. The ability to create user profiles, grading, etc. requires the use of an additional LMS, not a stand-alone solution.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a commercial cleaning provider, my organization has a need to train a remote workforce to ensure excellent cleaning standards and compliance with all health and safety and environmental legislation. While we have a training academy at our head office we wanted employees to be able to train at their convenience and needed to roll out emergency training on enhanced cleaning during a pandemic. Adobe Captivate allowed us to create engaging, interactive training videos that have been extremely well received by clients and cleaners alike.
  • Interactivity
  • Overlaying and recording audio narration.
  • Importing content from PowerPoint.
  • Compatibility with systems outside Adobe.
Well suited to training with voiceovers and self-running training. Not sure it would be as good for instructor-led.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Personal use only. For my testing uses, I use it to see how the courses I design fit the requirements of different platforms, and when they are uploaded, we try to test run them to see how they work. We also troubleshoot the courses and want to see if they are compliant.
  • Great UX
  • Easy Use
  • Great Menu
  • User experience
  • More instructional courses
  • More training on specific qualities
It is a great platform when you have a small group of learners and you want to develop a course for this small group of learners and do not want to spend a high price tag for a full LMS with shaky features that work sometimes and do not work other times.
Bernard Gale | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We originally selected Captivate to develop e-learning courses for our customers. We were very pleased with the original product although it was never as good as the original product Adobe bought to build on, Authorware. However, it became apparent Adobe were slow to develop the product. It fell behind other e-learning products in the marketplace.
We came back to Captivate after a customer had been using it and asked for help. We were pleased to see some improvements and again started to use it but the product is still full of out-of-date code, an attempt by Adobe to keep flash users.
It does include some AR and VR options but nothing compared to other products in the excellent Adobe range. So we are now being forced to move away again from Captivate.
  • Easy to use for a basic user and you can quickly produce a reasonable course.
  • Tight integration with LMS systems.
  • Good working examples to develop.
  • A good user base if a bit long in the tooth!!
  • Little coding options (yes you can use some Java script but it needs to be adapted.
  • Poor cross-platform integration with other Adobe products.
  • Poor slow develop cycle.
  • Can be buggy and cause Windows errors.
Good for users with limited needs. It's simple to take a model course, make changes and have something working in 0.5 hour. Simple to get started, very short learning curve.

Not good if you seek to do much with VR or AR and sadly lacks integration with other Adobe products.
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