Articulate Storyline / Rise vs New Captivate
Jul 12, 2023
Hello everyone,
I am preparing a case study for my company and would like to gather some info from experienced users if possible.
I realised it is very new, but I was wondering if anyone has had a chance to compare the new Adobe Captivate with Articulate Storyline/Rise. I work for an company that wants to bring development in-house and I would need to present my recommendation about going with Articulate or Adobe.
I have read many threads and it looks like articulate products are more powerful than Adobe Captivate, but it seems that the new version of Captivate changed the product a lot. We're specially considering that our designers/developers are mostly mac based and Articulate doesn't have a mac version yet.
I just watched a couple of Adobe's videos about the new version of Captivate and it looks like a mix of Rise + Storyline (please note that first impression and that I am not an advanced user at all).
Also, I read that Articulate doesn't share their roadmap, but maybe someone from Articulate can let us know if they have any new product/s or a new version in the pipelines to compete with the new Captivate?
Thanks a lot in advance!
4 Replies
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It seems no one in this community, has anything of value to add to this conversation :(
Hey Ozzie - Sorry you have had limited responses. I think we all needed to spend a little time trying to understand what Adobe is doing with captivate.... And its not looking good.
I am a user of the Captivate Classic and have been testing Articulate suite quite a bit as our team may switch programs with the new Captivate 2023 that was just released. So from my perspective there is NO COMPARISON between the two programs. Articulate (SL and rise) exceeds captivate in every way - especially the New captivate.
So some back story - Captivate (classic) which is their program that is similar to Storyline is being retired in 2027 and they will stop servicing it. The files from Captivate Classic are .CPTX files and cannot be used with the new captivate. The new captivate, from what we have seen, functions as a basic version of Rise. You lose all ability to design with the new captivate but rather have to use cookie cutter layouts and fonts and can't personalize it much. You can't even pick where you want an image to display on a slide. For this reason alone, as a designer - most of my projects are not cookie cutter projects and require personalization and creative freedom, so if captivate classic is going away - the only option for me is Storyline.
Now with the comparison between Storyline and captivate Classic - they basically do the same things, but Captivate makes doing those things SO MUCH HARDER. Where Articulate functions basically like PowerPoint with built in intuitive interactions that are very simple to create, captivate has the same functions hidden within menu after menu and it just is not very intuitive. In addition, you can import your storyboards, from PPT, directly into Storyline and then EDIT them. In captivate they basically turn your entire ppt slide into a image and you cannot edit it within Captivate so you have to manually transfer the entire ppt into Captivate element by element. There is also the "skin" feature in Storyline that is amazing. You can create search functions to find content in your course, a glossary, notes tabs and you can include company branding.
I get this is a little one sided with how I feel about the programs. I learned how to create training using Captivate, it was the only option my company offered, and I have used it for 6 years. So, testing and using Storyline was like a breath of fresh air as thing were just so much more simple and the output is so much more professional.
Also - to get Captivate to play well with our LMS, SABA which is a Cornerstone subsidiary, we have to use scorm 2004, advanced settings with several manual Java scripts to force completion and bookmark properly and learners need to close the CBT using a specific button or it won't grant credit. With Storyline, I published in Scorm 1.2 with default setting and get completion no matter how I close it out. it just is no comparison.
Anyway - hope this helped a little.
Thanks so much, Tiffany! Your response is very helpful, and I truly appreciate the effort you've put into providing such a thorough insight.
Since my initial post, I've had the opportunity to test drive Storyline, and it feels a bit dated and clunky to me. I've also experimented with Adobe Captivate, and it's been an even worse experience.
By reading many posts in this forum I also see that Articulate sometimes takes years to address bugs and even basic issues.
So, if it comes down to choosing between Captivate and Storyline/Rise as our primary options, it appears we might need to make the best of the less inconvenient choice.
Thanks again for sharing your insights and helping me navigate this decision-making process!
I do think you should compare Articulate Storyline/Rise and Elearning Brothers Lectora Online/Desktop. One big difference is the webbased and thus Mac-compatible approach of Lectora Online, in which it thus is possible to really cooperate as a team. Other difference is that it uses CSS and you thus can style courses that way. And the approach to responsive design is different from Storyline. It gives the user 4 views he/she can independently design. Lectora however is more complex than Storyline and initially its a bigger learning curve. Allthough the community is good and helpfull, the forum of ELB has changed recently and is really a disaster in views of user friendliness and looks. In my opinion a serious elearning company has both Articulate tools and ELB/Lectora... to use when appropriate.