Has anyone had to come up against a direct head-to-head competitive position with Snap! by Lectora and Engage, and if so, how were you able to defend Engage position?
This is one thing that I would like more help with from Articulate in 2012, some good, clear, competitive statements and rebuttals, in a form that makes sense to my (potential) clients.
We may do so, or want to do so, but some of us will still have clients and prospects that have heavily invested in alternatives, or have seen/"heard something on the Internet".
With the greatest of respect, I feel that Captivate and Powerpoint still have a good future ahead of them, much as I would like to hope they are doomed!
I cannot see that e.g. Kineo will immediately drop Captivate and Powerpoint-based courses, they may recommend SL to new clients, but clients often know what they want, before AND after advice.
I started this discussion because I have never yet seen good, solid competitive discussions and positioning statements discussed on this forum, or on e.g. AP'09 website - in the same way that the original Snap! site has them.
Just saying "...because we are better" just doesn't cut the mustard when you are in a room with a budget-savvy (pootential) client who wants to discuss your skills and your offering.
@Bruce - I have used Snap! now for about 4 months in our company. At times buggy, and limited - but it is doing the job, and quite well. Our employees are loving what we are putting out there with Snap!
Do I recommend it? ABSOLUTELY - is it for every company? Probably not. You just cannot beat the price of $99 for what it can do. A creative person can make wonders with Snap! and we've been able to do that.
I've used both Articulate and Snap! enough to have a few opinions.
For what it's worth, here they are:
Articulate is a better product than Snap!
Articulate is not 10x better than Snap!
I have had fewer (not more) publishing problems with Snap! than Articulate.
The user community around Articulate is awesome!
I spend about 40% of my time in the user community trying to resolve issues caused by Articulate itself.
Producing "one big SWF" can be a real advantage in some situations.
The car metaphors don't jive. We're here because we develop rapid eLearning--comparison between Yugo and BMW is way off. It's more like a comparison between a Chevy Cobalt (Snap!) and a Toyota Corolla (Articulate). The Corolla is a better car, but if it cost 10x more than a Cobalt, no one would buy it. Something worth thinking about.
Empower! is a stripped down version of Flypaper, which is just a set of customizable templates for Flash. And hey, that's what Engage is, right? Empower! has lots more templates "built in" and provides a higher level of customization. It's also moderately less user-friendly. Quite frankly, I've driven the standard Engage interactions into the ground and the user community Engage interactions haven't panned out as expected. Is it worth $99 to add a bunch of new interactions to toolbox? Yup.
In summary, people who develop rapid eLearning are not the BMW owner's group. We're looking for ways to create a lot of content, quickly, that meets business needs without spending a fortune. A massive price cut for "the next best thing" is nothing to write off, particularly in smaller organizations where the person who has to cough up the cash doesn't really care about the user community the designer will be interacting with. If Lectora invests in trying to close the quality gap (especially in their quiz software) with Articulate--which they can probably afford to do thanks to sales of its bloated and massively overpriced flagship product--Articulate Studio will have serious competition.
I'm sure they're thinking of all this rather than listening to the fan club.
If you find yourself having to buy an authoring program yourself, the difference in the prices becomes a real decision-maker. Unfortunately.
Agrees to some extent - if you have to buy it yourself, if you are a freelancer for example, then the price is important, but the RETURNS are more important.
If it costs me 3 x as much to buy Storyline but I can make 10 x more than I can with SNAP! then it's a no-brainer, and you find the money to invest somehow.
Our department has a few licenses of Snap. It's not a bad tool for what it *actually* does.
The problem for my team was thinking it would be something we could use to build training. It was advertised (falsely) as a competitive alternative to Studio and Captivate and we took a chance. Unfortunately, it's not at all the tool Lectora framed it to be. I had egg on my face with my director after advocating the purchase and later telling him that it's not being used in my group.
We gave it to some business units who still use it for their internal presentations. For the price, it's not a bad product for what it does. If you're trying to introduce elearning to your company, I would not recommend it because of the impression it will make. If you have a business need to deploy content online with some Q&A slides, it's a good solution.
Interesting discussion. I've played with Snap but never used it for production. I always thought that Travantis pushed Snap out to address some limitations in Lectora (lacklustre animation capabilities and inability to import PowerPoint content) and that they really meant developers to use Snap in conjunction with Lectora.
I have built a few interactive and branched courses, with media and built in animations that work great. (I dont mean the standard ppt stuff, I mean using action triggers and advanced animations.) Audio and video too work pretty well, and the tool is so powerful as long as you use your imagination you can build a pretty powerful course.
I do have issues with it though, It is an anomaly and utilising a tool that everyone knows, to build elearning is genius. Sure you need to know ppt at an advanced level but once you do you are good to go...
Well not really. I spend lots of hours on building media rich courses, only to go back after publishing and fixing stupid things that should DEFINITELY publish as I have seen it.
Example,
1. Putting a glow or shadow on text, doesn't work, it duplicates the text and there is no glow! Of course you cant delete the duplicated text, because it is now in a swf. So you have to go back to the text, save it as a picture and import it again to make is seem as though it is text.
2. Layering anything over a video or animation wont work either. so you need to come up with other ways to get it to work.
3. Anything over 25 slides the course will not publish. (that simple) maybe if you are lucky you will get it to publish once, after that? forget it. So I am resigned to building small units (or chapters) to publish and use in the lowest hierarchy in my LMS (efront) which is luckily open enough to accept it.
I was very excited to get Snap! for Lectora when I started p[laying around with it, but with these bugs (And believe me they have GOT to be bugs) - it may as well have been an opensource dev tool. $99 is dirt cheap, and thats why i wont complain too much because you can still build some really cool stuff... just add 50% fat into your dev time cos you are gonna need to go back and fix things over and over again...
Its a good tool, and because I love figuring things out it works for me, but in my opinion, it cant compare with Articulate or Lectora. Both do what they are supposed to, and publish outputs with high quality media, Snap not so much... (Also it is pure flash - no HTML5 wrapper... so forget about apple products being able to view your content). So $99 is a fair price for it... just don't expect it to be as rapid as it is sold to be...
40 Replies
Ironically, this whole discussion will be moot once Articulate releases StoryLine. You'll say goodbye to Captivate and PowerPoint...
Michael
Michael,
We may do so, or want to do so, but some of us will still have clients and prospects that have heavily invested in alternatives, or have seen/"heard something on the Internet".
With the greatest of respect, I feel that Captivate and Powerpoint still have a good future ahead of them, much as I would like to hope they are doomed!
I cannot see that e.g. Kineo will immediately drop Captivate and Powerpoint-based courses, they may recommend SL to new clients, but clients often know what they want, before AND after advice.
I started this discussion because I have never yet seen good, solid competitive discussions and positioning statements discussed on this forum, or on e.g. AP'09 website - in the same way that the original Snap! site has them.
Just saying "...because we are better" just doesn't cut the mustard when you are in a room with a budget-savvy (pootential) client who wants to discuss your skills and your offering.
It's going to be an interesting year.
Bruce
@Bruce - I have used Snap! now for about 4 months in our company. At times buggy, and limited - but it is doing the job, and quite well. Our employees are loving what we are putting out there with Snap!
Do I recommend it? ABSOLUTELY - is it for every company? Probably not. You just cannot beat the price of $99 for what it can do. A creative person can make wonders with Snap! and we've been able to do that.
I may just have to download the trial, mainly due to Engage's lack of of support for Actionscript 3. No sign of an update to the product.
Storyline might be the new super shizzle tool but in the meanwhile I need to integrate with Captivate 5. This has been an issue for quite a while.
Hi Jack - did you see this article on integrating Captivate with Articulate Presenter '09?
What type of Flash AS3 content are you trying to insert into Engage?
I've used both Articulate and Snap! enough to have a few opinions.
For what it's worth, here they are:
In summary, people who develop rapid eLearning are not the BMW owner's group. We're looking for ways to create a lot of content, quickly, that meets business needs without spending a fortune. A massive price cut for "the next best thing" is nothing to write off, particularly in smaller organizations where the person who has to cough up the cash doesn't really care about the user community the designer will be interacting with. If Lectora invests in trying to close the quality gap (especially in their quiz software) with Articulate--which they can probably afford to do thanks to sales of its bloated and massively overpriced flagship product--Articulate Studio will have serious competition.
I'm sure they're thinking of all this rather than listening to the fan club.
Thanks for the post Ben - very well put.
Some very interesting persepctives in there...
Bruce
If you find yourself having to buy an authoring program yourself, the difference in the prices becomes a real decision-maker. Unfortunately.
Am I missing something, or does Snap! appear to be just just a PPT to Flash "convertor"?
I'm not seeing any mention of SCORM wrappers or e-learning publishing options on Lectora's site.
Agrees to some extent - if you have to buy it yourself, if you are a freelancer for example, then the price is important, but the RETURNS are more important.
If it costs me 3 x as much to buy Storyline but I can make 10 x more than I can with SNAP! then it's a no-brainer, and you find the money to invest somehow.
Bruce
Our department has a few licenses of Snap. It's not a bad tool for what it *actually* does.
The problem for my team was thinking it would be something we could use to build training. It was advertised (falsely) as a competitive alternative to Studio and Captivate and we took a chance. Unfortunately, it's not at all the tool Lectora framed it to be. I had egg on my face with my director after advocating the purchase and later telling him that it's not being used in my group.
We gave it to some business units who still use it for their internal presentations. For the price, it's not a bad product for what it does. If you're trying to introduce elearning to your company, I would not recommend it because of the impression it will make. If you have a business need to deploy content online with some Q&A slides, it's a good solution.
Interesting discussion. I've played with Snap but never used it for production. I always thought that Travantis pushed Snap out to address some limitations in Lectora (lacklustre animation capabilities and inability to import PowerPoint content) and that they really meant developers to use Snap in conjunction with Lectora.
Just makes business sense - always found a way.
I prefer being optimistic to virtually every other alternative position
I disagree about how Snap! for Lectora "works".
I have built a few interactive and branched courses, with media and built in animations that work great. (I dont mean the standard ppt stuff, I mean using action triggers and advanced animations.) Audio and video too work pretty well, and the tool is so powerful as long as you use your imagination you can build a pretty powerful course.
I do have issues with it though, It is an anomaly and utilising a tool that everyone knows, to build elearning is genius. Sure you need to know ppt at an advanced level but once you do you are good to go...
Well not really. I spend lots of hours on building media rich courses, only to go back after publishing and fixing stupid things that should DEFINITELY publish as I have seen it.
Example,
1. Putting a glow or shadow on text, doesn't work, it duplicates the text and there is no glow! Of course you cant delete the duplicated text, because it is now in a swf. So you have to go back to the text, save it as a picture and import it again to make is seem as though it is text.
2. Layering anything over a video or animation wont work either. so you need to come up with other ways to get it to work.
3. Anything over 25 slides the course will not publish. (that simple) maybe if you are lucky you will get it to publish once, after that? forget it. So I am resigned to building small units (or chapters) to publish and use in the lowest hierarchy in my LMS (efront) which is luckily open enough to accept it.
I was very excited to get Snap! for Lectora when I started p[laying around with it, but with these bugs (And believe me they have GOT to be bugs) - it may as well have been an opensource dev tool. $99 is dirt cheap, and thats why i wont complain too much because you can still build some really cool stuff... just add 50% fat into your dev time cos you are gonna need to go back and fix things over and over again...
Its a good tool, and because I love figuring things out it works for me, but in my opinion, it cant compare with Articulate or Lectora. Both do what they are supposed to, and publish outputs with high quality media, Snap not so much... (Also it is pure flash - no HTML5 wrapper... so forget about apple products being able to view your content). So $99 is a fair price for it... just don't expect it to be as rapid as it is sold to be...
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