Adobe Captivate Review
Rating: 6 out of 10
March 13, 2025
Vetted Review
Verified User
4 years of experience
Courseware development that solves the training needs of multiple departments in the company.
- 360 View
- Video insertions
- Take-home license option
Cons
- The top issue is with Adobe Captivate vaporware - several years of Adobe promises of updates. Adobe Captivate is still called "2019". I've reviewed the prototype on several occasions over the course of 2 years, yet nothing is coming to market.
- Since Adobe dropped 360 view support in Photoshop, how are we supposed to edit 360 photos in Captivate? I feel this is very disappointing since Adobe Captivate's 360 feature is amazing. We've had to use non-Adobe products like Affinity to support the 360 feature.
- Adobe Captivate courses frequently lock up in SumTotal LMS (SCORM 2004 v3), while other products like Articulate work flawlessly.
- PowerPoint import is a big problem for us. In my experience, Adobe Captivate maintains hooks into the original PPT file, causing many problems and fails if the referenced PPT is updated or moved.
- No easy way to darken previous bullets after they have passed to the next bullet unless we use complicated scripting.
- Adobe Captivate is not part of Creative Suite, even though it depends on Creative Suite for many editing tools (imaging editing, video editing, etc.). It also makes licensing a challenge for the company.
- In my opinion, the timeline is clunky and buggy, especially when adjusting the end position. Some blocks in the timeline jump around instead of moving and/or truncating with the end-point adjustments.
- 360 view
- Video insertion
- Take-home license
- In my experience, Adobe Captivate courseware failures in SumTotal LMS have resulted in our aircraft mechanics not meeting qualifications, prohibiting them from repairing aircraft and resulting in delays in releasing the aircraft to service.
- In my experience, it is very difficult getting a hold of an Adobe technical service agent who speaks clear English, causing long delays in resolving problems.
Adobe Captivate is superior in 360 view courseware development. It's outstanding and a delight to work with. That's about it. Unfortunately, Articulate dominates in everything else.
6
Training development.
1
Adobe Licensing specialist, SumTotal Administration experience.
- Recurrent training on technician qualifications
- Standalone CBT/WBT courses
- Quizzes/Exams
- 360 view
- When vaporware becomes real-ware, our leadership will be able to re-consider the product for 2023.
No
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
Consider showing us a comparison table of competitor products and we can put rankings on features/functions (Adobe Captivate, Storyline 360, Rise 360, etc).
- Implemented in-house
- Course lockups in SumTotal LMS
I actually don't know if our level of support is "premium" or not. Sadly, in my opinion, Adobe should not be asking this question. ALL support should be "premium."
Yes
No - not in a timely fashion. In my experience, Adobe Captivate stopped working across the enterprise a little over a year ago and throughout the users in the Adobe Captivate forums. In my experience, Adobe's first response was to blame Microsoft's update. Then later, it became evident there was something wrong with Adobe's license server. We never liked how Adobe handled a system-wide outage like that.
Right now - taking the risk of asking users at this conference for frank reviews and opinions of the product. This is the most attention I've gotten from Adobe regarding what I think about the product, and I appreciate it very much.
- 360 View - love it!
- Timeline
- Bullet color animation effects
- SCORM settings