Articulate 360

Best authoring tool

Comments: I started by using Captivate and was not happy with the results. I found that the training I created and articulate looks more professional and was much easier to author.

Pros:

Articulate has a suite of products that will serve any training needs. For a quick training with interactive elements, RISE is what you will need. For a more complex robust training, STORYLINE is best suited. Assets are robust and very numerous.

Cons:

The price point is a little high for an individual license. That being said, if that is the only drawback, it is very well worth the price.

Worth the investment

Comments: I got several free trials with Articulate before I decided to purchase it. All of the free trials give you access to the full functionality of the software and by the second time I had run through it I knew that it was absolutely worth the price. It’s like hiring a person with impeccable design skills to build your course for you, except you have to actually put in the work but the ease of the process and beautiful outcome is worth every penny.

Pros:

This state of the art software will inspire you to build better courses! The thing I love about Articulate 360 is that it provides you with a beautiful user interface that will inspire your course creation. So many other course creation tools are clunky and slow. Articulate 360 is the exact opposite of that. It’s fast it’s super smooth in all of his operations, and because of that I find myself constantly inspired to create new content.

Cons:

The worst thing about this software is that it cost over $1000 and they don’t have a payment plan or a monthly option.

Alternatives Considered: Adobe Captivate

Reasons for Choosing Articulate 360: I had a really come up with my own DIY solution to build my courses. When I started building them in articulate the value of my courses went through the roof. They are worth 10x more now just because of the way that I’m presenting the material is so much better than I ever figured out how to do on my own. I ended up raising my prices on all of my courses after upgrading the content in Articulate.

Switched From: WordPress, Canva and Divi

Reasons for Switching to Articulate 360: It has a lot better user experience, it’s a lot faster, it integrates with an the rise platform that gives you tons of templates that are super customizable for any course you could ever imagine teaching.

Great software but needs some serious updating

Comments: I have been an Articulate StoryLine user since it came out in about 2013. It took a while, but once I learned how to use it, I was able to create hundreds of amazing e-course modules and interactive games. It became one of my favorite software development tools allowing me to do things I never dreamed possible and really impressed (and expanded) my clients. Support was okay. But I never really had to submit a support ticket. Articulate has the best community and I was usually able to get the help I needed from moderators or other community members. However, I can relate to Chris' frustration. For example, StoryLine has the capability to execute javascript which greatly expands what you can do with it. But the stock answer when you have a javascript question is ... "Sorry, we don't provide support for javascript; perhaps someone in the community can help you out." Fortunately for me, there was always someone well versed with javascript that was willing to share their code. Recently, it is becoming apparent that StoryLine has some major shortcomings, and that Articulate has been slow in adding new features and enhancements in response to client requests. These include such things as a) inability to use with high-res monitors; b) no capability to e-mail results to admin or user; c) no feature to have background audio across all slides (see Chris' review); d) no capability to publish only HTML5 output; e) poor quality of HTML5 published output that does NOT work well on many mobile devices; f) no responsive design capability; g) no capability to send results to a database; h) very slow player response on timeline when synchronizing animations and no true scrubber; and several other issues. In Nov. 2016, Articulate released 360 which bundled all of their current programs into one annual subscription (which is way too expensive for us to even consider). StoryLine 2 as a stand-alone product is still available and Articulate claims that StoryLine 3 will be available sometime in 2017. However, whether SL3 will address the major shortcomings of us and others, remains unknown. Therefore, to meet our needs for course development in an ever changing technological environment, we are currently exploring alternative e-learning software development tools. Our leading candidate is Captivate 9. It appears to have all the features missing in StoryLine (and much more). Also, it appears that CP9 is a much better value.

Design Courses & Create Community

Comments: The team at Articulate 360 is incredibly helpful and supported our staff onboarding with zoom calls and emails.

Pros:

Our team enjoys how simple it is to author courses within Articulate. We have a variety of multimedia content (webcomics, videos, music, interactives) this is the perfect platform for bringing everything together in one easy-to-access LMS.

Cons:

I'd like course progression tracking to be more detailed (ie how much time is spent in a module or specific activity).

Still my favorite authoring tool - powerful, modern & easy to get ideas/suplort

Comments: I chose Storyline as our primary authoring tool at my previous company. The templates and straightforward approach to creating interactivity with layers with trigger was really a joy to develop with.

Pros:

My favorite feature of storyline is the fact that it only been around 6-8 years. All of the examples, just-in-time support and troubleshooting you search for online are applicable to the current version (360) and can be implemented. Their online community is best in class.

Cons:

As a freelancer, when work is light in for my elearning business (I also work FT and do webdev work) - the subscription price Of Storyline 360 is too much. I wish I could pay for a month only.