Adobe Learning Manager Reviews

Pros

The prebuilt learning templates are easy to use and dynamic. The video conferencing is, as always, easy to yet and extremely reliable. I also really like the PPT integration feature. For my less tech-savy faculty members, this has proven be a very teaching asset.

Cons

The new virtual reality feature isn't quite there in my opinion. I fully believe is the future of online learning and Captivate is going to be one of the leaders in the field. But many users actual hardware isn't quite ready to keep up with this feature.

Alternatives Considered

Articulate 360

Pros

The product is evolving and starting to become a lot easier to use - a simple PDF manual would also help to bring new administrators on. It does the job well and the licencing is flexible. It is so much improved from around 18 months ago. I have found the product easier to manage and the addition of some simple features like deletion of modules has made content easier to catalogue and manage.

Cons

The product still has not adopted to meet commercial training provider needs, there is no paywall for example. There are also some simple things that commercial training providers need - after much discussion with ADOBE ACROBAT PRO DC teams, the pdf security (no printing or copy/pasting settings) are undone by PRIME when content is loaded (users can simply highlight, copy and paste content). This means a student or anyone accessing the programme can easily copy/paste content. This simply creates the capacity for IP loss. Its a small change I suspect - but critical in protecting IP for commercial providers. In the end I have had to use a workaround with MP4s. Support on the PRIME side was contradictory - despite ACROBAT testing the feature.

Alternatives Considered

HireRoad and Litmos

Reasons for Switching to Adobe Learning Manager

Great pricing, it was obvious that early on that the product was in its infancy and I was in no rush to launch as I was busy creating content. I would not switch now as the product has evolved and is close to what I need.

Pros

The most basic level functionality is pretty simple to understand.

Cons

We built our entire curriculum on Adobe Captivate (100s of files). When we used Moodle as our LMS, we often had problems. For example, the user needing to enable pop-ups and unsafe scripts, the files freezing, and a student watching the entire lesson and then not having it register as completed.

We assumed that Moodle was the problem. So, we moved our courses to Adobe Captivate Prime (which required considerable time and effort).

To our dismay, the problems did not improve. If anything, they got worse.

There are many things I could talk about, but the worst was the support. They were so unwilling to admit fault. A specific example of this is when they had a bug with the radio buttons in Captivate quizzes. The first several times I tried to contact support about the problem, they blamed the problem on the users. Only after I'd sent them several user complaints, screenshots, and videos did they start to listen. Even then, it took me being very assertive to get them to admit that the problem was on their end (& would take months to fix).

Other issues: I couldn't manually mark buggy lessons as complete for students. Students had to enable "unsafe scripts." Many problems were unrepeatable - a students would send me a screenshot of a problem. I'd wouldn't be able to re-create. They they'd try again later and it would work.

Because all of our lessons were built in Captivate & even Adobe's solution couldn't play them, we closed our training department.

Pros

Learning content is easily accessible, online, offline device independent.Easy integration into current CMS & LMS systemsWorks well in the Adobe ecosystem.

Cons

Can be a bit costly, however you get a quality product with an established ecosystem

Alternatives Considered

360Learning, LearnDash, LatitudeLearning and iSpring Learn

Switched From

LearnDash and Blackboard Learn

Pros

Ease of updating courses. I appreciate the sandbox so that I can test and learn. The ability to add branding. Preview as learner.

Cons

Toggling between Author and Administrator when uploading a course and assigning learners. Non-optional playbar. Deciding on how many points are needed to complete a skill. When the system is new it is an unknown number. Some modules within a course receive a checkmark when complete, but some show complete, but a checkmark is not displayed. This is confusing for the learner. Set incidents for completion based on when the course was pushed. For example, if a course is pushed automatically and should be completed within 2 weeks. It appears that the software will all set an actual date due.

Alternatives Considered

Cornerstone LMS, myUnity Senior Living and Relias Healthcare LMS

Reasons for Switching to Adobe Learning Manager

The presentation seemed more user-friendly than it actually is. I liked the option for social learning. I liked the graphics on the dashboard. It had more of a high-tech look. I felt that Adobe products, in general, are focused on being high-tech and therefore, the product would remain fresh and current looking.

Pros

I was very thrilled to see that
-Publish in various devices - tablets, mobile phones, desktop.
- Publish projects on devices that support HTML5 which are iPad and iPhone.
- 360 degree learning experience feature - VR images integration and augmented learning.
- Customizable overlay such as blurbs, audio content and quizes
- 2D and 3D view options
- SCORM compliant helps - it gives completion status, scoring and quiz results.
-

Cons

Concern:
Adobe Flash wis going to discontinue in December 2020. So we don't know what changes will be required to add in Adobe Captivate Prime after Adobe Flash is gone.

Pros

The software does everything you can imagine when it comes to creating SCORM training and testing it. It's cross software support with other Adobe products is a big plus point as well.

Cons

It has certain shortcomings when it comes to dealing with languages such as Arabic. It lacks support for languages and display issues for characters that are right to left. Plus there are language character related bugs that stop user from exporting training and make it go into an infinite loading loop.

Pros

It's easy to use. You're able to upload a wide range of documents to make it custom for learning.

Cons

There are some features that are missing that would benefit us... for example, setting a time limit on a course or building a quiz in the program rather than having to out source it. Ultimately, the more things you can host yourselves would be best in terms of ease of use as well as the ability to protect costs.

Alternatives Considered

Kajabi

Reasons for Choosing Adobe Learning Manager

It was difficult and confusing to use, the language of the program was different. Overall it lacked user friendly-ness.

Switched From

Kajabi

Reasons for Switching to Adobe Learning Manager

Much cheaper and easier to use.

Pros

Very easy to use and user friendly for both me and the students. I liked that I could use this product to post notes, video lectures and everything that I need into just one place

Cons

The only thing I did not like is the cost that is rather high

Alternatives Considered

Adobe Connect

Switched From

Adobe Connect

Reasons for Switching to Adobe Learning Manager

I wanted to choose Adobe Captivate Prime but my university does not subscribe to this product

Pros

I understand the difficulty in creating a single LMS that will satisfy everyone. We all have very different needs. There is steady, albeit slow, improvement in functionality and features. The options to have different domains and the ability to share content between domains is a nice feature. Much easier to navigate and set up than other LMSs I have used. Customer support has been very responsive.

Cons

The requirement for an email address to log in. I serve a clientele that is not tech savvy and many do not have an email address(I know hard to believe in 2019, but true). You can use a fake email but then the ability to recover your password does not exist. The lack of password control by administrators can be problematic. My usage is external. Many people logging in from all over the country. If they have a password issue I can not help them. The placement of a cookie on your system every time you log in. If the learner does not use the "Sign Out" option and just closes the browser it makes it impossible for another to log in until that cookie is cleared. This is an issue with clients who use the same computer for many users.

Pros

Simple and clean look, the main features work well, overall good feeling about the product.

Cons

Everything is great until you face a problem. Then you will struggle with the customer support, which is all outsourced and responds to emails after two days at best. After it does, if you had a simple problem, it will be solved. If it's not that common, you will struggle for weeks until someone figures out what was wrong.

The second thing is their certifications. You can't upload your own certificate through your admin profile. You need to contact support over and over and they will ask you to create a template in HTML, and then it will not work for no reason, and you can't test and fix it yourself. Seems like this feature just doesn't work, and you can't provide your learners with a printable certificate, only a badge in their profile.

External groups are completely separated from the internal ones, so it's much easier to use the system for your employees than for your customers.

Alternatives Considered

BRIDGE

Reasons for Choosing Adobe Learning Manager

Outdated look, limited reporting feature.

Switched From

Accord LMS

Reasons for Switching to Adobe Learning Manager

Pushy selling strategy of Bridge.

Pros

Adobe Captivate Prime is very easy to use. Our learners had no problem fully getting up to speed with how to use it. We enjoy the leaderboard as a way of being competitive with others. As an Admin, I feel like it is pretty straight forward with regards to adding courses, learning plans, and content. The reports feature is very good and continues to get enhancements made to it. All our courses work fine in the fluidic player with no issues. I like the dashboard and My Learning as a way for learners to view the status of their learning.

Cons

I have noticed a few bugs in the software that were reported. Some issues have been fixed and some are still outstanding. I would also prefer to have more control on when my self-paced courses expire. Currently there is a default expiration of six months for courses we want to keep available for longer. Since we have over 400 courses in the LMS, it will be a long process of re-publishing all the courses when they expire. The technical support availability could be a little better. I seem to mostly receive my communication from them in the afternoons (CST). Sometimes it would be nice to get a quicker response when there is an urgent issue.

Pros

Captivate Prime is an out-of-the-box LMS. It has all standard features needed for an effective and fun learning environment including gamification elements such as leaders boards, badges and general points. The interface is both, intuitive for the user and the administrator and can easily be customized to your personal preferences and access rights. The hosting of content is open to all types of SCORM compliant content, but also simple text files, graphics and videos. The structuring of programs can be done according to a single file system as well as clustered items in a program structure. One of the key performance tools is the mobile app provided. The app gives you the full spectrum of the desktop version, including an offline capability.

Cons

If you purchase this LMS via a volume license program (rather then buying a few licenses with credit card online), then it is recommended to find a local ADOBE certified dealer. The customer service team in (I believe ) India, is friendly, but very slow in the response and it takes several attempts to get things done. Therefore, using a local certified dealer and letting them deal with the headquarter, does not necessarily speed things up, but it does save you a lot of time.

Pros

Captivate Prime is a great learning management system that offers all of the necessary features to help businesses excel in their e-learning programs. It also allows you to pay per user without an unreasonably high "minimum user" requirement.

Cons

The inability to create quiz content within Prime itself is the only feature that I think it is really lacking. Quiz content must instead be authored in other E-learning creation programs first, which can then be hosted on Captivate Prime.

Pros

Easy to use and a great teaching tool. Always a great tool and easy to record lessons with it.

Cons

Affordability at times. I wish it was cheaper to purchase and also better discounts.

Alternatives Considered

Camtasia and Adobe Connect

Switched From

Camtasia and Adobe Connect

Reasons for Switching to Adobe Learning Manager

Better use for what needs to be done.

Pros

We use the Captivate suite for elearning development. My use is primarily limited to creating training video recordings to achieve higher quality than simply recording a web conference/webinar. From that perspective, I like the ability to create video demos and edit them to remove my hesitations and other hiccups. With a simple USB microphone, the audio quality is very good, and the ability to do basic editing meets my needs. I like being able to easily create multiple mini videos and combine them into a larger project.

Cons

There are a lot of options - it can be a bit much if you are muddling through on your own. There are a lot of external learning resources available, however. I also wish that it was a little more straightforward to edit individual video files after you've brought them into a project. I find that the graphic capabilities (creating title slides, for example) is a little clunky, so I usually just end up designing those in power point and exporting them as jpeg images for the Captivate project.

Pros

Easy set up and smart rules
There are several smart rules which can be built into ACP which allow automatic assigning of teams, courses and learning paths when someone is created or registered in the system. Other LMS’s provide this, but the way this is set up in ACP is intuitive and smart. It drastically cuts down the time needed to get people up and running on the LMS and will save the time that LMS administrators would usually take setting people up.

Offline Content
ACP seem to have done this better than any other LMS I have trialled. The ability to download all course content and use the system offline, while still experiencing the system as if offline, is a superior offering from ACP.

Publishing from Adobe Captivate
We already use Captivate to create our eLearinng content and publish our SCORM compliant training packages. Having a system that allows us to publish quickly and easily from our eLearning authoring program to our LMS saves time.

Instructor role
One unique part of ACP is having a dedicated instructor role which allows training instructors to log in and manage all of their training activities. Other LMS’s have this but tend to be quite complex. The way a user experiences this in ACP is simple and easy to use.

Cons

The software is a little pricier than other LMS's out there on the market.

Pros

The best thing that I like about Captivate Prime is that it has got webcam feature which lets you connect with your learners effectively. Even if you don't know much about technology or you are new to it, you can still do wonders with the capabilites of Captivate Prime. You can add your voice to your presentations really easily and create impressive learning modules on Captivate.

Cons

Captivate Prime has been there in the market for long and it has evolved a lot. So, there is nothing that I don't like about Capitvate Prime. It will be really great if they can lower the price a bit.

Pros

This product is interactive allowing the end user to simulate the software. The recording function is easy to use. Edits are simple.

Cons

Difficulty using the function of setting up a menu that needs to be in order and making the end user go through modules in order. The check mark and X functionality.

Pros

Has many features, many more than I'm sure I am aware of. The system looks really clean. Like being able to switch between types of roles easily.

Cons

It's been a huge struggle trying to get everything working properly. The catalog and recommended learning areas almost never show what I expect, adding filters in the catalog sometimes works and sometimes seems to do nothing. Revisiting the same page seems to have different results in terms of what courses/learning programs/filters appear.

I've not yet found a good way to efficiently manage all of the courses, content, etc. from a high level. A course report doesn't seem to exist that shows me all courses, if they are active/deactivated, if they're assigned a learning program, etc. This would help a lot to find courses that are floating around and not assigned properly. The audit report is good, but doesn't give me a clear view into how things are setup today across all courses.

We've sent several emails/tickets to Adobe contacts with no response back. The sales process was amazing and the technical resources doing the demo were extremely knowledgeable. The person who then helped us get implemented was very scripted and has since disappeared with no clear input on who we should contact with questions. Trying to just self learn it at this point, which has been frustrating.

Pros

Very good for Tracking
Excellent Multi Tenanting configuration possibilities for a business that is a GROUP of companies.
The Branding by use of a theme is a good idea. Love the email templates and automation within the system, it is a very handy feature for tracking learning, very handy indeed! Especially, for larger companies.
The use of setting up a programme and Learning Plans with certification levels and gamification in the form of badges. This is a superb way of delivering Apprenticeships for the Apprenticeship Providers also who work with Employers of large corporations.

A very Commercially viable product that will work seamlessly with their website, love the URL that they can get with their own name first.
Love the idea of booking Virtual class sessions and Lessons so that there is complete tracking and accountability built in.

As a registered Adobe user, I like the fact that I can create assets within the Adobe Creative Suite and then use them within Adobe Captivate LMS. The quality is very high in Adobe so I recommend the integration of Adobe assets with this LMS.

Cons

Found the course more suitable to commercial application.
It is important to have all your assets ready to start building the course and it would take some planning beforehand. This is not an LMS for lighthearted course development, and I do see this LMS as best suited to an ultra security conscious commercial environment that protects its assets like fort knox! For this reason alone, as a business, I would buy it.

Pros

1. In less than two hours, I had set up Captivate Prime. I had no hassles or problems.
2. The menus and options are easy to understand and look modern.
3. Despite the ease of use, I can do just about anything I'd want an LMS to do with Prime.
4. I can set up user roles and permissions at six different levels, including Learner.
5. I can set up external users, those outside my organization, and send them all a link to let them set up their own login and password, saving me a lot of time and ensuring greater security.
6. Prime lets me set up sets of skills for learners to achieve and tie them to learning objectives.
7. I can upload courses, videos, PowerPoint, PDF files and more and they show nicely using Prime's Fluidic Player.
8. There's a free app to use Prime on mobile devices.
9. The Reports that Prime generates out of the box are very nice, and I can also create my own.
10. There are gamification and branding options too.

Cons

It would be nice if Adobe offered trials longer than 30 days for those who want to try out the product because it can take a while to really put it through its paces.

Pros

The very interesting things that can be developed with the software.

Cons

There is not much information and the support is very basic

Alternatives Considered

Articulate 360

Pros

Easy to create own template and customize the overall look of modules.

Cons

Outdated widgets, broken links, overall unsatisfied with the entire program. Over priced and does not let you cancel at any time without charging you a ridiculous fee. I could go on and on about how things did not work but this is a waste of my time because the program is the worst Adobe program I have ever used.

Pros

The fact that it is automated. The ease of loading a training session into Captivate is seamless.

Cons

Not happy with all the reports, it is not easy to pull or user friendly for managers to use. As a learner I think it should be easier for a new user to find content.