--- title: Adobe Captivate Reviews meta_title: 'Adobe Captivate Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 204 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Adobe Captivate works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 3.9 review_count: 204 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-09' parent_category: name: Training eLearning url: https://www.g2.com/categories/training-elearning --- # Adobe Captivate Reviews **Vendor:** Adobe **Category:** [Course Authoring Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/course-authoring) **Average Rating:** 3.9/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 204 ## About Adobe Captivate Adobe Captivate offers ease to beginners and speed to professionals for creating everything eLearning, using just one tool. Plug-and-play your content in ready-to-go slides and create beautiful mobile-ready eLearning courses in minutes. Boost your productivity by using out-of-box functionality such as customizable interactions, automated branching, and video overlays. Deliver immersive learning experiences to your learners in virtual reality. Liven up your demos and training videos by making them interactive using informational and knowledge check questions slides as overlays. ## Adobe Captivate Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **interactive content capabilities** of Adobe Captivate, enhancing learner engagement and creating impactful experiences. (2 reviews) - Users love the **tool quality** of Adobe Captivate, seamlessly integrating with Adobe suite and providing excellent simulation capabilities. (2 reviews) - Users appreciate the **affordable pricing** of Adobe Captivate, finding it budget-friendly for their companies. (1 reviews) - Users value Adobe Captivate for its **seamless integration with Creative Cloud** , enhancing content creation and learner engagement. (1 reviews) - Users value the **high-quality content creation** capabilities of Adobe Captivate, enhancing learner engagement and impact. (1 reviews) - Users highlight the **ease of integration** with Creative Cloud, making content creation seamless and impactful. (1 reviews) - Easy Integrations (1 reviews) - Implementation Ease (1 reviews) - Setup Ease (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **limited collaboration features** of Adobe Captivate restrict their ability to work effectively with others. (2 reviews) - Users find Adobe Captivate has a **steep learning curve** , making it challenging for beginners to use effectively. (1 reviews) - Users find Adobe Captivate **not intuitive** , especially beginners struggling with alignment and usability challenges. (1 reviews) - Users find Adobe Captivate's interface to be **clunky and cumbersome** when building simulations, hindering their experience. (1 reviews) ## Adobe Captivate Reviews ### 1. The Dinosaur of eLearning Development **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tom E. | Technical Trainer & Instructional Designer, Computer Software, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 06, 2023 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** I have been using Captivate since its conception, along with Corel. At the time, Captivate was the leader and maybe the only app for eLearning development. It was difficult to use, very powerful, loaded with features and certainly did the job. I must have created over 300 eLearning SCORM and MP4 files over 20 years. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** I came to dislike Captivate once I began to use other eLearning dev apps. And, as time went along, Adobe never updated or added new features to the app. Still today 2023, we are using a version from 2019. This factor has lead me to use another app, I only use Captivate for legacy projects, ones that have Captivate project files as the content. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** Adobe Captivate is NOT really solving problems; it's creating them. You can only import a PowrPoint or Google Slide deck as images, not as a slide with elements. ### 2. Adobe Captivate is effective but dated **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rebecca C. | Graphics & Multimedia Developer, Flexible Learning Division , Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 17, 2023 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** It allows you to create interactive learning objects and basic animations, and integrates well with online learning platforms, and other Adobe programs. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** It is very dated, glitchy, and could definitely use an upgrade. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** Adobe Captivate is an easy to learn course authoring tool. I used to use more often but have gone away from it because there are other built in options on online learning platforms that are more effective. ### 3. Good for developing basic CBTs **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ruchismita M. | Lead Consultant - Talent and Change, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 13, 2022 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** It converts PPT decks to page turner CBTs in minutes. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** It crashes often when used to record simulations. Editing simulations is very very tedious too. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helped me create job aids, and videos captures with screen recording and audio. ### 4. It better than powerpoint, but it still needs improvements. **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael K. D. | Curriculum Developer, E-Learning, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 04, 2019 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** I like the fact that I can create fun videos and animations, but lacks easy to use features for newbies. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** It's not user-friendly, it's hard to do things in it, I'd prefer using sony video maker than this program. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** I'd steer away from it if you can get a better program like articulate 360. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has helped me in my development of eLearning software. The benefits are that it can be creative for users and create cool e-learning courses. ### 5. Not intuitive but good program **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2019 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** It can create interactive modules instead of boring ones that people skip through and don’t listen to. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** I don’t feel like it is the easiest program to figure out. I watched a lot of online training videos and still struggled through creating a basic module. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** Engaging online trainings are possible. If you can conquer learning how to use the program. ### 6. Great tool and easy to use **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** John C. | Training Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** Captivate is so easy that anyone can pick it up without any prior training. If you are interested in creating rapid development courses such as those done with lectora or storyline this is a great tool to use. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** I don't like the interface. Storyline uses a powerpoint type interface and lectora uses a similar one. Captivate has a more complicated interface that makes it harder to use. Also some LMS systems don't always correctly read the scorom files that are generated from captivate. Lastly, I am not a huge fan of it's character pack **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** Take a course and learn how to use it. I've noticed if you have previous experience with lectora and storyline it makes it a bit harder but still a decent program. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** I needed to create courses for my company and this was the software they used. ### 7. Not quite user friendly **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Victoria L. | Multimedia Developer, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 25, 2018 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** I like that it has some resemblance with all the Adobe products **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** It is really complicated. I’m used to work in Artixulate storyline and in Captivate it was just hard to build some more advanced quizzes. And it was really hard to trick it to work the way I needed it. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** If you are used to work with PowerPoint, Captivate is not that intuitive or similar to it. However it can be lear **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** I’m building online trainings for nurses. Our university provides online studying and it’s really helpful for students who don’t have a lot of time. ### 8. Internal Trainer using captivate for software simulations **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Government Administration | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 07, 2017 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** Captivate is excellent for creating walking through for new websites and/or software. Being able to use various modes such as simulation or being able to make the walk through interactive by having the end user complete a task to proceed with the training's. This allows us to know that they end user is listening and gaining valuable hands on training **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** The biggest problem I have noticed with Captivate is the lag time. It can be very slow when saving a project. It can also be very slow when opening or publishing projects as well. This can be critical when you are working on a deadline and are stuck unable to do anything because the program is slow. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** Captivate can be useful if you are looking for a user friendly simulation and training software. Do your research you want to also look at your learning management system and ensure it is compatible with captivate. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using captivate we can create and deliver to all our staff online Captivate has helped reduce our companies travel costs. ### 9. Captivate works well for interactive training courses **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** It's mostly easy to use. I like that you can have two instances open at once to copy and paste between projects **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** I don't like that you can't enlarge the thumbnails. I also don't like that it all of a sudden stopped letting me capture software on m y local VM **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using it for interactive training for our users. Our users like that it's interactive. It helps them learn how to use the software better ### 10. Glorified PowerPoint **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Katie W. | Marketing & Communications Specialist, Hospital & Health Care, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** I think that Adobe Captivate has a lot of great options for creating learning tools. It's simple to import PowerPoint presentations, it offers software simulation, and the multiple options to quiz the learners makes this program valuable for eLearning modules. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** As someone that is very familiar and comfortable with vector based graphics (I primarily use Adobe Illustrator), I've had a hard transition to Adobe Captivate. The keyboard shortcuts are so different from the rest of the Adobe Suite, which can be frustrating after you've become adjusted and familiar to the other programs. High resolution pictures seem to lose quality after they're imported, and I run into technical issues most times I use the program (such as: freezing, having to force quit the program, etc). I would also like to see more options for the templates that are included in Captivate. There's no freedom to adjust/edit the existing themes. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** Captivate is great for creating elearning content. It has been difficult adjusting to how to use the program, and I have found myself googling tutorial after tutorial to find simple answers. However; moving forward, I think Captivate is headed in the right direction. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** My organization was seeking ways to train our employees more efficiently as we grew at a rapid rate. We were finding that we simply couldn't keep up with the number of on-boarding employees. We are now implementing a LMS to train our employees independently. This program makes learning interactive, entertaining, and memorable. ### 11. Powerful but Clunky, with a Steep Learning Curve **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Laura A. | Assessment Lead, Physician Performance, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 13, 2017 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** I like using Captivate to create short, simple screencasts, simulations or training videos. You can quickly create screencasts and simple simulations with Captivate that make great quick references for employee training. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** There are a lot of things I don't like about Captivate. This may be because I started using Articulate Storyline before I learned to use Captivate, and I find Captivate less intuitive. It's easy to learn how to develop simple simulations in Captivate, but if you want to develop courseware that's more engaging and interactive there's a steep learning curve and a fair amount of quirkiness. I also don't like that it takes up a lot of system resources, and that it presents a lot of issues when you use it in a team environment on a network. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** Definitely take advantage of the 30-day trial to ensure it meets your needs. I would also recommend giving your development team training and time to play around with Captivate and get familiar with its features and quirks. Also consider how you'll handle courseware review in a networked environment, and build that into your review process. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** I've used it to create employee training and quick references. When using simulations, I'd suggest keeping them as short as possible. ### 12. Adobe Captivate: The Good, the bad and the ugly **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex R. | History Teacher/Virtual Academy Teacher -C.M. Russell High School, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 02, 2015 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** Adobe is a solid company with decent customer support. If you can use other Adobe products you are in pretty good stead in starting Captivate. I also liked the educational pricing for Captivate vs. some of the other products I looked it. I think oftentimes companies forget that many of the people who buy their software are not necessarily professional designers, but teachers designing for themselves. Captivate was not cheap, but a better deal than others. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** It is very quirky, and is not tremendously intuitive (unless, again, you use lots of other Adobe software, or if you have a guide on how to use it handy (or a lynda.com subscription). It is difficult to export your file into a usable and sharable format. You also have to have serious knowledge of your courseware to integrate it. Hard to set up quizzes that auto-grade. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** Get a good tutorial or pay for professional development for those who will be designing with it. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a teacher, so my Captivate creations are for my students. I have done Captivate lessons on Pearl Harbor and a few other history topics. Students seem to appreciate them. It is relatively easy to set up information in a power-point esque style, but going beyond that requires more training. ### 13. Solid Adobe Product for Course Development and Publishing **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sarah V. | Patient Safety Program Manager, Hospital & Health Care, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 19, 2015 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** Captivate has LOTS of features. It looks and feels like the other Adobe products, and if someone is comfortable with the other Adobe products, navigation and general tool/function usage will be natural. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** I felt a little overwhelmed while learning to use Captivate. If I'd had more experience with Adobe products, I think it would have been a much smoother transition, but I think the user interface is a little less intuitive than other products I've used for course development. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** Captivate is a great product. I think the learning curve may be a little steeper than with other course development products, unless you've used other Adobe products. Published courses are simple to upload, use and support, and I think the published courses tend to look cleaner than some other course development software's output. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm creating software system tutorials and reference material for a healthcare organization. Captivate was a great product to use to create impressive portfolio samples of e-learning modules, and was awesome in college, but my company uses another product in the HR department, and I was asked not to use Captivate despite having a license because they wanted to maintain the same look and feel. However, I do think that Captivate looks better as a published course than the product I'm currently using. ### 14. Always Seems a LIttle Less User Friendly **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeffrey D. | Instructional Designer, Trainer, Blogger, E-Learning, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 25, 2015 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** This is a powerful program, it's got lots of good features, they've made several significant improvements over time, and it's where I learned to do screen capture videos for software training. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** That said, it's always seemed a little harder to figure out than similar products by their competitors. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** Nice product, but consider others as well NOTE to company who puts this together: I'd put in the screen shot but I have switched computers recently at work and Captivate is still on my old computer, whereas I am writing this on my new computer. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creation of training materials for customers who buy our LMS, for customers looking to buy e-learning courses, and for promotional/informational material on our blog. ### 15. captivate 8 review **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Internet | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 29, 2015 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** fairly flexible when designing interactive elements **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** It can be pretty clunky and buggy. It has some strange rules that make difficult to do exactly what you're hoping for -- most of my support question came back with a "it's not possible to do that" even though they seemed like fairly simple asks. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** scalable training ### 16. Good for the experienced ID **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in E-Learning | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 02, 2015 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** Functionality is good and provides a very easy bespoke setup for ease of use. Ability to use on multiple devices, integrating easily with these. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** Can take some time to understand full usage and is not fully intuitive to a new user for speed of picking up this as a new tool. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** Video capture for screenshots in addition to using these in order to provide an interactive mock software training tool. ### 17. We use Adobe Captivate to create simulations for our courses. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kimberly C. | eLearning Technical Lead, Internet, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 13, 2014 **What do you like best about Adobe Captivate?** The HTML5 integration was what I liked most about the latest version of Captivate. **What do you dislike about Adobe Captivate?** Captivate does not integrate well with Articulate Studio 13 for iPad output. We had to do a lot of troubleshooting and testing to get it to work well enough for our customers. **Recommendations to others considering Adobe Captivate:** It is good to always test your output in multiple browsers and on various types of devices. **What problems is Adobe Captivate solving and how is that benefiting you?** Re-creating courses, that include demos, simulations and interactions, to make accessible via mobile devices. ## Adobe Captivate Discussions - [Adobe Captivate](https://www.g2.com/discussions/adobe-captivate) - 2 comments, 2 upvotes - [Between Captivate and Storyline, which elearning tool is better?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/21246-between-captivate-and-storyline-which-elearning-tool-is-better) - 3 comments, 1 upvote - [Which Course Authoring Tool is currently the best?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/which-course-authoring-tool-is-currently-the-best) - 1 comment, 1 upvote - [What is Adobe Captivate used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-adobe-captivate-used-for) - 2 comments - [What is a software simulation in Adobe Captivate?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-a-software-simulation-in-adobe-captivate) - 1 comment - [View Adobe Captivate pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/adobe-captivate/reviews?filters%5Bnps_score%5D%5B%5D=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-13+11%3A41%3A20+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=acebea36-d939-4e0e-922f-522814e30012&secure%5Btoken%5D=7ba0f33579b1f5ca387499b00fbf49edfab7c3d1302af4fe39da534257fd45a4&format=llm_user) ## Adobe Captivate Features **Training & eLearning** - Content Creation - Content Libraries - Interactive Content - Question Library **Generative AI** - AI Text Generation - AI Text Summarization - Generative AI **Additional Functionality** - Onboarding - Individual Development Plans - Career Development - Approval Process Control - Customizable Branding - AI Copilot - Reminders - Customizable Templates - Employee Profiles - Employee Engagement - Learning & Development - API **Agentic AI - Course Authoring** - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Assignment Management - Asynchronous Learning - Synchronous Learning - Self-paced Learning - Interactive Learning - Blended Learning - Role-Based Permissions - Multi-Language **Additional Functionality** - Audio/Video Recording - Collaboration Tools - Video Management - Video Support - Assessment Management - Course Authoring - Course Publishing - AI Copilot - Customizable Reports - Mobile Access - Video Streaming - Generative AI - SCORM Compliance - Access Controls/Permissions - Data Import/Export - Surveys & Feedback - VR/AR Compatibility - Customizable Templates - Drag & Drop - User Management - Template Management - Gamification - Progress Reports - Learning Management - Customizable Questions - Content Management - Compliance Management - Third-Party Integrations - Activity Tracking - Certification & Licensing - Real-Time Data - Reporting & Statistics - Activity Dashboard - Storyboarding - Single Sign On - Progress Tracking - Tests/Assessments - Customizable Branding - API - Training Management - Media Import - Quizzes - Instructor-Led Courses - Multimedia Support - Commenting/Notes - Alerts/Notifications - PowerPoint Conversion **Platform** - Customization - Integration APIs - Internationalization - User, Role, and Access Management - Activity Dashboard - Activity Dashboard - Mobile Access - Activity Dashboard - Training Management - Goal Management - Feedback Management - Action Management - Mobile Access - Activity Dashboard - Benefits Dashboard - Activity Dashboard - Feedback Management - Performance Management - Recruitment Management - Compliance Management - Training Management - Calendar Management - Employee Management - Orientation Workflow Management - Task Management - HR Management - Help Desk Management - Mobile Access - Payroll Management - Document Management - Job Description Management - Social Media Integration - Mobile Access - Activity Dashboard - Third-Party Integrations - Assessment Management - Social Media Integration - Activity Dashboard - Mobile Access - Third-Party Integration - Initiative Management - Workflow Management - Community Management - Employee Referral Management - Candidate Management - Workflow Management - Communication Management - Advertising Management - Application Management - Email Management - Job Management - Discount Management - Pipeline Management - File Management - Job Management - Data Storage Management - Compensation Management - Employee Management - Job Application Management - HR Management - Competency Management - Performance Management - Compliance Management - Job Description Management - Evaluation Management - User Management - Role-Based Permissions - Third-Party Integrations ## Top Adobe Captivate Alternatives - [iSpring Suite](https://www.g2.com/products/ispring-suite/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (829 reviews) - [Articulate 360](https://www.g2.com/products/articulate-360/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (787 reviews) - [Bigtincan Readiness (formerly Brainshark)](https://www.g2.com/products/bigtincan-readiness-formerly-brainshark/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (595 reviews)