Looking for best Adobe Captivate 9 alternative? Here’s the best eLearning authoring tool that has similar features in developing elearning content, and offers lower license price than Adobe Captivate 9 for your consideration.
Adobe Captivate 9 is one of the most well-known products from ADOBE, a big name in elearning industry at present time. Its new updated Captivate 2017 with their statement to provide a smart authoring platform to create responsive eLearning content and transform non-mobile course to m-learning easily. It is also proud themselves of the most professional, smartest authoring tool in the world now. We cannot deny the fact that Captivate 9 is the most wanted authoring tool for educators and teachers around the globe now. However, you maybe not affordable at their license price at $1099 and want to find a low cost elearning authoring tool which has the same features as Captivate 9.
Forget about free elearning authoring tools, they can not be compared with Captivate. Our today post will introduce some similar software with closest features to Captivate 9 with more reasonable cost for creating elearning contents effectively. I will not guarantee with you that this alternative is 100% the same with Captivate 9 but it is the best choice for you at present time.
Update 2018: ActivePresenter 7 is now released with lots of enhancements for creating responsive elearning courses. Check out the best features of ActivePresenter here!
ActivePresenter Professional – Best Alternative to Captivate 9
We’ve made a comparison table to show you what are the differences between Adobe Captivate 9 and ActivePresenter Professional in the below table. Take a look
Captivate 9 vs ActivePresenter
| Product | Adobe Captivate 9 | ActivePresenter Professional |
| Purchase Price | 29.99/mo; $1099 full | $399 lifetime |
| Type: | ||
| Desktop | Yes | Yes |
| Import from PowerPoint | Yes | Yes |
| Content view formats: | ||
| Flash | Yes | No |
| HTML5 | Yes | Yes |
| Export to SCORM, xAPI | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile app | Yes | No |
| Export to video | Yes | Yes |
| Audio/video recording (microphone/webcam) | Yes | Yes |
| Screen recording (screencasting) | Yes | Yes |
| Audio/video editor | Yes | Yes |
| Templates library | No | Yes |
| Characters library | No | No |
| Quizzes | Yes | Yes |
| Interactions | Yes | Yes |
| Dialog simulations | No | Yes |
| External objects: | ||
| Html pages | Yes | Yes |
| YouTube videos | Yes | Yes |
| Flash movies | Yes | No |
| Protection | Yes | Yes |
| Tracking Report | Yes | Yes |
| LMS support | Yes | Yes |
| Operating System | Windows and Mac | Windows and Mac |
What are the disadvantages of ActivePresenter in comparison with Captivate 9?
Though ActivePresenter is the most suitable tool to replace Captivate 9, but it has easy to see weakness that you should consider before making your decision. We will bullet down here right away.
- ActivePresenter does not have character library where you can use to add to your elearning content as easy as Captivate 9. However, the solution is to import the characters from any sources that you have on your computer. It will take a while, not as speedy as Captivate 9.
- Both ActivePresenter and Captivate 9 don’t have a LMS subscription in the offer. In ActivePresenter the content can be exported to SCORM, xApi (Tin Can) that are supported by most LMS in the world now. With Captivate, you need to purchase Captivate Prime separately to have a LMS.
These are major drawbacks of ActivePresenter in comparison with Captivate. But, in my opinion, it is acceptable when it comes to creating eLearning courses.
ActivePresenter’s eLearning highlight features
Smart Capture
Capture screen when mouse clicked or key pressed. Each action is captured as a slide which explains in details what the viewer/learner should follow to master the lesson.
Full Motion Recording
Record screen as a full motion video and embedded in a slide for further editing with annotations, voice-over, zoom-n-pan, closed captions and animation effects.
Microphone & Speakers Recording
Record system audio and audio from microphone simutaneously while recording screen.
Audio & Video Editing
Edit audio and video instantly without quality loss. Supported operations are cut, delete, crop, join, split, change volume, insert freeze frame.
Shapes
There are dozens of shapes to choose from. Changing the form and hotspot of a shape just by dragging mouse.
Style (Color & Effect)
Create polished and high quality screencast videos and training simulations with various line/fill/text styles and shadow effects.
Interactivity
The flexible event-action mechanism with rich event and action types allows defining different learning scenarios based on viewers’ responses at each step.
Quizzes
Create virtually any kind of assessments or surveys by using 9 quiz types.
Slide Pool & Randomization
Create professional random quizzes with slide pools & random slides to avoid viewers from remembering and predicting answers
Video Export
Export content to popular video formats including AVI, FLV, WMV, WebM, MP4. Balance between output size and video quality with frame rate, key frame, and quality options.
HTML5 Export
Export content to HTML5 Simulation which can run on any modern web browser and device (desktops, tablets, smartphones).
SCORM & xAPI
Support SCORM and xAPI, two most popular eLearning specifications which are widely supported by many Learning Management Systems.
Bottom Line
There are more reasonable low cost elearning authoring tools that can be a great alternative to Adobe Captivate 9 at present time. However, due to our limited time and resources, we will come back to your with more detail in this post at soonest time.
You are welcome to contribute to us in this post about the tools that you think it is great to replace Adobe Captivate 9 at present time or near future.
Thanks very much for being here and hope to see you around.
Good luck!
You may want to read: Top 3 professional elearning software for Windows in 2017.
Elearning Supporter 
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