ActivePresenter Review After 3 Years Using Professional Edition

ActivePresenter is a professional elearning authoring software, designed for creating interactive online learning courses. The program offers a wide array of useful features to help instructional designers speed up their content development. Whether you’re teachers, trainers, or elearning solution providers, ActivePresenter can be helpful to you.

If you’ve tried ActivePresenter free edition, with all the advanced features included, and you’re so happy about the program. You may consider to purchase the program for commercial use, or to remove the watermark in the HTML5 outputs.

In this article, I will share with you my detail review of ActivePresenter, pros and cons, give you 5 reasons why it’s worth your money. Added to that, I will also point out which version is suitable for you, Free version, Standard version, or Professional version.

I’ve been using Atomi ActivePresenter for about 5 years (2 years with free version, and 3 years with Professional version). I must say that, this is one of the best decision I made. As a software reviewer, ActivePresenter has everything I need to create different types of content for both my website, and my YouTube channel.

Overview of ActivePresenter

ActivePresenter comes in handy when you want to create software tutorial videos, interactive software simulations, or responsive elearning courses. It’s a professional, all-in-one elearning authoring software you can use on Windows, or macOS. ActivePresenter was released in 2008 by a Vietnamese based company, Atomi Systems. It has been 11 years since its first release. ActivePresenter 7 is the latest version of this software. In order to give you an idea of ActivePresenter, I’ve created below demo video to show you what the program can do if you purchase its professional license.

ActivePresenter’s PROS

It’s lightweight, and simple to use compare to other elearning authoring tools on the market I’ve tried. ActivePresenter’s main work space is similar to Microsoft PowerPoint. And the workflow is very similar.
It has many plenty of unique features when it comes to screencasting, and making online training videos, or learning courses.
License price is affordable and flexible. ActivePresenter has a free edition, which includes all the advance features, for personal, and non-commercial users. ActivePresenter Standard Edition ($199/ lifetime) is designed for making training videos such as software tutorials, product demos, or how-to tutorials. ActivePresenter Pro Edition ($399/ lifetime) is designed for creating eLearning Courses, which gives you the ability to export your courses into HTML5 format in SCORM, or xAPI Tin Can. Other authoring tools such as iSpring Suite, Adobe Captivate, or Articulate Storyline 3 lifetime price is around $1400 per license.
Technical support service of Atomi Systems is absolutely fantastic. They are very active, and responsive. Whenever you ask a question, you’ll get the answer in minutes if it’s during working hours.

ActivePresenter’s CONS

ActivePresenter does not has its own character library like other expensive authoring tools.
It’s not integrated with any other third party applications, content library services, or LMS. It’s just an authoring tool.

ActivePresenter’s Pricing Detail

Free for Trial Version (There is no time limit for trial version)
$199 for Standard Version, $399 for Professional Version
40% of full price for Upgrade
Discount program is available for students, teachers, and non-profit institutions.

Which ActivePresenter Version Should I Use?

If you’re not going to use ActivePresenter for commercial, you should definitely continue using its free version. It’s all you need to create software tutorials, product demos to share with your friends and family.
If you’re professional software reviewers, developers, tutorial makers, YouTubers who want to make money on your videos, buy ActivePresenter Standard Edition.
ActivePresenter Pro Version is designed for creating online learning courses. If you need to publish your courses into HTML5, this is the right option for you.