There are many authoring tools available on the market. In this article, we will explore five of the best eLearning authoring tools. We will also compare the plugins and evaluate their prices and available features.
In this article, I will discuss the best elearning authoring tools you can use to create your next elearning course. If you ask most elearning professionals to name the first three authoring tools that come to mind, they would probably mention Articulate Storyline, Captivate, and Lectora. While these three elearning software are indeed popular and powerful, there are some other options in the market that are less well-known but equally effective.
iSpring Suite Max
iSpring Suite Max is a fully loaded course authoring toolkit designed to allow the fast build of multi-device compatible courses as a PowerPoint add on. You can use slides, quizzes, video lectures, screencasts, and role-plays with a simple to use builder interface. With iSpring, you can also convert existing Word, PDF, and PPT materials into engaging interactive courses with a few clicks.
This is a great choice if you want to create online courses fast and easy, as well as collaborate on the content with your team. The toolkit incorporates an online space where several authors can cowork on the content and even build basic courses online with a built-in cloud-based authoring tool. It also includes Content Library, with over 68,000 e-learning assets.
Price: $970 per user annually
iSpring Presenter
iSpring Presenter is a reduced version of iSpring Suite that has the basic must-have authoring options. You can create interactive courses from scratch – the same way you create a PPT presentation. The tool also enables you to build beautiful interactive quizzes with 14 question types, including the ubiquitous multiple-choice and true/false questions, and engaging hotspots and drag-and-drops. You can also produce training videos with iSpring and sync slides with premade footage or record a presenter video with your webcam.
Price: $227 per user annually
Adobe Captivate
Adobe Captivate is a desktop e-learning authoring tool that supports mobile HTML5 content. Captivate includes some prebuilt assets, as well as customizable workflows that can be tweaked to suit developer preferences. Captivate is highly customizable and is often favored by developers who are creating complex software simulations, custom interactions, virtual reality (VR) learning experiences, and courses published as mobile apps.
Price: $33.99PM with annual commitment, $1,299 perpetual license
Articulate 360
Articulate Storyline 360
A well-known name in the world of authoring, Storyline is clean, modern, and has plenty of powerful features. For example, it allows you to storyboard your courses and then dictates the path that your learner takes. And although it can take a little bit of time to get to grips with Storyline, it’s balanced by the quality of the results.
The platform has two pricing options for you to choose from: a Storyline 360 subscription or a one-off purchase of Storyline 3. The website has a helpful comparison chart that details what comes with each option. The subscription is probably the better choice as it gives you access to a host of other apps to use and the benefit of regular updates, but either option is worth a try.
Articulate Rise 360
The sibling to Storyline, Rise 360 is another top-quality authoring tool from Articulate. With a prime focus on mobile-responsive content, it’s a smart choice for those who want courses that are compatible with every device. Again, like Storyline, it has a clean, modern interface that delivers visually pleasing results.
Articulate 360 is an e-learning course development subscription package. It includes the Articulate Storyline desktop authoring tool, plus Rise, a web-based cloud app for creating responsive courses. The other seven apps include an online review app and a webcast video app.
Storyline is a highly regarded desktop authoring tool and is known to be more user friendly for beginners than some of its counterparts. Rise allows for the creation of very quick responsive courses by selecting from pre-made block types and using the built-in Articulate content library of photos and illustrations.
Price: $1,299 per user, annually
Gomo
Gomo is a cloud-based, responsive HTML5 e-learning authoring tool that offers a mobile first approach. It is designed to be used collaboratively to author and deliver digital learning content.
You can create, discover, track and deliver video and e-learning content in a single and unified experience that appears the same to learners and content creators alike.
Price: authoring only £690 per seat, authoring and delivery £1,960
Lectora Inspire and Lectora Online
Lectora Inspire and Online are e-learning authoring products featuring Responsive Course Design (RCD). Lectora Inspire desktop is designed to make online course development fast and simple. It is bundled with the leading screen capture and recording software and offers high levels of customization possibilities, including the use of slide layers and programmatic elements.
Lectora Online Authoring Tool aims to offer similar features with an intuitive, easy-to-use interface. Of course, it doesn’t offer the same depth as it’s bigger brother, but does a good job of building less complex courses fast and with an easier workflow.
Lectora has traditionally been popular with developers in Academia, and its feature set and templates are somewhat focused in this niche.
Price: Inspire, $2,595 Single payment; Online, $1,390 PA
Adapt
Adapt is a free e-learning authoring tool that lets you create fully responsive, multi-device compatible HTML5 content using the open-source Adapt developer framework. Similar to Articulate Rise, courses created with Adapt provide a web app style experience with vertical scroll and swipe functionality on touch devices.
Adapt does not support branching scenarios or complex animations, but its functionality can be extended via plugins. However, this may not be something the average user has the time or technical ability to explore.
Price: Free
DominKnow | ONE
DominKnow | ONE is a cloud-based authoring system that has three main authoring modules. There is a responsive course creator, a more traditional course builder that includes the ability to convert PowerPoint presentations, and a tool for capturing, generating, and editing system software simulations. This tool is designed to help you to build many different types of e-learning via templates, stock assets, a global library to share and reuse content across different projects, and real-time collaboration and review modules.
Price: Team $1,497
Easygenerator
Easygeneratror is an online authoring tool that focuses on knowledge sharing from subject matter experts by enabling SMEs with no previous e-learning experience to create courses easily. This mainly involves picking premade subject matter templates and customizing them to create generic but great looking courses in a fraction of the time that custom development would require.
Price: Team £4,950
Elucidat
Elucidat is another online authoring tool with a focus on simplicity, ease of use, and using templates – called blueprints in this ecosystem – with guided customizations to produce courses quickly with low overhead. It offers many of the basic features that you would expect from an HTML5 authoring tool, such as creating tests and quizzes, video and audio management, and building out courses with images and text.
Price: Only available upon request
Evolve
Evolve is one more authoring tool with all the usual features. Its main point of difference is the inclusion of corporate e-learning solutions to provide online compliance training to organizations across numerous industries. OSHA, HIPAA, and HR compliance and development courses are available to push out to your employees through your own learning management system (LMS) or the Evolve hosted LMS.
Price: Only available upon request
Koantic
Koantic offers PowerPoint-like slides as an easy way to create visually stimulating content. It enables you to easily add background audio, synched interactions, and motion from a library of animations. You can choose from over 18 templates to start building content. It features a drag-and-drop branching tool to provide a simple way to incorporate scenarios into your content without any technical know-how.
Price: $79 monthly
Adeptly
Adeptly is a gamification focused online authoring tool. It allows you to build games that simulate and test your processes and boost learning outcomes with data-driven games. Adeptly offers an easy-to-use editor to create unique learning games. You can quickly add any content, create decision trees, and customize scoring metrics.
Price: Professional, £345 per month
thirst.io
thirst.io is a cloud-based authoring tool that helps you create dynamic, mobile-first, branded learning experiences, easily and efficiently. What you see in your thirst.io editor is what you get to facilitate easy course design. You add your content directly to the course, which means no separate editing panels, no waiting for previews to load, and instant feedback on how your course appears.
Price: Must apply for an account and be approved to get a price
Raptivity
Raptivity is an online authoring tool that focuses on making learning more fun by offering different types of interactions that you might not see in other tools. It features responsive interactions and microlearning functionality.
Price: $149 annual sub
Coassemble
Coassemble is a cloud-based LMS with built-in authoring tool features – so it aims to be a one-stop shop for both creating and hosting your courses. The native authoring tool aims to be very easy to use with no coding skills required. The main USPs of Coassemble are the great built-in gamification options and learner-centered content and interaction templates.
Price: $9 per month
Area9 Rhapsode
Area9 Rhapsode is an adaptive learning platform with LMS capabilities. It uses machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and cognitive engineering to support various types of learners. Courses authored in Rhapsode adapt to individual students using questions that determine comprehension and learning needs. In addition, students rate their confidence level for each answer they submit.
Price: Must contact to negotiate price
Camtasia
First and foremost a video capture tool, Camtasia content can be exported as SCORM packages. It’s an excellent option if you want to jazz up PowerPoint presentations as you can effortlessly record narration and even your face simultaneously.
It may be a lighter option than the others listed, but it benefits you by being highly accessible and affordable. Just be sure to test the reporting output on offer so you know it meets the requirements of your organization.
Camtasia from TechSmith is a tool for making screen and video recordings. You can record your screen, add video effects, transitions, hotspots, and more. Camtasia is popular with developers for creating software simulations quickly and easily that can optionally be made more interactive and exported as SCORM. It has a low learning curve compared to other video production software like Adobe Premier and can be used by SMEs with little or no training.
Price: $249.99 single license
Composica
Another authoring tool with a strong focus on smooth collaboration, Composica enables you to work with your colleagues straightforwardly.
You can add different users, assign tasks, and always have the most up-to-date version of your content at hand. It also has competitive pricing so it’s a relatively affordable option for your business.
knowbly
If you’re looking for a simple, yet powerful authoring tool, knowbly is one to check out. It’s got all the features an eLearning newbie needs like drag and drop content creation, quick customizability, mobile-responsive, and more.
Conclusion
Learning is an ongoing process that doesn’t stop just because you’re not in a classroom. For both lifelong learning as well as professional development, you need to keep up-to-date on new trends and tools. In this post, we’ll review the best elearning authoring tools and platforms. Hopefully, after reading this you’ll be able to identify the right tool(s) to design your elearning courses.