There are plentiful authoring tools available that can help you create interactive and engaging elearning courses. But not all authoring tools are created equal. You need to keep in mind that various authoring tools have varying levels of features and flexibility. It is important to select the right tool to meet your specific requirements.
In this article, I review a list of eLearning authoring tools which helps you in getting a clear idea regarding the best authoring tool for any style of eLearning course.
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
Camtasia
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
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
Composica
Composica is a cloud-based e-learning authoring tool for creating online training, compliance, and custom courses collaboratively. Its main USP is its ability to create, import, and edit animations for use within courses. Additionally, it has some Artificial Reality features that can be used with GPS for real-time coordinates to create in situ AR training. Composica also offers programmatic features like the use of conditional triggers (IF, WHERE, ELSE, etc.), multiple slide layers, and multiple objects that are traditionally the purview of desktop authoring tools.
Price: From $150 per month
Knowbly
Knowbly is an online authoring tool. Its main unique features are customizable themes and the ability to output courses in the EPUB format. As well, it offers all the standard features you would expect to find in an online authoring tool like a block-based course builder and an easy way to integrate images and other assets into your courses. You can also customize and configure themes, course elements, widgets, assessment scoring, structure, and navigation.
Price: $696 annually
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 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 an open-source authoring tool that creates customizable responsive HTML5 grid-like block content. It is a cost-effective solution for developing training and e-learning content. This employs a simple, user-friendly interface although with a limited set of interaction possibilities. Adapt supports HTML5, SCORM Windows, and Mac OS. Adapt is not cloud-based and thus does not allow for collaboration and also takes a fairly long time to install.https://www.youtube.com/embed/2MS8Q3y23K8?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1
Easygenerator
This is an authoring tool perfect for people who are inexperienced designers. It features easy-to-understand, pre-built templates to help novices get started. It also employs the use of mobile-friendly responsive design features and no coding is required.
It is important to note that although very easy and fast it is quite limited in its output options.https://www.youtube.com/embed/jcV4u-q5mpA?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1
Gomo
If you’re looking to create web-style content that can be hosted offline and offline, Gomo is a great choice. It offers great flexibility and produces mobile responsive output. It comes with a spectrum of pre-installed themes that can be modified to suit the brand requirements.
Design and creativity can be a little limited as the interactions are built in a two-column structure and the user interface is not intuitive. https://www.youtube.com/embed/JaKwDt99SAw?wmode=opaque&enablejsapi=1
Adobe Captivate
One of the most powerful authoring software, Adobe captivate is a desktop-based authoring tool well suited for experimental designers and authors but not so friendly for beginners.
Seasoned authors can create customized learning content from the available themes. Available on Windows and Mac OS, Adobe captivate can create virtual reality content and simulation. The downside to Adobe captivate is the limited support and inability to have collaborations.
Conclusion
It is important to remember that as new authoring tools come under development, the experience of creating e learning material with them is not always a walk in the park for the creators. I know about this first hand as the author of e learning material using the Articulate range of authoring tools. I have had many days where I have been left frustrated and stressed out over what to do next because there was no support available from other authors.