eLearning Lifehack - Get Adobe Captivate for FREE!

Adobe launched the Adobe eLearning Community in 2016 to grow the online community for Adobe Captivate. Shortly after, the Adobe LMS solution, originally called Adobe Captivate Prime, became Adobe Learning Manager. Adobe wanted their customers to talk together and share ideas informally rather than relying only on official help files. It has worked, as there are several hundred thousand members of the Adobe eLearning Community, including yours.

One little-known feature of the Adobe eLearning Community is its incentive program, which encourages participation in the community. Because of this program, I have not paid for Adobe Captivate since version 7. While you think Adobe has given me Adobe Captivate because of my YouTube channel, you would only be partially correct. Let me explain how this program works.

How does it work?

Visit elearning.adode.com and sign in using your Adobe ID. If you don't have an Adobe ID, it's free and easy to sign up and start using. If you don't already have access to Adobe Captivate, you can download a copy from here and start using it. The next step is to start sharing with the community. The easiest way to start participating is to post a blog post, ask a question, or start a discussion. For each of these activities, you will earn points. When you sign in, you start as a Newbie (I personally hate that word) and will have zero points. As you continue to engage with the community, your points will accumulate. You will graduate to an Explorer once you have gained 50 points, a guide at 150 points, a Master at 500, a Wizard at 1,000, and a Legend at 5,000.

Here is where it gets good

Here is where it gets good. If you get 150 points, you will receive one month of complimentary license usage for Adobe Captivate. Five hundred points get you 3 months of Adobe Captivate, 1000 gets you 6 months, and 5,000 gets you 12 months. For 1,000 or 5,000, you also get invited to Adobe Learning Summit, the conference in Las Vegas about Adobe Captivate, which includes a free pass and stay (you would need to figure out how to get there, though). This could include opportunities to present at the conference or within Adobe webinars and workshops.

How I use the program

Here is what I do. I'm making Adobe Captivate YouTube videos anyway, so once a week, when I release a new video, I merely post it to the Adobe eLearning Community, and just like that, I get 50 points. There are a couple of rules around posting videos. They should be more than 4 minutes long; the video must be about eLearning, or, better yet, specifically about Adobe Captivate; they should be well-produced and with recorded narration in English. I have enough points to cash that in for a 12-month complimentary license of Adobe Captivate. You can find all the details about the program here.

To check your current level and redeem your points, you want to visit your profile. To access your profile, click on the avatar of yourself in the upper right corner and click on My Profile. You will see your current points, lifetime points, the number of followers, and the number of other users you follow. 

My profile with accumulated points

You can request your points be converted into a complimentary license key to start using Adobe Captivate for free up to two times per year. One limitation of trial software is that anything you produce with it expires after 30 days. Not so with this version of Adobe Captivate. It is the full version.

Ideas for you to get started

If I were a new Adobe Captivate user, I would make it my goal to get to five hundred points as quickly as possible. Remember, five hundred points get you three months of Adobe Captivate, during which time you can focus on gaining an even higher level. Build something neat with Adobe Captivate and submit it as a free project. For this, you will earn two hundred points. That, along with a few separate blog posts, would be enough to become a Master and gain five hundred points. When you are ready to redeem your points, email elcommunity1@adobe.com and ask for your reward. Adobe doesn't issue the rewards daily, so be patient. For example, I have enough points for my following twelve-month complimentary license, which I will only need in October. To avoid disruption, I will request my redemption a few weeks before my license expires.

Learn more

If you have other questions about this program, be sure to look here. It includes an FAQ that should answer any questions you have.