This is the third time this week that someone has reached out to me with this question. When this happens I usually write a blog post to answer instead of writing the same email to multiple people explaining my thoughts about this controversial question. This way I can now refer people making similar inquiries to this post rather than repeating myself. Adobe has invited me to participate in things like conferences and training, but I think it’s important to say that I do not know Adobe’s plans for the marketing or selling of Adobe Captivate. When it comes right down to it, I’m just a user like all of you. Everything I say in this blog post is just my thoughts and opinion. There was a time when Adobe offered a product called the Adobe eLearning Suite. In fact, this is how I purchased my first personal copy of Adobe Captivate. The eLearning Suite included the following applications:
Adobe Captivate
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Dreamweaver
Adobe Flash
Adobe Audition
Adobe Presenter
Adobe Acrobat Professional
The last time Adobe offered this suite of products was with Adobe Captivate 6.
Since that time, the only other product where Adobe Captivate is bundled with other software from Adobe is in the Adobe Technical Communications Suite. The Adobe Technical Communications Suite includes the following pieces of software:
Adobe Captivate
Adobe FrameMaker
Adobe RoboHelp
Adobe Captivate (2019 release)
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Presenter 11.1
Of course, many people are always hoping that Captivate will become part of the Creative Cloud. As a Captivate and Creative Cloud user, I completely understand this. For me, the greatest benefit of such a merger would be the ability to install all my Adobe apps from one Creative Cloud application. Imagine purchasing a new PC or Mac and simple logging into your Adobe Account and selecting the option to install all your Adobe software. I could go away and have lunch while everything I need to be creative that afternoon would magically appear on my new PC.
Of course, some of you are hoping for a reduced price. I understand that also. Captivate, and the Creative Cloud represents over $US 80 per month. I would gladly accept a bundled price of less than $80, but I don’t think everyone would agree. Imagine if you were not in the eLearning industry but were a Creative Cloud user. If Adobe asked you to suddenly pay $30 more for something you didn’t need or want, you would likely not accept that. I would imagine that many illustrators, designers, and graphic artists might start looking for alternatives to Creative Cloud.
And for those who think Adobe should absorb Captivate’s cost and include it in the Creative Cloud for free, I say no thanks. If Captivate became a bonus piece of software in the Creative Cloud, I would imagine that it would stop being the innovative software it is today. I’m fairly certain that Adobe would no longer offer new features like interactive video or 360° VR training. As free included software, Captivate would cease to be that innovative product it is today.