Elucidat vs Lectora Online: Comparison and Review

Choosing the best authoring tool is not always easy. In this software review, we look at how the Elucidat authoring platform compares to Lectora Online.

There are a lot of different ways to review and compare elearning authoring platforms. Ultimately, how you go about it will depend on your organizational needs. Each company will have a different team structure, different numbers of learners and different goals. All of this needs to be taken into consideration.

To make this particular head-to-head review of Elucidat and Lectora Online authoring tool easier to follow, we will be comparing the two softwares based on:

1. Ease of use – an absolute must for a lot of teams out there. Having an easy-to-use authoring platform can be a massive time-saver.
2. Quality of elearning output – not every tool will give you the best quality of output. Too often, training developed with an authoring platform ends up looking too generic or just not engaging enough.
3. Speed and efficiency of authoring – this review element has become the top priority, particularly in recent times with many companies having to switch quickly to online learning.
4. Scaling up of production – whether you are a growing company looking to scale up your learning or a big employer tackling the challenges that come with scale, having an authoring tool that can withstand the velocity of scale tops many comparison lists.

Lectora vs Elucidat – comparison and review at a glance

Not everyone has time to look in-depth at the differences between Elucidat and Lectora Online. So, if you are short on time, here’s a quick overview of the main differences:

Elucidat elearning authoring tool review

The Elucidat elearning authoring platform is ideal for big organizations looking to create awesome learning, easily and super-fast.

Ease of use

Elucidat has always been pretty easy to use. With a WYSIWYG interface and a whole host of interactions to choose from, you don’t need to be super experienced to produce engaging elearning.

If you want to take this ease of use to the next level, there is an extensive library of pre-built templates that helps even novice authors create great-looking interactive experiences.

For those looking to be more innovative with their learning without having to code, there is a handy “layout designer.”

Quality of elearning output

Creating training with Elucidat is easy and fast without risking quality! The pre-built templates have best practice already baked in. This way, even your least experienced authors, or your SMEs, can get involved and produce something great.

And, if you don’t find a template that you need, you can always count on Elucidat’s gifted examples. Here’s 10 of the best elearning examples you can start using right away – some are pre-built blueprints and some can be gifted.

If you are looking to share the workload and get more people involved in authoring, Elucidat also provides powerful user management, an additional quality safeguard. Using custom roles, you can ensure that you provide the right level of access to every member of your team. So, if you have that one team member who still needs to learn the ropes before she/he is allowed to publish courses, you can easily set that up and ensure only top-quality content leaves your door.

The courses produced with Elucidat look great on any device, since the platform allows you to easily adjust your course for any size with a click of a button.

Speed and efficiency of authoring

For those looking to work quickly at scale, Elucidat is a great choice. The pre-built blueprints and workflows perfectly suit larger teams – making production 4x faster.

Elucidat is a cloud-based authoring tool, which makes collaboration super easy. You can work together on the same course at the same time, making sure that nothing is missed in the back and forth outside of the platform. Comments are logged within the authoring tool and can be left on specific parts of a page using the “review” feature.

With Elucidat’s brand importer, you can be confident your courses always stay on brand. Simply set up your brand in a few clicks and save your company style. Your team can then use those styles when creating new courses, saving valuable design time.

Scaling up of production

Elucidat can seem expensive if you’re not producing much content.  Elucidat is designed specifically for teams creating and managing elearning at scale, which is where ROI really comes into play.

You can easily save and share assets such as videos, images and logos using the central asset library. This means updating your assets across multiple courses is quick and easy. Anything you replace in the library is updated across your courses with one click.

For those organizations looking to cater to a disputed or even global audience, Elucidat offers smart translation and localization features. You can easily manage multiple languages or brands using the variations manager. Create several versions of one project and apply updates across them all seamlessly.

Lectora Online Elearning Software

Lectora Online can be a powerful authoring tool, but only if you have the time to learn how to use it and/or you are an experienced elearning developer.

Ease of use

Lectora Online is certainly not the easiest tool out there. Experienced designers might find it slightly easier to figure out, but for anyone else, the learning curve will be pretty steep.

The complex, overwhelming interface and lack of guidance in the software means interesting features and functionality, such as the many integrations it offers, are easily missed and not properly understood. This can result in authors being unable to explore and experiment, resulting in them having to re-use pages that came with the template they originally picked.

Lectora’s Online offers a drag and drop authoring interface and a layers panel similar to traditional design applications. However, the vast array of options on the interface can make creating a course difficult. The level of flexibility and control can, for some, leave the experience feeling fiddly and frustrating.

Quality of elearning output

Lectora comes with a range of pre-built interaction templates.  These can be used as they come or tweaked. If you’re looking to get under the hood of these templates, you’ll need some design experience!

In terms of responsiveness, Lectora Online doesn’t disappoint with their new “Responsive Course Design,” or “RCD” feature. This will automatically adapt and rescale objects to fit on any other screen size.

One of Lectora’s most interesting features is the “error check.” This runs before a course is released to, you guessed it, check for any logical errors! It categorizes them into two types of error, blue and red. A blue error is a non-critical error and a red error is critical. Lectora Online will not let you publish your course until all your red errors have been resolved.

Speed and efficiency of authoring

Lectora Online’s steep learning curve will at first impact the speed and efficiency you can expect from the tool. Once you have invested considerable time in learning how to use the software, things speed up.

If you are looking to efficiently collaborate with your team, like any other decent cloud-based authoring tool, Lectora Online has a handy review and comment feature. This can speed up course interactions. Comments are also kept in one place so everyone can keep track of what’s being suggested.

Scaling up of production

Lectora Online offers a handy translation feature. It helps you scale one course into multiple languages. Unfortunately, the missing parent-child relationship between the files can make this tricky since changes need to be made individually.

Prepare for a gradual onboarding process for new authors as you scale. If you plan on scaling up your production, hiring experienced designers might not be a bad idea!

Final words on Elucidat and Lectora Online Authoring Software

Every team is different, and what works for one might not work for another. If Lectora Online and Elucidat are part of your mix of potential authoring tools, hopefully, this review and comparison gives you a good idea of how they stack up.

In a nutshell:

• If you are an L&D team working at scale with mixed design abilities and a desire to create engaging elearning easily and quickly, Elucidat might be the perfect fit.
• If your learning team is made up of experienced designers and you don’t mind fiddling with a tool for a while, Lectora Online is worth a try.
• Luckily, both tools offer a free trial, so you can take them for a drive before you make a decision.

If you are looking to expand on your search, here are some of our other software review articles you might want to check out:

• The Best Elearning Authoring Tools & Software 
• Storyline & Captivate
• Evolve
• Gomo Learning
• Storyline & Rise
• iSpring Suite