eLearning authoring tool by market share (2025)
eLearning authoring tools by market share
| Rank | Tool (core focus) | Proxy for market share* | Founded (place / year) | Founders & early DNA | Financing history & status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Articulate 360 (Storyline, Rise) | ~78 000 customer orgs, all Fortune 100 (newcannabisventures.com, articulate.com) | New York City, 2002 | Adam Schwartz – ex-education-services exec & software entrepreneur; bootstrapped fully remote team from day 1 (learningguild.com, medium.com) | Bootstrapped 19 yrs → $1.5 B Series A (2021) led by General Atlantic, Blackstone & ICONIQ; valu-ation ≈ $3.75 B (businesswire.com, techcrunch.com) |
| 2 | iSpring Suite | 60 000+ customers incl. 148 Fortune 500 (builtin.com) | Yoshkar-Ola → Alexandria VA, 2001 | Yury Uskov – engineer; team spun out of Flash-con-version R&D, laser-focused on PowerPoint-to-HTML5 authoring (karlkapp.com) | Profitable/bootstrapped; no outside VC disclosed (tracxn.com) |
| 3 | Adobe Captivate | 11 562 active corporate installs; used by 80 % of Fortune 500 (enlyft.com, capterra.ca) | San Diego (FlashCam → RoboDemo, 2001) → became Macromedia Captivate (2004) → acquired by Adobe (2005) (adobe.fandom.com, en.wikipedia.org) | Origin team (Nexus Concepts/eHelp) were multimedia devs; rolled into Macromedia/Adobe engineering | No stand-alone rounds; product funded inside Adobe Inc. (NASDAQ: ADBE) |
| 4 | 360Learning (author-LMS) | 2 300+ enterprise customers (linkedin.com) | Paris, 2013 | Nick Hernandez (École Polytechnique M.Sc.) – SaaS & finance background; vision: “collaborative learning” (theofficialboard.com, businesswire.com) | $243 M raised – SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Sumeru, Silver Lake (Series C $200 M in 2021) (leadiq.com, edtechreview.in) |
| 5 | Easygenerator | 2 000+ paying companies; 50 000 individual authors (easygenerator.com, nl.linkedin.com) | Rotterdam, 2013 (roots back to 1992 CD-ROM tool) | Kasper Spiro – 30-yr L&D technologist, ex-teacher; co-founded to champion “Employee-Generated Learning” (trainingmag.com, easygenerator.com) | Largely bootstrapped; disclosed $0.5 M seed (2013) (leadiq.com) |
| 6 | Lectora | 1 435 companies tracked using it (theirstack.com) | Cincinnati OH, 1999 | Tim D. Loudermilk (J.D.) – ex-P&G product & ed-tech innovator; built one of the first “rapid” authoring tools (wikieducator.org, pmiadvisors.com) | Trivantis sold to ELB Learning (eLearning Brothers) in 2020; ELB has attracted $92 M PE backing (RLG Capital + Trinity Investors, 2020–22) (businesswire.com, techbuzz.news) |
| 7 | Elucidat | Hundreds of large-enterprise logos (Tesco, Coca-Cola, Comcast); public customer count not disclosed—estimated < 1 000 | Brighton UK, 2013 | Steve Penfold – software entrepreneur from a family of educators; mission “people-centred elearning” (elucidat.com, elucidat.com) | $6.9 M VC – YFM Equity Partners (£4.5 M 2019; £2 M 2023 follow-on) (elucidat.com, finsmes.com) |
About Elucidat
| Person | Role(s) | Career snapshot & skills DNA |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Penfold | ✔ Co-founder (2013) | CEO (2015-present) • Mechanical Engineering & French, Univ. of Bristol • Grew up in a family of teachers, ran two earlier software ventures → blends pedagogy empathy with SaaS discipline • Known inside the firm for “single-metric focus” culture (active learner impact) (elucidat.com) |
| Simon Greany | ✔ Co-founder (Chief Learning Officer → Director until 2024) | 15-year learning-design career before Elucidat (Epic/City & Guilds, consultancy) Created the “Learning at Large” podcast & State of Digital Learning reports—thought-leadership funnel |
| Early lieutenants | Ian Budden (CTO), James Little (CRO) and Kristina Daukantaitė (VP Product) joined 2016-18—gave the startup senior bench strength in cloud engineering, sales ops and UX (highperformr.ai) |
Funding & growth journey of Elucidat
| Year | Milestone | Capital | What it enabled |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2013–18 | Bootstrapped Saas MVP (Brighton, UK) after founders’ “there-must-be-a-better-way” moment with legacy tools | — | Built browser-based authoring, landed first enterprise customers in retail & telco (elucidat.com) |
| May 2019 | Growth round – £3.5 m from YFM Equity Partners | Seeded U.S. sales pod, doubled R&D headcount, added PowerPoint-Import and brand-governance features (angelnews.co.uk) | |
| 2020 & 2022 | Internal follow-ons from YFM (undisclosed, on YFM site) | Sustained COVID-era capacity surge, rolled out Re-Release one-click LMS updates (yfmep.com) | |
| Jan 2023 | Follow-on – £2 m (YFM) | AI auto-translate, U.S. enterprise marketing push, CrossKnowledge integration (finsmes.com, learningnews.com) | |
| Total external capital (2025) | ≈ £7.1 m / US $8.8 m – all from YFM growth-capital funds (no traditional VC) (yfmep.com) |
Commercial traction
- ~10 000 authors have built 280 k courses consumed by 58 m+ learners in 60+ countries (yfmep.com)
- Calendar-year 2024 revenue US $6.9 m with 59 staff (29 % CAGR since 2021) (getlatka.com)
- Enterprise logos: Tesco, Pret, Nissan, Metro Bank, Kingfisher, Decathlon (elucidat.com)
Why a 2013 “late entrant” still broke through
| Success lever | How it played out |
|---|---|
| HTML5 & mobile-first timing | Flash’s collapse (2013-16) left Articulate/Captivate users scrambling. Elucidat launched cloud-native, responsive templates when most incumbents were still desktop-bound. |
| “People-centred/SME-generated” positioning | Instead of wooing only specialist IDs, the UI lets any employee start from guard-railed templates, while brand-lock & review workflows reassure L&D teams—perfect for the post-2019 content-boom. |
| Capital-efficient scaling | Bootstrapping forced laser focus on usability & self-serve onboarding; modest but patient YFM growth capital avoided the “grow-at-all-costs” trap that hurt some 2021 cohort SaaS firms. |
| Thought-leadership flywheel | Free assets (State of Digital Learning, “Learning at Large” podcast, LITE events) won SEO, backlinks, and trust far above its ad spend. Greany’s content credibility drew early-adopter enterprises. |
| Continuous micro-innovation | Quick-release cycle delivered “Re-Release” (hot-update SCORM in LMS), Auto-translate, AI layout assistant—small but high-ROI delighters that incumbents were slow to match. |
| Values-driven culture | Consistently ranked a UK “Great Place to Work”; low churn keeps product/CS knowledge in-house, which shows in NPS and expansion revenue. (yfmep.com) |
| Strategic partnerships | OEM tie-ins (e.g., CrossKnowledge distribution, 2020) opened continental Europe without heavy field-sales build-out. (learningnews.com) |
© Copyright notes
The copyright of the article belongs to the author, please do not reprint without permission.
Related posts
No relevant contents!
No comments...
Coursetoolbox - Proven tips and selected tools for L&D, customer education, and course creation.