60+ Best Instructional Design Software Tools & Resources in 2025

What are the best instructional design software and tools?

Today, we’ll explore the top tools for starting and building your career as an instructional designer.

Want to learn more? Read on!

What is instructional design software?

Instructional design software refers to tools that you, as an instructional designer, would use to design and develop eLearning. There are various tools you can use:

• Storyboard software (these tools help you map out your eLearning experience before you start developing it)
• eLearning development software (or eLearning authoring software, which helps you build interactive courses, lessons, and tutorials)
• Presentation tools (these tools help you create engaging and interactive presentations)
• Learning Management Systems (LMS tools are software tools that help you deliver, track, and report on eLearning courses)
• Video editing tools (tools that help you edit and create educational video content)

…And many more. We’ll look at the most effective tools in the next section.

To get an introduction to the best instructional design software packages, take a look at this quick video here below:

What is the most popular instructional design software?

Now we’ll look at the top instructional design software. I recommend some of these tools because I’ve used them on my client projects, and I recommend the other tools based on their reviews from the instructional design community.

One of the most popular tools, if not the most popular tool, is Articulate Storyline 360. It’s used by most corporate teams, and it’s the most in-demand technical skill for instructional designers. So if you’re looking for just one tool to get started, then Storyline is the way to go. Also, while the rest of these tools will help you, Storyline will likely be your top priority if you’re new to the field.

So what are the best instructional design tools? Let’s dive right in.

eLearning authoring tools

First, let’s start with the top eLearning authoring tools. Including an authoring tool in your software stack is necessary–and Storyline is a solid choice. Let’s take a look at your options.

And if you want a tutorial on how to use these, take a look at this video I put together for you:

Storyline 360

Articulate Storyline is the most essential instructional design software. It was the most popular tool when I got into the industry back in 2017, and continues to be the most popular tool over 5 years later.

If you’re familiar with PowerPoint, then you’ll find many similarities between PowerPoint and Storyline 360.

Pros:

• Easy to get started with
• Creates interactive slides without any coding knowledge

Cons:

• Not the best tool for experimenting or changing your design. It’s better to perfect the design in Adobe XD (mentioned later) and then build in Storyline for the final product
• The accessibility features are limited (but they’re working on it)
• The learning curve is steeper for more advanced interactions

Price: From $1,099 per year, with a 30-day free trial for the entire Articulate 360 suite

Here’s my take on why Storyline is so important for instructional designers:

Rise 360

Articulate Rise is a cloud-based eLearning authoring tool that is part of the Articulate 360 suite. So Storyline and Rise go hand in hand. This tool is ideal for building simple, mobile-responsive courses quickly.

Pros:

• User-friendly with good curriculum design features
• Excellent for beginners and experienced instructional designers

Cons:

• It is not meant for more advanced interactions (but you can embed Storyline interactions within Rise courses)
• Customization is limited because Rise is optimized for speed and ease-of-use

Price: From $1,099 per year, with a 30-day free trial for the entire Articulate 360 suite

Adobe Captivate

Adobe Captivate is Adobe’s solution to a complete eLearning development tool. It’s a popular alternative to the Articulate suite, but the user experience is not consistent with other Adobe tools. Captivate has a slight edge over Storyline when it comes to software simulations, but people generally prefer the user experience of Storyline.

Pros:

• Good functionality for creating software simulations
• Can build fully custom and complex eLearning interactions
• More affordable and flexible payment options than those available for Storyline

Cons:

• The user experience is not as good as it is in tools like Storyline
• There’s a learning curve to using Captivate effectively

Price: $33.99 per month

iSpring Suite

The iSpring Suite is an all-inclusive eLearning authoring tool that is best known for being easy to use. It’s perfect for beginner instructional designers. The UX is almost identical to PowerPoint but with more polished animations and interactions.

Pros:

• Works similarly to PowerPoint
• Customer support is great

Cons:

• Slide templates are more limited than other platforms
• Only works on Windows.

Price: $770 per year

iSpring Page

iSpring Page is one of the best instructional design tools for anyone new to the field. It’s low cost so a great entry point and you can experiment with creating micro courses before progressing to larger projects.

Pros:

• You can work from your browser. No downloads or drivers needed.
• Great for creating short-form courses

Cons:

• It can be buggy as it’s a new product
• Only 10GB of storage on the basic plan

Price: $97 per user per year

Lectora

Lectora is one of the industry leaders when it comes to instructional design software. It boasts high accessibility which is great for creating learning assets for all. It’s flexible, powerful and has a great library of assets to help you.

Pros:

• Prioritizes accessibility
• Creates clear analytics reports on how your course is performing once it’s published

Cons:

• There’s a learning curve before you can use it intuitively
• Customer support can be slow

Price: $1,399 per year

Chameleon Creator

Chameleon Creator stands out because it has a design-led approach to learning and authoring. With a beautiful user interface, you can create equally beautiful learning assets for clients without any coding knowledge. It’s a great tool for beginners.

Pros:

• No coding or specialist knowledge needed to use effectively
• Low entry price point which is great for new instructional designers

Cons:

• The tool is newer to the market and still has room to grow
• Performance reporting is limited

Price: $75 per month for freelancer plan

DominKnow

DominKnow is a cloud-based eLearning authoring tool that concentrates on efficiency and creating responsive, professional learning assets. It’s designed to work best for teams, with powerful collaborative authoring and review tools.

Pros:

• Works well for team collaboration
• Highly customizable

Cons:

• Some features require a higher learning curve
• No offline version

Price: From $997 per year.

Instructional design LMS tools

Learning Management Systems help you create and track courses. Some LMS tools also come with in-built authoring software. Once you pick one, check out this practical guide on how to use an LMS to get the most out of it. Here are my favorites:

TalentLMS

TalentLMS is a comprehensive training platform that prioritizes ease-of-use. Using their intuitive drag-and-drop system, you can create media-led courses from scratch in no time. You can also add SCORM files for more interactivity. It’s a great all-rounder.

Pros:

• A comprehensive system that’s also easy to use
• You can customize further with code

Cons:

• Customization is limited if you can’t code
• Has few native integrations. You’ll need Zapier to help.

Price: Free version available, premium plans from $69 per month

Brainshark

Brainshark combines authoring software and an LMS system to create the perfect all-rounder for corporate instructional designers. This tool is built with business training in mind for sales teams. You can create engaging courses here and deliver them using scorecards and streamlined onboarding.  

Pros:

• Easy to create content within the LMS
• Enables detailed analytics for sales teams

Cons:

• Not easy to use for less tech-savvy people

Price: Works based on custom quotes depending on your needs

Canvas LMS

Canvas is a digital classroom app that uses an integrated learning approach. The platform is designed around 6 pillars for student success: learning management, assessment, content, online programs and professional development. It’s great for IDs in the education sector.

Pros:

• Easy to navigate
• Has innovative assignment and testing methods

Cons:

• Only works well with Chrome
• Can be buggy

Price: Free

RockstarLearning Platform

RockstarLearning Platform by eLearning Brothers is a digital learning platform, LXP and LMS all rolled into one. It’s designed to serve enterprises of all sizes but works especially well for large organizations with multiple locations.

Pros:

• Works well at scale
• Flexible platform with customized learning paths and delivery methods

Cons:

• Reporting lacks some features
• Can lag in some browsers

Price: Free version available. Customized pricing for businesses.

Video and recording tools

Video and recording tools are foundational tools for most instructional designers. A good editing or audio tool can help you take your eLearning material to the next level.

Vyond

Vyond (formerly GoAnimate) is a video production platform that allows you to make professional, sleek-looking animated videos with no special technical or creative knowledge. Videos contain customizable animated figures for engaging training videos in no time (and the tool is becoming increasingly popular in the corporate instructional design space)

Pros:

• Offers hundreds of customizable, simple video templates to use
• Creates engaging animated videos with no technical knowledge
• Big asset library so you don’t need to spend time searching for images

Cons:

• Can lag or crash sometimes
• Free trial is very limited

Price: Basic plan from $25 per month (billed annually)

Adobe Premiere Pro

If you need Adobe Premiere Pro is a tool that’s used to edit videos. It comes with advanced features, such as effects, animations, and more. This tool is moderate-difficult (or even easy-difficult) to learn. If you are already familiar with video editing tools, it’ll be easier to get a hang of Premiere Pro faster.

Pros:

• Advanced effects and animation features

Cons:

• Steep(er) learning curve if you aren’t familiar with video editing tools

Price: Starting at $20.99 per month

YouTube

YouTube is the primary video-sharing platform on the internet, and with good reason! Not only is it free and intuitive to use, but you can also easily embed YouTube videos into a wide range of course platforms and websites to create a video course.

Pros:

• It has brand name recognition
• It’s easy to use

Cons:

• It’s difficult to prevent sharing of unlisted links as there are few privacy settings
• You have less control over the quality of the video

Price: Free

Snagit

Snagit is a simple screen capture and recording software. I recommend it for screenshots and screen recording as you can export your captures as videos or animated GIFS. This is perfect for courses and training videos.

Pros:

• Has many third-party integrations so you can share your videos directly to Slack, YouTube, DropBox and others
• Has a simple animated GIF maker
• Makes taking and editing screenshots extremely easy

Cons:

• Can be buggy (although I haven’t experienced this myself)

Price: $62.99

Camtasia

Camtasia is a video editing platform and screen recorder that is perfect for instructional designers. Because it’s made for beginners, you won’t find an easier video editing software that can help you put a video course together. It also includes light interactive functionality in case you’d like to add quizzes to your videos.

Pros:

• Simple interface for those new to video editing
• Screen capture is high quality and easy to use

Cons:

• Lacks advanced functionality if you’re an intermediate/expert in video editing
• Crashes often

Price: $239.99 for the first install then $50 per year for an ongoing subscription

iSpring Cam Pro

iSpring Cam Pro is a screen recorder that perfectly integrates with the iSpring Suite. It’s designed specifically for screen capture for software training videos, allowing you to record voiceovers and presenter videos too. You can make annotations as you record and edit in smooth scene transitions. Create easy training videos in no time.

Pros:

• Can share training videos directly into an LMS
• Has easy-to-use editing tools

Cons:

• Missing some customization features
• Doesn’t have many third-party app integrations

Price: $227 per user per year

Screenflow

If you have a Mac, Screenflow is a great video editing and screen recording software to try. It’s a little easier to use than Final Cut Pro, but you can still create professional videos with these powerful editing tools, animations and graphics.

Pros:

• Screen recording and editing tools are made for iOS users
• Can export as MP4 or GIF

Cons:

• The UX is a bit clunky at times
• Latest version looks quite dated

Price: One-time purchase starting at $169

Loom

Loom is a great, flexible dual-screen recorder that allows you to record your screen and your webcam at the same time. This is perfect for instructional videos as you have the personal touch of showing your face on camera while you demonstrate the process.

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Integrates with various apps and platforms

Cons:

• The transcript feature is not very accurate
• The screen and camera recording can struggle if you have multiple screens

Price: Freemium. $8 per month for the business version

CloudApp

With CloudApp you can create high-quality screen recordings, screenshots, and GIFs with just a few clicks. You can annotate your captures to explain certain features and share the files with simple links.

Pros:

• Contains a customizable CTA button to keep learners engaged
• Screenshot tool is flexible allowing you to crop and zoom in

Cons:

• Doesn’t have the same editing capabilities as others on the market
• Doesn’t integrate with any LMS systems

Price: Free version available, premium version from $9.95 per month

Audio tools

Audio tools help you add high-quality audio to your eLearning material. Here are two tools you can use:

Audacity

Audacity is a free, open-source audio recording and editing platform. It’s great for creating high-quality audio clips to add to your slides. You can export into wav and mp3 form.  Once you get used to the system, it’s easy to edit audio in no time.

Pros:

• Contains advanced audio editing features
• Completely free!

Cons:

• Not that easy to edit audio if you’re a beginner
• Can be laggy

Price: Free

BBC Sound Effects

To create more engaging slides and improve your audio clips, you need sound effects. BBC Sound Effects is a huge library of sound effects you can use with commercial or non-commercial licenses.

Pros:

• Great variety of sound effects
• High-quality clips

Cons:

• Better for nature and daily life sound effects
• No license-free music included

Price: You can purchase each sound effect individually. Price varies from $5 per sound.

Survey and data collection tools

As an instructional designer, you often have to conduct surveys and gather data. These tools help you do just that.

Google Forms

Google Forms is surprisingly flexible for a free app! Google Forms allows you to send out forms to people for surveys and more. It’s simple to use while also allowing a lot of customization so you can get the answers you need.

Pros:

• Data collection reports are easy to read
• Free to use

Cons:

• Missing more advanced analytics features
• Doesn’t integrate with many third-party apps

Price: Free

Typeform

Typeform is an intuitive, streamlined web app that helps you create customized surveys, quizzes and forms. This is what I use for all of my surveys.

Pros:

• The templates are engaging and highly customizable
• Integrates with many third-party apps such as Slack, ActiveCampaign and Thinkific

Cons:

• If you’re creating a complex form with many rules, the interface can lag
• Customization can be overwhelming for simpler surveys and data collection

Price: Free version available, premium starts at $25 per month

SurveyMonkey

If Typeform is a little too stylized for your taste, Survey Monkey is a simpler alternative. It’s a leading software for survey and data collection.

Pros:

• Data analysis tools are detailed and clear
• Recipients find the surveys easy to use which boosts the completion rate

Cons:

• Lacks some design customization features
• Doesn’t integrate with WordPress as seamlessly as other survey apps

Price: Basic free plan available, premium plans from $31 per month

CrowdSignal

CrowdSignal creates interactive, beautiful but simple surveys that are easy to create and easy to complete. Like TypeForm, the surveys can get quite complex with conditional responses, ratings and quizzes for more accurate data.

Pros:

• Highly customizable surveys you can build from scratch
• Detailed reporting with easy export of data

Cons:

• Can be buggy when embedded into websites

Price: Free version available, premium version from $15 per month

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is an excellent tool for data collection and tracking. It’s perfect for tracking behaviors of real-life customers and is the best reporting tool on the internet for web traffic.

Pros:

• Powerful tool with accurate data
• You can monitor several websites for free

Cons:

• Setting up specific website tracking requires a learning curve
• The latest version of Google Analytics isn't as user-friendly as previous versions

Price: Free

Presentation tools

Most instructional designers need to create engaging presentations. And to do that, you need the right presentation tools. However, you don’t need anything too fancy; PowerPoint is an excellent choice.

PowerPoint

PowerPoint by Microsoft continues to be the industry leader when it comes to presentation programs. It’s intuitive, simple, and allows lots of customization.

Pros:

• Excellent templates to choose from
• You can integrate media such as YouTube videos and graphics easily

Cons:

• There are no automatic saving features
• Slide animations are dated compared to competitor presentation apps

Price: $149.99 one-time purchase or $99.99 per year for the full Microsoft suite

Prezi

Prezi is a flexible suite of tools that are built around presenting in the best way for learning. With the education bundle, you get access to Prezi Present, Prezi Design, and Prezi Video, which work in sync to help you create the most engaging learning assets.

Pros:

• Ideal for instructional designers in the education sector
• Great selection of templates

Cons:

• Not as powerful or customizable as PowerPoint
• Team collaboration tools need work

Price: Starting at $3 per month

Interactive learning tools

Interactive learning tools are getting more popular. For instance, if you need to create no-code learning apps or gamify your learning experience, these tools help you do just that.

Glide Apps

Glide is an app builder that businesses will love as a learning tool. You can create custom apps for your clients using their templates as a guide or start from scratch. They have a library of templates that include simple courses and quizzes that you can customize.

Pros:

• Perfect for creating custom learning assets as applications
• Apps work seamlessly across screen sizes and operating systems

Cons:

• Customer support can be slow
• Can be laggy

Price: Free version available, premium plans from $25 per month

Landbot

Landbot is an intuitive chatbot app that businesses can use to provide answers to potential customers or training assistance to staff members. That’s where you come in. You can use chatbot technology to facilitate learning in an organization. Landbot is one of the best out there.

Pros:

• No coding knowledge needed
• Provides options for WhatsApp and websites

Cons:

• Customer support can be slow
• Chatbot is only available in English

Price: From $39 per month

QuizGame

Quizzes are perfect for interactive learning. QuizGame provides a method to reinforce employee knowledge with quick games that are accessible on any device.

Pros:

• Gamifies learning
• Create activity reports for you or your clients to monitor participation

Cons:

• Design is a little dated
• Can be laggy with poor internet connection

Price: Starts at $3.81 per user per year for 100 users

Content and communication sharing tools

Good instructional design isn’t just about creating eLearning material. It’s also about communicating and sharing information. And that’s something you can do with these content and communication sharing tools.

Slack

To stay in touch with clients or facilitators, Slack is an excellent tool. With multiple channels that you can create, you can easily share ideas and media.

Pros:

• Ideal for remote communication
• Integrates with many productivity tools

Cons:

• Having multiple channels can become confusing
• Difficult to find old threads if they aren’t kept active

Price: Free version available, $7.25 per month

Zoom

Everyone knows Zoom, which is one of its biggest benefits! For remote meetings and interviews, this is the software of the moment.

Pros:

• You can record meetings to refer back to at a later date
• Easy to schedule and send meeting invitations with clients

Cons:

• You have a 40-minute limit on meetings if you’re on the free plan
• Video quality isn’t great unless you add on HD video capabilities

Price: $149.90 per year

Dropbox

Dropbox is a great cloud-based file storage and sharing app. It has multiple third-party integrations making file sharing incredibly easy across devices and between team members. There’s a robust free version but if you’re saving large files, you’ll want the premium version.

Pros:

• Simple method for file sharing with clients and team members
• Syncs quickly across devices

Cons:

• Share permissions can be a little clunky
• Customer support can be slow

Price: Free version available, solo workers plan from $16.99 per month

Image, graphics, and infographics tools

How do you create the best images and graphics? With these image, graphic, and infographic tools, you’ll create beautiful and engaging visuals for your eLearning material. If you want a deeper dive into sourcing visuals, check out where to get graphics for eLearning. ¨

In this quick video, I talk more about where to find graphics:

Adobe Illustrator

I use illustrator the most out of the whole Adobe suite. I highly recommend it for creating and modifying vector graphics to use in your e-learning projects.

Pros:

• Powerful tool for modifying vector graphics
• Has an amazing iPad application for intricate designing (if that applies to you)

Cons:

• Takes up a lot of storage space on your computer
• Not beginner friendly! You’ll need time to learn all the system’s capabilities

Price:  $20.99 per month

Canva

Canva is one of the easiest design tools for new instructional designers. If you’re just starting out, Canva has some excellent basic vector and design tools you can use without a steep learning curve.

Pros:

• Easiest design tool on the market
• Wide range of customizable templates to choose from

Cons:

• Templates can look dated and ordinary as many people recognize Canva templates
• You can’t download raw, editable files to your computer

Price: $12.99 per month

Adobe XD

Adobe XD is a tool to create prototypes. So why include it in a list of best instructional design software? Advanced IDs use it to create visual mock-ups for slides before building them. It’s easy to iterate your design in Adobe XD before developing the final product in an eLearning development tool like Storyline 360.

Pros:

• Lightweight tool
• Helps you create more polished slides and share mockups for feedback

Cons:

• Not ideal for collaboration in teams
• Relatively easy to use, but there’s still a learning curve

Price:  Only available as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite at US$599.88/year

Figma

Figma is an alternative to Adobe XD that is dominating the space because of its collaboration tools. Adobe XD is great for prototyping on your own, but if you want to collaborate with others Figma is a far better user experience.

Pros:

• Engaging and easy-to-use interface
• Ideal for designing with collaborators

Cons:

• There’s no offline version
• Can be laggy when working on big projects with collaborators

Price:  $12 per editor per month

Infogram

Infogram allows you to create engaging infographics with an intuitive, drag-and-drop designer. They have a great collection of designer templates to get you started making infographics that will help your learning tools stand out.

Pros:

• Animations make infographics even more engaging
• Easy to collaborate with team members and/or clients

Cons:

• Not ideal for complex large-scale maps
• Not easy to use on mobile devices

Price:  Free plan available, premium plan from $19 per month

Pexels

Pexels is a free stock photo platform with great quality imagery. There is also an extensive royalty-free video library. These are great for adding visual interest to your slides.

Pros:

• Great range of high-res images and videos
• You can create collections to group your photos for each project

Cons:

• Search function could be more detailed for more accurate results
• Lifestyle images are better than B2B images

Price: Free

Unsplash

Unsplash is another free stock photo platform with a wide range of imagery you can use for your eLearning projects. The photo libraries are creative, rich and diverse which adds beauty to your work.

Pros:

• Simple website to use with great categorization
• Business and work stock imagery is more robust than other stock photo platforms

Cons:

• No stock video library
• You’re limited to one or two resolutions formats

Price:  Free

Flaticon

Flaticon is the ultimate resource for vector icons. With over 8.2 million icons and stickers, you can find any possible icon in a wide range of styles. With the premium plan, you can download in multiple formats and edit the vector in the app.

Pros:

• You can edit the vectors in the app to match your client’s branding
• Huge library of unique vectors you won’t find anywhere else

Cons:

• You can’t edit all of the icons
• Customer support can be slow

Price:  Free plan available, premium plan $12.99 per month

Freepik

Freepik is the home of high-quality stock photos, illustrations, and vectors. It also has fonts, text effects and templates which are unique for this kind of platform.

Pros:

• Contains royalty-free fonts and text effects
• Robust free version

Cons:

• There’s a limit of 100 image downloads per day regardless of whether you are on the free plan or premium plan
• No videos available (at the time of writing)

Price:  Free plan available, premium plan includes Flaticon membership and premium assets for $12 per month

Adobe Stock

Adobe Stock is Adobe’s library of photos and videos that you can use in your slides. You can count on Adobe to provide high-quality, unique imagery for your presentations.

Pros:

• High-quality stock imagery and videos
• Has an extensive library of stock audio, music, vector art, illustrations and templates

Cons:

• The corporate imagery is not as unique and inspiring as the creative portrait and landscape imagery
• Can get expensive if you ended more than 10 assets per month

Price: $29.99 for 10 assets per month

Google Fonts

If you want to up your typography game, you can’t go wrong with Google Fonts. This huge database of fonts, categorized by slant, thickness, weight and language, allows you to find the perfect type for the learning assets you’re creating.

Pros:

• Excellent search functionality
• Over 1400 font families available

Cons:

• Many of the fonts available look similar
• There could be more categories included to make searching easier

Price:  Free, all fonts are open source

Mind mapping tools

With mind mapping tools, you can collect and brainstorm your own thoughts. You can also brainstorm with your team, for instance, by getting the subject matter expert to share their ideas and insights.

Xmind

Xmind is a powerful brainstorming and mind-mapping app. You can create detailed, color-coded mind maps to help you visualize your learning design. Whether you prefer traditional mind maps, brace maps, fishbone charts or tree charts, Xmind has got you covered.

Pros:

• Wide range of structures available
• Responsive UI

Cons:

• Lacks some customization features
• You can’t collaborate with others in the app

Price:  $59.99 per year

MindMeister

MindMeister creates beautiful mind maps with custom styles and varied layouts. This app is better for collaboration as you can add comments and receive notifications when your clients or team members comment on your notes. You can even embed photos, videos and documents to streamline your brainstorming.

Pros:

• Creates beautiful mind maps your clients will love
• Good collaboration tools with collective brainstorming sessions

Cons:

• Customer service can be slow
• Third-party app integration options are limited

Price: Free option available, premium plan from $4.99 per month

eLearning templates

Looking for eLearning templates? Take a look at these eLearning tools:

eLearning Brothers

eLearning Brothers provides some of the best instructional design templates on the market. It has over 160 million assets to choose from. That goes beyond PowerPoint and xAPI templates. That also includes sound effects, stock photos and vector icons!

Pros:

• Huge template library
• Best resource for ready-made modules and varied templates

Cons:

• Complex to search for what you’re looking for as there are so many assets
• Overwhelming amount of choice

Price:  $1,399/year

eLearningLearning

eLearningLearning is a digital platform geared toward instructional designers and learning professionals to sharpen their knowledge. They have a resource page where they share free templates for several LMS and authoring tools. It’s an excellent source of easy templates for beginners.

Pros:

• Templates are free and easy to use
• You can find templates for multiple apps e.g Lectora, PowerPoint, Camtasia and more

Cons:

• Only a small collection of templates available
• Most templates on the platform are more than 3 years old

Price: Free

Project management tools

Project management is incredibly important for successful instructional design projects. And here are the top tools!

Basecamp

Basecamp is an awesome simple project management tool. You organize your projects into simple templates including documents, to-do lists, schedules and message boards. You can easily collab with team members or clients with this clean, intuitive system.

Pros:

• Simple design to facilitate your productivity
• Centralized system to organize all your files, schedules and todos in one place

Cons:

• No Kanban or Gantt charts for tracking projects
• No task organization e.g subtasks and priority labels

Price: $11 per user per month

Trello

Trello is an excellent instructional design software tool if you like visual planning for your projects. Using the Kanban method, Trello helps you organize your projects into boards that you move from stage to stage in your workflow.

Pros:

• Engaging, simple interface
• Easy to collaborate with clients or team members on projects

Cons:

• The Kanban method of productivity doesn’t work for everyone
• Complex projects can get too complicated

Price: Free version available, premium version from $5 per month

Notion

Notion is another productivity tool that is more complex but more powerful. It covers all bases of your workflow from note-taking

Pros:

• Highly customizable to the way you work
• Huge number of third-party integrations to make your workflow even more seamless

Cons:

• Requires a learning curve to customize the workflow to your liking
• The search function could be better

Price: Free version available, premium version from $4 per month.

Instructional design courses

How do you acquire the right skills and build your career as an instructional designer? Here are the top courses for instructional designers:

ID Bootcamp

The ID Bootcamp is my flagship course designed to help you become a great instructional designer that wows potential clients and scores high-paying opportunities. The ID Bootcamp goes step by step through how to use the best instructional design software, the principles of modern ID, and how to build a portfolio that lands you top clients. You get 1-to-1 support from my team and weekly feedback sessions with me. You’ll come out of the course ready to leap into instructional design as a profitable, rewarding career.

You can learn more about the bootcamp here.

Storyline Project Lab

Remember I said that Articulate Storyline is the most essential tool for instructional designers? Having used it to build my successful freelance career, I’ve created a course to show you just how powerful this tool can be.

In this course, we dive deep into how to use Articulate Storyline and create portfolio projects that grab the attention of potential clients and hiring managers.

Learn more about the Storyline Project Lab here.

Price: $999

Free Code Camp

If you want to upskill as a more advanced instructional designer, learning to code is a great option. Free Code Camp is a free platform that teaches you how to code. Adding front-end web development skills (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) to your toolkit will make you stand out in the instructional design space.

Price: Free

Instructional design career tools

Want to build your instructional design career? These tools will help you get started.

Webflow

Webflow is a website builder I highly recommend for creating and hosting your portfolio. You don’t need any coding knowledge to create an engaging professional website. With plenty of customization options, you can even build learning sites and interactions for the web.

Pros:

• No coding knowledge needed
• Perfect for hosting portfolios for instructional designers

Cons:

• Requires a learning curve
• No live chat support

Price: Free version available, premium plans from $14 per month

LinkedIn

To land more opportunities, every instructional designer needs a strong LinkedIn profile. It’s a great place to land clients and build connections in the field.

Pros:

• Dynamic professional community
• You can appear in searches and be approached by recruiters, hiring managers, and potential clients

Cons:

• It takes time to build up a strong network on LinkedIn (so start now!)
• Has a learning curve to using the app effectively

Price: Free version available, LinkedIn Premium $29.99 per month

Devlin Peck’s ID Community

Want to join a buzzing community of instructional designers? My community is great for connecting with industry peers, asking questions, and getting help from colleagues at every stage of their career. It’s a friendly, welcoming community. We sometimes host live events, too, to strengthen that all-important network.

Pros:

• Specific to instructional designers
• People post jobs and freelance opportunities here
• Completely free to sign up!

Cons:

• The experience isn’t optimized for mobile

Price: Free

eLearning books

Want to polish your skills? Take a look at these eLearning books.

And if you want even more books, take a look at this quick video:

Map It

Map It by Cathy Moore is a handbook for designing effective training for clients. It helps you identify the pain points and gives you practical tips on how to build training that works. This book is ideal if you want to go into corporate instructional design. You can’t create effective training without knowing how to identify the core issue in a business. This book will help you do just that.

Price: $57

The Non-Designer’s Design Book

A key part of instructional design is the visual design. Creating engaging, clean, effective learning tools is your core work, so it helps to brush up on your design skills! The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams is perfect for you if you have no formal background in visual design. It centers on the fundamentals of design in an accessible, fun style. It has practical advice, quizzes and tons of imagery to hone your design skills. Trust me, you need this book!

Price: $18.77

Over to you!

There you have it! Now you know what instructional design software to use.

Storyline 360 is THE tool for instructional designers, but there are also plenty of other tools that can make your life easier.

But while tools are great, they are just that–tools. To build a successful career, you also need to know how to use them, develop your skills, and position yourself well for employers and clients.

That’s what I teach in the ID Bootcamp. If you want to learn more about how to build your career as an instructional designer, take a look at the portfolios and results our students have achieved after working with me and my team.

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