Authoring tool comparison: dominKnow | ONE vs Articulate Rise

Considering dominKnow | ONE or Articulate Rise as your next LCMS or authoring tool, but don’t know which is best suited to your needs? Our handy authoring tool comparison looks at the powerful, scalable dominKnow | ONE vs the nimble, rapid authoring tool Articulate Rise.

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If you’re looking for a new LCMS or eLearning authoring tool, you’ll likely be familiar with dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise. As two of the top tools for eLearning content authoring, you may have landed on this blog looking to compare the two… and you’re in the right place!

In this article, we’ll walk you through the pros and cons of both dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise, helping you make a smarter decision about the right LCMS or authoring tool for your organization.

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What is dominKnow | ONE?

dominKnow | ONE is a cloud-based LCMS and authoring platform that supports collaboration, content management and responsive design, all in one place.

It combines tools for course authoring, content reuse, review, translation, and publishing. dominKnow | ONE is primarily designed for team environments where multiple authors, reviewers, and SMEs need to collaborate seamlessly, and it’s a true LCMS rather than a standalone authoring tool, offering long-term scalability, content management, and efficiency.

Within dominKnow | ONE, there are two authoring modes within the same interface: Flow design mode for responsive design, and Claro design mode for slide-based layouts, and the ability to create show me/try me/guide me/test me software simulations, giving content authors flexibility depending on their project type.

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What is Articulate Rise?

Articulate Rise is a cloud-based eLearning authoring tool that focuses on creating clean, responsive courses quickly and easily. It’s part of the Articulate 360 suite, which also contains Articulate Storyline.

It combines tools for building structured lessons, interactive blocks, and knowledge checks, all through a browser-based interface. Articulate Rise is primarily designed for individual instructional designers or small teams who want to produce attractive and mobile-ready content fast. While it offers some collaboration through cloud access and role-based sharing, it is fundamentally an authoring tool rather than a full LCMS, so content reuse, tagging, single-source design, version control, and large-scale project management are more limited or non-existent.

Within Articulate Rise, courses are created using pre-designed templates and modular blocks – such as text, images, videos, quizzes, and scenario interactions – making it simple to create professional-looking courses with minimal technical expertise.

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Is dominKnow | ONE or Articulate Rise easier to use?

Learning a new authoring tool can impact productivity, adoption, and how quickly teams can start producing quality content. Both dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise are browser-based and intuitive, allowing authors to get started without complex installations or IT setup.

Initially, new users may find that Articulate Rise has a shorter learning curve, as it has a streamlined, simplified “block approach” to content and page design. While this is straightforward to learn for most users, the downside is that designs can feel limited and repetitive across courses.

Owing to the greater depth of course design options, flexibility, and range of learning activities, dominKnow | ONE may initially feel more complex. However, it quickly pays off in efficiency once the course author has mastered the tool. Authors have many more options with dominKnow | ONE than Articulate Rise when it comes to page structure, so a little more time spent getting to know dominKnow | ONE results in an easy, flexible and repeatable design process that saves time and gives your content a better overall design over time.

dominKnow | ONE’s version control and internal collaborative tools reduce headaches later in the workflow allowing for greater flexibility throughout the content creation and publishing process.

While Articulate Rise can be “easier” to use at first, the learning curves between the two tools are relatively similar when you consider the flexibility of each. In other words, Articulate Rise is quicker to pick up, but with much more limited design outcomes teams will more quickly reach a design ceiling, whereas dominKnow | ONE allows more creative design flexibility, yet requires a slightly longer learning curve.

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Does dominKnow | ONE or Articulate Rise better support collaboration?

Effective collaboration is critical for teams producing high-quality learning content efficiently. Both dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise allow multiple authors to work on the same project simultaneously, avoiding file-sharing conflicts and version issues, and both offer reviewer access with free logins.

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Author collaboration

While both platforms support simultaneous authoring, dominKnow | ONE offers deeper control and flexibility. It provides extensive permission settings for authors and admins, content locking, page-level versioning, and an undo/undelete system with unlimited time and access for all assigned authors, plus a recycle bin for recovering deleted content. Rise supports collaborative authoring too, but versioning is restricted to the project level, and undelete is limited to ~30 seconds after the change is made, and only by the author who made the change. 

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Review collaboration

Both platforms enable review workflows, but the experience differs. dominKnow | ONE features in-tool, in-context review and individual or team assignment to content: reviewers comment on individual items (not just pages), authors see comments inline, previous feedback is preserved across updates, and comments on reusable learning objects appear in all instances. Rise uses a separate integrated tool, Review 360, where reviewers comment on published versions of the course. While in both cases reviewers are free, Rise enables reviewers to access courses without a login. However, all comments exist outside the main authoring interface, requiring reviewers to refer to an external screen when updating content and when updating content, this can overwrite previous review feedback, and authors have less visibility during editing.

Overall, dominKnow | ONE provides a more tightly integrated, efficient, and error-resistant collaboration environment, particularly for teams managing multiple authors, larger amounts of content, and iterative reviews. Rise allows basic collaboration, but lacks the full-scale infrastructure of an LCMS like dominKnow | ONE.

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Does dominKnow | ONE or Articulate Rise have the faster content production speed?

Speed and efficiency are critical for learning teams, whether creating one-off modules or managing large-scale content pipelines. Both dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise allow authors to quickly produce courses using templates and prebuilt layouts.

Out of dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise, Rise offers the fastest route to creating quick, attractive eLearning modules using preset layouts and multiple template projects covering various topics. However, some customers complain that the courses end up looking “all the same” as there’s limited customization available.

For more engaging content experiences or compliance-heavy courses, dominKnow | ONE shines in team-based production. Its reusable themes, baselines/templates, shared assets, single-sourcing, permissions, and favorites with actions enable teams to set up processes that enable efficient creation of larger volumes of content, while maintaining quality and consistency. This collaborative process based approach can lead to teams delivering more targeted, impactful learning experiences across multiple projects, driving faster, more effective content production for organizations working at scale.

Both solutions speed up reviews with their integrated review options. However, dominKnow | ONE has the edge, with content reviews by enabling real-time, in-context collaboration. Reviewers can comment directly on specific elements, and authors see those comments immediately within the tool, reducing confusion and unnecessary back-and-forth. Organizations using this workflow have reported up to a 25% faster review process compared with using external review tools alongside platforms like Articulate Rise.

While Articulate Rise may be faster for one-off courses, dominKnow | ONE steps ahead for ongoing learning content production pipelines.

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Is dominKnow | ONE or Articulate Rise more flexible?

Flexibility is crucial for designing and delivering engaging, effective learning experiences that meet diverse learner needs. Both dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise offer responsive design, allowing courses to adapt automatically to desktop, tablet, or mobile screens, and modular content blocks that can be rearranged within courses.

Both “packages” provide two authoring approaches, slide-based and responsive. With Articulate 360 these are two separate applications with different capabilities and interfaces. With dominKnow | ONE, both “modes” are available within the same interface and provide largely the same functionality. 

dominKnow | ONE’s responsive design approach is particularly flexible, especially when compared to other responsive authoring options. dominKnow | ONE supports a wide range of learning activities, including actions, triggers, variables, branching scenarios, and advanced content blocks. Authors can choose from multiple/navigation styles, such as sequential eLearning, knowledge bases, or “choose-your-own-topic” courses, enabling highly creative and tailored learning experiences. Last when designing pages, authors can easily adjust their on page layouts with differing numbers of columns and rows and a design assistant to boot.

Articulate Rise offers flexibility in a simpler, more streamlined way. Its block-based design makes it quick to use and easy to learn, but creative options are limited. Design is restricted to stacking the various available blocks and customizing the blocks with the available design options for the given block. While easy to add, this typically leads to courses feeling quite similar. Recent updates, like the new Code Block feature, allow some additional customization, but this adds complexity without fully matching dominKnow | ONE’s native range.

Overall, dominKnow | ONE provides teams the flexibility to create, review, and reuse content efficiently, producing higher-quality, more differentiated courses, while Rise is better suited for straightforward, information content.

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Is dominKnow | ONE or Articulate Rise more scalable?

In large or growing organizations, the ability to scale content efficiently across teams, courses, and platforms is critical. Both dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise are cloud-based and support multi-author collaboration, version control, and responsive design, providing the basis for success.

Scalability is where dominKnow | ONE truly stands out. Designed for enterprise-level operations, it supports multi-author teams, granular version control, permissions, all in one translations, content reuse, single source design, and dynamic publishing via SCORM/xAPI/CMI5 stubs and web links that can be used in any Learning Management Systems (LMSs) or Learning Record Stores (LRSs), making it faster and easier to manage large volumes of content across diverse organizations and audiences.

Articulate Rise does offer basic team control through admin and author user settings and basic collaboration and version control. When it comes to delivery, if you are using Articulate’s Reach for content access, you can take advantage of an enhanced publishing process similar to dominKnow | ONE’s dynamic publishing. When organizations scale, where teams have differing needs, capabilities and need different content approaches, this is where gaps arise in Rise’s ability to meet the demand. Users will quickly note that courses appear repetitive, and less engaging, due to limited layout and design variety. As eLearning expert Ed McLean notes —“if you’ve ever used Rise, you will be able to spot another Rise course instantly,”.

By functioning as a centralized content hub, dominKnow | ONE enables organizations to manage extensive content and asset libraries, multiple brands, and large-scale learning initiatives efficiently, making it the more robust, platform-independent choice for scaling learning across teams and audiences.

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Who are dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise best suited to?

Articulate Rise is best suited to individual instructional designers or small teams with basic content needs. It’s great for simple, standalone courses or rapid eLearning course authoring, and is more suitable when collaboration and content governance aren’t top priorities.

dominKnow | ONE is ideal for mid-to-large organizations or teams requiring more sophisticated learning experiences or managing multiple projects – especially those for different audiences or across different languages. It’s especially powerful where content consistency, collaboration, and scalability matter and enterprise L&D, government, and regulated industries with ongoing content updates and compliance needs.

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Which LCMS or eLearning authoring tool should I choose?

If you’re trying to choose between the dominKnow | ONE LCMS and Articulate authoring tools, here’s a recap of the key things to consider:

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dominKnow | ONE

• Ideal for complex, scalable learning content projects
• Better suited to larger enterprise teams who want to collaborate
• A future-proof platform combining content authoring, management, and publishing

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Articulate Rise

• Good as a quick-start, design-led solution
• Better suited to individuals or small teams
• Suitable for simple, templated eLearning courses

There’s no right or wrong answer, and choosing between dominKnow | ONE and Articulate Rise depends on your own priorities. 

However, if you’re thinking beyond single courses and toward creating a sustainable learning ecosystem, dominKnow | ONE is likely to be the stronger long-term investment, while Articulate Rise is a more suitable choice for one-off courses and rapid authoring.

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Looking to see how dominKnow | ONE measures up against Articulate Rise? Schedule your demo today and we’ll show you how it works!