Thinkific Review - It's OK, but NOT Recommended

With all of the new and emerging online class platforms and learning management systems popping up, finding the right one for your needs as an educator can be quite difficult.

Thinkific is one of the many new online course platforms that is disrupting the market of traditional management learning systems.

Before going out and purchasing this system, make sure to read our review of the platform to gain a better understanding of it. You can also look at our review of the Top 5 Online Course Platforms, where we compare some of our favorites on the market.

 

 

What Is Thinkific?

Thinkific is one of the top online course platforms on the market today. Educators and entrepreneurs around the world use Thinkific to market and sell courses and membership sites. With Thinkific, you can easily build courses with videos, images, and other types of downloadable content.

Thinkific allows its users to publish sales pages with unique branding that can collect payments from customers and grant them access to the courses that they purchase. On the backend of the platform, you can publish curriculums with an intuitive course organizer so that students can easily navigate your course to take quizzes, jump to different sections, obtain certificates, and more.

Over 36,000 course creators around the world use Thinkific, including some big names like John Lee Dumas (Entrepreneur On Fire) and Lewis Howes (School of Greatness). Customers also include some large companies like Samsung, Hootsuite, Intuit, and more.

Thinkific Pricing

There are four different price plans with Thinkific.

 

 

The Free option is different than most free options from course platforms, as it doesn’t limit you to a 14-day trial or charge transaction fees. The free price plan from Thinkific provides more than enough for educators to get started in selling their courses. Once you have more than three courses that you want to sell, you will want to upgrade. This way, you can begin taking advantage of custom domains and affiliate programs.

The Basic plan is $39 per month. This plan provides educators with a few more features, such as unlimited courses and integration with third-party programs and email providers.

The Pro plan, in our opinion, offers the best value. This plan runs at $79 per month and unlocks the doors for advanced pricing, such as subscriptions or payment plans. The pro plan also features priority phone support, which is unique to Thinkific, as well as a few affiliate tools that you can provide to a team of marketers who want to help sell your course.

Lastly, you have the Premier plan, which runs up to $399 per month. This plan is for advanced educators who need infinite scaling capabilities.

Pros and Cons Of Thinkific

Pros

• The only course platform on the market with a completely free option.

• The only course platform on the market to offer priority phone support.

• Total customizability for your unique branding

• Top-notch voiceover PowerPoint presentation tool that makes video production easy

• Options for payment plans (great for expensive courses) and options for monthly recurring subscriptions

Cons

• No course marketplace available to market your course

• No integrated sales funnel builder. You will need to tie in a third-party builder

• No integrated email marketing. You will need to tie in a third-party email marketing platform

• No integrated chat support

 

 

Top Thinkific Features

Wonderful FREE Plan

One of the best things about Thinkific is that the free plan is fairly viable. It’s the perfect, long-term option for new course creators who want to get used to the premium features that Thinkific offers.

The free plan gives course creators the option to set up three separate courses, as well as benefit from about a hundred excellent features.

Once you are ready to add more courses to your site, you can upgrade to one of Thinkific’s other great plans!

Customizability

 

 

Thinkific is one of the top online course platforms when it comes to customizability. If you already have a website that you love, you’ll be happy to know that you can brand your Thinkific storefront to look just like it. All the while, you can provide students with surveys, quizzes, prerequisite lessons, discussions, certificates, and more.

Everyday users who aren’t well-versed in code language will love the intuitive features of the site while those on the technical side will love the access to HTML and CSS.

Of course, Thinkific also offers third-party interactions for any features you want to take advantage of that are not built into the platform, including Infusionsoft, MailChimp, Brillium Exams, and more.

Final Verdict - Is Thinkific Worth It?

Thinkific is one of our favorite course platforms here at Course Creek. If you would like to see how Thinkific compares to our other favorite platforms, make sure to look at our article outlining the Top 5 Online Course Platforms.

While we talk about our love for Kajabi quite a bit here at Course Creek, as it is an all-in-one platform that provides many features built directly into the system without third-party integration, it is important to note that both of these platforms have functionality that is unique to each.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform, Kajabi might be the best pick. However, if you are looking for serious customizability in a platform that has the ability to utilize third-party integrations with ease, Thinkific is a great choice.