TL;DR: Is Thinkific The Best Online Course Platform?
Thinkific is the best online course platform I know for experts who care about delivering a serious learning experience. The course builder, quizzes, assessments, and compliance tools are stronger than anything at this price point.
Pricing: Basic $36/mo | Start $74/mo | Grow $149/mo | Plus (custom)
Free trial: 30 days (credit card required)
There’s no Free Plan anymore.
Best for: Coaches, consultants, and subject matter experts who want to deliver structured learning experiences and sell courses or memberships
Not the right fit if: You want a full marketing system with deep email automation (use Kajabi instead) or want to create a community first learning experience (use Skool or Circle)
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I’ve been using Thinkific for over a decade and currently run six courses on the platform for my companies Learning Revolution, Leading Learning, and Tagoras.
I’ve also referred and helped onboard hundreds of my clients who use it to sell coaching programs, online courses, memberships, and other educational products.
I’ve been through course launches, plan upgrades, pricing decisions, and the friction points that don’t show up in feature comparison tables.
What I’m about to share in this review is based on thousands of hours I’ve spent using this platform for my own businesses and for the people I work with.
Thinkific has made meaningful updates in the past few years. It has improved its AI capabilities that are now embedded throughout the platform and has also added better email marketing tools.
But is it actually as good as it claims? My simple answer to that is it depends on who you are and what you are trying to build.
For many independent experts, coaches, and course creators, Thinkific is the best platform available. For others with different priorities, it is the wrong choice entirely.
In this detailed review, I’ll explain the truth behind Thinkific’s features and help you determine if it is the right online education platform for your needs.
Use my Free Thinkific Pricing Calculator to get the exact amount you’ll need to pay for a plan
Thinkific at a Glance | Product Snapshot (2026)
| Platform | Thinkific |
| Main Use Case | Building and selling structured online courses, memberships, and coaching programs |
| Best For | Independent experts, coaches, and consultants who prioritize learning experience quality over built-in marketing tools |
| Not For | Community-first businesses, creators who need sophisticated email automation |
| Pricing | No free plan. 30-day trial (credit card required). Paid plans from $36/month (Basic) to $149/month (Grow) billed annually. Plus is custom pricing. |
| Course Builder | Strong. AI-assisted setup, drag-and-drop editor, drip scheduling, prerequisite controls, and 12 lesson types including video, quizzes, assignments, and live Zoom sessions |
| Assessments | Best in class at this price. Multiple-choice quizzes with question banks, pass/fail gates, assignment submission, and Brillium exam integration on Grow |
| Memberships | Yes, on Start plan and above. Bundle courses, communities, and downloads under a single recurring subscription |
| Coaching | Available as a product type. Sessions delivered via Zoom. No built-in scheduling (requires a separate tool like Calendly) |
| Community | Functional as a course add-on. Not a standalone community platform. Lacks the engagement depth of Skool, Circle or Mighty Networks |
| Basic. Lead sequences and abandoned cart only. Cannot reach external lists. Not a replacement for Kit or ActiveCampaign | |
| Site Builder | Block-based. Clean and professional but limited design flexibility |
| Analytics | Full learner engagement data on Grow. Basic enrollment and revenue reporting on Start and below |
| Transaction Fees | 0% on all paid plans when using Thinkific Payments. Surcharge applies if using your own Stripe account |
Read: The best online course selling platforms for edupreneurs
What Is Thinkific?
Thinkific is an online course platform built for course creators, coaches, and subject matter experts who want to deliver structured learning experiences and generate revenue from their knowledge.
I consider it the best platform for online courses and memberships when the quality of the learning experience is your primary requirement.
But it’s not the best all-in-one course creation and marketing system. Kajabi wins that.
But for creating and delivering a genuinely good course, with real assessment tools, structured content, and meaningful learner management, Thinkific is the one I recommend and the one I use myself.
Here is a screenshot of my actual Thinkific admin showing multiple published courses across my schools.
Who Thinkific is ideal for: Independent experts, coaches, consultants, and educators who are either currently managing their courses and clients through unintegrated tools (Zoom calls, spreadsheets, email threads) or are ready to move from a free or makeshift setup to a proper course platform. You want to focus on the content, not the admin.
Who Thinkific is not for: If community is your primary product and courses are secondary, Thinkific is not the right fit. If you need a full email marketing system with behavioral triggers, list segmentation, and complex automations, you will be disappointed. If you need SCORM compliance for corporate training delivery, look at LearnWorlds or a dedicated LMS instead.
Thinkific Main Features and Capabilities
- Build and sell structured online courses with video, text, quizzes, assignments, and more
- Sell recurring memberships that bundle multiple courses and products together
- Deliver coaching programs and webinars through integrated Zoom sessions
- Create and run a community attached to your courses and membership products
- Set up basic email lead capture, sales sequences, and abandoned cart recovery
- Track learner progress, course completion rates, and revenue through the analytics dashboard
- Sell digital downloads, standalone PDFs, and resource packs alongside courses
Read: The best Thinkific alternatives for course sellers
Thinkific Pricing: How Much Does It Cost?
Thinkific offers a 30-day free trial. There is no permanently free plan anymore (thinkific discontinued it in 2024)
Paid plans (billed annually):
- Basic: $36/month
- Start: $74/month
- Grow: $149/month
- Plus: custom pricing
| Feature | Basic | Start | Grow |
| Courses | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Students | Up to 10,000 | Up to 10,000 | Up to 10,000 |
| Communities | 1 (5 spaces) | 1 (10 spaces) | 3 (20 spaces) |
| Memberships | No | Yes | Yes |
| Certificates | No | Yes | Yes |
| Assignments | No | Yes | Yes |
| Email automations | Lead sequences | Lead sequences | Mass email included |
| Advanced analytics | No | No | Yes |
| Brillium exam integration | No | No | Yes |
| Transaction fees | 0% | 0% | 0% |
My honest recommendation for most experts starting out is the Start plan. Basic is too limiting for a real course business.
Memberships, certificates, assignments, and Zoom-based coaching all require Start at minimum.
One thing the table above makes clear that Thinkific’s own marketing does not emphasize is that all three standard plans cap you at 10,000 students. For unlimited students, you need the Plus plan.
For most independent experts that ceiling is far away, but if you plan to run free lead-magnet courses alongside paid products, that count adds up faster than you expect.
For a deeper breakdown of what each plan includes and whether Plus is worth it, read the full Thinkific pricing article.
One friction point I feel worth flagging is that archived or unpublished products still count toward your account limits. You cannot permanently delete a course or digital download.
So, if you like to experiment a lot (like me) be careful. When you create a product, it counts towards your limits, even when it’s an experiment.
What Are Products In Thinkific?
Before I move, let me clarify what thinkific means wherever it says “Products”. Here are the different types of educational products you can create with Thinkific.
- Online Course: Self-paced or structured on-demand learning experiences
- Coaching: One-on-one sessions delivered through Zoom
- Community: A shared online space for discussion and engagement
- Membership: Not a product itself, it’s recurring revenue model that bundles other products together
- Webinar: Live group events delivered through Zoom
- Digital Download: Standalone files like ebooks, PDFs, templates, or workbooks
- Bundles: Packaging multiple courses or products together at a combined price
Read: Thinkific vs. Kajabi – A detailed comparison
Thinkific Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Best-in-class quiz, assessment, and compliance tools at this price point | Only three themes in the site builder. Limited design flexibility |
| AI-powered course creation: describe your product and Thinkific generates the outline, content, and landing page | Email automation is student-side only. It cannot reach external lists or replace a dedicated email tool |
| Clean, distraction-free course player that creates a professional learner experience | Archived products still count toward plan limits. Cannot be permanently deleted |
| No transaction fees on any paid plan when using Thinkific payments. | Community tools are functional but shallow compared to Circle or Mighty Networks |
| 30-day free trial (credit card required for pre-authorization) | Full analytics dashboard only available on Grow. Basic reporting on Start and below |
Thinkific Examples | Courses And Online Learning Programs Built On Thinkific
Before we dive into Thinkific’s features and capabilities in more detail, let me show you some real world examples of live online courses, memberships, and learning programs built using Thinkific.
Thinkific Example #1: CopySchool
Copy School by ScopyHackers is among the world’s most popular conversion copywriting membership programs.
It is a high-ticket membership that offers access to the full range of copywriting courses by Joanna Wiebe and some of the leading copywriters. In addition, it includes live coaching calls and a community to engage with professional copywriters and mentors.
The program is fully hosted and built on Thinkific and attracts thousands of customers every year.
It is a great example of Thinkific’s scalability as an e-learning platform.
Thinkific Example #2: The Personal Development School
The Personal Development School is an online academy hosted and built with Thinkific. It offers memberships, courses, coaching, and community access for customers looking to learn about building better relationships and improving as individuals.
It’s another excellent example of Thinkific’s capabilities and shows how it empowers non-technical professionals by giving them everything they need to monetize their expertise without worrying about the technical stuff.
Impressive, right?
You can view more Thinkific examples here.
Thinkific’s Core Features: What Can You Actually Do With The Platform
Thinkific has a lot of features and I feel it’s unnecessary to cover all of them. So, I’ll stay focused on the most critical functionalities that actually move the needle when it comes to course creation, marketing, and content management.
These are the features I tell everyone to evaluate before they choose an online course platform.
Feature 1: The Online Course Builder
The course builder is the reason I chose Thinkific and the reason I have stayed on it.
When you create a new course, or any Thinkific product, you get an AI-powered setup flow that asks you to describe your audience and what they will learn.
Thinkific generates a course outline, draft lesson content, and a landing page from that description. You can skip it and start blank, but for anyone who finds the blank canvas intimidating, this is a genuinely useful starting point.
The classic course editor is clean and drag-and-drop. Sections act as modules, lessons nest inside them, and you can reorder everything without disrupting anything.
Once you are inside a lesson, the content panel lets you upload video directly, embed from external hosts, add text, attach PDFs, or drop in any other content type.
What Thinkific does well here is structure.
You can set prerequisite lessons so students cannot skip ahead until they have completed earlier sections. You can drip-schedule content by days after enrollment. You can lock lessons behind quiz completion.
These compliance controls are standard in corporate LMS platforms but rare in consumer-facing course tools at this price, and they matter when you are running a serious program rather than an informal video library.
Feature 2: Content Types and Lesson Flexibility
Thinkific supports more content types than most platforms at this price point.
From within the curriculum editor, you can add Video, Text, PDF, Quiz, Audio, Download, Multimedia, Survey, Presentation, Assignment, Exam, and Live (Zoom) lessons.
That is twelve lesson types in one place. Most platforms at this level give you four or five.
In practice this means you can build a lesson that opens with a video, follows with a text summary, attaches a downloadable workbook, and closes with a quiz, all within a single course flow.
Students move through it in sequence, completing each element before unlocking the next if you choose to set it that way.
What Thinkific does well here is that all of this content renders cleanly in the course player.
Here’s an example from one of my courses.
The player feels professional. Your branding is front and center. Students are not looking at a generic learning dashboard. They are inside your school.
What I don’t like is that discussion threads do not sit inside the lesson flow. If a student wants to post a question after watching a video lesson, they have to go into the community separately. The course content and the conversation are in different places.
But not a dealbreaker for me.
Feature 3: Assessments, Quizzes, and Compliance Tools
For me, this is where Thinkific genuinely separates itself from every other platform at this price, and it is among the main reasons I recommend it for professionals who take learning seriously.
The quiz builder lets you create multiple-choice questions, set a pass mark, randomize question order, pull from a question bank, and require passing before the student advances.
On the Grow plan, you can integrate Brillium for high-stakes exam delivery, the kind used for professional certification programs.
You can also use Thinkific’s AI quiz generator, which builds questions directly from your lesson content, or import a question set from a file if you already have one.
Assignments let students submit written work or files, which you then review and mark complete or incomplete before they can continue. Combined with the prerequisite controls and drip scheduling, you end up with a learning path that actually enforces progression.
That matters when your program is designed as a structured journey rather than a library people browse.
Few other platforms at the Start plan price point give you this combination of quiz banks, assignment submission, compliance controls, prerequisite gates, and exam integrations.
If someone completing your course needs to demonstrate real understanding before receiving a certificate, this set of tools makes that possible.
However, the testing environment focuses on structured, multiple-choice style assessment only. If you need open-ended evaluation, peer review, or scenario-based assessment at scale, Thinkific’s tools run out of depth.
For that level of assessment, a dedicated LMS built for formal education becomes the more appropriate choice.
Feature 4: Thinker, the AI Teaching Assistant
Thinkific launched Thinker in February 2026. The concept is straightforward. An AI assistant trained on your course content that sits inside the course player and answers learner questions in real time, in your tone of voice.
When you enable Thinker on a course, it reads your video transcripts, text lessons, and any PDFs you upload, and it becomes available to learners as a chat button in the course player.
When a student asks “what did you mean by that concept in lesson 3?” or “where do I find the template you mentioned?” Thinker responds using your content, not the wider internet.
Your content is not used to train Thinkific’s underlying AI model. Learners cannot extract or download your material through the chat interface.
You can also customize the assistant’s name, profile image, and tone so it matches your brand rather than looking like a generic chatbot.
However, Thinker is only available to Thinkific Plus subscribers for now. But looking at the pace of AI advancements, I get a feeling Thinker will soon be available on Start and Grow as well.
Feature 5: Memberships and Subscriptions
Memberships in Thinkific let you bundle multiple products under a single recurring subscription. A student pays once per month or year and gets access to everything you include in the membership.
That means multiple courses, communities, digital downloads, and coaching products if you have them set up.
This is useful for two specific use cases. The first is the expert who already has multiple courses and wants to offer an all-access pass.
The second is someone building a subscription-based knowledge business from the start rather than selling individual courses.
What Thinkific does well here is that the membership integrates naturally with everything else on the platform.
Adding a product to a membership is a two-click process. You search your existing courses, select them, and they are included. Pricing, billing cycles, and free trial periods are all set within the membership product itself.
However, if your membership model is built around ongoing community interaction and content is secondary, Thinkific’s memberships will feel more like a course bundle than a community product. For community-led memberships, look at Circle or Mighty Networks instead.
Feature 6: Coaching
Thinkific offers coaching as a product type, separate from courses.
When you create a coaching product, you are setting up sessions delivered through Zoom. You connect Zoom from the App Store. Students purchase the coaching product and you manage the session delivery through your existing Zoom account.
Thinkific handles the product page, pricing, and enrollment but the actual session happens on Zoom.
Thinkific Coaching fits naturally into the same platform as your courses. If someone buys a course from you and also wants one-on-one time, you can offer that without pointing them to a separate tool or platform.
The purchase flow and student management stay in one place.
However, there is no built-in scheduling which means students cannot book sessions through a calendar inside the platform.
You’ll need to handle scheduling separately through a Calendly link or a similar tool. If you run a high-volume coaching practice where scheduling, session notes, and client management are central to your work, a dedicated coaching tool or a platform like Practice.do would serve you better.
Thinkific’s coaching feature works well as an add-on to a course-led business. It is not built to be the main product.
Feature 7: Community, What It Actually Delivers
In my experience, the community feature in Thinkific gets marketed more broadly than what it actually delivers. I want to be direct about this because I see a clear market shift towards building communities ever since AI made information just another commodity.
People now rightly subscribe to courses more for the interaction than the content itself. So, community has to be a leading part of your course offer.
Thinkific communities use a Spaces structure. You create different spaces (Announcements, General, topic-specific threads) and members can post, comment, and interact within them.
Thinkific has been actively upgrading its community feature and it now has a cleaner left-hand navigation, faster load times, and private spaces that can be linked directly to specific courses.
The advantage with Thinkific Communities is that everything is integrated with your courses and products.
When a student enrolls in a course, they can be automatically added to a linked community space. The community sits inside the same platform they used to access the course, so there is no friction in getting them there. For a supporting community attached to a course or membership, this works well.
However, Thinkific community is good enough only as a supporting feature. It is not built for community-first businesses.
There is no meaningful gamification, the engagement tools are basic, and you cannot replicate what Skool, Circle or Mighty Networks delivers in terms of structured community management, events calendar depth, or engagement incentives.
Still, looking at the broader picture and considering how well Thinkific delivers courses integrated with a dedicated community, I’d still say it’s not a dealbreaker as long as the community itself is not the product.
Read: Thinkific vs Skool – Which platform is better for community building
Feature 8: Email Marketing, What Thinkific’s Email Actually Does
Thinkific’s email automation offers Email Sales Flow and Abandoned Cart.
That is the full scope of the native email automation builder.
The Email Sales Flow lets you build a short sequence of automated emails that gets sent to leads or prospects who express interest in a specific product.
You select the product, write the sequence, and it fires when someone enters the top of that funnel.
Abandoned Cart sends a follow-up email to someone who got to checkout and did not complete the purchase.
Beyond those two flows, Thinkific also sends automated transactional emails. These include enrollment confirmations, weekly lesson reminders to enrolled students, and similar notifications you can customize.
On the Grow plan, you get Mass Email, which lets you send a one-off broadcast to a specific segment of your student list.
If you’re starting out and do not yet have an external email platform, the basic lead sequence and student notifications cover the minimum.
But it does not cover the full scope of email marketing a course creator needs.
There is no segmentation based on behavior or multi-step conditional automations. You cannot email your entire external audience. Only leads who entered a specific Thinkific funnel and students already enrolled in your courses are reachable.
If your list lives in Kit, ActiveCampaign, or Mailchimp, none of those contacts are reachable through Thinkific’s email tools.
What I recommend is to use Thinkific’s native flows for the course-side automations and run a separate email tool for everything that involves your broader audience.
Those course-side automations cover enrollment, abandoned cart, and lead sequences for your Thinkific products.
You can connect ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, HubSpot, or others through the integrations panel or via Zapier if your preferred tool is not natively available.
Feature 9: Analytics and Learner Management
Thinkific’s analytics dashboard gives you insights on how your courses and students are performing. The depth of that picture depends entirely on which plan you are on.
On the Grow plan, the full dashboard shows enrollment trends over time, revenue breakdown by product, student engagement by course (which lessons they are completing, where they are dropping off), and overall completion rates.
This is the data you need to understand whether your course is actually working for students or whether people are buying and not finishing.
You can pull a list of students who enrolled three months ago and have not completed more than 20% of the course. You can see which specific lesson has the highest drop-off. That kind of visibility lets you improve your course rather than just collecting revenue from it.
On the Basic and Start plans, the analytics are significantly more basic. You get enrollment counts and revenue figures but not the deep engagement and behavioral data.
You need to be on Grow to get it.
That is $149/month annually, which starts to approach Kajabi territory in price, though Kajabi’s analytics are also strong.
Feature 10: Site Builder and Branding
Thinkific gives you a site builder for your school’s public-facing pages. That includes the homepage, course landing pages, and checkout pages. The setup is block-based: you add sections, rearrange them, and edit the content within each block.
When you create a new product, Thinkific’s AI generates a landing page automatically from the description you provide at setup.
The generated pages are functional and save time, though you will want to customize them to sound like you rather than an AI prompt response.
You can set up a custom domain, create professional-looking course and product pages, and have a fully functional school online without hiring a developer. The page editor is accessible enough that someone with no technical background can manage it.
But it offers only three themes. Empire, Vogue, and Vision.
Each has a few style variations, but you are working within a narrow design range.
If you want a unique visual identity or need layouts that do not fit the block structure Thinkific provides, you will run into walls.
You can access CSS for customization, which experienced developers can use to push further, but compared to WordPress or even Kajabi’s page builder, the design ceiling here is noticeably lower.
Read: Thinkific vs teachable – Which platform is better for selling expertise
Do I Recommend Thinkific? Is It Worth Using?
If you are serious about creating the best learning experience in your educational products then yes, Thinkific has my vote.
The combination of course builder quality, assessment and compliance tools, and clean learner experience is better than any other platform I know at this price point.
If you are a coach, consultant, or subject matter expert who wants to deliver a structured, professional course and possibly a membership, Thinkific gives you what you need without forcing you to pay for a full marketing stack you will not use.
The Start plan at $74/month annually is the right starting point.
It unlocks memberships, community, and the full course management controls. Basic is too limited to give you a fair test of what Thinkific actually does.
Where it gets more complicated is the Grow plan at $149/month.
At that price, you are paying Kajabi-adjacent money. Kajabi gives you more at that price range. Full email marketing, advanced automations, a stronger page builder, and deeper community tools.
The only reason to choose Thinkific at $149/month over Kajabi at a similar price is if the learning experience is genuinely your priority and you are willing to manage email and marketing through a separate tool.
If your core product is a serious course or certification program, that trade-off makes sense. But if you want everything integrated, and can settle for a slightly limited learning experience, Kajabi is the better choice at that price point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Thinkific have a free plan in 2026?
No. Thinkific discontinued its free plan in 2024. It now offers a 30-day free trial on paid plans. A credit card is required to start — Thinkific places a $49 pre-authorization hold that is not a charge and is automatically reversed within a few business days. Your paid subscription starts automatically when the trial ends, so set a reminder if you want to cancel before then.
Does Thinkific charge transaction fees?
No transaction fees on any paid plan when using Thinkific Payments. If you use your own Stripe account instead, Thinkific charges an additional surcharge per transaction: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start, 1% on Grow. Use Thinkific Payments to avoid it. The dedicated Thinkific pricing article covers the full cost breakdown.
What email tool should I use alongside Thinkific?
Kit (formerly ConvertKit) or ActiveCampaign both integrate natively and work well. Kit is simpler and suits most independent experts. ActiveCampaign is better for more complex automation. Mailchimp also integrates natively for basic needs. Use your external tool for audience-wide communications and let Thinkific handle the course-side automations — enrollment confirmations, abandoned cart, and lead sequences for your Thinkific products.
Is Thinkific good for coaching businesses?
It works well as a secondary offering alongside a course or membership. You can create coaching products, connect Zoom for session delivery, and manage payments inside Thinkific. There is no built-in scheduling calendar — you handle booking separately through Calendly or a similar tool. If coaching is your primary business model rather than a complement to courses, a dedicated coaching platform like Practice or HoneyBook handles more of the operational side.
Can I sell digital downloads on Thinkific?
Yes. Thinkific supports digital downloads as a standalone product type — PDFs, templates, workbooks, audio files, or any downloadable file, each with its own landing page and pricing. Basic allows 5 downloads. Start and above allow unlimited. The AI product creation flow generates a landing page from a description, which speeds up setup.
What happens to my content if I cancel Thinkific?
You can export your video files and course content before cancelling. Student data exports as a CSV. Access to the platform ends when the subscription ends. Download everything before you cancel, not after — once the account closes, recovery is not guaranteed.
Does Thinkific work for selling courses in multiple languages? Yes. You can create courses and product pages in any language. The platform interface and system emails default to English, but your course content, landing pages, and checkout pages are entirely under your control. Thinker, the AI teaching assistant on Plus plans, also supports multiple languages and can respond to learner questions in a different language from the course content.
Can I migrate my courses from Teachable or Kajabi to Thinkific?
Yes, but the process is manual. Thinkific has no automated import tool for content from other platforms. You can export videos and course materials from most competitors and re-upload them, but student enrollment history, progress records, and completion certificates do not transfer. Budget several days for a migration if you have multiple courses.
Does Thinkific support private or hidden courses?
Yes. You can create private, hidden, and invite-only courses. Creators use this for employee training, client-only programs, and premium mentoring tiers where you do not want the course appearing publicly on your school.
Does Thinkific have an API?
API and webhook access is available on the Grow plan and above. It lets you automate enrollments, sync users, trigger workflows, and build custom integrations. Basic and Start plans do not include API access.
Does Thinkific support SCORM?
SCORM is available on the Plus plan only. On Basic, Start, and Grow, you need to convert SCORM content into video, PDF, or text lessons before uploading. If SCORM is a requirement for your corporate training delivery, you need either Plus or a dedicated LMS.
Can I use Zapier with Thinkific?
Yes, but with a plan restriction. Basic includes Zapier triggers only — you can send data out of Thinkific but not push data in. Start and Grow include both triggers and actions, letting you automate enrollments, tag leads in your CRM, and build more complete workflows.
Does Thinkific offer phone support?
Phone support is available on the Grow plan and Plus only. Basic and Start users have access to email and live chat support. For creators who want real-time human support when something breaks, this is worth factoring into your plan decision.
Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution
Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.
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Hi Jeff. Thanks for all this. I wanted to share that I joined Thinkific earlier this year, primarily attracted to their community feature. What I didn’t realize at the time is that their community feature is extremely lacking in even the most basic functions, which makes community engagement very difficult to create. For examples, members of the community aren’t notified when a post is made, leaving many posts going unresponded to. There’s no simple like button for people to show agreement or to simply acknowledge a post. If a person makes a mistake in their post, not only can they not edit it, they also cannot delete it. Post notifications, like buttons, and the ability to edit or delete a post are all VERY basic functions. Though the support staff is very friendly and responsive, there seems to be too little interest in making the community feature a valuable, usable feature. Had I known this, I would have chosen a different platform. So I thought others might like to know.
Hi Jeff and all,
You guys are very experienced. I am just starting to offer on-line courses after many years of onsite teaching, and have been researching on the best tool. I am kind of between Teachable and Thinkific (leaning toward Thinkific) now. Thanks to Jeff’s reviews I have learned a great deal about both, but after reading people’s comments and their experiecnes –sincere thanks for sharing them!–I am more confused on which one to choose, or a different one. Assuming there is no issue with emailing students at Pro/Growth level of thinkific, I would like to choose Thinkfic.
I am not sure though if I should start with Free, Basic, and Pro/Growth (I did read their features).
Your experience and suggestions?
Thanks!
Kathy
Thinkific is good at some things, but really rips you off for money with their growth plan.
You pay for the Pro plan and learn that:
You can’t see how many people are enrolled in a course.
You can’t see a list of people in the course.
You can’t message people in the course.
Unless you pay extra for their growth ad on. What a rip off. Ruzuku lets you do all these things on their basic plan.
Other problems: There reviews feature sucks. It only shows a limited number of reviews that you have to select. Very cumbersome interface. On top of that you can edit the reviews and even get rid of ones you don’t like. Whats the point?
I am kind of stuck with Thinkific but I keep finding they try to get every dime from you.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience, Eric. I had to reach out to Thinkific on some of your points as I am on the Growth plan, so couldn’t really double check what you say about the Pro plan. Here’s what a Thinkific representative says:
From my perspective – which, admittedly is influenced by years of working with much higher-priced systems than Thinkific – the level of functionality Thinkific provides is a bargain even at the Growth plan and higher levels. – Jeff
Thanks Jeff! I found the information about Zapier on their support page called Integrate with Zapier, where it states, “Level 1 – Triggers (Basic plan & above)
As part of any paid plan, you can use Triggers to send information out of Thinkific and into another app. This works well for automating tasks to happen as a result of events on your Thinkific site. Level 2 – Triggers and Actions (Growth plan & above)
Our Level 2 Zapier integration has both Triggers and Actions for Thinkific, allowing you to send information in as well as out.” The only plan presently above their Growth plan is their Premier plan. This information can also be somewhat surmised by clicking on the Growth plan pricing page on their website where they discuss what features they add to the Pro plan for their optional fee. Truthfully, I think this information is a little too hidden, as it’s not even fully clear on their Growth plan features page, and is not spelled out in their Full Feature Comparison page.
Thank you for planning to deliver my comment to Thinkific. I’ve seen comments made by a representative of Thinkific that they made this change as it costs a lot to them to maintain students, which is why they changed their focus of receiving money from transactions to active student numbers, and that in the future they will be adding more new services to the Growth plan. They stated that people in plans from Basic up were interested in these additional full features which is why they decided to place them all in an optional Growth plan. I wonder if their very popular Business plan they had wasn’t inspiring others to move to a higher-featured plan, and due to more integrations with Active Campaign among others that they’ve started was costing them more than they were recovering from course creators.
I do not want to completely discourage anyone from using Thinkific. They do seem to have a stronger feature model than even Teachable, with better reported support, and a much stronger community. But I do think this makes one pause to consider implementing an LMS solution located on one’s website instead of the cloud.
Thanks again, Sherri. I’ve verified on the Thinkific site and have updated the table to reflect your comments. These terms definitely changed since I did the review (which wasn’t all that long ago). I agree they could be clearer about all of this – particularly with people who were already on the Pro plan. That said, I don’t find the Growth plan unreasonable, particularly since it is based on active (which, in most cases, would be paying users). I may be somewhat biased because I come from a world where e-learning platforms carry much higher price tags than even Thinkific’s most expensive plan. Still, I think it is a very good value for the money. – Jeff
Hi Jeff, This is a great article and is helping me a lot to make a decision on where I want to sell online courses! Really nice research! One thing I noticed that may be incorrect: You listed under Pro that Zapier ingoing actions and Active Campaign is included; I think only outgoing zaps are included for Pro. Ingoing zap actions and Active Campaign direct integration are included if you purchase the optional Growth package. The Growth package needs to be purchased also if you want to white-label the product completely.
In addition, I saw from their closed Facebook Studio group that many class creators are upset as the new Growth package price per user includes all those who are active students, and only excludes those who are completing a free trial or who have expired from their courses. This is concerning to me as someone who would like my product white-labeled, integrated with Active Campaign including incoming zap actions, and give lifetime access to those I sell my class to. With this model, you will easily pay the $499 a month upper limit for the growth package, as all those who purchased the class in previous months are also included in the active student numbers.
The basic plan or the Pro plan does look like a good way to start though for those who are interested. Thinkific does offer a lot of tools and help to create an online class with their how-tos, forums and tight-knit community. I see many, however who are concerned. They have grandfathered those who were in the Business plan by Oct 2018 to stay with the same previous features and price for at least two years, but have said there are no ongoing guarantees of anything further. I understand needing to increase their price over time, but I think it would be much easier to sell extras that used to be in their Business Plan that are now in their Growth package, if people paid via additional cost per transaction vs. total active users.
Thanks for taking the time to leave such thoughtful comments on the review, Sherri. I’ll double check on Zapier. I was pretty careful about what was or wasn’t included when I wrote this, but I may have made a mistake or it may have changed in the meantime. I’ll also make sure Thinkific is aware of the perspective you have shared here. – Jeff
Jeff, I read your book years ago, when I was considering making the leap into the e-learning field. Since then, I’ve been a CANVAS user because I teach hybrid classes at a local college as an adjunct. Now that I’m committing to ramping up my business, your reviews are the BEST I’ve come across. Your attention to detail and counsel are greatly valued. Your insight has convinced me to follow my gut on THINKIFIC and go with their platform. All my best, Dan
Hey Dan – Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and say so. If there are any specifics about Thinkific you are still wondering about, just let me know. If I don’t have the answer, I can most likely connect you with someone who does. That said, I don’t think you will go wrong with them, and I am fan of following your gut and getting to it! – Jeff