Thinkific

RATING:

4.4

(177)

About Thinkific

Thinkific is a versatile and comprehensive online course platform designed for entrepreneurs and educators. It excels in offering an array of features for course creation, marketing, and sales. Users can build personalized, branded websites using custom web themes and domains, enhancing their online presence. The platform supports diverse teaching tools including quizzes, assignments, and live lessons, fostering interactive learning experiences. Community engagement is a standout feature, with community spaces and notifications that encourage learner interaction. For on-the-go access, Thinkific provides a mobile app, ensuring courses and communities are accessible anytime, anywhere. Course creators benefit from drip scheduling for content release, and sales tools like ...

Thinkific Pricing

Free accounts available, with core features only There are 3 subscriptions plans available: Basic - $39 per month (paid annually) or $49 per month (paid monthly) Pro - $79 per month (annually) or $99 or month (monthly) Premier - $399 per month (annually) or $499 per month (monthly)

Starting price: 

$49.00 per month

Free trial: 

Available

Free version: 

Available

Drag-and-drop course builder

Thinkific Reviews

Overall Rating

4.4

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4.5

Customer Support

4

Value for money

4

Functionality

4

Most Helpful Reviews for Thinkific

1 - 5 of 174 Reviews

Jonathan

E-Learning, 2 - 10 employees

Used less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

Reviewed March 2021

Great for Online Courses

User Profile

Michelle

Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising, 1 employee

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed January 2021

Outstanding course-hosting platform that makes your life easy

Overall the experience has been excellent over the past four years. I have to add that the Thinkific Helpdesk is genuinely helpful, and their response time is lightning fast. They have an option for "how urgent is your issue?" when you submit your help ticket, and if you select "urgent," they actually get back to you very quickly, as in, within a few hours. This is essential when your income comes from your course website and you need help updating or fixing something!

PROS

I love that Thinkific is comprehensive so I get to focus on content creation and student outreach. Thinkific manages the payment portal and moves students smoothly through the course experience. In a lot of ways, it's set-it-and-forget-it, meaning - once you have a course set up the way you want inside Thinkific, students move through it beautifully and all you have to worry about is getting new students!

CONS

My only suggestion for Thinkific would be to provide a few more options for testimonials layouts on the sales/landing pages. I'd like more flexibility and options to showcase or emphasize certain student experiences... but otherwise, I wouldn't change anything.

Reason for choosing Thinkific

I had experience with Thinkific as a student and as an affiliate for someone else's courses, and I like the dashboard layout for both. I already knew it was a strong product so decided to go for it!

Yadah

E-Learning, 1 employee

Used less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

4

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

4

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed April 2021

Beautiful Course Platform for Online Education

A stunning product which I would have been happy to use (even with all the workarounds for certificates, email and quizzes). The support is quick with responses and the tutorials provided really are next-level amazing. A consistent and impressive LMS.

PROS

This is an absolutely beautiful platform. Thinkific has been in the elearning industry for years and it shows - the portal is easy to navigate and set up courses. The tutorials section is robust and detailed, giving step-by-step information on how to set up various course features and troubleshoot any issues that may come up. There is the ability to issue certificates of completion, add an assignment section for students to upload their work, basic quiz functionality, drip-scheduling as well as compulsory lessons which need to be completed before the student can move on. The lessons can consist of videos, text, PDF's (which can be downloadable or not), or quizzes. You can embed videos and links from other sites too. The course analytics allow you to see how much of a course/lesson was completed before a student drops off, giving valuable insight which enables the course creator to edit and adapt the courses to make them more engaging for the students. There is also a 'community' feature which gives students the chance to chat and give/feedback away from an external site (like a Facebook group). Thinkific does not take any of the course fees and allows the course creator to keep 100% of the profits earned. There is also a free version which has a lot of features included.

CONS

The certificates are quite basic and it's necessary to be design-savvy and tech-savvy to create a certificate which would be accepted in the upload process. The quizzes are very basic and do not support time-limits, limited retries or anything more robust than true/false or multiple choice. Should you want to integrate with a more robust quiz software, their native integrative party is quite pricey! There is no built-in email functionality aside from the notifications that can be sent to existing students. As email is becoming more popular among other learning management systems this is quite a big negative point against them. The option to whitelabel the site completely is only available on the 'Growth' plan which over and above the 'Pro' plan which is already $99.

Reason for choosing Thinkific

Value for money and number of features offered. It's an established product with years of market research and expertise.

Reasons for switching to Thinkific

Option to do upsells and order bumps with Thinkific. Option for assignment uploads for students. All-round more robust LMS.

Mitch

E-Learning, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review Source: Capterra
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

2

EASE OF USE

4

VALUE FOR MONEY

1

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

2

FUNCTIONALITY

1

Reviewed November 2023

Stick with wordpress

We just moved our members to Thinkific. I like some features but mostly it was a big mistake. But we're kind of stuck here now. I'm not changing again since we're looking to sell soon. This was part of the reason for the move, when we sell we wanted to make it an easier transition than a whole bunch of wordpress logins everywhere. But ultimately, I got caught up in the hype around these course platforms. I have tested pretty much all of them, and they make the UI look and feel great. But then once you start working in there you become super limited in what's achievable. I've had another reality check now. Honestly, I just don't understand why people use them. It's like going back 10 years in time for the page builders. Wordpress is far superior than anything else out there. Even though it can be a little clunky at times too. And the UI & UX is nowhere near as good. But it costs a fraction of the price of every other platform and you can do 10x more. Even when using the best plugins. Ultimately, the benefits of this platform definitely do not outweigh the limitations it has. And definitely not when you are paying 5-10x the price tag. Mostly I am writing this here to keep myself accountable moving forward lol. You would think that after 8 years I'd be smarter than this by now. But nope

PROS

Easy login process for members and easier to upgrade into other courses, easier to use coupon codes, etc Single dashboard for partners, users and affiliates. This is the main issue we are trying to solve in the best way possible. Easier to display the courses on the site like an education company. Less design needed which is good for our VA's. A mobile app included, but it's super basic and not at all impressive

CONS

We had to manually import every student and bulk enroll them into every course individually. The bulk enroll will only run 1 import at a time. So it took about 2-days to import them for every course We had to individually add every single affiliate because they don't have bulk enroll. It's taken my VA 3 days to do since we have over 300 affiliates. We're also going to have to manually pay them each month. The only way Thinkific is useful is if you buy a bunch of plugins so you can build a proper website. That then causes caching issues. The video player is old an outdated. We have to now go back and manually add every SRT file. It doesn't auto-generate like most players do these days. This will take a VA about a week to do. They also don't have an inbuilt API that when a subscription member cancels to remove a tag from your CRM. This blows my mind. It's simple, standard practice for any membership platform. So we have to use Zapier instead which adds another unneccesary cost. Support team is fairly unhelpful. All they do is send you to a document. They don't every help in any other way. For example, we just wanted to change the font size for the header menu. It had to be done in code. Would have taken someone on their team with develper knowledge 30 seconds to do or point us in the right direction. They wouldn't do it.

Reason for choosing Thinkific

Thinkific looked like the better one of the lot.

Reasons for switching to Thinkific

Looking for a better user experience for our members

Lucas

Management Consulting, 2-10 employees

Used daily for less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed March 2021

Thinkific Rocks!

Excellent! I appreciate the outstanding product, fair prices, ease of interface and ability to easily build and delivery QUALITY courses. I haven't required customer service (that's a good sign!). I love the product and will definitely stay here!

PROS

The intuitive nature of your interface is extremely helpful for both course designers and students. As a site and course administrator, I'm exceptionally impressed with the ease of use. Thank you for incorporating finance management functions. Sleek design, ease of use, great price point. Don't change the price, it's one of your best market differentiators. I switched to Thinkific for the Pro Growth plan which was the key difference for me from other providers like Matrix.

CONS

I really need to market courses via social media with the least number of accounts and steps. It would be awesome if you could integrate some social media marketing tools into the site rather than link accompanying providers. The more I can do WITHIN thinkific, the better. The same applies for business functions like website management, sales of non-course materials (e.g., printed books, e-books), and perhaps QuickBooks

Reason for choosing Thinkific

Price and ability to scale my costs via the Pro Growth plan. I really liked the Matrix site itself but couldn't justify the price as soon as I saw the Thinkific plans and the product. Your site is excellent!

Reasons for switching to Thinkific

Price and ability to scale my costs via the Pro Growth plan. I really liked the Matrix site itself but couldn't justify the price as soon as I saw the Thinkific plans and the product. Your site is excellent!