Welcome to my in-depth Thinkific review for 2024.
With the rise of digital courses, more and more entrepreneurs are using online learning platforms like Thinkific to turn their expertise into a business. But is Thinkific still the best course platform in 2024?
I signed up for a Thinkific account, explored all the key features, and compared it to top competitors to find out. In this detailed review, I’ll share everything I learned to help you decide if Thinkific is right for your online course business.
Let’s get started!
What is Thinkific?
Thinkific is a cloud-based online course platform and learning management system. It offers a robust set of tools to help entrepreneurs build, market and sell online courses, memberships and other digital learning products – all in one place.
According to Business of Apps, the global E-Learning market is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 15% from 2022 to 2025 – reaching nearly $457 billion.
Thinkific is one of the most popular learning management platforms in this booming industry. More than 50,000 course creators actively use Thinkific to run their online education businesses.
In 2022 alone, entrepreneurs earned over $1 billion selling online courses through Thinkific per Thinkific’s annual creator survey. This represents 100% year-over-year platform growth – outpacing the overall industry expansion.
Some key things you can do with Thinkific:
- Create engaging online courses with video, text, PDFs, audio etc.
- Assess students with quizzes, assignments and surveys
- Build online communities and membership sites
- Customize your course website and branding
- Market your online school with coupons, affiliate programs etc.
- Sell courses or memberships and process payments
- Track student engagement metrics to improve courses
Unlike a simple course hosting platform, Thinkific gives you all the tools needed to build an entire online school or membership site customized to your brand.
It’s trusted by over 50,000 online educators globally. And in 2022, creators earned over $1 billion selling online courses through Thinkific.
Next, let‘s take a closer look at the key features that sets Thinkific apart.
Thinkific‘s Core Features
Thinkific comes packed with features to build, market and sell online courses. Let‘s explore the most notable ones:
Easy Online Course Builder
Thinkific’s course builder is extremely flexible – allowing you to create different types of online courses.
- Structure your course into chapters and lessons
- Upload videos, PDFs, audio files, presentations etc.
- Add assessments like quizzes and assignments
- Set up automation with drip content scheduling
I found it very intuitive to use. Within minutes, I was able to put together a professional-looking course.
You can also access advanced options like:
- Interactive modules with drag and drop, hotspots etc.
- Live streaming lessons
- SCORM course uploads
While the course builder is easy to use for beginners, it provides enough advanced functionality for experts as well.
Engaging Video Player
Thinkific provides native video hosting, so you can upload course videos without relying on external platforms.
The video player offers standard playback controls. While it lacks sophisticated interactions like annotations or hotspots, you can still create an engaging video learning experience for students.
There’s also a neat option to toggle on video downloads – allowing students to save and watch lessons offline.
Assessments to Test Student Knowledge
To gauge student progress, Thinkific offers diverse assessment options like:
- Multiple choice questions (MCQs)
- Fill in the blanks
- Matching questions
- Short answer questions
You can even set up timed quizzes for a more robust testing experience.
Besides standard quizzes, you can create flexible assignments and have students upload files as submissions which you can easily review and grade.
This level of assessments sets Thinkific apart from basic course platforms.
Tiered Memberships and Communities
Thinkific now allows you to offer memberships with tiered access levels. For instance:
- Basic – $20/month with 3 courses
- Pro – $40/month with 5 bonus courses
You can gate course access on membership level and easily manage renewals.
It’s also possible to build thriving online communities using Thinkific’s forum-style discussion boards. This fosters student engagement and loyalty.
Marketing and Sales Features
Using the bundled marketing tools, you can instantly create:
- High converting sales pages
- Lead generation forms and landing pages
- Affiliate programs
- Coupons and promotions
For payments, Thinkific seamlessly integrates with Paypal and Stripe with the option to accept global payments in multiple currencies.
It also comes with insightful sales and student engagement analytics allowing you track ROI.
White Label Branding and Custom Domains
While your school runs on Thinkific’s servers, you retain complete control and ownership over your brand, content and student data.
Using custom domains and logos, you can white label the platform and build your school under your own brand – with no Thinkific branding visible to your students!
Let‘s now look at some of the pros and cons of Thinkific as an online course platform.
Thinkific Pros and Cons
Thinkific Pros
- Intuitive course builder: Easy to use drag and drop builder to create professional courses quickly
- Tiered memberships: Sell multi-tier membership plans with gated course access
- Assessments: Quizzes, surveys and flexible assignments to evaluate students
- Zero transaction fees: No cuts on course sales – keep 100% of revenue
- Mobile access: iOS and Android apps for learners to access courses on mobile
- Powerful Integrations: Connect tools like Zapier, ConvertKit, Mailchimp and more
- Drip Content: Automated content access scheduling improves engagement
- Affiliate marketing: Recruit influencers to promote your program
As you can see, Thinkific specializes in helping course creators build a solid online education business with professional courses, assessment capabilities and marketing tools.
However, there are a few downsides to consider:
Thinkific Cons
- No built-in tax handling – Additional setup needed for VAT, GST etc.
- SCORM compliance only for specific course uploads
- Limits on custom code editing for maximum site customization
- Steep learning curve for some advanced functionality
Lack of taxes out-of-the-box can get tricky for international entrepreneurs.
SCORM compliance for easily migrating courses from other LMS platforms is still limited too.
Overall though, Thinkific’s pros seem to easily outweigh the cons for serious course creators.
Thinkific Pricing
One major plus point of Thinkific is that it’s free to get started. Here’s an overview of the pricing tiers:
- Free Plan – 1 course, 50 students, core features
- Basic – $49/month, Unlimited students and courses
- Premium – $99/month, Advanced features like affiliates
- Pro – $299/month, Higher limits for mature schools
While the free plan is quite limited, the paid tiers offer very competitive pricing compared to other LMS platforms.
And here’s the kicker – there are no transaction fees taken from your sales on ANY plan!
This means you keep 100% of your online course profits (just pay for your monthly subscription).
Many other LMS charge extra payment processing fees that can eat into your margins. So the zero-fee structure makes Thinkific very lucrative.
Next, let‘s see how Thinkific compares with other leading online course platforms.
Thinkific Alternatives
The most popular Thinkific alternatives are Teachable, Podia and LearnWorlds.
Teachable
- Easy-to-use course builder
- Integrates with Zapier and Mailchimp
- 5% transaction fee on paid plans
Podia
- Sell courses, downloads and memberships
- Built-in email marketing tools
- 2.5 – 5% transaction fees apply
LearnWorlds
- Interactive and gamified courses
- SCORM/AICC compliant
- 499 EUR/year starter plan
Thinkific holds its own against the top competitors, matching their core course creation and marketing capabilities.
The zero transaction fee model gives it an edge over most other major players like Teachable and Podia too.
For building highly interactive, gamified courses, LearnWorlds has the most robust toolset. But it comes at a higher base pricing.
Let‘s dig deeper into the pricing and plan differences:
Pricing Comparison
Thinkific starts free with unlimited students and offers paid tiers from $49/month to $299/month.
In contrast, Teachable‘s starting plan is $39/month handling up to 100 students while Podia is $39/month with a 2500 student limit.
LearnWorlds has annual billing at 549 EUR per year for up to 15 students.
For medium tier plans, Thinkific is $99/month while Teachable is $99/month and Podia is $79/month – so Thinkific enjoys price parity with the major brands here.
Thinkific clearly seems more affordable than LearnWorlds too.
And most importantly, it does NOT charge any % of revenue as transaction fees like the others!
So if you‘re selling high ticket programs, Thinkific can represent massive cost savings from lost revenue.
Target Audiences
Based on its versatile course builder and included capabilities, Thinkific is well suited to:
- Yoga teachers, personal trainers building membership sites
- Professional educators and institutions
- SaaS companies needing customer training portals
Whereas Teachable is more positioned towards individual creators selling online courses directly to consumers.
Podia caters well to bloggers selling downloads or service providers with tightly integrated payment and email marketing features.
LearnWorlds seems optimal for companies needing to train employees at scale with compliance needs.
So Thinkific strikes a nice balance appealing to a broader segment of online educators from independent creators to larger enterprises.
Use Case Innovations
I recently discovered companies leveraging Thinkific in clever ways beyond just selling courses directly like:
- Lead generation: Create a compelling but free course that captures leads for a sales team to contact
- Client portals: Customers get access to private product update training and docs behind a login
- Onboarding employees: Streamlined new hire onboarding training in a branded portal
The flexibility to brand and gate content makes Thinkific a Swiss army knife platform with diverse applications.
Overall, Thinkific strikes the best balance of ease of use, features and affordability in my analysis.
Who is Thinkific Best Suited For?
Based on my hands-on testing and research, here are the typical users who will benefit most from Thinkific:
- Coaches and consultants selling online programs
- Yoga teachers, personal trainers building membership sites
- Professional educators and institutions
- SaaS companies needing customer training portals
- Enterprise sales teams handling customer training
Essentially, if you need to build a professional online academy or membership site with paid digital learning products, Thinkific is an ideal pick in 2024.
It offers the complete toolkit required for running an edtech business catering to vertical niches like coaching, software training, corporate training and more.
The Verdict – Should You Use Thinkific in 2024?
In my testing and analysis, I found Thinkific continues to be one of the top online course platforms in 2024.
It neatly ties together ease of use, feature depth and value across all aspects of selling online courses profitably.
The cutting-edge course builder requires no technical skills to create polished, multimedia courses. And clever touches like assessments, drip scheduling, bundles and tiered access help boost student engagement.
Add to this the generous zero transaction fee model, and Thinkific turns out to be very lucrative for serious course entrepreneurs.
While the lack of built-in tax management can be an issue, it’s a trade-off given the platform’s depth and flexibility.
So if you need a hosted solution to launch and grow a thriving online school or membership site, Thinkific remains a compelling choice in 2024.
I hope this detailed review gave you a clear picture of Thinkific’s capabilities to make the right platform choice for your online courses and digital learning products.
You can also sign up for a free trial here to test it out firsthand.
