Getting the right content for your online course or digital product is equally as important as choosing the right platform to create, market, and sell your online course.

Imagine how disappointing it would be to spend sleepless nights getting your content right, only for you to make limited sales just because of a single decision. And that is a decision on selecting the platform to use in selling your top-class online course.

By now, you already know what Thinkific is and what it offers. However, the question you are definitely asking yourself is, is Thinkific the right solution for selling your online course compared to other platforms? Well, your answer is right here. Just keep reading.

What is Thinkific?

Thinkific is a popular online course creation platform/website that offers options for creating, marketing, and selling online courses and membership sites. It allows for extension flexibility and richness of features both in the front-end and back-end.

For example, you can create courses rich in videos, text and images, as well as other downloadable files. Once you’re done working on your course, you can get straight into marketing it by creating a captivating sales page with all your branding and option to collect payment from the same sales page.

On the back-end, you get a chance to develop a schedule for your students to make it easier for them to navigate the different course sections, schedule exams, and even offer certificates upon successful completion of the courses.

Here are three key reasons why you might want to consider Thinkific:

1. Extensibility – With Thinkific, you can design, build, edit, upload, and customize every aspect of your course. This means you can create rich video courses, interactive quizzes, and eBooks.

2. Richness of Features – Thinkific gives you multiple ways to showcase your course through its many features. These include a beautiful yet simple interface, drag-and-drop functionality, ability to add videos, interactive quizzes, social sharing icons, and so much more.

3. Flexible Pricing Model – Thinkific also lets you set flexible pricing models for your course. For instance, you can charge either per month or per sale basis. Also, you can set prices based on the number of modules, course length, package price, etc.

Thinkific Features

Two features set Thinkific apart;

• It is the only platform that offers a viable long-term free price plan. Unlike other platforms that offer just 14-day free trials or free plans tied to transaction fees, Thinkific’s free plan is absolutely free and super helpful in terms of the features it offers. It allows for setting up of 3 separate courses, run quizzes, collect payments, and even add your branding, plus many more.
• It is unquestionably the most flexible and customizable course creating platform. In addition to its plethora of amazing features, you can add more features through integrations with Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), MailChimp, and Brillium Exams.

Other features include:

• Very easy to create and customize your courses. E.g. hidden and private courses, prerequisite lessons, drip schedule content, cohorts, membership sites, and multiple instructors, among others.
• Advanced course management features such as webinar replay, membership resource library, pre-sell features, flagship course, and mini-courses.
• Support for multiple media uploads such as videos, quizzes, surveys, Google docs, discussions, and other downloadable materials. All with 100% free hosting.
• Numerous themes to choose from, all with easy drag and drop functionalities. While the site builder is a little limited in terms of advanced customizations such as adding your custom CSS styles, it caters for all the basic features you need to successfully and comfortably run your online course or membership site. For example, calls to action, social proof, pricing options, and count down timer, just to mention a few.
• Flexible pricing and payment options
• Guaranteed safety for your courses and other data.

All these features can be extensively modified to meet your personal preferences. And it doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or a pro, Thinkific has an impressive load of tutorials and ‘smart coach course building tips’.

Marketing your online course through Thinkific

Thinkific is specifically built to enable easy and efficient marketing and selling of online courses. Consequently, it features some of the best marketing features and integrations to make your marketing process as easy and seamless as possible.

You can access the marketing features under the “Market and Sell” section of the administrative panel. Some of these features include;

• Specify different payment systems for your course, e.g. one-time payment, monthly payments, subscription/membership, and free option.
• Set up coupons for your course either in percentage or dollar value and with expiration dates.
• Sales widgets that allow you to send customers directly to your course’s landing page on Thinkific or direct to checkout.
• Ability to add an affiliate option if you want other people to market your course.
• Numerous marketing integrations such as Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Segment, and email marketing add-ons such as MailChimp, AWeber, and ConvertKit. Talking of marketing, here’s a list of the best email marketing tools you need to market your course.

Thinkific Pricing (updated 2023)

Get the Thinkific Pro + Growth plan free for a month > Click here.

Thinkific offers four subscription options.

Free version – allows for up to three-courses, unlimited students, content hosting, quizzes & surveys.

Basic plan – Goes for $39 per month and allows unlimited courses, coupons, email students capabilities, scheduled content, affiliate reporting, custom domain, email integrations, Zappier triggers, and manual student enrollment and exports.

Pro plan – Goes for $79 a month and includes all the basic plan features plus 2 site admin accounts, 5-course admins/authors, private & hidden courses, advanced course pricing options, memberships and bundles, certificates, advanced customization, priority support, assignments, communities, and live lessons with Zoom.

Premier plan – Goes for $399 a month and includes all pro plan features plus unlimited courses and students, 5 site admin accounts, 15 group analysts, 50 course admins/authors, single sign-on (SSD), onboarding package, and unlimited growth package.

You can enjoy the Thinkific Pro plan for a month for free, with the added flexibility to downgrade to the Free plan or upgrade depending on your needs and budget.

Check the pricing options here.

Pros

• Only course platform with an amazing free option and no transaction fees.
• Offers phone support
• Impressive and flexible customization
• Custom domain capabilities
• Voice-over PowerPoint presentation tool for your video courses.
• Numerous payment options for your students

Cons

• Not integrated with a funnel builder
• No live chat support

Thinkific Vs Teachable

These two platforms are almost kind of similar in terms of the features they offer. The main difference and point of advantage for Thinkific is its better site design and customization tools. On the other hand, Teachable has better marketing and sales features.

Here is a comparison in terms of the features you might consider most critical when making your selection.

1. Performance and uptime – Thinkific offers 24/7 monitoring of the website and boasts an excellent uptime of 99.9%. Teachable is a little off in terms of monitoring as it has some common issues such as updating billing information, intermittent connectivity issues, latency and 504 errors.
2. Ease of use and customization – Thinkific excels in this sector as previously mentioned. However, Teachable offers almost similarly intuitive customization and features, especially in terms of language customization, page editors, and sales customization capabilities.
3. Sales and marketing – Teachable is the best in terms of sales and marketing capabilities thanks to its numerous integrations, ability to create promotional offers, landing page builders, etc.
4. Data analytics – Teachable’s advanced marketing and sales capabilities extend to better data analytics such as a comprehensive analytics dashboard for tracking student signups and revenue statistics, the ability to track the average completion rate of lectures, and other integrations.
5. Payment Processing – Thinkific is better in terms of payment processing thanks to its integration with Stunning which prevents failed transactions on Stripe. They also constantly monitor their site meaning you are guaranteed to always receive your payments easily and fast.
6. Pricing – The biggest advantage of Thinkific is its free plan that allows you to get started without spending a single dime. Thikinfic also gives you a month on their Pro plan for free. The link above will take you to the special offer page. However, Teachable has also readjusted their pricing since first writing this article, and they now offer a free plan and way cheaper basic and business plans. Their basic plan goes for $29, pro plan for $99, and business plan for $249. Here is a list of the pricing plans and features.

Conclusion

It is hard to say which platform is better Thinkific and Teachable. I use Thinkific and I have fallen in love with it.

Could I be biased, definitely yes. I think it all boils down to the preferences and capabilities you’re looking for. If you want better functionality when designing your course, Thinkific is the perfect choice for you. However, if you’re looking for better marketing capabilities, Teachable is your best option. These are the categories that each of these options excels best in.

My suggestion would be for you to visit both sites and check out their different functionalities and how they serve your intended purpose.

Our Pick > Thinkific.

For our customers and readers, we have a special bonus offer from Thinkific, Get one month Thinkfic Pro + Growth Plan worth $99 a month for free!