Thinkific is one of many different online teaching platforms that allows you to connect with and welcome thousands of students from all around the world.
There is almost no end to the subjects that you are able to teach on the Thinkific platform and you can build a large number of students with the right promotion. However, before you can do all of that, you need to be able to set up the right account for your needs.
There are a few options that you can choose from on Thinkific. In this article, we will look at the Thinkific login and how to set up an account.
What Is Thinkific?
First things first, what is Thinkific? Thinkific is a cloud-based learning management platform. It has been specifically designed to allow creators and teachers to create, manage, and market their courses.
The courses are built with your own content and can be structured in a way that you design to best fit the goals of your course.
The Thinkific platform is a great option for experts to share their experience and knowledge with other people. It allows you to earn extra revenue and grow your brand or business.
If you already have experience with marketing, it will be easy for you to find success for your course on this platform. While the content of the course is important, your ability to market the course within the platform is what makes you successful and makes the platform worthwhile.
There are multiple types of accounts that you can set up with the Thinkific platform. There are some accounts that are completely free and while the free version of the platform is more limited than the paid versions it still has enough features to successfully build and run an online course.
You can also create a student test account to allow you to view the course as a student would. This is a great way to ensure that the course you build is user-friendly and easy to understand. This will help you to see more results from your course.
What Kind of Account Do You Need?
As we mentioned above, there are three different types of accounts that you can set up on Thinkific. At most, you will need two different accounts but it is possible to have a successful course with just one.
Below, we will look at the different types of accounts that you can have on the Thinkific platform.
Student Test Account
A student test account is the only second account that you will need on the Thinkific platform. This account works in tandem with your paid or free account to help you provide the best possible experience for your students.
The role of a student test account is to allow you to experience the course that you have built from the point of view of your students and potential students.
Being able to see what your students will see is a great way to check the usability of your course and identify any issues or bugs that might occur. This allows you to be able to fix the issues before your students experience them.
It isn’t necessary to have a student test account on Thinkific, however, it can improve the success of your course. The fewer issues that your students have with the course you build the more likely they will be to rate the course highly and recommend it to other users.
This can help you to get more students in an organic way which can cut down on marketing efforts.
You can set up a student test account at any point, it isn’t necessary to set one up when you set up your main account. It can be a good way to see any issues that your students report firsthand if you don’t have time to check through the course before you open it to students.
Free Account
In order to build a course on Thinkific, you will need to create either a free or a paid account. With the free account, you can sign up in minutes and begin building your course immediately.
Because this account is free, the features that you have access to are more limited than the features that you can access with a paid account.
One of the biggest selling points for using Thinkific to create and sell your own course is that you can build and sell your course entirely from a free account.
Sticking with a free account instead of subscribing to a paid account still allows you to create a quality course that will appeal to students.
If you are starting with very few funds, using a free account can be a great way to build and sell your course to make some extra income. This extra income can then be used to upgrade your account and ultimately improve your course.
Paid Account
The other option is to have a paid subscription account that allows you to have access to all of the features that Thinkific offers. There are a few extra features that you can unlock with a subscription account that are unavailable to those with a free account.
These features are not necessary to make a high-quality online course that provides a lot of value to your students.
However, the extra features can give your course a significant boost and make it appear more professional and more in-depth.
When you have access to the extra features that are offered with a paid subscription account, you have the opportunity to charge more for your course than with a free account because the course is likely to be able to provide more value with the extra features.
How To Set Up A Free Account
As with any platform, it is super easy to set up the free version of an account. You don’t need to have any documents or payment methods in order to set the account up. Starting with a free account is the best way to start with Thinkific.
This plan allows you access to all of the basic features that you will need to begin building your course. This is a great way to get a feel of the platform and what it can offer you before you commit to a subscription.
The first step in setting up your free account is to use your preferred email address to sign up. Make sure that you are using an email that is reserved for your business ventures so that important emails do not get lost among personal emails and junk emails.
As with most online accounts, you will also need to create a secure password to protect your account. You will want to make this password as secure as possible to help protect the intellectual property that will create the basis of your course.
The best way to ensure that your account remains secure is to regularly alter your password.
Once you have created your account, you will receive an email from Thinkific that will explain how to log into your account. The email will contain a link to the dashboard for your Thinkific site. It is from this link that you will be able to start building your course.
You will also receive a link to your site. This will allow you to see the site that your students will have to visit to access your course. This link doesn’t give you access to the site from the student’s perspective though. For that, you need the student test account.
Within the email that you receive, you will also get a Thinkific email that will be your means of communicating with your students and with the Thinkific community. This helps to give your course a more professional feel.
From here you are able to begin building your course and adding your content to your site. You will have complete access to all of the free features on the site. These will be enough to build a functioning and insightful course.
How To Set Up A Paid Account
If you want to create a paid subscription account right from the start that is possible too, you can also upgrade an established free account in the same way.
If you want to set up a paid account, you will need to select your preferred option from the range of payment plans. Thinkific has a range of four payment plans for their paid subscription accounts including the free account.
If you are looking for paid subscriptions, you can choose from the Basic plan, the Start plan, or the Grow plan.
Basic Plan
The basic plan gives you access to the core features and essential tools that will help you to create a smooth and easy-to-use online course. This can then be sold to students.
With this payment plan, you can make an unlimited amount of courses on the platform. This can be a great way to make more income and spread out knowledge about a more complex or difficult subject.
With this plan, you also get a single community for your students to join and discuss the course. The basic plan allows you to have 5 people in your community and you can have unlimited students on your course.
Start Plan
With this plan, you get all the features of the free plan, plus all the features of the basic plan. On top of all of these features and tools, you also get access to features and tools that help to drive student engagement and improve the experience that your students have on your course.
On this plan, you get to have 10 members in your community which helps to boost the engagement of the course. You will also have access to assignments that your students can complete.
This can be a great way to provide feedback to your students or compound the knowledge that they have learned.
One of the best features of this plan is access to live lessons. This allows you to host special additional lessons on your course that are held in real-time.
This can significantly increase the value of your course as your students will be able to have face-to-face lesson time with you or guest teachers. This can also give your students the chance to ask complex questions in real time.
Grow Plan
As with the other paid subscription plans on Thinkific, you get all of the features of the cheaper and free plans with the Grow plan.
In addition to all of the features that have been mentioned already, you get access to features and tools that give your course the most professional look possible.
For this payment plan option, you get access to 3 communities, with 20 spaces in each community. This makes your course a much more interactive experience for your students.
You will also have access to the support of two administrators who can help to keep your course running smoothly even when you aren’t working on it.
With the Grow plan, which is the most popular of all the paid plans, all of the Thinkific brandings are removed from your course which makes it look more professional. This also allows you to make sure that your own brand logo is the most prominent branding on the course.
You will also be able to set up bulk student emailing and bulk enrollment. This can help you to maximize the profitability of your course.
Once you have settled on a payment plan for your Thinkific account, you can sign up for it in the same way as a free account. You will need to provide valid credit card information in order to progress with your account setup.
You will be provided with a Thinkific email and links to your domain and site.
How To Set Up A Student Test Account
Setting up a student test account is slightly different from setting up a main account with Thinkific. You already need to have either a free account or a paid plan account in order to set up your student test account.
You will need a working email address for at least one student test account. It is not necessary to have an email linked to every student test account that you make.
The first step in making a student test account is to go to the support your students section of your account dashboard. Then select users. In the top right of the menu, there is a +NewUser button.
When you click on this button, a form will appear on the screen. You can fill this in with the credentials of a fake student. It is important to make sure that you choose a name for this account that you will be able to recognize as definitely not a real student.
It is recommended to use a name such as Test Student.
You will then need to enter an email address for the fake student account. It is possible to enter a completely fake email that follows a valid email format. However, it is better to use a valid email address that you can access.
Whichever type of email you choose, remember it because you will need it to log into the account. Additionally, choose a simple password that you can easily remember. (See also ‘Can You Create A Blog On Thinkific?‘)
You can then enroll the test student in any of the courses that you wish to test. This is a step that can be left until later when you want to actually test a course. Once you have filled everything out, simply click the save button and you can begin using your test account.
Once you have made your student test account, you can use it to enroll in any of your courses. This will allow you to experience your course from the student’s perspective. This helps you to fix any potential bugs or issues with your course before it is used by actual students.
Using this account can also help you to see firsthand any specific problems that students may report to you when using your course. This helps improve the experience that your students have when they enroll.
This can help encourage more students to enroll in your course and any other courses you may make.
Thinkific Login To Your Account
When you create any accounts with Thinkific, you will have to input your email address and create a password. These are the credentials that you will need in order to sign in to the Thinkific platform.
Should you forget any of your sign-in information, you can recover your account by resetting your password or recovering your email address.
Although it is important to set a secure password to protect your account, it is also important that you can remember the password that you choose.
Remember that the safest practice to keep all of your courses and other intellectual property effectively protected is to regularly update your password.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Thinkific Have A Phone App?
One of the main downsides to Thinkific is the fact that there is no mobile app for the platform and there don’t seem to be any plans to make one. However, the website has been optimized to work on a mobile device.
What Are The Accessibility Features Like?
The accessibility features of Thinkific are less built into the platform itself and can be found in the device that is used to access the courses. Most devices have the ability to increase font sizes to increase readability.
It is also possible to have the contents of pages read aloud by most computers and mobile devices.
How Many Students Can You Have?
No matter which tier you purchase or if you stick with the free plan, you can enroll an unlimited amount of students in your courses. Students are also able to enroll in more than one of your courses simultaneously.
The fact that there is no limit to the number of students that you can have on even the free plan helps make the platform even more appealing to creators.
The ability to sign up for more than one course makes Thinkific sound more appealing to prospective students and can increase the success of your courses.
Is The Free Tier Worth It?
The free tier that is offered by Thinkific is one of the biggest selling points of the entire platform. It is possible to make a successful course from the free version of Thinkific. (Check out ‘How To Make Money On Thinkific?‘)
The main downside of using the free tier is that all of your course materials will be emblazoned with the Thinkific logo.
You are also limited in the features that you can use including live lessons and assignments. The domain of your course site will also not be entirely custom. Instead, it will have Thinkific in it as a way to advertise the platform.
With that being said, there are many more positives to the free tier than there are negatives. If you have never made an online course before, the free tier will allow you to make an insightful and worthwhile course that can be easily marketed to your potential customers.
It is worth noting that with the free version of Thinkific, you are limited to only making one course. This means that if you want to be able to make more than one course or even a series of courses, you will have to choose one of the payment options.
This can end up being a choice that is just as profitable as the free tier.
Final Thoughts
Thinkific is a great platform on which to build an online course. Whether you are completely new to building a course or you have previous experience there are multiple tiers to provide you with all of the tools and features that you need to facilitate your own online course.
Best of all, Thinkific gives you the ability to market your own course which helps it to reach the right audience.
