In this Thinkific review, we explore one of the most popular ways to build an online course.
It’s possible to find a class for anything on the internet. And with online course platforms, it’s easier than ever to sell and buy an online course.
However, you need to use the right and only online course platform to sell your courses. In this review, we focus on a one-course builder: Thinkific.
If you want to build online courses or sell your courses, this could be the site for you.
If you’re preparing yourself for getting some online training from some of the best online course platforms, you’re in the right place. We review the various price plans, the ease of use of the site, and how to begin your course creation.
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What Is Thinkific?
To begin our Thinkific review, you might like to hear the basics about Thinkific. The platform has one purpose in mind: the buying and selling of informative courses that your students will like. Through the Thinkific platform, both individuals and businesses can become course creators by compiling their knowledge into teachable online courses.
You don’t have to look very hard to get a Thinkific review if you are selling or considering selling online training courses. In comparison to conventional LMSs, these platforms are both more accessible and cheaper in their user interface.
Thinkific is an all-in-one solution to quickly and easily create and sell online courses.
- Free option to get started
- Website builder to market your course
- Ideal for membership sites
- Expensive if starting out
- Lack of dynamic pricing
It is extremely helpful for individuals working as edupreneurs and startups looking to enter the online course market. Furthermore, it could significantly alter the Learning Management System industry as we know it
Edwize has done in-depth reviews of several learning curve platforms in addition to our roundup of the best online course platforms, but it is assumed that the thinkific site review is significantly better than other platforms because the company today has the most momentum out of any of the equivalent online course platforms on the market, and also because the readers of Edwize have had a positive experience with Thinkific.
Thinkific isn’t a separate platform from your existing site. It is solely a course creation platform with a drag-and-drop course landing page
You can export the courses you build on the platform to your site whenever you like. You are free to share your teachable courses with your students.
When it comes to marketing online courses, the Thinkific site is the best platform for solo edupreneurs and small businesses. It is also a great choice for bigger companies that don’t have very intricate requirements for handling certification and continuous education.
While the free basic plan already offers a variety of useful features, the more premium account plans provide even more powerful Thinkific course creation tools. Thinkific platform has done a fantastic job of listening to course suppliers, developing features in response to their feedback, and keeping the platform as user-friendly as possible despite its extensive feature set. They have also thought about student management constantly.
The organization has made it obvious that it is committed to doing everything it takes to facilitate high-quality e-learning opportunities.
Who Is Thinkific For?
Thinkific platform is for anyone looking to plan, create, and sell teachable courses. If you have something teachable to share, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try to sell online courses. Thinkific lets you sell courses and achieve an additional income source through the sale of courses and affiliate marketing.
There’s no one way to use Thinkific to build your course. It is a versatile platform with numerous teachable applications for teachers and students alike. For example, you can use it to create quizzes, teach class materials, or develop learning communities. Frankly, you can use Thinkific however you like.
If you want to sell the course, the platform is incredible, too. Customers want to know that your site and platform are legitimate. They want to know that you have a basic plan andknow what you’re doing. If you sell your Thinkific courses through your site, it highlights a breadth of knowledge on your topic. It indicates a sense of confidence and know-how. Both would be nice for clients’ peace of mind.
Ideally, Thinkific is the only platform for small business owners. It promotes ease of use, and if you simply don’t have the budget to afford a professional association web designer, it’s perfect. The low cost is all the more true with the Thinkific free plan, which has no transaction fees.
However, no matter the size of your online course business, selling online courses can be an excellent way to boost traffic and authority. Thinkific offers tools for building courses and email marketing active campaigns so that you can upgrade your small business significantly. All it may take is the easy-to-use site builder. The learning platform is unique in this way and helps you increase the selling of online courses.
Thinkific Features
There are many things to like that set the platform apart from other online course platforms. For this Thinkific review, we explore each feature to give you the best representation of this easy-to-use online course platform.
A Wide Range of Customization Options
The Thinkific course builder is one of the most varied available by a significant margin. The platform allows you to customize your online course from top to bottom. However, don’t let this intimidate you. Most of the development is drag and drop, making it exceedingly user-friendly. Thinkific courses can be edited later on using the same drag-and-drop editor.
Thinkific account also ensures the creation of unlimited courses seamlessly. Creating courses is a breeze and you can brand them as you like, so they are identical to existing looks and website performance. You can also create quizzes for unlimited students on teachable knowledge and publish satisfaction surveys. Also, you can include students in discussion boards to encourage deeper engagement.
The platform also provides numerous teachable landing pages and course sales page templates. You don’t need to be a web design genius to create an eLearning industry for your students. Thinkific makes the entire process easier.
Your student engagement needs to stay high so that they can complete your course. Things like the discussion of courses and management systems will give them plenty to like. The above features and the ability to provide completion certificates, make it easy to ensure your students stay engaged.
If your participants like your courses, they will tell others about them. It could lead to more enrolled students in the future. A unification between selling courses and an effective learning management system is one of Thinkific’s most prominent strengths.
Creating Quizzes in Thinkific
Thinkific’s quizzing features are adequate for short, multiple-choice tests. With each quiz question you create, you can choose to have either one or numerous right responses. You can also choose to offer some advice on how the student can arrive at the right answer, in addition to explaining why a particular answer is accurate or erroneous. After a student has chosen and submitted an answer, this justification appears.
With the Pro or Enterprise package, you can make quizzes mandatory before students progress to the next course.
Brillium provides a more comprehensive set of reports and a wider variety of question types, such as matching and fill-in-the-blank. While most course designers won’t require all of this, it’s a fantastic choice for tough exams like those required for certification.
Building and Branding Your Website
You need a place for your mini-courses to “live,” and ideally that place is both attractive and user-friendly to your current and upcoming students.
Site Builder is a fundamental feature of the platform’s control panel. With the help of a simple user interface, you can design a beautiful landing page for the course site and add as many more pages as they require. Although users are unable to install their style sheets (CSS) from the Thinkific app store. They are given extensive autonomy in customizing logo aspects like color schemes and fonts and can add any images or media they desire.
Thinkific’s quizzing features are adequate for short, multiple-choice tests. With each quiz question you create, you can choose to have either one or numerous right responses. You can also choose to offer some advice on how the student can arrive at the right answer, in addition to explaining why a particular answer is accurate or erroneous. After a student has chosen and submitted an answer, this justification appears.
With the Pro or Enterprise package, you can make quizzes mandatory before students progress to the next course.
Brillium provides a more comprehensive set of reports and a wider variety of question types, such as matching and fill-in-the-blank. While most course designers won’t require all of this, it’s a fantastic choice for tough exams like those required for certification.
Building and Branding Your Website
You need a place for your courses to “live,” and ideally that place is both attractive and user-friendly to your current and upcoming students.
Site Builder is a fundamental feature of the platform’s control panel. The user can design a beautiful landing page for the course site and add as many more pages as they require. Although users are unable to install their style sheets (CSS), they are given extensive autonomy in customizing logo aspects like color schemes and fonts and can add any images or media they desire.
As of right now, Site Builder offers three distinct theme options, each with several different versions. Numerous standardized “parts,” or blocks of content, are available for use on any page and can be tailored to your needs, such as those relating to social proof. Furthermore, the “Text & media” part is completely customizable, allowing you to make anything you can imagine.
Unique features include:
- Custom URL
- SSL
- White labeling
- Text Changes
Some of the most significant limitations include:
- All themes are single columns, which limits layout options.
- There is no access to SEO preferences for pages;
- The user is unable to implement his CSS (cascading style sheets).
- Compared to WordPress, which has a large community of skilled contractors and a wide variety of plugins to choose from, Thinkific has neither.
A Unique Free Plan
It isn’t unheard of for a site builder to offer a free trial. However, Thinkific offers a much different free experience with a lot more to like.
Rather than a simple 2-week trial, Thinkific provides a full experience with no hidden transaction fees and no time limit.
Marketing and Selling
Thinkific’s core features were designed with online-specific course promotion and e-commerce in mind. All the courses can be sorted into different groups. You can also add a “Categories” section to any page, and the categories will show up in the All Courses component of your website.
Features to highlight in the “Manage Learning Content” section:
- Personalize the completion page for each course
- Develop course bundles that can be marketed as a single product
- With a Pro or Enterprise account, you can divide earnings proportionally among trainers for courses and course bundles.
- Course analytics helps retarget the particular audience
You also have some other options:
- Free
- One type of payment option
- Subscription / Membership
- Monthly Payments Option
- Coupons
- Sales Widgets
- Affiliates
Completion Certificates in Thinkific
Certificates can be issued with an Accredible integration that is available through Thinkific. You need the Pro or Enterprise package if you want to give out certificates for completed courses. Select “Completion certificates” from the course settings menu and then choose “Thinkific” from the “Certificate Template” drop-down menu to add a completion certificate. Limiting the certificate’s validity to a specific date range is similarly simple. Once you’re finished, save your work.
Certificates earned upon successful full course completion can be seen and downloaded in the Learner’s Account.
Managing and Supporting Students
Using a dedicated online course platform has several benefits, one of the most important of which is that it simplifies the process of managing and tracking your users as well as the data that they contribute, in addition to facilitating the delivery of your courses.
Managing and Organizing Learners
When a user creates an account on Thinkific, the company gets essential contact information such their name, address, and email. In addition, Thinkific has custom sign-up fields, so you can easily add fields to collect whatever special information you need from users.
You can also choose to organize people into different groups. Learners can be readily grouped according to a variety of characteristics such as time, date, registration, role, organization, and more. Because of this, you can monitor how well your products or services do with different demographics and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.
Communicating and Interacting with Learners
Thinkific also provides a variety of different channels like a student dashboard via which you can contact your students and through which they may provide feedback on the course they are taking. Under “Support Your Students,” you can decide to allow class discussion and then regulate your students’ participation.
Discussions can be added on a per-lesson or even per-course basis. At the Pro level, Thinkific now provides a Communities component in addition to the possibilities for holding discussions. This enables you to develop your on-branded communities, removing the need to direct learners to other platforms where they can interact.
The Thinkific Groups feature allows you to automatically add users to your communities on a site-wide, course- or bundle-by-bundle basis, and it also allows you to get premium features and membership sites based on Thinkific Groups. From a promotional perspective, having your students provide course evaluations is also a great idea.
With Thinkific’s Free Plan, It offers you the opportunity to:
- Create a course with their course builder.
- Enhance Thinkific branding
- Trial-run quizzes
- Different collect payment options when you sell courses
It’s the ideal review of the service, without ever spending a dollar.
The Thinkific free plan is unusual compared to many online course creators. You are free to review and modify your HTML and CSS via the free plan, too.
The user-friendly free trial with no transaction fees allows you to review what you may like from the paid plans. Moreover, the paid plan has a useful analytic feature for business growth.
Course Creation: Step-by-Step
Now to Review the main sell of Thinkific: the course building.
The platform prides itself on being user-friendly. Thinkific allows users of any skill level to build courses to suit their audience. The Thinkific course creator gives you everything you need to create the ideal learning platform (see also ‘Is Thinkific Safe? [What You Need To Know!]‘).
For this Thinkific review, we’ve broken down this process for you:
Step One: Select a Template
Using Thinkific, you can review and use numerous templates provided by its public API. The templates let you create anything from a landing page to a sales page, learning modules, and more.
The templates promote the overall ease of use feature of this service. Should you wish to start entirely from scratch, you can simply select the ‘blank’ option.
Step Two: Name Your Course and Build Chapters
Building your course starts with naming it and filling it with individually built ‘chapters.’ This stage breaks your course down into digestible chunks for your students. You can also add completion certificates to the end of each of these course chapters.
Note: If you have previously created course lessons, you are free to import your courses from your text document or video library into the multimedia course player.
Step Three: Give Your Chapters Descriptions and Links
The descriptions will give your students insight into the courses. Keep them brief but informative.
It’s also here that you can add teachable course links and resources for your students. If you want to add course quizzes for your students, simply go to ‘Add Lesson,’ and you should see a button labeled ‘quiz.’
Step Four: Finalize Your Online Course
To complete your course, click the ‘Settings’ tab and begin the finalizing process. The final step includes altering the URL to your course and uploading any final course multimedia.
Building a Thinkific course epitomizes ease of use. From the drag-and-drop free templates to the multimedia course import function, you are in control from the beginning. It’s easy to see why Thinkific remains one of the most popular ways to create and sell an online course.
Creating Online Courses
The platform offers a variety of pre-configured layouts that can be particularly useful for course creators seeking assistance with content organization. The templates address a variety of common scenarios that a user may consider when delivering an informative product. These are:
- Blank
- Mini-course
- Flagship Course
- Pre-sell
- Digital Download
- Membership Resource Library
- Webinar Replay
All of these are highly adaptable. The user can experiment with different approaches to the material by modifying the existing sections, removing them entirely, or adding new ones. Thinkific offers “smart coach course creation tips” to assist you in creating a course from start to finish. Put effort into making it the best, and you’ll be rewarded for it.
After clicking “New Course,” you’ll be able to choose a course format, give it a name, and save it. You can include “Chapters” to organize the material into all the lessons. The chapters can be filled with a variety of lessons.
- Video Lessons
- Quiz lessons
- Multimedia lessons
- Text lessons
- Survey lessons
- PDF lessons
- Audio lessons
- Downloads
- Presentation lessons
- Exam lessons
- Assignments
Many users of Edwize worry about the safety of the content they access online, thus the ability to copy and paste text from courses and the ability to download PDFs are both restricted by default.
Integrations
Because the creators of online course platforms, like Thinkific, are aware that they cannot be excellent at everything, integration is of utmost importance for these platforms. Integration is of the greatest priority for most Web platforms. As a result, it makes perfect sense to connect to other software that can perform tasks that their product cannot.
Thinkific integration has placed a primary emphasis on the integration of the following six major areas:
- e-commerce
- automation tools
- analytics
- e-mail marketing
- student success
- growth tools
Tracking and Reporting
The progress tracking feature of Thinkific enables you to zero in on a particular student and track their performance across a variety of dimensions for each of the courses in which they are enrolled.
For each course, you will see the following information:
- the percentage of the course that has been viewed
- the percentage of the course that has been completed
- the student’s name
- the student’s email address
- the date that the course was completed
- the date that the course started
- the date that the course was activated (date)
- Last sign-in (date)
- Company
In general, one of the primary areas in which the Thinkific system might be improved is the area of reporting, which applies to courses as well as quizzes and surveys.
Is Thinkific Legit?
With over 50,000 active businesses building courses, it’s safe to say Thinkific is definitely legit. From their website alone, their commitment to bringing superb customer service is evident.
Indeed, an entire section of their site development (Thinkific com) features customer service testimonies with full user profiles.
As a course business, the brand excels in personality. It also prioritizes engagement via social media followers, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. It’s hard to find a social media platform they don’t use. They even use
Is Thinkific Better Than Teachable as an Alternative?
You might like the platform’s features after reading this Thinkific review, but be curious about Thinkific alternatives.
One alternative that users sometimes like is Teachable. Review after review pits each course platform against the other, but which one is superior?
Teachable Vs Thinkific, who wins?
In our humble opinion, Thinkific is the superior of the online course platforms. It’s not only because Teachable has recently done away with its free plan (though that doesn’t help). It’s also not as user-friendly.
Thinkific makes it easy to get started on your courses, with or without a transaction fee. It succeeds all around, providing an effective eLearning industry.
FAQs
Is Thinkific Mobile Friendly?
Yes. Any online course made through Thinkific works on multiple devices, including tablets and mobile.
Does Thinkific Offer Customer Support?
Yes. The platform’s customer support team is available through any social media site where they have a profile. They also have a customer support team on their official site (Thinkific com).
Who Owns a Course Created Through Thinkific?
You do! You receive a custom domain for any course Thinkific helps build. You are free to use it on your site.
Using Non-English Languages
More than 30 different languages are now supported by Thinkific after the most recent inclusion of Latvian. You can also mention that students are free to select the language version of the site that they wish to view according to their preferences.
Remember that the content that you have entered into the site will not be altered immediately when you select a different language from the drop-down menu. The only text that is modified is the language that belongs to Thinkific’s basic headings, labels, and navigation. You will need to enter the contents of your site in the language you want it to display in if you want any section of it, including the data of your courses, to be displayed in a language other than English.
Thinkific Pricing Options
🚨 Update September 2022: Thinkific has announced a new set of pricing plans called Start, Grow, and Expand. They have replaced the previous Thiific plans previous plans.
The Thikific Free plan also has a new look, packed with more features than ever before.
There is a free plan available on Thinkific that includes access to one course and one community with up to tens of thousands of people. The thinkific cost of the monthly payment option for a premium plan is $399, and the lowest annual price for an Expand license is $299.
The Grow plan, at $199 per month ($149 if paid yearly), provides all of the capabilities that most course developers will ever need, while the Start plan, at $99 per month ($74 if paid annually), gives a significant boost in functionality. Also, remember that there are thinkific charge transaction fees associated with any Thinkific paid plan.
There are four Thinkific pricing options, with an additional plus package:
The Free Plan
$0 Per Month
This scheme allows you to use and review all the core features with no transaction fee. It includes up to one course to help you get started.
START PLAN
$74 Per Month
The start option has all the core features alongside new course features, including a head start into email marketing for your students. You also have more control over learning management with the basic plan. The basic plan is ideal for small businesses. The start plan has more options in creating a courses section.
GROW Plan – Most popular
$149 Per Month
The grow plan features everything from the starter plan and allows for five learning management admins. The grow plan also allows you to create a hidden course or private course and have access to advanced course customization.
The eLearning management system is better overall, allowing for a more nuanced review of any course Thinkific helps you create.
EXPAND Plan
$374 Per Month
This plan features everything you need to plan your courses via an easy-to-use course platform. It includes all previous course features and the Grow package, the use of which is for high-flying businesses that want to provide in-depth courses for their students. This package is not for the casual course builder.
A unique feature of the premier plan is white labeling for emails. Emails sent to your students with white labeling go out from the official Thinkific server, adding an extra level of professionalism.
➡️ Thinkific Coupon – Is Thinkific Worth It?
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Easy-to-use site builder
- Drag-and-drop function
- Free templates
- Connects with WordPress
- Extensive features with the free plan
- Ideal for small businesses and educators
- Many features for online student learning
- Various options for selling and buying online courses
- Marketing and white-label options are available
- Mobile-friendly
Cons
- Not a “full service” platform – it won’t design your course for you
- Requires effort – the marketing doesn’t happen on its own
What’s Missing (So Far)?
If you’ve been involved in online education for more than a decade you’ll appreciate the incredible value that Thinkific provides. Given this, it’s difficult to claim that Thinkific is “missing” anything significant. However, there are still open questions that will prevent certain course makers from using it.
- There is no multitenancy option
- No ability to accrue continuing education credits
- There is no SCORM or xAPI/TinCan support
Final Thoughts
In this review, we’ve walked you through the course builder. From its unique payment plans to its extensive management systems, Thinkific is an easy-to-use platform. It can provide businesses with teachable course content embedded into their very own site.
When it comes to businesses, Thinkific has a significant amount of momentum behind it. This is not a side issue by any means. There are similar competitive offerings in the already crowded and noisy market for online course platforms. Lots of today’s platforms won’t be around tomorrow, but this one seems to be expanding and getting better with each passing day.
