17 years helping Israeli businesses
choose better software

What Is Thinkific?

Thinkific: The ultimate all-in-one online course platform, designed to empower any type of creator - from consultants and experts to authors and speakers. Effortlessly create and deliver captivating courses on your personalized, branded site. Whether your aim is to educate customers, monetize your knowledge, or expand your brand's reach, Thinkific simplifies your journey. With its intuitive tools and user-friendly interface, crafting and selling courses becomes a seamless experience.

A distinct highlight is the platform's strong focus on community engagement, offering dedicated spaces and interactive notifications to foster vibrant learner communities.

Join over 800,000 creator educators, including trainers, teachers, coaches, professional associations, and businesses, who have all thrived on Thinkific. Begin your journey today and transform your expertise into engaging, profitable online courses with Thinkific.

Who Uses Thinkific?

Everyone from small businesses, creatives, consultants, coaches, authors, speakers, and trainers to professional associations, larger companies and universities use Thinkific today.

Thinkific Software - Your website and courses can be viewed on any device and with any browser.
Thinkific Software - Thinkific's drag and drop course builder makes it easy to create engaging courses.
Thinkific Software - You can build an entire product, from content, to landing pages, to checkout in the Thinkific course builder.
Thinkific Software - Thinkific Advanced Reporting gives you deeper insights on your business so you can make smart decisions quickly. You can analyze everything from which course is bringing in the most revenue, transactions from new students versus existing students and more

Not sure about Thinkific? Compare with a popular alternative

Thinkific

Thinkific

4.4 (184)
US$49.00
month
Free version
Free trial
86
30
4.3 (184)
4.2 (184)
4.2 (184)
VS.
Starting Price
Pricing Options
Features
Integrations
Ease of Use
Value for Money
Customer Service
US$29.00
month
Free version
Free trial
170
31
4.5 (134)
4.4 (134)
4.7 (134)
Green rating bars show the winning product based on the average rating and number of reviews.

Other great alternatives to Thinkific

LearnWorlds
Top rated features
Assessment Management
Learning Paths/Tracks
Reporting/Analytics
Udutu Guru LMS
Top rated features
No features have been rated by reviewers for this product.
SmarterU LMS
Top rated features
Course Management
Wisetail LMS
Top rated features
Course Tracking
Learning Management
Training Management
iSpring Suite
Top rated features
Course Publishing
Interactive Learning
Tests/Assessments
Systeme.io
Top rated features
Email Marketing Software
Landing Pages/Web Forms
Marketing Automation Software
LearnDash
Top rated features
Course Tracking
Learner Portal
Tests/Assessments
WebinarNinja
Top rated features
Alerts/Notifications
Event Management Software
Multi hosts
Moodle
Top rated features
Course Management
Learning Management
Student Portal

Reviews of Thinkific

Average score

Overall
4.4
Ease of Use
4.3
Customer Service
4.2
Features
4.2
Value for Money
4.2

Reviews by company size (employees)

  • <50
  • 51-200
  • 201-1,000
  • >1,001
Michelle
Michelle
Founder in US
Verified LinkedIn User
Marketing & Advertising, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 2+ years
Reviewer Source

Outstanding course-hosting platform that makes your life easy

5.0 4 years ago

Comments: 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.

Yadah
Educator in Ireland
E-Learning, Self Employed
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Beautiful Course Platform for Online Education

5.0 4 years ago

Comments: 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.

Mitch
Founder in Australia
E-Learning, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Stick with wordpress

2.0 12 months ago

Comments: 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.

Lucas
Owner in US
Management Consulting, 2–10 Employees
Used the Software for: 6-12 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Thinkific Rocks!

5.0 4 years ago

Comments: 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

Verified Reviewer
Verified LinkedIn User
Information Technology & Services, 11–50 Employees
Used the Software for: 1-5 months
Reviewer Source

Alternatives Considered:

Fills a gap in this space with enthusiasm!

5.0 5 years ago

Comments: Blackboard Course sites, Moodle, and Instructure Canvas are great products, but you have to invest in additional solutions to collect payments, etc. for selling the online courses. Thinkific does all this in 1 system with more options for site design than the big education players do. Some of the features could be more well-thought-out, but for a non-LMS company, it is incredibly easy to set up and allows you to design instructional sound materials.

Pros:

I liked that you could design the access portal, the courses, and the payment methods all in 1 interface without any needs for additional products. I particularly enjoy how easy it is to set the courses up if you have your curriculum designed.

Cons:

I wish there was an option to be able to have access to all the course features without fees. We are a startup and just are not in a position to charge for courses yet, meaning this would be a huge investment for us that we are not willing to make. It would be great if you could get a 6month burn-in period to test and market before going live.