Thinkific is one of the best recommendations for solo edupreneurs and small enterprises looking to sell online courses. It’s also a great choice for larger companies that don’t have complicated requirements for handling continuous education or certification.

Even with the free plan, the variety of features is excellent, and it only gets better with the more sophisticated options. 

Thinkific has done an outstanding job of recognizing the needs of course vendors, creating tools to satisfy those needs, and making the system incredibly user-friendly.

They’ve also kept the student in mind throughout the process. Moreover, Thinkific has explicitly focused on what it takes to enable great e-learning experiences – that is, an experience that has an impact and keeps your consumers coming back for more.

Let’s get into the details of the Thinkific experience now.

Who can use Thinkific?

Thinkific is a course development platform that can be used by anybody looking to launch an online tutoring business.

Thinkific’s most frequent users include:

• Platforms for digital marketing (Hootsuite)
• Universities and colleges
• Online instructors
• Entrepreneurs
• Business advisors

Thinkific allows you to create courses with little technical skills, advertise online courses using powerful marketing tools, and track student progress.

Course Builder Module

Thinkific receives full scores for its material variety, ability to build multiple membership levels, bespoke course look, and drip content capabilities as a platform for producing online courses.

Most instructors find it difficult to keep online courses engaging.

Thinkific’s ‘Bulk Importer’ allows content creators to migrate or upload several content pieces from other platforms or existing material.

Any courses you sell must be “live” somewhere on the world wide web, and that somewhere should ideally be appealing and user-friendly for your current and prospective students. Thinkific has shown to be up to the task since the launch of its Site Builder features launch.

You may build up a beautiful home page for your course site and construct as many custom pages as you need using Site Builder, which is just part of the platform’s admin interface (e.g., to provide information about your company, the instructor (which is you) and other services). While you don’t have complete flexibility – for instance, you can’t install your CSS (style sheets) – you have a lot of power over branding components like colors and font styles, and you can upload almost any form of picture or media.

Site Builder presently has three themes to pick from, each with many variants. (According to the organization, more themes will be added in the future.) There are also a variety of pre-built “sections” that you can insert and modify on any page to include things like social proof (e.g. “as seen on” logos or customer quotes), calls to action, a countdown timer, and pricing options – basically, everything you need to run a successful course or membership site. There’s also a blank slate “Text & media” area where you can create anything.

Thinkific Features

• Cohorts & Live Lessons: Provide the learning experience your students desire, whether live, on-demand or mixed.
• Certificates & Assessments: Assignments, engagement surveys, quizzes, tests, and awards are available.
• Progress Monitoring: Comprehensive reports to track students’ development and awards to recognize their achievements!
• Memberships and Communities: Engage students with Communities and create constant revenue with Memberships.
• Website builder with drag-and-drop functionality: Create a unique storefront or school to highlight the value of your courses.
• Inclusive of eCommerce: It’s simple to start selling with eCommerce since there are no transaction fees, and you may take payments from over 100 countries.
• Product versatility: Sell individual courses, packages, digital downloads, or subscriptions based on your expertise.
• Sell and market: Coupons, monthly payments, and subscriptions can all be used to customize prices.
• Themes for websites: Beautiful and simple-to-use website themes give you a professional appearance without the added expense.
• Customizations: Create a brand that is visually appealing and works well with many styles and adjustments.
• Create your web address: You can replace the Thinkific address with your branding according to your professional domain. 
• Connect your devices: If you have your own CRM, email list, or website, the Thinkific team can help you integrate with your other tools.
• Industry-leading assistance: Get immediate assistance from a team of award-winning and highly trained professionals.
• Thinkific University: Take your studies to the next level with webinars and premium courses from industry leaders.
• A Professional Community: With a community of over 50,000-course authors, you can share strategies, inspiration, and ideas.
• Help Center for Everyone: Thousands of high-quality online courses on developing, marketing, and selling are available.
• Trusted by the industry leaders: Stress-tested by leaders such as Hootsuite, HBO, Shopify, and others.
• Automation & Open API: Because of our extensive API and design, you can use whichever tool you like.
• Cloud Hosting with Security: You can use it securely with 24/7 monitoring and dependable cloud hosting.
• Enterprise-ready: Thinkific Plus comes with white-glove support, numerous websites, improved security, and other features.
• Course Customization Appearance: Individual courses can have personalized graphics and descriptions uploaded by Thinkific instructors.

Thinkific’s premium plans provide more customization options. You may add lesson labels (the type of class), alter the font and color of your website, and add a course player logo.

These white-labeling solutions let you showcase your brand, whether you’re a business coach or influencer.

Thinkific Pricing: Levels of Membership

As an instructor, giving online course access must be accompanied by a sound income plan. Educators may establish several membership tiers using Thinkific.

The Thinkific Plans have Monthly and Yearly Packages:

Monthly packages

• For Test-Driving = $0
• Basic = $49
• Pro (Most Popular) = $99
• Premier = $499

Yearly packages

• For Test-Driving = $0
• Basic = $39
• Pro (Most Popular) = $79
• Premier = $399

You’ll need access to Thinkific’s Pro plan to use these membership choices.

The plan you purchase will also depend on the integrations you wish to have. So far, Thinkific has focused on the six most essential integrations – Growth Tools, Student Success, E-mail Marketing, Analytics, Automation Tools, and eCommerce. 

Using Thinkific as the primary website for the business

The answer is definitely “yes” for edupreneurs who are just getting started and don’t yet have an online presence. Thinkific is a terrific way to cross something off your “to-do” list (i.e., “find out how to get a nice website up and running”) so you can focus on producing and launching your courses. You may worry about creating a more advanced website later.

On the other hand, Site Builder is fantastic for what it provides, and it may help you construct a terrific course site to go along with your main site.

Completion Certificates

For certificate issuing, Thinkific has an interface with Accredible. Accredible is an online platform for producing and maintaining various forms of credentials. Thinkific decided to leverage best-of-breed software in a single area, credentialing, rather than attempting to create these capabilities in-house.

A Pro or Enterprise package is required to issue certificates for your courses. Although some course makers may object to paying more for this functionality, the Accredible integration is worthwhile. If you’re serious enough about what you’re teaching to issue a certificate, a Pro-level license is more reasonable than a standard license.

Marketing and Selling on Thinkific

Platforms like Thinkific, unlike academic and corporate learning management systems, are designed particularly for marketing and selling online education. 

Many of them may be found in the administration panel’s “Market and Sell” area, but you’ll also discover some of the most helpful marketing and selling tools in several other sections. Essentially, the Thinkific platform is built to promote and sell online courses.

In the “Manage Learning Content” section, there are a few extra marketing and selling tools:

• You may choose whether every piece of content you add to a course will be included in the course’s free trial. The presence of free trial content is noted on the course’s sales page. Students can sign up for free, but any content that isn’t listed as free will need payment. This is a great selling point!
• Each course’s completion page may be customized, and you can use it to promote related courses. (This is a great practice.)
• You can simply construct bundles of courses. This option will help you to sell a range of courses as a single product using any of Thinkific’s premium plans. 
• With a Pro or Enterprise account, you may split income for courses and packages of courses among teachers on a percentage basis. So, if you’re selling courses with numerous teachers, you’ll need to figure out how much money each one gets. While Thinkific keeps track of the split, real payments are processed elsewhere, such as through PayPal.

Takeaway

Thinkific is a rapidly growing business than Thinkific Alternatives. This is not a minor point. The online course platform industry, such as Thinkific, is now crowded and loud. You can bet that many platforms available now will be gone tomorrow. Thinkific recently launched the Thinkific App Store, a new integration method. Thinkific is developing and spending to enhance its platform. It obtained a $22 million round of funding in 2020.

Be sure to check out our list for the best Thinkific Alternatives as well!