When you’re trying to decide which online learning platform to use there’s a chance you’ll be presented with a variety of suggestions. The Thinkific platform is an outstanding choice due to its many useful features.
There are a variety of factors to look out for when using an online course platform and Thinkific offers them all. Continue reading through the Thinkific review below to discover more about its unique advantages and features.
Overview of Thinkific Review Thinkific Badges
Thinkific is among the more well-known options for selling and creating online courses. In addition to having an easy-to-use design, this platform comes with ready-made templates that you can build your personal website.
With just a few clicks, you’ll get to create and sell online courses without any prior experience. Drag and drop functionality of the website makes it easy to get started.
Online course creators are interested in the advanced quiz elements for each course you create. These can make your lessons more enticing to learn by the students.
It is an online builder of course s. also allows you to upload various types of files to enrich Your Thinkific course.
As with other online course platforms, Thinkific offers email marketing tools and third-party app integration. You can send out emails either via Thinkific itself or via external apps like MailChimp, Zapier, etc.
Read the Thinkific review to find out more about this popular online course platform.
Pros
- Easy-to-use drag & drop editor
- Efficient course site builder
- Pre-made templates
- Different payment options
- Marketing and sales features
- Student management options
- Student feedback capabilities
- Adequate customer support
- Lifetime access to the free plan
- No transaction fees or hidden charges
Cons
- Limited quizzing features
- The absence of tools for marketing via email
- Live chat is not available.
How do you define Thinkific?
Thinkific is an online course platform that is cloud-based. This means that everything you create there is automatically saved online. This makes course creation more efficient and convenient.
Furthermore it functions as an Learning Management System (LMS), it provides many custom options for course creators. You can create an easy course and then upload different materials to supplement your lessons.
If you’re one of those people who would prefer writing your course offline prior to uploading it to the internet, Thinkific is just right for you. You can do that and then upload the course later to the internet.
Thinkific is also the host for all of the websites you build and can upload whatever content you’d like.
You can create an entirely new online course site even without any design expertise and. You won’t have to endure an arduous learning curve when you use Thinkific, that’s for sure.
There are a variety of distribution and marketing options which will help speed up the sales process of your Thinkific course. There’s an online marketplace community that you can market your courses and communicate with other course creators.
Additionally, Thinkific is also a good option for people who already have their own website but would like to improve their marketing efforts and attract more students. You can connect third-party sites to Thinkific for a greater reach audience.
The benefits and features of Thinkific
In this Thinkific review we review the top features and benefits that help Thinkific shine.
Drag and Drop Editor
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The way that your courses appear on your website will significantly influence conversion rates. This is the reason we love that Thinkific offers a drag and drop editor. It helps you organize your website and digital products.
You can rearrange the courses and lessons the way you want. There is no need to learn complicated code or methods. Simply select the object you’re looking for and drag it where you would like it to appear.
A majority of the crucial elements that make your site look more professional is covered by Thinkific’s editor. From the logos, colors, as well as fonts to find everything you require from the site.
However, if you want to go that extra mile to make your site you can still choose to input CSS and HTML code into Thinkific. It’s up to you decide.
Plus, you can also make use of the drag and drop feature to upload additional material to your classes. Nearly every type of media file can be uploaded through the editors uploader. You can upload the audio of your course, as well as quizzes and PDFs to enhance your course.
Even the quiz types you design are easily altered with the help of the editor. Just choose which assessment type you wish to use for your instruction and drag it to the appropriate place. You can pick from type forms, surveys, and multiple-choice types as well as many more.
Course Site Builder
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Thinkific goes beyond just its drag and drop editor. Its site builder for the course is effective for getting everything set up and in place.
As we mentioned earlier, Thinkific does its own web hosting. This means that you won’t need to worry about uploading limits. Your online storage capacity is unlimited when you use Thinkific.
If you’re considering domains, Thinkific lets you choose a unique URL that you can use in conjunction with its subdomain. Your URL will look like this: .thinkific.com
So, your website is more memorable and easy for students to recall.
If you prefer to skip your Thinkific subdomain, there’s the option of registering an individual domain to your website. It’s just a matter of paying slightly more to get it.
Templates Pre-Made
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With regard to the course site builder, Thinkific has a slew of pre-designed layout and course templates you can choose from. It saves you from needing to create your site totally from scratch.
The platform gives you templates that are based on the type of Thinkific course you’re creating. For instance, if you’re creating an introduction course, you can choose the mini-course template. For assessments and culmination it is possible to pick a review template.
In terms of template layouts and themes There are a bunch that you can select from. After you’ve selected one that is suitable for your needs, Thinkific offers settings to customize the colors, fonts and design of the elements of the template.
Again, there is absolutely no need to input complicated codes or text. You simply have to select what you would like to put on your website and drag it onto the layout.
But yes, if you want to continue using HTML and CSS it’s still an option.
You may also rearrange and reorganize the elements of your site periodically. The different sections can be arranged in order of priority so that students know what lesson they should be focusing on.
Payment Options
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As for payment, Thinkific offers options to integrate Stripe and PayPal to your site. With these payment processors from third parties, you can easily access your earnings as quickly as 1 to 2 days.
This is a sharp contrast with other online courses with a payment schedule that is 30-day intervals. With Thinkific, you can withdraw more quickly.
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For your students they have the option of choosing between an one-time payment plan or an installment subscription plan. And you can offer bundles, discounts, and coupons along with whichever payment option they pick.
Just note that for the one-time payment plan, your subscribers will pay one-time transaction fees as well. Same applies to the installment plan, with the exception that the transaction fee will be divided over the installment period.
Marketing and Sales Features
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Beyond being an online course creator, Thinkific is also effective in promoting online courses. As already mentioned, it comes with features that allow you to create and market courses in just a few clicks.
After you have published your course, you may immediately make it available for sale by using Market and Sell. Market and Sell choice on the menu on your Dashboard.
You can customize your website to optimize the conversion rate of your clients. You can change the way that your checkout and sign up pages look to users. So, they’ll be more encouraged to sign up for the online course.
You can also improve how your courses are presented on your website. They can be more attractive by separating them into categories that the people can easily browse.
As we mentioned earlier, you can opt to bundle your courses with discounts coupons and freebies. This way, your students will be enticed to sign up more often for your program.
A sales widget may be made using Thinkific. It’s basically a button that you can add to other third-party sites that will link straight to your course platform. You can personalize them with a certain color scheme and logo to ensure that they are more in line with your brand too.
Thinkific can also allow you to run an affiliate program to help you reach more audiences. Right on the site, you can create affiliate links that you’ll transmit to the affiliates you have. They’ll use these links in order to bring their followers to your platform and enroll in a class.
And once the affiliate program is running you’ll be able to view its progress on the Thinkific site. You’ll have the ability to monitor sales, revenue, and other commissions.
Finally, you can choose to add other programs to Thinkific. If you’re looking into email marketing campaigns, then Aweber is a good tool to sync to your Thinkific account.
Student Management
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A learning management system can not be effective if it doesn’t cover every aspect of online teaching. And that includes keeping the track of students’ progress.
Thinkific provides a simple student management system. With it, you can quickly access the contact information of your students as well as basic information.
You can also customize the sign-up sheet for your subscribers to ask for specific details. The template by Thinkific requires names emails, names, along with contact number. If you’re seeking more particular details, just change your settings and add an extra field to the form to sign up.
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After you’ve got your subscribers pooled, you can classify them based on the courses they have signed up for. That way, you can keep track of them for each course simpler.
With the Premier and Pro plans, you are able to look up a particular user based on his/her registration date, the date of their enrollment, subscribed courses as well as job-type. There are additional categories available when you explore the page.
Student Feedback
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Thinkific prioritizes not just the course creators, but also students. So, feedback from students is highly encouraged when you’re enrolled in the course.
An open discussion between the students and the instructors will greatly decrease the learning curve with the lessons.
There is a discussion section on Thinkific wherein students can post questions that they have about their online courses. After that, course instructors can reply and provide clarification.
Students can also choose to rate and review the courses they’ve completed. The ratings will reflect the quality of the instructor online as well. This way, course instructors can demonstrate their authority on Thinkific.
These reviews can also assist other students determine which course is suitable for them. It decreases the chances of a student leaving within the middle of an entire class all of a sudden.
If course creators are worried the reviews could affect them negatively but they don’t have to. They’re the ones who’ll get to decide whether they’d like reviews published or not. Thinkific will never publish reviews without permission.
A good method to keep students engaged is to provide them with regular updates. Thinkific lets course instructors send push notifications to their students when they update their materials or lessons via the website.
Customer Support
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In addition, as one would expect from learning management systems, Thinkific does quite a great job with its customer service.
Before you even sign up, you can access case studies and article guides on the official website. There are also easily accessible product demos and video tutorials to browse through.
And once you’re already subscribed You can log into Thinkific’s Help Center. You’ll find a wealth of resources that will assist you in learning how to market online courses.
Thinkific includes guides, articles and instructional videos that guide you through the interface. Additionally, as I previously mentioned, there are user discussions wherein you can express your worries. Instructors and other users can respond to help you out.
If you have more serious problems You can submit a ticket to ask for assistance from the customer service team. If you’re on an Enterprise plan, or higher you’ll receive priority answers.
The only problem is that Thinkific does not have an option to chat live, however. It’s just a matter of waiting long enough for a response from the company.
How Does Thinkific Works
As with any other course platform review This Thinkific review will teach you how to start using Thinkific. All you have to do is follow these simple steps.
Step 1: Create an account
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It’s the first thing to do is register and then create an account on Thinkific account. You’ll be automatically subscribed to the trial trial that is free after registration.
Step 2: Personalize Your Course Player
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Once you have a login, you can begin customizing your player. You can use a specific color scheme that corresponds with your company’s logo and the theme.
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The course player is the tool your customers will be using to access your course’s content. Videos, audio files, and quizzes will all be accessible through this player.
Step 3: Design Your Course
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After that, you can design your online course. Utilizing the Course Builder tool, you can start a new course by adding lessons, modules and other documents to it.
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The content of the course can be divided into sections and categories. You can also give your online courses customized labels to help them be easier to find.
Step 4: Personalize Your Website
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When your content is ready, you can finish the overall look of your site. With Thinkific you can are able to personalize each landing page for every course you offer.
This Thinkific Site Builder lets you choose a color scheme as well as a theme for your home page. This is where all your courses will be put up. Students will be able to look through it and decide which one interests them from there.
You can also personalize the landing pages for each course. It’s recommended to create an entirely different design for each course to make them easy to differentiate but still fit in with the overall brand.
Step 5: Name Your Website
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What you have to do after material, courses player, and customization are done is to name your site. Be sure your name is memorable, but still appropriate to your business.
Step 6: Make Your Course
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And lastly, when everything is all set, you can publish the course. To publish, you simply need to decide on a price and provide specific payment information.
A card that is referred to as a course is required to be developed. The course card will be the one that appears on your students’ dashboards. If they view it they’ll get a quick overview of your online course and content.
A great course card can prove invaluable when selling courses on Thinkific.
What needs to be improved on in Thinkific
While there’s plenty to like about Thinkific, it isn’t without a few imperfections. For this Thinkific review, we’ve listed below what we believe can be improved.
Limited Quizzing Features
While we think that Thinkific does a good job of creating courses and uploading content but we feel that quiz features could still be improved.
The assessment template available on Thinkific is fairly basic. Although it’s sufficient to gain an idea of what your students know, it isn’t enough for asking more complex questions.
But if you’re satisfied with short check-up type quizzes at the end of every course, then that’s exactly what Thinkific can offer you. If your questions require longer and more precise outputs You might want to look at a different platform.
Insufficient Email Marketing Tools
As previously mentioned, Thinkific can be integrated with third-party software and include tools for marketing via email. However, it doesn’t provide email marketing tools on its own.
While there are many third-party tools that work, it still would be great to have Thinkific already had this on its own. It would have accelerated the process.
No Live Chat Support
And even though we think that the response from customer service is swift, it isn’t enough to make up for lack of a live chat feature.
Users who have more urgent issues will not be able to have them resolved quickly. They’ll need to sit and wait for the response particularly if they’re not paying for the paid plans.
Thinkific Pricing
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Thinkific offers three paid plans that you can sign up to. After signing up, you’ll first be able to sign up for the free plan with no fee for transactions or other hidden charges.
Thinkific Free
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Thinkific’s free plan is unique as, unlike the plans of rivals, it doesn’t expire. You can avail of the free plan the duration you wish to continue using Thinkific. Thinkific Badges
In addition to being completely free, it does not contain any hidden costs or transaction fees, even when you sell courses. It’s ideal for course creators who want to cut down on costs or small business owners that are just beginning their journey.
With the Thinkific FREE plan, users can create three courses that you can customize with your own branding. It is possible to enhance your courses with quizzes and other tools in addition.
You are able to enroll any quantity of pupils, automate the process of signing up, and then also track their progression. Surveys can also be sent to them so that you can assess how they feel about the courses they’re taking. Thinkific Badges
Thinkific’s free plans also allow 1 authorized site administrator as well as multiple instructor profiles and 24 hours access to your student data. You can even monitor conversion rates and click rates of your learners.
The free plan allows search engine optimization for your content. This way, your courses are more easily found by your customers. You may also add third-party applications and websites to your own site to enhance user experience.
Thinkific Basic
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Thinkific Basic costs $49 per month. However, if you decide for a payment plan that is annual, it will cost you $39 per month.
With it, you get all the same features that the free plan provides, as well as added benefits that are premium. You can first create unlimited courses. Selling courses will be much easier. Thinkific Badges
One more thing that you don’t get on your free subscription is the option to drip your content, mail out coupons, and accessing analytics.
To simplify into two parts, drip content is to provide information to your students at a set and gradual intervals. Second, you can send out coupons for discounts and other freebies for students who may need a boost in incentive to remain connected. Thirdly, the analytics that you are able to access include affiliate reporting and marketing conversion rates.
And with this plan it is easy to integrate third-party tools you want to use. This includes Zapier, Aweber, and MailChimp as well as others.
Additionally, you can design a custom domain to your website with the basic plan. No need to use the Thinkific domain to host your website’s URL any longer.
Thinkific Pro
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Thinkific Pro costs $99 per month, but if you are annual billing, it’s $79 each month.
This plan have the same benefits that you get with the Free Basic and Basic plans. The only difference is that you get greater options for setting up and benefits.
Thinkific’s Pro plan lets you manage 2 sites and 5 course admin accounts. There will also be advanced pricing options for courses and editing HTML/CSS codes. Thinkific Badges
You’ll have the ability to design individual courses only accessible to a certain number of users can access as well. Plus, you can offer subscription bundles and freebies for your subscribers.
Course creators also have access to the more sophisticated quiz, assignment and assessment features.
Growth Package
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And with The Pro plan, there’s a feature called a Growth Package that you can avail of. The best part is that once you’ve got more than 100 users subscribed to your plan, Thinkific will automatically charge additional fees over the monthly fee of $99.
However, don’t worry because the price grants you access to additional features. You can send out large quantities of emails, use third-party software, and organize users based on different parameters.
Thinkific Premier
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The Thinkific Premier is the least expensive plan. It costs $499 per month but when it’s billed annually, it will cost $399 per month. Thinkific Badges
If you’re a subscriber with this program, you’ll get access to the same features that are available in the Free, Basic, and Pro plans. What gives it its edge and the higher price is the fact that it’s targeted at larger companies that have more members.
The Thinkific Premier plan lets you have five site admin accounts and 50 course admin accounts. It also allows for something called a Single Sign-On (SSO). This is useful if you have a lot of users who need access to the same website.
Also, this plan includes an onboarding package which is an onboarding call lasting 30 minutes along with a launch preparedness review and online training manual.
You’ll also have an access Growth package at a lower fee. There’ll be a flat fee that you will only need to pay.
Thinkific Reviews
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Reviewers and users of Thinkific particularly appreciate how economical it is. Even when using the free plan, you will have access to helpful features. There aren’t any fees hidden, so you don’t spend more than you originally planned to.
Others also liked the white-labeling function of Thinkific. It allows you to enhance your brand’s image even if you’re an individual business.
In the end, educators are enthralled working with Thinkific because it’s great for learners. The interface is easy to navigate and explore.
“I liked that this had an option to upload documents within the discussion. Then I’m glad I choose this particular option as others require a % of income AND it takes longer to wait to receive money. There are no transaction fees!” -Anonymous
“I liked that you could create your access platform, the course, and the payment methods in one interface without having to purchase additional software. I especially like how simple setting up up the courses if you’ve had your curriculum designed and white-labeling is enabled.” – Anonymous
“Thinkific lets you begin creating courses for free and will keep them for free for the rest of your life. Really, this is an excellent way to get started with course development without spending a dime.” -Anonymous
“Thinkific made it easy to develop and run our online course for financial advisors. The support team at Thinkific was always quick to respond and helped us learn the ropes. I also love the fact the possibility of white-labeling and use an individual domain.” – Anonymous
“Classes were more fun as well as entertaining and easy especially for our more advanced learners. Teachers enjoyed using it to create their classes and to share their content.” -Anonymous
Alternatives to Thinkific
In case this Thinkific review hasn’t convinced you of its potential as an online course platform, then check out the following alternatives:
Kajabi
Kajabi is one of the first online course platforms that will probably get your attention once you begin asking questions. It’s an all-in-one platform which lets you design and sell your courses online. Thinkific is similar to Kajabi in that sense.
When you sign up with Kajabi, you’ll be able to quickly create a course and add content. The platform offers built-in templates and themes you can make use of to personalize your site right from the beginning. The editor on your site lets you add multiple sections and sales pages to your courses. Thinkific Badges
In terms of quiz features It is a step ahead over Thinkific because it has more advanced settings. You can create more customized quizzes and assessment types. In addition, you can hold videos and webinars to provide better clarity in teaching.
Many teachers particularly like the idea of rewarding their pupils with certificates for each successful course. They can also opt to send content out to their subscribers, just like Thinkific.
Another difference Kajabi differs from Thinkific is that it offers more effective marketing tools. While Thinkific lets you easily market on-line courses but it doesn’t allow you to create an online sales funnel that could make your process more efficient.
Kajabi also offers email marketing tools as well as automated email, in contrast to Thinkific. You don’t need to install with a third-party program to send email sequences and broadcasts to your clients.
Do note that Kajabi is costlier than Thinkific.
Read: Review of Kajabi The All-in-One online course platform
Teachable
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Following Kajabi, Teachable is Thinkific’s most similar competitor. This is because they share a lot of similarities as online courses platforms.
Teachable’s interface is easy to use and includes useful features that will aid you in creating your content. There are themes pre-designed that you can utilize to make your website appear attractive even if you don’t have any previous experience in web design.
Like Thinkific, instructors can choose to distribute the content they share to their subscribers.
What is what sets Teachable apart from Thinkific is its quiz-taking options. Instead of having basic templates, Teachable lets you customize your tests and quizzes.
And like Kajabi You can also create webinars and videos in order to boost engagement with your subscribers. You can also include a sales page to your online course for better conversion rates.
One last thing that we like about Teachable is that you can also offer your subscribers certificates for every course they take. In contrast to Thinkific, Teachable has email marketing tools you can use to send bulk email to our subscribers.
Please read: Teachable Review – Unlimited Course Creation Features
READ: Kajabi vs. Teachable
Final Review and Conclusion on Thinkific Review
Thinkific Badges
Thinkific has a variety of advantages that justify an annual subscription. One of them is that it’s easy to use. You can create a unique online course and then sell it, even if an aspiring seller.
The software also includes pre-designed templates and layouts to make it easier to set up your website. You don’t need to input complex CSS or HTML code to have an attractive and professional looking website.
If you select any of these paid options, you will have access to more advanced features that will enhance your branding. You can forego your Thinkific subdomain and use Advanced users will set up their own domain name with hosting and create the majority of the pages of their website on the domain’s own address.
You can also integrate third-party applications to Thinkific, especially as it doesn’t have its own tools for marketing via email.
Students are also able to interact with their instructors via online discussion on Thinkific. They can conveniently seek assistance with lessons or post questions about their classes. The teachers will be able to respond to the questions promptly.
Support for customers isn’t bad also. Prioritization of responses is given when you’re a subscriber to one of the other paid plans. But just remember that this plan doesn’t have a live chat function.
Overall though, our verdict for this Thinkific Review is it’s worth giving it a test. Especially if you’re a novice course creator, Thinkific seems to be the ideal place to start learning how to create courses.
The free plan is also available for a lifetime, unlike other platforms. If you’re strapped for cash, then it’s a good choice since you can access great features at zero cost.
We strongly recommend that you try Thinkific out.
If you’ve enjoyed reading this Thinkific review, you may take a look at our review on the Best Online Course Platforms available today here.