Thinkific Review – Pros & Cons (2021)

Thinkific is one of the best online course platforms. Over 50,000 educators and entrepreneurs use the platform to monetize their knowledge by selling courses, webinars, and live streams. In fact, over $650 million worth of sales has been processed on the platform!

Top Thinkific Features

Thinkific is a robust platform that offers a number of important features.

Course Creation

Thinkific offers clean navigation, a familiar interface, and straightforward instructions which makes creating courses extremely-easy, even for those with little to no experience running an online course.

The Thinkific course builder doesn’t require advanced technical knowledge. It is easy to use and accepts all popular content formats — including HTML, PDF, images & videos, etc. You’re even able to add presentations, quizzes, exams, assignments, and surveys to your course.

Pre-built templates with drag-and-drop functionality are included which allows you to quickly create attractive course pages. With their Pro + Growth plan, you can also remove Thinkific Branding from both the footer of your course site and the Course Player.

Lastly, course creators can relax knowing they own all of their course material 100%. This means that despite using a third-party platform for distribution, you retain full ownership of the content created on Thinkific’s platform.

Sales & Marketing

Thinkific includes Sales & Marketing features that allow you to generate revenue from your courses (or offer them for free, too).

There are a number of promotional features available which means you can create coupons and discounts to entice students with urgency to register for your course.

Thinkific also offers several tools to aid ongoing marketing as well. You’re able to create a membership site or offer courses through a subscription.

Additionally, Thinkific allows you to designate someone as an affiliate. This is powerful functionality that allows others to promote your courses and, in exchange, you pay them a portion of the revenue. This is also known as performance marketing.

Thinkific supports direct integrations with PayPal and Stripe, arguably the two most popular options for accepting payments online. You’re able to integrate with one or both options. The nice part about direct process integration is that you have instant access to your funds.

Design Customization

Thinkific offers pre-built templates which can be used to create attractive landing pages. The online course platform also lets you create a look that matches your brand by allowing you to customize colors, fonts, logos, and labels. Their course builder includes drag and drop functionality so it’s not necessary to know how to code to create a course.

We really like how you’re able to use a custom domain with Thinkific. You can integrate your online course with your WordPress website so you won’t have to build a whole new site. Their WordPress plugin allows you to transfer content or link directly to your Thinkific checkout.

Teaching on Thinkific

It is pretty straightforward to create different types of learning environments on Thinkific to egnage students, monitor progress, and provide certification.

Thinkific offers different course formats – self-directed, group discussions, or hybrid courses – to engage your students. Students are also able to revist their lessons when needed.

While the platform doesn’t offer true email marketing functionality (you’ll need to use a tool like Mailchimp), Thinkific does send automated email reminders to your students.

Security & Support

Thinkific includes built in SSL security and ensures 99.9% uptime and 24/7 monitoring. This means your student data is securely transmitted and your course will always be available online.

Thinkific also protects your content. You’re able to disable students from selecting and copying text within your course.

All plans offer expert customer support and a comprehensive knowledge base. Priority support is offered with a Pro (or higher) plan and their Premier and Plus plans include a complimentary 30 minute onboarding call and ongoing hands-on support whenever needed.

Thinkific Plans & Pricing

Thinkific offers six different plans with varying features and price points that fit most budgets. Here are three of their most popular options:

• Basic – $49/mo – offers essential course creation functionality and allows you to offer coupons, scheduled content, and more.
• Pro – $99/mo – includes all features in their Basic plan along with advanced course pricing options and multiple admin/author accounts.
• Premier – $499/mo – includes all Pro features along with the ability to have 5 site admins, 15 analysts, and 50 course authors. Complimentary onboarding support is included.

Click here to get a 1-month free trial of Thinkific’s Pro Plan.

Summary & Recommendation

While Thinkific doesn’t offer robust email marketing tools (you have to use a third party service, like Mailchimp) or chat support, Thinkific is one of the best options to create an online course.

They offer a free trial, provide promotional marketing options, and you to retain complete ownership of your content.

Thinkific’s course creation software is super easy to use thanks to their drag-and-drop builder and offers a number of tools that help you every step of the way – from creating, distributing, and selling.