Thinkific Review: The Best Online Course Creation Platform

Whether you are creating a course to supplement your existing business or creating an online course empire, you need to have a platform that will take you to the next level and help you share your knowledge with the world.

Thinkific is one of the first choices that come to mind when we think of these goals.

If you are interested in Thinkific, this review can help you out.

In this Thinkific review, I will walk you through the various features, costs, pros and cons about this LMS.

I aim to help you determine if it is, or is not, an excellent platform for your online course website or business.

What is Thinkific?

Thinkific is a learning management system (LMS) designed to make the lives of online course creators easier. If you are looking to create an online course business, build a website, or sell online courses, Thinkific is a great option to consider.

Thinkific is also an education platform that lets you create a webpage to help you create and sell your own courses. It is designed to make course creation easier for people who want to build a website.

History & Team

Thinkific was founded in 2012 by Greg Smith while he was teaching an LSAT class on the weekends. Because he had to take the time to create everything for his class, he did not have time to spend with his family. 

Smith took what he learned and along with his team, including Matt Payne, Matt Smith and Miranda Lievers, he created Thinkific to help people design courses and build their websites.

Thinkific has 500+ dedicated employees and is represented in over 35 countries. 

Around 48% of their leadership team positions are held by women. Their educational software platform helps you market, create, deliver, and sell your own online courses.

How much does Thinkific cost?

​Thinkific offers four different pricing levels. All of their pricing plans include Thinkific’s core features. 

Plan	Pricing	Features
Free	$0/month	Core features plus: Limited courses Unlimited students Quizzes & surveys Content hosting  Instant access to your funds
Basic	$49/month	Free features plus: Unlimited courses & students Coupons  Email students  Drip (scheduled) content Affiliate reporting Custom domain Thinkific App Store  Live chat support  Manual student enrollment & exports
Pro	$99/month	Basic features plus: Unlimited courses & students 2 Site admin accounts 5 Course admins/authors Private & hidden courses Advanced course pricing options  Memberships and bundles  Certificates  Advanced Customization  Priority Support Assignments
Premier	$499/month	Pro features plus: Unlimited courses & students Groups Unlimited Communities White labeling API Access 5 Site admin accounts 15 Group Analysts 50 Course admins/authors  Onboarding package  Unlimited Growth Package

The core features are email and phone support, instant access to your funds, choice of site language, full e-commerce, secure cloud hosting, easy drag and drop course builder, discussion forums, build out your entire website, upsell offers, student notifications, multiple instructor profiles, and easy, built-in SSL certificates. 

Let's understand the different plans that Thinkific offers:

Thinkific Plans

Thinkific Free

Yes. Thinkific offers a free tier.

The free plan includes the core features and, content hosting, limited courses but unlimited students, surveys and quizzes, and instant access to your funds. 

Thinkific Basic

The next level is the basic level.

The basic level costs $49 per month. It includes everything from the free level plus unlimited courses and students, manual student enrollment and export, coupons, Zapier triggers, email and WordPress integrations, email students, custom domain, drip schedule content, and affiliate reporting. 

Thinkific Pro

The next level, which is the most popular level, is the pro level.

The pro plan costs $99 per month.  It includes everything from the basic level plus communities, 2 site administrator accounts, assignments, 5-course administrators/authors, membership and bundles, priority support, private and hidden courses, advanced customization, advanced course pricing options, and certificates. 

Thinkific Premier

The premier level is the final level.

The premier plan is charged $499 per month. Included in the premier level is everything from the Pro level plus an onboarding package which includes an onboarding call, training, and a launch preparedness review. 

The premier level also includes 5 site administrative accounts, single sign-on (SSO), 15 group analysts, and 50-course administrators/authors. 

The premier level also includes an unlimited growth package.

The unlimited growth package includes the bulk enrollment of students, bulk emails, groups, brilliant exam integration, advanced segmentation, Zapier actions, communities, webhooks, infusionsoft integration, public API, removable branding, and import students. 

Features

Thinkific offers 100s of features to help you build your courses and the website.

Here are the core features:

• Instant access to your funds
• Student notifications
• Upsell offers
• Full e-Commerce
• Discussion forums
• Easy drag & drop Course Builder
• Secure cloud hosting
• Build out your entire website
• Choose your site language
• Multiple Instructor profiles
• Email and phone support
• Easy, built-in SSL certificates

Let's talk about these in detail.

Drag & Drop Course Builder

Thinkific’s drag & drop course builder features include the ability to drag and drop and quickly upload quality content to your curriculum.

Integrations

They also support Captivate, Articulate, video, discussions, quizzes, downloads, Typeform, Google Docs, texts, and surveys. As usual, Thinkific provides video hosting for your course.

Thinkific also helps you market your site with a complete set of business tools. 

Customizations

You can also customize and restrict the running of your course system with features such as membership sites, private and hidden courses, evergreen and expiring content, prerequisite lessons, cohorts, multiple instructors, and drip schedule content. 

You can showcase your courses with customizable themes to help get more attention and create a more professional online presence. You can use your own domain name for a much better search presence.

Payment Methods and Subscriptions

You can offer subscription courses and membership sites on your webpage. You can also use coupons and promotional features to boost your sales. Payments on Thinkific are 100 % safe. They accept all credit cards and charge in over one hundred currencies. You can get paid immediately.

Marketing Tools

Thinkific also has advanced marketing tools available. These tools include direct tracking, customized commission rates, integration with over one thousand marketing and business apps, advanced data tracking including Facebook, Google Ads, and retargeting campaigns, and easily connecting with your favorite email providers such as Mailchimp and Convertkit. 

Student Friendly

With Thinkific, you can offer students language controls and unlimited replays of lessons.

You can also set up customized completion pages and certificates acknowledging the completion of a course.

You can track your students' progress and keep them motivated by sending out automated reminders and progress emails.

You can optimize and monitor your business with cohort and group reporting, data exports, detailed segmentation, and more.

Security & Backup

Thinkific also offers data security features. Their security features include built-in security and SSL, secure cloud hosting with daily backups, 24 hours a day and seven days a week monitoring with 99.9% uptime, and instant access to updates.

Support

Thinkific offers a blog, help center, and resources, including video tutorials to help you set up your site and grow beyond.

Thinkific also offers online Thinkific experts.

These course creation experts can help you with course setup, content migration, and curriculum design. They also have site creation experts who can help you with your site setup, website design, and customized web development.

They also have marketing experts who can help you with customer acquisition, branding, and marketing along with technical implementation experts who can help you with SSO, custom solutions, and integrations.

How to Create a Course with Thinkific?

There are not too many steps involved.

All you need is to visit the Thinkific course creator page (one month free trial for pro plans).

Enter your email address and follow the instructions.

Once you are done with the registration, you will have to create a school. You can use ready-made templates to create and customize schools as per your needs. Every template, except the blank one, comes with detailed animated instructions on how to use that.

Once you have chosen your template you can add your content by using Thinkific’s bulk importer or you can create your own content with the tools provided by Thinkific.

Who uses Thinkific?

Thinkific is used by 50,000+ solopreneurs, businesses, and educators. The list includes the greats of Hootsuite, Wishpond, Breakthrough Academy, Influitive, Market Campus, Lewis Howes (The School of Greatness), Mimi G (Sewing Academy), Jonathan Levi (Become a SuperLearner), Dana Malstaff (Boss Mom Academy) and more. You can explore their online courses to understand what kind of websites you can create with Thinkific.

Thinkific Review