Our honest Thinkific Review: The best online course builder ever?

The online learning niche is growing exponentially. Especially after the pandemic, people have realized that they can get a quality education from their favorite tutors without meeting them personally ever.

According to some reports, the Online education market will swell up to $325 Billion by 2025!

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So it’s a golden period for tutors to leverage their learning skills, build courses & generate massive revenue. If you are a tutor, you can easily create hundreds of courses quickly with course-building tools.

Thinkific is ideal for those launching their first online course, even if they have limited technical skills. As a comprehensive learning platform, Thinkific supports digital learning for educators and organizations.

But With hundreds of course-building tools available in the market, it’s challenging to find a good one.

Here, I will dissect a tool with a helpful review of one such tool. Yes, you guessed it right; I am talking about Thinkific.

In this Thinkific review, I will be talking about how good this tool is, how you can use it to create courses easily & what are some of the best Thinkific features. Thinkific has a minimal learning curve, making it accessible for beginners.

Let’s put this tool to the test and dive into this Thinkific review!

Introduction to Online Course Platforms

Online course platforms have completely transformed the landscape of education, making it easier than ever for anyone to share their expertise and reach learners around the world.

Whether you’re an experienced educator, a business owner, or a passionate hobbyist, these platforms provide the tools you need to create, manage, and sell online courses from a single, user-friendly dashboard.

The benefits of using an online course platform are clear: you can build a professional course website without any coding skills, deliver engaging content in multiple formats, and connect with students no matter where they are.

For course creators, this means the ability to scale your impact and income by selling online courses to a global audience. For learners, it means access to high-quality education on demand.

With so many course platforms available, choosing the right one can be overwhelming. That’s where Thinkific comes in. As a leading online course platform, Thinkific is designed to help course creators launch, market, and sell online courses with ease.

In this review, we’ll explore what makes Thinkific stand out in the crowded world of online course platforms and why it might be the perfect choice for your next course.

What is Thinkific?

Thinkific is a powerful online course-creating tool that offers a perfect platform for course creators & online educators. With robust course creation tools and versatile creation tools, Thinkific simplifies building, managing, and customizing your courses.

Using this innovative & unique tool, you can build, market & sell your courses online & generate massive revenue.

Thinkific is marketed as one of the most simple, affordable & yet highly efficient course-building tools. Its user friendly course builder makes it accessible for anyone, even without technical skills.

If you are an individual coach or educator, Thinkific can significantly help you. It will save you a lot of money by eliminating the need to invest in an expensive Learning Management System.

You can create a website for your courses without any coding using the integrated site builder. The Thinkific site builder is a key feature, offering drag-and-drop editing, customizable templates, and advanced options for a professional look.

You can integrate numerous third-party applications to power up your website & you can promote your courses online, all from this one tool. And when it comes to Student Management, it’s at par with all the expensive Learning Management Systems out there.

From the student’s perspective, Thinkific is designed to be intuitive and easy to navigate, ensuring a smooth learning experience.

In short, Thinkific works precisely like its tagline, “Power your Education.” Its streamlined course creation process and comprehensive features make it a standout choice. Let’s find out what distinctive features of this tool offers in the Thinkific review.

Why I Love Thinkific Website Builder?

Your website is the first place your potential student will interact with you. So your course website needs to be impeccable & intuitive. Thanks to Thinkific Website Builder, you can create attractive course websites hassle-free.

The integrated landing page builder allows you to easily create high-converting landing pages and dedicated landing pages for your courses, helping you capture leads and drive sales. Let’s take a look at why I love Thinkific Website Builder.

1. Custom Domain

Adding a custom site URL to your course gives it a unique identity. With Thinkific Paid Plan, you can customize your domain & make it more attractive. Unfortunately, if you use the paid plan, you will have to use whatever free domain Thinkific offers.

2. Drag & Drop Builder

With Drag & Drop Page Builder of Thinkific, you won’t have to worry about coding. You can create an intuitive website by just dragging & dropping the modules & sections you love into your website.

You can start by choosing the available templates with Thinkific. If you want to create your template, there is an option for that too.

There are a lot of sections to choose from, like Image Gallery, Reviews, Videos, Checklists, Countdown & much more. Thinkific gives you a free hand when it comes to creativity.

3. Pre-designed Themes

Suppose you do not want to tangle yourself in creating a personalized website. Thinkific has got you covered! You can choose from multiple themes available with Thinkific & you are good to go!

There are a couple of perfect themes available in Thinkific’s free library. All these themes are pretty customizable & you can personalize them as per your choice.

4. SSL Certificate

Security is a significant concern these days. People are terrified of cyber fraud & hence, avoid visiting websites with no SSL certificate.

Thanks to Thinkific, you can get a basic SSL certificate with their paid plans. SSL certificate protects your students and boosts your Website Authority in the eyes of Google. This can indirectly help boost your SEO.

But creating a good website for your online course is not enough. Designing engaging courses is equally, if not more, necessary. And Thinkific does a marvellous job here with its course builder module. Let’s take a look at some best Thinkific Course Builder Module Features in this Thinkific Review.

What are the best Thinkific Course Builder Module features?

The best part of Thinkific is its ease of use. You can quickly create courses without any hiccups, thanks to a streamlined creation process and intuitive creation tools.

Thinkific’s fully customizable course player enhances the learning experience by allowing you to tailor the look and feel of your course content for better student engagement.

Additionally, Thinkific also offers a ton of helpful material to assist you. Here are some of the best features of the Thinkific Course Builder Module that I liked during this Thinkific Review.

1. Type of Lessons

When creating a course, it’s very important to use the format your learners will love. And you cannot stick to a single format only. Adding video lessons, PDFs, text lessons, surveys & Quizzes can be a great move to make your course more engaging.

With Thinkific, you can create 12 types of lessons for your students! You can select any one of them & get started. Thinkific offers an option for “Bulk Import,” using which you can import tons of files into your course. Here is the list of different courses you can create using Thinkific:

Video, Quiz, Text, PDF, Audio, Downloads, Brillium exams, Assignments, Live feed, Survey, Multimedia, & Presentations.

2. Course Customization

You do not want your course to look just like some random or cliché online course, right? So you can utilize the full customization features of Thinkific to give your course a distinctive identity.

You can upload your custom images, unique colors & personalized descriptions to your online courses. You can alter the fonts of your website, the theme of your course & much more.

But here’s the catch. You must upgrade to their paid plan to access the extensive customization option. Their free trial offers limited customization. This is something I didn’t like about Thinkific.

3. Setting Dynamic Pricing Structure

The ultimate goal of building online courses is to generate a steady flow of revenue. For this, you cannot give away everything for free. Here comes the multiple membership level feature of Thinkific.

Using this feature, you can create multiple membership levels for your students, and offer flexible payment plans such as one-off payments, memberships, and bundles to suit different needs.

4. Drip Content

The goal of every trainer or coach is to offer structured learning. To achieve this, your students must systematically go through every section of your course. If they start picking sections randomly, the essence of creating a course is lost.

Thinkific has come with this handy feature for this purpose. Using Drip Content, you can decide when your student will get access to the next level of your course. It can be based on the student’s enrollment date or the completion of previous levels.

5. Course Completion Certificate

Course Completion Certificates benefit students from a psychological and career point of view. Certificates help students in their quest for great opportunities & give them an experience of achievement.

With Thinkific, you can create attractive Course Completion Certificates. If you already have a template, you can upload it to Thinkific.

After doing the Thinkific Review, I can say it is straightforward & very efficient. Even a newbie can handle it without any hassle. That’s what makes this tool a perfect choice for beginners.

Thinkific as an Online Training Platform

Thinkific isn’t just another online course platform, it’s a full-featured online training platform built to help you create, market, and sell online courses successfully

With its intuitive drag and drop course builder, Thinkific makes it simple for anyone to design engaging course pages and organize course content, even if you have no technical background.

The platform’s user friendly interface ensures that both new and experienced course creators can get started quickly and focus on what matters most: delivering value to their students.

One of Thinkific’s standout features is its customizable course pages, which allow you to showcase your brand and create a unique learning experience.

The platform also supports discussion forums, enabling you to engage students and foster a sense of community within your courses.

Progress tracking tools make it easy to monitor student progress and ensure learners stay on track, while built-in marketing tools help you promote your courses and grow your audience.

Whether you’re looking to sell online courses as a side hustle or build a full-scale online training business, Thinkific provides all the features you need to succeed.

From seamless course creation to powerful sales and marketing tools, Thinkific empowers course creators to deliver high-quality online training and maximize their impact.

In the following sections, we’ll dive deeper into Thinkific’s features, pricing, and support to help you decide if it’s the right online course platform for your goals.

Thinkific: Market your courses like a Pro

Creating attractive courses is not enough. You need to promote & market your courses effectively to get actual conversions. Thinkific offers integrated marketing and sales tools, including a variety of sales tools, to help you promote and sell courses with ease.

The platform also allows you to sell digital downloads, such as eBooks, guides, and audio files, alongside your courses, making it a comprehensive solution for digital creators. Here are some Thinkific Marketing tools that can help you with the task:

• Seamless third-party integrations: Email marketing is a great way to promote your courses. You can integrate Thinkific with email marketing services like Mailchimp, Zapier, Sumo, Zoom, & Shopify for automated and targeted communications, such as welcome messages and notifications, to enhance student engagement.
• Discount Coupons: People love discounts & hence, it’s the best way to promote your courses too. With Thinkific, you can create distinctive discount coupons for every course you offer.
• Sales Widgets: You can add sales widgets to your other websites or your network websites using Thinkific. All you have to do is copy & paste these code snippets into the specific website & you are ready to roll.

Thinkific: Flawless Student Management

If Thinkific Course Builder is the heart of Thinkific, its Student Management is its soul! For any course builder, managing their student effectively is the core goal.

With Thinkific, you can offer a seamless onboarding process to your students, share all the vital information via registered emails, & notify them about any upcoming events.

The Thinkific support team is always available to help course creators and students resolve any issues quickly, ensuring a smooth experience for everyone.

You can also track a student’s progress via multiple Thinkific features. Let’s take a look at some.

• Student Progress Report: You can track the performance & progress of each student based on their attendance, chapter completion rate, & progress across multiple courses. This will help you offer a personalized experience to each student.
• Student Groups: You can segregate your students into multiple groups based on various factors & filters. This feature is excellent for attracting students from free courses to paid courses. But to access this feature, you must upgrade to the paid plan.
• Discussion forums: Discussion Forums by course-providing websites are where potential students look for reviews. With Thinkific, you can create such forums on your website that will help such seekers find out more about your courses.
• Reviews: No one buys your course without checking reviews. Using Thinkific, you can edit & embed your students’ reviews to your website & can run promotional campaigns based on that.
• Quizzes & Assignments: Quizzes & Assignments are integral to any course. They keep your students engaged in the course & set some goals for them, which is very important in online learning.
• Live Surveys: When running Live Lectures, it’s always great to hear from your students. Their opinions can help you optimize your subsequent courses. With Thinkific, you can create Live surveys for each lesson, which can be very helpful.

What is the Thinkific pricing structure?

After going through an in-depth Thinkific review, let’s discuss Thinkific pricing. Thinkific offers several subscription tiers, known as Thinkific plans, including a Free plan, the Start plan for those beginning to expand their online courses or memberships, and the Grow plan designed for more established creators who need advanced analytics, priority support, branding control, and marketing tools.

The plans start from $39/month for the Basic Plan and go up to $339/month for the Premium Plan. Importantly, Thinkific does not charge any transaction fees on course sales, allowing creators to keep more of their revenue. You can check out the detailed Thinkific Pricing.

How is Thinkific Customer Support?

I was surprised with the quality support that Thinkific offers. You can get in touch with their support team via Telephonic Support, which is very helpful, and email support. Thinkific also offers massive Learning Materials & video tutorials for beginners. Their Facebook community is also very vibrant & members are beneficial.

Additionally, higher-tier plans provide advanced analytics, giving users in-depth data insights and detailed learner behavior analysis to support data-driven decision-making.

In my Thinkific Review, I found Thinkific Support is way better than its competitors.

Thinkific: Pros & Cons comparison table

Pros:

• Very easy to use
• Drag & Drop feature is very efficient
• You can create courses, promote them & manage your students in one place
• Dedicated app store to enhance your website’s performance
• Free plan with a lot of features
• ZERO Commission on any number of courses you sell

Cons:

• There are just 3 themes in the themes library
• If you are using a free plan, there is little room for customization

Thinkific Alternatives

Thinkific is a robust learning management system (LMS) renowned for its easy-to-use interface and comprehensive suite of features. However, depending on your needs, other platforms may offer functionalities or pricing models that better align with your goals.

Some of the best Thinkific alternatives include Teachable, Kajabi, Podia, and LifterLMS, each offering unique features for different audiences.

For example, Teachable and Podia are popular among new course creators due to their free plans and beginner-friendly setup, while Kajabi is favored by organizations that rely heavily on advanced marketing tools and automation. Here are some noteworthy alternatives to Thinkific.

While Thinkific is a versatile and user-friendly platform, these alternatives each offer unique features and benefits that might better align with your specific needs.

Many of these platforms are designed to make selling courses easy, with built-in marketing and payment options, making them ideal for both new course creators and experienced educators.

So feel free to explore them before making any decision. But if you ask me, I really like both Thinkific and LifterLMS. Both are excellent tools that you should not miss out on.

Thinkific Review: Final Verdict

After this detailed Thinkific Review, I can only say this tool is way ahead of its competitors. It’s reasonably priced, loaded with many features & can help you achieve everything from a single place.

So my final verdict is that Thinkific is worth it. Thinkific enables educators and businesses to sell courses successfully. If you are new to this field, you must try Thinkfic’s free trial.

I hope you find my Thinkific review helpful. You can also check out our other similar product reviews.

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