Are you considering using Thinkific for your online course? This article will go over Thinkific pros and cons for course creators and online coaches with online communities.
You can also learn more in this free guide to online course platforms.
What is Thinkific?
Thinkific is a learning management platform that gives you a chance to host and sell your digital course or membership.
Like most learning management platforms, Thinkific has easy-to-use back-end management for your course portal, sales pages, thank you pages, checkout, customer management and other elements you might need to successfully start selling digital courses.
In short, it really has everything you need to start selling a course online.
Note: Thinkific and similar platforms do not help you to create or sell the course per se.
Below, let’s talk a bit more about Thinkific pros and cons for online course creators.
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Thinkific pros and cons for online course creators
The pros of using Thinkific for an online course setup
As Thinkific has most of the same features as many other learning management systems, below I won’t state some of the obvious facts like “it has a sales page builder”.
Yes, it does give you functions like:
- Student enrollment, checkout, management
- Course content upload and systemizing
- Pricing tier options for your products
- Page builder, including sales and thank you pages
Instead, learn what makes Thinkific better than other platforms, and what features and options stand out!
PRO NO.1: Sales page templates
One of my favorite things about Thinkific is that they offer sales page templates to get started with.
For comparison, their closest competitor Teachable has just one default sales page layout to work with.
Meanwhile, Thinkific gives you a variety of setups to choose from: different preset colors, fonts and styles to work with.
PRO NO.2: Thinkific has a community feature
A forum, group – call it what you want. Thinkific has it and I consider it being THE key factor of why it stands out from other course creation platforms.
Having a built-in community space can be an amazing feature to use for your course or membership website, as more and more people move away from Facebook and prefer to reduce their time on social media.
Plus having a community space on Facebook can be just plain distracting…
PRO NO.3: It has a 30-day free trial
I mean, who doesn’t love a free trial! Get yours here.
This gives you a chance to explore the other side of Thinkific and how it functions, all on your own. Plus you can even start enrolling your students and see how profitable is your idea!
PRO NO.4: They know what they’re doing
Thinkific is a platform that has been in the market for “long enough” and have established their presence. This means that they have done their fair share of trial and error and they’ve grown exponentially since the first time I got on the platform around 2016/17.
The cons of using Thinkific for an online course setup
As I always say, all of the course platforms have their set of pros and cons, it’s just inevitable. Ultimately, it’s not the question of “which is the best course platform to use?”. Instead, it’s all about choosing the one that suits YOU the best and, well, has the least cons in your eyes.
Keep in mind though: what might be stated and important for me, might not be all that relevant for you…
CON NO.1: It’s expensive
I could give you the whole rundown of Thinkific’s history and how it “used to cost $39/per month” (oh, the good old days) BUT the reality of now is that the monthly price of Thinkific is starting from $79/monthly and, let’s be honest, it’s a lot for a course platform, especially, if you’re just getting started…
I want to leverage this though. All of the platforms are getting slightly more expensive. Even their closes competitor recently increased its pricing from the lowest being $29 to $59… Talk about a leap in pricing!
CON NO.2: The landing page builder can be annoying af
Pardon my French but it really can be a pain…
Unfortunately, this page builder is rather limited and can be hard to manage when it comes to page design details. There are a set of features you can use and customize but there’s a limit to the extent in which it can be done.
It wouldn’t be much of a problem if you’re flexible with your sales page design plans though!
CON NO.3: Limited integrations
To be fair, this is the case with many course platforms: each will have its own set of built-in integrations.
However, to set up any next-level connections, for example, sending various email sequences to various course enrollments, you will have to use platforms like Zapier for an upgrade.
My experience with Thinkific
Along with various Thinkific pros and cons, my own experience with this platform has also been a story of ups and downs.
When I first got into the online course business in 2015, I chose Teachable over Thinkific. For years, I stayed on the platform and was content with my decision. Teachable also has always been my go-to suggestion for starters as their user interface is really easy to use.
In early 2023, I moved my own membership from Teachable to Circle. Mostly because of the community feature. However, around the same time (late 2022, to be precise), most of the platforms started shifting their offers.
As of now, Thinkific actually has a way better offer for starters than Teachable and I’d definitely suggest you to check it out first. The fact that there are 0% commission fees AND the chance to build your community space there too.
Despite the fact that I haven’t been much of Thinkific’s fan in the past, I now see it as one of the best platforms for course creators.
I hope this insight into Thinkific pros and cons gave you a good idea of whether or not this might be your perfect fit platform. If you’re still unsure, join us in Your Course Creation Membership where you’ll get access to full platform insight and will get a chance to ask me anything as well.
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