Thinkific Reviews

Outstanding course-hosting platform that makes your life easy

Comments: Overall the experience has been excellent over the past four years. I have to add that the Thinkific Helpdesk is genuinely helpful, and their response time is lightning fast. They have an option for "how urgent is your issue?" when you submit your help ticket, and if you select "urgent," they actually get back to you very quickly, as in, within a few hours. This is essential when your income comes from your course website and you need help updating or fixing something!

Pros:

I love that Thinkific is comprehensive so I get to focus on content creation and student outreach. Thinkific manages the payment portal and moves students smoothly through the course experience. In a lot of ways, it's set-it-and-forget-it, meaning - once you have a course set up the way you want inside Thinkific, students move through it beautifully and all you have to worry about is getting new students!

Cons:

My only suggestion for Thinkific would be to provide a few more options for testimonials layouts on the sales/landing pages. I'd like more flexibility and options to showcase or emphasize certain student experiences... but otherwise, I wouldn't change anything.

Beautiful Course Platform for Online Education

Comments: A stunning product which I would have been happy to use (even with all the workarounds for certificates, email and quizzes). The support is quick with responses and the tutorials provided really are next-level amazing. A consistent and impressive LMS.

Pros:

This is an absolutely beautiful platform. Thinkific has been in the elearning industry for years and it shows - the portal is easy to navigate and set up courses. The tutorials section is robust and detailed, giving step-by-step information on how to set up various course features and troubleshoot any issues that may come up. There is the ability to issue certificates of completion, add an assignment section for students to upload their work, basic quiz functionality, drip-scheduling as well as compulsory lessons which need to be completed before the student can move on. The lessons can consist of videos, text, PDF's (which can be downloadable or not), or quizzes. You can embed videos and links from other sites too. The course analytics allow you to see how much of a course/lesson was completed before a student drops off, giving valuable insight which enables the course creator to edit and adapt the courses to make them more engaging for the students. There is also a 'community' feature which gives students the chance to chat and give/feedback away from an external site (like a Facebook group). Thinkific does not take any of the course fees and allows the course creator to keep 100% of the profits earned. There is also a free version which has a lot of features included.

Cons:

The certificates are quite basic and it's necessary to be design-savvy and tech-savvy to create a certificate which would be accepted in the upload process. The quizzes are very basic and do not support time-limits, limited retries or anything more robust than true/false or multiple choice. Should you want to integrate with a more robust quiz software, their native integrative party is quite pricey! There is no built-in email functionality aside from the notifications that can be sent to existing students. As email is becoming more popular among other learning management systems this is quite a big negative point against them. The option to whitelabel the site completely is only available on the 'Growth' plan which over and above the 'Pro' plan which is already $99.

Good overall with critical limitations for teaching online live

Comments: Good. They have excellent customer support and they responded to me quickly even during busy times. I actually recommended them for a company that has recorded videos and could benefit from using a modern LMS to share their recorded lessons.

Pros:

I think I like the idea of the software. There are alternatives. I think I picked Thinkific first because they have clear description about their software, seemed reputable and seemed like they have good customer service and responsiveness. Their website is nicely responsive for different screen sizes. Although the theme itself is limited, and you are on your own to customize it, I felt that the drag and drop choices for the editor covered everything I need.

Cons:

There were critical limitations that I felt decreased the value of the software for my business. The first thing that made me feel uncomfortable is that the website you build for your business through their LMS software would publish to the public immediately as you save the changes. I look thoroughly through the website theme settings, but there was no way to keep the website as "password protected" or "private" before it is published. As a result, I felt I should hold on about sharing important details until I write the entire content of the website, then drag and drop the content for the layout, and then put the content. After that first issue, I felt less excited. There were other limitations that resulted in me losing interest. I didn't feel like I want to pay to customize my website with HTML and CSS. importing your own website website was not a convenient option. My courses were live online but their website had no way of sharing the time on the website based on the user local or system time. I would have to pay for their Pro plan and do it myself with javascript. I could look up and learn how to do it, but I didn't want to. I felt like the software was good for only recorded content. The price they were asking for was not convincing anymore. Slowly and slowly I lost interest. Finally, I saw that they charge a flat fee for each student plus their monthly fee, for any student after the 100th student. I decided not to move forward with them.

Easy, Wholesome LMS for beginners and experts alike

Comments: Positive primarily due to fantastic customer support and ease of use.

Pros:

I loved how versatile it was and their customer support was second to none. Also there was plenty of templates and training modules for absolute novices to set up their school easily. Integrations with other relevant apps and softwares made this very efficient LMS.

Cons:

The price increases. I eventually couldn't continue as there was alternatives for better prices

Great Course Platform

Comments: Thinkific is much better than trying to remember to share Google Drive links with people to watch courses. It also looks much more professional.

Pros:

Thinkfic integrates well with CRM systems which is so important to manage leads and data. It works well with Zapier as well which gives numerous possibilities.

Cons:

I wish some things were a bit more clear. It provides the ability to have courses that renew or memberships but doesn't do great on the backend of highlighting pros and cons of each.

A great platform, but not as robust as others

Comments: Thinkific was fine for when I started selling courses, but ultimately it wasn't the right tool for my business and needs.

Pros:

This is a platform built for courses, and as such, it does that incredibly well. If you are only looking for somewhere to sell courses and are most concerned with those looking great and being well built for your customers, then this is a great program.

Cons:

I really wanted a platform that could handle more than just courses (ie, also selling digital downloads, memberships, and 1:1 coaching programs). Thinkific isn't made to do everything because they focus on doing one thing really well. If you're looking for a jack of all trades rather than a master of one, this probably isn't for you.

Think About Using Thinkific

Pros:

For me is it was the user friendly features of the program. I was able to train myself on the features in a few hours.

Cons:

Our company has enjoyed using Thinkific and in comparison to to other programs we don't find any negative issued with Thinkific.

Sturdy training platform

Comments: Happy, students seemed to get on wit it fine.

Pros:

The way it structures lessons, with sublessons.

Cons:

Fiddling to put video content in. Can be fiddly to restructure a course if adding a lesson.

A Good Basic Platform for selling online courses

Comments: I have used thinkific for over 3 years. It has been a good basic platform although somewhat frustrating at times due to limited functionality around creating engaging courses, no SCORM support and having to integrate with Thord party email management systems via Zapier (GetResponse)

Pros:

Ease of use and simple to understand user interface

Cons:

Somewhat limited in creating engaging learning, and having to use third party paid plugins for basic gamification. Virtually no customer management functionality built into the platform (such as email management) and limited integration with Third party contact management systems.

So Far So Good

Comments: I was brought on board to help manage my client's Thinkific site. I did not have previous experience with Thinkific. So far, I've been satisfied with my overall experience.

Pros:

I had no experience with Thinkific prior to jumping in to help my client with her account. However, I had some experience with other landing-page builders, and it was not too difficult to get the hang of using the Thinkific Site Builder. Also, I quickly found some YouTube videos that helped me out as well. My client already had a published Thinkific site. Thinkific has the option to create an offline copy so we can experiment with a new design and not worry about messing up the live site or causing disruptions for students. As a newbie, I was relieved not to have to worry about messing anything up. The Theme Library has a decent selection of templates - just enough to find a good starting point but not too many to be overwhelming. The sample landing pages are great inspiration as well. I love the "smart" blocks that pull content from elsewhere in your account. For example, the instructor's bio or course curriculum or student reviews.

Cons:

I encountered a few limitations: - The Site Builder includes about a dozen or so recognized fonts, but I did not see a way to add custom fonts. Maybe this is comes with a higher plan. - For the instructor's bio, I didn't like the default design of the "Instructors" block, so I just used a "Text & Media" block. That would have seemed fine, except the text and photo are too close together. I couldn't see a way to increase the space. - You can get a pretty good preview of the page using Fullscreen mode inside the Site Builder - but the links and buttons are not clickable. I didn't find a way to preview the course landing page with live links/buttons so I can make sure they are working properly. If I'm working with an offline copy, I would like to be able to check links and buttons BEFORE publishing and overriding our existing live page.

Thinkific Learning Management System

Comments: Amazing! I highly recommend the software and the team. For the money, you cannot do any better!

Pros:

I love the customer support and training. I was able to launch my program in two hours with no assistance. The Quick Start program is an amazing example of what we should all aspire to in our online training videos. The software is easy to navigate and has some beautiful templates to help jumpstart user progress.

Cons:

I was a little limited with the amount and layout of content on the course sales pages. Wish options here were more flexible. Also, the reporting at my subscription level is a little time-consuming requiring exports to Excel to confirm actual totals each time. It's easy enough to work around, however, and I have found customer support to be exceptional at helping me with some of my more creative workarounds.

Great tool. It would be just better if you build a mobile App for students.

Comments: I'm really enjoying the experience.

Pros:

Having an API that facilitates the integration with our back office.

Cons:

Not having an app for the student experience.

With Thinkific as our Platform, we have successfully launched three very different online courses.

Comments: We are at the beginning stages of offering a high quality course to students from around the world.

Pros:

We researched many Platforms before choosing Thinkific. We love that Thinkific is Canadian. We love the journey that students take from first encountering the site landing page, going to the course landing page and then immersing themselves in the course. I appreciate the helpful support from the Thinkific team. They do a great job of answering our many questions. I am fortunate that Thinkific rebuilt their course editing software quite soon after we began developing our course. Their new software is quite easy to use and easy to revise. I really like their flat-rate monthly subscription fee with no hidden costs.

Cons:

I wish students could purchase this course in the currency of their own country. I wish we could pay for our subscription in Canadian funds instead of American. We have had to purchase a separate Discussion Forum because their Disqus Plug In is a social media plug in that is not confidential, and their built in Discussion Forum is very awkward and poorly organized with no ability to search, edit, or even manage posts. Thinkific focuses much more on supporting marketing than on supporting online course development. We were fortunate that we had already taken two excellent courses in online course development that we could apply to the Thinkific Platform. Thinkific is less responsive to good ideas for improvement than I would like them to be. For example, despite many, many requests from many course developers it is still not possible for the course author to copy, paste and edit quizes and so there is a lot of unnecessary labour involved in inputting quizes

Thinkific works for me!

Comments: No benefits realized yet as I just got my first course up and published. I have several courses written but finding the right software for me and my students was my Catch 22... never considered that would hold me back. I kept working on the courses... and finally, the solution was presented to me. I have tried so many different teaching platforms already and never actually published. Just wasn't confident in knowing the site well enough -- but in no time at all, I am published on Thinkific and so thrilled I made the leap. Finally! Pure FUN!

Pros:

Thinkific is easy to use. Add a new Module, one click to add content, module after module. So easy! Better yet, I LIKE how it looks to the user. I LIKE how the site can look like mine -- not another platform. It does look different, but MY site name is on top, visible, so users know where they are immediately. I've tried others and never quite liked the look as I work with seniors who have retired... and wanted simplicity. This time I found just that. AND YET -- very functional, with every content option I'd like to add. Thinkific has a great Facebook group too. Very active and helpful, learned how others are doing their classes so gives me new ideas. Some groups were full of people whining about what the software didn't do or needed to be corrected... that didn't work for me either, yeah, picky picky! :)

Cons:

I only had to ask Support one question while adding my first course. My only question was: how to add a manual student who paid me privately (or complimentary class) if they didn't purchase through Thinkific itself. I know its there, just chose to ask instead of searching! :) I didn't even use HELP pages to learn how to use it... it was pretty intuitive for me and I love that! Please don't think that means its not a fully integrated teaching service, it really is. They simply "got it" where the user (me, the instructor) and the other user (student) is concerned. Someone did the work to think about how both users will interact with the software. Kudos!

Good for small, basic needs

Comments: Value for the money, attractive front end with little effort.

Pros:

The way Thinkific presents content, from landing page to course completion page, is beautiful and appealing to the user. There are ample ways to connect with the user through various integrations if desired. It's also useful that you can customize the branding and even your own site theme if you have the available resources to do so! After switching from a sub-par LMS, our users are more engaged and more excited about signing in to consume our courses.

Cons:

Reporting leaves much to be desired - best count on using Zapier to pull data into a 3rd party for analyzing user progress and completion rates. It's also frustrating that I have to wait for some reports to be emailed to me after requesting them. Perhaps the most frustrating part is that the front-end is designed using Liquid, which is difficult for a novice with basic CSS / HTML knowledge to navigate in order to make small text changes across the site.

Think Simple Online Course Creation

Pros:

I like Thinkific because it offers a simplified way to create, market, and sell online courses all in one platform. Thinkific have many content creation resources to design multimedia online courses or trainings. For example, there's an intuitive drag and drop feature that allows you to create classes, videos, and other digital tools for content with easy placement onto the platform. What makes this platform unique is the Thinkific Academy that is full of resources to walk you through creating, marketing, and selling your content, especially if you are new to this concept. What is great about Thinkific is the ability to customize and brand your online platform using low code development.

Cons:

Although the interface is simple with a basic look and the ability to use low code development to customize the layout, it does not offer flexibility in making changes to fit your brand. Also, if you are not skilled in frontend development the visual elements of the platform, you will have to pay for additional fees.

I've tried WP plugins for courses as well as Teachable. Thinkific has been phenomenal.

Pros:

It's mobile friendly for my students. It's a very simple to use a system which means even if you're, not super tech you can make it work. I get awesome student feedback on how easy Thinkific is to use, especially on the go. It's got great reporting and you get paid right away instead of having your money held up. Even on the free account which is awesome to better manage cash flow needs. I also love that you can see how your students are progressing and where people might be getting stuck on your content.

Cons:

Probably the only big negative for me is that is I want to include writing below my video training it doesn't show the student how long the video is or even that there's a video there at all. So sometimes people have missed training parts because of the formatting of their system. Not the biggest deal, but I like to streamline my lesson by putting a small blurb under the video and the easiest way to do this means it doesn't show up as a video on the sidebar for the student.

Thinific delivers

Comments: Overall it is goo. The product delivers what it sets out to deliver. I am happy to receive payment immediately unlike other online course options who hold on to payment for weeks.

Pros:

Payment is received immediately when someone purchases my course.

Cons:

It is expensive compared to Systeme.io. They use Stripe as the payment gateway. South Africa and Stripe are not compatible so I'm forced to use Paypal. This leads to lost sales.

Thinkific is a fantastic online learning platform

Comments: We are growing into an international learning community with the help of Thinkific.

Pros:

Versatile, well organized, easy to learn. Free until you get going.

Cons:

- Terrible discussion forum (we wish they would link up with website tool box). - Their pricing plans have changed in ways that don't work well for us and they have not been responsive to our feedback.

Terrible experience and terrible customer service

Comments: Average platform, with awful service, would recommend anything else, have moved to LearnWorlds for now.

Pros:

We thought Thinkific would be a great solution for internal and client LMS for onboarding. We invested a lot into a high plan.

Cons:

It had some poor features, poor UI and UX, and customer experience. Once we went down to a lower plan, service went from average to absolutely terrible. We had multiple accounts and were unable to cancel one, it kept billing us and they would neither assist us to remove the subscription nor refund us. They also over-billed several of the clients we introduced to the software and those clients had similar terrible customer service issues.

Tech Support Needs Improvement!

Comments: The software is alright. I have a major problem with tech support. First, they throw articles at you. I understand it can be annoying to get the same question over and over, but when I’m replying to a thread I don’t want another random tech agent replying by dismissing me with more articles when we already established their articles do not resolve the issue. They are definitely not on the same page and you get replies from a different person each time even though you’re dealing with the same issue. Also, they cannot help with billing updates which is absurd.

Pros:

It’s pretty simple and basic so it’s easy-ish for a beginner.

Cons:

It could use more ease of functionality. When building a landing page you have to search for certain aspects that you want to change when it should all be right there. Tech support needs a MAJOR overhaul.

Best Training App

Comments: Able to help healthcare virtual assistants like me when it comes to in-depth training. Very informative.

Pros:

I loved that I'm able to learn with user-friendly features of the app. I'm able to watch informative videos that are included on certain topics everyday. I also loved the features when taking a quiz which makes me pay attention to details to pass it before proceeding to a next topic.

Cons:

Not much least favorite. I'm satisfied with all the features.

Love it

Comments: Love it so much- I take courses and make my own course

Pros:

Easy to use and explains everything very very well- the best platform I’ve used so far for my business

Cons:

Nothing to complain about except not needing so many videos to split it up but to turn it into a pro makes it shorter and brings my clients attention back

Best money for value for startups

Comments: Easy to use and set up. I am not a tech person and I set up a whole online course in 3 days so pretty cool.

Pros:

There is a free function you can actually set up a whole program completely for free and they only charge a % of the sale. It’s perfect for start ups.

Cons:

I found anything I don’t like so far. I am really happy with it.

Thinkific Has A Lot Going For It

Pros:

The look presented to students, and options for directing their learning process is thoughtful and creative. When I have a question that the help file can't answer, the live chat has been helpful a number of times.

Cons:

Some options are "all or nothing", in other words, I can't customize to individuals as much as I might like.