Thinkific Reviews

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!

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.

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.

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.

The intuitive nature of your interface is extremely helpful for both course designers and students. As a site and course administrator, I'm exceptionally impressed with the ease of use. Thank you for incorporating finance management functions. Sleek design, ease of use, great price point. Don't change the price, it's one of your best market differentiators. I switched to Thinkific for the Pro Growth plan which was the key difference for me from other providers like Matrix.

I really need to market courses via social media with the least number of accounts and steps. It would be awesome if you could integrate some social media marketing tools into the site rather than link accompanying providers. The more I can do WITHIN thinkific, the better. The same applies for business functions like website management, sales of non-course materials (e.g., printed books, e-books), and perhaps QuickBooks

I like that it is easy to use, it's easy to upload your course material and publish your course.

My main issues with thinkific include very slow page load speed (which kills SEO rankings), dysfunction in the assignment feature (specifically, when clicking "next page" on the assignments, it takes you back to page 1 and you have to start all over), inability to edit a course landing page (my course has been published for 4 years and the URL is out in google so I don't want to recreate and for some reason we can no longer edit the page at all), and problems with user experience (students not being able to load a page, etc)

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.

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.

I liked that you could design the access portal, the courses, and the payment methods all in 1 interface without any needs for additional products. I particularly enjoy how easy it is to set the courses up if you have your curriculum designed.

I wish there was an option to be able to have access to all the course features without fees. We are a startup and just are not in a position to charge for courses yet, meaning this would be a huge investment for us that we are not willing to make. It would be great if you could get a 6month burn-in period to test and market before going live.

Ease of use and simple to understand user interface

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.

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! :)

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!

I was so excited to find this product and thought it would be ideal for my needs

The software is not user-friendly. I was hoping that it would be more straightforward and my staff have also commented that is it not user-friendly.

There is nobody to call when you have a query and can only email. It takes them a day to get back to you. And we are based in the UK and with the time difference, we have to wait at least a day for an answer. What makes it even more frustrating is that, after waiting for a reply, they ask for information that was already included in your original email (and then you have to wait another day for a response).

I sent a query on Monday asking how to do something and the reply said 'see instructions below' and there were no instructions there. In the same email, they asked me to confirm the email address (which I had emailed them on and they had clearly not tried this). I responded right away and just got an email asking how they could help me! (They clearly had not read the email chain).

It is now 9pm at night on Tuesday and will be at least Wednesday afternoon with the time difference until I may get a reply and actually proceed.

I like that it is customizable. I like that Thinkific offers lots of webinars and help with all aspects of publishing online courses. It allows a couple ways to collect money for your courses. They spell out exactly what to do! For a newbie like me, I began setting things up months ago while I was working on my course. As I completed it, I began uploading the lectures and made some changes to my text and landing page and other info. Easy to make it your own. I am happy with how professional it all looks. Now I will get busy with the marketing end and Thinkific can help with info about that too! Customer service is awesome and they reach out frequently to see what they can do to guide you! I highly recommend this solution for getting an online course published. I am at the entry level, but am testing the waters until I need to go further and unlock more features.

As expected the free version is basic, so in order to get to some of the good stuff, you have to upgrade. Not a big deal really, since I am producing my first course and need to go slowly.

I love the drag and drop options. The ease of use and bulk importers. I have such a great contact to my students and abundant options to get my teachings across. The editors are functional and best of all:

The designs are professional and looks like a Tesla ;)

I have room for up to 2gb videos! That is hosting and being serious to support online education. Did I mention it is Per Video!!

There is one thing I'd like to see different on Thinkific. My ability to have more sub-modules in each Chapter of my courses. That's it. Otherwise, I have nothing to say.

The UI/UX is well developed and it feels premium.
- Ability to create memberships & Bundles
- Website Builder
- Affiliate Center
- Community feature is awesome (your can create your own Private community/space)
- Overall analysis (revenue, order, Student engagements etc.)
- Drip content is cool (Publish your content/material on specific day or time)
- Certificates after completion of the course
- Ability to create assignments, Quizes & Surveys

- Lack of mobile app, It is handy to learn using mobile phone
- It's Expensive, Difficult to bear the cost if you are just starting
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