When it comes to platforms that allow you to develop and market your online courses, there are quite a few options out there which are available to you.
And Thinkific, we think, is one of the best ones on the market.
However, that’s not to say others aren’t as great. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, as does Thinkific. So today, we’re going to have Thinkific battle against a few of the best on the market, so you can make an informed decision on which platform works best for you.
Everybody has different needs, expectations and capabilities.
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Thinkific VS Teachable Thinkific or Kajabi
First thing’s first, let’s get one of the bigger, and more difficult, comparisons out of the way. Thinkific and Teachable are equally great. They offer the essentials you’ll need, easy to use whether you have experience or not, are fairly priced and are just really great solutions. They’re quite similar so it makes choosing between the two of them a little bit more complicated, but we’ll try our best anyway.
Let’s start with who uses which platform! Though they both have a broad appeal that can cater to single individuals or companies and groups, there are preferences.
Because Thinkific’s main objective is to empower educators more, to help those who really care about their students’ experience, their clients are more often that not entrepreneurs — typically masters of a particular craft such as writing, or speakers and coaches — and companies who wish to grow and develop their companies through education for their chosen audience.
Teachable on the other hand honestly imbibes their mantra of “Everything is Teachable.” Their target audience is still quite wide actually even crossing over to a few of those that Thinkific targets, but they also cover people who wish to begin teaching online and earning through it.
So which are you? Who they cater to can be very revealing for what they stand for and what they can do.
Moving on to course creation and student engagement, both Teachable and Thinkific are really good at what they do. It’s really hard to go wrong with one or the other. There are of course differences between the two.
While Teachable offers you more flexibility with its course builder, extensive course reporting tools and an iOS app for your student, Thinkific can provide you advanced quizzing features, the ability to create assignments and surveys in addition to a”communities” and”Groups” features.
Teachable is much easier to use from them both, and really has more to offer in regards to the sales and marketing features. It also helps that they have some pretty powerful course reporting programs, and their checkout process is optimized — complete with 1-click upsells, support for Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc..
Thinkific really hones in on the educational side a bit more, with a greater focus on students. You can see that in its stronger quizzing capability, how its built to support missions. Create communities and manage your students.
Additionally, it wins out a little more in terms of its site builder, which is a big consideration if you don’t have an existing site already as it is.
Finally, concerning price, Thinkific kind of wins since they have a plan that’s absolutely free. Sure it provides just the basics, but it’s free. And that’s a significant thing.
When it comes to the paid portion though, Thinkific has a more beginner-friendly prices, but it could actually end up getting more costly than Teachable, based on needs and add-on features which might not be available on certain plans. Teachable however provides everything right off the bat, based on your plan.
Thinkific can be somewhat sneaky that way. But otherwise, if you do not need those extra bells and whistles, Thinkific is the more affordable option between the two.
If we’re gonna need to give the crown to somebody, it would need to be Thinkific, with it barely beating out Teachable. It is so close that, at the end of the day, it is really more of a personal taste and contextualized need that will guide you to which of the two platforms you should work with.
> > Click here to try Thinkific for Free Now! < <
Thinkific VS Udemy
Thinkific and Udemy will be a tiny bit easier to compare than our previous match up, because of the fact that they are two quite different platforms with their own pros and cons. Thinkific or Kajabi
With Thinkific, you really can design your site. Yeah, there are templates you can use, but if you decide so and are capable, it is possible to totally take control of your website’s design and customize plenty of it. With Udemy, you do not really get that choice. You’re limited in your options for design. You can pick your course graphic, but otherwise things such as course layout and style can’t really be touched.
Udem does have a marketplace feature though, which can be quite useful. However, it’s a double edged sword. You own the program, but you can’t removeit from Udemy’s marketplace, while with Thinkific, you can do anything you want with your own courses.
You can price your course however way you see fit, provide any type of discounts and when it comes to Affiliate programs, you determine how much the commission percentage is onThinkific. But with Udemy, you have to follow their pricing , coupon system and all Affiliate Programs to your course are set at 50% commission.
There’s more freedom and flexibility with Thinkific, allowing it to stand above the competition.
And that is why Thinkific kind of stands head and shoulders over Udemy for us.
Udemy is great to begin with from scratch, especially if you don’t really have an audience yet, or in case you don’t have experience in creating an internet course. It’s the basics of what you need and the marketplace is a fantastic starting point. It also helps that it’s pretty inexpensive.
However, Udemy is not ideal if you would like to grow beyond that. If you wish to expand, to take control or to just go bigger, it is not the perfect platform for you.
We highly advise you to go with Thinkific instead, if that’s the case.
If you would like, you don’t even have to take our word for it. One good thing you can do is try it out yourself actually. Thinkific has their free plan with all the basics, while Udemy doesn’t charge you a monthly fee if you join. First Hand experience is always one of the best ways to determine if it works for you.
> > Click here to try Thinkific for Free Now! < <
Thinkific vs Kajabi
The gap between Thinkific and Kajabi can be seen in their messaging.
Thinkific’s homepage says “Easily Create, market and sell your online course. You get complete control and great support.”
Kajabi’s says,”Sell Your Knowledge. Get Set up in minutes. Everything under one roof”
Kind of similar, yeah? Yes and no. We’ll get to it in just a bit. Thinkific or Kajabi
But even here you can see what they concentrate on, and who they’re for specifically. For one, from the way it was structured and rolled out, you can see that Kajabi was created for people who want to sell and feature individual pieces of content, rather than a more expansive and structured learning.
You go for Kajabi if you wish to teach someone let’s say how to perform Shakespeare really well. A masterclass in that particular topic.
Thinkific is for those who want to sell an entire structured course on acting, from its history, to its techniques, to the different kinds and styles there are out there in the world. We are by no means saying one is far better than another in this respect, but rather saying that it actually depends on your requirements and exactly what it is you want to sell and teach.
Do you just have to sell a class, or an entire expansive curriculum? It’s up to you, and either or is fine.
Looking at the features, that’s also reflected. Thinkific offers a great pure course builder, while Kajabi is more of a marketing platform with sales automation tagging features. With Thinkific, you are able to offer certifications, while with Kajabi, you can not. Kajabi is accompanied by an email-builder and a landing page builder, while Thinkific doesn’t. Kajabi is the way to go if sales funnels are what you need with your software. That being said, Thinkific has a cool blog post about increasing sales for your online course here.
Again: What are your needs?
Kajabi s a fantastic all-in-one marketing solution, however it has a tendency to overextend its offerings, attempting to do too much and not really attaining it. And it does that while being more expensive that Thinkific, so that is another enormous consideration.
As we have mentioned before, Thinkific has a free plan you can avail of and not just test, but use indefinitely if it satisfies your needs. Kajabi includes a 14 day trial and that is it. If you want to give both a spin to see if it works for you, go ahead, but for this particular item, Thinkific clearly wins.
‘At the end of the day, Kajabi does indeed have an edge concerning the promotion suite if offers — and we can not stress enough how important marketing is! Doesn’t matter how good a course is if your”classroom” is empty. However, if you will need to construct a program, which is what we assumed you need, hence you researching all these options, then Thinkific is your obvious option.
Thinkific is, at its core, the answer to what you need in the first place: A platform that will help you educate.
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And The Winner is?
We had to take our time deciding who is the best here, especially since its quite an important decision which tool you’re going to outsource to. Picking the right software is no small matter.
After going three rounds with some of the heavy hitters on the market, Thinkific with its core focus on its class builder, terrific plan options that includes a basic free service, and it’s focus on making the experience of getting out there to create a strong online educational platform, clearly wins. Thinkific or Kajabi
Give it a think and you’ll see what we mean.