When it comes to platforms that allow you to develop and market your online classes, there are a number of options out there which are available to you.
And Thinkific, we believe, is among the best ones out there.
However, that’s not to say others aren’t as great. They all have their pros and cons, as does Thinkific. So today, we are going to have Thinkific battle against a few of the best out there, so that you can make an educated decision on which platform works best for you.
Everybody has different needs, capabilities and expectations.
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Thinkific VS Teachable Thinkific and Shopify
First thing’s first, let us get one of the bigger, and more difficult, comparisons out of the way. Thinkific and Teachable are equally great. They both offer the essentials that 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! Although they both have a wide 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 assist those who really care about their pupils’ experience, their clients are more often that not entrepreneurs — typically masters of a particular craft such as writing, or coaches and speakers — and companies who wish to grow and build their businesses through education for their chosen audience.
Teachable on the other hand truly imbibes their mantra of “Everything is Teachable.” Their target audience is still quite wide even crossing over to a few of those that Thinkific targets, but they also cover individuals who want to start teaching online and earning through it.
So which are you? Who they appeal to can be quite revealing for what they stand for and what they can do.
Moving on to course creation and pupil engagement, both Teachable and Thinkific are excellent at what they do. It’s really tough to go wrong with one or the other. There are of course differences between the two.
While Teachable provides you more flexibility with its course builder, extensive course reporting tools and even an iOS app for your student, Thinkific can give you advanced quizzing features, the ability to create assignments and surveys as well as a”communities” and”Groups” features.
Teachable is much easier to use from them both, and actually has more to offer when it comes to the sales and marketing features. It also helps that they have some fairly strong 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 side somewhat more, with a greater focus on students. You can see that in its more powerful quizzing capability, the way its built to support assignments. Create communities and manage your students.
It also wins out a bit 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 cost, Thinkific kind of wins because they have a plan that’s absolutely free. Sure it offers just the basics, but it’s free. And that’s a significant thing.
In regards to the paid portion though, Thinkific has a more beginner-friendly rates, but it could actually end up getting more expensive than Teachable, based on needs and add-on features which may 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 if you don’t need those additional bells and whistles, Thinkific is the less expensive choice between the two.
If we are gonna have to give the crown to someone, it would have to be Thinkific, with it barely beating out Teachable. It’s so close that, at the end of the day, it is really more of a personal taste and contextualized need that will lead you to which of the two platforms you should work with.
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Thinkific VS Udemy
Thinkific and Udemy will be a tiny bit easier to compare than our previous match up, due to the fact that they are two very different platforms with their own pros and cons. Thinkific and Shopify
With Thinkific, you can really design your website. Yeah, there are templates you can use, but if you choose so and are competent, you can totally take control of your site’s design and customize plenty of it. With Udemy, you do not really get that option. You are limited in your choices 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 however, which can be quite useful. However, it’s a double edged sword. You own the course, but you can not take it out of Udemy’s marketplace, while with Thinkific, you can do whatever you want with your courses.
You can price your course however way you see fit, provide any kind of discounts and in regards to Affiliate programs, you determine how much the commission percentage is onThinkific. But with Udemy, you need to follow their pricing options, coupon system and all Affiliate Programs for your course are set at 50% commission.
There’s more freedom and flexibility with Thinkific, allowing it to stand above the competition.
And that’s why Thinkific kind of stands head and shoulders over Udemy for us.
Udemy is great to get started with from scratch, especially if you don’t actually have an audience yet, or in case you don’t have experience in creating an online course. It has the basics of what you need and the market is a wonderful starting point. It also helps that it is pretty inexpensive.
However, Udemy isn’t ideal if you want to grow beyond that. If you want to expand, to take control or to just go larger, it’s not the ideal platform for you.
We highly suggest you go with Thinkific instead, if that is true.
If you would like, you don’t even need to take our word for it. 1 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 see if it works for you.
> > Click here to try Thinkific for Free Now! < <
Thinkific vs Kajabi
The gap between Thinkific and Kajabi can be observed 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 a bit. Thinkific and Shopify
But even here you can see what they focus on, and who they’re for specifically. For one, from how it was structured and rolled out, it is possible to see that Kajabi was made for men and women who want to feature and sell individual pieces of content, instead of a more expansive and structured learning.
You go for Kajabi if you wish to teach someone let us say how to do Shakespeare really well. A masterclass in that specific topic.
Thinkific is for people who want to sell a whole structured course on acting, from its history, to its techniques, to the different kinds and styles you will find out there in the world. We’re by no means saying one is far better than another in this respect, but rather saying that it actually depends on your requirements and what it is you want to sell and teach.
Do you just have to sell a course, or an entire grand program? It’s up to you, and either or is fine.
Taking a look at the features, that is 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 can provide 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 propensity to overextend its offerings, attempting to do too much and not actually attaining it. And it does that while being more expensive that Thinkific, so that is another huge 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 wish to give both a spin to find out if it works for you, go ahead, but for this specific item, Thinkific clearly wins.
‘At the end of the day, Kajabi does really have an edge in terms of the promotion suite if offers — and we can’t stress enough how important marketing is! Doesn’t matter how great a class is if your”classroom” is empty. However, if you will need to build a course, which is exactly what we assumed you need, hence you exploring all these choices, then Thinkific is the obvious choice.
Thinkific is, at its heart, the answer to everything 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 out there, Thinkific with its core focus on its course builder, great plan options that includes a basic free service, and it’s focus on making the experience of getting out there to create a powerful online educational platform, clearly wins. Thinkific and Shopify
Give it a think and you’ll see what we mean.
