When it comes to platforms that allow you to develop and market your online courses, there are quite a few options out there that are available to you.
And Thinkific, we think, is among the best ones on the market.
However, that’s not to say others aren’t as good. 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 you can make an informed decision on which platform works best for you.
Everyone has different needs, capabilities and expectations.
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Thinkific VS Teachable Thinkific or Udemy
First thing’s first, let’s get one of the bigger, and harder, comparisons out of the way. Thinkific and Teachable are both 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 are quite similar so that it makes choosing between the two of them a little bit more complicated, but we will try our best anyway.
Let’s start with who uses which platform! Although they both have a broad appeal that may cater to single individuals or companies and groups, there are preferences.
Because Thinkific’s most important goal is to empower educators more, to assist those who really care about their students’ experience, their customers are more often that not entrepreneurs — usually masters of a particular craft such as writing, or coaches and speakers — and businesses who wish to grow and develop their businesses through education for their preferred audience.
Teachable on the other hand truly imbibes their mantra of “Everything is Teachable.” Their target market is still quite wide even crossing over to some of those that Thinkific targets, but they also cover people who want to begin educating 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 tough 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 even an iOS app for your pupil, 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 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 tools, and their checkout procedure is optimized — complete with 1-click upsells, support for Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc..
Thinkific really hones in on the side a bit more, with a greater focus on students. You can see that in its stronger quizzing capability, how its built to support assignments. 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 cost, Thinkific kind of wins since they have a plan that’s absolutely free. Sure it offers just the basics, but it’s free. And that’s a significant thing.
When it comes to the paid portion though, Thinkific includes a more beginner-friendly prices, but it could actually end up becoming more costly than Teachable, depending on needs and add-on features that might not be available on certain plans. Teachable however provides everything right off the bat, depending upon your plan.
Thinkific can be a bit sneaky that way. But if you do not need those additional bells and whistles, Thinkific is the more affordable option between the two.
If we’re gonna have to provide the crown to someone, 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 lead you to which of the two platforms you need to work with.
> > Click here to try Thinkific for Free Now! < <
Thinkific VS Udemy
Thinkific and Udemy will be a little bit easier to compare than our previous match up, because of the fact that they’re two very different platforms with their own pros and cons. Thinkific or Udemy
With Thinkific, you can really design your website. Yeah, there are templates you can use, but if you decide so and are capable, you can totally take control of your site’s design and customize a lot of it. With Udemy, you don’t really get that choice. You’re 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 though, which can be quite helpful. However, it’s a double edged sword. You own the course, but you can’t take it out of Udemy’s marketplace, while with Thinkific, you can do whatever 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 is more freedom and flexibility with Thinkific, enabling 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 online course. It’s the basics of what you need and the market is a fantastic starting point. Additionally, it helps that it is 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 larger, it is not the ideal platform for you.
We highly advise you to go with Thinkific instead, if that is the case.
If you would like, you do not even have to take our word for it. 1 good thing you can do is try it out yourself actually. Thinkific has their free program including all the basics, while Udemy doesn’t charge you a monthly fee if you join. First Hand experience is always among 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 Udemy
However, even here you can see what they concentrate 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 created for men and women that wish to sell and feature 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 particular topic.
Thinkific is for those who want to sell a whole structured course on acting, from its history, to its own techniques, to the different kinds and styles you will find out there in the world. We are by no means saying one is far better than the other in this regard, but rather saying that it actually depends on your needs and what it is you want to sell and teach.
Do you only have to sell a class, or an entire grand program? 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 provide certifications, while with Kajabi, you can not. Kajabi comes with 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 really attaining it. And it does that while being more expensive that Thinkific, so that’s 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 really have an edge in terms of the marketing suite if offers — and we can’t 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 build a course, which is what we assumed you need, hence you researching all these choices, then Thinkific is the obvious choice.
Thinkific is, at its heart, the answer to what you need in the first place: A platform to 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 a few 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 Udemy
Give it a think and you’ll see what we mean.
