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 believe, is among the best ones out there.
However, that is 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 you can make an informed decision on which platform works best for you.
Everybody has different needs, capabilities and expectations.
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Thinkific VS Teachable Thinkific Private Courses
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 both 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 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 wide appeal that can cater to single individuals or businesses and groups, there are preferences.
Because Thinkific’s main goal is to empower teachers more, to help those who really care about their pupils’ experience, their customers are more often that not entrepreneurs — typically masters of a specific craft such as writing, or speakers and coaches — and companies who want 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 audience is still quite wide even crossing over to a few of those that Thinkific targets, but they also cover people who wish to start teaching online and earning through it.
So which are you? Who they cater to can be quite revealing for what they stand for and what they can do.
Moving on to course creation and student 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 offers you more flexibility with its course builder, extensive course reporting tools and even an iOS app for your student, Thinkific can provide 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 really has more to offer when it comes to the sales and marketing features. Additionally, it helps that they have some fairly powerful course reporting programs, 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 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.
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 is free. And that’s a significant thing.
When it comes to the paid portion though, Thinkific has a more beginner-friendly prices, but it can actually end up becoming more expensive than Teachable, depending on needs and add-on features which 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 otherwise, if you do not need those extra bells and whistles, Thinkific is the less expensive option between the two.
If we are gonna need to give the crown to somebody, it would have to be Thinkific, with it barely beating out Teachable. It is so close that, at the end of the day, it’s really more of a personal preference and contextualized need that will lead you to which of the two platforms you need to work with.
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Thinkific VS Udemy
Thinkific and Udemy will be a little bit easier to compare than our previous match up, due to the fact that they’re two quite different platforms with their own pros and cons. Thinkific Private Courses
With Thinkific, you can really design your site. Yeah, there are templates you can use, but if you choose so and are capable, you can take control of your site’s design and customize plenty of it. With Udemy, you don’t really get that choice. You’re limited in your options for design. You can pick your course graphic, but otherwise things like course layout and style can’t really be touched.
Udem does have a market feature though, which can be really helpful. However, it’s a double edged sword. You own the program, but you can not take it out of 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 options, coupon system and all Affiliate Programs for your class 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 get started 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 has the basics of what you need and the market is a fantastic starting point. It also helps that it’s pretty inexpensive.
However, Udemy is not ideal if you want to grow beyond that. If you wish 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’s the case.
If you want, you do not even have to take our word for it. One good thing you can do is try it out yourself actually. Thinkific has their free program with all the basics, while Udemy doesn’t charge you a monthly fee if you combine. First Hand experience is always among the best ways to determine if it works for you.
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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 just a bit. Thinkific Private Courses
However, 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 made 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 us say how to do Shakespeare really well. A masterclass in that specific topic.
Thinkific is for those who wish to sell an entire structured course on acting, from its history, to its own techniques, to the different kinds and styles there are out there in the world. We’re by no means saying one is far better than the other in this respect, but rather saying that it actually depends upon your requirements and exactly what it is you want to sell and teach.
Do you just need to sell a class, or an entire expansive curriculum? 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 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 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 is another huge consideration.
As we have mentioned before, Thinkific includes a free plan you can avail of and not just test, but use indefinitely if it satisfies your needs. Kajabi has a 14 day trial and that’s it. If you want 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 indeed have an edge concerning the marketing suite if offers — and we can’t stress enough how important marketing is! Doesn’t matter how great a course is if your”classroom” is empty. However, if you need to construct a program, which is exactly what we assumed you need, hence you exploring these options, then Thinkific is the clear choice.
Thinkific is, at its core, 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 make a powerful online educational platform, clearly wins. Thinkific Private Courses
Give it a think and you’ll see what we mean.
