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.

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)

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 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.

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.

That it's really comprehensive, yet still has a free to low-cost entry-level option. It's easy to use and looks visually great too with its customisable interface options. Oh and I love that you can i-frame other websites and URL's into your courses (this is great for spreadsheets and websites) - it saves a lot of time and energy, and updating! Oh, and it has / had a low payment processing fee structure.

I haven't hit any issues with it yet so to date there's nothing I don't like about it.

I do really like Thinkific although the price seems a bit higher than some new online platforms that are coming through. I like the course layout and the amount that you can edit. It's a bit more tech-savvy than some which I don't mind. I've built fast courses with Thinkific and enjoyed being a user on a weekly basis. I do just hope that Thinkfics features get more modernised as time goes on as it can seem a little outdated at times. Just my opinion :)

It's a bit more tech-savvy than some which I don't mind, but even a tech-savvy person wouldn't mind more convenience every day. This could come from more drag and drop and more templates to use as there doesn't seem to be any help in building your courses. There may be tutorials that I haven't come across the mind. I would like to see the price drop down before I go elsewhere.