Teachable vs Thinkific: Which Is Best? (Updated 2025)
Teachable vs Thinkific: Where do these popular online course platforms stand in terms of key features and pricing? Too many options, not enough time, and both platforms swear they're “the one”.
These platforms help creators, tutors, podcasters, and educators build thriving e-learning businesses. They offer solid toolsets for beginners and seasoned professionals looking to create, market, and sell their expertise online.
But here's the question every creator asks: Which platform actually delivers on its promises? And more importantly, is there a better alternative that won't force you to choose between features and affordability?
In this deep dive, I’ll walk you through how Teachable and Thinkific compare features, pricing, and ease of use. And I’ll also show you why a newer player like FreshLearn might just outshine them, especially if you're starting or scaling without a big team behind you.
Teachable vs Thinkific vs FreshLearn - Comparison Checklist
What is Teachable?
Teachable, a creator-focused LMS launched in 2014, helps you build and sell online courses with customizable tools and built-in student engagement features.
The platform offers integrated email marketing, quizzes, advanced reports, etc., that help creators deliver a better experience to their students and improve conversion rates.
Benefits of Using Teachable As An Online Course Platform
- Teachable’s course builder lets you modify multiple lessons at once from the curriculum page. Unlike Thinkific, where you must click into each lesson to change preview settings or publishing status, you can select several lessons and update them together on Teachable.
- It tracks when someone starts but doesn't complete a purchase, then automatically sends follow-up emails to remind them to finish buying. This abandoned checkout feature automatically captures partial buyer information, so you can remind them to finish their purchase later — something Thinkific doesn't offer.
- Teachable's BackOffice automatically handles affiliate payouts, tax forms (W-8/W9s, 1099s), and automatic refund adjustments. You pay 2.8% extra, but it saves hiring someone to manage affiliate accounting.
- The platform provides detailed quiz analysis, student demographics, and video engagement metrics, including play rates, which are more comprehensive than Thinkific's basic course reporting.
- It lets you edit HTML code directly in content blocks for unlimited customization. Non-coders can use pre-written templates for dynamic FAQs, testimonials, and featured insights blocks.
- Teachable offers more AI features than Thinkific. Both have outline and quiz generators, but only Teachable includes automatic subtitle creation, lesson summaries, and a writing assistant for course content.
Limitations of Using Teachable As An Online Course Platform
- Teachable's page builder lacks basic sections like testimonials and author bios, forcing you into custom HTML for standard elements. Meanwhile, Thinkific provides 20+ ready-made sections, including countdown timers, lead capture forms, and pricing tables.
- You can't copy individual lessons between courses — it's all or nothing. Want to reuse one lesson from Course A in Course B? You'll either recreate it from scratch or duplicate the entire course, while Thinkific copies lessons individually.
- Teachable only offers an iOS app — no Android app or white-label options. But Thinkific provides both iOS and Android apps, plus white-label mobile apps at an additional cost.
- The entry-level Starter plan charges 7.5% per transaction, which can eat into profits for new creators testing the waters.
- Teachable's new 2025 plans impose student limits — you can serve up to 100 students on Starter, 1,000 students on Builder, with unlimited students only on Growth and Advanced plans. This means smaller creators hit caps that require plan upgrades.
Teachable Pricing
Teachable pricing is divided into four plans
Starter: $39/month or $29/month (when billed annually).
- Best for exploring Teachable and launching your first product at your own pace
- You get one published product with unlimited product creation in draft mode
- Includes 7.5% transaction fee, global payments in 200+ countries, and an iOS student mobile app
- Offers upsells, coupons, abandoned cart recovery emails, and email support
Builder: $89/month or $69/month (when billed annually).
- Best if you’re ready to build a strong foundation and turn your work into a real digital business
- Adds five published products with 0% transaction fee and unlimited product creation
- Supports affiliate program, course certificates, and live chat support
- Includes global payments, upsells/coupons, and abandoned cart recovery emails
Growth: $189/month or $139/month (when billed annually).
- Best if you want to grow faster, reach more people, and sell your expertise with confidence
- Offers 25 published products with a white-label website and custom admin permissions
- Enables free subtitle and translation generation, plus live chat support
- Delivers affiliate program, course certificates, and upsells/coupons
Advanced: $399/month or $309/month (when billed annually).
- Best if you want to optimize your business operations, and grow reach and revenue at scale
- Features 100 published products with 0% transaction fee
- Includes unlimited integrations and free subtitle and translation generation
- Provides white label website, custom admin permissions, and all Growth plan features
Who Is Teachable For?
Teachable is perfect for you if you are a/an:
- New creator testing the waters who wants to avoid monthly commitments; pay only 7.5% transaction fees when you make sales.
- Creator needing superior AI tools who wants automatic subtitle generation, lesson summaries, and content writing assistance that Thinkific doesn't provide.
- Solopreneur wanting hands-off affiliate management who hates admin work - automatically pays affiliates, handles refunds, and files tax forms.
- An international seller to Europe earning over €10,000 annually who needs automatic VAT collection and BackOffice tax handling to eliminate compliance headaches.
What is Thinkific?
Thinkific is a complete platform that empowers users to create and manage courses using the intuitive admin panel easily.
It is also one of the older learning management system (LMS) platforms, founded in 2012.
Thinkific provides interactive features that allow better input on the creator's courses and delivers automated features that lighten the creator's load.
Benefits of Using Thinkific As An Online Course Platform
- Thinkific doesn't charge transaction fees on any plan, including their entry-level Basic plan. You keep 100% of your revenue minus standard payment processing fees, while Teachable charges 7.5% on their Starter plan.
- It offers randomized question banks, detailed answer explanations, and bulk question importing — features that Teachable doesn't support.
- Thinkific's video library automatically saves uploaded videos for reuse across multiple courses. You can also copy individual lessons between courses, making content repurposing more efficient than Teachable, which requires complete course duplication.
- The platform allows bulk enrollment of students and group progress tracking, enabling bulk corporate sales. This group management feature is available on higher-tier plans.
- It includes native survey tools to gather feedback on teaching performance, course quality, and student progress. Teachable requires custom coding to achieve similar survey functionality.
- The drag-and-drop sales page editor lets you easily arrange calls to action, course banners, curriculum overviews, author bios, and ratings sections. The design system offers more layout flexibility than basic page builders.
- Thinkific communities let you add live events within communities and give students mobile app access. You get more community spaces, while Teachable keeps communities more basic.
- Thinkific Plus gives you SCORM compliance for corporate training systems, plus single sign-on and enterprise security features that Teachable doesn't match on regular plans.
Limitations of Using Thinkific As An Online Course Platform
- Thinkific lacks automatic VAT collection and remittance systems for EU sales. Creators needing VAT compliance must use third-party tools like Quaderno at around $50/month, while Teachable handles this automatically.
- It doesn't offer built-in student referral features to incentivize word-of-mouth marketing. You'll need third-party apps to create referral programs, while Teachable includes this functionality natively.
- It sends basic automated notifications but restricts drip schedule flexibility to simple onboarding and completion emails. Advanced email sequences require external marketing tools.
- Thinkific lacks several top-rated monetization features, such as Masterclass or Newsletters.
- It does not offer white-label services unless a creator subscribes to their Grow Plan, which costs $199/month.
Check out the best Thinkific alternative here.
Thinkific Pricing
Thinkific Pricing is structured across several tiers, each designed to accommodate varying levels of course creation and business growth:
Basic: $49/month or $36/month (when billed annually).
- Best for new creators starting their online education business
- You get one community (five spaces), five digital downloads, and five coaching/webinars
- Includes email automation, site builder, coupons/promotions, and affiliate selling
- Offers email and live chat support
Start: $99/month or $74/month (when billed annually).
- Step up for creators ready to scale with enhanced engagement features
- Adds unlimited downloads/coaching, live Zoom lessons, and memberships
- Supports product bundles, advanced quizzes, and course certificates
- Includes email and live chat support
Grow: $199/month or $149/month (when billed annually).
- Suited for growing businesses needing advanced features and priority support
- Offers three communities (20 spaces each), standard API and webhooks, and two admin accounts
- Enables advanced analytics, bulk enrollment, group orders, and three revenue partners
- Delivers phone and priority email support
Plus: Custom pricing
- Built for enterprise-level operations and high-growth teams
- Features unlimited everything, SCORM compliance, SSO, and 99.5% uptime SLA
- Includes dedicated sandbox, Plus Portal, and launch preparedness review
- Provides a dedicated customer success team and 24/7 monitoring
Who Is Thinkific For?
Thinkific is your ideal platform if you are a/an:
- Budget-conscious creator who wants to maximize profit margins with zero transaction fees across all plans instead of paying 5-7.5% per sale.
- Educator requiring advanced assessment tools with randomized question banks, detailed quiz explanations, and Brillium integration for better evaluation.
- Corporate trainer or enterprise client who requires SCORM compliance, SSO integration, and enterprise features for LMS compatibility.
- Content creator building course libraries who repurposes content across multiple courses using video library features and individual lesson copying.
Teachable vs Thinkific: Which Online Course Platform is Better?
Course Creation Features
Both platforms give you drag-and-drop course builders with unlimited hosting. Teachable wins on lesson management: you can bulk edit multiple lessons at once instead of clicking into each one individually, like Thinkific requires.
But Thinkific's video library beats Teachable hands down. Upload a video once, reuse it across any course. Copy individual lessons between courses without duplicating everything. Teachable forces you to duplicate entire courses just to reuse content.
Both platforms work fine for basic course creation, but neither gives you the complete toolkit modern creators need, and they lack integrated newsletters, masterclass content, or complete digital product ecosystems.
Inclusivity
Neither of the two platforms, Teachable and Thinkific, offers an all-in-one solution.
User Interface (UX) and Ease of Use
Both platforms offer clean, intuitive interfaces with drag-and-drop course builders and logical left-sidebar navigation. Course creation feels straightforward: upload content, structure lessons, and automatically generate sales pages without manual linking.
Teachable edges ahead with better organization, keeping all course settings (certificates, coupons, reports) in one centralized location. Thinkific scatters these options across separate sections, creating extra clicks to manage courses.
Both platforms work fine for beginners, but neither offers the streamlined workflow that modern creators expect. You'll still face a learning curve navigating multiple sections and understanding platform-specific quirks.
Migration Support
Neither platform offers real migration help. You'll manually rebuild everything: courses, content, student data, and integrations.
Thinkific provides migration guides and bulk student import on higher plans, but you're still doing the heavy lifting yourself. Both can't migrate student progress or subscriptions automatically. Expect weeks rebuilding from scratch.
This means creators need platforms built for seamless transitions, not manual rebuilds.
Pricing & Free Plan
Teachable hiked prices in 2025, restructuring plans, and eliminating free options while adding 7.5% transaction fees for beginners. Depending on your plan, student limits now cap growth at 100-1,000 students.
Thinkific maintains zero transaction fees across all plans, making it more creator-friendly for high-volume sellers.
However, both platforms have eliminated free plans, forcing all creators into paid subscriptions.
Payment Integration
Both platforms use their own payment gateways (Teachable Pay, Thinkific Payments) powered by Stripe, supporting cards, digital wallets, and buy-now-pay-later options with automatic tax collection.
However, gateway restrictions create problems. Teachable blocks your own Stripe in supported countries and charges 2.8% extra for PayPal. Thinkific allows your gateways but adds 0.5-5% fees. If Thinkific payments aren’t available in your country, this fee is waived.
Teachable's BackOffice handles affiliate payments and tax forms for 2.8% extra. Both offer one-step checkouts with order bumps, but only Teachable recovers abandoned carts.
Marketing Features
Both platforms offer basic affiliate management with custom commission rates and tracking dashboards, but neither allows course-level commission settings.
Teachable dominates with superior affiliate features - application forms, custom cookie periods, external URL tracking, and automatic BackOffice payouts. Plus, Thinkific lacks student referral programs entirely.
For email marketing, Thinkific integrates with more services (MailChimp, ConvertKit, AWeber, ActiveCampaign) while Teachable relies heavily on Zapier.
Customer Support
Thinkific offers live chat on all paid plans, while Teachable only restricts it to the Growth and Advanced tiers. Thinkific adds phone support to Grow plans, but Teachable does not provide that support.
Both platforms offer email support and knowledge bases, with active user communities for peer assistance. Support is available during business hours, with Thinkific generally having a better reputation for response times.
Teachable Vs Thinkific: Which One Should You Choose?
The ultimate decision boils down to your priorities. Pick Teachable if you value AI-powered content tools and streamlined bulk lesson editing over everything else. Go with Thinkific if maximizing profit margins through zero transaction fees and building robust assessment systems are non-negotiable.
Teachable suits creators who hate administrative work: automated affiliate payouts and cart recovery handle the busywork. Thinkific works better for educators prioritizing content reuse and corporate sales through group management features.
But honestly? Neither platform stands out as a clear winner. Teachable's 2025 price increases strain budgets, while Thinkific's outdated interface frustrates users. Both require workarounds for basic needs: migration support, modern customer service, and integrated marketing tools.
FreshLearn- A Better Online Course Creation Platform
While Teachable and Thinkific force you to pick between features and affordability, FreshLearn delivers both without compromise.
Need real migration support? The platform handles it for free.
Want 24/7 live chat without paying enterprise prices? It's included on all paid plans.
Looking for white labeling without breaking the bank? Available at $59/month.
Though Teachable and Thinkific provide unlimited courses, enrollment, and course content, these platforms can only be scaled with the plans. FreshLearn offers all this (and more) on its Free Plan alone.
FreshLearn drives course creator-friendly prices, especially against Thinkific and Teachable, which offer the same features and less for 8 times the price.
The platform stands out as the most complete solution for course creators, especially beginners. With detailed YouTube tutorials, even first-time creators can quickly set up and launch their online businesses without technical expertise.
FreshLearn provides better services and features in areas where Teachable and Thinkific fail. It's the latest entrant in the market, aiming to help creators make a better first impression.
As an all-in-one platform, FreshLearn is a better Teachable alternative as well as a better Thinkific alternative because:
- The course creation interface feels intuitive and beginner-friendly, while the team regularly uploads detailed YouTube tutorials to help creators maximize their results.
- FreshLearn provides seamless payment processing through Stripe and PayPal without complicated setup requirements.
- FreshLearn's AI Agents effortlessly create courses, generate quizzes, and build sales pages, letting you focus on teaching.
- Membership sites come built-in, letting you create exclusive content for paying members without external tools.
- You can access a fantastic collection of email templates to launch your marketing campaign with FreshLearn. Plus, you get beautifully designed, mobile-responsive email templates to engage customers quickly and promote your online business.
- Multiple revenue streams are possible through online courses, masterclasses, and digital downloads, all from one platform.
- Advanced features like bulk student uploads and course enrollments are available in FreshLearn's No Brainer Plan at $59/month, considerably cheaper than Thinkific and Teachable.
- Pricing stays affordable across all plans while packing in premium features that competitors charge extra for.
- Video hosting flexibility lets you embed content from YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon S3, and Google Drive, whatever works best for your workflow.
- FreshLearn offers templates or custom designs with personalization fields (name, completion date, signatures) for certifications. It automatically sends certificates via email with social media-ready shareable links upon course completion.
- FreshLearn provides 24/7 live support for its creators and has a YouTube channel detailing the course creation process.
- Community features let you create membership groups with flexible pricing (one-time, monthly, yearly) at 0% commission. At the same time, gamification with points and badges, plus robust moderation tools, ensures engaging, safe discussions.
The platform has five simple pricing plans:
- Free Plan at $0/month with zero transaction fee
- Pro: $49/month or $37/month (annually) or $27/month (biannually) with 3K free email credits
- No Brainer: $79/month or $59/month (annually) or $42/month (biannually) with 5K free email credits
- No Brainer+: $149/month or $119/month (annually) or $83/month (biannually) with 12K free email credits
- Enterprise: $249/month or $169/month (annually) or $123/month (biannually)
The Verdict: Teachable vs Thinkific
Both Teachable and Thinkific get the job done, but if you prioritize affordability, comprehensive automation, and reliable support, FreshLearn presents a substantial alternative worth exploring. We offer:
- AI-powered course creation and 24/7 live support that removes the time-consuming manual setup and limited customer service found in Teachable and Thinkific.
- Free migration assistance and white labeling at entry-level pricing that solves the expensive migration costs and premium branding restrictions that force creators into higher-tier plans.
- Zero transaction fees from day one with genuine free plan access right from our free tier that addresses the profit-eating fees for new creators on other platforms.
- Built-in community features with gamification and custom certificate automation that replace the need for multiple third-party tools and complex integrations.
Over 20,000+ creators have earned $20 million or more, established online courses, and sold digital products straight to their audience using branded websites. Start with FreshLearn’s Free Plan — no credit card required, and no migration complexities when you scale.
FAQs
1. What is Thinkific used for?
Thinkific is an online course monetization platform that allows users to easily create courses and manage them through an intuitive admin panel. It provides interactive features for course input, automated features to reduce creator workload, and tools for selling courses with zero transaction fees on paid plans.
2. What's better than teachable?
FreshLearn offers a compelling alternative with AI-powered course creation, free migration assistance, and white labeling starting at $59/month, which is much cheaper than Teachable's comparable features. Plus, FreshLearn includes advanced community features with gamification and starts with a genuinely useful free plan.
3. Which platform is better for selling courses internationally and handling taxes?
Teachable is better for international sales with automatic EU VAT collection through their BackOffice feature, which handles tax calculations, collection, and remittance. Thinkific lacks automatic VAT handling and requires third-party tools like Quaderno at around $50/month for EU compliance.
4. Do Teachable and Thinkific charge transaction fees on sales?
Teachable charges 7.5% transaction fees on their Starter plan, while the Builder+ plans have 0% fees. Thinkific charges 0% transaction fees across all paid plans. FreshLearn has 0% transaction fees on all plans, including the free plan.
5. Does Thinkific have a free plan?
No, both Teachable and Thinkific have eliminated their free plans, forcing creators into paid subscriptions. Only FreshLearn offers a genuine free plan with core features and zero transaction fees. However, Thinkific offers a 14-day free trial.
6. Can I white-label my course platform with Teachable and Thinkific?
Teachable offers white labeling starting at $139/month (Growth plan), while Thinkific requires their Grow plan at $149/month. FreshLearn includes white labeling for just $59/month, making it the most affordable option.
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