Top 10 Thinkific Alternatives for Creating Online Courses in 2024

Thinkific is a platform that lets you create, market, and sell courses with a single dashboard. In this blog, we have identified and listed some really compelling Thinkific alternatives.

Thinkific is a platform that lets you create, market, and sell courses with a single dashboard. And its simple interface has made it popular among creators.

Though Thinkific offers many features that other platforms lack, such as a built-in learning management system or interactive whiteboard capabilities, it is still far from perfect.

If you’re looking for Thinkific alternatives, here is our compiled list of great alternatives along with their pros/cons to help you make an informed choice.

A Full Scoop on Thinkific

Designed with eLearning creation and learning management in mind, Thinkific is an online platform that allows you to create and market your courses. Created in 2012, Thinkific is a popular learning management system that lets companies and people generate revenue from their expertise.

Thinkific users can personalize their course materials, design quizzes and assignments, and give students course completion certificates. In addition, the Thinkific community offers a forum where students can discuss and exchange ideas.

Emphasizing your brand helps you control and improve interactions. The platform also provides various marketing options, such as email campaigns and affiliate marketing tools, to assist in selling courses.

Features

The following are the key features Thinkific provides:

a. Visual editor

Thinkific enables teachers to create exciting courses in little time without prior experience.

You can create full-scale courses, pilot programs, and a resource library using a template set.

Then, a drag-and-drop course builder lets you create your curriculum visually by adding and reorganizing courses and chapters. The software also lets you upload your current assets using a bulk import tool.

b. Landing page builder

The Thinkific platform consists of a course website builder that assists online teachers in showcasing their creations. This builder supports several pages and is code-free with customizable templates. Adding chatbots or contact forms will also upgrade your website, but you must pay for those outside-of-house widgets separately.

c. Sales tools

Thinkific boasts many built-in eCommerce and marketing tools, including audience segmentation, discount, promo, and checkout optimization. It lets you market your products as subscriptions or bundles.

d. Free Trial

Thinkific has different pricing plans from beginners to enterprise organizations. All the plans have no transaction fees and provide core features, unlimited courses and students, and access to their accelerator program. Although they do not have a free plan, you can take advantage of a 14-day trial on all the plans except Thinkific +.

e. Live support

Course development and management can be challenging, especially in cases of inexperience; hence, it is imperative to be able to seek assistance or direction and get a prompt response. Thinkific offers a self-service help center and individualized backing via a chatbot, email, and live chat support.

Pricing

Thinkific has five pricing plans. Basic, Start, Grow, Expand, and Thinkific+.

Their basic plan starts at $49, and they have an accelerator program (expand) that costs $499. The online course platform offers Thinkific +, a learning management system for enterprise organizations to develop and administer courses for large-scale customers and employees more effectively.

The Thinkific+ has all the features of other paid plans plus additional features, including CRM integration and bulk sell checkout.

Why You Should Look for a Thinkific Alternative?

Thinkific is an all-in-one platform offering several benefits to course creators. So why should you look for a Thinkific alternative? The following are the areas in which the course platform struggles, making you look for a plan B.

a. High Pricing

Startups and small companies with limited budgets may find Thinkific's prices challenging. However, it provides a free trial on all plans. You may need to go for costly pricing plans to benefit from more course enhancement features. This can make course creators search for cheaper substitutes for Thinkific with comparable or even greater functionality without straying from the budget.

Also, Thinkific+ is a customized solution with a personalized and more expensive price tag than any standard Thinkific plan. Thinkific Plus might not be the greatest option if you want to offer modest onboarding to your small staff.
Have a look at one of the recent customer reviews of Thinkific about its high pricing.

b. Visible learning curve

Thinkific's feature-rich approach turned off some course creators who felt it was a little more complex than expected to set up their first course. If you intend to introduce a basic instructional product only for testing the waters, the sheer number of processes and features involved could overwhelm you.

c. Less flexibility

Thinkific's approach to courses and websites is somewhat strict and does not allow for great personalization and innovative ideas. As noted, paying for extra apps is the only way to have more customization possibilities.

There are no reasonably priced corporate training options. Thinkific Plus is a personalized solution designed specifically for staff training, and it has a special and more expensive price tag than any standard Thinkific subscription. Thinkific + might not be the greatest option if you want to offer modest onboarding to your small set of employees.

d. Need for using several applications

If you want additional features beyond the basic customization, be ready to pay a heavy price. Since the software focuses on course development and management, you can achieve everything exclusively with outside extensions.

For instance, you must buy the Sections Kit app for $199 to include a new custom section in your course site. While some course creators value Thinkific's integrity, others see it as a drawback since they want all-in-one platform solutions.

These drawbacks are obviously subjective. It can vary depending on where you stand in your course creation journey. Still, it's always a good idea to consider other choices, mainly if your budget is limited and you want to avoid paying hundreds of dollars for your Learning management system and some for your email tool, CRM, etc.

d. Poor rating

In 2021, Thinkific launched its online course app. With a 2.6-star review in the Google Play Store and a 2.2 in the App Store, the apps are well-known for not storing content, often breaking, and poor user experience.

Thinkific Alternatives

Despite several features, Thinkific has gaps in certain areas, for which you can consider the platform’s alternatives. Also, it is good to have an idea of other course creation platforms to decide which works for your budget and requirements.

The following is the list of the top 7 Thinkific alternatives you can consider exploring:

Thinkific Alternative #1: FreshLearn

FreshLearn is a powerful learning management system for course creators. It allows you to create, market, and sell your course at the price you decide, with a 0% commission. You can link the payment gateways to your account, and all student payments will hit your account directly.

The platform offers an AI course builder, where you provide the course idea, select a title, and conclude the outline—everything in less than 60 seconds.

Developed in 2020, FreshLearn aims to give you a personalized approach and user-friendly interface, from creating online courses to custom pricing possibilities. FreshLearn also provides several features for online course creators to market their courses and sell them through additional revenue streams, including digital downloads and blogging CMS, which we will discuss later.

Key features

a. Course idea validator

FreshLearn has an AI page builder feature that lets course creators validate their course ideas before beginning the course creation process.

Step 1 — The AI page builder will create a customized landing page with the course title, outline, and photos, depending on your interests and sector.

Step 2 — Upload a logo and modify the wording, graphics, and colors to complement your brand and make it uniquely yours.

Step 3- Begin marketing your course landing page and let your learners or audience join the waitlist to validate the idea.

b. Robust community features

Besides creating and selling online courses, you should have a strong community of like-minded individuals for healthy brainstorming and discussions. FreshLearn lets you create a community with your learners for member interactions and managing content.

You can create custom pricing for your community (one-time, monthly, or yearly) with 0% commission. You can also make the discussions fun by including points and badges to encourage members to be active and helpful to each other.

c. AI sales pages

To speed up selling courses, you can leverage FreshLearn’s powerful AI technology to create and launch your course sales pages. All you have to do is answer a few questions, and your customized course sales page and course outline will be ready in no time.

You can even add custom scripts and connect them with Google Analytics or other systems. These sales pages are mobile-friendly and look great on all kinds of devices.

d. AI agents

AI agents are a new feature introduced in FreshLearn. You can utilize the platform’s AI-powered solutions in every step of your course creation process, making it brighter and quicker.

The platform will soon launch several features, including an AI blog generator, an AI course content generator, and an AI video caption file generator. All these can serve as integrated marketing tools, providing a holistic way to create and manage online courses.

Besides all these, FreshLearn supports course creators with an affiliate program, advanced analytics, reporting features to track student progress, and several customization options, making the platform an excellent Thinkific alternative.

Pricing

FreshLearn offers a free plan that lets you create courses and market them. The plan includes all the important course creation tools, including custom branding, email support, and a blogging CMS.

This popular platform offers:

• Pro plan - $29/month
• No brainer - $49/month and
• No Brainer+ - $75/month.

Apart from this pricing plan's features, you can easily migrate your enrollments and students by having an annual Pro or no-brainer plan of up to 8 courses. FreshLearn's extensive and free account migration tool will help you to be sure that your course content is securely and safely migrated to the platform and ready for use.

Advantages of Using FreshLearn over Thinkific

a. Pricing

Pricing plans are the first apparent reason for considering FreshLearn as an alternative to Thinkific. FreshLearn provides a free plan with all core features.

The basic plan starts at $29 per month and is billed annually at $349. On the other hand, Thinkific’s basic annual plan starts at $36 per month and does not offer a free plan for beginners.

Also, FreshLearn does not charge transaction fees, allowing creators to sell courses and retain their total earnings. The Thinkific learning platform charges transaction fees that differ from one country to another and also by the payment’s nature.

For example, the learning platform charges creators in the US and Canada 2.9% plus 30 cents for credit card payments. For the same countries, BNPL transaction fees are 6.5% + 30 cents on every successful transaction

b. User experience

FreshLearn has a reputation for being very intuitive, with a setup process that even beginners find easy to navigate. Thinkific, while powerful, can require a steeper learning curve, especially for users needing more technical experience.

c. Improved customization options

FreshLearn allows more customization in course layouts and designs, giving creators greater control over branding and the learning experience. Thinkific’s customization options are more limited unless you move to higher-tier plans, which may discourage creators on a budget who want a unique look and feel.

In addition, Thinkific’s option availability requires higher-end plan subscriptions. For example, you can create more than one community only if you have their ‘Grow’ plan, which is $199 a month.

d. Better customer service

FreshLearn can be the best online course platform over Thinkific in terms of customer reviews and accommodating queries through live chat support. Have a look at the customer reviews, which obviously show FreshLearn’s capability to be one of the best alternatives to Thinkific.

FreshLearn:

Thinkific:

Check out this video for a detailed comparison of FreshLearn Vs. Thinkific

Thinkific Alternatives #2: Teachable

Teachable, one of the best Thinkific alternatives, provides unlimited courses and coaching packages for all their plans, including the free one. Course design templates are available to creators; you can create a shop for all your products, and sales made using Teachable's payment gateway qualify for quick payouts.

Features

The unique features of Teachable include:

• The website and course builder aims to provide premium products with pleasing designs. With them, you will have all the resources required to design a beautiful website and improve the student’s learning experience.
• You can include student engagement features like quizzes and course compliance controls.
• Provides course marketing tools, including email, affiliate program, up-and-down sales, and cart recovery
• Tools for creating course completion certificates
• Custom user roles and automated rewards help to control the workforce effectively.
• Excellent tools for tax management

Limitations

• It lacks an Android app, so many learners cannot access your mobile course. (Even the Apple app boasts poor ratings.)
• It lacks live streaming, discussions, events, other features, and live instruction or community alternatives. It majorly supports pre-recorded courses.
• The "free" plan from Teachable charges a 10% transaction fee, which drastically reduces income from selling online courses.

Pricing

• Basic plan - $39 / month + 5% transaction fee.
• Pro plan - $119/month offering everything from Basic plus a few advanced features including unlimited membership tiers, 50 published products of each (coaching, downloads, and online courses)
• Pro+ plan - $199/month - Features from the Pro plan and 200 of each published product (online courses, digital downloads, coaching, and bundles)

Besides this, the platform offers a business plan, which includes all the tools from the Pro+ plan plus additional features like White glove onboarding, custom pricing, and more.

Thinkific Vs.Teachable

Teachable and Thinkific provide strong tools for course development and management. Although both online course creation platforms are comparable, users who value simplicity and ease of use could find Teachable's marketing capabilities and user-friendly interface appealing. It is a great alternative to Thinkific for those seeking a complete course development and marketing solution.

Thinkific Alternative #3: Kajabi

Selling courses, digital products, coaching, memberships, and podcasts, Kajabi is an all-in-one platform offering a complete alternative to Thinkific. It may also help with email marketing, affiliate program management, website building, and analytics tracking to manage and sell online courses.

Kajabi also provides in-depth pipelines or sales funnels. Pipelines are automated models that help you reach a particular objective, such as lead nurturing or introducing a new product.

Features

• The Drag-and-Drop website builder creates a much simpler and time-saving mechanism for generating total marketing sequence templates.
• This all-in-one platform is SEO-friendly, meaning that search engines will readily find your created and published website.
• Quizzes and course insights help to make the learning experience exciting and significant.
• Develop advanced sales funnels.
• There is an infinite storage capacity. Uploading many courses and extra materials is one of the most crucial aspects of being a professional creator.

Limitations

• The new community feature, Kajabi 2.0, replaces its old, basic forum. It has additional tools like live streaming and meeting rooms. However, since it's a new platform, this learning management system requires members to log in to two different apps to use the community and online courses together.
• Kajabi is more expensive than any other popular platform that provides similar features. In addition to the costs, Kajabi restricts the quantity of products you may create on all plans and the number of active participants in your programs.

Pricing

Kajabi does not offer a free edition, but it offers a 14-day free trial period. Its four price schemes are Kickstarter, Basic, Growth, and Pro.  

• The Kickstarter is $55 monthly with limited features, including a single website, funnel, and product.
• The basic package costs $119 a month and allows you to have three products and three pipelines. It also includes 10,000 contacts, unlimited emails, and limitless landing sites.
• The most often used plan is Growth, which costs $159/month and allows you to publish and market up to 15 funnels and 15 goods. Furthermore, a single website might have up to ten administrators with this pricing plan.
• The Pro plan costs $319 a month. It allows you to have three websites with up to 25 administrators, 100,000 contacts, and 20,000 active users, as well as upload up to 100 items and pipelines.

Thinkific Vs. Kajabi

While Thinkific concentrates primarily on managing online courses and their development, Kajabi provides a wider spectrum of tools for running a web company. This is an excellent alternative to Thinkific for those looking to manage courses and leverage additional features. For companies trying to simplify their processes and combine several facets of their digital strategy, Kajabi could be an ideal option.

Alternatives to Thinkific #4: Podia

Podia is a website builder designed to manage online courses. This platform also lets you market other digital goods besides course creation. With podia, a cloud-based learning management tool, teachers, designers, managers, course makers, marketers, and business owners can have various course delivery options—ebooks, online courses, audio files, PDFs, videos, and more.

This website builder allows creators to develop an easy-to-use website using pre-built themes and templates. Mail and messaging marketing features let marketers run automated campaigns.

To sync products, websites, customer lists, and other marketing tools with the sales funnel, Podia links with Google Analytics, Hotjar, Drip, Stripe, PayPal, and other systems.

The platform also permits building membership plans in several languages and scheduling live sessions in advance.

Features

• Excellent website builder with many customization options.
• The course builder enables single, drip, or publication. It also facilitates pre-sale.
• The digital downloads tool lets one offer various products and online courses.
• Tools for email and affiliate marketing
• Various integrations with marketing features

Limitations

Though Podia is one of the good Thinkific alternatives, its main focus is on website building with its in-built templates and pages, along with the look and feel of a conventional website and course. Their course building functionality is essential, and their community forum is simple and does not include advanced capabilities.

Pricing

Podia does not offer a free plan but provides a 30-day trial for you to choose the plan that fits your requirements.

Thinkific Vs. Podia

Podia could be one of the best Thinkific alternatives for those looking for a complete company solution because of its integrated marketing features and emphasis on digital products.

Small companies and single entrepreneurs that require a straightforward, all-in-one system to handle their operations will especially find it appropriate. Those trying to simplify their digital business operations find Podia appealing because of its easy-to-use design and powerful capabilities.

Alternatives to Thinkific #5: LearnDash

LearnDash lets you sell unlimited courses to limitless students from your WordPress website, improving your online business. Establish self-study initiatives, run a course forum, and gamify your program with leaderboards, course points, badges, and drip content over time.

Your courses are one-time payments, subscriptions, memberships, or product bundles. LearnDash works with most PHP themes and page builders, like Elementor, and offers customization options on the design front.

Features

• Provides drag-and-drop course builder for better personalization
• Enables focus mode to help your students stay on the content
• Lets you provide course completion certificates
• Enables including assessments and assignments to enhance course content and learner interaction
• You can utilize their built-in marketing tools to sell courses as subscriptions, packages, or memberships.

Limitations

• When you consider LearnDash, know that you should use a monetizing tool for selling online courses.
• Challenging customizing: Working on WordPress can be tricky. Adding complex plugins causes issues, requiring a developer to obtain the look and feel you desire.
• LearnDash is only a course-building tool; it does not offer the many advantages for involvement and community that other Thinkific alternatives offer.

Pricing

In addition to this pricing for Starter, Growth, and Pro, you must pay for other course creation expenses when developing and managing a WordPress site (for web hosting, themes, plugins, and domain registration).

Thinkific Vs. LearnDash

Though Thinkific is a stand-alone, LearnDash connects with PHP to provide more adaptability and personalizing choices. This is a better fit for those who wish to design personalized learning environments and possess the technical knowledge to run a PHP website. For those using Linux, LearnDash could be one of the alternatives to Thinkific because of its features and integration capacity.

Alternatives to Thinkific #6: Mighty Networks

Mightly Networks accommodates running free and paid online communities. Although creators can sell online courses on the Business Plan, the community aspect is obviously exceptional. In Mighty Networks, users enjoy the smooth community interface and top capabilities, which include unlimited members, notifications, live streaming, events, and API connections with Zapier.

You can upgrade to access the course creation tools and drip content, add other instructors, and create a unique community area for course attendees.

Mightly Networks accommodates running free and paid online communities. Although creators can sell online courses on the Business Plan, the community aspect is obviously exceptional. In Mighty Networks, users enjoy the smooth community interface and top capabilities, which include unlimited members, notifications, live streaming, events, and API connections with Zapier.

You can upgrade to access the course creation tools and drip content, add other instructors, and create a unique community area for course attendees.

Features

• Tools to link social media followers as a community
• Mighty Networks provides live streaming possibilities.
• Unique features for community building tools
• Exclusive information and statistics

Limitations

Though Mighty Networks provides top-notch community features,  it primarily concentrates on this aspect rather than course building. Selling services and coaching are not the best uses for Mighty Networks. It's mostly for creators whose community should be front and center. Hence, more real-time work than in a conventional self-paced course may be necessary.

You can sell courses only on the business plan; Mighty Networks has transaction fees on all plans. Though you may create a landing page highlighting your group, the platform lacks email marketing tools and a website builder.

Pricing

You can choose Mighty Networks pricing plans depending on your requirements, whether you want to create a community or develop and sell online courses.

Thinkific Vs. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks offers more sophisticated community management and monetizing tools than Thinkific. This is a better option for individuals who need to establish a robust interactive community with comprehensive analytics and who prioritize community interaction and involvement.

Alternative to Thinkific #7: Ruzuku

For new and seasoned online course developers, Ruzuku is a great platform with good customer service and a user-friendly interface.

Regarding payment choices, you could offer students either structured payment plans or one-time payments, improving your entire online business journey from course creation to student payments.

Video and audio materials let creators easily link to their community for events like webinars and live streams. Additionally, the platform allows you to include course templates to enable fast creation anywhere, from one to unlimited courses.

Features

• Student social profiles with images and biography
• Tech assistance for every plan is available via phone, Skype, email, Facebook, and more.
• limitless students
• Unlimited course creation and video hosting
• Integrated conferencing and live video/audio meetings
• Students can get technical support.
• Simple registration with PayPal or Stripe for payment

Limitations

• Ruzuku does not provide promotion tools to sell online courses
• No Blog possibilities and complete website builder
• The platform supports only two payment options.

Pricing

Thinkific Vs. Ruzuku

Ruzuku stresses simplicity and ease of use—especially for beginners. It provides a guided course development experience using integrated technologies, including webinars and discussion boards to encourage community involvement. Ruzuku appeals to individuals, stressing a simple, supportive structure for speedy course launches, whereas Thinkific fits developers looking for advanced capability.

Thinkific Alternatives #8: Coursera

One of the learning sites, Coursera, specializes in business and engineering. It is widely available in world-class universities and colleges. To start your lessons on this platform, you must join the faculty of subject-matter experts. For content creators, you can post your course materials on Coursera and monetize your content.

Features

• Curriculum management
• Team building
• Coursera labs let you practice practically.
• Recommendations for curriculum
• Improved employability
• Insights derived from data

Limitations

• Certificates are not free. Although some courses may have free learning content, students must pay the course fee to obtain a certificate verifying course completion.
• Classes take time. Most degree and certificate programs require several months or years to finish. So, gathering and evaluating course materials will take time. You cannot consider completing them in your free time.

Pricing

Coursera does not offer a free plan, and you provide pricing information on request on their enterprise plan for more than 125 users.

Thinkific Vs. Coursera

Coursera often follows a more structured curriculum with certificates upon completion, making it ideal for learners seeking recognized credentials from reputable institutions. On the other hand, Thinkific lets individuals create courses and monetize from them. The platform also provides several features to improve student’s overall learning experience.

Alternatives to Thinkific#9: LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning could be one of the Thinkific alternatives for a professional with a personal brand and a course. You must be approved to offer a course, but you will have several handy tools for developing your courses if you are. LinkedIn can be a good payment option since it will pay a set cost ahead of time to cover the training. Then, they distribute royalties depending on viewing time.

Like any other marketplace, LinkedIn Learning offers plenty of advantages, such as users finding your course, partnering with a reputable brand, etc. LinkedIn is a professional site, so there's also an advantage in terms of turning your LinkedIn course into something like consultancy or speaking.

Features

• Excellent learning resource with a worldwide reach
• Upfront reward accompanied by watch-time payments following

Limitations

The income from LinkedIn Learning will be low. LinkedIn owns the students like other marketplaces, and you cannot control your brand.

All these elements suggest some intriguing possibilities for you to access LinkedIn. However, if your brand is strong enough to be accepted to teach on LinkedIn, you might earn more on a self-hosted site.

Pricing

Thinkific Vs. LinkedIn Learning

Thinkific lets you develop and manage courses, branding, and price, enabling you to create a unique learning environment for your audience and directly generate income. On the other hand, LinkedIn Learning is a subscription-based service whereby customers pay for access to an extensive range of courses.

LinkedIn Learning can benefit you by improving your portfolio if you are a professional looking for career development. The platform also suits companies investing in employee training, providing skill-building courses that align with the organization’s goals.

Thinkific Alternative #10: Udemy

Selling your courses on Udemy, an online learning marketplace, lets you reach more people. All you have to do is post your course materials and videos; Udemy manages most of the marketing. Given their enormous global student population of 40+ million, this is an excellent choice for creators looking to approach sales from a distance.

Features

• Course marketing includes discovery, email campaigns, targeted and retargeted ads, and outside partner promotion.
• Compliance management features
• It can accommodate video, audio, and text lectures, among other presentations.
• Questionnaires and assessments
• Evaluations
• Direct messaging

Limitations

With Udemy, your course format and price are less under control. Udemy will shape the educational process; you cannot build cohorts, drip courses, or real-time offerings. You will have a cap of the course's charge cap, so if you take advantage of site-wide sales, you can sell it for a fraction of the regular amount.

Udemy must approve video lessons; duration and quality standards apply. Although a hands-off platform can sound appealing, you might make less than if you choose a creator platform that allows you control over audience and course revenue.

Pricing

Udemy does not charge for content creation and hosting. However, when you sell courses online without a referral or coupon, you only receive 37% of the revenue share, while with a referral, you can retain up to 97% of the total earnings.

Thinkific Vs. Udemy

Thinkific is a stand-alone platform; Udemy benefits from a built-in audience and marketplace. This is a preferable option for those wishing to appeal worldwide without making significant marketing investments. For those giving reach and accessibility a priority, Udemy is one of the great alternatives to Thinkific because of its simple style and vast marketing options.

Concluding Opinion

Making content on social media platforms more and more popular calls for content creators to have a well-considered business plan more than before. Thinkific has been fantastic in offering simple access; nevertheless, many are looking forward to what is next with the current shifts in content consumption patterns.

Today, video content rules and emphasizes the strength of producers' income sources. Modern creators want more complete platforms, next-generation user experiences, and 24x7 live customer support at a creator-friendly cost.

FreshLearn is the greatest Thinkific alternative among all the ones we mentioned earlier.

One of FreshLearn's best aspects is its excellent user experience for creators and students and its thorough toolsets for translating knowledge into commercial products. Additionally, FreshLearn facilitates comprehensive account migration.

In this sense, since FreshLearn is a comprehensive platform, from content creation to additional revenue sources, it is obviously one of the most trusted online course-creating platforms instructors can rely on. Contact us now and join our 15+ creators community!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Thinkific Alternatives

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