Thinkific Review: A Good Platform, But Will You Outgrow It?

We at FreshLearn know that choosing the right LMS can feel like a make-or-break decision for course creators.

In fact, almost half of our enquiries and migration setup calls revolve around this very concern. We’ve seen it, heard it, and helped with it.

We often get asked about Thinkific, one of the most popular names in the space. If you’ve decided to sign up with Thinkific, it’s really a good choice.

But the big question is: will you eventually outgrow it?

In this guide, we’ll walk you through what Thinkific does well, where it falls short, and how to decide if it’s the right platform for your next course.

Bottom line first: Is Thinkific worth it?

Yes, Thinkific is worth it if you:

• Want a beginner-friendly platform to launch your first course quickly, with no technical skills
• Just need basic course delivery, simple payments, and minimal pre-built websites
• Don’t mind using third-party tools for marketing or automation

No, Thinkific isn’t worth it if you:

• Care about design freedom, advanced community features, or true “all-in-one” marketing tools
• Dislike hidden fees and prefer everything to be included in the plan
• Plan to scale fast, need memberships, analytics, or anything beyond the basics (unless you’re ready for higher-tier plans)

What is Thinkific? (and who is it for?)

Thinkific is a user-friendly platform that helps everyday experts turn their knowledge into online courses, communities, and digital products. It’s built for people from a non-tech background who want to share their skills, teach what they love, and build a real business.

Thinkific will be a natural fit for:

• Tutors, trainers, and coaches who are ready to scale beyond one-on-one sessions
• Bloggers, YouTubers, and authors who want to add new income streams
• Teachers and subject matter experts who want to build a bigger audience
• Anyone looking to grow a community or monetize their expertise online

My honest opinion of Thinkific

Now, let’s get into my notes. There’s no denying that Thinkific has good features, but some questions worth considering are:

• Is this feature helpful?
• Do users say this feature is working as intended?
• Will the feature make my life easier as a creator?

From my research, the answer isn’t always a yes… and you deserve to know in order to anticipate what you’re signing up for.

Course creation: smooth, beginner-friendly

What everyone loves about Thinkific is its course builder.

If you’re someone who just wants to get a course out without hiring a web developer or designer, Thinkific does the job well. You can put together a multi-lesson course in a weekend, even if you’ve never built a website before.

Thinkific’s easy-to-use course builder requires no coding at all.  You get a clean, drag-and-drop interface like this:

You can also use Thinkific's AI outline generator to create a course outline based on your chosen topic and upload your content in bulk with the Bulk Importer to ship the course quickly. Thinkific will automatically turn them into chapters and lessons.

Lessons can be delivered in various formats, including video, text, quizzes, surveys, downloads, or even live sessions with the Zoom integration.

What users really commend about Thinkific is how it approaches assessments.

→ You can set passing grades

→ Require students to complete a quiz before moving on

→ Allow file uploads in quiz responses for more open-ended assessments.

The AI quiz generator automatically creates quizzes from the text lessons.

This is quite impressive in comparison to what some other competitors offer. For example, Kajabi only offers basic quizzes and lacks formal assignments.

Website/landing page builder: Clunky and creativity hits a wall

Now, moving on to the presentation.

Thinkific’s built-in Site Builder offers pre-made themes and drag-and-drop sections to build all the website basics, such as:

• Homepage
• Sales pages
• Checkout
• About and contact page
• Course info page

Every Thinkific site comes with a free subdomain, but you can also connect your own domain. You don’t need to worry about security, as it includes SSL, and the responsive design is automatic, ensuring your site functions seamlessly on both phones and laptops.

You build pages by stacking pre-built content blocks, such as banners, testimonials, and curriculum outlines, and then dragging them into place. It works, it’s simple, and you won’t break anything, but here’s the catch: there’s a hard limit on creative control.

There are only three default themes, which have just a few style presets to personalize with colors, fonts, and button style, like this:

Source

Unless you can code and you would like to edit HTML/CSS, that’s all you have. And most creators don’t touch the code, which means they only tweak the fields that Thinkific provides.

And while you can add various sections with a drag-and-drop page builder, you don’t get many editing options.

Each section comes with specific settings, and you can’t change the layout. For example, if a section template has an image on the left and text on the right, you can’t swap them or add a second image. You’re locked into the preset structure.

The whole system is more “fill in the blanks” than “make it yours.”

Therefore, you can’t really build a strong brand aesthetic or create high-converting sales funnels with pop-ups, fancy forms, or deep SEO tweaks. Most creators outgrow the design options as they scale and end up building a separate marketing site elsewhere.

Student experience: Engagement stops short

Now, if you want your courses to do well, you’ll need to engage students beyond just video lessons. Thinkific offers some interactive tools to help you with that.

• Communities: Acts like a private forum for your students where you and your students can post updates and discuss.
• Course player: The student’s interface allows them to mark lessons as they complete and unlock content.
• Progress views: Both the student and instructor can view progress. You can also issue completion certificates (a nice touch of recognition).
• Gamification: Students can earn badges for completing a course, regularly signing in, or staying committed to their program over time.
• Assignments and surveys: Allow students to upload files or submit text responses. You can also review assignments to provide feedback.
• Live lessons and webinars: Schedule Zoom sessions as part of your course, where students just click into a lesson to join live. You can also add the option to replay after.
• Mobile access: Thinkific now allows students to access courses directly from their app, provided creators have enabled the app option in their account.

While I think Thinkific gives students a clean and stable experience from start to finish, it’s nothing special. For example, many competitors offer far more engaging gamification options, such as rewards and leaderboards. Doing the same with Thinkific will require third-party integrations.

Selling courses: Major limitations with payment and marketing tools

Thinkific’s built-in sales and marketing features are collectively known as “Thinkific Commerce” or TCommerce. It includes essentials such as checkout, payment options, pricing, and promotions.

TCommerce sounds like a lot of thought has been put into it. But it falls short when you’re expecting a full marketing suite.

Payment options

You can accept credit cards via Thinkific Payments powered by Stripe, or connect your own Stripe or PayPal account.

If you stick with Thinkific Payments, you avoid platform fees and just pay the standard card processing rate. However, if you opt for the other options, Thinkific charges a substantial amount of transactional fees (such a bummer). We’ll discuss that later.

Pricing options, discounts, upselling

With Thinkific, you can sell courses for free, a one-time payment, set up subscriptions, or let your clients pay in monthly installments, as shown below:

Source

You can also offer single-use or public coupon codes to offer discounts in percentage or a fixed amount. Thinkific recently added (much-needed) upsell and order bump features at checkout.

Sales funnels

Thinkific recently added features to create funnels, but they’re rudimentary.

The idea is good on paper:

• You pick a funnel type between Free Lesson, Free Download, or Sales Page
• Thinkific generates the set of landing pages you’ll need
• Then you can customize these pages with your own branding and content

But this funnel builder has limitations:

→ You’re locked into the preset funnel types

→ There’s no way to add, remove, or even reorder steps.

→ The page editor is as basic as it gets.

(So, if you want a true drag-and-drop experience or the flexibility to craft complex funnels, you might be more interested in Kajabi or FreshLearn — we’ll get there.)

Other marketing tools

Now, coming to email marketing, Thinkific covers the basics:

1. Transactional emails for order receipts, course completions
2. Broadcast messages to students

However, these tools can’t replace a comprehensive email marketing platform. They’re best suited for simple updates and communication, rather than nurturing leads or automating full campaigns.

If you want automated email sequences, nurturing leads, or true list-building, you’re on your own. You’ll need to connect a third-party tool, such as Mailchimp or ConvertKit, through its app store.

So, bottom line: Thinkific simply isn’t designed to run sophisticated marketing campaigns on its own. To fill the gaps, you’ll need to use third-party apps from Thinkific’s App Store, which gets complicated as you’re still stitching together multiple tools.

Thinkific pricing 2025: What it really costs

Thinkific previously offered a free plan for newcomers. Unfortunately, it was discontinued in 2024 in favor of a 30-day free trial.

Here’s an up-to-date breakdown of Thinkific’s current plans and what you actually get at each level.

Fees, fine print, and real costs

While Thinkific pricing looks fairly straightforward in this table.

Several additional costs can sneak up on you.

For example, third-party marketing tools you buy on Thinkific’s app store, like Zapier, start at around $20/month for basic use, and custom domain registration adds roughly $18/year.

Additionally, if you’re not using Thinkific payments, the processing penalties may come as a surprise.

This means that if you’re earning $1,000 a month on Basic, you'll lose $50 to Thinkific for just processing your payments.

Thinkific offers the free Thinkific-branded mobile app for all your students. However, if you want your own branded app in the app stores, it’s again a paid add-on of $199/month.

Let’s put this in perspective: That Basic plan, advertised at $36/month (with annual billing), can actually cost $107.50/month when you factor in payment fees ($50), Zapier ($20), and a custom domain ($1.50/month).

That’s nearly three times the price shown on Thinkific’s website.

So, what do I like about Thinkific?

Thinkific isn’t perfect, but there are a few things it does genuinely well, and I can’t ignore that. So, here’s what stood out the most about Thinkific from its current user reviews:

Course builder’s user friendliness

Thinkific’s course builder is straightforward and easy to use, even if you have zero technical background.

Drag, drop, rearrange, and publish, that’s it.

This is a major advantage if you want to get your course live quickly and focus on content rather than the technical aspects.

Flexible pricing options

Thinkific’s pricing options make it a great choice for individuals who want to price and monetize their content in various ways. It also means you can meet your students where they are:

• If they prefer paying upfront, you can charge a one-time payment
• If most of your customers would find spreading costs over time more convenient, you can let them pay in monthly installments
• If they want to sign up for ongoing access to your content, you can offer a subscription

Additionally, managing coupons, discounts, and even simple upsells is built in — no matter how basic it is.

This kind of versatility is a significant advantage for creators seeking to maximize sales by catering to diverse audiences.

(And as long as you use Thinkific Payments, there won’t be surprise transaction fees either.)

Your brand and student data ownership

Thinkific lets you put your brand front and center.

You can use your own custom domain, a branded site, and even remove the Thinkific branding on higher plans — although it’s very expensive.

Even more important, you own your student data.

Every email, purchase, and enrollment belongs to you, not the platform. You can export your lists, reach out directly, and never worry about losing access to your audience, unlike selling through a marketplace.

So, why won’t I still recommend Thinkific to everyone?

I won’t recommend it as the best choice for creators who want to scale.

Here’s exactly why:

Limited marketing tools and funnels

Thinkific is built for delivering content, not marketing it.

The new funnel builder is a good addition, but it definitely needs some upgrades. Additionally, the built-in email tools are limited to simple notifications, making them unsuitable for sending newsletters, automating tasks, or nurturing leads.

If you want to run sales campaigns or high-converting launches, you’ll have to rely on outside tools, which means more setup, more expense, and more complexity.

Basic website design options

While you can launch a functional site quickly, design options are quite basic. You’re locked into pre-set layouts, and deep customization requires coding skills.

If you want more than “fill in the blanks,” you have a strong brand vision, or want your student experience to truly stand out, you’ll feel the restrictions gripping your choice.

Top features reserved for higher plans

First of all, there’s no free plan anymore — yeah, we all hate that. But many of the features that make Thinkific appealing, such as memberships, completion certificates, and branded sites, aren’t even available with the Basic plan.

While you may think you don’t need them now, you’ll be nudged into more expensive tiers as your business grows just to unlock core tools. So, one should be ready for a much higher bill over time.

Some Thinkific alternatives to consider

If you’ve decided that Thinkific works for you and fits your needs after reading my review, well and good.

But, if you’ve decided against it, don’t worry; I won't leave you hanging without any choices.

Here are some of the best alternatives that fill the Thinkific gaps.

Teachable: For those who prefer simplicity

If your top priority is getting a course online quickly, without a steep learning curve, Teachable is one of the recommended platforms available.

What Teachable does better:

• Even easier setup than Thinkific: The interface is as simple as it gets. Most creators can launch their first course in a day or two, even without any web design experience.
• Faster content uploads: Teachable handles video, text, and files more quickly and efficiently compared to Thinkific.
• Integrated student experience: You can handle everything from enrollments to certificates to course updates in one place.
• New AI features: Teachable’s new AI assistant helps with course creation and lesson planning, an amazing add-on for creators.

Some drawbacks to keep in mind:

• Transaction fees on lower plans: The Starter plan charges a 7.5% transaction fee (even higher than Thinkific — yikes).
• Strict limits: Lower-priced plans limit the number of products and students you can have, so you might need to upgrade sooner than you’d expect.

Read our in-depth Teachable vs Thinkific article to determine if Teachable is the right alternative for you.

Pricing

Teachable’s Starter plan is attractive to test a course idea, but the transaction fees and strict caps mean most creators outgrow it quickly. Here are the updated pricing plans:

• Starter: $39/month (up to 1 product, 100 students, 7.5% transaction fee)
• Builder: $89/month (up to 5 products, 1,000 students, 0% transaction fee)
• Pro: $249/month (50 products, 5,000 students, advanced features)

Kajabi: For those who want comprehensive marketing options

Kajabi is the platform for creators who want to do more than just deliver courses. It’s an all-in-one marketing platform that handles everything from marketing funnels to payments, all under one roof.

What Kajabi does better:

• Superb built-in marketing features: Kajabi includes full-featured email marketing, automation, and customizable funnels (Pipelines) compared to Thinkific’s marketing tools.
• Flexible website builder: Many more themes, page layouts, and design controls as opposed to Thinkific’s restrictive designs. This means your site and sales pages look polished and on-brand without coding.
• Advanced analytics: Get in-depth insights to help you track every step of your student’s journey and optimize for sales.

Some drawbacks to keep in mind:

• High cost: Kajabi is one of the most expensive options in this space.
• Basic quiz features: Course delivery is polished, but quizzes and student engagement tools are fairly minimal compared to Thinkific’s.

Pricing

Kajabi’s premium price is worth it if you want a website, deliver courses, win at marketing, create high-converting sales funnels, and take advantage of automations. It’s a comprehensive suite, all of which is managed from a single dashboard. Here’s the up-to-date pricing as of August 2025:  

• Kickstarter: $89/month (limited time/availability; very restricted)
• Basic: $149/month (3 products, 1,000 active members, full marketing suite)
• Growth: $199/month (15 products, 10,000 contacts, advanced automations)
• Pro: $399/month (100 products, 20,000 contacts, priority support)

FreshLearn: For those who want the best features at affordable rates

FreshLearn combines all the key features found in Teachable, Thinkific, and Kajabi, along with new AI agents designed to bring a ‘fresh’ experience to today’s creators.

With built-in course creation, community, email, sales, and AI agents, FreshLearn gives you everything you need to teach, engage, and grow your business from a single, intuitive dashboard without breaking your bank.

Our users consistently mention three things:

1. Easy to get started
2. Great value without paying extra for every feature
3. The support team is always ready to help

What do we do best:

• Truly all-in-one: Course builder, website, communities, mobile app, email marketing, sales funnels, and analytics. There's no need to patch together multiple tools, as you would with Thinkific.
• Zero hidden fees: Unlike Thinkific, we won’t charge you surprise transaction fees or penalties for using different payment gateways.
• Unlimited products and students: Grow as big as you want without any caps, even on lower-tier plans.
• Much more advanced engagement: Quizzes, assignments, completion certificates, digital badges, and built-in communities all boost student motivation.
• Flexible design: Customize your course pages and website to match your brand, without requiring any coding. FreshLearn offers far more flexibility in design compared to Thinkific — you can personalize branding, control logos, colors, page designs, and links to create a unique online presence.
• Free plan, not just a trial: We even offer a free plan for those who’re just getting started. No credit card required.

Some drawbacks to keep in mind:

• Zapier integration on higher plan: While FreshLearn provides access to most core features in the free plan, Zapier integration for automating workflow is reserved for higher-tier paid plans.

Pricing

FreshLearn is designed for creators who seek complete control and growth of their business. No complexity, high costs, and limitations of traditional course platforms. It has a plan for everyone:

• Free plan: $0/month (no credit card required, unlimited courses, core features)
• Pro: $49/month (everything unlimited, communities, email marketing, mobile app)
• No Brainer: $79/month (advanced automations, white-labeling, priority support)
• No Brainer+: $149/month (full agency mode, advanced API, sub-accounts, full branding control)
• Enterprise: $249/month (tailored for large organizations, advanced security, dedicated success manager, and full enterprise integrations)

Do we recommend Thinkific? Depends

Use Thinkific if you’re a creator who cares most about course creation features and doesn’t mind building your own tech stack for marketing. Suppose you already have an audience, a marketing funnel, and the budget to invest in additional tools (or higher-tier plans). In that case, Thinkific is a reliable option that will get the job done.

However, consider an alternative if you’re price-sensitive, want to stand out with branding, or want comprehensive features for marketing and automation. You’d also want to look at alternatives if you wish to avoid the transaction fees and hidden costs (and hassle) of piecing together third-party tools.

We’ve provided you with three solid alternatives, but hundreds of creators have called FreshLearn the most affordable and user-friendly option. Try it out and see for yourself why it’s the best choice. Explore FreshLearn today with its free plan.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What are the disadvantages of Thinkific?

Thinkific’s biggest drawbacks are:

• Basic website design options
• Limited marketing and funnel tools
• Many top features, such as memberships, certificates, and advanced analytics, are only available with higher-priced plans.

There are also hidden costs associated with using external payment gateways and premium add-ons, which can significantly increase your actual monthly bill beyond the sticker price.

2. What's better than Thinkific?

If you want more flexibility or all-in-one features, platforms like FreshLearn and Kajabi both offer a range of built-in tools for marketing, community, and automation. FreshLearn offers a mobile app, unlimited courses, and advanced engagement features at a significantly lower price point, without hidden fees or caps.

3. Is Thinkific safe?

Yes, Thinkific utilizes industry-standard security measures, including:

• SSL encryption for all websites
• Secure payment processing through Stripe/PayPal, or Thinkific Payments
• Regular platform updates.

Your data and your students’ information are protected, and you control your own student list and content.

4. Is Thinkific easy to use?

Absolutely. Thinkific is built with beginners in mind. The course builder, website tools, and basic settings are straightforward, so you can launch a course even if you’ve never done it before.

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