Thinkific is an easy-to-use platform for hosting online courses.
I’ve been running and selling 2 courses on it without issues.
So, I figured it’s time to walk you through my full experience with the platform.
If you’re just skimming, here’s the quick version: Thinkific is super intuitive. It gives you all the tools you need to create and sell courses properly.
Pricing feels fair, and support has always been helpful when I’ve needed it.
Disclaimer: This article is reader-supported. If you choose to pay for the tools listed in this article, I might earn a small commission at no cost to you.
Key Features
Before I dive into how I actually use Thinkific, here’s a quick look at what the platform offers:
- Course Creation Tools: Add videos, quizzes, and other interactive lessons to your course.
- Customizable Website: Build your own branded site to host and sell your courses.
- Marketing and Sales Tools: Run promotions, offer coupons, launch affiliate programs, and connect your email marketing tools.
- Membership and Subscriptions: You can package your content into memberships or recurring subscriptions if you want.
- Quizzes and Surveys: Build quizzes and get feedback through surveys to keep students engaged.
- Drip Content: Set up scheduled content releases to keep people coming back.
- Secure Cloud Hosting: Your course is always up and running, with everything stored safely in the cloud.
- Analytics and Reporting: See how your course is doing with data on student progress, sales, and more.
- Integrations: Hook it up with tools like Zoom, Stripe, PayPal, and your favorite email software.
- Student Management and Support: Track who’s doing what, and give your students support through forums or direct messages.
My Experience
I’ve been using Thinkific for almost a year now, and I’ve launched (and sold) two courses through it.
So in this part, I’ll walk you through exactly how the platform works from a course creator’s point of view.
To give it a try, find the best deal here.
Thinkific Course Creation Tools
Once you’ve signed up, you can start creating a course from the “+ New Course” button.
Right off the bat, it asks you to pick a course template. This is one of the spots where Thinkific already does a great job. You get a bunch of different templates to choose from and build on.
For this example, I’m picking the “Blank” one:
After that, you can start building Chapters for your course.
Here’s how it works on Thinkific:
- Courses are made up of Chapters
- Chapters are made up of Lessons
So for example, your first Chapter could be a quick intro to the course. Then inside that, you can add smaller lessons like who you are, what students need before starting, what to expect, and so on.
Once you start adding lessons to your chapters, you’ll need to choose the type of learning content.
It’s not just limited to video, text, or quizzes—there’s actually quite a bit more to pick from.
I was honestly surprised by how many different lesson types there were. When I built my first course, I thought I’d just upload one long video and call it a day. Turns out, there’s a lot more flexibility.
Another thing I really like about Thinkific is that you can attach extra material to your lessons.
So let’s say you’ve added a video lesson—you can just scroll down and drop in some extra resources.
These can be notes, quick thoughts, or even corrections if you missed something in the video and didn’t have time to re-edit it.
You can also add downloadable files here. In my blogging course, for example, I included a few templates as downloads right under the lesson.
One thing that bugs me a little with video content is the file size limit—and the time it takes to preview videos.
It makes sense, since the platform needs to process and prep each video before showing it. But it can get a bit confusing. Sometimes it takes 30 to 60 minutes before the video actually shows up.
Thinkific recommends compressing your videos with a tool like Handbrake so they upload faster—and so you can get longer videos through without issues.
I can’t remember the exact limit, but in my case, videos over 30 minutes have sometimes struggled to upload. Not a huge deal, though. You can just break them down into shorter lessons, and it works fine.
Something else I really enjoy doing on Thinkific is throwing in a quick quiz for my students. You can add these as their own separate lessons.
Type the question, add answers, and choose the right one.
Oh, and one thing that makes life easier—Thinkific lets you drag and drop your lessons and chapters around. So you don’t have to build your course in any specific order. 🙂
One thing that’s fun to play around with is the Thinkific Apps—or Integrations, as they call them. These are made by third parties (at least I think so), and they can add some extra functionality to your Thinkific setup.
So if there’s something missing, chances are there’s an app that can fill the gap.
The only downside here is that these apps can get really pricey.
A lot of them cost about the same as the Thinkific Standard plan itself.
That feels like a lot just to add one extra feature on top of everything we already have… But hey, if you really need it, then go for it 🙂
Customizable Website
Now what about a website for your course? No worries—Thinkific has you covered.
There’s a built-in landing page builder you can use to put together a high-converting page for your course.
What I like most is that the default layout is already a pretty good starting point.
Let’s test it out with my sample course:
Here’s the pre-built course page that came with the sample course I just made.
As you can see, it already looks pretty decent and does what it’s supposed to do. Of course, you’ll want to add some personality to make it your own.
But the basic structure is there. You’ve got the course title and a clear call-to-action button right up front.
If you scroll down, you’ll find more promotional elements for your course.
If you want, you can change the theme of your course pages by clicking “Theme Settings” on the left side. This lets you update colors, fonts, images, and all that.
The only thing that caught me off guard was that it changes the theme for all your courses—not just the one you’re editing. So when I was testing it out, I ended up changing the look of all 3 of my courses without realizing it.
Anyway, the site builder is super easy to play around with, so I’d just recommend jumping in and testing things out.
If you want to add more stuff to your page, just hit the “+ Add Section” button. That’s pretty much all it takes to start building your course website.
For example, let’s say I want to add a little scarcity timer at the bottom of the page to help boost sales.
All I need to do is click “Add Section” and search for “Counter.”
Then I just click on the counter, and boom—it’s added to the page:
To adjust the countdown and make it show what I want, I just click on the counter and set the expiry date on the left-hand side.
This shows how the site builder works overall—just hover over any element, click “Edit,” and make your changes right there.
It’s all super straightforward. Just pick an element and tweak it using the easy-to-understand controls.
The one thing that’s a bit limited is customizability. Not a huge issue, but it’s something you’ll notice pretty quickly.
For example, I wanted to show the original price with a strikethrough next to the discounted one, like this:
This was not possible on Thinkific.
Marketing and Sales Tools
Once your course and landing page are ready, it’s time to start marketing.
People won’t just magically land on your page and buy. You’ve got to put the course in front of them—whether that’s with offers, funnels, or other tactics.
No surprise here, but Thinkific gives you tools for that too!
For example, you can offer a free preview lesson and keep the rest of the content behind a paywall.
Or you can set up sale coupons to give people a discount on your course.
These come in handy! You can even limit them to, say, the first 10 sign-ups to add a bit of urgency and make the offer more appealing.
Analytics and Reporting
Once you’ve got a bunch of students and content, you can use analytics to track things like transactions, revenue per user, total revenue, and more.
Some of this is already available on the Standard plan, but if you want more detailed insights, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher plan.
I’m not sure how I feel about that part. But then again, I only have 2 courses, and I can already see all the key analytics I care about—so for now, there’s nothing to complain about.
Student Management and Support
And last but not least, you can support your students too.
This really comes in handy when you’ve got a bunch of them—and it’s something that’d be tough to manage without a platform like this.
For example, you can track how your students are doing.
Who’s falling behind?
Who hasn’t even started?
Who’s already finished?
And a bunch of other stuff like that.
You can also give your students a certificate once they complete your course. This can boost their motivation and make your course feel a lot more professional and valuable.
Preview the Student View
When your course is ready to go live, you can enroll in it yourself as a student to see exactly how everything looks and works.
This is one of the things I really like about Thinkific. It handles all the technical stuff—organizing lectures, tracking progress, showing lecture and chapter numbers, and so on.
It makes things smooth for the student. Instead of some random folder full of files, they get a proper, user-friendly learning experience.
That’s the kind of stuff you get with Thinkific. Without it, you’d have to custom-build all these features into your course—which isn’t exactly easy.
Sure, you could just share a private link to a long video, but if you want to track progress, take payments, build a proper landing page, and actually manage everything, you’ll need a platform like Thinkific.
Pros
- All-in-one platform. Like I’ve shown you, it comes with everything you need to build a proper, user-friendly course.
- Progress tracking and analytics. You can see how students are moving through your content and what they’re engaging with.
- Payments handled. Thinkific takes care of payments, refunds, discounts, and all that behind-the-scenes stuff.
- Responsive support. I’ve sent quite a few messages to their support team, and even with the time difference, they always get back to me quickly.
These are just a few of the things I like about Thinkific. You can technically run a course without a platform like this, but it would quickly turn into a mess.
Cons
Some downtime. Back when I started, the platform went down quietly for days. Turned out I hadn’t submitted some tax info. Would’ve been nice to get a heads-up from the dashboard instead of my students asking me what was going on.
Limited customization. You get the essentials, but anything more advanced is a bit restricted. For example, I couldn’t even cross out the original price on my landing page.
Apps cost a lot. If you need something Thinkific doesn’t already have, chances are there’s an app for it—but they’re usually pricey.
Pricing
There are quite a few plans on Thinkific:
- Free plan — $0
- Basic plan — $49 per month
- Start plan — $99 per month
- Grow — $199 per month
To Take Home
Thinkific is great. If you’re thinking about creating an online course, it’s definitely worth a try.
You can even start with the free plan to test things out.
It lets you build different types of learning content, track your students’ progress, handle sales, market your course, and a bunch more.
The only thing I’m not a huge fan of is that it’s missing a few marketing features, and the landing page builder can feel a bit stiff sometimes. But honestly, those are tiny things—and they won’t really matter until you’ve got hundreds of students anyway 🙂
Thanks for reading!