How To Use Thinkific

thinkific-review

We all know the expression “Knowledge is Power” which has its roots in Latin: scientiapotentia est. It still holds true today as it did all those years ago.

Knowledge makes us superior to the other more powerful creatures in the world. Eagles and other sharp-eyed creatures might have better eyesight than humans, but we have learned to see further than them by understanding how the world works.

Although the example is a bit extreme, you get the point. Because of our knowledge and ingenuity, the human race has risen to the top in food chain.

It is therefore beneficial to share the knowledge we have with others, so that this knowledge does not become a burden on our minds and make us forget. After all, for knowledge to grow and develop, it must be shared and evolved.

That said, while it is ideal for sharing your knowledge and ideas for free, there is nothing wrong with selling it. Knowledge is power, and money can also be power. The knowledge owner has the final say in what happens to it. And that is the beauty of it.

The only way to “sell” knowledge for years was to either directly or indirectly tutor the buyer.

The advent of the internet has only democratized this ability to distribute what you learned to the public. Anyone can share their knowledge, even those without a teaching license or who don’t know how to write books.

The kinds of things being taught around have also been busted wide open. Whether for good or for bad, people can teach others how to make or do the most mundane or nonsense of things through multiple platforms like Youtube or TikTok.

Online education is not the only option. Online courses platforms are the answer.

thinkific-logo

For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from the YouTube channel SoftwarePundit. You can still read our article to get a complete overview of Thinkific.

Thinkific: An Online Course Platform How To Use Thinkific

Thinkific is a top choice for hosting your online classes. Learning Management System (LMS), creates, promotes and sells your online courses.

Thinkific was founded in 2012 by a group entrepreneurs who wanted to create an environment that would allow students and instructors to learn and teach.

They were fortunate to find a solution to their problem. Thinkific became an effective solution for creating, managing, and marketing online courses. Thinkific was easy to use, so even people with no technical knowledge could use it.

This ease of use makes Thinkific essential for online course creators. This allows the users to focus on one thing and one thing only: content. Good content is what drives students and teachers to engage.

Thinkific offers many features to fulfill that promise. Later, we will look at these features and see if they really live up to the hype.

Enjoy the Thinkific Benefits

Thinkific is not the only platform that is a decent course maker. Many LMS and CMS can do the same job as Thinkific. That said, we would be remiss if we gloss over Thinkific just because of this fact.

So what is it about thinkific that makes us prefer it as a platform overall?

  • Unlike most other platforms, Thinkific does not take any transaction fees from your sales. Thinkific instantly makes your funds available to withdraw whenever you make a sale. So when it comes to sales, Thinkific makes sure that whatever is yours is absolutely yours
  • You can try Thinkific’s core features and have a feel for the environment through its free plan. Although you are only limited to uploading 3 courses, you can have unlimited students enrolled in it as well as host most of the core content that Thinkific allows
  • As a commitment to their promise of letting content creators focus on the content, Thinkific makes it easy to build an online course through its drag and drop builder. Thinkific also allows multiple kinds of content, from video files, audio files, PDFs, quizzes, text, surveys, and more.
  • You can also play with the course engagement through Thinkific’s many capabilities. You can organize groups, schedule content and send them via drip-feed. They also lock them with prerequisite lessons.
  • You can also engage with students via Thinkific’s multiple channels. You can email your students their progresses and engage them in discussions. And even have them compete with the leaderboard.

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Useful Features

Thinkific features are almost identical to other course builders. There are some differences, but these are minor. This is mostly because they focus on certain sections of the entire experience. These features include:

  • Easy to use course creator

This isn’t a new feature, as many online course builders already offer it. A course builder who doesn’t have a user-friendly one will find it very difficult to compete in the market.

  • Drag-and-drop web site builder

Drag-and-drop page builders, like the course builder are common issues for these types of services. Course makers need to market their courses. As such, giving them the proper tools to do so easier is a godsend. Just like with Thinkific.

  • Promotion and marketing tools

Thinkific, a course builder, should also be able to offer coupons, as well as the necessary email and affiliate marketing tools.

  • Flexible payment options

Without multiple payment options, all of your marketing tools will be useless. Having more than one payment option is also optimal, as it removes friction from wannabe customers, and more payment options can make it easier for your leads to paying you.

  • Reporting

Analytics is key to content creation. How else can you find your approach without knowing your strengths and weaknesses? Thinkific offers this feature to its users to make it easy for their users as to the direction their content should go.

Should they continue doing tutorial videos with direct samples, the best way to go about things, or just plain instructions would be better? One cannot decide the best course of action without properly tracking revenues, engagements, and business performance.

  • Support for students and student communities

A good way to increase your customer base is to have a strong community that uses your content. It is also a great way to brand your company and increase engagements. Customer retention is greatly improved by having a strong community and customer support. It is good that Thinkific provides the avenue to do so with these features.

  • Tools to train the trainer

Although we are in the business selling knowledge, it’s a good idea to have our own. Selling and course building are two different things. Many people who try Thinkific may be unfamiliar with the process and will stumble around until they feel at ease.

Thinkific gives these newbies and even veterans a chance to learn from what is tried and tested. In doing so, they can speed up the process of making courses and allow newer people to use the app more.

  • Thinkific App store

The Thinkific App store sells apps and programs that take your online courses to another level. The best thing about the AppStore is its community-made nature. It is a great place for fellow course creators and content creators to come together and have discussions with Thinkific developers.

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The Thinkific Course Builder: Is it Good?

At the end of the day, the only way to know how good a course builder is to test the crux of its service, which is the course builder itself.

The main course builder will determine how good a course builder service is. If they don’t have a well-functioning course building system, then what can we expect from them about secondary and additional features?

In the case of their course builder, Thinkific provides a handy “Get Started” checklist that guides you on what to do at your first foray into course building.

Build Your First Course

You will receive a draft of “Your First Course” when you start your course.

Opening this file brings you to the first-course builder interface, wherein the layout is very easy to follow. The course content is divided into chapters and lessons.

You can create lessons by clicking the “add Lesson” button.

Content types can be either of the following:

  • Video
  • Audio
  • Text
  • Download PDF documents
  • Slideshow presentations
  • Webinars and live zoom lessons.

Any of these files can be uploaded as your lessons. If you want, you can add multiple course content and upload them using the Bulk Importer. You can also copy old lessons from other courses using the “Copy Lessons From” button on Thinkific.

Pick the Course Type

Thinkific allows you to pick what course you are currently building. For some of the choices, the service provides you with pre-formatted and good-looking templates that are structured for the appropriate course content.

While you can have perfect flexibility by using a blank template, these course templates can be extremely helpful when doing your job in a hurry or when you are just beginning to make courses.

Some of these premade course types include:

  • Mini-course: These are course templates designed to create short and fast courses such as tasters and freebies.
  • Flagship Courses are courses that attract students and keep them coming back. Every lesson is designed to be easy for students to follow and is simple to learn.
  • Pre-sell course: Pre-sell courses help you sell your courses. These can be like testers and short courses. This will allow you to tell potential customers about your courses. How To Use Thinkific
  • Membership Resource Library: You can use this template to create an archive of resources for your subscribers. This will encourage your audience stay on your site even when they are looking at resources.
  • Webinar Replay: This is like the library template, except it is specially made for webinars and live lesson video recordings. This template is ideal for late enrollees or people who missed your seminars.

Your Students’ Course Design

Your students will be able to consume your learning resources in the Course Player. You can change the appearance of the course player in the “Settings tab” on the “Courses” page. Options include changing color schemes, fonts, or adding logos.

You can even add a course description and image in the settings here.

This part also allows you to preview your lessons in the course player. This allows you to see the views of your students on your lessons. As such, you can put yourself in their shoes and see the problem from their perspective.

Set Assignments and Check Progress

As an extra way to engage students, assignments, quizzes and surveys can be very useful. Aside from that, you can use it as an added way to rate your students. How To Use Thinkific

Assignments are not available for PRO plans.

Overall, Thinkific’s course builder is very user-friendly. They will give you enough guidance, especially if you’re just starting out with your course.

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Building an Online Course Website

While the course builder is what you can consider the core of Thinkific, It is the Site Builder that serves as the foundation with which you can prop your courses.

The Thinkific Site builder shares the same characteristics as the other landing page builders. This allows you to sell courses directly from your website, even if your site isn’t yet online.

The website builder is easy to use. This website builder was created with non-techy people and newbies in mind.

Start building your website by:

1. Pick a Theme.

When building your website, the best place is to pick a theme.

Thinkific offers three pre-designed themes templates. Each theme has its own styles, color schemes, fonts, and tweaked layouts.

These websites all have professional and good designs.

2. You can customize your online course site using the Site Builder.

After picking a theme, you can customize it as you like. You can make your desired edits to the site builder and create an entire website. If you want, you can dig in and craft individual pages.

Site builders use drag-and-drop tools that make it simple to create a website from scratch. This tool can be combined with pre-made themes to create a professional-looking website.

And that is just the beginning. The potential your website can take will be up to you. Your imagination is limitless.

3. Make a Training website Entirely from Scratch.

We are already in the course-making business so it makes sense to build a website for training. For this matter, Thinkific provides a great selection of pages for your perusal.

These pages can be easily mapped to create a course or training website. As such, we can take these pages and use them as the building blocks of your websites. These pages are worth mentioning:

  • Home Page: The face of your website. Where most relevant things should be found
  • Course pages: These can swerve as landing pages for approaching courses. If you want, you can also make a course page that serves as a landing page for all the courses you offer in your “class”
  • Sign-up pages: This is where your potential customers and students enroll for individual courses or memberships How To Use Thinkific
  • Sign in Pages: This should be sued for subscribers of your website
  • Student Dashboard: This will serve as your student’s starting point when signing in to your website. A good student dashboard can be designed in a way that makes everything on your website accessible.
  • You can find payment pages, or checkout pages: Here you can place your payment options to subscribe or sign up for your class.
  • Coming Soon pages: These pages may look empty, but they can serve as teasers and previews for any upcoming pages, courses, offers, and even bundles you offer.

Of course, these types of pages are just some examples you can use with the website. These templates are also a good utility for making a website and needing it fast. This skips the nitpicky part of choosing which to use on your website. How To Use Thinkific

You can also create a customized page by clicking on the Custom Page link in the menus. This will allow you to design your page according to your requirements.

4. Edit Individual Pages

It is important to understand the structure of Thinkific Site Builder pages in order to properly design them. These sections can be customized easily and moved around.

Pre-built pages come with suggestions sections that will help you choose the right ones for your page. Adding more sections is just as simple as clicking on the “Add Section”

All in all, Thinkfic provides users with 23 pre-formatted page sections available. These pages are geared towards building high-converting pages. These high-converting pages include, but are not limited to:

  • Call to Action.

This is an essential part, especially when you aim to sell. This lets your would-be students and customers know how to sign up or buy.

  • ‘Smart’ Product and Category

This section provides a list of information that can provide your customers with automatically listed summaries of available products you sell.

  • Checklists

This section can be used to highlight key messages, making it easy for the readers to scan information using bullet points.

  • Most Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions are a common scene on most websites. These are designed to answer all common questions from customers. How To Use Thinkific

  • ‘Social Proof’

These sections can be compared to testimonials. They show client reviews, comments, and experiences. They make a statement to show off what they get in the lessons, which in turn entices other customers to avail of your product.

  • Upsell

These sections help you promote other courses. This section is often found on the checkout page for one of your courses.

  • Instructor

This is where your instructors profiles can be added to the courses. This gives students information as to the people who are teaching them.

  • Pricing Options

Here you can submit your pricing options. This tells your students the cost of your courses and where you can pay for them. This is where you can also describe your bundles and what they include, as well as how much each one costs.

  • Video

If you want to promote your courses with a video advertisement, you can add the section here.

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You can earn profit through your content by using your online course platform

Now we come to what is known as among the most anticipated parts of the review. How does the business side of Thnkific work? Is the service providing enough tools and resources to enable users to make a living from their hard work?

The thing of the matter is that nowadays, all online course builders and course platforms include inherent tools to give users and teachers the ability to promote their courses and products. The only difference is in the focus of each platform.

Yep, that’s right. Some platforms are more focused on the conversion side of selling courses and creating content. Others, on the other hand, focus more on the business and promotion side of things and rely heavily upon integrations.

So on which side does Thinkific fall on? Let’s find out as we try the business, promotion, and marketing features of Thinkific.

Promote Your Courses

By default, Thinkific has marketing tools that help you sell your content for cash. Even users who are utilizing the free plan can try these features, albeit they only have access to the most basic of functions and are pretty limited in their scope.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of these tools. Thinkific offers the necessary SEO options for free to plan users. This allows you promote your lessons in the simplest ways possible, making it capable of rising up the search engine results page.

Another feature available for free users is the ability to build free trial courses. It’s like giving your customers a free taste or sample. This is one of the best ways to show your audience who you are. How To Use Thinkific

By allowing customers and potential students a taste of your content, you will allow them a peek into the curtains and how classes are done. This will give customers and potential students a glimpse into the workings of your content before they pay for it.

These promotional materials can be a great way to promote your products. In the right condition, they might even compete with some products that have been promoted to the extreme.

We are not talking about the stuff that is free. You will unlock more marketing tools as you move up in the Thinkific pricing plans. Many of these enhance your ability to promote your course materials in the market. These include:

  • Coupons

Coupons don’t need introduction. They’ve been in use for many transactions for a long period of time. It is not surprising that they are being used in online marketing and business.

Thinkific’s coupons come from digital codes that are very easy to share. These codes can be used in Thinkific’s ecosystem very well. Using a coupon on Thinkific’s checkout will automatically use it with little to no hassle.

Coupons can be used to promote bundles or courses from a marketing perspective. You can encourage potential customers to visit your courses by including a discount.

Thinkific also allows you to personalize your coupons. The coupon can be customized by setting the dollar amount or percentage, as well as the expiration date and the number of times it can be used.

  • Sales Widgets

You can use sales widgets to link to other websites or social media to share your purchase links. These widgets are very useful given the amount of traffic required to get your course noticed. You will need lots of traffic, let’s face the facts.

You can’t expect traffic if your courses are new and you don’t have an audience. Even if your audience is already established, you still need a quick and easy way to link your courses with classes on other websites.

This is where social media comes into play. It’s a fact that social media is used by almost everyone. You should find where most of the internet traffic comes from and try to divert some of those traffic to your website.

This is possible by using sales widgets that generate HTML code which can be easily pasted onto existing websites. This includes social media sites. Aside from that, these codes can also be sent as messages if you want to market that way. How To Use Thinkific

Another customization you can do with this widget is how it looks. You have the option to show a button or a button with a product picture. Or you can add text to match it.

  • Email Marketing Tools

Email marketing tools allow you to manage your newsletters and send targeted messages to subscribers. In a way, this tool is used less to get new conversions and rather to retain them. After all, you can only send this to people you already have contact with.

Thinkific’s email marketing tools are limited to this ……… Unfortunately, you can only email existing students enrolled in your courses. Notifying them about new products or courses is another option.

You don’t have to like everything. However, if you need more features, there are other email marketing tools available such as Mailchimp or Mailerlite, AWeber and Constant Contact. ActiveCampaign is another option.

However, it would have been a lot better if Thinkific had an even better local Email marketing tool available for its users.

  • Affiliate Marketing

If you think your own marketing skills are insufficient, then you can opt to go the Affiliate marketing route and get experts and influencers to promote your courses.

The process is simple and straightforward with Thinkific. You will need to add the associated person as a user, and make him an “Affiliate”. This information can be found under “User Roles” within the Process.

You can also convert Thinkfiic users into affiliates by finding them through the same process.

As for checking the status and performance of your affiliates, Thinkific will track the courses or bundles your affiliate sells and record the corresponding revenue. How To Use Thinkific

However, affiliates are not paid within the system. It’s the same with instructor revenue sharing.

Payment Options

All that marketing work will be for naught if you have no way of receiving payments or your courses. In this vein, Thinkific has Stripe as a card payment platform. You can also connect PayPal to make one-off payments.

You can also link your courses with a Shopify website. That way, you can get all the tools the eCommerce platform offers its users.

Thinkific’s payment options let you customize the price of your products. Customers can be charged with different payment options. For example, you can sell courses for a one off fee.

You can even make membership subscriptions and charge accordingly. If you want, you can sell your course in a bundle. But right now, I haven’t tried that feature as I have only a few courses made with their system.

One thing to note about Thinkific though is that they do not charge you any commission fee for any of your courses sold!

Analytics and reporting

Any good website that is selling something should include a Reports and Analytics feature. This feature will help users identify which areas they excel at and which ones they should focus on to improve.

Though it’s a new feature, Thinkific does have one. It currently reports only on four areas, which are: Enrollments and Student Engagement, Revenue, Orders, Enrollments, and Student Engagement. This feature is currently in its infancy, and only the Start + Growth package has it.

For what it’s worth, it is a step in the right direction as having it is much better than having nothing at all.

How does it all work?

Thinkific’s reporting and analytics collect the necessary data how they wish. Some selections include filtering data by date, course or product type, by recency of customers (whether they are new or existing), and more.

These data can give you multiple insights into how your courses perform. Let’s take, for instance, data about student engagement.

This data will allow you to view things like course enrollments and completion rates. These metrics can be compared across all subjects. This allows you to see which subjects are having low completion rates.

You can then identify the reasons for these problems. Then it will be up to you to adjust accordingly. How To Use Thinkific

Students might find it difficult to complete courses that have low completion rates. It could be an issue with how you present the information. Once you find the problem, you can then find an applicable solution without tearing your hair out.

This data is then shown as a chart and graph that makes it a lot easier to read and understand.

Prices and plans that are thought-provoking

Thinkific is a leading platform for course development and marketing. As such, you can expect to have a price that is appropriate for their standing.

Thinkfiic is a product that you pay for. With all its features, you won’t be ripped off.

Thinkific also offers a free plan that you can use to try their products. If you are interested in learning more about Thinkific’s features or need to start your course-creating journey, you can always get a free plan.

Free Start Grow Expand
$0 per month $74 per month $149 pero month $374 per month
-Create and launch your product with a website and checkout experience

 

  • 1 Course
  • 1 community
  • 1 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • Transaction fee of 0$
  • Chat Bot and Email Support
  • 100% Content Ownership
  • Drag and Drop Course Builder
  • Easy to use website themes
  • Fully integrated e-commerce
  • App Store
Add products to your company and create a cohesive learning experience.

 

  • Unlimited Courses
  • 1 Community
  • 1 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • All features included in the price
  • Custom domains
  • Coupons and discounts
  • Assignments
  • Bundles and add-on packages
  • Payment plans and memberships
  • Live lessons
  • Affiliate selling
  • Options for advanced course-building
  • Advanced Courses at Thinkific Academy
A complete set of tools is available to help you increase your sales.

 

  • Unlimited courses
  • 3 Communities
  • 2 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • 0% transaction fee
  • Support by phone and email
  • All Start Features Included
  • Take out the Thinkific brand
  • Bulk emailer for students
  • Bulk enrollments
  • API access
-Optimize your workflow and create a premium experience with a platform designed to scale

 

  • Unlimited courses
  • 10 Communities
  • 5 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • 0% transaction fee
  • Priority phone support
  • All Grow features included
  • Custom SSL Certificates
  • Priority Support

The Free Plan

Is the first plan you should take if you are new to all this course building and course management stuff. It is the best way to get a feel of the service and to test drive what it is capable of. The free plan allows you to do everything the service offers, albeit at a limited capacity.

The Free plan is only good for making one course. To make more courses, you will need to sign up. This course is full of potential and you can enroll as many students as you wish.

The Start Plan

If you think you like using Thinkific and would like to proceed with the next big step in the right direction. The main benefit of upgrading to this plan is your limiters are removed, and you are free to make unlimited courses.

Thinkific also offers a variety of course options. For example, you can begin to live-stream your lessons as long as time permits it.

Furthermore, the Start plan opens up more marketing tools and gives you access to the Thinkific app store.

You also have the option of a custom domain to host your course website.

The Grow Plan

If you’re serious about making sales and selling courses, the Grow plan is right for you. The first benefit you get is removing the Thinkific branding. Although it may seem easy, it has a significant impact on branding, marketing, and professionalizing your courses.

This gives you access to bulk enrollments so that the enrollment process can be done easier and faster. You have priority email support and phone support. You can get faster solutions if you have different issues with your website. How To Use Thinkific

The Expand Plan

The Expand plan is for bigger institutions and businesses. This plan allows you to streamline your workflow and provide a premium experience using a platform that can scale.

This plan is ideal for large institutions that want to establish an online presence. Aside from providing the usual features of the other Thinkific plans, it provides unprecedented 10 Communities to keep students easier to manage.

Speaking of management, this plan also provides 5 administrators to help with running things.

Thinkific Plus

LMS services offer clients and customers the option to create custom plans that are separate from their basic plans. Their prices are not listed because customization may change the cost. The customization will affect the price.

For Thinkific, this is called Thinkific Plus. It is a powerful, scalable, and easy-to-use learning platform geared toward your team and students.

To get Thinkific Plus, you must contact the Thinkfic sales team. They will help you understand the tools you need to optimize your platform. They can connect you with education experts who will inspire you and give you the confidence you need to achieve more than you could ever imagine.

Thinkific Plus will give you all the features from the Expand plans while also adding in these features:

  • Unlimitted Products
  • Unlimited Administrators
  • Three+ separate Thinkific sites
  • Service Level Agreement 99.9%
  • Dedicate Customer Success Team
  • Check out multiple seats or a tiered pricing option
  • Email white-labeling
  • Single Sign on
  • Bulk Selling App
  • Enterprise API Access

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Thinkific Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Thinkific does not take any transaction fees. Funds are immediately available for withdrawal whenever a sale is made from your products, courses, or memberships.
  • Thinkific offers a fully implemented free plan. It has all the core features available and acts like a paid plan. There are no restrictions, but if you’re serious enough you can sell courses through the service with no upfront investment. How To Use Thinkific
  • Thinkkific’s drag and drop builder is easy to use by even non-tech-savvy users. It even allows you to upload multiple types of media content to create varied and interesting courses and lessons.

Cons

  • There are some aspects of Thinkific that are not really that are not as user-friendly as expected. This is something that some creators of the service have expressed.
  • There is a huge lack of marketing features in the service. Their email marketing capability is quite basic and is miles behind the competition.
  • The customization options and designs available through Thinkific are very limited. There are only a handful of themes that you can choose from. With these options, it is hard to create a website that stands out among the rest.

Thinkific Verdict

Overall, Thinkific is a good choice for course creation as well as course promotion. Its price is entirely reasonable, and the features are as good and easy to use as most of its competitors.

For those who are just starting out, the free startup plan will be a great help. It will allow them to get a feel for how things work. How To Use Thinkific

I believe that offering a free startup plan to a service is a sign of confidence. They believe their product is of use and are willing to let the public try it.

You can see that Thinkific’s free plan is bold and understandable. It is unlike the other “free plans” of the other products where they only masquerade as free, but there isn’t you can do with the service.

Thinkific’s Course Builder is very intuitive and easy to use. With just a glance, you can easily know what to do and what functions as what. As for the more complex side of things, Thinkific provides enough prompts to guide you through the process.

This can be a tricky side. Too many prompts can overwhelm novice users and cause frustration for those who are already proficient.

However, it is important to remember that Thinkific might be too easy for some users. This is just my nitpicking. At the end of the day, Thinkific’s course builder is fast, easy, and responsive, and that’s what most people need.

For their Site Builder, Thinkific also chooses to keep it simple. It is not like a standalone platform. It is easy to use, and it fits their philosophy.

It does offer impressive editing options, which makes it ideal for creating training and tutorial websites. Aside from that, it is an excellent tool for adding training pages to existing websites.

The only thing lacking is more themes to cater to more people and their different tastes.

Lastly, on the marketing side of things, this is where I feel Thinkific falls short. Just looking at the bare bones structure of their Email marketing can turn off marketers, and marketing Thinkific’s courses can be an uphill climb without resorting to third-party integrations.

It would be more convenient to have other payment options than Stripe or PayPal.

Not everything is bad. Thinkfic still offers some useful tools to help you make money from your courses. With a little creative touch, you can sell your products and courses. This requires more effort than normal, but it is possible.

Thinkific Frequently Asked Questions How To Use Thinkific

Is it possible to create a complete website with just Thinkfic?

Yes, you can!

Thinkfiic gives you the freedom to build your entire online education business. You can easily create courses, websites, and your entire brand on one platform. Thinkific has builders that are designed to facilitate building, marketing, and selling online courses.

How can I allow my students to access my course content while offline?

It is up to you.

Remember that students may need assistance logging in to your courses offline. You can make your courses downloadable. This can be done for content such as audio files, video files, and PDFs. Your students can download these to their devices and access them even offline.

Who owns the content published on Thinkific?

The creators are the complete and sole owners of any content that is built into the Thinkific Platform.

Thinkific does not, and will not, claim any intellectual property rights over materials made by the course creators and builders. Therefore, anything built and published on the platform is 100% to the creators.

How To Use Thinkific

thinkific-vs-competition

While they already existed before 2019 B.C. (where B.C. stands for Before COVID), Online Course Platforms were already a thing. Even then, they were made for the same purpose, to create and sell online courses.

Back then, most courses were much more focused on niched things like leadership seminars, wholesomeness, and self-help classes. Of course, courses and classes focused on normal subjects were there too.

These classes focused on bringing education to where it is most convenient and comfortable.

People who are housebound for multiple reasons (e.g., childcare or health issues) can still learn and study even if they cannot go out. Due to its flexibility, people who are unable to attend school regularly due to scheduling conflicts or duties could still complete courses.

Then the pandemic happened, and everything else was forced to shut down. People still needed to learn and online courses and other eLearning platforms made this possible.

The industry saw a 221% rise in course creators using one Course Platform during the initial stages of the pandemic. This growth may be shared across multiple online platforms.

Everybody from Entrepreneurs and solopreneurs to human resource professionals and proper educational institutions has used a course platform or two during the pandemic.

These platforms can also be used to make extra profits, as the pandemic showed. They say that knowledge is wealth. Online courses platforms have given this maxim legs and allowed people to convert their knowledge into wealth.

There are many online courses that people can take. You can find everything from life coaching to make your life easier, to tutorial classes on the more academic subjects such as Algebra. Even to courses about making your courses more profitable.

Online courses are everywhere, and if you want to get in on the action, the next question is which platform you will use to share that treasure in your noggin.

thinkific-logo
Ross Herosian has posted a video review on his YouTube channel Tricycle Creative. For those who like a visual experience, You can still read our article below to get a complete overview of Thinkific. It also compares it with some other competitors.

Thinkific: You’re Go-To Online Course Business Platform How To Use Thinkific

Thinkific Overview

Thinkific is one the most popular options for selling, hosting and building your courses.

One of the main reasons why Thinkific stands out is that you know they are doing this in a place of passion. You can feel that they are more focused on giving the best learning experience they can to both the creators and their audience and that earning money is needed to keep things afloat.

It’s impossible to not! It is one of few online courses platforms that offers a free full-service service. Thinkific offers a free service that is just as good as the paid lower-tiered.

The platform is ideal for beginners as it allows them to see how content and courses are built, as well the industry’s overall environment. Using the free plan allows users to glimpse what they are about to partake in without any investment.

The only limitation of this free plan is that it only allows you to create one course and one course, and in my opinion, that is generous enough.

Thinkific also does not take any cut for a transaction fee whenever a user makes a sale on the platform. All profits go to content owners.

Thinkific ensures that all profits are immediately available after they have been sold. That means that course makers and content creators can use their earnings directly, with no need to wait for a quote or a certain threshold to reach before being able to touch the money.

This is a testament to how Thinkfiic views its customers.

Thinkific Features

Let me start by saying that almost all online courses platforms have the same features. First, there is the course builder, then there is the website builder for your courses, and then the marketing features.

The only difference between them is how well they work, along with some bits and bobs that make the product unique. As such, we will be focusing on these aspects of Thinkific’s features.

Thinkific’s main focus is their ability to create course curriculum. The creation part of Thinkific’s features is the most important. They make sure that online courses are as engaging as possible.

Thinkific’s user interface is very easy to get into. It’s intuitive and logical. It is easy to navigate. All other features can be accessed through a sidebar menu. Except for occasional hiccups, they are correctly classified. How To Use Thinkific

Users who love to check on analytics and performance will love this interface, as everything is placed and organized neatly on the dashboard.

The dashboard shows you how you are doing in revenue and student accounts. You can also see student course enrollments and sign-ups.

If we are to nitpick something out of this, it would be that the aesthetics of the interface can be done a little bit better.

As mentioned above, Thinkific’s main focus is on the creation side of course creation. The platform makes course creation easy. Thinkific lets you try all the features of the course creator even if it is a free plan.

You can also include many media types in this course builder. These include content, quizzes, surveys, assignments, pdfs, and student discussion areas to allow peer-to-peer interaction.

Another highlight is the scheduling of course content and some automation in drip-feeding content.

As for the Marketing features of Thinkific, I’m afraid that is where the platforms fall pretty flat. Don’t get me wrong. It has everything that you need to promote and market your courses.

That’s not all. Compared to the competition, Thinkific’s market features are a bit lackluster. It doesn’t include a sales funnel builder. This is the most noticeable aspect. The overall checkout experience is pretty clunky.

What’s more is that there is really nothing you can do about this part since it has very limited customization.

Even email marketing features lag behind the competitor. Most of it is quite basic, and at most, you can notify your students of new courses or products, as well as send them their course progress and notify them about their course progress as well as updates.

However, not everything is bad, as Thinkific can integrate multiple third-party applications. These third-party applications are not meant to be used as bandages. They can be used to address some of the problems in Thinkific’s marketing department.

For email marketing alone, Thinkific directly integrates five of the most popular email marketing providers, including ConvertKit, Active Campaign, Aweber, Drip, and MailChimp.

I guess it makes sense, given the platform’s repeated promises of focusing on course creation. It would be smarter to invest all resources in ensuring that they get the course creation part right, and then to hire third-party apps for the marketing part.

The Thinkific Price

While I have already mentioned Thinkific’s Free Plan and how great it is, that plan is still limited and is a far cry from what Thinkific’s paid plans are. It isn’t like most of the competition.

At a cheaper price point, Thinkific allows users to make an unlimited number of courses and enroll an unlimited number of students in these courses. This is in line with their mission to be focused on the education part. How To Use Thinkific

As such, if you want to use a more affordable plan and have many content ideas you think will sell, Thinkific should be one of the best matches for you.

Free Start Grow Expand
$0 per month $74 per month $149 per month $374 per month
Create and launch your product using a website and checkout experience

 

  • 1 Course
  • 1 community
  • 1 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • 0$ transaction fee
  • Support via Chat Bot and Email
  • 100% content ownership
  • Drag and drop course builder
  • Simple to use website themes
  • Full integrated e-commerce
  • App Store
-Add products to your business and create a cohesive learning experience for your students

 

  • Unlimited Courses
  • 1 Community
  • 1 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • 0% transaction fee
  • All features included in the price
  • Custom domains
  • Coupons and discounts
  • Assignments
  • Bundles and add-on packages
  • Memberships and payment plans
  • Live lessons
  • Affiliate selling
  • Advanced course – building options
  • Advanced Courses at Thinkific Academy
-Build a successful business with a complete suite of tools to help you sell more

 

  • Unlimited courses
  • 3 Communities
  • 2 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • Phone and priority email support
  • All Start Features Included
  • Take out the Thinkific brand
  • Bulk student emailer
  • Bulk enrollments
  • API access
With a platform that scales, optimize your workflow to create premium experiences.

 

  • Unlimited courses
  • 10 Communities
  • 5 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • Priority phone support
  • All Grow features included
  • Custom SSL Certificates
  • Priority Support

Aside from these plans, Thinkific also has a more advanced and bespoke plan called Thinkific plus. Thinkific Plus takes what you know of Thinkfiic and makes it a powerful, scalable, and easy-to-use learning platform.

Of course, it still maintains its dedication to course building, teachers, and students.

To get Thinkific plus, you need to contact the platform’s sales team and ask for this upgrade. They will help you to get the best out of your platform. Lastly, you will also discuss with them the total cost of this upgrade.

Each Thinkific Plus plan is unique, and as such, different Plus plans might more or less have different costs. This is one thing that is certain. Thinkific Plus will offer you all the benefits of the most expensive plan, plus these extra features.

  • Unlimited Products
  • Unlimited Administrators
  • 3+ Separate Thinkific sites
  • Service Level Agreement 99.9%
  • Build a Customer Success Team
  • Check out multiple seats or a tiered pricing option
  • Email White-labeling
  • Only one sign on
  • Bulk Selling App
  • Enterprise API Access

man-seriously-staring-at-laptop

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Thoughtific Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Thinkific’s free package is permanently free. This isn’t a glorified trial. You can only take as many courses as you like.
  • Thinkific doesn’t charge transaction fees for any sale. All earnings by content creators are theirs. These funds can be claimed and used by creators as soon as they are received in their accounts.
  • Thinkific is flexible when it comes to payment options. They offer different payment options for different types and types of students.
  • The limitation for the number of courses is removed in all instances of Thinkific’s premium plans. Users can create unlimited courses and enroll unlimited students in these courses.
  • In terms of interface, Thinkific has one of the easiest to understand. With most options logically placed and easily located. This interface is easy to use for users just starting out.
  • Thinkfic’s course creator is also easy to use. You can also choose from many course materials to make your course more engaging and exciting.
  • Thinkific gives you the option to offer incentives, such as leaderboards and awards, to motivate your students.

Cons

  • Not everything in Thinkific’s tools are user friendly. You may need to take some time and read guides to learn how to use the tools.
  • The marketing features of Thinkifiic make it hard to recommend for people who are more focused on propping up businesses on the platform. You will need third-party integrations to get a better experience.
  • Despite Thinkific having one of the most intuitive user interfaces, it looks outdated, and there are times when the experience can be clunkier than expected.
  • The platform lacks many customization options. It is possible to find websites similar to yours. How To Use Thinkific

Thinkific Summary

Thinkific is one the most popular online courses platforms on the market. I would easily recommend it to beginners and those looking for a more course-focused platform. Despite its limitations, it still competes with other more “advanced and feature-rich” platforms.

In my opinion, its strongest suit would be its focus on providing the best course experience and free plan. Thinkfiic already has a solution for this problem. Any problems with the platform can be fixed by integrating third-party services.

If you’re looking for the best online course creation software that builds courses from scratch. You can never go wrong with Thinkific.

Kajabi Versus Thinkific

Kajabi Overview

Kajabi is a widely used platform for running an online course business. It is primarily focused on productivity and selling. It provides tools that are geared towards simplifying your operations.

Kajabi’s top features include automations and pipelines, email marketing and a mobile application.

As for products, there is a lot you can sell through the platform. Apart from courses, there are many other options. You can also sell memberships, communities and podcasts.

It is no wonder that Kajabi also has advanced marketing features, the most prominent of which include sales funnels (OVO pipelines), email marketing, and automations. This allows Kajabi users to sell their products more easily.

Kajabi is a rare product that can be described as an “all-in-one” platform. It’s a course-creation platform that offers more than just decent marketing features. You can even use automation features to help you spend more time marketing and creating than on the mundane tasks.

Kajabi land is not perfect. For starters, it has one of the more expensive platforms available in the market. The lowest plan is $149 per month. These plans are not unlimited. The lowest plan allows you to sell only 3 products.

Kajabi’s features are not as rich, particularly in the community engagement and gamification departments. These issues might require third-party integrations.

Kajabi Features

Kajabi claims to be one of the best platforms. Even more, they have one of the most expensive courses in the market. As such, it is only to be expected that the audience will have high expectations of the product. How To Use Thinkific

Let’s now take a look at the Kajabi interface and see how great they are.

Kajabi’s interface looks very normal at first glance. It is neat, minimal, and feels very modern. The majority of features are accessible in just 3-4 clicks. The page also includes a search assistant that allows you to quickly locate the tools and features within the application.

Kajabi’s pages load quicker. It makes it easier to work and provides a smoother experience.

In terms of Course Creation, Kajabi allows you to create various types. You can create mini-courses, online or drip courses, as well as creating your own. You can choose among these types for whichever suits your needs. (i.e. For long courses with long content, short courses for product launches.

For easier building experience, Kajabi provides blueprints which are akin to templates. These “skeletons” can be used as templates, so you don’t have to worry about adding content.

These courses could be properly structured too into categories, subcategories and posts. It would be easy to organize your content in a neat and organized manner. You can organize them depending on their types and content. You can have text and slideshows in one place, and audio and video in another.

As for storage, Kajabi allows for cloud uploading from Dropbox and Google Drive so there is little to worry about.

Kajabi is a strong and comprehensive marketing tool.

It also offers the traditional stuff of offering coupons in a flexible way, which, as we have seen, is an old and proven marketing strategy.

If you want to market through email, Kajabi has a powerful email marketing solution that is already built in the platform which has plenty of features in and of itself. You can even have email templates ready for the different functions you want it to.

Their pipelines are another conversion tool that they have. They can help you convert more customers to increase sales. They are not that hard to use and even the platform has provided various templates that can easily be used by their customers.

Kajabi offers a dedicated affiliate program to users who have a higher plan. This feature makes the entire process extremely simple and easy. It also organizes affiliate links as well as affiliates into its own category which it makes easier to find and track down.

Kajabi’s lack of an integrated payment solution is the main problem. Instead, users will need to rely on integration from other payment gateways like Stripe, Paypal and BitPay.

This is entirely disappointing given how robus their marketing tools are as well as how good their checkout is at doing things like upsells, bump offers, and downsells.

Although it is not perfect, Kajabi has a lot to offer that can be used for both marketing and course creation. As such, it is easy to see that these features are good for almost everybody who are serious about making an online business.

Of course, potential users should be willing to pay for the steep price point to use these tools.

Kajabi Price

It is undeniable that Kajabi is among the most expensive service when it comes to the course creation market. Their lowest plan starts at $149 per month and this plan doesn’t even include unlimited courses. How To Use Thinkific

However, if you think that Kajabi’s steep price as well as its more advanced features like automation is something you really need, then of course, it is the customer’s choice at the end of the day.

Basic Growth Pro
$119 monthly billed annually $159 per month, payable annually $319 per month billed annually
  • 3 products
  • 3 funnels
  • Unlimited Landing Pages
  • Unlimited Marketing emails
  • 10,000 contacts
  • 1000 active customers
  • 1 website
  • 1 admin user
  • Kajabi University
  • 0% Transaction Fee
  • Webinars and events
  • Ready to Use Templates
  • Ready-to-use Templates
  • Assessments (Quizzes & Surveys)
  • 1 Welcome Call with an Onboarding Specialist
  • Chat Support
  • Automatizations
  • 15 products
  • 15 funnels
  • Unlimited Landing pages
  • Unlimited marketing emails
  • 25,000 contacts
  • 10,000 active customers
  • 1 website
  • 10 admin users
  • Kajabi University
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • Webinars & Events
  • Ready to Use Templates
  • Assessments (quizzes & surveys)
  • 1 welcome call with an onboarding specialist
  • 1 check-in call with an onboarding specialist
  • 24/7 Chat support
  • Automated systems
  • Ability to remove Kajabi Branding
  • 100 products
  • 100 funnels
  • Unlimited landing pages
  • Unlimited marketing emails
  • 100,000 contacts
  • 20,000 active customers
  • 3 websites
  • 25 admin users
  • Kajabi University
  • 0% Transaction Fee
  • Webinars & Events
  • Ready to Use Templates
  • Assessments (quizzes and surveys)
  • 1 Call to an Onboarding Specialist
  • 1 Check-in call with an onboarding specialist
  • 24/7 chat support
  • Advanced Automation
  • Ability to remove Kajabi branding
  • Affiliate Program
  • Code Editor

Kajabi Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Kajabi, as its name suggests, is an all-in-one content creation and marketing tool. It provides various tools to create courses, like a drip course or a mini-course, and combine them with different marketing automations to ensure they sell.
  • Kajabi provides blueprints and templates to help you get started on your project.
  • Kajabi allows you to sell other digital products like coaching, webinars, communities, podcasts, etc. It is also one of the best places to do so.
  • Kajabi also has a built-in assessment function that allows you to grade and observe your students’ performance. This is extremely good when combined with drip courses to provide courses that can only be accessed when the proper grades are reached
  • Kajabi’s accessibility is pretty good thanks to its mobile app, which students can use to access classes and lessons whenever and wherever they are. It even includes a notification feature that can help with alerts.
  • Kajabi has a membership option that allows users create and sell membership options for their customers. This can be used to provide users with a way to sell extra and exclusive course content.
  • Kajabi’s automation feature can automate the purchase of offers, post-completion of courses or memberships, assessment completion, as well as other tasks. Users can also use more advanced options with conditional filters to be precise in the automation process.
  • Kajabi has one of the strongest marketing features among the content and course-building platforms available right now.
  • Kajabi’s Email Marketing is among the best in the industry. It includes various email templates that can be used in different situations. Kajabi has the ability to automate email sequences using triggers or actions. How To Use Thinkific
  • Kajabi’s pipeline feature allows various OVO funnel templates to be available. The pipeline features automate the selling of the products and “funneling” your customers to where you want for better conversion rates.

Cons

  • Kajabi’s pricing is not to be laughed at. It costs $149 per month, and you cannot create unlimited courses. It only offers 3 products as well as 3 pipelines
  • Kajabi doesn’t offer certificate of completion for courses, which some users would like to have as proof that they took the class.
  • Kajabi does not have page templates to design landing pages, thank-you pages, checkout pages, forms or other pages. That means users must do everything from scratch when editing page templates through the page builder. As such, it will be very difficult for new and non-tech users.
  • Kajabi does not offer a guaranteed badge on the checkout page. A guarantee badge is a great tool to increase conversions. Guarantees assure buyers of a product’s quality.
  • Kajabi does not have a local payment gateway. You must rely on Stripe and Paypal integrations to take payment from orders.
  • Despite having some advanced features, there are still some features that Kajabi lacks, especially in the community department. It does not have community engagement or gamification features.

people-having-online-meeting-while-wearing-mask

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Kajabi Summary

It is undeniable that Kajabi is a juggernaut of a platform regarding course creation and marketing. Their marketing tools are unparalleled.

They provide the best marketing experience. Their pipeline and automation features can be the envy of other platforms and something users would want to have if they want the best rate of conversions.

Kajabi has its faults, however. For one, it lacks features that help you connect with your students and customers. These features allow you to create a great community. How To Use Thinkific

Kajabi is also pretty expensive. People might find it difficult to justify buying a plan which can only host 3 products when there are cheaper alternatives that offer unlimited products.

Overall, Kajabi is a good creation platform with advanced marketing features. If you’re looking for a platform to market your products, Kajabi is the right choice. Although it is a little expensive, Kajabi’s features are well worth the cost.

Podia Versus Thinkific

Podia Overview

Podia is another popular digital content-selling platform. Podia is a powerful platform with strong marketing features. Online courses, coaching, webinars and community are just a few of the many products that you can sell through this platform.

Podia is also one of the most affordable digital content-selling platforms on the market. In fact, it might be among the lowest prices. It does take a portion of your profit when you sell. This might be their way to offset the high price of its powerful features.

At the end of the day, Podia is an excellent tool and platform, especially for those who are more focused on the business side, such as marketers, promoters, and the like.

couple-looking-at-laptop-happily

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Podia Features

In terms of features, Podia has loads of them.

From looking at the interface, Podia has it clean and minimal. It is designed to have all the other features accessible within 3 clicks. In fact, it is so simple that the learning curve for using Podia’s interface is almost non-existent.

This makes it very user-friendly. There are no more complicated terms and actions needed just to reach or access something that you need or want. In fact, almost all of Podia’s functions can be accessed straight from the dashboard.

For its Course creator, Podia supports various files that can serve as the building block for your lessons. A course can contain text, embeds and quizzes as well as coaching and files. You can make interesting lessons from the platform provided.

Nevertheless, there are some areas where the course creator is lacking. Podia supports only a few lesson types, which is a major difference to other platforms. It does not provide a way to monitor student performance. How To Use Thinkific

That said, it has a very powerful embed tool that supports several platforms. Some of these websites include:

  • Youtube, Vimeo and Dailymotion are video hosts.
  • Music and podcast platforms such as s Spotify, soundcloud, and podbean
  • Slideshow platforms like speaker deck, presentation, google slides, and slide share
  • Social media sites like Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, and Behance
  • Form Builder websites like Google Forms, Typeform and Paper Form
  • Coding websites such as Github and Codepen

Podia recently added the ability to issue certificates. This certificate’s feature can be seen as a perfect incentive/prize for completing your courses. However, Podia only has one type of certificate for now. Podia cannot customize or design your certificates.

Podia’s marketing focus is on the bag. It has a lot of excellent features to enhance the effectiveness of your marketing. Tools like Pre-launch, upsells, and coupons make great strategies to promote your products.

This makes Podia an excellent choice for marketers looking to sell products on a smaller site.

Nevertheless, not all things are perfect. In this case, Podia’s weakness is its email marketing, which only provides the basics. Although it allows you to send email broadcasts and campaigns, some of its features are missing such as split testing or personalization fields.

People looking for automation features may also have lost their chance since Podia’s isn’t as advanced as theirs.

For payment processors, Podia has a local payment gateway. That said, you will need to connect your bank account or PayPal account to payment processors. You can integrate with Stripe or PayPal for a simpler solution.

Checkout is possible for your audience using their credit cards. They usually take less than 2 days to process and are credited to your PayPal or bank account. How To Use Thinkific

Podia Price

In terms of pricing, it is one of the cheapest there is in the market. What’s more, is that the platform has recently added its own free plan. While this free plan does not offer much, it is still a good way to figure out how Podia works.

No cost Mover Shaker Earthquaker
$0 per Month $33 per month $75 per month $166 per month
  • Transaction fees of 8%
  • Full Website
  • Email Marketing
  • Chat Support
  • Community
  • 1 Download
  • 1 Coaching Product
  • Draft Courses
  • Draft webinars
  • No transaction fees
  • Full website
  • Email marketing
  • Chat support
  • Community
  • Unlimited Downloads
  • Unlimited coaching
  • Unlimited Courses
  • Create webinars
  • No transaction Fees
  • Full website
  • Email marketing
  • Chat support
  • Community
  • Unlimited downloads
  • Unlimited coaching
  • Unlimited courses
  • Unlimited webinars
  • Affiliates
  • No transaction fees
  • Full website
  • Email marketing
  • Chat support
  • Community
  • Unlimited downloads
  • Unlimited Coaching
  • Unlimited courses
  • Unlimited webinars
  • Affiliates
  • Priority Support
  • Onboarding calls

Podia Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Podia’s strongest point is its clean and crisp UI/UX. It’s very user-friendly and doesn’t require any training. It is easy to set up for users of all tech levels.
  • Podia has many functions and can become a one-stop shop for all your needs. Digital products can include memberships, webinars and bundles.
  • Other than the free plan, Podia allows you to sell unlimited courses and products. That means as long as you have the energy and the idea, you can create as many pages for your courses and products as you want.
  • Podia also allows you to upload as many videos as possible for your content. This is thanks to the unlimited storage and bandwidth that the platform offers its users. You don’t have to use Vimeo and Wistia.
  • Podia offers an affiliate program that you can use to reach your audience. This is only available for Shaker or Earthquaker plans.
  • Despite providing only the most basic functions, the built-in email marketing tools are enough to support broadcasts and campaigns.
  • Podia supports a prelaunch mode as one of its marketing features. It can create buzz around your products and get early email customer conversions. How To Use Thinkific
  • Except for the free plan, Podia charges no transaction fee on sales.
  • Podia has a new feature that allows content creators to give certificates, community, and quizzes. Even the community area can be used to create memberships.

Cons

  • Their email marketing only provides the basic functions. It lacks personalization fields, especially in the email composer. Aside from that, the tool lacks templates, drag and drop editor, and other features
  • There is a noticeable lack of course-compliance features in the platform
  • Podia also does not have many customization features. Podia does not support custom CSS/HTMl customizations. Podia will result in generic websites.
  • Podia also has no landing page builders or funnels, which are important tools when considering Podia’s focus on marketing.
  • Its free plan is severely lacking and will only allow you to host 1 product. There is also an 8% transaction charge.
  • There are no course blueprints available in Podia.
  • Podia only supports a few lesson types. Podia does not support certain types of lesson, such as Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline.
  • It has some good marketing features but it is still lacking others. These include cart abandonment, downsells and order bumps.
  • Podia doesn’t have a mobile app. This could limit its user base and access given how dependent the world is on tablets and smartphones. How To Use Thinkific

Summary of Podia

Overall, Podia is an acceptable platform for hosting your content. This is pretty true especially given the price point it is offered.

Many might think that with Podia, you get what you pay for. Well, it is not entirely true. Podia is more than what you pay. You can make impressive courses with enough creativity and great ideas and sell them for a fair price.

Despite some of its limited capacity, it is still an all-in-one platform. It is perfect for a lot of people. It is ideal for content creators, marketers, teachers, and other people who target marketers. If they have any questions, Podia can help.

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Kartra Versus Thinkific

Kartra Overview

Kartra is a completely different product to the ones listed above. Scratch that, Kartra is entirely different from the other products listed in this review.

We offer a platform that allows you to sell your products, instead of creating courses. It is also a marketing platform.

In this vein, Kartra should not be treated as a separate website or your product’s website.

Rather, you should focus on its strengths and use them to sell products, services, and membership for your proper sites.

Kartra can be used to create and sell digital and physical products. You can sell unlimited quantities of these products and many different types of products. In fact, it also offers multiple pricing options for more flexible pricing on your part.

Kartra Features

Kartra is an entirely different beast, so we may focus on features that aren’t found in most course-building sites. Kartra might not have a course-building website.

Katra lets you sell multiple products, as we mentioned previously. Each account can sell unlimited quantities of products and offer them at any price.

To maximize the profits of its users, Kartra focuses on marketing and lead conversion. One of their key features is funnel construction.

Funnels are a way for sellers to get their customers to buy their products. While Kartra does not refer to funnels as campaigns, They function similarly. How To Use Thinkific

Kartra makes funnel building relatively easy. If you have previous experience in the field, you can create one yourself. You can also have Katra build it for you with their plug-and play campaigns, which are from industry leaders.

You can share your personally-built campaigns with other Kartra members. You can even market and sell your campaigns and make money from them.

Kartra handles all the payment and billing processes needed, so you can focus on better funnels as you gain experience.

Kartra has powerful page-building capabilities. These features allow users to create product pages, checkout pages and opt-in pages. It even provides you with professionally designed templates to help you speed up the process or just start it out.

These pages can be optimized for mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. You can host these pages on your domain or on Katra itself.

They are not yet able to host the full functionality and features required for a website. Even Kartra feels it themselves, as they wouldn’t allow you to host those pages in your domain otherwise.

The marketing features are to be considered as Kartra’s shining jewel. In terms of email marketing, it has all the stuff that a good email marketing feature has.

First, it can send broadcast messages either by email or SMS. This will require integration with all available SMS gateways.

Aside from that, Kartra also has automation which it can use to create email sequences. Drag-and-drop visual sequence builders make it easy to create them. Once you’re done, the program can run on autopilot.

Another one that is unique to the platform is its behavior-based automation. This powerful tool allows you to send emails based on the recipient’s behavior. This allows you to relax after all the work has been done.

Kartra Price

Kartra’s price is steep for a platform focused on marketing and lead conversions. That said, depending on what you need, the platform’s price point on its plans might be worth it. How To Use Thinkific

Kartra offers advanced features that aren’t available in other products.

Starter Silver Gold Platinum
$79 per month when billed annually $149 per Month when you pay annually $229 per Month when you pay annually $379 per month when billed annually
  • You can get up to 2,500 leads
  • 1 custom domain
  • 15,000 emails per month
  • 50 GB bandwidth
  • Host 100 pages
  • Host 50 Videos
  • Build 2 membership sites
  • Add 1 more member to your team
  • Connect 1 Helpdesk
  • You can get up to 12,500 leads
  • 3 Custom domains
  • Unlimited emails
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited pages
  • Unlimitted videos
  • Unlimitted products
  • Unlimited membership sites
  • Unlimitless team members
  • Unlimited helpdesk
  • Kartra agency
  • Get up to 25,000 leads
  • 5 custom domains
  • Unlimited emails
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited pages
  • Unlimited videos
  • Unlimited products
  • Unlimited membership sites
  • Unlimited team members
  • Unlimited helpdesk
  • Kartra agency
  • Up to 50,000 Leads
  • 10 Custom domains
  • Unlimited emails
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited pages
  • Unlimited videos
  • Unlimited products
  • Unlimited Membership Sites
  • Unlimited help for team members
  • Unlimited Helpdesk
  • Kartra Agency

Kartra Pros and Con

Pros

  • You don’t need any external marketing integrations. Kartra offers everything: integrated email marketing, sequence builder, automation, and all other features necessary to market your products perfectly
  • Kartra has an automatic translation for its checkout pages. It works based on the user’s geographic location. It also supports other currencies.
  • Kartar also allows you to drip content and vary access to different levels if you have a membership site.
  • There is A/B testing for your email content which can help you refine your automated email replies as you set them up.
  • Kartra includes an agency feature that can hold multiple client accounts. This allows you to manage different websites in just a single dashboard.

Cons

  • Some people might think Kartra’s price point is pretty expensive for what they are offering
  • There are not unlimited integrations available with any of the plans.
  • Kartra’s interface is quite slow and might get frustrating to use at times. How To Use Thinkific
  • Even Kartra’s pages may load slowly
  • The number of features can be very difficult for beginners to get used to.

Kartra Summary

Overall, Kartra is a powerful all-in-one platform for sales and marketing.

There are many tools and features available that will allow you to create engaging and compelling promotions and products.

That said, it isn’t a course builder and definitely not a website builder. Kartra should be used in conjunction with a professional website page maker. This could be pretty difficult to swallow, as Kartra’s price point is pretty expensive for what it does.

However, if you take the plunge, you might just get your money’s worth and more.

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Overall, Verdict How To Use Thinkific

When you are interested in joining the industry, course builder websites can be very useful.

There will be many platforms available to provide the service you require, just as there are for most industries and markets. For course building and selling, there are Thinkific, Podia and Kajabi (and a bit of Kartra), as well as other platforms.

In a market-like course building, these platforms will offer almost identical services. They will have very few differences. Of course, some might excel in one aspect or another.

The key to finding which product you should use is to decide on the direction of what you want to do. Find the platform that aligns with your goals. Chances are, you will find that their features will be most useful to you.

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