Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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. While eagles and other intelligent creatures may have better vision than humans, we have been able to see more by understanding the workings of the world.

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.

As such, it is only beneficial for us to share what we know with our fellowmen, lest we let this knowledge consign only to our minds, rotten and forgotten. Knowledge must be shared and developed in order to grow and develop.

It is great to share your knowledge and ideas free of charge, but it is also fine to sell it. After all, Knowledge is Power, and power can be money. The knowledge owner has the final say in what happens to it. That is the beauty of it.

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

This ability to share what you have learned has been made possible by the internet. 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. People can share their knowledge on a variety of platforms, such as Youtube and TikTok, to teach others how they make or do the most common or absurd things.

Online education is not the only option. This is where online course platforms come in.

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 Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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

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 also did it easily, as even those without technical knowledge could use the platform.

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.

As such, Thinkific provides plenty of features to help facilitate that promise. We will examine these features later to see if the promises are true.

Enjoy the Thinkific Benefits

Thinkific isn’t the only platform capable of creating decent courses. In fact, plenty of LMS and CMS do the job as well 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?

  • Thinkific doesn’t take transaction fees, unlike many other platforms. Thinkific instantly makes your funds available to withdraw whenever you make a sale. Thinkific ensures that your sales are 100% 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
  • Thinkific’s drag-and-drop builder makes it simple to create an online course. This is in keeping with their commitment to letting content creators concentrate on the content. 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. The platform allows you to organize cohorts, schedule your content, and deliver them by drip-feed, locking them through prerequisite lessons and many others.
  • 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 how they handle some specific sections of the whole experience. These features include:

  • Easy to use course creator

To be honest, this is not really a unique feature as most online course builders will already have this feature. 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 page builder

Like the course builder, drag-and-drop page builders are standard issues for these kinds of services. Course makers need to market their courses. As such, giving them the proper tools to do so easier is a godsend. Similar to Thinkific.

  • Marketing and promotion 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

All of those marketing features will be for naught if there are not many payment options available for customers. It is ideal to have more than one payment option. This removes any friction for potential customers and makes it easier for them to pay you.

  • Reporting

For content creation, analytics is the name of the game. Analytics is the only way to discover your approach and your weaknesses. This feature is offered by Thinkific to help users decide the direction of their content.

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.

  • Student support and communities

Having a good community that consumes your content is a good way to build up returning customers. Besides that, it is also good for branding as well as engagements. Remember, good customer support and community greatly improve customer retention. It is good that Thinkific provides the avenue to do so with these features.

  • Training tools

While we are in the business of selling knowledge, it is not a bad thing to acquire our own in the meantime. Course building and selling are different disciplines altogether. Many who try Thinkific might be new to the process and will tend to stumble around until they feel comfortable.

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. What is great about this AppStore is that most of it is community-made. As such, it is an excellent place where fellow content and course creators get together and discuss things along 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

Upon starting your first course, you will be presented with a draft called “Your First Course” for you to use.

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

To begin creating lessons, you only need to click the aptly named “add Lesson” button and pick a content type.

You can choose from the following content types:

  • Video
  • Audio
  • Text
  • Download PDF documents
  • Slideshow presentations
  • Live zoom lessons and webinars.

You can upload any of these files as your lessons. You can upload multiple courses to the Bulk Importer. Also, Thinkific makes you duplicate old lessons from previous ones by using the “Copy Lessons From” button.

Choose the Course Type

Thinkific allows you to pick what course you are currently building. The service also provides pre-formatted, professional-looking templates which can be used to create the 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.

These premade courses 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 allows you to advertise to potential customers what your courses entail. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress
  • 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

Students will be able use your learning materials in the Course Player. As such, you can customize how this course player looks in the “Settings” tab on the “Courses” page. You can change the color scheme, fonts or add 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.

You can assign assignments and track progress

Assignments, quizzes, and surveys are super handy as an additional way to engage your students. You can also use it to rate your students. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

That said, assignments are only available for the PRO plan.

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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How to build an online course website

The course builder can be considered the core of Thinkific. However, it is the Site Builder that provides the foundation on which your courses can be built.

Thinkific Site Builder shares many of the same features as other landing page builders. This allows you to sell your courses from your website or even if you don’t have a website yet.

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

To start building your website, you start with:

1. Pick a Theme.

Picking a theme is the best place to start when building your website.

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. Use Site Builder to Customize Your Online Course Site.

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. Combining this with pre-built themes, users can make a professional-looking web page from scratch.

This is only the beginning. Your website’s potential is limitless. Your imagination is limitless.

3. Make a Training website Entirely from Scratch.

Since we are already in the business of making courses, it would be a very good idea to proceed and build a training website to house your created courses. For this matter, Thinkific provides a great selection of pages for your perusal.

These pages are pre-designed and ready to be mapped into a complete course or training website. As such, we can take these pages and use them as the building blocks of your websites. Some pages of note include:

  • Your website’s homepage is the face. The place where the most important things should be located
  • Course pages: These can swerve as landing pages for approaching courses. You can create a course page to serve as a landing page for all courses in your class.
  • Sign-up pages: This is where your potential customers and students enroll for individual courses or memberships Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress
  • Sign in Pages: This should only be used for subscribers to your website
  • Your student’s dashboard will be your starting point for signing in to your site. It is possible to design a student dashboard that makes it easy for students to access all the content on your website.
  • 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 can also be used to quickly create a website. This skips the nitpicky part of choosing which to use on your website. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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

To properly design a web page using Thinkific Site Builder, it helps to understand that the pages made with these site builders are made up of sections. These sections can easily be modified 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”

Thinkfic offers 23 pre-formatted pages sections. These pages are geared towards building high-converting pages. These pages are highly-converting and include but not limited to:

  • Get involved.

This is a crucial part of selling. This will allow potential students and customers to know how to sign-up or purchase.

  • Smart Product and Category

This section contains information that will allow you to provide your customers with summaries of the products you offer.

  • Checklists

This section can be used for key messages and makes it easy to scan information with bullet points.

  • Most Frequently Asked Questions

Websites often feature Frequently Asked Question. These aim to answer all the commonly asked questions by the customer base. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

  • ‘Social Proof’

These sections are akin to testimonials and show off client experiences, comments, and reviews. 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 section is where you can put your instructor profiles in the courses. This gives students information as to the people who are teaching them.

  • Pricing Options

You can place your pricing options here. 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

You can add this section to your course promotion page to make a video advertisement.

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

We now come to the part that is often the most anticipated. 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. They only differ on how much that platform focuses on.

Yep, that’s right. Some platforms are more focused on the conversion side of selling courses and creating content. While others are the opposite and mostly rely on integrations to carry forth the promotion and business side of things.

Which side is Thinkific 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 provides free plan users with the needed SEO options, which allows you to promote your lessons in the most basic ways by making your content capable of climbing up the top of the search engine results.

Another feature available for free users is the ability to build free trial courses. Think of it as giving your potential customers a free sample or a taste test. This is one of the best ways to show your audience who you are. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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. That way, once they dive into your paid content, they already have at least a small idea of how things work out.

While these promotional materials may seem lacking at first, in skillful hands, these can go a very long way as promotional materials. They can even be used to compete with products that have been promoted too much.

We are not talking about the stuff that is free. As you go up through Thinkific’s pricing plans, more marketing tools are unlocked for you. Many of these enhance your ability to promote your course materials in the market. These include:

  • Coupons

Coupons don’t need introduction. They have been used in many transactions for a long time. So it is no surprise that they are also being used in online business and online marketing.

Thinkific’s coupons come from digital codes that are very easy to share. These codes can be used in Thinkific’s ecosystem very well. You can use a coupon at Thinkific’s checkout to instantly redeem it.

From a marketing standpoint, coupons can be set up and used to promote your bundles and courses. 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

Sales widgets are a feature that allows you to post purchasing links to other websites and social media. These widgets are very useful given the amount of traffic required to get your course noticed. And let’s face it, you will need a lot of traffic.

You can’t expect traffic if your courses are new and you don’t have an audience. Even if you have a built-in audience, you need a fast and convenient way to link your courses and classes from other websites.

This is where social media comes into play. It is a given that almost everybody uses social media. You should find where most of the internet traffic comes from and try to divert some of those traffic to your website.

The easiest way to do this is through sales widgets which generate HTML code that can easily be pasted on 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. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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 manage newsletters and send out targeted promotions 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.

In the case of Thinkific, their email marketing tools do just this…….. And not much more. Unfortunately, you can only email existing students enrolled in your courses. You can also notify them about new products and courses.

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.

That said, it would have been miles better if Thinkific had a better local Email marketing tool for users to use.

  • 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.

Thinkific allows the process to be easy and straightforward. 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.

If you find some current users of Thinkfiic or your course, you can convert them into affiliates through the same process.

Thinkific tracks the sales of bundles or courses by affiliates to check their performance and status. It also records the revenue. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

That said, paying the affiliates is done outside the system, so that’s a catch. It’s the same with instructor revenue sharing.

Payment Options

If you don’t have a way to receive payments or enroll in your courses, all that marketing effort will go sour. Thinkific offers Stripe as a payment platform for cards. You can also connect PayPal to make one-off payments.

You can also link your courses with a Shopify website. This allows you to access all of the eCommerce platform’s tools.

Thinkific’s payment options allow you to customize how you price your products. You can even charge customers with different payment plans. You can also 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. However, this feature is not available to me at the moment as I only have a handful of courses created with their system.

Thinkific is unique in that you don’t have to pay a commission for any courses they sell.

Analytics and reporting

A good website selling products should have a Reports and Analytics section. 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. Currently it only reports on four ares which include: Orders, Enrollments, Student Engagement, and Revenue. This feature is currently in its infancy, and only the Start + Growth package has it.

It is a good step in the right direction. Having it is better than nothing.

How does it all work?

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

Of course, these different data can provide multiple insight as to how your courses are performing. Let’s take, for instance, data about student engagement.

This data will allow you to view things like course enrollments and completion rates. You can then compare these metrics across the board. This will allow you to identify subjects with low completion rates.

From there you can find out the problems as to why such things are. It is up to you then to make the necessary adjustments. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

Students might find it difficult to complete courses that have low completion rates. Still, it might be a problem with the way you are presenting the information or instructions. 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.

Thinkific Pricing and Plans

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. You can always start your course-creating journey for free before moving to a paid plan if you need it or want more of Thinkific’s features.

Free Start Grow Expand
$0 per month $74 per month $149 pero 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
  • 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 business and create a cohesive learning experience for your students

 

  • Unlimited Courses
  • 1 Community
  • 1 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • 0% transaction fee
  • Includes all free features
  • 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
-Build 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
  • Remove Thinkific branding
  • Bulk student emailer
  • 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
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • Priority phone support
  • Includes all Grow features
  • Custom SSL Certificates
  • Priority Support

The Free Plan

If you’re new to course management and course building, this is the plan that you should start with. 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.

Aside from that, Thinkific affords you a few more options in the type of courses you can make. You can even live-stream your lessons for as long as you have the time.

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

Lastly, you also have the option to have a custom domain for your course website.

The Grow Plan

If you’re serious about making sales and selling courses, the Grow plan is right for you. First, you will be able to remove the Thinkific branding. Although it may seem easy, it has a significant impact on branding, marketing, and professionalizing your courses.

This allows you to access bulk enrollments, making the enrollment process easier and quicker. In terms of support, you are given priority email and phone support. You can get faster solutions if you have different issues with your website. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

The Expand Plan

The Expand plan is for bigger institutions and businesses. It allows you to optimize your workflow and create a premium experience with a platform that is designed to scale.

This plan is ideal for large institutions that want to establish an online presence. It provides the same features as the other Thinkific plans but also offers 10 Communities that make it easier for students to manage.

This plan provides five administrators who will help you manage your business.

Thinkific Plus

LMS services offer clients and customers the option to create custom plans that are separate from their basic plans. Most of the time, their prices are unlisted as the customization might change the cost, and that cost will depend on the customization.

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

Contact the Thinkfic sales team to get Thinkific Plus. They can help you to understand the tools that you need in order 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 offers all the Expand features, but also adds these additional features to the plan:

  • Unlimited Products
  • Unlimited Administrators
  • Three+ 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
  • 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 includes all core features and functions 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. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress
  • Thinkkific’s drag-and-drop builder is super easy to use, and even non-tech-savvy people can use it. 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. Some creators have acknowledged this.
  • There is a huge lack of marketing features in the service. Their email marketing capabilities are very basic and far behind those of the competition.
  • Thinkific’s designs and customizations are quite limited, given that the service only provides a few themes to play with. It is difficult to make a website that stands out from the competition with these options.

The Thinkific Verdict

Overall, Thinkific is a good choice for course creation as well as course promotion. It is affordable and features are just as easy as those of its rivals.

The free startup plan is a godsend for those just starting, as it will give them a feel of how things are with the service. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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. This is not like other free plans of other products. However, there are still things you can do with it.

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. Thinkific has enough prompts to help you navigate the more complicated aspects of the world.

This is a difficult side to balance, too, as giving too many prompts away can usually overwhelm the beginner user and may irritate those who already have a handle on things.

One thing to note, however, is that some experienced users might find Thinkific too simple for their taste. This is just my nitpicking. Thinkific’s course creator is responsive, fast, and easy to use, which is what most people want.

Thinkific’s Site Builder is also simple. It’s not a standalone platform. However, in keeping with their philosophy, it is simple to use and can easily be grasped by beginners.

It has impressive editing capabilities, making it ideal for creating tutorial and training websites. Aside from that, it is an excellent tool for adding training pages to existing websites.

There aren’t enough themes to suit all tastes and demographics.

Lastly, on the marketing side of things, this is where I feel Thinkific falls short. Marketers can feel disillusioned by the Email marketing structure. Marketing Thinkific’s courses are difficult to market without third-party integrations.

As for their payment options, it would be better to have more options other than Stripe and PayPal.

Not everything is bad. Thinkfic still has some clever tools that help you monetize your courses. You can sell products and courses with a little creativity. It does require more effort than usual, however.

Thinkific’s Frequently Asked Questions Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

Can You Build an Entire Website with Just Thinkfic?

Yes, you can!

Thinkfiic gives you the freedom to build your entire online education business. This means you can create both courses, websites, or your overall brand within one seamless platform. Thinkific offers builders that can be used to build, market, and sell online courses.

I Want to Allow my Students Access to my Course Content while Offline; How Do I Do that?

It will be at your discretion.

Remember that students may need assistance logging in to your courses offline. You can make your courses downloadable. You can do this on content such as video files, audio 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 has no intellectual property rights and will not claim them. Everything published and built on the platform belongs to its creators.

Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

thinkific-vs-competition

They existed even before 2019, B.C. (where B.C. B.C. stands for Before COVID, Online Course Platforms were already in existence. Even then, they were made for the same purpose, to create and sell online courses.

The majority of courses back then were more niche-oriented, such as leadership seminars, wholesomeness and self-help classes. There were also classes and courses that covered normal topics.

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

People who were housebound due to multiple reasons (maybe childcare or health problems) could keep studying and learning despite not being able to go out. People who couldn’t attend regular school due to duties and scheduling conflicts could still finish courses due to the medium’s flexibility.

Then the pandemic happened, and everything else was forced to shut down. However, people still needed to learn, and online course platforms and other eLearning platforms made it possible for a lot to continue their studies.

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.

Nowadays, there are countless online courses people can partake in. From the usual life coaching stuff about making your life better to tutorial classes of the usual academic subjects like 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
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Ross Herosian on his YouTube channel Tricycle Creative. 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 Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

The 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.

How could you not? After all, it is one of the few online course platforms that provide a full-on free service. Yes, Thinkific has a free service that is as good as their paid lowest-tiered one.

This makes the platform perfect for newcomers as they get to experience what it’s like to build content and courses, as well as the overall flow and environment of the industry. The free plan lets users see what they’re about to do without making any investments.

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 the profits go to the content owner.

Thinkific even makes sure that all profits are directly available upon being 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.

Useful Features

Let me start by saying that almost all online courses platforms have the same features. The course builder is first, followed by the website builder to create your courses and finally the marketing features.

They are all the same except for how they work and some other unique features. 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 ensure that online courses are as interactive as possible.

Thinkific’s user interface is very easy to get into. It is intuitive and logical. Users will have no problem navigating everything. You can access all other features via a sidebar menu. Except for occasional hiccups, they are correctly classified. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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

From the dashboard, you can see how well you are doing in revenue, student accounts and sign-ups, student course enrollments, and much more.

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.

Thinkific is primarily focused on course creation, as mentioned previously. As such, the platform ensures that the course creation mechanism is easy to get used to. Thinkific lets you try all the features of the course creator even if it is a free plan.

This course builder also allows you to include a multitude of media types. 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.

The marketing features of Thinkific are where I fear the platforms will fall flat. Don’t get me wrong. It has everything that you need to promote and market your courses.

But that’s just about it. Compared to the competition, Thinkific’s market features are a bit lackluster. The most glaring aspect is that it doesn’t have a built-in sales funnel builder. The overall checkout experience is pretty clunky.

You can’t do much about it because it is so limited in customization.

Even email marketing features are behind the competition. It is very basic and you can only notify your students about new products or courses, send them progress reports and update them on their course status.

However, not everything is bad, as Thinkific can integrate multiple third-party applications. Rather than band-aids, you can consider these third-party apps as bandages to fix some of Thinkific’s deficiencies in the marketing department.

Thinkific integrates five of most popular email marketing platforms, including Aweber and Drip with email marketing.

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.

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’s not like the rest 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. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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.

No cost Start Grow Expand
$0 per month $74 per month $149 per 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$
  • Support via Chat Bot and Email
  • 100% Content Ownership
  • Drag and Drop Course Builder
  • Easy 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
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • All features included in the price
  • Custom domains
  • Discounts and coupons
  • Assignments
  • Bundles and add on packages
  • Memberships and payment plans
  • Live lessons
  • Affiliate selling
  • Advanced course – building options
  • 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
  • Remove Thinkific branding
  • Bulk emailer for students
  • Bulk enrollments
  • API access
With a platform that scales, optimize your workflow to create premium experiences.

 

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

Thinkific offers a more complex and customized plan, Thinkific plus. Thinkific Plus takes the best of Thinkfiic, makes it powerful, scalable and simple-to-use, and then adds more.

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. You will discuss with them the tools you need to make the most of your platform. You will also discuss the cost of this upgrade with them.

Each Thinkific Plus plan is unique, and as such, different Plus plans might more or less have different costs. One this is sure, though. Thinkific Plus will give you the features of the most expensive plan as well as these additional features:

  • Unlimited 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

man-seriously-staring-at-laptop

> > Click Here to Start Your Free Trial < <

Thinkific Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Thinkific’s free package is permanently free. It also is not just a glorified free trial. You can only take as many courses as you like.
  • Thinkific does not ask for transaction fees whenever a sale is made. 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.
  • When it comes to payment options, Thinkific can be flexible and has different payment options for different types of students and schools.
  • 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. The majority of options are logically placed and easy to find. 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

  • Some of the tools in Thinkific are not 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.
  • Although Thinkific has one of the most intuitive user interfaces in the industry, it can sometimes look dated and the experience can sometimes be more confusing than you expected.
  • The platform lacks many customization options. It is possible to find websites similar to yours. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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. It is still competitive with other “advanced” and more feature-rich platforms, despite its shortcomings.

My opinion is that its greatest strength would be its commitment to providing the best course experience possible and a 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. Thinkific is the best online course creation software.

Kajabi Versus Thinkific

Kajabi Overview

Kajabi is an open-source platform that allows you to run an online business. It is primarily focused on productivity and selling. It provides tools that are geared towards simplifying your operations.

Some of Kajabi’s highlights include automations, pipelines, email marketing, and a mobile app.

As for products, there is a lot you can sell through the platform. Aside from courses, you can sell coaching, memberships, communities, podcasts, and other digital content.

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. These features give the Kajabi platform users an easier time selling their products.

Kajabi is a rare product that can be described as an “all-in-one” platform. It is a course creation platform with more than decent marketing features. It even has automation features that could help you focus more on marketing or creating than the menial tasks.

That said, not everything is good in Kajabi land. 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. In the case of the lowest plan, you can only sell 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. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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

At first glance, Kajabi’s interface is pretty normal. It’s minimalist, clean, and modern. Most of the available features can be accessed through 3 to 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 provides for a smoother experience and does not get in the way of your work.

Kajabi offers a variety of course creation options. Some samples include mini-courses, online courses, drip courses, or create one from scratch. 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 also be organized into subcategories, posts, and categories. 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 has robust and extensive marketing features.

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.

Kajabi offers a powerful email marketing platform that allows you to market via email. It is built on top of the platform and has many features. Email templates can be created for different functions.

Their pipelines are another conversion tool that they have. They can help you convert more customers to increase sales. These are easy to use, and the platform even provides templates that customers can easily access.

Kajabi also has a dedicated affiliate program for users of a higher plan than the basic one. It is a feature that makes the process overly easy and simple. It organizes both affiliate links and affiliates in its own category, making it easier to track down and find them.

I would say that the biggest problem for Kajabi is its lack of integrated payment solution. Instead users will have to rely on the integration form other payment gateways such as Stripe, Paypal, BitPay, Authorize.net and others.

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.

Potential users must be prepared to pay a high price for 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. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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 Monthly payment of $319
  • 3 products
  • 3 funnels
  • Unlimited Landing Pages
  • Unlimited marketing emails
  • 10,000 contacts
  • 1000 active customers
  • 1 website
  • 1 admin user
  • Kajabi University
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • Webinars and Events
  • Ready to Use Templates
  • Ready-to-use Templates
  • Assessments (Quizzes and Surveys)
  • 1 Call to an Onboarding Specialist
  • Chat Support
  • Automatizations
  • 15 products
  • 15 funnels
  • Unlimited Landing pages
  • Unlimited marketing emails
  • 25,000 contacts
  • 10,000 customers currently active
  • 1 website
  • 10 admin users
  • Kajabi University
  • 0% Transaction Fee
  • Webinars and 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
  • Advanced automations
  • Kajabi branding can be removed
  • 100 products
  • 100 funnels
  • Unlimitless landing pages
  • Unlimited marketing emails
  • 100,000 contacts
  • 20,000 active customers
  • 3 Websites
  • 25 admin users
  • Kajabi University
  • Transaction fee 0%
  • Webinars & Events
  • Templates Ready for Use
  • Assessments (quizzes & surveys)
  • 1 Call to an Onboarding Specialist
  • 1 Check-in call with an onboarding specialist
  • Chat support available 24/7
  • Advanced Automations
  • Ability to remove Kajabi branding
  • Affiliate Program
  • Code Editor

Kajabi Pros & Cons

Pros

  • True to its name, Kajabi is an all in one content making 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 lets you sell digital products such as coaching, webinars and communities. It is also one of the best places to do so.
  • Kajabi also includes an assessment function that allows students to grade their performance and monitor them. 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. You can even set up notifications to receive 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 has an automation feature that can automate offers purchase, course or membership post-completion, assessment completion, and much more. Users can also use more advanced options with conditional filters to be precise in the automation process.
  • Kajabi’s marketing strategy is one of the most powerful among all the course-building and content platforms currently available.
  • Kajabi’s Email marketing is one of the best in the business. It includes various email templates that can be used in different situations. Kajabi also has the option to automate email sequences by using triggers and actions. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress
  • Kajabi’s pipeline feature makes it possible to have various OVO funnel templates. Pipeline features automate product sales and funnel customers to the places you want. This will result in higher conversion rates.

Cons

  • Kajabi’s pricing is not to be laughed at. It starts at $149 per month and does not even offer unlimited course creation. It offers only 3 products and 3 pipelines.
  • Kajabi does not offer course completion certificates, something that some users want to receive as proof of going through the class
  • Kajabi has no page templates for designing landing pages, thank you pages, checkout pages, forms, and other pages. This means that users will have to create all pages from scratch using the page builder. It will be difficult for non-tech users and new users.
  • Kajabi doesn’t offer a guarantee badge on its checkout page. Guarantee badges are a good tool for increasing conversions. Guarantees assure buyers of a product’s quality.
  • Kajabi does not have a local payment gateway. To receive payment from orders, you will need to rely on Stripe or Paypal integrations.
  • Kajabi has some great features but it still lacks some key features, particularly in the community section. There are no gamification or community engagement 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. They have the most advanced tools for marketing alone.

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. It lacks features that allow you to connect with students and customers. Features that allow for the creation of a great community. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

Kajabi can also be quite 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.

Thinkific Versus Podia

Podia Overview

Another big name digital online content-selling platform is Podia. 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.

Furthermore, Podia is one of the cheaper digital content-selling platforms in the market. It might even be one of the most affordable. It does take a portion of your profit when you sell. It might be their way of offsetting the price for its powerful features.

Podia is an excellent platform and tool, especially for business-oriented people like marketers and promoters.

couple-looking-at-laptop-happily

> > Click Here to Start Your Free Trial < <

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 the platform very beginner friendly. There are no more complicated terms and actions needed just to reach or access something that you need or want. Podia can access almost all functions from its dashboard.

Podia allows you to upload files that will be used as building blocks for your lessons. You can include text, embeds, quizzes, coaching, and files in a course. With some imagination, you can create interesting lessons with the platform that is given to you.

That said, This course creator can be lacking in some parts. Unlike most other platforms, Podia only supports very few lesson types. It does not provide a way to monitor student performance. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

It also supports multiple platforms thanks to its powerful embed tool. Some of these websites include:

  • Video hosts such as Youtube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion
  • Podcast and music platforms like s Spotify, soundcloud and podbean
  • Slideshow platforms such as speaker deck, presentation and google slides.
  • Social media sites such as Twitter, TikTok and Pinterest.
  • Form Builder websites such as Google Forms, Typeform, and Paper Form
  • Github and Codepen are two examples of coding websites.

One of the more recent additions to Podia’s courses is the ability to give certificates. This certificate feature can be viewed as an incentive/prize to complete your courses. However, Podia only has one type of certificate for now. Podia cannot customize or design your certificates.

In terms of marketing, Podia is focused on the bag. You can use it to increase the effectiveness of your marketing. You can promote your products using tools like coupons, upsells, or pre-launch.

This marks Podia as an excellent choice for marketers who want to sell their products on a smaller website.

That said, not everything is 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.

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

Your audience can use their credit cards at checkout. They usually take less than 2 days to process and are credited to your PayPal or bank account. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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 Earthquake
$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
  • Create Courses
  • Draft webinars
  • There are no transaction fees
  • Visit the full website
  • Email marketing
  • Chat support
  • Community
  • Unlimited Downloads
  • Unlimited coaching
  • Unlimited Courses
  • Create webinars
  • No transaction Fees
  • Visit the full website
  • Email marketing
  • Chat support
  • Community
  • Unlimited downloads
  • Unlimited coaching
  • Unlimited courses
  • Unlimited webinars
  • Affiliates
  • There are no transaction fees
  • Visit the 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. Users of all edges and tech levels will find it intuitive to set it up.
  • Podia has many functions and can become a one-stop shop for all your needs. Digital products can include memberships, webinars and bundles.
  • Podia also offers a free plan that allows you to sell unlimited products and courses. This means that you can make as many pages as you like for your products and courses as long as there is energy.
  • Podia allows you to upload unlimited videos for your content. The platform provides unlimited storage and bandwidth, which is why this feature is possible. This way, you don’t need to use Vimeo or 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 will generate buzz about your products and encourage early conversions of email customers. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress
  • Podia does not charge any transaction fees for sales, except the free plan.
  • Podia has a new feature that allows content creators to give certificates, community, and quizzes. You can even create memberships in the community area.

Cons

  • Their email marketing provides only the most basic functions. It lacks personalization fields, especially in the email composer. Other features that the tool does not have include templates, drag-and-drop editor and other features.
  • There is a noticeable lack of course-compliance features in the platform
  • Podia does not offer many customization options. It lacks custom CSS/HTMl customizations. Podia will result in generic websites.
  • Podia does not have landing page builders and funnels. These are essential tools considering Podia’s focus in marketing.
  • Its free plan is severely lacking and will only allow you to host 1 product. It also charges an 8% transaction fee.
  • 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.
  • While it has pretty good marketing features, it still lacks some. 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. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

Podia Summary

Overall, Podia is a decent platform to host your content. Podia is a decent platform, especially considering the price.

Many might think that with Podia, you get what you pay for. It isn’t 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. Content creators, teachers, marketers, and 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. Kartra is completely different to the other products in this review.

We offer a platform that allows you to sell your products, instead of creating courses. Yep, it is a platform that goes all in on the marketing side.

Kartra should not be considered a website in its own right or your product’s.

Instead, focus on the strengths of your site and sell products, memberships, and services.

Kartra can be used to create and sell digital and physical products. It allows you to sell an unlimited number of them and different kinds of products. It also allows you to choose from multiple pricing options, which will allow you to set a more flexible price.

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.

Kartra’s focus is on lead conversion and marketing to maximize its users’ profits. As such, one of their main features is funnel building.

Funnels literally mean a “funnel” for sellers to direct potential customers to buy their products. While Kartra does not refer to funnels as campaigns, They function similarly. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

Kartra makes funnel building relatively easy. You can build one from scratch if you already have experience in this field. Otherwise, you can have Katra do it for you through their plug-and-play campaigns that are from top industry experts.

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 manages all of the billing and payment processes so that you can concentrate on improving your funnels as you gain more experience.

Kartra has powerful page-building capabilities. Users can create product pages, checkout pages, and opt-in forms with these features. You can even use professionally designed templates to speed up or start the process.

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. However, this will require you to integrate with any available SMS gateways.

Kartra can also use automation to create email sequences. You can do this through its drag-and-drop visual sequence builder, and once done, and you can let it run on autopilot.

Another one that is unique to the platform is its behavior-based automation. This powerful tool allows to send emails based upon the behavior of recipients. As such, when you are done setting up the hard work, you can just sit back and relax.

Kartra Price

Kartra’s pricing is high for a platform that focuses on lead conversions and marketing. However, depending on your needs, the price of Kartra’s plans may be worth it. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

After all, Kartra has some advanced features that are not found in others.

Starter Silver Gold Platinum
$79 per month when billed annually $149 per month when billed annually $229 per month when billed annually, Monthly payment of $379 when you pay annually
  • Up to 2,500 leads
  • 1 custom domain
  • 15,000 emails per month
  • 50GB bandwidth
  • Host up to 100 pages
  • Host 50 Videos
  • Build 2 membership sites
  • Add 1 additional team member
  • Connect 1 Helpdesk
  • Up to 12,500 leads
  • 3 Custom domains
  • Unlimited emails
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited pages
  • Unlimited videos
  • Unlimited products
  • Unlimited membership sites
  • Unlimited team members
  • Unlimited helpdesk
  • Kartra agency
  • Get up to 25,000 leads
  • 5 custom domains
  • Unlimited emails
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Unlimited pages
  • Unlimitted 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 is based on the user’s geographical 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.
  • You can use A/B testing to refine your automated email responses as you set them up.
  • Kartra includes an agency feature that can hold multiple client accounts. This feature allows you to manage multiple websites from one dashboard.

Cons

  • Some might feel that Kartra’s pricing is too high for the quality of what they offer
  • There are no plans that offer unlimited integrations
  • Kartra’s interface can be slow and frustrating at times. Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress
  • Even Kartra’s pages can load slow
  • The number of features can be very difficult for beginners to get used to.

Kartra Summary

Kartra is an all-in-one marketing and sales platform that’s powerful.

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 Teachable vs Thinkific vs Kajabi vs Memberpress

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

As with most markets and industries, there will be a lot of platforms that will offer the service that you need. In the case of course building and selling, we have Thinkific, Podia, Kajabi ( and a little bit of Kartra), among others.

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

To find the right product for you, you must decide what direction you want to go. Find the platform that aligns with your goals. You will likely find their features most helpful to you.

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