While they already existed before 2019 B.C. (where B.C. B.C. stands for Before COVID, Online Course Platforms were already in existence. They were created for the same purpose: to sell and create 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 were designed to bring education to the most convenient and comfortable places.

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. Due to its flexibility, people who are unable to attend school regularly due to scheduling conflicts or duties could still complete courses.

Everything else had to be shut down when the pandemic struck. People still needed to learn and online courses and other eLearning platforms made this possible.

In the early times of the pandemic, the industry saw a 221% increase in new course creators on one Course Platform. This growth may be shared across multiple online platforms.

Everyone, from solopreneurs and entrepreneurs to professionals in human resources and educational institutions, has used at least one course platform during the pandemic.

Not only that, but the pandemic also showed the potential of these platforms as a way to earn extra profit. They say, “knowledge is wealth.” Online course platforms gave that maxim legs and provided people with an instrument to turn knowledge into wealth.

Nowadays, there are countless online courses people can partake in. 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 all the rage. The next question is how you plan to share the treasure you find in your head with the world.

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 Thinkific And WordPress

The Thinkific Overview

Thinkific is one of the most fashionable options available now for building, hosting, and selling your courses.

One of the main reasons why Thinkific stands out is that you know they are doing this in a place of passion. It is clear that they are more concerned with providing the best learning experience possible to creators as well as their audience. They also understand that making money is important to maintain the business.

It’s impossible to not! It is one of few online courses platforms that offers a free full-service service. Yes, Thinkific has a free service that is as good as their paid lowest-tiered one.

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.

This free plan has one limitation. You can only create one course. I find that this is sufficient.

Thinkific does not take any transaction fees when a user sells on the platform. All profits go to content owners.

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

First, let me preface this by saying that most online course platforms share almost 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.

For Thinkific, the main focus would be their course curriculum creation capabilities. The creation part of Thinkific’s features is the most important. They ensure that online courses are as interactive as possible.

The user interface of Thinkific is easy to use. It is intuitive and logical. Users will have no problem navigating everything. You can access all other features via a sidebar menu. They are properly classified to where they are, except for occasional hiccups. Thinkific And WordPress

This interface is perfect for users who enjoy performing analytics and monitoring performance. Everything is neatly organized and placed 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.

We can make the interface look a bit more appealing if we have to.

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. Even in the free plan, Thinkific allows you to try everything the course creator can do.

You can also include many media types in this course builder. These media types include quizzes and surveys, assignments, pdfs, content, and student discussion areas that allow for 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. Thinkific’s market features compare poorly to its competitors. The most glaring aspect is that it doesn’t have a built-in sales funnel builder. 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 are behind the competition. 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.

Thinkific can also integrate third-party apps. Rather than band-aids, you can consider these third-party apps as bandages to fix some of Thinkific’s deficiencies in the 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 wiser to pour all resources into ensuring they got that part right and get third-party apps to tackle the marketing part.

The Thinkific Price

Although I’ve already spoken highly of Thinkific’s Free Plan, it’s still a limited plan and far less than Thinkific’s paid plans. 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. Thinkific And WordPress

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.

Thinkific offers a more complex and customized plan, Thinkific plus. Thinkific Plus takes what you know of Thinkfiic and makes it a powerful, scalable, and easy-to-use learning platform.

It still dedicates itself to teaching, lecturing, and supporting 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. You will also discuss the cost of this upgrade with them.

Every Thinkific Plus plan has its own unique cost, so different Plus plans may have slightly different prices. This is one thing that is certain. Thinkific Plus will offer you all the benefits of the most expensive plan, plus these extra features.

• Unlimitted 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’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. Content creators own all earnings. 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.

• Thinkific’s premium plans remove the restriction on the number of courses. In fact, users can create an unlimited number of courses and enroll an unlimited number of students in these courses.

• In terms of interface, Thinkific has one of the easiest to understand. With most options logically placed and easily located. Users just starting can easily understand how things work in this interface.

• 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. Some would need guides and a bit of time to get used to.

• It is difficult to recommend Thinkifiic for those who are more interested in promoting the platform’s marketing capabilities. Their email marketing capability is quite basic, and you will need to depend on third-party integrations to have 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. Thinkific And WordPress

The Thinkific Summary

Thinkific is one of the best online course platforms in the market today. It is a great platform for beginners as well as those who are looking for more course-focused platforms. Despite its limitations, it still competes with other more “advanced and feature-rich” platforms.

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. Using local third-party integrations can remedy any problems you have with the platform.

You’re searching for an online course creation tool that creates courses from scratch. You can never go wrong with Thinkific.

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 offers tools that simplify 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. 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.

That said, not everything is good in Kajabi land. It has one of the most expensive platforms on 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 boasts about being one of the better platforms. They even have one of the more expensive plans in the course creation market. It is not surprising that customers have high expectations for the product. Thinkific And WordPress

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. For easier accessibility, the page has a search assistant to quickly find the features and the tools inside the application.

Kajabi’s pages also load faster. 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 also be organized into subcategories, posts, and categories. As such, it would be very easy to organize your content neatly and properly. 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.

Of course, it has the usual stuff of providing coupons in a flexible manner, which as we have established, is an old, tried and tested 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. 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 also has a dedicated affiliate program for users of a higher plan than the basic one. This feature makes the entire process extremely simple and easy. 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 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.

Overall, while its not perfect, Kajabi offers a lot of features that are both geared towards marketing as well as course creation. These features can be used by anyone who is serious about starting an online business.

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

Kajabi price

Kajabi is undoubtedly the most expensive course creation service in the market. The cheapest plan is $149 per month, and it doesn’t include unlimited courses. Thinkific And WordPress

If you feel that Kajabi’s high price and more advanced features such as automation are something you really need, then you can choose to purchase it.

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 templates and blueprints to get you started with 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 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. You can even set up notifications to receive alerts.

• Kajabi also has a membership feature that allows users to create and sell membership options to 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 one of the best in the business. There are many email templates that you can use in various situations. Kajabi also has the option to automate email sequences by using triggers and actions. Thinkific And WordPress

• Kajabi’s pipeline feature makes it possible to have various OVO funnel templates. 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 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 does not have page templates to design landing pages, thank-you pages, checkout pages, forms or 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 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 has no local payment gateway. To receive payment from orders, you will need to rely on Stripe or Paypal integrations.

• Despite having some advanced features, there are still some features that Kajabi lacks, especially in the community department. There are no gamification or community engagement features.

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Kajabi Summary

Kajabi is undoubtedly a giant platform for course creation and marketing. They have the most advanced tools for marketing alone.

They have the tools that provide a great 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. Thinkific And WordPress

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. It might be a bit expensive, but Kajabi’s features can be worth it.

Podia Versus Thinkific

Podia Overview

Another big name digital online content-selling platform is Podia. Podia is a powerful platform with strong marketing features. Among the products you can sell on this platform are online courses, coaching, webinars, community, and many more.

Furthermore, Podia is one of the cheaper digital content-selling platforms in 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.

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

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Podia Features

Podia offers a lot of features.

From looking at the interface, Podia has it clean and minimal. The interface is easy to use and allows you to access all other features in just 3 clicks. It is so easy that almost no learning curve is required to use Podia’s interface.

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.

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. With some imagination, you can create interesting lessons with the platform that is given to you.

Nevertheless, there are some areas where the course creator is lacking. Unlike most other platforms, Podia only supports very few lesson types. Furthermore, it does not have a proper assessment feature to help you monitor student performance. Thinkific And WordPress

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

• Youtube, Vimeo and Dailymotion are video hosts.
• Podcast and music platforms like 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
• 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. Podia currently only offers one type of certificate. They cannot still customize and design your certificates.

In terms of marketing, Podia is focused on the bag. It has a lot of excellent features to enhance the effectiveness of your marketing. You can promote your products using tools like coupons, upsells, or pre-launch.

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. It allows you to send broadcasts and email campaigns but lacks some features, such as split testing and 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. 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. Thinkific And WordPress

Podia Price

In terms of pricing, it is one of the cheapest there is in the market. The platform recently added a free plan. While this free plan does not offer much, it is still a good way to figure out how Podia works.

Podia Pros and Cons

Pros

• Podia’s strongest point is its clean and crisp UI/UX. It is very easy to use and has a non-existent learning curve. 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.

• Other than the free plan, Podia allows you to sell unlimited courses and products. 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. You don’t have to use Vimeo and Wistia.

• Podia has a built-in affiliate program for your audience that is only available for Shaker and 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. Thinkific And WordPress

• Except for the free plan, Podia charges no transaction fee on sales.

• Podia now offers a new feature that allows content creators the ability to give certificates, community, or quizzes. Even the community area can be used to create memberships.

Cons

• Their email marketing only provides the basic functions. Especially in its email composer, which lacks personalization fields. Other features that the tool does not have include templates, drag-and-drop editor and other features.
• The platform lacks course compliance features.
• Podia does not offer many customization options. It lacks 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. 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. This includes order bumps, downsells, cart abandonment, and others.
• 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. Thinkific And WordPress

Summary of Podia

Overall, Podia is a decent platform to host your content. This is pretty true especially given the price point it is offered.

Many people might believe that Podia is a value-for-money company. It isn’t true. Podia is more than what you pay. With enough creativity and good ideas, you can create impressive courses and sell them at a good price.

It is still an all-in one platform, despite its limitations. 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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Thinkific Versus Kartra

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. Yep, it is a platform that goes all in on the marketing side.

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. 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.

As for the features, we already mentioned that Katra allows you to sell many products. Each account can sell an unlimited number of them and offer them at any price point.

To maximize the profits of its users, Kartra focuses on marketing and lead conversion. As such, one of their main features is funnel building.

Funnels are a way for sellers to get their customers to buy their products. Although funnels are not considered campaigns by Kartra, they function in a similar way. Thinkific And WordPress

Kartra makes funnel building relatively easy. You can build one from scratch if you already have experience in this field. 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. Your campaigns can be marketed and sold to make money.

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. 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. These pages can be hosted on your domain, or on Katra.

That said, they are still limited in capacity and features to be considered a proper website. Kartra believes it, and they won’t let you host these pages on your domain.

Kartra’s marketing features should be considered the crown jewel. It has all that is needed for email marketing.

It can send broadcast messages by SMS or email. However, this will require you to integrate with any available SMS gateways.

Kartra can also use automation 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 pricing is high for a platform that focuses on lead conversions and marketing. That said, depending on what you need, the platform’s price point on its plans might be worth it. Thinkific And WordPress

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

Kartra Pros and Cons

Pros

• You don’t need any external marketing integrations. Kartra has it all: built-in email marketing, automation, sequence builder, and other essential features needed to perfectly market your products
• Kartra has an automatic translation for its checkout pages. It is based on the user’s geographical location. In this vein, it also supports different 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 has an agency feature that allows you to hold multiple client accounts. This feature allows you to manage multiple websites from one 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 can be slow and frustrating at times. Thinkific And WordPress
• Even Kartra’s pages can load slow
• For beginners, it can be difficult to understand the many features.

Kartra Summary

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

It has a lot of tools and features that provide you with the opportunity for interesting and engaging 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.

But, it’s possible to get more for your money if you decide to take the plunge.

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Overall, Verdict Thinkific And WordPress

Course builder websites are pretty useful when joining the industry.

As with most markets and industries, there will be a lot of platforms that will offer the service that you need. For course building and selling, there are Thinkific, Podia and Kajabi (and a bit of Kartra), as well as other platforms.

These platforms will almost offer identical services in a market-like setting. Their differences will be minimal at best. Some might be better than others in certain areas.

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