Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

By lasplang / February 13, 2023

We are all familiar with the saying, “Knowledge is power.” Having its roots in the Latin: scientia potentia est, it holds just as true today as all those years ago.

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

Sure, that example might be overly dramatic, but you get the idea. The human race has won our place in the food chain due to our sheer knowledge and ingenuity.

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

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

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

The advent of the internet has only democratized this ability to distribute what you learned to the public. Even those who have no teaching license or do not know how to write books now have the ability to share their knowledge.

It has also been revealed that there are many things being passed around. 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. Online courses platforms are the answer.

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 Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

When it comes to online courses, Thinkific is among the best services to host your 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.

Luckily, they were able to find an effective solution to their dilemma. 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.

Thinkific offers many features to fulfill 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. Many LMS and CMS can do the same job as Thinkific. We would be remiss if this were not mentioned.

What is it that makes thinkific such a great platform?

Thinkific doesn’t take transaction fees, unlike many other platforms. As a bonus, Thinkific immediately makes your funds available for withdrawal whenever you make a sale. So when it comes to sales, Thinkific makes sure that whatever is yours is absolutely yours
You can try Thinkific’s core features and have a feel for the environment through its free plan. While you are limited to 3 courses upload, you can host unlimited core content and have unlimited students.
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 supports multiple types of content such as audio, video, PDFs and quizzes.
You can also play with the course engagement through Thinkific’s many capabilities. You can organize groups, schedule content and send them via drip-feed. They also lock them with prerequisite lessons.
Thinkific also allows you to engage with your students through multiple channels. You can email them their progressions, engage them in discussions, and give them awards. You can even make them compete on the leaderboard.

> > Click Here to Start Your Free Trial < <

Thinkific Features

As for the features, Thinkific has more or less the same as that of the other course builders. There are some differences, but these are minor. This is mostly because they focus on certain sections of the entire experience. These features include:

Easy to use course creator

To be honest, this is not really a unique feature as most online course builders will already have this feature. It will be very difficult for a course builder to compete on the market if they don’t offer a user-friendly option.

Drag-and-drop web site builder

Drag-and-drop page builders, like the course builder are common issues for these types of services. Course marketers need to promote their courses. It is essential that they have the tools and resources to market their courses. 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. Having more than one payment option is also optimal, as it removes friction from wannabe customers, and more payment options can make it easier for your leads to paying you.

Reporting

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

Do they need to continue making tutorial videos that include direct examples? Or should they just give instructions? 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. Customer retention is greatly improved by having a strong community and customer support. These features are a great way to get it done at Thinkific.

Tools to train the trainer

Although we are in the business selling knowledge, it’s a good idea to have our own. 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.

These newbies, as well as veterans, have the opportunity to benefit from the tried-and-trued knowledge of Thinkific. This allows them to speed up the creation of courses and makes it easier for new users to use the app.

Thinkific App Store

Apps and programs can be purchased at the Thinkific App Store. The best thing about the AppStore is its community-made nature. As such, it is an excellent place where fellow content and course creators get together and discuss things along with Thinkific developers.

> > Click Here to Start Your Free Trial < <

Thinkific Course Builder: How Good Is It?

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.

A course builder service will only be as good as its main builder. If they don’t have a well-functioning course building system, then what can we expect from them about secondary and additional features?

Thinkific offers a “Get Started” checklist to help you get started with course building.

Create 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. The course content is divided into chapters and lessons.

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

You can choose from the following content types:

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

Any of these files can be uploaded as your lessons. You can upload multiple courses to the Bulk Importer. You can also copy old lessons from other courses using the “Copy Lessons From” button on Thinkific.

Choose the Course Type

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

Although you can still be flexible by using a template blank, they can be very helpful when you need to do your job quickly or are just starting to create courses.

These premade courses include:

Mini-courses: These course templates are designed to make short, fast courses like tasters or freebies.
Flagship Courses: These are the courses that make students and audiences take your courses or keep them always coming back. Each lesson is constructed in a way that is easy to progress and navigate for students.
Pre-sell course: Pre-sell courses help you sell your courses. These can be like testers and short courses. This will allow you to tell potential customers about your courses. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder
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 is perfect for your students who are late enrollees and for people who missed your seminars.

Your Students’ Course Design

Your students will be able to consume your learning resources 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 is convenient since you can see how your students view your lessons. As such, you can put yourself in their shoes and see the problem from their perspective.

Set Assignments and Check 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. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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

All in all, Thinkific’s Course Builder is easy to use. Especially when you are just starting, they will provide you with enough guidance on approaching your course.

> > Click Here to Start Your Free Trial < <

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.

This website builder is also pretty easy to use. It was designed with newbies and non-tech people 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.

For this reason, Thinkific has three pre-built theme 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.

You can modify the theme you have chosen after you’ve selected it. Through the site builder, you can do your preferred edits and make out an entire website. If you want, you can dig in and craft individual pages.

The Site builder uses drag-and-drop tools, making it easy for users to build your website from scratch. Combining this with pre-built themes, users can make a professional-looking web page from scratch.

This is only the beginning. The potential your website can take will be up to you. Your creativity will only be your limit.

3. Start a Training Website from Scratch.

We are already in the course-making business so it makes sense to build a website for training. Thinkific offers a wide range of pages to help you choose from.

These pages are pre-designed and ready to be mapped into a complete course or training website. These pages can be used as building blocks for your website. These pages are worth mentioning:

Home Page: The face of your website. The place where the most important things should be located

These pages can be used as landing pages to help students approach courses. If you want, you can also make a course page that serves as a landing page for all the courses you offer in your “class”

Sign-up pages are where students and potential customers enroll in individual courses or join a membership Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Student Dashboard: This will serve as your student’s starting point when signing in to your website. A good student dashboard can be designed in a way that makes everything on your website accessible.

Checkout pages or payment page: This is where you place your payment options for subscribing or signing up for your class.

Pages Coming Soon: Although they may not appear to be full, these pages can be used as teasers or previews of any pages, courses, offers, or bundles that you might 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. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

If you want something entirely different, you can create a custom page by simply clicking on the Custom page in the menus and then designing your page to suit your needs.

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 be customized easily and moved around.

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

All in all, Thinkfic provides users with 23 pre-formatted page sections available. Most of these pre-formatted pages are focused on building high conversions. 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 provides a list of information that can provide your customers with automatically listed summaries of available products you sell.

Checklists

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

Most Frequently Asked Questions

Websites often feature Frequently Asked Question. These are designed to answer all common questions from customers. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

‘Social Proof’

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

Upsell

These sections help you promote other courses. You can often find this section on the checkout page of one of your courses.

Instructor

This is where your instructors profiles can be added to the courses. This section gives students information about the teachers.

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. If possible, this is also where you can describe your bundles, what you include in them, and how much they cost.

Video

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

> > Click Here to Start Your Free Trial < <

Earning Profit Through Your Content with the Use of Your Online Course Platform

We now come to the part that is often the most anticipated. What is the Thnkific business side? Is the service providing enough tools and resources to enable users to make a living from their hard work?

It is a fact that all online course builders and platforms today offer tools to allow teachers and students to promote their courses. 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. Others, on the other hand, focus more on the business and promotion side of things and rely heavily upon integrations.

So on which side does Thinkific fall on? Let’s see how Thinkific handles promotion and business.

Promote Your Courses

By default, Thinkific has marketing tools that help you sell your content for cash. These features are available to all users, even those who use the free plan. However, they are very limited and only allow for the most basic functions.

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

Free users also have the option to create 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. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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 need no introduction. They’ve been in use for many transactions for a long period of 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. They are utilized very well in Thinkific’s ecosystem. Using a coupon on Thinkific’s checkout will automatically use it with little to no hassle.

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. From setting the dollar or percentage amount for the coupon to setting an expiration date and setting the number of times, the coupon can be redeemed.

Sales Widgets

Sales widgets are a feature that allows you to post purchasing links to other websites and social media. These are extremely useful, given how much traffic you need to get your courses noticed in the first place. And let’s face it, you will need a lot of traffic.

It’s the truth, you can’t expect to have any traffic at all if you are just new to creating courses and if you do not have a built-in 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.

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

This is possible by using sales widgets that generate HTML code which can be easily pasted onto existing websites. Of course, this includes social media sites. If you wish to market this way, these codes can be sent as messages. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

You can also customize the widget’s appearance. 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. This tool is not used to convert new subscribers but to keep them. After all, you can only send this to people you already have contact with.

Thinkific’s email marketing tools are limited to this ……… Unfortunately, only existing students can be emailed about your courses. You can also notify them about new products and courses.

Not everything is bad, though, as if you want more features, you can use other email marketing tools such as Mailchimp, Mailerlite, AWeber, Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, or ConvertKit.

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

Affiliate Marketing

You can choose to use affiliate marketing to get influencers and experts to promote your courses if you feel your marketing skills are not sufficient.

The process is simple and straightforward with Thinkific. The steps include adding the affiliated person as a user and making him an “Affiliate” which you can find under “User Roles” in the Process.

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

As for checking the status and performance of your affiliates, Thinkific will track the courses or bundles your affiliate sells and record the corresponding revenue. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

However, affiliates are not paid within the system. The same applies to instructor revenue sharing.

Payment Options

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

Lastly, there is also an option to link your courses to a Shopify site. That way, you can get all the tools the eCommerce platform offers its users.

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.

Reporting and Analytics

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

Though it’s a new feature, Thinkific does have one. 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.

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

So how does it work?

Thinkific’s analytics and reporting collect the data they need. Filtering data can be done by date, product type, or course, as well as by recency of customers (whether new or old).

Of course, these different data can provide multiple insight as to how your courses are performing. Take for example, the data on 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. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Students might find it difficult to complete courses that have low completion rates. It could be an issue with how you present the information. Once you have identified the problem, you will be able to find a solution that works without having to tear your hair out.

The data is displayed as a graph and chart, which makes it much easier to understand and read.

Prices and plans that are thought-provoking

Thinkific is one of the leading platforms on course building, and marketing. You can expect a price that’s appropriate for your standing.

However, what you pay is what you get with Thinkfiic, with all the features it provides, you will hardly find yourself being ripped off by the product.

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

Free

Start

Grow

Expand

$0 per month

$74 per month

$149 pero month

$374 per month

-Create and launch your product with a website and checkout experience

1 Course
1 community
1 admin
Unlimited students
Transaction fee of 0$
Email and Chat Bot Support
100% Content Ownership
Drag and drop course builder
Easy to use website themes
Fully integrated e-commerce
App Store

Add products to your company and create a cohesive learning experience.

Unlimited Courses
1 Community
1 admin
Unlimited students
Transaction fee 0%
All features included in the price
Custom domains
Discounts and coupons
Assignments
Bundles and add on packages
Memberships and payment plans
Live lessons
Affiliate selling
Advanced course – building options
Advanced Courses on Thinkific Academy

-Build successful business with a complete suite of tools to help you sell more

Unlimited courses
3 communities
2 admin
Unlimited students
0% transaction fee
Support by phone and email
Includes all Start Features
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
Transaction fee 0%
Priority phone support
All Grow features included
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. Upgrade to this plan and your limitations are gone. You can make unlimited courses.

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

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

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

The Grow Plan

The Grow plan is for you if you are serious about selling and making courses. 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 gives you access to bulk enrollments so that the enrollment process can be done easier and faster. 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. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

The Expand Plan

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

This plan is especially good for huge institutions wanting to create 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.

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

Thinkific Plus

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

This is 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 will help you understand the tools you need to optimize your platform. They will provide you with education experts who can inspire and give you the confidence to grow beyond what you imagine.

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

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

> > Click Here to Start Your Free Trial < <

Thinkific Pros and Cons

Pros

Thinkific does NOT charge transaction fees. When a sale occurs from your products, courses or memberships, funds are immediately available for withdrawal.

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. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Thinkkific’s drag-and-drop builder is super easy to use, and even non-tech-savvy people can use it. You can upload multiple media types to create different and exciting lessons and courses.

Cons

Some aspects of Thinkific aren’t as user-friendly than expected. This is something that some creators of the service have expressed.

There is a huge lack of marketing features in the service. Their email marketing capabilities are very basic and far behind those of the competition.
The customization options and designs available through Thinkific are very limited. There are only a handful of themes that you can choose from. It is difficult to make a website that stands out from the competition with these options.

The Thinkific Verdict

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

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. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

In my opinion, providing a free startup plan is actually a mark of confidence on the side of the service. They are confident in their product and willing to allow the public to try it.

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

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

This 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.

However, it is important to remember that Thinkific might be too easy for some users. This is just my nitpicking. Thinkific’s course creator is responsive, fast, and easy to use, which is what most people want.

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

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

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

Finally, I believe Thinkific is lacking in the marketing department. Marketers can feel disillusioned by the Email marketing structure. Marketing Thinkific’s courses are difficult to market without third-party integrations.

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

However, not everything is grim-looking though. Thinkfic still has some clever tools that help you monetize your courses. With a little creative touch, you can sell your products and courses. This requires more effort than normal, but it is possible.

Thinkific Frequently Asked Questions Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Can You Build an Entire Website with Just Thinkfic?

Yes, you can!

Thinkfiic allows you to create your entire online education company. This means you can create both courses, websites, or your overall brand within one seamless platform. Thinkific has builders that are designed to facilitate building, marketing, and selling online courses.

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

It is up to you.

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

Who Owns the Content Published on Thinkific?

Any content built into the Thinkific Platform is the sole and exclusive property of the creators.

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

Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

By lasplang / February 5, 2023

While they already existed before 2019 B.C. (where B.C. stands for Before COVID), Online Course Platforms were already a thing. 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 are housebound for multiple reasons (e.g., childcare or health issues) can still learn and study even if they cannot go out. Due to its flexibility, people who are unable to attend school regularly due to scheduling conflicts or duties could still complete courses.

Everything else had to be shut down when the pandemic struck. 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 is probably shared throughout multiple platforms online.

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

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

There are many online courses that people can take. You can find everything from life coaching to make your life easier, to tutorial classes on the more academic subjects such as Algebra. You can even learn how to make your courses more lucrative.

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: Your Go-To Online Course Platform Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

The Thinkific Overview

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

Thinkific is unique because you can feel that they are passionate about what they do. 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. The free plan lets users see what they’re about to do without making any investments.

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. This means course creators and content producers can immediately use their earnings without needing to wait for a quote, or reach a certain threshold before they can 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. First, there is the course builder, then there is the website builder for your courses, and then the marketing features.

The only difference between them is how well they work, along with some bits and bobs that make the product unique. These are the features that Thinkific is known for.

Thinkific’s main focus is their ability to create course curriculum. Most of their features are geared toward the creation bit, of course, creation. They ensure that online courses are as interactive as possible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that’s just about it. Thinkific’s market features compare poorly to its competitors. It doesn’t include a sales funnel builder. This is the most noticeable aspect. The overall checkout experience is pretty clunky.

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

Even email marketing features 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.

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

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

It makes sense considering the platform’s repeated promises to focus 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.

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’s not like the rest of the competition.

Thinkific is a lower-cost option that allows you to create unlimited courses and enroll unlimited students. This is in line with their mission to be focused on the education part. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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$
Email and Chat Bot Support
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
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 on Thinkific Academy

-Build a successful business with a complete suite of tools to help you sell more

Unlimited courses
3 communities
2 admin
Unlimited students
Transaction fee 0%
Support by phone and email
Includes all Start Features
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
All Grow features included
Custom SSL Certificates
Priority Support

Aside from these plans, Thinkific also has a more advanced and bespoke plan called Thinkific plus. Thinkific Plus takes the best of Thinkfiic, makes it powerful, scalable and simple-to-use, and then adds more.

It still dedicates itself to teaching, lecturing, and supporting students.

You will need to contact the sales team of Thinkific Plus to request this upgrade. They will help you to get the best out of your platform. Lastly, you will also discuss with them the total cost of this upgrade.

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

Unlimited Products
Unlimited Administrators
Three+ separate Thinkific sites
Service Level Agreement 99.9%
Dedicate Customer Success Team
Multiple seats and Tiered pricing checkout
Email White-labeling
Single Sign on
Bulk Selling App
Enterprise API Access

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Thinkific Pros and Cons

Pros

The Thinkific free package is permanent free. This isn’t a glorified trial. It is a free account, with the only limitation being the number of courses you can take.

Thinkific does not ask for transaction fees whenever a sale is made. Content creators own all earnings. Creators can even claim and use these funds as soon as they arrive in their account.

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

The marketing features of Thinkifiic make it hard to recommend for people who are more focused on propping up businesses on the platform. 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.

There is a distinct lack of customization options within the platform. As such, it is not impossible to find other websites that may look the same as yours. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Thinkific Summary

Thinkific is one the most popular online courses platforms on the market. It is a great platform for beginners as well as those who are looking for more course-focused platforms. 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.

You’re searching for an online course creation tool that creates courses from scratch. Thinkific is the best online course creation software.

Kajabi Versus Thinkific

Kajabi Overview

Kajabi is a widely used platform for running an online course business. It is primarily focused on productivity and selling. It 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.

Kajabi has many marketing features. It’s no surprise that they have sales funnels, email marketing, and automations. This allows Kajabi users to sell their products more easily.

As such, Kajabi is one of those rare products where the “all in one” platform fits. 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.

Kajabi land is not perfect. It has one of the most expensive platforms on the market. Their lowest plan starts at $149 per month. What’s more, is that these are not unlimited plans. 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. So you might need some third-party integrations to address these issues.

Kajabi Features

Kajabi claims to be one of the best platforms. They even have one of the more expensive plans in the course creation market. As such, it is only to be expected that the audience will have high expectations of the product. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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’s minimalist, clean, and modern. Most of the available features can be accessed through 3 to 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 provides for a smoother experience and does not get in the way of your work.

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. long courses for long content, mini-courses for product launches).

Kajabi offers blueprints that are similar to templates for a simpler building experience. 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. They can be arranged according to their content and types. You can have text and slideshows in one place, and audio and video in another.

Kajabi offers cloud storage via Dropbox and Google Drive, so you don’t have to worry.

Kajabi has robust and extensive marketing features.

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.

If you want to market through email, Kajabi has a powerful email marketing solution that is already built in the platform which has plenty of features in and of itself. 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. They are not that hard to use and even the platform has provided various templates that can easily be used by their customers.

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

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 a huge disappointment considering how poor their marketing tools and how adept their checkout at upsells, bumps offers, downsells is.

Overall, while its not perfect, Kajabi offers a lot of features that are both geared towards marketing as well as 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

Kajabi is undoubtedly the most expensive course creation service in the market. Their lowest plan starts at $149 per month and this plan doesn’t even include unlimited courses. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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 per month 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 & Surveys) 1 Welcome Call with an Onboarding Specialist Chat Support Automations	15 products 15 funnels Unlimited Landing pages Unlimited marketing emails 25,000 contacts 10,000 active customers 1 website 10 admin users Kajabi University Transaction fee 0% Webinars and Events Ready-to-use Templates Assessments (quizzes and surveys) 1 welcome call with an onboarding specialist 1 check-in call with an onboarding specialist 24/7 Chat support Automated systems Kajabi branding can be removed	100 products 100 funnels Unlimited landing pages Unlimited marketing emails 100,000 contacts 200.000 active customers 3 Websites 25 admin users Kajabi University 0% Transaction Fee Webinars and Events Ready to Use Templates Assessments (quizzes and 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 and 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. This is also a great place to do this.

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 mobile app makes it easy for students to access lessons and classes wherever and whenever they want. 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 feature can be used by users to offer additional and exclusive content.

Kajabi’s automation feature can automate the purchase of offers, post-completion of courses or memberships, assessment completion, as well as other tasks. Users can also use more advanced options with conditional filters to be precise in the automation process.

Kajabi has one of the strongest marketing features among the content and course-building platforms available right now.

Kajabi’s Email Marketing is among the best in the industry. It includes various email templates that can be used in different situations. Kajabi has the ability to automate email sequences using triggers or actions. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Kajabi’s pipeline feature allows various OVO funnel templates to be available. The pipeline features automate the selling of the products and “funneling” your customers to where you want for better conversion rates.

Cons

Kajabi’s pricing is not to be laughed at. It costs $149 per month, and you cannot create unlimited courses. It only offers 3 products as well as 3 pipelines

Kajabi 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. That means users must do everything from scratch when editing page templates through 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. Buyers are assured of the product’s quality by obtaining a guarantee.

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. It does not have community engagement or gamification 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 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.

That said, Kajabi is not without its flaws. For one, it lacks features that help you connect with your students and customers. Features that allow for the creation of a great community. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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 has advanced marketing features and is a great creation platform. It is perfect if you are looking for a platform for its marketing features. 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. It is also an all-in-one platform that has powerful 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.

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

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Podia Features

Podia offers a lot of features.

Podia’s interface is clean and minimalistic. 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. Podia supports only a few lesson types, which is a major difference to other platforms. Furthermore, it does not have a proper assessment feature to help you monitor student performance. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

It also supports multiple platforms thanks to its powerful embed tool. Some of 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 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’s feature can be seen as a perfect incentive/prize for completing your courses. Podia currently only offers one type of certificate. They cannot still customize and design your certificates.

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

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

Nevertheless, not all things are perfect. Podia’s weak point is its email marketing. It only offers the basics. It allows you to send broadcasts and email campaigns but lacks some features, such as split testing and personalization fields.

Also, those looking for automation features have lost their luck since Podia’s is not as advanced as some of theirs.

For payment processors, Podia has a local payment gateway. You will need to connect to your PayPal or bank accounts to pay processors. For a simpler solution, you can also integrate with Stripe and PayPal.

Checkout is possible for your audience using their credit cards. These usually are processed within 2 days and will be credited to your bank or PayPal account. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Podia Price

In terms of pricing, it is one of the cheapest there is in the market. The platform recently added a free plan. Although it doesn’t offer much, this plan is a great way to learn more about Podia.

No cost	Mover	Shaker	Earthquake
$0 per Month	$33 per month	$75 per month	$166 per month
8% transaction fees Full Website Email Marketing Chat Support Community 1 Download 1 Coaching Product Draft Courses Draft webinars	There are no transaction fees 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 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 can serve many purposes and be a one-stop shop to meet all your needs. You can sell various digital products such as courses, memberships, webinars, bundles, community, and other digital downloads.

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 has a built-in affiliate program for your audience that is only available for Shaker and Earthquaker plans.

Although it only provides the basic functions, the email marketing tools built-in are sufficient to support campaigns and broadcasts.

Podia has supported a pre-launch mode among its marketing features. It will generate buzz about your products and encourage early conversions of email customers. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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 only provides the 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.
The platform lacks course compliance features.
Podia also does not have many customization features. 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.
The free plan does not allow you to host more than one product. It also charges an 8% transaction fee.
Podia does not have any course blueprints.
Podia supports only a handful of lesson types. It lacks support for some types like Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, and HTML 5 Content, among others.
It has some good marketing features but it is still lacking others. These include cart abandonment, downsells and order bumps.
Podia does not have a mobile app, which can limit its user base or access, given how much the world has depended on smartphones and tablets. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Summary of Podia

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

Many people might believe that Podia is a value-for-money company. Well, it is not entirely 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. It is ideal for content creators, marketers, teachers, and other people who target marketers. Podia will be able to serve their needs if they need to.

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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.

Instead of a course creator, we have an all-in-one platform that sells your products. 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.

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. You can sell unlimited quantities of these products and many different types of products. It also allows you to choose from multiple pricing options, which will allow you to set a more flexible price.

Kartra Features

Since Kartra is a different beast altogether, we might focus on features not found in most course-building websites. In fact, there might not be a course-building site for Kartra.

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

Kartra’s focus is on lead conversion and marketing to maximize its users’ profits. One of their key features is funnel construction.

Funnels literally mean a “funnel” for sellers to direct potential customers to buy their products. Although funnels are not considered campaigns by Kartra, they function in a similar way. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

Kartra makes funnel construction simple. 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.

For personally built campaigns, you can also choose to share them 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 also has page-building capabilities, and it is surprisingly powerful. These features allow users to create product pages, checkout pages and opt-in pages. It even provides you with professionally designed templates to help you speed up the process or just start it out.

These pages can also be optimized for desktops, tablets, and mobile devices. 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. 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 price is steep for a platform focused on marketing and lead conversions. However, depending on your needs, the price of Kartra’s plans may be worth it. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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

Starter	Silver	Gold	Platinum
$79 per Month when you pay annually	$149 per Month when you pay 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 50 GB bandwidth Host up to 100 pages Host 50 Videos Create 2 membership websites Add 1 more member to your team Connect 1 helpdesk	You can get up to 12,500 leads 3 custom domains Unlimited emails Unlimited bandwidth Unlimited pages Unlimitted videos Unlimitted products Unlimited membership sites Unlimitless team members Unlimited helpdesk Kartra agency	Up to 25,000 leads 5 custom domains Unlimited emails Unlimited bandwidth Unlimited pages Unlimited videos Unlimited products Unlimited membership sites Unlimited team members Unlimited helpdesk Kartra agency	Get 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 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 offers an automatic translation feature for its checkout pages. It works based on the user’s geographic location. It also supports other currencies.
Kartar allows you to drip content or vary access to different levels, if you have an existing 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 not unlimited integrations available with any of the plans.
Kartra’s interface is quite slow and might get frustrating to use at times. Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder
Even Kartra’s pages may load slowly
For beginners, it can be difficult to understand the many features.

Kartra Summary

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

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

It is not a course builder, and certainly not a website creator. As such, If you use Kartra, ensure that you are doing so in conjunction with a proper 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 Thinkific vs Thrive Themes Course Builder

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

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

In a market-like course building, these platforms will offer almost identical services. Their differences will be minimal at best. Of course, some might excel in one aspect or another.

The key to finding which product you should use is to decide on the direction of what you want to do. Find the platform that aligns with your goals. You will likely find their features most helpful to you.