Udemy vs Thinkific

thinkific-review

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

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

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

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

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

This ability to share what you have learned has been made possible by the internet. Even those who have no teaching license or do not know how to write books now have the ability to share their knowledge.

The kinds of things being taught around have also been busted wide open. People can share their knowledge on a variety of platforms, such as Youtube and TikTok, to teach others how they make or do the most common or absurd things.

Even formal education can have its niche platforms too. This is where online course platforms come in.

thinkific-logo

For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from the YouTube channel SoftwarePundit. To get a comprehensive overview of Thinkific, you may still want to check out our article below.

Thinkific: an Online Course Platform Udemy vs Thinkific

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

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

They were fortunate to find a solution to their problem. Thinkific became an effective solution for creating, managing, and marketing online courses. Thinkific 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 is not the only platform that is a decent course maker. Many LMS and CMS can do the same job as Thinkific. That said, we would be remiss if we gloss over Thinkific just because of this fact.

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. Although you are only limited to uploading 3 courses, you can have unlimited students enrolled in it as well as host most of the core content that Thinkific allows
  • As a commitment to their promise of letting content creators focus on the content, Thinkific makes it easy to build an online course through its drag and drop builder. Thinkific also allows multiple kinds of content, from video files, audio files, PDFs, quizzes, text, surveys, and more.
  • Thinkific also allows you to play with your course engagement by giving you various capabilities. You can organize groups, schedule content and send them via drip-feed. They also lock them with prerequisite lessons.
  • You can also engage with students via Thinkific’s multiple channels. You can email your students their progresses and engage them in discussions. And even have them compete with the leaderboard.

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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 how they handle some specific sections of the whole experience. These features include:

  • Easy to use course creator

To be honest, this is not really a unique feature as most online course builders will already have this feature. A course builder who doesn’t have a user-friendly one will find it very difficult to compete in the market.

  • Drag-and-drop web page builder

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

  • Promotion and marketing tools

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

  • Flexible payment options

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. Analytics is the only way to discover your approach and your 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

A good way to increase your customer base is to have a strong community that uses your content. It is also a great way to brand your company and increase engagements. Customer retention is greatly improved by having a strong community and customer support. 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. Selling and course building are two different things. Many who try Thinkific might be new to the process and will tend to stumble around until they feel comfortable.

Thinkific gives these newbies and even veterans a chance to learn from what is tried and tested. 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. What is great about this AppStore is that most of it is community-made. It is a great place for fellow course creators and content creators to come together and have discussions with Thinkific developers.

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Thinkific Course Builder: How Good Is It?

The only way to determine the quality of a course builder’s service is to actually test it.

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

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

Create Your First Course

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

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

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

You can choose from the following content types:

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

You can upload any of these files as your lessons. If you want, you can add multiple course content and upload them using the Bulk Importer. Also, Thinkific makes you duplicate old lessons from previous ones by using the “Copy Lessons From” button.

Pick the Course Type

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

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

Some of these premade course types include:

  • Mini-course: These are course templates designed to create short and fast courses such as tasters and freebies.
  • Flagship Courses are courses that attract students and keep them coming back. 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 allows you to advertise to potential customers what your courses entail. Udemy vs Thinkific
  • Membership Resource Library: You can use this template to create an archive of resources for your subscribers. This will encourage your audience to remain on your website even when looking at resources
  • Webinar Replay: This is like the library template, except it is specially made for webinars and live lesson video recordings. This template is ideal for late enrollees or people who missed your seminars.

Your Students’ Course Design

Students will be able use your learning materials in the Course Player. As such, you can customize how this course player looks in the “Settings” tab on the “Courses” page. Options include changing color schemes, fonts, or adding logos.

Here you can also add a description of the course and an image.

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. This allows you to see the problem through their eyes.

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. Udemy vs Thinkific

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.

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Building an Online Course Website

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

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

The website builder is easy to use. It was designed with newbies and non-tech people in mind.

Start building your website by:

1. Pick a Theme.

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

Thinkific offers three pre-designed themes templates. Each theme comes with its own style, colors, fonts, layouts, and customized layouts.

These websites all have professional and good designs.

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

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

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.

And that is just the beginning. Your website’s potential is limitless. Your imagination is limitless.

3. Make a Training website Entirely from Scratch.

We are already in the course-making business so it makes sense to build a website for training. 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. Some pages of note include:

  • Home Page: The face of your website. Where most relevant things should be found
  • These pages can be used as landing pages to help students approach courses. You can create a course page to serve as a landing page for all courses in your class.
  • Sign-up pages are where students and potential customers enroll in individual courses or join a membership Udemy vs Thinkific
  • Sign in Pages: This should be sued for subscribers of your website
  • Student Dashboard: This will serve as your student’s starting point when signing in to your website. It is possible to design a student dashboard that makes it easy for students to access all the content on your website.
  • Checkout pages or payment page: This is where you place your payment options for subscribing or signing up for your class.
  • Coming Soon pages: These pages may look empty, but they can serve as teasers and previews for any upcoming pages, courses, offers, and even bundles you offer.

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

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

4. Edit Individual Pages

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

The provided pre-built pages even come with suggested sections to easily allow you to pick which ones you need for your page. Simply click on “Add Section” to add more sections.

Thinkfic offers 23 pre-formatted pages sections. Most of these pre-formatted pages are focused on building high conversions. These high-converting pages include, but are not limited to:

  • Call to Action.

This is an essential part, especially when you aim to sell. This will allow potential students and customers to know how to sign-up or purchase.

  • ‘Smart’ Product and Category

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

  • Checklists

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

  • Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions are a common scene on most websites. These aim to answer all the commonly asked questions by the customer base. Udemy vs Thinkific

  • ‘Social Proof’

These sections can be compared to testimonials. They show client reviews, comments, and experiences. These sections are like testimonials and show what the clients get from the lessons. This in turn encourages others to use your product.

  • Upsell

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

  • Instructor

This section is where you can put your instructor profiles in the courses. This gives students information as to the people who are teaching them.

  • Pricing Options

You can place your pricing options here. This will inform your students about the cost of your courses as well as where they can be paid. 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.

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

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

It is a fact that all online course builders and platforms today offer tools to allow teachers and students to promote their courses. The only difference is in the focus of each platform.

Yep, that’s right. Some course platforms focus more on selling and turning conversion than the creation side. Others, on the other hand, focus more on the business and promotion side of things and rely heavily upon integrations.

Which side is Thinkific 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. Even users who are utilizing the free plan can try these features, albeit they only have access to the most basic of functions and are pretty limited in their scope.

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.

Another feature available for free users is the ability to build free trial courses. It’s like giving your customers a free taste or sample. This is among the most efficient ways to show your audience what you are capable of. Udemy vs Thinkific

Customers and potential students can get a glimpse into your content by allowing them to see it. This will give customers and potential students a glimpse into the workings of your content before they pay for it.

These promotional materials can be a great way to promote your products. They can even be used to compete with products that have been promoted too much.

Of course, we are only talking about the free stuff. 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 have been used in many transactions for a long time. It is not surprising that they are being used in online marketing and business.

Thinkific’s coupon codes are digital codes that can be shared easily. They are utilized very well in Thinkific’s ecosystem. You can use a coupon at Thinkific’s checkout to instantly redeem it.

From a marketing standpoint, coupons can be set up and used to promote your bundles and courses. This will entice potential customers to check out your courses, especially if a discount is included.

As a side note, Thinkific allows you to customize 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

You can use sales widgets to link to other websites or social media to share your purchase links. 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. It is important to determine where the majority of internet traffic comes and redirect some traffic to your site.

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

Another customization you can do with this widget is how it looks. You can choose to display a button, a button with a product image, or include text that you want to go with it.

  • Email Marketing Tools

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

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.

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

  • Affiliate Marketing

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

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

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

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

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

Payment Options

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. This allows you to access all of the eCommerce platform’s tools.

Thinkific’s payment options allow you to customize how you price your products. You can even charge customers with different payment plans. You can also sell courses for a one-off fee.

You can even make membership subscriptions and charge accordingly. If you want, you can sell your course in a bundle. However, this feature is not available to me at the moment as I only have a handful of courses created with their system.

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

Reporting and Analytics

A good website selling products should have a Reports and Analytics section. This will allow users to figure out which stuff they are doing well on and which ones they need to focus on and improve.

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

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

So how does it work?

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

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

Having this data allows you to see things such as course enrolments as well as there completion rates. These metrics can be compared across all subjects. This allows you to see which subjects are having 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. Udemy vs Thinkific

For example, for courses with low completion rates, students might find the course extremely hard. Still, it might be a problem with the way you are presenting the information or instructions. 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.

Thinkific Pricing and Plans

Thinkific is one of the leading platforms on course building, and marketing. As such, you can expect to have a price that is appropriate for their 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.

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

No cost Start Grow Expand
$0 per month $74 per month $149 pero month $374 per month
Create and launch your product using a website and checkout experience

 

  • 1 Course
  • 1 community
  • 1 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • Transaction fee of 0$
  • Chat Bot and Email Support
  • 100% Content Ownership
  • Drag and Drop Course Builder
  • Easy to use website themes
  • Full 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 at Thinkific Academy
-Build successful business with a complete suite of tools to help you sell more

 

  • Unlimited courses
  • 3 communities
  • 2 admin
  • Unlimited students
  • 0% transaction fee
  • Phone and priority email support
  • 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
  • Includes all Grow features
  • Custom SSL Certificates
  • Priority Support

The Free Plan

If you’re new to course management and course building, this is the plan that you should start with. It is the best way to get a feel of the service and to test drive what it is capable of. The free plan allows you to do everything the service offers, albeit at a limited capacity.

Only one course is allowed under the Free plan. 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 feel that Thinkific is something you would enjoy, you can take the next step. The main benefit of upgrading to this plan is your limiters are removed, and you are free to make unlimited courses.

Aside from that, Thinkific affords you a few more options in the type of courses you can make. For example, you can begin to live-stream your lessons as long as time permits it.

The Start plan also opens up additional marketing tools and grants you access to the Thinkific App Store.

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

The Grow Plan

If you’re serious about making sales and selling courses, the Grow plan is right for you. 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. Udemy vs Thinkific

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

Some LMS services give clients and customers an option to create bespoke plans separate from the services’ 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.

To get Thinkific Plus, you must contact the Thinkfic sales team. They will help you understand the tools you need to optimize your platform. They 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:

  • Unlimited Products
  • Unlimited Administrators
  • Three+ separate Thinkific sites
  • Service Level Agreement 99.9%
  • Build a 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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Thoughtific Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Thinkific does not take any transaction fees. When a sale occurs from your products, courses or memberships, funds are immediately available for withdrawal.
  • Thinkific has a fully realized free plan. It has all the core features available and acts like a paid plan. Although there are no limitations, if you are serious enough, you can start selling courses through the services with no upfront monetary investment. Udemy vs Thinkific
  • Thinkkific’s drag and drop builder is easy to use by even non-tech-savvy users. It even allows you to upload multiple types of media content to create varied and interesting courses and lessons.

Cons

  • Some aspects of Thinkific aren’t as user-friendly than expected. This is something that some creators of the service have expressed.
  • The service lacks many marketing features. Their email marketing capabilities are very basic and far behind those of the competition.
  • Thinkific’s designs and customizations are quite limited, given that the service only provides a few themes to play with. With these options, it is hard to create a website that stands out among the rest.

Thinkific Verdict

Thinkific is an excellent choice for course promotion and course creation. It is affordable and features are just as easy as those of its rivals.

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

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.

For the Course Builder, Thinkific is pretty easy and intuitive 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. At the end of the day, Thinkific’s course builder is fast, easy, and responsive, and that’s what most people need.

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

It has impressive editing capabilities, making it ideal for creating tutorial and training websites. It is also a great tool to add 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. Just looking at the bare bones structure of their Email marketing can turn off marketers, and marketing Thinkific’s courses can be an uphill climb without resorting to third-party integrations.

As for their payment options, it would be better to have more options other than Stripe and 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’s Frequently Asked Questions Udemy vs Thinkific

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 offers builders that can be used to build, market, and sell online courses.

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

It is up to you.

Bear in mind that your students will need help logging into your courses offline. That said, you can offer your courses to be 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.

Udemy vs Thinkific

thinkific-vs-competition

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

The majority of courses back then were more niche-oriented, such as leadership seminars, wholesomeness and self-help classes. Of course, courses and classes focused on normal subjects were there too.

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. People who couldn’t attend regular school due to duties and scheduling conflicts could still finish courses due to the medium’s flexibility.

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.

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.

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

thinkific-logo
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Ross Herosian on his YouTube channel Tricycle Creative. To get a comprehensive overview of Thinkific, you may still want to check out our article below, which compares it to some competitors.

Thinkific: Your Go-To Online Course Platform Udemy vs Thinkific

The Thinkific Overview

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

Thinkific is unique because you can feel that they are passionate about what they do. You can feel that they are more focused on giving the best learning experience they can to both the creators and their audience and that earning money is needed to keep things afloat.

How could you not? It is one of few online courses platforms that offers a free full-service service. Thinkific offers a free service that is just as good as the paid lower-tiered.

The platform is ideal for beginners as it allows them to see how content and courses are built, as well the industry’s overall environment. The free plan lets users see what they’re about to do without making any investments.

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

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

Thinkific ensures that all profits are immediately available after they have been 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

First, let me preface this by saying that most online course platforms share almost the same features. First, there is the course builder, then there is the website builder for your courses, and then the marketing features.

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

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

The user interface of Thinkific is easy to use. It’s intuitive and logical. It is easy to navigate. All other features can be accessed through a sidebar menu. They are properly classified to where they are, except for occasional hiccups. Udemy vs Thinkific

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

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

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

As mentioned above, Thinkific’s main focus is on the creation side of course creation. The platform makes course creation easy. 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 include content, quizzes, surveys, assignments, pdfs, and student discussion areas to allow peer-to-peer interaction.

Other highlights include scheduling of course content as well as some automation in terms of drip-feeding content.

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

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 smarter to invest all resources in ensuring that they get the course creation part right, and then to hire third-party apps for the marketing part.

The Thinkific Price

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

At a cheaper price point, Thinkific allows users to make an unlimited number of courses and enroll an unlimited number of students in these courses. This is in keeping with their mission to focus on education. Udemy vs Thinkific

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

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

 

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

 

  • 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
  • Advanced course – building options
  • Advanced Courses at Thinkific Academy
A complete set of tools is available to help you increase your sales.

 

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

 

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

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

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

To get Thinkific plus, you need to contact the platform’s sales team and ask for this upgrade. 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.

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.

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

man-seriously-staring-at-laptop

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Thoughtific Pros and Cons

Pros

  • The Thinkific free package is permanent free. It also is not just a glorified free trial. It is a free account, with the only limitation being the number of courses you can take.
  • Thinkific doesn’t charge transaction fees for any sale. Content creators own all earnings. Creators can even claim and use these funds as soon as they arrive in their account.
  • Thinkific is flexible when it comes to payment options. They offer different payment options for different types and types of students.
  • Thinkific’s premium plans remove the restriction on the number of courses. Users can create unlimited courses and enroll unlimited students in these courses.
  • Thinkific’s interface is one of the most intuitive. 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. It also allows for many course materials, making it possible to have your course as exciting and engaging as possible.
  • 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.
  • It is difficult to recommend Thinkifiic for those who are more interested in promoting the platform’s marketing capabilities. You will need third-party integrations to get a better experience.
  • Although Thinkific has one of the most intuitive user interfaces in the industry, it can sometimes look dated and the experience can sometimes be more confusing than you expected.
  • There is a distinct lack of customization options within the platform. It is possible to find websites similar to yours. Udemy vs Thinkific

Thinkific Summary

Thinkific is one of the best online course platforms in the market today. I would easily recommend it to beginners and those looking for a more course-focused platform. It is still competitive with other “advanced” and more feature-rich platforms, despite its shortcomings.

My opinion is that its greatest strength would be its commitment to providing the best course experience possible and a free plan. As for its weakness, Thinkfiic has already provided some kind of solution to it. Using local third-party integrations can remedy any problems you have with the platform.

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

Kajabi Versus Thinkific

Kajabi Overview

Kajabi is a widely used platform for running an online course business. Its main focus is on productivity and sales. 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. These features give the Kajabi platform users an easier time selling their products.

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. The lowest plan allows you to sell only 3 products.

Aside from that, Kajabi is not as feature-rich, especially in the gamification and community engagement department. 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. Udemy vs Thinkific

So let’s take a look at how good Kajabi features are starting from the interface.

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

Kajabi’s pages load quicker. It provides for a smoother experience and does not get in the way of your work.

Kajabi offers a variety of course creation options. You can create mini-courses, online or drip courses, as well as creating your own. These types can be customized to suit your specific needs. (i.e. For long courses with long content, short courses for product launches.

Kajabi offers blueprints that are similar to templates for a simpler building experience. These “skeletons” are pretty much presentation ready that if you want, you can just add your needed content and then you are good to go.

These courses could be properly structured too into categories, subcategories and posts. It would be easy to organize your content in a neat and organized manner. 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.

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

Kajabi has robust and extensive marketing features.

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

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 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 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 need to rely on integration from other payment gateways like Stripe, Paypal and BitPay.

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.

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. Their lowest plan starts at $149 per month and this plan doesn’t even include unlimited courses. Udemy vs Thinkific

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

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

Kajabi Pros & Cons

Pros

  • True to its name, Kajabi is an all in one content making and marketing tool. You can create courses using various tools, such as a drip or mini-course. Then, you can combine them with marketing automations to make sure 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. 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 feature is especially useful when used in conjunction with drip courses. Drip courses allow you to offer courses that are only accessible when the correct grades have been achieved.
  • Kajabi’s accessibility is pretty good thanks to its mobile app, which students can use to access classes and lessons whenever and wherever they are. You can even set up notifications to receive alerts.
  • Kajabi has a membership option that allows users create and sell membership options for their customers. This can be used to provide users with a way to sell extra and exclusive course content.
  • Kajabi has an automation feature that can automate offers purchase, course or membership post-completion, assessment completion, and much more. Users can also use more advanced options with conditional filters to be precise in the automation process.
  • Kajabi’s marketing strategy is one of the most powerful among all the course-building and content platforms currently available.
  • Kajabi’s Email Marketing is among the best in the industry. There are many email templates that you can use in various situations. Kajabi has the ability to automate email sequences using triggers or actions. Udemy vs Thinkific
  • Kajabi’s pipeline feature allows various OVO funnel templates to be available. Pipeline features automate product sales and funnel customers to the places you want. This will result in higher conversion rates.

Cons

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

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

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Kajabi Summary

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.

Kajabi has its faults, however. It lacks features that allow you to connect with students and customers. Features that allow for the creation of a great community. Udemy vs Thinkific

Kajabi is also pretty expensive. It might be difficult for people to justify purchasing a plan that can only hold 3 products, when there are cheaper options that allow them unlimited access.

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. Although it is a little expensive, Kajabi’s features are well worth the cost.

Thinkific Versus Podia

Podia Overview

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

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

couple-looking-at-laptop-happily

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Podia Features

In terms of features, Podia has loads of them.

Podia’s interface is clean and minimalistic. It is designed to have all the other features accessible within 3 clicks. It is so easy that almost no learning curve is required to use Podia’s interface.

This makes it very user-friendly. Accessing or reaching the information you desire or need is easy with no additional steps or terms. In fact, almost all of Podia’s functions can be accessed straight from the dashboard.

For its Course creator, Podia supports various files that can serve as the building block for your lessons. A course can contain text, embeds and quizzes as well as coaching and files. With some imagination, you can create interesting lessons with the platform that is given to you.

That said, This course creator can be lacking in some parts. Unlike most other platforms, Podia only supports very few lesson types. Furthermore, it does not have a proper assessment feature to help you monitor student performance. Udemy vs Thinkific

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

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

Podia recently added the ability to issue certificates. This certificate feature can be viewed as an incentive/prize to complete your courses. Podia currently only offers one type of certificate. Podia cannot customize or design your certificates.

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

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

That said, not everything is perfect. In this case, Podia’s weakness is its email marketing, which only provides the basics. 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. That said, you will need to connect your bank account or PayPal account to payment processors. You can integrate with Stripe or PayPal for a simpler solution.

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

Podia Price

It is also one of the most affordable on the market in terms of pricing. 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.

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

Podia Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Podia’s strongest point is its clean and crisp UI/UX. It’s very user-friendly and doesn’t require any training. Users of all edges and tech levels will find it intuitive to set it up.
  • Podia 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.
  • Other than the free plan, Podia allows you to sell unlimited courses and products. That means as long as you have the energy and the idea, you can create as many pages for your courses and products as you want.
  • Podia 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.
  • 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. Udemy vs Thinkific
  • Podia does not charge any transaction fees for sales, except the free plan.
  • Podia has a new feature that allows content creators to give certificates, community, and quizzes. You can even create memberships in the community area.

Cons

  • Their email marketing provides only the most basic functions. It lacks personalization fields, especially in the email composer. Other features that the tool does not have include templates, drag-and-drop editor and other features.
  • The platform lacks course compliance features.
  • Podia does not offer many customization options. Podia does not support custom CSS/HTMl customizations. Podia will result in generic websites.
  • Podia also has no landing page builders or funnels, which are important tools when considering Podia’s focus on marketing.
  • Its free plan is severely lacking and will only allow you to host 1 product. There is also an 8% transaction charge.
  • There are no course blueprints available in Podia.
  • Podia 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. Udemy vs Thinkific

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 might think that with Podia, you get what you pay for. It isn’t true. Podia offers a lot more with what you pay for it. You can make impressive courses with enough creativity and great ideas and sell them for a fair price.

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

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Thinkific Versus Kartra

Kartra Overview

Kartra is a different product from the others 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. It is also a marketing platform.

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 is properly fitted to create and sell both 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

Since Kartra is a different beast altogether, we might focus on features not found in most course-building websites. Kartra might not have a course-building website.

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 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. Udemy vs Thinkific

Kartra makes funnel construction simple. 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.

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 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 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. 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. 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.

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

Behavior-based automation is another feature that makes the platform unique. This powerful tool allows to send emails based upon the behavior of recipients. This allows you to relax after all the work has been done.

Kartra Price

Kartra’s price is steep for a platform focused on marketing and lead conversions. However, depending on your needs, the price of Kartra’s plans may be worth it. Udemy vs Thinkific

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

Kartra Pros and Cons

Pros

  • You don’t need any external marketing integrations. Kartra offers everything: integrated email marketing, sequence builder, automation, and all other features necessary to market your products perfectly
  • Kartra offers an automatic translation feature for its checkout pages. It works based on the user’s geographic location. It also supports other currencies.
  • Kartar also allows you to drip content and vary access to different levels if you have a membership site.
  • There is A/B testing for your email content which can help you refine your automated email replies as you set them up.
  • Kartra 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 might feel that Kartra’s pricing is too high for the quality of what they offer
  • There are no plans that offer unlimited integrations
  • Kartra’s interface is quite slow and might get frustrating to use at times. Udemy vs Thinkific
  • Even Kartra’s pages can load slow
  • The number of features can be very difficult for beginners to get used to.

Kartra Summary

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

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. Kartra is quite expensive for the features it offers. This can be difficult to swallow.

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

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Overall, Verdict Udemy vs Thinkific

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

As with most markets and industries, there will be a lot of platforms that will offer the service that you need. 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. They will have very few differences. Some might be better than others in certain areas.

To find the right product for you, you must decide what direction you want to go. And find the platform that is best aligned with that. You will likely find their features most helpful to you.

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