Content Outline
Teachable vs Thinkific: What is Teachable and Thinkific?
To begin, Teachable and Thinkific both operate as cloud-based learning management systems (LMSs). This implies that instead of hosting your courses on your website, they will do it for you.
There is no need to install software, add plugins, or mess with annoying HTML or CSS code. You may easily avoid the biggest learning curves associated with web design.
Additionally, and perhaps most importantly for education and training organizations, both LMSs serve as e-commerce platforms, allowing you to promote and sell your online courses.
All you need to do is join up (each offers a free trial) and log in to your account to begin creating courses.
Teachable or Thinkific enable you to create and manage material, monitor and control students and personalize the look and feel of your course and website.
One of the finest features of both of these top-tier options is their ability to serve as all-in-one solutions.
They handle the scary technical parts of course development, website design, and sales! You’ll just need your account and, optionally, a domain name to direct it too!
Now let’s throw the two against one another to see what distinguishes them. This comparison will help you choose which top online course platform is the greatest fit for your unique circumstances!
Why Choose Teachable Over Thinkific?
- Additionally, it comes with a powerful webhooks management system and other Zapier capabilities.
- Teachable enables you to send automatic email alerts when a lesson/drip material is unlocked.
- You can build a blog directly inside Teachable, which is not possible with Thinkific.
- If you want built-in support for EU VAT, Teachable provides it without the requirement for integration, as Thinkific does.
- Teachable outperforms Thinkific in terms of conversion optimization due to one-step checkouts and upsells.
- Teachable provides an iOS app if you want your students to be able to view your course on the move.
- Teachable enables you to create downloadable files from your course material.
- Teachable allows you to modify your course material in bulk.
- Teachable allows you to import material from cloud storage services such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive.
- Students may leave comments directly underneath a lecture, which can assist increase student involvement. Thinkific makes it more difficult to start a debate.
- You may improve sales by including testimonials and course assurance badges on your course checkout pages.
For more details on Teachable, you can read our detailed review here.
Why Choose Thinkific Over Teachable?
- You may sell your course on any website by using customizable Sales Widgets.
- Additionally, it integrates seamlessly with Accredible to give a variety of certificate of completion templates and resources. Additionally, there is no additional expense.
- Thinkific’s free Brillium integration enables course developers to create complex tests.
- It has real White Label capabilities, which means that you can more easily personalize your Thinkific site than you can with a Teachable site.
- It has a variety of course formats, including narrated/voiceover presentations and assignment classes.
- You may quickly conduct a poll of students to determine which aspects of your course need improvement.
- Thinkific provides three distinct templates for course building. Additionally, you may create your course from scratch to get the style and feel you like.
- Unlike Teachable, which charges a 5 % transaction fee on all tiers, Thinkific does not.
Want to get the best deals on Thinkific? Then you much check out this article about Thinkific coupons and get great discounts on your purchase.
Major Differences Between Teachable & Thinkific:
Here are some of the major differences between Teachable vs Thinkific:
1. Customer/Technical Support:
It is a well-known reality in the e-learning business that the overwhelming majority of LMS systems provide help only through online tutorials and support requests with response periods of up to 24 hours or more.
However, individuals who are not technologically skilled depend on the security of great customer care, particularly when confronted with revenue-impacting technical challenges.
Fortunately, both Teachable and Thinkific have a strong track record of customer service — a characteristic that is often reserved for the most expensive LMSs.
Even yet, when I hear about an LMS system that includes live help, my ears perk up since the most beneficial assistance is both individualized and immediate!
Thus, when it comes to customer/technical help, Teachable once again outperforms the competition thanks to its live chat support system! Significant caveat: to use this function, you must subscribe to their professional or business plan (the basic plan only offers email support).
2. Sales & Marketing:
Regardless of how excellent your course is, marketing and sales will ultimately decide its success. Thus, marketing and sales skills should not be overlooked while determining which platform is best for you.
Fortunately, both platform-based courses provide comprehensive answers in this area. Both provide robust e-commerce capabilities. However, there are several critical distinctions.
To begin, Teachable allows you to establish blogs to increase website traffic and grow your audience, but Thinkific does not. Second, and perhaps most crucially, Teachable’s checkout procedure is more straightforward and quick.
Any potential buyer may easily explore your website and purchase your goods by simply entering in their contact and payment information on one page.
However, for some reason, Thinkific needs your purchasers to register before they can see the payment page. As you may think, to increase client conversion rates, this procedure must be simplified and streamlined. Thus, Teachable has a substantial sales edge.
Additionally, Teachable, unlike Thinkific, has conversion components like testimonial pages and upsells! Therefore, if marketing and sales are at the top of your priority list, Teachable is a no-brainer.
3. Website Design & Customizability:
When comparing e-learning platforms, it’s critical to consider the style of your course/school website, which is determined by the available templates and the degree to which they may be customized.
While Teachable and Thinkific are not as complete as full-featured all-in-one platforms such as Kajabi, both enable you to host your courses on a professional-looking website utilizing a free subdomain or, with subscription plans, your unique domain name.
With the higher-priced options for each, you may also white-label them to include your personalized logo and branding. In any case, these platforms handle technical aspects like security and upkeep!
Nonetheless, there is no one-size-fits-all option for website design. The finest course development software provides you with the most customization options. Regrettably, Teachable is absent on this front.
Teachable features a single website theme. It does, however, allow you customization of your logo, background, colors, and font.
On the other hand, Thinkific has a site builder that includes a variety of themes and designs to fit your demands! Thus, Thinkific certainly has an advantage in this area.
This contrast in website modification is also evident in the page-building capabilities of Teachable vs Thinkific.
For instance, although both systems’ drag-and-drop page builders are relatively simple to use, Thinkific’s page editor also includes more native customization possibilities.
\This versatility is somewhat restricted with Teachable. However, unlike Thinkific, Teachable enables you to edit your websites using HTML/CSS code.
The main conclusion is that if personalized branding and design flexibility are important to you, Thinkific is the obvious victor.
4. Course Development & Interactivity:
At the end of the day, both platforms enable you to build courses that go beyond the fundamentals.
The fundamentals include the ability to upload a range of multimedia material (e.g., unrestricted video hosting), create lessons and organize them into modules, as well as create quizzes and evaluations that decide whether or not students obtain certificates of completion.
Having said that, Thinkific, unlike Teachable, allows you to build surveys and polls to conduct evaluations and collect feedback on your course.
While both systems provide thorough monitoring and statistics for courses, the opportunity to collect real-time feedback gives critical information for course modifications and enhancements.
There is also the critical issue of interactivity and learner engagement to consider. The worth of your course is not just determined by its content, but also by its delivery.
Students absorb knowledge more effectively when they are actively learning rather than passively absorbing it. That is why I believe Teachable has a minor edge in terms of instructional design.
For instance, you may build courses specifically to receive (or reject!) tasks and projects.
Finally, when it comes to creating courses, usability is critical — you want the course development process to be as simple as possible. Fortunately, both systems provide drag-and-drop material uploading and organization.
Certain navigational features, on the other hand, make Teachable more user-friendly. For instance, if you want to update a setting for many courses – say, the course expiry date – you can do it in Teachable on a single page.
On the other hand, with Thinkific, you’ll need to access the backend of each course separately. Teachable, on the whole, wins out in terms of operability, adaptability, and engagement.
Thinkific, on the other hand, provides far more extensive solutions for quizzes, surveys, and assessments, including randomized questions and native test answers.
Additionally, Thinkific earns points for enabling content import from popular course creation tools such as Articulate Storyline and Adobe Captivate.
Teachable vs Thinkific: Blogging & White Labeling
If you want to differentiate your online learning solution, you’ll need more than a variety of payment options and plugins. You need a strategy to demonstrate your worth upfront. That is why many businesses include blogging and branding into their company strategies.
Teachable’s platform enables you to build a blog, which means you can write blog posts, add text and photos, and have a very basic blog up and running in a matter of minutes.
However, a Teachable-based blog is not entirely functioning. It lacks the functionality and flexibility of a Squarespace or WordPress blog. Additionally, there is no way to alter anything on the site.
Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that Teachable does not seem to have any immediate plans to improve its blogging skills. Recently, we haven’t seen much indication that Teachable has updated the blog personalization choices.
The good news for white labeling is that both of these platforms enable you to sell digital items under your brand. This implies that when you develop membership sites or update your payment gateway, you can design something consistent with your brand.
Teachable.com and Thinkific both enable you to customize their websites by removing their branding and replacing it with your logos and content.
Even if you choose a custom domain, it’s important to remember that Teachable retains ownership of the signup pages.
When it comes to constructing a website that enables you to take advantage of content marketing and brand development tactics, Thinkific easily defeats Teachable.
There are more advanced site themes available, as well as a more complex page builder. This simplifies the process of developing your unique websites. You can also create sales pages and other marketing materials using the Teachable platform.
Teachable vs Thinkific: How Much Does It Cost?
When it comes to Teachable’s professional plus plans, you’re curious about the price structure, since these two platforms are always tweaking their features and updating their pricing appropriately.
While the prices listed in this post may not be the same at the time you read it, the firms, in general, are rather competitively priced.
Bear in mind that both platforms provide a free plan, which makes them ideal for testing. Teachable makes this choice much less obvious — you must browse to the bottom of the price page to see it, or you can just click here to begin creating a free account.
Thinkific’s free plan covers three courses, while all subscription plans include limitless courses and students. Thinkific’s entry-level subscription is $ 49 per month, while the company’s most popular professional package is $ 99 per month.
Save more on Teachable by checking out Teachable Discount & Coupon Codes here.
The most comprehensive and costly option is the business plan, which costs $ 499 per month. However, there are no transaction costs on any plan, even the free one!
Teachable’s free plan, on the other hand, charges a transaction fee of 10% of your selling price plus $ 1 for each registration.
When you upgrade to a premium plan, Teachable’s basic plan is somewhat less expensive than Thinkific’s at $ 39 per month but includes a 5 % transaction fee – which may wind up costing you more than Thinkific’s plan, depending on your pricing structure and number of sales.
The professional plan is $ 99 per month, while the business plan is $ 399 per month — and both have no transaction fees.
Take note that all of the price stated above is every month. Both providers provide comparable savings for paying for programs on an annual basis. To ensure you’re getting the most up-to-date price, make sure to visit each company’s pricing page.
FAQs On Teachable vs Thinkific
Is Teachable legit?
Teachable is a real business. Ankur Nagpal launched the company in 2014, and it now employs over 170 people to serve over 70,000-course authors.
Is Teachable good for online courses?
Teachable is a website that you should invest time on. Pros: It's certainly one of the best options for creating online courses. To begin, you have a plethora of integration choices with third-party software, which is advantageous since it eliminates the need to start from scratch in certain areas.
Is Teachable easy to use?
The site is straightforward to navigate. Even while Teachable enables website customization, you are not required to utilize it if you do not know how to code. This learning management system is simple to use.
Can I use Thinkific for free?
The free plan offered by Thinkific is rather substantial. On their free plan, you may have an infinite number of students and create up to three courses. This covers all hosting services for material such as videos. Additionally, you'll have access to their quizzes and surveys, as well as immediate access to any income you generate.
Is Thinkific user-friendly?
Thinkific is an easy-to-use platform for creating online courses that allow organizations complete control over their online course concept. The first and only app store dedicated to course building, straightforward drag-and-drop tools, and superior customer service are just a few of the key features.
Does Thinkific take a percentage?
No, Thinkific does not take a cut or commission on the sale of your course. Thinkific earns its revenue entirely via premium plans, which are detailed on their pricing page.
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Conclusion: Teachable vs Thinkific 2023
This is one of the closest comparisons we’ve done on this site, and it’s because when you compare Thinkific and Teachable, you’ll see that they have a lot in common. Both are pre-built website systems designed specifically for online courses.
You can interface with a variety of marketing tools, and payment processing is taken care of automatically. Additionally, domain names are supported, and you do not need to secure your hosting.
Having stated that the following are some recommendations:
- Thinkific’s template designs are excellent. Teachable offers a single default design that you may alter.
- Teachable and Thinkific both provide comparable functionality, but I prefer Thinkific’s connectors to Teachable’s sales landing pages.
- Teachable makes the most sense if your only concern is cost.
We’ll recommend Thinkific over Teachable.
That concludes the discussion! That concludes our comparison of Teachable vs Thinkific. Let us know if you have any queries or would want to share your experience with Thinkific or Teachable in the comments section below.
