Top Thinkific Alternatives, Competitors & Similar Software (2023)
Thinkfic is an online tool that allows you to create your own courses, without worrying about the technical details.
What is Thinkfic?
Thinkfic is a course creation platform that allows you to create courses that engage learners. You can create digital course experiences tailored to your audience, whether consultants, authors, speakers, trainers, teachers, coaches, association executives or companies of any size.
Thinkfic alternatives: Top reasons you need them
- The layout isn't as clean and modern as others.
- The website you build for your business through their LMS software would publish to the public immediately as you save the changes.
- Thinkific is slightly more expensive, and the pricing model is confusing.
- Most options are available with higher-priced plans. The biggest negative with the platform is that it offers ZERO SECURITY. A paid subscriber can access the content URL using a simple "View HTML" that can share with anyone.
Best Thinkific Alternatives
Graphy Community Platform
Mighty Networks
Podia
Slack
Passion
Teachable
LearnWorlds
LearnDash
SamCart Courses
Ruzuku
WordPress
MemberPress
Kajabi
PeepSo
Graphy Community Platform
Graphy Community Platform is an ultimate community platform that helps you build a robust community where you can sell your courses and host live events, webinars, and live streams. It offers the best community features through which you can moderate, manage, and monetize your community all in one place - with your brand appearance, under your custom domain. Graphy Community Platform can also generate a whitelabelled mobile app and list it on the Play Store/App Store.
Features
Pros
- Available across in multiple formats & avatars; be it a web app under your domain, a native whitelabeled app on Android and iOS, integrations within your existing app or API-based integrations.
- Auto Scaling across platforms - Scenes uses powerful auto-scaling technology to keep your community blazing fast no matter how many visitors you have across all devices. They scale as you scale.
- The only platform that enables custom CSS for top to bottom granular-level user interface customization. You can make your community look close to your app/website's UI.
- A built-in coin system lets you incentivize your community members to engage more.
- Live audio-video features for your events, webinars and live classes where all your members can get notified and RSVP.
Cons
- You will lose some members during the platform migration process.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks allows businesses of any size to create online courses, mobile apps, and communities. In addition, one can create membership sites to offer paid courses, paid groups, or bundles of courses and groups.
Mighty Networks Features
- It offers platform capabilities that scale as your community scales, allowing a seamless experience for you and your community members.
- White-label and customize your community under your domain and replicate your brand aesthetics.
- It has many LMS features that let educators and course-creators manage and run their online courses in one place.
Mighty Networks Pricing
- Starts at $39/mo.
- A 14-day free trial is available.
Pros
- It offers good social engagement features like live audio/video and chat that lets your members engage with each other.
- It comes with a native mobile app that is fully Whitelabeled (available when you buy the Mighty Pro plan)
- It has a very user-friendly UI on the web that replicates Facebook groups on some level.
Cons
- Not very customizable when it comes to their user-interface. Community owners have to work within a relatively rigid set of constraints.
- At $30,000, the native mobile app is the most expensive compared to other alternatives.
- The course creation experience has been said to be 'cumbersome' by many of their paid customers.
Podia
Podia is a platform that lets you build a free, no-code website and sell your online courses. With Podia, you can create a business from anywhere in the world with zero fees or start-up costs.
Podia Features
- Connect your audience and your content – You can host an online community in the same place that your audience uses your digital products.
- Community – In Podia, you can create a community that works like a forum or Slack. The design is clean, and the workflow is simple.
- Course Features – Using Podia, you can quickly create lessons and quizzes.
Podia Pricing
- Paid Plans start at $39/month.
- It has a free version.
Pros
- You can offer your audience webinars using YouTube Live and Zoom with Podia.
- If you want your website to look professional and run smoothly, you do not need to be tech-savvy or have coding knowledge.
- You can connect your payments, scheduling, and sales pages all in one place in minutes with Podia.
Cons
- Podia does not have a mobile app if you want to build courses that will be accessible on mobile for your members.
- Podia doesn't offer in-depth lesson reports if you're interested in knowing how impressive your course is. Only some basic information about student progress is provided.
- To assess your students more effectively, Podia lacks open-ended questions. The use of multiple choice questions is not suitable for all courses.
Slack
Slack is where workplace communication happens. As a tool designed for collaborative workflow, Slack allows team members to put forward their ideas or concerns and get them heard whenever they want. It's a one-stop shop for work-chat that integrates with typical web applications like Google Drive and Dropbox.
Slack Features
- The thread features allow effective communication between team members by tracking every new conversation.
- Create public and private channels to allow for team-based collaboration and communication.
- Supports all kinds of rich-text formats and media, including images, GIFS, file uploads, bulletin and numbering and more.
Slack Pricing
- Paid Plans start at $8.75 per user/mo.
- The free Plan includes access to 10,000 recent messages, ten integrations with other apps, and 1:1 voice and video calls.
Pros
- Works best for improving workplace communication and efficiency between teams.
- Extremely intuitive interface, rich with features with plenty of integrations with other products.
- Works seamlessly for remote teams all around the world.
Cons
- Slack is a great workplace tool but nothing close to a community-building platform. The entire tool is optimized to improve collaboration over email.
- The paid Plan is expensive for community builders, starting at $8.75 per user monthly. That is ~$1000 if you have a community of 100 members.
- No gamification tools to incentivize your community and no ability to white-label your community in terms of domain, branding and appearance.
Passion
Passion.io is an easy way to create a mobile learning platform for your online courses. You don't need any coding experience to create a fully-customizable learning ecosystem. Passion.io features pre-built tools like video, gamification and social sharing that are guaranteed to grow your community of users very quickly!
Passion.io Features
- Offers seamless orders & subscription plans.
- Provides easy payments and payout.
- Provides a hassle-free drag and drop option.
Pros
- Build interactive courses with pre-built templates or design your own from scratch.
- Simple to use interface.
- No coding or technical worries.
Cons
- Not affordable for everyone.
- Due to lots of features, it may take some time to be familiar with Passion.io
- The drip content feature is not available in the Pro plan.
Teachable
Teachable is a popular online course platform that allows anyone to create, host and sell their pre-recorded online courses. So if you have your videos recorded & ready, you can create an online course within half an hour without being tech-savvy.
Teachable Features
- Drag and drop builder - Building courses on Teachable can get slightly confusing if you try to do it all yourself. But thankfully, if you follow their tutorials, it becomes easy.
- Quizzes - You can add multiple choice questions alongside (or after) your lectures - this helps your students assess their learning progress.
- Promotional offers - You can create coupon codes. This is a good way to run discounts and increase sales on your courses.
Teachable Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month.
- Teachable has free trial.
Pros
- Teachable is affordable even on the paid plans, making it accessible to everyone.
- Teachable is easy to start with - it best suits beginners to advanced-level users.
- You can sell a variety of add-ons alongside courses like ebooks and services and even set up workshops and conferences.
Cons
- Pay-out options are a problem for customers from outside of the USA.
- Teachable doesn't include email marketing, community management, or landing page software.
- Teachable does not offer gamification or live learning which can make your courses boring and not up to the mark, as per 2023 standards (where cohort-based courses are the norm).
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is a learning management system that lets course creators create online courses. Using LearnWorlds, you can create student communities and sell online courses.
LearnWorlds Features
- Offers gamification tools such as badges so that you can acknowledge efforts & promote good behaviour.
- In-built shop for highlighting the details of your courses and selling them all in one place.
- A broad range of assessment tools to help the educator & the students measure the learning progress.
LearnWorlds Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $24/month (billed annually).
- LearnWorlds offers a free 30-day trial.
Pros
- You can create student communities in LearnWorlds so that your members can share their experiences, ideas, and learnings.
- Students can interact with your course content through LearnWorlds' course builder and enjoy a blissful learning experience.
- LearnWorld's live online classes encourage your students to have interactive sessions and discussions among each other.
Cons
- LearnWorld's interface is difficult to understand, and there are no tutorials that can help you get started.
- Regarding email management and funnel-building tools, LearnWorlds does not offer as many options.
- In LearnWorld, users complain that many features do not work when courses are published, making the learning experience less seamless.
- With LearnWorlds, you need too many integrations and more management, distracting you from your business activities.
LearnDash
LearnDash is a platform for creating course websites using WordPress. In addition, LearnDash offers great LMS features for course instructors, educators, and knowledge creators.
LearnDash Features
- The drag & drop course builder helps course creators create courses easily and quickly.
- It offers gamification tools like badges and certificates - Award certificates based on quiz results and course completions.
- It has a built-in notification feature that prevents your students from missing any necessary updates.
LearnDash Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $199/year.
- No free trials available.
Pros
- The video preview feature gives students a sneak peek into video lessons and makes the course more engaging.
- It offers a flexible quiz builder that makes creating QnAs easy.
- Provides gamification tools that help in engaging your members in your courses.
Cons
- Its URL structure is highly complicated, making SEO difficult. There is no way to shorten it.
- It takes some time to get used to all the new features. The learning curve is steep.
- It runs only on WordPress, which means you'll need to know all WordPress functionalities.
SamCart Courses
SamCart courses is an e-commerce platform for creators. It allows you to create and sell courses, offers, templates and digital products on a single platform. You have complete control over your pricing, content, and branding.
Samcart Courses Features
- Drag & Drop Builder - You can add anything you want to showcase about your product. No coding experience is required to design pages.
- Pre-Designed Templates - You can easily create an attractive website with customizable templates to help you start selling.
- Conversion Rate Optimization - Optimization can be applied to every page on your site, making it easier to improve conversion rates.
SamCart Courses Pricing
- Pricing starts at $49/month.
- SamCart courses offer free trials.
Pros
- The affiliate management setup is very simple and easy to use. Each product has an affiliates option that can be enabled or disabled.
- Building sales pages and the checkout process for the customer are convenient and easy.
- You can easily add Google Pay and Apple Pay to the check-out flow, making it easier for your customers to pay.
Cons
- Due to SamCart's lack of an autoresponder, you cannot use your lists to send reminders, so the entire email process must be handled manually.
- SamCart's customer service is lacking, leaving customers with unanswered questions.
- Email marketing and website builders will require you to utilize multiple tools, which will take your time and effort.
Ruzuku
Ruzuku is an online portal where students from across the globe can learn by taking courses. The website enables education institutions to upload courses, track student performance and more efficiently manage monetary transactions which lead to a highly effective student-professor interaction as well as better ranking for prestigious institutions.
Ruzuku Features
- It helps you set up and configure different types of course content- including images, videos, quizzes, lists, etc- without coding anything at all.
- Course Analytics – As an online tutor, you should be able to track your students as they progress through the courses.
- A Flexible Subscription System – You could choose to have your subscription bill coming in every month or on an annual basis.
Pros
- Students can mark each activity as “complete”, and track their own progress.
- It provides a straightforward system of setting up your online courses and configuring the accompanying options. You could, for instance, select a relevant payment framework for your students, and then determine an ideal price for each course.
- You can rely on Ruzuku to handle not only the enrolment process but also the corresponding payments. All the students will be charged accordingly based on their selections and your precise course pricing schedule.
Cons
- You cannot offer a free trial of your course.
- There is no place to promote active, continuous and open discussion. It does not have a central forum.
- Can suffer from feature bloat(result of packing too many features and functionalities into a product).
WordPress
WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) which enables you to create your own website. Whether it's a personal blog or a corporate website, WordPress can be used for any purpose. Bloggers, digital agencies and web developers use WordPress as their foundation for building custom websites.
Wordpress Features
- Customizable Templates - Provides templates that are editable and have a lot of customization options. There are templates for almost all types of web pages.
- SEO Management - SEO optimization can help you target the right search queries to generate interested customers.
- Drag & Drop - Making a website or product can be overwhelming for new designers. But there are some ways to make it easier, with drag and drop options or even pre-made templates.
Pros
- Open Source system There are millions of integrations to add further functionalities, such an ecommerce, a book-system, etc. Easy to install, to manage and widely known in terms of having a community capable to support any wonder if any appears.
- The customization features of WordPress, and how the tool can be successfully deployed to give every author a visual toolbox to create a digital collage that corresponds aesthetically or thematically with their intended vision.
- WordPress is constantly updated with the latest security features so your site remains safe from attack
Cons
- WordPress is difficult to manage and can be complicated to use.
- WordPress is not as versatile as other options, such as Drupal or Joomla, and may not have all the features you need.
- There are complex functionalities for you to get where you want to be will require a lot of tech know-how.
MemberPress
MemberPress is the easiest and most powerful WordPress membership plugin available today. It lets you quickly and easily set up a membership website, sell access to premium content or files, charge recurring fees, and so much more. And it's all included right in your WordPress dashboard!
MemberPress Features
- Power of WordPress - MemberPress’ paywall feature is a built-in WordPress capability that gives you extraordinary power over what content or products you wish to make available behind your paywall.
- MemberPress is a wordpress forum plugin that allows you to easily build password protected forums with the same quality software and support as WordPress.
- MemberPress is great at giving you control over what content you’re users can see. You can decide and customize who can access your site based on content restrictions set within MemberPress and fine-tune your WordPress site in so many different ways.
Pros
- The access restrictions is a great feature, wherein you can select any content that you want to block.
- It is flexible in deep integration with WordPress. It makes it very easy to brand and pull into their API to meet your needs.
- Its 2-in-1 feature of Course and Membership plugin for WordPress is convenient for setting up course sites.
Cons
- Expensive, no Lifetime Option.
- Interface is not the friendliest.
- Integrations should be built inside the plugin.
Kajabi
Kajabi is a platform that enables educators to run their online courses and manage their students in one place. Moreover, Kajabi also offers a mobile app to allow your users to access courses on the go (however, it is not a native white-label app)
Kajabi Features
- No bandwidth or storage restrictions - Upload all of your videos, photos, and other files without worrying about space or bandwidth limitations.
- Fully-fledged LMS capabilities let you run your courses and manage your students seamlessly.
- Integrated checkout - Accept payments from anywhere in the world using Stripe or PayPal and give instant access to your content behind a paywall.
Kajabi Pricing
- Starting Price is $119/month.
- Kajabi offers a 14-Day free trial.
Pros
- Kajabi has rich-text and media features that let you upload all kinds of content into your online content library.
- You can track lesson progress, view grades, and get detailed analytics on how well students digest your content.
- Kajabi offers your prospective students free trials to taste your content before rolling them over to become paid customers.
Cons
- Kajabi is one of the most expensive solutions out there when it comes to LMS + community platforms.
- It lacks good customer support and offers minimal options to customize your course community.
- You have no native branded mobile app; your students will have to download the Kajabi app to access your content.
PeepSo
The PeepSO plugin is an easy way to add a social network or an online community to your WordPress site. It is extremely light, free and it looks great on any device. You can connect with your friends, share photos, videos and much more.
Peepso Features
- You can automatically create a corresponding Post on Community Stream when a new blog post is published.
- WordPress blog posts can be reacted on and commented on. Comments and reactions are synced with the corresponding community posts.
- Provides live On-site and Email Notifications.
Pros
- Dashboard with an Overview of Your Community and statistics.
- Configure your entire community navigation from one place.
- Built-in security configuration, preventing brute force attacks and more.
Cons
- Peepso expect customers to go into a testing-phase to find errors that the plugin causes the site.
- It is not user-friendly.
- Plugins are buggy.
Disclaimer: To curate the pros, cons and reviews - we mine the internet for customer references regarding the said software. Some of our sources include Reddit, Product Hunt, Twitter & Quora (and sites like G2 & Capterra).
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