​Teachable Pricing Plans​​​So you want to use an online course platform to host your new course, but you're not sure whether to use
Both platforms are excellent choices with similar features so it's hard to go wrong. But each option does have some pros and cons.
What are the main differences between
In this article we'll look in-depth at the similarities and differences between
- ​​You can also read my guide to the best online course platforms here
- And compare ​ Teachable vs WordPress here
- ​Or ​check out my beginners guide to ​How To Create An Online Course here
Table of Contents
Pricing And Features
Here's how Teachable and Thinkific compare on price. I'll be looking at the cost per month when you sign up for annual plans for both platforms. If you prefer to not lock in to an annual plan and pay up front, these costs will be a bit higher.
Teachable Pricing
Basic
Basic includes
All of our base features, plus:
$
​29
/mo
- 5% transaction fees
- Instant payouts
- 2 admin-level users
- Product support
- Course creator training
- Custom domain support
- Coupon codes
- Drip course content
- Integrated affiliate marketing
- Integrated email marketing
- Third-party integrations
Popular
​Professional
Professional includes
Everything in Basic, plus:
$
​​79
/mo
- No transaction fees
- Instant payouts
- 5 admin-level users
- Priority product support
- Graded quizzes
- Advanced theme customization
- Advanced reports
- Unbranded website
- Course completion certificates
​Business
Business includes
Everything in Professional, plus:
$
​399
/mo
- No transaction fees
- Instant payouts
- 100 admin-level users
- Priority product support
- Manual student imports
- Bulk student enrollments
- Custom user roles
I have a post all about Teachable's Pricing Plans, so check that out if you want to understand the differences between the options in more detail.
Teachable makes it extremely hard to find their free plan, but it does exist! (On their pricing page, it's a text link buried lower in the page, instead of being compared to their paid plans.)
All
1) Transaction fees
​One of the big differences between different tiers of
2) Basic vs. free
Teachable's basic plan has some features that the free plan is lacking. These include multiple admin users, course creator training, coupon codes, the ability to drip course content, and third-party integrations.
3) Professional vs. basic
Aside from eliminating transaction fees, the professional plan allows for 5 admin-level users instead of 2, advanced theme customization, advanced reports, an unbranded website, course completion certificates, and graded quizzes.
4) Business vs. professional
I wouldn't recommend anyone except large organizations such as schools use
- Check out my in depth review of Teachable here.
- Learn more about Learnworlds vs. Teachable online course platforms comparison.
​Thinkific Pricing
Basic
​Free features plus:
$
​39
/mo
- ​Unlimited courses & students
- Coupons
- Email students
- Drip (scheduled) content
- Affiliate reporting
- Custom domain
- Email integrations
- Zapier triggers
- Manual student enrollment & exports
Popular
​Pro
​Basic features plus:
$
​​79
/mo
- ​Unlimited courses & students
- 2 Site admin accounts
- 5 Course admins/authors
- Private & hidden courses
- Advanced course pricing options
- Memberships and bundles
- Certificates
- Advanced Customization
- Priority Support
Premier
​Pro features plus:
$
​399
/mo
- ​Unlimited courses & students
- 5 Site admin accounts
- 50 Course admins/authors
- Single sign on (SSO)
- Onboarding package
- Unlimited Growth Package
​FREE
​Test-drive Thinkific's core feature set for free.
€
​0
/mo
- 3 Courses
- Unlimited students
- Quizzes & surveys
- Content hosting
- Instant access to your funds
All Thinkific plans include full e-commerce, an easy drag and drop course builder, built-in SSL certificates, discussion forums, secure cloud hosting, and more. Like
None of Thinkific's plans charge additional transaction fees, which is nice if you're using a lower-tier plan. But like
1) Basic vs. free
Thinkific's basic plan allows for unlimited courses, whereas their free plan will only allow you to create three separate courses. You'll also need the basic plan to create coupons, email students, schedule or drip content, use a custom domain, and a few other features.
2) Pro vs. basic
The pro plan includes everything the basic one does, except that you can have 2 site admins, 5 course admins, private or hidden courses, completion certificates, and advanced customization.
You'll also need the pro plan if you intend to use any advanced course pricing options. That includes creating payment plans, subscriptions and memberships, or if you want to bundle multiple courses together for one price.
3) Premier vs. pro
Much like
There is one scenario where the premier package becomes more cost-effective than the pro package, and that's if you've got more than 3,100 students and want to use Thinkific's growth package.
4) The ​Growth package
Thinkific's pricing is almost identical to
Thinkific's growth package is required to white label your courses. That means removing Thinkific branding from your website and course. So if you don't pay for the growth package, you'll have another company's logos all over your course, even after paying for a $79 per month plan.
The growth package is also required to send bulk emails to reach multiple students at once. Compare to
You'll also need the growth package to integrate with third-party apps and software like Zapier, Infusionsoft, Brillium, or to use webhooks. As well as some other more technical items like having a public API.
Thinkific's growth package is free for your first 100 users. But once you go over your initial 100 users, they'll charge you an extra $10 per month for each additional 100 users. This maxes out at $499 per month.
The platform continues to take $0.10 per student per month, which can start really eating into your profit. Especially since you're still paying for any previous students that have lifetime access to one of your courses, but may never buy another product from you again.
So on the surface
- Read my in-depth Thinkific Review
- Learn more about Thinkific Pricing Plans
- Inspire form these Thinkific course Examples
- Compare Learnworlds vs. Thinkific, Podia vs. Thinkific, or Podia vs. Teachable
- Find 7 Best Thinkific Alternatives for your online courses
Customer Support
If you've read older reviews of Teachable, then you may have seen complaints about their customer service.
In the past this was true, and Thinkific was largely viewed as offering faster and better customer support than
But
Since then, they've reached a point where they now reply to most email support questions in under 1 business hour.
So if customer support is an important factor in which platform you go with, I don't think there is a significant difference between the support provided by Thinkific and
Both platforms also have Facebook groups where you can get advice and ask questions to other users of the platform and their staff. Both groups are very active.
I would say that
Plus once your course is up and running, hopefully you won't really need to use customer support for anything.
If you're interested in the uptime of both platforms, you can see their respective statuses at status.teachable.com and status.thinkific.com.
Right now it seems like
Both companies use a third-party company called Wistia to host their video, so there's no difference there. Neither company has had any issues with site security in the past.
Ease of Use
You'd likely find either
Either platform is far simpler than setting up a WordPress website, configuring an LMS plugin, and trying to host all of your course content yourself.
It's easy to create courses and add content on either platform. You can bulk upload your files, and then organize it using a simple drag and drop interface.
Personally I find
I know plenty of people who prefer Thinkific though. I'd agree that its menu design is a little more intuitive. You just work down each section of the menu and by the end your course will be fully set up and ready to launch.
I'd recommend watching a tutorial video about both platforms and see which configuration makes the most intuitive sense and is more appealing to you personally.
Course Delivery And Student Engagement
Both
Both allow you to use a wide range of mediums including video, text, audio, PDFs, and quizzes. Both offer completion certificates, allow you to schedule or "drip" content from their basic plans on up, and a number of other features where both platforms are on par.
So in many areas, course delivery for both
There are a few items that we can look at where the two platforms do differ though.
1) Uploading your content
Both platforms allow you to bulk upload content. However,
2) Overall course appearance
​ Example of Course created with
Maybe it's just personal preference, but I feel like
One big drawback is that Thinkific doesn't allow you to mix different types of content in a lesson. So for example, you can't put a video and then have text or a PDF file below it.
3) Surveys
Thinkific has built-in capabilities to use surveys as a way of collecting feedback from your students.
4) Quizzes
Both platforms offer basic quiz capabilities and even graded quizzes, but Thinkific has more capability when it comes to quizzes. This is since it integrates with a service called Brillium where you can produce more complex quizzes, exams, and assessments.
5) Course analytics
Thinkific provides detailed course analytics on all of their plans.
6) Mobile apps
Right now, only
But both platforms are fully mobile responsive, so students can take your courses from a tablet, phone, or computer. Both platforms also feature fully responsive admin dashboards so you can check in on your students and courses from your phone too.
7) Student discussions
Both platforms have built in discussion systems. However,
Site Design And Customization
Overall, I'd say Thinkific is more customizable than
Both platforms enable SSL by default on all pages of your site. It doesn't matter if you host your course on their domain or use your own.
1) Drag and drop site builder
Both platforms feature a visual drag and drop page builder. You can use it to design all of your pages including your homepage, sales page, and other pages on your site. Thinkific's page builder is a bit more powerful though. It lets you add custom elements.
2) Themes
Teachable doesn't really have themes. You can change the overall color of your theme and your font, but that's about all you have access to without adding custom CSS or HTML code.
Even common elements like the style of buttons that your site uses can't be easily changed from
3) Blogging
Teachable has some built in blogging capabilities. Thinkific doesn't have any blogging capabilities at all. Although I'll say that even
4) Advanced customization
Both platforms have advanced editors that allow you to customize your page using CSS and HTML code. I would say that Thinkific's is a bit more robust. For example, it allows you to import and export custom themes. If you're a developer or have a decent grasp of coding, either platform allows you to make completely customized websites.
- Check out these Teachable Course Examples of real-life businesses.
Sales And Marketing Features
Thinkific might have slightly better customization capabilities, but
1) Integration
Teachable integrates with MailChimp, Aweber, Infusionshoft, and Mixpanel right out of the box. Plus you can integrate with almost any other marketing tool using Zapier.
Thinkific also has Zapier integration, but lacks some features like not allowing you to automatically unenrol students.
2) Payouts
Both
However, in order to get instant payouts on
3) Bulk emails
In order to send bulk emails with Thinkific, you'll need to use their growth package which costs extra.
4) Conversion pixel support
Teachable supports tracking pixels, while Thinkific doesn't.
5) Course and bundle pricing
Teachable allows you to set multiple pricing options for both individual courses as well as bundles. For example, you can sell a bundle that costs $50 per month or $500 per year. Thinkific allows for multiple pricing on individual courses, but not on bundles.
Teachable also allows you to price your course in multiple currencies. If you have customers from all over the world, you might want to set specific prices in USD, CAD, GBP, EUR, and AUD. On Thinkific you can only charge in one currency.
6) Ease of checkout
Teachable has a one-step checkout. That means users make a payment first and then enter their information to create their account. This can lead to higher conversions.
Thinkific uses a traditional two-step checkout where users need to create an account first before they can make a payment. This can result in a noticeable percentage of users dropping off during the registration process before making a payment.
7) Check out page customization
With Thinkific, there's no simple way to customize your online course's checkout pages.
8) Upsells
Teachable lets you add 1-click upsells into your course. This can be a promo video or adding a coupon to your thank you page. Thinkific allows for 1-click upsells but doesn't let you add coupons or videos.
9) Affiliate marketing
Teachable gives a higher level of control over your affiliate marketing. You can define a custom cookie period, and
You can also allow an affiliate to only promote specific courses. In contrast, Thinkific doesn't allow you to restrict course permissions, use their affiliate features on an external sales page, or set a custom cookie duration.
10) EU VAT
If you're in Europe, keeping track of VAT is very important for your business.
Thinkific doesn't provide any support for adding VAT on top of your base course price. You'll need to keep track of sales and pay tax to the proper authorities out of your total revenue. If most of your students are from Europe, this can effectively cost you 15% of your revenue!
11) Coupon codes
Both platforms only allow you to create coupons on their basic paid plans or higher. You can create individual course coupons or sitewide coupons that apply to your entire course catalog on either platform.
12) Subscriptions and payment plans
​Teachable allows you to offer payment plans and subscriptions for your courses on any of their monthly plans. Thinkific only allows payment plans and other advanced course pricing options on their pro ($99/month) plan or higher.
13) Web hooks
Both platforms allow you to send information to third-party apps when your students take specific actions on your course.
There are a few areas where Thinkific is better when it comes to sales and marketing:
14) Course previews
Both platforms allow you to offer free course previews. However, only Thinkific has a built-in ability to collect emails in exchange for a free preview.
15) Course reviews
Thinkific has built-in support for gathering and displaying course reviews.
​Teachable and Thinkific ​Alternatives
Obviously, there are more than two online course platforms that you could use. However, for most people just getting started on a lower budget, I think
There are more complex platforms out there with more features, like Kajabi which brands itself as an all-in-one online business platform.
You'll get more marketing features like a range of different themes and landing page designs, as well as email automations and their Pipelines funnel builder.
However, it comes at a higher price point as well. The most basic Kajabi plan starts at $149 per month, so if you're on a tighter budget then
- ​For more info about Kajabi, check out my Kajabi Review​ here.
You could also decide to create your online course on your own WordPress website. This is more complicated as it involves you setting up and configuring plugins, as well as dealing with all the tech side of your course going forward.
However, it also gives more customization and features, plus it's usually cheaper in the long run too.
- Check out my guide to Creating An Online Course With WordPress here
- Compare the Best WordPress LMS Plugins here
​Are there any options to avoid?
​There are a couple of platforms I've see others use which are just not ​ideal for online courses.
For example, ​​I don't think Clickfunnels is good for an online course or membership site. They have a​lot of hype and aggressive marketing through an army of affiliates but it's just not built all that well for the purpose of online courses.
Also, some people have a website built on Wix, and then try to make a course there too - read ​my article here for more info on why it's a bad idea.
More About Teachable And Thinkific
Before you commit to either platform to host your online course, you might want to know about the size of both companies and if they'll both be around for a while.
While there is no guarantee about how either company will be performing in a decade (any company can be rocked by scandal or financial issues,) right now it appears that both
Teachable
Teachable is based in New York. The company was founded in October of 2013.
Their website gets 104,000 visitors from organic search traffic each month and has 18,000 backlinks (other domains referring to them.) The company has approximately 65 employees at the time of this article.
Teachable currently has 12,000 paying customers that have created over 125,000 courses.
Thinkific
Thinkific is based in Vancouver, Canada. The company was founded in 2012.
Their website gets 43,000 visitors from organic traffic each month and has about 9,300 backlinks (other domains referring to them.) Thinkific has around 70 employees.
Teachable has more than 25,000 course creators, but it doesn't disclose how many of those are free vs. paying customers.
So overall,
Final Recommendation
It should be clear that both
But personally, I lean toward recommending Teachable as my top pick. Where it really shines is its list of comprehensive sales and marketing features. When it comes to online courses, I think having flexible tools to promote and sell your courses is a critical part of any platform you use.
Not only is
To me,
Teachable and Thinkific are in a constant ongoing battle to one-up each other. As end users, we all benefit from this competition as both sides continue to add new features to try and beat out their competition. So let's hope this rivalry continues!
​How To Decide The Best Option For You
What I might want from an online course platform might be different than what you want.
When you're evaluating whether to choose
Then I'd rate them to determine how important they really are. Perhaps some are critical to running your online course, while others are just nice to have.
Once you've made a list of these features, I'd take a look and see which course offers the closest set of features compared to what you're looking for.
Most likely it will be a very close choice. Both platforms are great, and in the end it might just come down to personal preference.
One thing I'd urge you to do is to look at things long-term. Don't just evaluate the different online course platforms you have to choose from based upon what you're offering right now.
Think about how many different courses you may be offering 5 or 10 years down the road, as well as how many students you expect to have enrolled in total.
The features you might want when you're teaching thousands of people might differ from what you want when you only need to interact with a couple dozen students.
Once you do choose a platform, I'd plan to stick with it for the life of your course. It can be very difficult to migrate all of your course material and students from one platform to another, regardless of which platform you choose.
Also read more 7 best Teachable Alternatives before choosing you online course platform.
Overall both are great platforms though and you can't really go wrong with either. You can grow your online courses into a six-figure business with either one. So the important thing is just to pick one and get started!
If you absolutely can't decide, it's important to remember that both platforms offer a free version. So the best way to see which you prefer might simply be to sign up risk-free for both and give each one a fair try.
You don't have to actually launch ​your course on either, but you can experiment with the back-end and see how everything works from a course creator's point of view.
If you have any questions or you'd like to share your own experience using either
