Thinkific Vs Teachable: Which Is Better For You?

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So, are you trying to find the most suitable online learning platform for your business? Which is better for you, Thinkific or Teachable? 

What is really the difference between Thinkific and Teachable?

And how do you decide which one is the best for your business needs?

Lastly, are there any better and cheaper alternatives?

Here, I am going to share with you everything you need to know to help you make an informed decision.

What To Look For In Online Course Platform

Before you choose an online course platform, you should find out what exactly you need for your online education business. 

• How many courses do you have?
• How many instructors do you have?
• How are you teaching your courses? In which formats?
• How are you planning to deliver your courses (i.e. course player)? 
• Are you planning to create and sell membership sites?
• Are there assessments or tests for your students?
• Do you offer certification to your students?
• Are you planning to create a community for your students?
• Are your students mostly international or local? (If you have a lot of European students, then you will need to have payment options that allow you to charge VAT)
• What language are you launching your online courses in?

So, here are the important factors you need to consider before you commit to an online course platform:

• Course Builder
• Course Player
• Website Builder
• Security & Reliability of Platform
• Customer support
• Customer reviews
• Pricing

Now, let’s first take a close look at Thinkific and Teachable, and then we will compare them in great detail.

Thinkific 

Thinkific was founded by Greg Smith, a course creator himself who strives to build the best online course software for course creators.

It was founded on the belief that online entrepreneurs should be in complete control of all their data and content if they are to build a lasting online business. 

That’s why Thinkific allows you to make decisions about your course business based on what’s best for you and your students. 

It does so by making it very easy to customize every piece of the platform 

Online Course Builder

Thinkific has a very powerful online course builder which allows you to easily create and customize courses to match your brand.

With its drag-and-drop course builder, you can launch a course quickly with no coding required. 

What’s more, it supports all the following rich media to help you create the online course the way you want it:

• Video
• Text
• Downloads
• Quizzes
• Survey
• Discussions
• Typeform
• Google Docs
• Captivate
• Articulate

If your online course is video-based, there is no need to pay a third-party video hosting such as Vimeo because you can host 100% of your video content for free with Thinkific.

Course Player

For every course creator, it’s important that you have full control over the way your course is delivered.

With Thinkific, you can customize the way your course system runs with the click of a button. 

For example, if you want to set certain lessons as prerequisites before allowing students to move on to the next lessons, you can do that just by clicking the box next to “Making this lesson as a prerequisite” in the lessons settings.

Or if you want to set up a membership site and charge a monthly subscription fee for access to multiple online courses, you can do that as well with Thinkific. 

Here are some other examples of how you can customize your course player:

• Private and hidden courses
• Multiple instructors
• Drip schedule content
• Cohorts
• Evergreen and expiring content

Course Website Builder

Today, if you are selling online courses, it’s a MUST to set up a website for that.

Why?

First of all, it’s for branding purposes. 

Secondly, people want to find out who you are and what you can help them with before they even consider joining your course.

So, you must use your website to build trust and authority with your potential customers.  

And Thinkific knows exactly what you need to build and design a website to effectively sell your courses, after helping its course creators sell over $200 million in courses. 

You can choose over a wide range of website themes that are specifically designed for selling education, and all the website themes include pre-built instructor, curriculum, key learnings, and course review sections.

Thinkific Vs Teachable

So, which online course platform is better for you, Thinkific or Teachable?

Both Thinkific and Teachable offer the same essential tools that online course creators need to start and launch their online business:

• Easy drag and drop Course Builder
• Quizzes, certificates, course play options such as drip scheduled course
• Multiple languages
• Multiple instructors
• Integrated affiliate program 
• Coupon codes 
• Course bundles
• Built-in reporting tools
• Website builder
• Secure cloud hosting & built-in SSL certificates
• Custom domain
• Fully optimized for web and mobile
• e-Commerce with flexible payment options
• Instant payout

So, is there any difference between Thinkific and Teachable?

In terms of functionalities, Thinkific is much better than Teachable when it comes to course creation and course play.

For example, Thinkific allows you to import Captivate and Articulate files to the platform while Teachable does not.

Also, Thinkific provides more advanced quiz features.

For example, you can create randomized question banks and bulk import questions.

Also, Thinkific allows you to add an image as well as a video to your questions and the answer choices.

“Assignment” tool is another useful tool that is unique to Thinkific.

You can add “Assignment” to your course and accept or reject submission from your students. 

If you want to get feedback from your students, Thinkific allows you to do that within the platform while Teachable doesn’t.

In terms of course play, Thinkific is also more flexible and offer you many more options than Teachable. 

For example, students can search through the course by lesson titles on Thinkific platform. 

Also, Thinkific offers a full-screen mode for a better learning experience while Teachable doesn’t have.

When it comes to course compliance, you have much more flexibility with Thinkific. 

Because compliance is always enforced at a course level with Teachable while Thinkific allows you to customize it at a lesson level. 

For example, for video watching compliance, video completion % is fixed at 90% on Teachable platform.

With Thinkific, you can set your own video completion %.

Lastly, Thinkific gives you all the necessary tools you need to launch a membership site while Teachable does not.

With membership sites, you will need to do the following:

• Charge recurring subscription
• Ongoing training 
• Building a community 
• Emphasis on retention 

And Thinkific got it all covered. 

You can create additional private pages so that only students enrolled in the membership can gain access to those pages.

Also, you can set up a standalone community area which is very much like a “Facebook group”.

Finally, Thinkific allows you to create a free trial period followed by recurring payment for your membership site.

Lastly, if you are bulk selling your courses to organizations, you will find Thinkific’s “Group” feature very useful. 

It allows you to enroll multiple students at once and track their progress and generate reports.

In terms of sales and marketing, both Thinkific and Teachable offers you the standard tools to help you market and sell more courses:

• Create & manage affiliate program 
• Coupon codes
• Course bundles
• Integration with third-party email marketing software
• Advanced pricing options such as payment plans and subscription

Lastly, when it comes to website builder, Thinkific offers you a lot more options than Teachable.

In terms of website themes, Thinkific offers you three elegantly designed website themes.

Within each theme, you also have different styles for you to choose from.

When it comes to website customization, with Thinkific, you can find more than 20+section types that you can drag and drop to customize your website page.

Here are some examples of the section types:

• “Hero” section
• Social proof
• Bonus materials
• Pricing details
• FAQs
• Countdown timer
• Lead capture form
• Video
• Upsells

On the other hand, Teachable has only one standard website theme with limited customization options. 

In terms of pricing, both Thinkific and Teachable offers a free plan which allows you to test drive their platforms risk free.

Thinkific’s cheapest paid plan starts at $49/month (or $39/month if billed annually) while Teachable’s cheapest plan starts at $39/month (or $29/month if billed annually).

So, what are the key differences between these two basic plans?

Thinkific does not have any transaction fees at all while Teachable charges a 5% transaction fee for every course sold.

That’s why Teachable’s basic plan is priced a bit lower than Thinkific.

But, if you expect to generate at least a monthly revenue of $200 a month (which is very doable), then Thinkific’s basic would be a much better choice in terms of pricing because you can save a lot on transaction fees.

Another key difference is that Thinkific offers integrated affiliate marketing in the Basic Plan while Teachable only offers it in its Professional Plan.

If you already have a large audience and expect to generate quite a lot of sales during your course launch or you are planning to launch a membership site, then I recommend Thinkific’s Pro Plan.

In terms of pricing, Thinkific’s Pro Plan ($99/month or $79/month if billed annually) is much cheaper than Teachable’s ($119/month of $99/month).

In terms of features, with Thinkific, you get multiple authors/admins, more course play options, advanced course pricing options, Memberships and bundles, Certificates, Advanced Website Customization, Priority Support, Assignments, and Communities.

Teachable offers you more or less similar features but it doesn’t really measure up to Thinkific when it comes to course play, pricing options, website design customization, and building membership site.

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