“Knowledge is wealth” – this quote is not to be taken lightly in this internet world. You can learn everything from the internet. It has ease of access, unlimited resources, and allows you to learn at your own pace. Thus more and more people are preferring to learn online. So if you know anything that’s worth learning, then you have a means for a recurring income. In this article, we are discussing Teachable vs Thinkific.
The online learning industry is one of the fastest-growing fields. It has a prospect of growth with a margin of $240 billion by 2023. Teachable and Thinkific are in the battle of leading this field.
Teachable is an online learning platform that will help you sell your knowledge and experience to help others. It is a complete all-in-one platform that will take care of hosting, backup, security, etc. It has more than 100,000 creators with net revenue of $500 million.
Thinkific is also an online platform that will help you build, design, market, and sell your course online. It is also an all in one platform. It has more than 50,000 creators generating net revenue of $650 million.
You can see that the one is not less than the other. But in the end, you can only choose one. So in this article, we are going to see their pricing, unique features, user-friendliness, and drawbacks to help you make up your mind.
Teachable vs Thinkific
Course Creation
The first step of selling your courses online is course creation. And the ease of setting up the course is the first factor to consider while choosing a platform.
Both platforms let you create the course structure and upload your content accordingly with ease. They both have a clear and uncomplicated way of doing it.
Both platforms allow you to add complex content types. You can only add videos. You can add video and text files. Or you can add any number of complex content types like images, video, text, pdf, etc.
Both platforms allow you to upload bulk content. After that, you can drag and drop them into their respective lesson or chapter.
But the difference is in the ease of doing it. Teachable easily lets you bulk select content and change settings for preview, downloads, and publishing. On the other hand, you have to go to individual lessons to change the settings separately on Thinkific.
Thinkific has a unique feature of letting you hold live sessions like webinars, training, etc., for the benefit of the students. And they also allow you to schedule a meeting on Zoom to hold these live sessions. While Teachable allows you to hold one on one coaching sessions.
Another difference between Teachable vs Thinkific is the cloud import feature. Teachable allows you to import content from cloud storage like Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive. This is much faster and efficient.
Thinkific only allows you to import videos into the cloud library. Even then you cannot import other file types like media, pdf, etc. Because of this, you have to upload content individually.
When it comes to Course creation Teachable is more facilitated than Thinkific. Even though both the platforms have efficient course creators.
Engagement
It is very important for an online course to keep the students engaged. To make sure they are following and understanding a topic, you have to test them and assess their engagement.
Communication
Teachable has a commenting feature attached to every chapter or lecture. Here students can post their doubts, discuss the topic. The discussions are more topic limited yet equally effective.
Thinkific has a discussion thread which you can attach to the course. In it, students can post their doubts, read previous discussions, and connect with fellow students.
Quizzes and Assignments
A successful online course will test the students of their knowledge. And to do so, both platforms allow you to hold quizzes and accept assignments.
But Thinkific additionally allows you to create surveys, polls to get the feedback from the students.
Drip and Lock
Thinkific and Teachable allow you to send drip emails to the students with little reminders for chapter completion, deadline reminders, etc. They also allow the creators to lock the students’ progress until they have submitted their assignments or if they haven’t completed a lesson.
Completion Certificate
It is important to send an authentic certificate to students to indicate the course completion. Teachable has three certificate templates for you to choose from. On the other hand, Thinkific uses a third-party service to create its certificates.
Reporting
In order to analyze student engagement, both platforms have reporting tools. The tool will let you know the completion rate of a course, lessons completed rate, quiz attempt rate, reviews, and average course rating. You can also track new students and returning students, etc.
Payment Processing
Both platforms allow you to accept payments for your courses. But the key is how do they process it and deliver it to you.
Teachable has its own payment gateway and custom payment gateways. The Teachable payment gateway processes the fee through their account.
They have monthly payouts which mean you will only get paid at the end of each month. If you are located outside the US or Canada, it will take more than 30 to 60 days to process your payment.
The custom gateway allows you to accept money through PayPal and Stripe. But it is only available for professional and business plan members.
Teachable also allows you to automatically pay your authors and affiliates for 2% transaction fees.
And Teachable takes care of VAT and tax calculation for all students again for a 2% admin fee. It will automatically add the correct VAT amount to the course invoice.
Thinkific on the other hand allows you to accept payment through PayPal and Stripe. The payment is processed and transferred to your account immediately for no transaction fees. But you will have to handle paying your co-authors and affiliates.
Also, Thinkific doesn’t calculate VAT. But you can integrate your account with a third-party service that will automatically calculate VAT, GST, and sales taxes.
Site Design
Both Teachable and Thinkific allows you to design your own website for your courses.
Teachable and Thinkific offers you free hosting and SSL for all their paid plans. And they take care of all the backend processes like security, backup, updates, and maintenance. So there is no technical work you have to worry about.
They also give you a free subdomain for your website (yourwebsite.teachable.com or yourwebsite.thinkific.com). You can also white-label your website (yourwebsite.com) with a custom domain if you want.
On both websites, you can change the website text with your own text and also change the language of the website. This will allow you to teach regional courses too.
Website Themes
Thinkific has a theme library with three elegant website themes. Each theme has multiple styles. These themes and styles can be completely customized with your brand logo, font, and color.
In addition, it gives you access to a power editor. That is you can edit the source codes. Thus you can even import your own theme.
Teachable has a monotonous blueprint for all of its courses. The only customization you can do is add your brand name, logo, fonts, and colors for your website. Other than that they have a default layout. However, we must also remember that their site design is very professional and efficient.
Page Builder
A web page has many elements like the banner, header, footer, buttons, text, images, menu, etc. Both Teachable and Thinkific has a page builder that can add elements to their page. And then drag and drop them on various locations on the page.
Teachable has a pretty basic Page builder with a few sets of default elements that cannot be customized. And they don’t have basic elements like testimonials, author’s bio, etc. So it is very limited.
However, Thinkific has an excellent page builder. There are more than twenty elements you can add to a single page. You can display testimonials, FAQs, and any multimedia in Thinkific.
Customer Support
If you want a tension free experience, then you have to know that your platform has your back.
Teachable has an efficient email and telephone support that operates on all working days for all their subscribers. In addition to this, they also offer live chat support for their professional and business plan members.
They also provide training videos and webinar for all their paid members to help them learn the ropes.
Thinkific has 24*7 email and phone support all week long. They are quick to respond and have good knowledge support. They also have training courses free to all their users.
In addition both the platforms have private Facebook communities for their users to interact with each other.
Marketing and Sales
Once you have created your course, you have to do marketing to sell it to the students. You have to find the right audience and call to action to do that. And you need the right tools. Both the platforms offer some tools:
- To make the course available for a lifetime.
- To create subscriptions.
- To generate discounts and coupon codes.
- To offer courses in a bundle.
- To launch email marketing campaigns with the data collected from subscriptions.
- To launch affiliate marketing programs.
- To use Google analytics and course tracking.
In addition to this Teachable allows you to create and publish blogs. This will help you reach more traffic. Thinkific does not have a blogging feature.
Also, the Teachable has one step checkout where you select a course, enter your details, and just pay. But on Thinkific you have a two-step check out. First, you sign up and then you pay for the course.
Security Measures
An online platform has a lot of sensitive information like payment gateways, student details, course details, etc. These platforms must take required security measures to protect them from cyberattacks.
Teachable only deals with payment providers who are PCI level 1 compliant. This allows them to maintain complete payment data security. In addition, they provide a 2048 bit SSL certificate. That will ensure the subscribers that the link is secured to conduct online payment.
Teachable will automatically install all security updates and new features regarding cybersecurity. Thus they allow you the complete authority of your data.
Thinkific ensures cybersecurity by providing secure cloud hosting to safely store your data. The platform also provides a built-in SSL certificate to ensure a secure server to store the details. They also automatically update their security software to keep up the security.
They back up your content regularly to prevent any data loss. They also monitor the platform 24*7 for any security breach and are always prepared to act swiftly in case of a breach.
Thus when it comes to security both platforms offer absolute safety of your data. And Thinkific does offer extra security than Teachable.
Plans and Pricing
One of the main factors for choosing the right platform is to learn the best value provided at the best price.
Teachable has three pricing plans:
- The basic plan costs around $39/ month with a transaction fee of 5% for getting payments.
- The pro plan costs around $119/ month with no transaction fees.
- The business plan costs around $299/ month with no transaction fees.
You can save up-to 20% if the courses are billed annually.
Thinkific has four pricing plans:
- They have a free plan with limited access to their features.
- They have a basic plan that costs $39 per month with no transaction fees.
- They have a pro plan that costs $79 per month with amazing tools and no transaction fees.
- They have a premier plan that costs $399 per month with tools for large scale growth. This too doesn’t have transaction fees.
You can save 20% if the plans are billed annually.
In comparison, Teachable is a little more expensive than Thinkific when it comes to their basic and pro plans. And Thinkific is more expensive in the business plan.
Unique Features
Here we are going to compare signature features that are unique to Teachable and Thinkific in order to get a better insight into their functionality.
The unique features of Thinkific are:
- They have zero transaction fees.
- They have a free plan for users to get the hang of their services.
- They have instant payout using payment gateways like PayPal and Stripe.
- They allow you to customize and create an attractive website. They even have website themes you can select from.
- They allow you to embed their course directly to blogs and social media for promotions.
- You can schedule and conduct a live class or webinar with Zoom.
- You can add a community with a course for students to interact with each other.
- They have advanced features like polls and surveys.
- It offers secure cloud hosting, automatic backups, automatic security updates, SSL certificate for the secure server.
The unique features of Teachable are:
- They have an easy to navigate interface.
- They have a blogging feature that Thinkific does not have.
- They have an automatic VAT tax calculation feature.
- They can automatically pay affiliates during payment processing.
- You can directly upload content from cloud storage like Google Drive, DropBox, One drive, etc.
- They have live chat support for their premium subscribers.
Drawbacks
While there are the best features, there are also drawbacks. It is important to get to know the drawbacks and decide what drawbacks you can afford and those you cannot.
The drawbacks of Thinkific are:
- They don’t handle tax and affiliate payouts. This means you have to use third-party users to handle your tax and that may cost you. Also, you have to take care of paying your co-authors and affiliates by yourself.
- A little less user-friendly than Teachable. Teachable may have fewer features than Thinkific. But it is designed with easy navigation and is more user friendly. With Thinkific you have to put in a little more effort.
- You cannot upload files and media from cloud storage.
The drawbacks of Teachable are:
- They charge transaction fees. Unless you are making bulk sales, these small transaction fees will cut into your profit.
- They don’t have an instant payout option. Payouts are delayed by 30 to 60 days. This waiting for payment is very outdated in this fast world.
- You cannot customize the website layout. You get stuck with a monotonous website.
- Their page builder has a limited function. So you can only add elements and features that are already available.
Conclusion
When it comes to online course platforms, it’s not an easy feat to decide between Teachable and Thinkific. If Teachable is the traditional, well-oiled platform, then Thinkific is the modern revolution filled with possibilities.
Teachable is more user-friendly, budget-friendly. They have optimized sales and marketing features like blogs, one step checkout, highlighting their testimonials and upsells. And they have automated tax calculation and affiliate payments.
Teachable is suitable for people who want a well automated online course platform. And those who have less regard for the costs and more concerned with marketing and sales. They will have a better conversion rate with Teachable.
Thinkific has advanced quizzing features, better security. And mainly it has a highly customizable interface. Their free plan is a magnet for new users to try them out. If you want a high end online course platform then Thinkific is your way to go.
Thinkific is suitable for people whose major concerns are better features, better safety, instant payouts, and an attractive interface. Thinkific has more features than Teachable. While Teachable has better-optimized marketing and sales tools.
