Thinkific vs. Teachable: Which is Best? [Guide 2024]

In this post, I'm going to do a thorough Thinkific vs. Teachable comparison.

Having used both Thinkific and Teachable to launch my online courses in recent years, my aim is to help you choose the right online course platform.

This post is not a of what's already out there, it's drawd from my experiences with these platforms.

So if you're ready to launch your online course and do it right the first time, should you choose Thinkific or Teachable? That's exactly what you're going to find out.

  1. Thinkific Vs. Teachable At A Glance
  2. Who Is Thinkific Best For? Who Is Teachable Best For?
  3. A Close Look At The Features Of Thinkific and Teachable
  4. Thinkific Vs. Teachable – Pros And Cons
  5. Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?
  6. What Do Thinkific And Teachable Look Like Inside?
  7. – Which Is Better: Thinkific Or Teachable?
  8. Thinkific Vs. Teachable – FAQ

Let's begin.

Thinkific Vs. Teachable At A Glance

Let's quickly glance through the features of both Thinkific and Teachable and see where they stack up, and which one is better.

Industry Leader
Teachable is currently the industry leader. While Thinkific has 50,000+ course creators, Teachable has 100,000+ creators who have sold $500+ million in online courses.

9.0 / 10

9.5 / 10

Usefulness Of Features
Both Thinkific and Teachable have amazing features for creating, pricing, and launching online courses.

9.0 / 10

9.0 / 10

Ease Of Use
Both Thinkific and Teachable are quite easy-to-use online course platforms, with drag-and-drop visual course builders.

9.0 / 10

9.0 / 10

Customer Support
Thinkific and Teachable offer phone and support. Teachable support isn't available for free customers, while Thinkific offers support for every customer.

9.0 / 10

8.0 / 10

Goldmine For Money
Thinkific offers more value for money with its 1v1 onboarding, migration support, and assigning account managers. Teachable lacks this additional feature.

9.5 / 10

8.0 / 10

When you really think about it Winner
Teachable wins for having a free plan to test drive the features first. Teachable's Basic costs $59/month, and Thinkific's Basic costs $49/month.

8.5 / 10

9.5 / 10

Thinkific and Teachable are the biggest names in the online course creation space. If you're wondering how they are different, and which course platform is best for you, here's what I found out:

Who Is Thinkific Best For? Who Is Teachable Best For?

Thinkific is best suited for authors, coaches, speakers, online entrepreneurs, and other subject matter experts who want to create, price, and publish their online courses to the industry. 

Mid-size businesses looking adding their reach and scale their companies with useful education can also benefit from Thinkific.

Teachable has a broader audience. The platform is designed for individuals (mostly beginners) who want to teach what they know online and make extra money. 

These individuals may not have an existing business — but as long as they're passionate about their expertise, Teachable is fine.

A Close Look At The Features Of Thinkific and Teachable

How does the Thinkific online course platform compare with Teachable? Let's take a closer look at the core features.

Features

Thinkific

Teachable

Visual Drag-and-Drop Course Builder
Thinkific and Teachable have easy Visual drag-and-drop Course builders you'll love love

YES

YES

Student enrollments
Both Thinkific and Teachable allow an unlimited number of students to enroll in any course or coaching class

YES

YES

Quizzes & Surveys
Thinkific offers more reliable quizzes and surveys, it allows multiple tracked attempts, Teachable offers limited quizzes with optional grading and no upload allowed

YES

YES

Private & Hidden Courses
Thinkific and Teachable allow course creators to protect their online courses and hide them from unauthorized students

YES

YES

Slideshows/Presentations
Course creators can create voice-over slide presentations on Thinkific, but Teachable lacks this feature

YES

NO

E-commerce Tools
Both Thinkific and Teachable have reliable eCommerce features to help course creators scale their businesses.

YES

YES

Email Integrations
Both Thinkific and Teachable make it easy for Course creators can merge with their email provider (e.g., ConvertKit, MailChimp)

YES

YES

Instant Payouts
Thinkific and Teachable instantly payout course earnings to creators. There's no payment delay in all plans – only on the Teachable Basic plan.

YES

YES

Course certificates

Students are awarded certificates for completing their courses on both platforms

YES

YES

WordPress plugin
Thinkific offers a WordPress plugin that allows users to turn Research Reports into course content and insert checkout links. Teachable lacks this feature.

YES

NO

Features Of Thinkific

image11Thinkific is built from the ground up with some of the best features for creating and launching a profitable online course. Here, we'll pay attention to the key functionalities that you'll need: 

#1 Easy Drag and Drop Course Builder

One of the defining key features of Thinkific is the visual drag-and-drop course builder. It's so easy to use, even if you're new to website builders.

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This visual builder makes it easy to build your course from the ground up. If you choose to use one of the premade themes, it gets even better. You simply click a text area, change text and , and save.

With the drag-and-drop builder, it's fun to upload videos, build quizzes, and organize all your resources in one place. 

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You can even set pricing, schedule lessons, and automate every aspect of your online course curriculum. No coding is required!

You can also customize how your course looks, feels, and runs. If you don't want all your students to access your courses, you can set private and hidden courses. 

Other things you can do with the course builder include:

  • Assign multiple instructors
  • Drip schedule content
  • Create prerequisite lessons
  • Cohorts
  • Manage evergreen and expiring content
  • Create membership sites 

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Thinkific has a more instinctive drag-and-drop visual builder than Teachable. There are plenty of pre-built themes you can choose from and customize to suit your branding. But if you choose to build a course page or website from scratch, it's as simple as dragging and dropping default texts, images, and videos. Then customize as you see fit. 

#2 Build a Complete Website

When you're ready to sell your online courses, you need a professional website. Thinkific makes it easy to build and design a full-blown website to effectively market your courses.

The drag-and-drop website builder makes it extremely easy. Once you log in to your Thinkific account, click the “DESIGN YOUR SITE” tab at the left to begin:

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You can also choose a stunning theme from the library that best suits your course topic, brand, or culture. Or customize the theme as you see fit to look exactly the way you want.

Your website will be equipped with a pre-built instructor, key learnings, course review sections, curriculum, and more. Add, delete, or rearrange sections of your course pages and curriculum to suit modern learning patterns.

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A stunning website isn't enough. You need to also use your own custom domain. Thinkific gives you full access to HTML and CSS. If you're a beginner, Thinkific was built for you, yet still, website developers can do a lot at the backend as well.

#3 Market and Sell Your Online Courses

Thinkific has a ton of features for marketing and selling your online courses. 

From flexible pricing options that will fit the size and style of your business to membership subscriptions, you can package your courses yet still you want and give students more options to pay. 

Remember that delivering the best experiences is the most important aspect of your online course business. Put the customers first and you'll build a thriving business.

Additional sales tools include coupons and promotional features. You can also add Upsells right on the ‘thank you page,' custom first-month payments, free trials, and a ton of other features to help drive and lift sales. You can accept all credit cards in over 100 currencies. 

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More so, there's no need to get worried about payment as you'll get paid instantly when you sell through Thinkific.

Additional ways Thinkific helps you market and sell your online courses:

  • Host an affiliate program and reward affiliates for promoting your courses
  • Incentivize your partners with direct tracking and personalized commission rates
  • Easily merge your email marketing provider to send promotional emails to students

And so on.

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Thinkific offers more reliable marketing tools with the latest technology. If you don't want to peer into new marketing tools, Teachable is your best bet. You can lift your course sales and get more students to enroll in your courses by utilizing built-in marketing tools.

#4 Student Support and Experience

Creating the best experiences for students is the #1 part of a successful and thriving course business. 

Thinkific allows course creators to teach more effectively using features built to help learners have a memorable experience and have more success. This includes aim setting, customized learning environments, dedicated tracking, and course landing pages.

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Course creators can even make the learning experience more rewarding and enjoyable by offering unlimited replays of course materials, and language controls, and exploiting clear progress indicators.

Another important aspect of driving student support and celebrating their wins is by offering completion certificates and customized completion pages.  

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There's more:

  • Easily track progress and keep students inspired all day long.
  • Encourage students with automated check-ins.
  • Streamline transmissions using automated progress and reminder emails that you can personalize to appeal to your students as well as your brand.

#5 Online Course Security Tools

Thinkific stands tall above its competitors by offering iron-clad security tools and features. This ensures that your content and course data are kept safe. 

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Here are some of the security tools from Thinkific:

  • Secure cloud hosting & daily backups: This is reliable, secure, and safe cloud hosting, with SSL certificates built-in to keep your data in good shape.
  • 99.9% uptime & 24/7 monitoring: Your site/course pages will always be available working optimally whenever your students access it. No outages.
  • Instant access to updates: You don't have to worry about missing a version. You get automatic updates, with instant access to all of the latest features.

Features Of Teachable

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I love the tools and features that Teachable offers course creators. 

If you're looking to create your online course and start your entrepreneurial path, here are the key features that bring Teachable to the spotlight: 

#1. Create and Customize Your Online School

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Teachable is truly the industry leader when it comes to creating and launching an online course. Its drag-and-drop course builder is instinctive to use. 

Once you log in to Teachable, name your school to begin. You can always change it later.

If you don't want to create a new course from scratch, you can customize a pre-designed theme. You can also use your own custom domain.  

With the Power editor (for developers), it's pretty easy to create appropriate, multimedia lectures, coaching sessions, and videos. If you want your online course to be instinctive and user-friendly, Teachable is right for the taking. 

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You can host videos and merge with email marketing providers such as Constant Contact, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp, and ConvertKit. 

This helps you kickstart your marketing emails and drip (schedule) course content to your students via email.

#2 Online School Learning Experience Features

Teachable is powerful. It allows course creators to create unlimited courses, enroll an unlimited number of students on all plans, and give students access to peerless experiences.

Teachable gives you access to unlimited video bandwidth, unlimited courses, and coaching services. 

Notifications: This is an important feature in Teachable. In the Notifications settings section, course creators can control enrollment and set common notifications. 

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Whatever your choice, you may adjust your setting to get notified when a new student joins your school, enrolls for your course, leaves a comment, or when someone engages with your comments on the thread.

#3 Talk to Your Students Live

With Teachable, course creators are in good hands. They can talk to their students live: Run one-on-one sessions using the easy-to-build milestone, call hosting, as well as the task features.

  • Schedule and host: If you're a consultant or coach, Teachable makes it easy to smoothly unified lead clients from booking to intake to scheduling and learning when you merge with Calendly.

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  • Create success stories: Course creators can tap into the rich deposits of success stories and testimonials. To encourage students to participate, creators can design fun quizzes and award course completion certificates to graduating students. They can also ensure necessary change with course compliance controls.

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With Teachable, course creators can enjoy interacting and appropriate with their students. The built-in tools such as quizzes, course certificates, and even live chat are designed to create a memorable experience for students. If you want that engrossing experience with your students, Teachable is the way to go.

#4 Teachable Online Course Security 

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Just like Thinkific, Teachable takes your business seriously. You don't want to turn your passion into an online course, only to have it hijacked or hacked by some folks. 

Teachable has a full crop of experienced fraud teams on staff to engage and ward off bad guys who may be a threat to your online course content and student data.

As a course , you own your content and student data. It doesn't belong to Teachable. That's why you get smooth hosting capabilities, with 24/7 monitoring for outages, so that you don't get knocked off. 

This reliable hosting comes with instant upgrades — no need to wait around for the latest features. It uses a 2048-bit SSL certificate to keep your students' information secure — especially during login and checkout.

Teachable also partners with payment providers that are PCI level-1 compliant. This gives you confidence that your students' data is 100% safe and secure.

#5 Teachable Course Marketing Tools

Teachable offers a suite of marketing tools to help drive new students to your online courses and lift the lifetime value of your existing students. Coupons and free trials are highly effective.

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Effective marketing is perhaps the most essential aspect of a successful course launch. When you have an inclusive marketing strategy, you'll notice an increase in the number of students going through your course. 

You may also enroll students manually, assuming there's a technical glitch on your school's page.

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If you were using online learning platforms like Udemy and Coursera, then you already have access to potential students. It's good news until you realize how much you're expected to price your courses (about $11.99 – $299).  

While Thinkific and Teachable allow course creators to charge a premium for their courses, you need to market yourself.

This is where Teachable makes it pretty rewarding with a range of marketing tools:

  • Use the landing page builder features to drive sales.
  • Integrate with front-running marketing tools such as Mixpanel, Infusionsoft, MailChimp, and more. This way, you can take your marketing efforts and drive them via email marketing, CRM, and more.
  • Easily host affiliate programs with built-in features and expand your reach through other people's efforts.
  • Create coupon codes to encourage new students to join your course at a fraction of the cost.
  • Quickly accept payments in 130+ international currencies. You can accept payments in multiple currencies for your online course(s). 
  • Add conversion pixels to your website to track & measure the punch of your marketing campaigns.

Thinkific Vs. Teachable – Pros And Cons

Thinkific is perhaps one of the best online course platforms you can lay your hands on. But do you think it's perfect? Let's look at the pros and cons:

Pros

Cons

It's easy to create stunning content pages with a drag-and-drop visual builder

The Thinkific Basic plan is a bit expensive (starting at $49/month) compared to Teachable Basic (at $39/month)

Explore the Thinkific platform and its rich features with the free plan (no credit card required)

The free plan has basic and limited features (not suitable for serious course creators)

Create unlimited courses

Course creators can't conduct workshops

Easily embed course sales widget directly to your blog to increase sales

The affiliate interface can be improved

Turn your Research Reports into course content with the WordPress plugin

The premade themes can be more responsive

Zero transaction fees for all plans

 

Teachable is the industry leader when it comes to creating online courses, with well over 100,000 course creators. So, is it the BEST platform for your online courses and coaching lessons? Let's consider the pros and cons:

Pros

Cons

Easily create online courses with a drag-and-drop course builder (no experience needed)

The Basic plan comes with transaction fees

No transaction fees on free courses

There are no features or tools for conducting live workshops

Course completion certificates for graduating students

Basic integrations with third-party tools

Rich and flexible Upsell features to lift course sales

All courses look identical, except for the logo and color scheme

Easy to use “Drip course content” feature that engages your students

 

Teachable is ideal for beginners who don't want to mess with technology

 

Where Do I Get The Most For My Money?

Pricing is another aspect of any online course platform you need to think about. 

To help you choose between Thinkific and Teachable, here's a breakdown of the pricing and plans (with screenshots).

Thinkific Pricing Plans

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Thinkific offers three pricing plans to cater to businesses of different sizes and needs. It's important to note that Thinkific does not offer a free plan, but they do provide a 14-day free trial for all their paid plans.

  1. Basic Plan ($49/month): The Basic Plan is suitable for individuals or small businesses just starting with online course creation. With this plan, you can create and sell unlimited courses, access core course player features, and enjoy basic integrations with tools like Zapier and Aweber. But if you think otherwise about it, there is a 5% transaction fee on paid courses.
  2. Start Plan ($99/month): The Start Plan is designed for established businesses and entrepreneurs. It includes all the features of the Basic Plan, plus advanced course player capabilities, memberships, bundles, and the ability to offer course assignments and certificates. This plan also provides access to advanced integrations with tools like Zapier, Aweber, and Infusionsoft. Additionally, there are no transaction fees, allowing you to keep 100% of your revenue.
  3. Grow Plan ($199/month): The Grow Plan is the most covering offering from Thinkific, catering to large businesses and organizations. We have to point out that to all the features of the Start Plan, it includes advanced customization options, Single Sign-On (SSO), Unlimited Admins, an onboarding package, and dedicated customer support. This plan is ideal for businesses with complex course offerings and a large user base.

Thinkific also offers additional services, such as expert consultations, custom development, and dedicated support, which can be purchased separately or bundled with the Grow Plan.

All paid plans come with a 14-day free trial, allowing you to peer into the platform and find the best fit for your business before committing to a subscription.

Teachable Pricing Plans

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Teachable offers four pricing plans to cater to businesses of different sizes and needs, including a free plan for those just starting.

  1. Free Plan ($0/month): The Free Plan is an excellent option for those looking to test the waters with Teachable. With this plan, you can create and sell one online course, access core course player features, and merge with popular tools like Zapier and MailChimp. But if you think otherwise about it, it's important to note that the Free Plan includes Teachable branding and a 10% transaction fee on paid courses.
  2. Basic Plan ($59/month): The Basic Plan is suitable for individuals or small businesses. It removes the Teachable branding and allows you to keep 100% of your revenue. Additionally, you can create unlimited courses, access advanced course pricing options, and enjoy basic integrations with tools like Zapier and MailChimp.
  3. Pro Plan ($159/month): The Pro Plan is designed for established businesses and entrepreneurs. It includes all the features of the Basic Plan, plus advanced course player capabilities, memberships, bundles, and the ability to offer course assignments and certificates. This plan also provides access to advanced integrations with tools like Zapier, MailChimp, and Infusionsoft.
  4. Pro+ Plan ($249/month): The Pro+ Plan is the most covering offering from Teachable, catering to large businesses and organizations. We have to point out that to all the features of the Pro Plan, it includes advanced customization options, Single Sign-On (SSO), Unlimited Admins, an onboarding package, and dedicated customer support. This plan is ideal for businesses with complex course offerings and a large user base.

Teachable also offers additional services, such as expert consultations, custom development, and dedicated support, which can be purchased separately or bundled with the Pro or Pro+ Plans.

All paid plans come with a 30-day free trial, allowing you to peer into the platform and find the best fit for your business before committing to a subscription.

– Which Is Better: Thinkific Or Teachable?

There you have it, the side-by-side comparison between Thinkific and Teachable.

Both online course platforms offer rich and flexible tools and features for creating your online courses, pricing them, making money, and building an online educational business.

Based on my experience using both platforms, Thinkific offers more advanced features that can help you begin quickly and scale your online course businesses.

Whether you're an individual or a business that needs exact features that you can rely on, Thinkific is highly recommended.

Teachable, on the other hand, is more popular than Thinkific, with over 100,000-course creators already and tools to get your first online course created and launched.

Thinkific Vs. Teachable – FAQ

Given the popularity of both Thinkific and Teachable, a lot of aspiring course creators are asking a ton of questions. Here are 4 of the most all the time asked questions (FAQs):

Is Thinkific better than Teachable?

Yes, Thinkific offers both basic and advanced tools to help you create, price, launch, and market your online course. Teachable also has amazing features mostly for beginners.

Can I use Teachable for free?

Yes, Teachable has a free plan that you can begin with. But you'll have to pay a high transaction fee: $1 + 10% commission on any course sale.

Is Thinkific free?

Thinkific offers a free plan with zero transaction fees. But if you think otherwise about it, you can only create 3 courses. The Basic plan costs $49/month if you pay annually or $36/month (paid monthly). This offers you Unlimited Courses & Students, Email integrations, Custom domains, Coupons, Affiliate reporting, and so on.

Can I make money on Thinkific and Teachable?

Yes, you can make money on both Thinkific and Teachable in 2 ways:

  • As a course creator: Create an online course on either of these platforms, price it, and make money from student enrollments.
  • Make money as an affiliate: Simply promote Thinkific/Teachable to earn a 30% recurring commission on all monthly or yearly subscriptions (you can be paid up to $1,700/referral/year. It comes with a 90-day cookie period.