TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Joomla

    Score8.3 out of 10
    N/AJoomla! is a free and open source content management system used to publish web content. Included features are page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, a search function, and support for language internationalization.N/A

    Thinkific

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AThinkific Plus is a scalable learning platform that’s designed to be easy to use for teams and customers. Thinkific Plus offers enterprise-grade features that scale with the needs of enterprises, and the service includes a people seriously dedicated to helping users to reach their goals.N/A
    Pricing
    JoomlaThinkific
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    JoomlaThinkific
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    JoomlaThinkific
    Considered Both Products
    The Joomla Project
    No answer on this topic
    Thinkific
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    93%
    Would buy again
    14 Answers
    88%
    Would buy again
    46 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    93%
    Delivers good value for the price
    13 Answers
    89%
    Delivers good value for the price
    40 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    87%
    Happy with the feature set
    13 Answers
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    49 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    87%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    39 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    14 Answers
    85%
    Implementation went as expected
    40 Answers
    Features
    JoomlaThinkific
    Security
    Comparison of Security features of Joomla! and Thinkific
    Feature
    Joomla!
    8.3
    51 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    Role-based user permissions8.351 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform & Infrastructure
    Comparison of Platform & Infrastructure features of Joomla! and Thinkific
    Feature
    Joomla!
    6.6
    48 Ratings
    17% below category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    API7.246 Ratings00 Ratings
    Internationalization / multi-language6.047 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Creation
    Comparison of Web Content Creation features of Joomla! and Thinkific
    Feature
    Joomla!
    7.7
    54 Ratings
    2% below category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    WYSIWYG editor8.353 Ratings00 Ratings
    Code quality / cleanliness8.551 Ratings00 Ratings
    Admin section8.249 Ratings00 Ratings
    Page templates7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Library of website themes6.350 Ratings00 Ratings
    Mobile optimization / responsive design7.550 Ratings00 Ratings
    Publishing workflow8.450 Ratings00 Ratings
    Form generator7.446 Ratings00 Ratings
    Web Content Management
    Comparison of Web Content Management features of Joomla! and Thinkific
    Feature
    Joomla!
    7.6
    52 Ratings
    1% above category average
    Thinkific
    -
    Ratings
    Content taxonomy7.951 Ratings00 Ratings
    SEO support7.650 Ratings00 Ratings
    Bulk management8.049 Ratings00 Ratings
    Availability / breadth of extensions7.052 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community / comment management7.150 Ratings00 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    JoomlaThinkific
    Small Businesses
    Umbraco CMS
    Score7 out of 10
    iSpring Suite
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Square Online
    Score7.7 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Enterprises
    RWS Tridion Sites
    Score9 out of 10
    Articulate 360
    Score9.2 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    JoomlaThinkific
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.2
    (75 ratings)
    9.2
    (54 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (28 ratings)
    8.6
    (8 ratings)
    Usability
    8.0
    (14 ratings)
    8.7
    (44 ratings)
    Availability
    9.9
    (2 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    7.8
    (2 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    10.0
    (4 ratings)
    8.9
    (10 ratings)
    Online Training
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    8.7
    (3 ratings)
    6.6
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    3.6
    (1 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (1 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.4
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.9
    (3 ratings)
    6.4
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    4.5
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.5
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    JoomlaThinkific
    Likelihood to Recommend
    The Joomla Project
    If your developers want to have some fun, Joomla offers the stability and friendliness to do custom coding. Certain marketing initiatives require us to get "cute" with the interface, and Joomla allows for that a bit easier than WordPress (and definitely easier than sites like Squarespace). The security of Joomla is also always a plus.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    I think Thinkific is very well suited if you want more control and not a ton of competition. It is very well suited if you want to create courses because it does an amazing job with providing course outline examples for you to stay organized and so forth. The only thing I would say where the courses might be less appropriate is if someone is expecting it to be like an udemy where people can see a ton of different course creators all in one place with course recommendations. Thinkific is not that type of platform and I LOVE that. On Thinkific, it almost feels like our site is our own ya know. I tried out other platforms and it just felt like you were competing with so many other people and could see other courses. Felt like being on a platter served with others. Thinkific just feels more unique in the sense it feels like when people come to your page, they are only seeing your page.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    The Joomla Project
    • Security. Its got many new features in the new Joomla! 4 which make the already good security even better. I like the ability to use my Yubi keys to log in with the new webauth standard, I don't think any other CMS has that built in
    • W3C Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (with AA compliance)
    • Really good SEO that gets our sites to the top of the search engines again without the need for any extra things
    • Speed, it gets a really good score (100%) in the google lighthouse on our server, can't beat that
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    • Enables course creators to deliver high quality courses very fast
    • Offers unlimited hosting for videos included in the subscription price
    • Provides an easy to use administration interface that's powerful and accessible
    • Easy to scale subscription tiers on B2C plans, cost effective highly scaleable B2B plans (Thinkific Plus) ideal for companies who want to start a customer education program
    • Amazing support and account management team - great mindset and people in the teams.
    Read full review
    Cons
    The Joomla Project
    • Because Joomla's user community is smaller than WP, it lacks as many choices from 3rd party developers, meaning it can be a little more difficult to find the right extension for what you need to accomplish
    • Along the same vein, most of the best 3rd-party software for Joomla! is paid
    • Simple features such as Add to Menu and Cache cleaners should be adopted as part of the Joomla! core, though they are available as extensions
    • Joomla! could use a simpler and easier URL rewriting process
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    • auto formatting of some course building content, does not format well on phone vs desktop
    • filter by group functionality for website based content, it's mostly filter by enrollments
    • the plug and play web building is convenient but really we need a UX/UI designer to build a super good looking website. Plug and play builder works but doesnt look SUPER sharp if done by someone with no dev skills or coding ability
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    The Joomla Project
    I gave it a rating of 10 because I just love how Joomla! works, how it is set up and how it handles many users. Also it is very fast, and there is no overload on the MySQL database or servers ever.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    I'm very likely to renewal as long as Thinkific stays focused on helping small businesses like myself to stay in the know of new and more effective ways to use digital learning tools to help our students get better success. I will also stay with Thinkific if they do not intend to hike up the prices and keep the different price plans suit all businesses regardless of the size.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    The Joomla Project
    Joomla! 3.x is easily installed either manually or via a script provided by your host. It contains most of the tools needed to begin creating websites right from the start. Those features that it doesn't have are easily installed via links and buttons from the thousands of extensions available in the community
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    Under Site Builder, when trying to add a new section, so many templates appear; however, preview is not shown, which makes it super difficult and time consuming to identify a template that suits the purpose. Customization of certification designs is a bit difficult too. There are limitations to the type of quiz questions I can create - for example, there's no option to have fill in the blank questions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    The Joomla Project
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    I've never had any issues with accessing Thinkific but I can see when it has been a problem for others. When I get updates on when they are doing maintenance to their platform I tend to make sure that is not the day I plan to be working on my school so as not to get frustrated
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    The Joomla Project
    Today's Modern Joomla performs very well and is robust and durable. The pages load faster than they ever did in the past and Modern Joomla's integration into other software or systems has become seamless. Modern Joomla sites will last long and will stay running forever.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    When it comes to the performance of Thinkific for me I find that it's good but could be better. I tend to think that the larger the files and videos you upload on your courses may add to the impact of it's uploading (not sure if that's actually true or not). But overall the performance of Thinkific via my tablet and desktop is very good when I have a fast speed broadband speed
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    The Joomla Project
    Between the core Joomla developers who are excellent at answering questions and providing support, you have a whole community of developers who work with Joomla and are happy to help fellow developers out answering questions and supporting the Joomla project. Out of the many communities I am involved in for open-source software, Joomla's community is by far the best.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    I rate Thinkific a ten because of its excellent customer service, ease of use, high-quality product, fair price with excellent ROI, and because they keep making improvements. Using Thinkific solved the problems of piecing together our course with various WordPress plugins, iframes, and payment processing software. It's easy to create a course website for people who can't write code.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Online Training
    The Joomla Project
    It is good if you know Joomla! if not it can get a bit confusing
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    It was good and easy to understand
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    The Joomla Project
    Joomla has gone through tremendous growing pains. It is now better than ever. But before, when it was going from 1.5-2.5, the templates and plugins would break over and over again. If you don't understand what Joomla was trying to do back then, you might have a bad attitude toward it. Today, those pains are over and things don't break like they used to during that time period.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    I highly recommend utilizing the bulk importer for video content early on, as it saves a massive amount of time during the initial setup phase. Another insight is to set up your custom domain and email integrations (like Mailchimp or HubSpot) at the very beginning of the implementation
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    The Joomla Project
    We tested other platforms like WordPress, Magento and some local CMS. 
    But Joomla offered us better resources for generating content.
    Joomla is a CMS suitable for many types of projects, especially if you have several people editing content at the same time.
    It allows you to maintain visual standardization and offers many options for working with images.
    With its ability to control access to different articles, categories or even different components, it is a great tool, even if they are managed by different people.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    ClickFunnels is great for funnels, but as of now, it does not do well with e-learning. Maybe they'll change that in ClickFunnels 2.0. But for now, I use Thinkific because I need a place where the students can come into their own dashboard, find all the courses they have purchased on a single place and be able to track their progress.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    The Joomla Project
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    Great use easy and simple
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    The Joomla Project
    No answers on this topic
    Thinkific
    The opportunities to scale your online course business with Thinkific is endless. They provide a great range of plans with features, integrations and support to suit the needs of any business as different levels. The key here is knowing where to start with the budget you have and then knowing when it's time to scale up and the tools and resources it will require.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    The Joomla Project
    • Joomla has reduced our costs of rolling out a new website because it uses less developer time and can be rolled out by individual users as needed.
    • Joomla has a lot of extensions and add-ons that make it easy to create and implement advanced solutions quickly.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Thinkific
    • No email marketing makes it more difficult to collect leads.
    • Price can be a barrier at time for small businesses who don't have revenue.
    • Easy to use and helps with my business needs vs platforms like Squarespace.
    • Community building through workshops and webinars Thinkific host.
    • Access to educational resources and mobile app.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots