New Course Creators Ultimate Course Platform
Rating: 8 out of 10
August 09, 2019
AB
Vetted Review
Verified User
2 years of experience
As an online content creator and teacher, it is important that I'm able to create and host my teaching material on a mobile-friendly site that is accessible for students globally. Thinkific allows me to do just that whilst being able to integrate it with third-party tools that allow my business to work on autopilot whilst providing great online support for my students.
- Ability to customise your school to match your branding and to therefore link to your own company website
- Ability to upload images, videos, presentations, PDFs and audio recordings as well as create quizzes to assess your students knowledge
- Able to drip your course content for when it's ready to be released and not be pressurized to only publish a full course when it's ready
- Integrate with third-party tools such as PayPal, MailChimp, Google analytics and Zapier to name a few
- Promote individual courses on your website by embedding widgets
Cons
- Although it has some great third-part integrations it would be great if it offered more such as links with email service providers such as MailerLite
- Assignment feature to be available on the lower tier plans
- Improve the file size uploads for images and videos
- Provide a lot more themes
- It has helped us create professional and engaging courses without having to learn new skills with it's great drag and drop features
- The investment in the site means that everything is done for us and integrates well with other online tools we're currently using
- The only negative is that there isn't any guarantee (like most things) on making a return on investment if you pay for a plan with al singing and dancing features.
Prior to using Thinkific, I used Teachable free ad then a paid plan for about 18 months as it was one of the most recommended course platforms back in 2015 and 2016. I moved to Thinkific in 2017 when I wanted to try something different that offered a lot more features, integrations and flexibility.
1
Thinkific provides us with a platform that allows us to can create, host and sell our courses so that we can teach our target audience, build our brand awareness and credibility within our industry and sections. I love that this site allows my business to work on autopilot and reach various people around the world at any time and any day.
To be able to use Thinkific and get a good ROI I believe you need to be a course creator who knows the type of content that their audience is looking for and are craving to improve a need they have. You'll need to know how to upload videos, graphics, PDFs and use hyperlinks and embed HTML features.
- The ability to create engaging learning material
- Hosting our in-demand courses
- Being able to integrate with other tools that make our courses easy to sell and deliver value to our target audience
- Being able to host pre-recorded webinars and offer it to our students
- A place to host premium resources
- A great way to grow our email list by offer bite size free modules or courses
- Being able to offer special offers and contest with the use of the coupons
- Create beta courses and drip content to assess the demand for new course ideas
- Possibly to use only Thinkific as our main hub without the need of a separate website
Yes
I had previously used Teachable and had some frustrations with the lack of customisation of my online school so I had decided I need a platform that allowed me to do more and offered a few more themes to suit my branding. Instantly once I had signed up to Thinkific I was able to create a more branded site that didn't scream that it belonged to the host.
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Vendor Reputation
At the time many influencers that I had followed were recommending Thinkific and so I wanted to see why. So I had signed up for their 7 day marketing online workshops, which I learnt so much from, which inturned empowered me and inspired me to be a better course creator and marketer. I instantly connected with the presenters and knew from then I wanted to make the move as I felt they aligned more with the type of course creator I wanted to be.
I think if I was looking at new course platforms again I would do much better research and check out more reviews and those that have written detailed breakdowns and comparison blog content to get a better insight to what would have suited my business at the time. So sites like TrustRadius would definitely a place I would come to read up on the good and frustrating parts people found using the tools that interested me.
- Implemented in-house
- How to create the sales landing page for each course
- How to plan out the course structure
- How to integrate third-party tools
- Self-taught
As someone who has used learning management systems before I did not feel I needed in-person training or for anyone else to create my online school for me. But what I did like to see is that Thinkific had these services available for those that didn't have the time, headspace or know-how to create it for themselves. Along with Thinkifics very own training resources of video tutorials, blog posts and PDFs you're not bound to go wrong.
Not Sure
No
Luckily for me, I haven't had any major problems that required me to reach out for support on the Thinkific website directly. I now find with the use of their Facebook community that has reduced my need to contact their customer service. Their very active there and other course creators like myself are all there to help one another.
- The uploading of your content such as videos. presentation slides, and PDFs
- Linking it to your nominated payment gateway provider
- Customizing the look and feel of your school to match your branding
- When you have content piece that is to large to upload I initially found using the recommend tool to compress the files annoying
- Understanding the best layout for the sales page that promotes the course
- Finding the correct dimension for the graphics for the course
No
- Having more integrations
- The saving on costs
- Having more flexibility with customization and making our school look more professional
- New features that enable more brand customization
- More integration with new tools
- More themes
No