Thinkific Plus vs. SkillJar
Thinkific Plus delivers a robust enterprise-level feature set without enterprise-level pricing and complexity. G2 research shows that Thinkific Plus excels in several areas including:
- Faster speed to launch (2 months on Thinkific+ vs. 3 months on SkillJar)
- Ability to drive faster ROI (13 month average on Thinkific+ vs. 20 months on SkillJar)
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Summary
Key takeaways
- Thinkific Plus is built to support a broad range of training use cases, including customer, partner, and employee education, as well as revenue-generating learning programs, while Skilljar is optimized primarily for customer onboarding.
- Thinkific Plus offers a more predictable and cost-effective path to scale, without per-learner pricing constraints. Skilljar’s pricing is typically tied to estimated user volumes, add-ons, and ongoing support needs.
- Thinkific Plus stands out for faster time to value and greater flexibility, with built-in commerce, engagement, and administrative controls. Skilljar’s primary strength lies in its extensive CRM integrations.
Winner by category
- Best for scalability: Thinkific Plus (unlimited courses and students, no per-active-learner pricing model)
- Best for native tools: Thinkific Plus (built-in admin, engagement, sales, and marketing tools that reduce reliance on external systems or ongoing support)
- Best for revenue-generating organizations: Thinkific Plus (built-in ecommerce, subscriptions, order bumps, flexible pricing, AI-powered sales funnels)
- Best for CRM integrations for customer onboarding: Skilljar
- Best for supporting multiple use cases: Thinkific Plus (more versatile for organizations treating learning as a product, including customer, partner, employee, and revenue-generating education)
Top features
Thinkific Plus is a flexible, enterprise-grade platform built to launch and scale external training programs quickly, with low administrative lift and built-in monetization. This makes it a far more versatile option for organizations that treat education as a product — not just a support function — compared to Skilljar, which is more narrowly focused on customer onboarding.
Thinkific Plus supports unlimited courses and learners, offering a more scalable and cost-effective foundation than Skilljar’s pricing model, which is based on estimated users.
| Feature | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited courses, students, and more | - | |
| Unlimited Member-only Communities and spaces | - | |
| Enterprise readiness (SSO, SOC 2, SCORM) | ||
| Ease of use | High | Moderate |
| Native ecommerce (order bumps, payment plans, and free trials) | - | |
| AI-powered course creation tools (course outlines, quizzes, and more) | ||
| AI-driven marketing and sales capabilities | - | |
| AI-powered teaching assistant | - | |
| CRM and customer success integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce, Zapier, and APIs) | ||
| Speed to launch | ~2 months | ~3 months |
| Built-in sales and marketing tools | Limited | |
| Mobile app for the on-the-go learning | - | |
| Scalable pricing model | - | |
| Extensive learner engagement capabilities | - |
“Using Thinkific Plus has allowed us to employ our customer education at scale. To date, we have educated over 3,000 users in our products and services. Without Thinkific Plus, it would have taken an immense amount of resources to train our user base.”
— Grace Tilmont, Director of Education Services, Flashpoint.io
Course creation
The biggest differences between Thinkific Plus and Skilljar are flexibility, setup time, and the effort required to manage content over time. Thinkific’s course builder is designed for teams at high-growth businesses and enterprises that need an intuitive, well-supported way to create and launch engaging, multi-format courses — no technical expertise required.
Skilljar’s course creation tools are geared toward customer onboarding and enablement. Its AI-assisted features help admins generate learning objectives, quizzes, and short descriptions to speed up initial setup, but launch timelines still typically lag Thinkific’s average by about a month.
| Course Creation Capabilities | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| Design and technical experience required | Low | Moderate |
| Intuitive course builder | ||
| Unlimited courses, students, and more | - | |
| Create courses with multiple lesson types (video, multimedia, text) | ||
| Downloadable resources, quizzes, and assignments | ||
| SCORM compliant | ||
| Advanced design and branding tools | - | |
| AI generated course outlines, quizzes, and more | ||
| Flexible learning paths | - | |
| Speed to launch | ~2 months | ~3 months |
“We hit go, we purchased Thinkific Plus, and from there, we spent two weeks ramping our content. We had an incredibly successful rollout. We were utilizing Thinkific Plus within four weeks.”
— Jenn Hunter, Co-Founder at PayShepherd (350+ administrative hours saved in 3 months)
Learning experience
Thinkific Plus is designed around the learner’s experience. Interactive course content, built-in communities, and gamification tools help learners connect and engage directly with you and with each other, offering a more dynamic learning experience. For businesses where structured onboarding matters more than ongoing engagement, Skilljar may be a good fit.
| Learning Experience Features | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| Intuitive course builder | ||
| Unlimited Member-only Communities and spaces | - | |
| Flexible learning paths | - | |
| Mobile app for on-the-go learning | - | |
| Live learning | Limited | |
| Gamification and engagement tools | Limited | |
| AI-powered teaching assistant | - | |
| Third-party app integrations for engagement, assessment, learning experience | ||
| Out-of-the-box learner analytics |
“Our end users are more educated and we have better product adoption because they are more confident in what they’re doing in our system.”
— Jacob Sewell, Training and Certifications Manager, Procurify (Saved 15+ hours a week of internal resources with Thinkific Plus)
Sales, marketing, and customization
With Thinkific Plus, teams have full control over how deeply they customize their learning experience, with both built-in no-code tools and advanced customization options. Because Thinkific Plus is designed to support revenue-generating education, it also includes native sales and marketing tools and integrations that help organizations market, sell, and scale their courses. AI-powered features further reduce manual work by automating time-consuming tasks across creation, sales, and marketing.
Skilljar offers more limited flexibility for advanced customization, as code-level changes typically require support from professional services teams. While Skilljar integrates well with existing CRM, sales, and marketing systems, it provides fewer built-in monetization tools and more limited AI-supported capabilities.
| Sales and marketing capabilities | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| Create free and paid courses | ||
| Revenue maximizing sales tools (Buy Now, Pay Later, order bumps, bulk selling) | Limited | |
| AI-generated sales landing pages | - | |
| AI-powered email marketing automation and copywriting | - | |
| Monetize community memberships | - | |
| Marketing integrations | ||
| CRM integrations (HubSpot, Salesforce) | ||
| Out-of-the-box marketing analytics | Limited | |
| Commerce tools: payments, bookkeeping, tax remittance, and more | - |
| Design customization features | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| Full design control (advanced CSS/HTML editing) | Limited (Requires specialized support) | |
| No-code design tools | Limited | |
| White-label learner experience | ||
| Custom course player appearance | - | |
| API access for custom workflows |
“We decided we didn’t want to be constrained by limitations. If we’ve got 500 schools I want to make the training available for our schools as easy as possible. I chose Thinkific Plus because of the API access. It gave us the ability to go as far as we wanted to.”
— Ian Richardson, CEO & Founder, Schudio (50,000+ enrolments and 60+ courses with Thinkific Plus)
Support and security
Thinkific Plus and Skilljar both offer enterprise-grade security compliance and comprehensive support at every phase. While there’s overlap with many provided features, Thinkific Plus offers setup and dedicated support at no additional cost, while Skilljar has different support packages with variable fees depending on your needs.
| Support features | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| Included migration and onboarding support | - | |
| Dedicated customer success team | ||
| Ongoing technical and strategic support | ||
| No setup or support fees | - | |
| Human-led support experience |
| Security features | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type II compliance | ||
| 99.9% uptime and 24/7 monitoring | 99% uptime | |
| SCORM-compliant secure content delivery | ||
| Secure payment processing | ||
| Single Sign-On (SSO) | ||
| Built-in security (data encryption, access controls, compliance) |
“When Epoch Education (119,000+ enrollments, 50+ courses with Thinkific) was planning a course that would welcome over 3500 participants at once, they turned to Pia, from Thinkific’s customer success team, to answer all their technical questions and even had her on standby for the launch, just in case."
Site administration
Thinkific Plus delivers enterprise-grade administration through built-in tools, unlike typical enterprise LMS platforms. Teams can manage multiple sites, audiences, and courses from a centralized account using native publishing controls and clearly defined admin roles and permissions to collaborate efficiently at scale.
Skilljar supports centralized administration for customer onboarding and enablement. While it offers strong administrative features, deeper customization often requires additional support, which can make ongoing course updates more resource-intensive as programs grow.
| Site administration features | Thinkific | Skilljar |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple websites supported | - | |
| Streamlined admin dashboards | ||
| Revenue and order management | ||
| Native presell and launch controls | - | |
| Built-in course lifecycle management | ||
| Ongoing reliance on vendor services | Low | High |
| Native advanced pricing and promotions | - | |
| Built-in reporting and advanced analytics | ||
| Granular admin roles and permissions | Limited | |
| Native Zapier integration |
“We wanted something that would allow us and our clients to track what our students were doing, what they were watching, and how many people were watching them. We really wanted to get good analytics and have everything under one roof, which is Thinkific Plus.”
— Erin O’Donnell, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Education and Events Technology, BankersHub (8% revenue growth, 150+ corporate clients, and 1M+ course enrolments with Thinkific Plus)
"Our previous legacy LMS was more expensive with low user limits, and we were looking to really expand the programs. We were able to scale with Thinkific Plus easily."
Anthony Graham
Product Marketing Manager
Frequently asked questions
Which type of organization should choose Thinkific Plus over Skilljar?
Thinkific Plus is designed for companies, academies, and organizations that treat digital learning as both a training tool and a revenue driver. Businesses often use it to deliver learning experiences to customers, partners, and employees while selling learning products from one platform. Skilljar is typically used by enterprise teams focused on customer onboarding and product training.
How long does it typically take to launch a training program?
Implementation timelines can vary depending on the complexity of the program. Many organizations using Thinkific Plus are able to launch within weeks because the platform includes a no-code course builder and fully hosted infrastructure. Platforms like Skilljar may involve longer implementation timelines depending on configuration requirements and program setup.
Do these platforms support mobile learning and community engagement?
Thinkific Plus includes built-in community features that allow learners to connect with instructors and peers through dedicated spaces. Businesses can combine courses, communities, and live sessions to create engaging learning experiences. Learners can also access content through a branded mobile app experience. Skilljar focuses primarily on structured customer training programs delivered through a web-based environment.
Are there additional costs for platform setup or support?
Thinkific Plus customers work with a dedicated Customer Success Manager who helps guide onboarding, migrations, and long-term program growth. This support helps organizations successfully launch and scale their learning initiatives. Skilljar also provides onboarding and support resources depending on the service plan.
Which platform provides tools for selling learning products?
Thinkific Plus includes a powerful suite of built-in commerce tools that allow organizations to sell learning products such as courses, communities, coaching, and digital downloads. These tools support customizable landing pages, checkout experiences, and flexible payment options. Skilljar is generally focused on delivering customer education programs rather than selling learning products directly.
How easy is it to manage multiple learners, groups, and programs?
Thinkific Plus provides administrative tools that allow teams to manage learning products, learner groups, and reporting from a centralized dashboard. Administrators can track learner progress, engagement, and revenue performance while organizing multiple learning programs. Skilljar also provides management tools designed to support customer education and onboarding programs.
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