Thinkific Reviews

If you sort reviews on TrustPilot to "most recent" instead of "most relevant" it's almost all one-star reviews. Maybe Thinkific was good once but has gone downhill significantly.

Thinkific advertises giving a higher proportion of revenue to the instructor compared to other learning sites, which sounds great until your find out they easily get their money back in instructor fees, add-on fees and reducing costs by cutting support.

I tried solving a technical issue using the chatbot but it couldn't even provide accurate instructions to navigate its own website.

Every time I asked the bot how to contact support or speak to a real person it said "before I connect you..." with a really long note about how free accounts were supported for the first 30 days (I'm on day 5, well within the window). It even asked for a description of the issue.

Then it didn't respond until prompted, which started the "before I connect you..." loop all over again.

On the Thinkific website the "contact us" links take you to pages that provide generic information about how supportive Thinkific is, but without any actual support.

Your cheapest Thinkific instructor membership is $49USD per month, which doesn't include much. I still would have bought one if it turned out to be a quality platform. At this point I don't know if it's even worth it for free.

Date of experience: April 03, 2024

My website courses.wellform.academy
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I need help, I have free plan. Not able to get access to my account. And no Human support of whatsoever....very dissapointing, not being able to intervene... my site is under attack... I have been running my website for more than two years being a loyal client....

Date of experience: March 26, 2024

I have been doing online training for years and decided to move my courses to an LMS platform. I've created my first course on Thinkific, and the image resolution and quality of the slides are dreadful! Most of the colours are gone, and the images are full of JPEG artefacts. I was planning to get the Start or Grow plan for my courses, but it is too embarrassing to present my content to my clients in such a poor quality. I am looking for an alternative platform now.

Date of experience: March 26, 2024

We have already upgraded twice since starting with our basic Thinkific! Their features have inspired us in directions we had not initially thought of and have helped our business to grow quickly. Their support pages are hugely helpful to learn what functions are possible and tech support has been awesome. They are interested in what we do and want to help us thrive.

Date of experience: December 08, 2022

Hello thinkific,
Thank you for reaching out to Me. While I Am a returning novice so to speak, I have found the training videos quite helpful. Each presenter provides clear and concise information about useful tools.
Presently, I do not feel as confident as I know I will.
I must continue to explore, and accept trial and error, while becoming a successful course content creator.
Respectively, I believe this is doable, and holds success for Me.
Sincerely,

Date of experience: May 01, 2023

So far, There are two specific things that have really soured my experience with Thinkific.

1. Their class platform is serviceable. But it lacks polish. For example: in the class videos, there is a feature that allows for students to post questions to the instructor.

However, after I reply to their messages, it's spaced out in a really awkward way, and looks sloppy. Additionally, I cannot go back and edit the message (even though it's the 21st century, and practically every website offers this?)

2. My biggest gripe is an absolutely abysmal customer service experience I had. One of my students wanted to delay their payment from March 24th to March 29th. So I chatted with a customer service rep, April, and she told me to pause the student's payment plan, and that they would take care of ther rest. I get an email from April, a little while later, and she tells me to un-pause the plan and then they will move the billing date forward a few days.

However, as soon as I did this, the student immediately got charged. And I had to refund her $100. I told customer service about this, and the next day they said "We didn't know unpausing the payment plan would do this".

That's right.. customer service DOESN'T EVEN KNOW THEIR OWN PRODUCT!

Since they charged her a few days before her payment was due, I didn't think it would be right to charge her the remaining $100 (after refunding the first premature charge), so I told Thinkific this, and that it would only be fair for them to reimburse the $100 that I lost since they led me astray.

They refused (though I think my ask was a reasonable one).

This is not a single-incident though where they were completely clueless. There was another time where I asked them if I could create a special 8 month payment plan for someone (Even though I usually offer 5-month payment plans). They told me it was not possible if I already had a payment plan setup. Yet I figured out how to do it 1 day later...

I will soon be migrating to Kajabi, and I suggest others do the same. This company is a stinking mess.

Date of experience: March 22, 2024

Thinkific has great plans and has been of great help to me in being able to provide evergreen online classes at any time using their platform. I am also able to add on any class I would like based on demand from my community or existing students. I love their customer support; they are understanding and great people working there. They have really helped me out with any query I have had.

Date of experience: February 13, 2023

Thinific has helped me bring my vision/plans/dreams to life. Everything is so easy to follow. The guidance and support that they give (absolutely free) before you make an investment, is incomparable. I have gained so much knowledge before even deciding to move forward with a monthly plan. I am truly grateful for Thinkific and all of the opportunities and support they provide.

Date of experience: February 09, 2023

The best onboarding process ever! In my humble opinion. This was so easy, and I am speaking of someone with a history of traumatic brain injury, so anything new is always harder. But Thinkific's onboarding was easy, and creating my first course was flawless, even creating my community. I did it all in a day! That says it all. I created my headers and thumbnails right then and there in Canva on the spot. I had already begun recording my short 5-minute videos, so that was done. But their setup is genuinely amazing!

Date of experience: March 06, 2023

I have been using Thinkific for over 3 years. I have published 10 online courses - 5 free and 5 paid. The platform is very easy to use. The templates for the website pages and each course page are intuitive with a lot of drag-and-drop functionality. Creating the course, adding videos, instructions and downloads is also easy as are features like Quizzes. Integrating with PayPal and Stripe for online payment was no problem and was well explained. As a trainer, it is great to have an online offering for on-demand training that adds additional to my business.

Date of experience: March 03, 2023

I have used Thinkific since 2020. I think it has improved over time. They listen to customer experience and modify their services to accommodate when possible. Like any other service like this, it's not perfect but the fact that they are open to feedback and actually do something about it speaks loads to their mission of learning first. I'm using the new improved communities and for my needs it's really good. Thinkific evolves with it's customers and stays true to their brand. They used evidence-based approaches to learning and they truly want you to succeed. Their courses are better than some paid courses I've taken, too.

Date of experience: October 07, 2022

I really enjoy this platform and the students find it easy to use. We have 4000 students currently. I was a high school teacher, so understand education, but I have found a new passion in creating online classes. This is in part to the ease of use of this platform.

One comments on ways to improve: be able to set some homework assignments as automatically accepted when they turn it in.

Date of experience: May 08, 2023

I love Thinkific. It's so easy to set up a course and I have never had a customer complain about an issue trying to process a payment. The only improvement I would like is better reporting (which I think is included in higher plans). I always recommend Thinkific. It is easy to use, looks great and it means I don't have to stress over tech issues.

Date of experience: January 23, 2023

You are the best!

Anything allowing for having live spaces within Thinkific without having to initially log in would be great. Say, from my Twitter account I share an URL inviting everyone to my community on thinkific.com, and have them purchase while during a live.

Date of experience: March 23, 2023

I love the embedding option for media. Most of the time, I am able to embed resources from other websites; in this way, my students always stay within the platform, instead of sending them out to multiple websites. Thank you Thinkific, YOU ARE THE BEST!!

Date of experience: March 15, 2023

they have a really easy to use platform and nice website designer. I’m giving four stars because there are a few improvements I’d like to see on the website designer as well as automation for sales tax. I believe they’re working on the sales tax piece now, but it isn’t available yet.

Date of experience: January 13, 2023

Quickly and easily customisable course pages.
I am reaching a lot of course participants. The courses are evaluated as excellent, including the friendly and simple to use viewer interface. BrachyTerra is a not-for-profit philanthropic project and all our work is voluntary. I really enjoy working with the Thinkific tools. It doesn't feel like work, it is pure pleasure. Exciting!

Date of experience: February 06, 2023

I’ve been using Thinkific for a few years now. A great platform for my courses. (My students agree). When I need to troubleshoot , that can’t be easily answered on their Help pages, I reach out. The customer service is always friendly and helpful. Over the years I have requested some features - hopefully they add them at some point! - though the Thinkific team will always give alternatives. They never leave you without some solution to your problem. Customer service and solutions is really important for this sort of product as I’m not a developer or tech expert , so I really appreciate being able to communicate with a real person. Thanks.

Date of experience: December 15, 2022

Thinkific is an extremely easy to use tool which allows us to deliver information to those who want and / or need it. There is no better vehicle than Thinkific to do it so efficiently. Thank you!

Date of experience: December 22, 2022

I am learning to use the platform.
I feel that there is not enough creativity available in the landing page creation - its limited in placement and sizing of images and restrictive in the presets for text.
So far that is where I struggle with it.
Still building course so will comment on that in the future.

Date of experience: March 02, 2023