Video Monetization

Thinkific vs Teachable: Which is Better? (2024 Comparison)

By Ralitsa Brennan and Aarushi Singh

Published on August 8, 2024 15 Min Read

Table of Contents

Whether you’re just starting a new online knowledge business or looking to switch platforms, you’ve definitely come across Thinkific and Teachable – two of the best online course platforms out there.

But, choosing the right course platform for your needs can be challenging.

To help you decide which platform suits you best, we’ve reviewed and compared Teachable and Thinkific – from key features and pricing to real customer reviews and ratings.

This guide will cover everything you need to pick the perfect online course platform to make it easy to sell online courses.

Let’s get right into it…

Thinkific vs. Teachable at a Glance

	Thinkific	Teachable
Pricing starts from	$36/month	$39/month
G2 score	4.6/5	4/5
Sales pages	Unlimited pages	3 pages maximum
AI course content creator	Included	Included
Unlimited courses	Included in all paid plans	Up to 200 courses in the highest tier
Student assessment	Quizzes, surveys, assignments, exams	Quizzes and open-ended
Certificates	Included in paid plans	Included in paid plans
Community features	Included in all plans	Included in paid plans
Live streaming	Zoom integration or third-party	Only from third parties

Key similarities & differences: Thinkific vs Teachable

Overlapping features between Thinkific and Teachable

Certifications
Drip lessons
AI course templates
Landing pages
Communities
Lesson discussions/comments

Where Thinkific wins:

Thinkific is the better option for selling courses and earning revenue with zero transaction fees, as well as the option to participate in affiliate programs and create multiple customized sales pages.

Thinkific integrates with more apps than Teachable and is overall the more versatile learning management system.

Its other advantages include:

Proven course templates for creating different types of courses.
Supports advanced quiz features like question bank and bulk import.
Built-in support for assignments and surveys.
Better course compliance (content locking) at the lesson level.
Powerful site and page builder with a choice of themes.
More flexible pricing options for subscriptions.
Instant payouts.

Where Teachable wins:

Teachable is a solid choice for people who want a straightforward way of selling online courses, especially the ones with a user base in the EU, as the platform handles EU Digital Goods VAT tax, unlike its competitor.

Its other advantages include:

Ability to bulk select lessons and change the settings.
Let’s you import course content from cloud-based storage.
Option to send drip email reminders on content drip courses.
Supports Apple and Google Pay on native gateways.
Includes back office services like automated affiliate and author payouts.
Offers live chat support.

Thinkific vs Teachable: In-depth comparison

Course creation and structure
Interactive tools and assessments
Website design and customization
Sales and marketing tools
Analytics and reporting
Integrations
Security and hosting
Customer support and training
Pricing plans

Course creation and structure

Thinkific

On Thinkific, you can start your course from a blank page or use their AI course creator feature.

If you go with the AI, you need to begin by describing your goals and target audience, and then, they will generate a template related to that.

Thinkific courses are made up of chapters that contain lessons. And for each lesson, you choose which content format you want:

*Types of content included with Thinkific*

The course interface consists of a sidebar on the left and the current lesson on the right.

Teachable

Similar to Thinkific, with Teachable you start crafting your course the moment you create the account. During the setup, you get to choose:

The goals for your business and your availability.

The type of product you’re going to use.

Thumbnail image, if you have one.

*Adding a thumbnail image to the course in Teachable*

The pricing of the course.

*Selecting a pricing plan for a Teachable course*

Whether you want to create one from scratch or with AI.

*AI course creation prompt on Teachable*

If you choose the AI option, you will get a rough template of the course which you can modify further in the ‘curriculum area’. This is where you customize the layout of your course, add your content, and include optional quizzes, surveys, discussions, and more.

Teachable courses are made up of sections that contain lectures. And for each lecture, you can choose which content format you want to include:

*Editing a lesson in Teachable and adding different types of content*

Teachable also lets you bulk-select lectures and publish, upload, delete, or change their visibility settings without going into individual lessons, which is a handy time-saver.

*Teachable bulk-editing lessons and sections*

Their course player is very similar to Thinkific’s with a side bar and a main window.

🏆 Verdict: Thinkific Wins

Both course builders allow you to kickstart your course with AI and a description, giving you a rough template of it could look like that you can then edit to your desires. They also both let you add multiple content types in the same lecture, with Thinkific offering slightly more options.

Interactive tools and assessments

Thinkific

Thinkific lets you interact with your students using its Communities feature that can be bought separate. It is attached to specific courses or bundles and it can be visible to anyone logged in your site, or only available to students in specific groups.

You can change those access settings for each community.

Other ways you can interact with your students is by enabling discussions for specific lessons or giving them quizzes and surveys, which you can customize in the settings and then gather that data for assessments and analytics.

*Quizzes and surveys dashboard in Thinkific*

Quizzes are also how your students are graded. When you create one, you can add the option that the quiz can only be completed with a passing grade, which is determined by you.

*Adding a mandatory passing grade for a quiz in Thinkific*

When students complete a course, you can have the platform automatically issue a certificate, but keep in mind that this option isn’t included in the free plan. If you go with that, you can choose from 7 different templates and personalize the design and text to fit your brand.

Besides the certificates, you can also create a custom completion page, which gives you the opportunity to offer them more relevant content or suggest the next course they should take.

*Creating a custom completion page for a course in Thinkific*

This could be a great feature if you’re someone who offers beginner, intermediate, and expert classes, for example, in guitar. As soon as someone finishes one tier, you can immediately offer them to purchase the next level, encouraging progress and their continued involvement.

Teachable

Since mid 2024, Teachable now also has a community option, which isn’t available on the free plan, but it works more or less like Thinkific’s version. It’s in the same platform, so people don’t need a separate login and can be adjusted depending on the course and student requirements.

Once you create it, you can:

Adjust who has access

Create new categories and adjust their permissions and visibility.

Teachable also uses a native commenting system to support student interactions. You attach comment blocks to specific lectures, which makes it topic-based.

Example of a comment window in Teachable

This is a great option for students to leave their impressions and opinions for a specific lesson and even get advice from their peers.

🏆 Verdict: It’s a Tie

On Teachable, you can choose from one of 3 pre-designed templates or create a custom certificate, but keep in mind that this is only available on the paid version and unlike Thinkific, they don’t offer a custom completion page that you can add.

However, it also gives you the option to customize the templates with CSS, which the other platform doesn’t provide.

Website design and customization

Thinkific

Thinkific allows you to customize the landing page in a user-friendly block editor.

Some of the sections you can add include:

Calls to action
Course banners
Curriculum overview
Ratings and reviews
Author bio
Pricing options
Countdown timer
Frequently asked questions
And many more!

With the paid versions, you can also create custom pages to include information like the Terms and Conditions, About us, Contacts, and more. Removing the branding is available to users with the Grow plan and more.

Thinkific footer banner with logo

Teachable

Similarly, Teachable’s site builder lets you customize your pages, but unlike Thinkific, it includes the extra pages for free.

Teachable’s page builder lets you add:

Banner.
Text.
Image with text blocks
Dynamic FAQs
Personal letters
Featured insights blocks
Recent results
Testimonials
eCommerce plugin

However, you’re limited to those 3 pages per course:

A course description landing page.
A sales page.
A checkout page.

Keep in mind that even if you use a custom domain in Teachable, the signup, login, and checkout pages still use a Teachable sub-domain, which you cannot change. However, you can hide the footer with the Teachable logo if you want to.

Teachable footer with logo

🏆 Verdict: Thinkific Wins

Both platforms offer very user-friendly site builders and the opportunity to deeply customize the landing page with all kinds of sections. Thinkific, however, has a significant edge here as you can create your own custom pages, unlike the three options that Teachable gives you.

Marketing and sales tools

You’ll need to market and sell your course after you’ve created it. And both Teachable and Thinkific provide the tools to do that.

For example, you can:

Sell lifetime courses.
Create subscriptions.
Add 1-click upsells.
Generate coupon codes for promotions.
Bundle courses, promote, and sell them as discounted offers.
Pre-launch courses to build a waitlist.
Conduct email marketing campaigns.
Launch affiliate marketing programs.
Use Google analytics and course tracking.

Thinkific

Thinkific has now upgraded its old 2-step checkout to a streamlined 1-step checkout:

It also includes some useful marketing and sales tools, such as:

Customized sales funnels

*Thinkific customized sales funnel flow*

Affiliate marketing management
Lead management dashboard

The option to add revenue partners

Teachable

Teachable also has a smooth 1-step checkout process.

While they also let you create bundles, subscription plans with free trials, and upsells at different stages of the journey, they don’t really offer as many marketing and sales tools as Thinkific.

🏆 Verdict: Thinkific Wins

Both platforms include a great and simple checkout process, as well as other useful tools like bundles, subscriptions, and upsells. However, Thinkific offers slightly more options, allowing users to customize, launch, and track marketing campaigns.

Course reporting and analytics

Thinkific

Thinkific’s analytics dashboards are only available to paying users. The Basic plan offers marketing insights, while the Grow plan unlocks everything else, including enrollments, orders, revenue, and engagement.

Teachable

Teachable, on the other hand, doesn’t come with native analytics and relies on third-party apps like Google Analytics or Meta Pixels.

🏆 Verdict: Thinkific Wins

If you want to have all the data you need in one place, Thinkific is definitely a better option. It also offers integrations with popular apps, including Zapier, ConvertKit, Meta Pixels, and Google Analytics, allowing you access more granular data.

Integrations

Thinkific

If you want to add an integration to your online platform, you can go to the Thinkific App Store.

In there, you can choose from almost 100 integrations in different categories like:

Business Operations
Connections & Social
Email & Marketing
Engagement & Assessment
Learning Experience
Selling & Conversion
Site Design

Teachable

Teachable has only 20 apps available for its users, all of which are restricted to paid plans, with some only in the highest tiers.

🏆 Verdict: Thinkific Wins

If you want to be spoiled for choice, Thinkific is definitely the better option with its rich library of app integrations.

Customer support and training

Both Thinkific and Teachable offer customer support channels, including a self-service knowledge base and a private Facebook community.

Teachable offers email support on all its plans and live chat support on the Pro Plan and above. It also has an online training school called TeachableU (available on any paid plan) to help course creators. However, recent reviews in Trustpilot show the lack of adequate support and long waiting times for response. There, its score is 2.7 compared to 3.8 for Thinkific.

Thinkific offers email support on all its plans and live chat support on all the paid plans. It also has several free training courses and a premium training program called the Online Business Masterclass, available to its paid subscribers for free.

While these are rated excellent on the G2 website, similar to Teachable, when you go to Trustpilot, the situation is a bit different, with some instances of bad support and unwanted renewals.

🏆 Verdict: It’s a Tie

Both Thinkific and Teachable offer a range of support and training options. However, in the past year, both platforms have received many complaints regarding bad customer support, unresolved issues, and slow responses, so keep that in mind when you make your choice.

Security and hosting

Both platforms include…

free secure cloud hosting and daily backups,
built-in security and SSL certificate,
And 24/7 monitoring, maintenance, and updates.

You can check their uptime performance here:

🏆 Verdict: It’s a Tie

Both Teachable and Thinkific offer comparable security and hosting capabilities.

Pricing plans

Both platforms have free versions, but Thinkific’s free plan is not available for users in the United States, Canada, and Australia. If you’re from any of these countries, you can only use their 14-day free trial.

Thinkific

Thinkific has one free and 3 paid pricing plans that come with unlimited students and unlimited courses:

Basic: $49 per month or $36 per month (billed annually).
Start: $99 per month or $74 per month (billed annually).
Grow: $199 per month or $149 per month (billed annually).

With Thinkific, there are no transaction fees on any plan. Plus, you get instant payouts on all the plans. All paid plans include their Accelerator Program, which is “an 8-week interactive learning experience that gives you the tools, community, and mentorship you need to quickly and confidently sell digital courses.”

Teachable

Teachable also has one free and 3 paid pricing plans that come with unlimited students and unlimited courses:

Free: $0 per month with limited features.
Basic: $59 per month or $39 per month (billed annually).
Pro: $159 per month or $119 per month (billed annually).
Pro+: $249 per month or $199 per month (billed annually).
Enterprise: Custom pricing

Teachable charges ($1 + 10%) transaction fee on their Free Plan and 5% on the Basic Plan.

Uscreen: An alternative for video-first creators

Now that we’ve been through the A to Z of Teachable vs Thinkific, it’s clear that they are both solid online course platforms. For someone looking to create one-off courses with a mix of written content, video, and quizzes, then any of these would be amazing for you.

However, if you’re looking to grow a membership business with multiple video courses, apps, and a sustainable community instead of one-off students, then maybe you need something a bit different.

And we have the happy community to prove this, with a rating of 4.8 on G2.

Uscreen has changed my life and helped me 5x my income all while receiving full and ongoing support
Natalie Rose E. – 5/5
Personal Trainer & Online Coach

What do you like best about Uscreen?
They are constantly adding new features & the team are very responsive if you need anything. You can view analytics clearly and the community aspect is a great way to build retentionForever grateful and excited to reach more people with my online studio!

What do you dislike about Uscreen?
I would like the ability to give other members of the team more editing or controls within Uscreen.

Every Uscreen creator is paired up with a dedicated success manager to help you make the best of the platform. And if your content is already hosted somewhere else, you get a free migration included.

To put it simply, this is a platform made for ambitious video creators that need a stable income and want to give the best possible experience to their community.

You can even launch your own branded OTT apps to reach your students on their favorite devices.

Website design and customization

Uscreen is fully equipped with options to build sales pages and landing pages so you can control your customer’s journey through your sales funnel.

You get:

A website template optimized for user experience and high engagement across all devices. Optimized for high conversions with the seamless flow of built-in sales and checkout pages. Plus, its SEO-friendly, so you can add relevant details like keywords and meta tags to improve your site searchability.
Easy-to-use website builder with options to customize and add your own branding and domain name. It comes with all the blocks and tools you need to create a modern, engaging website that converts visitors into students.

The option to create your own branded mobile and TV apps, depending on what suits your learners and content.

*Practice with Clara – Desktop and app online course*

Uscreen has been great so far and continues to get better every month
Ryan R. – 5/5

What do you like best about Uscreen?
What I like best about Uscreen is the Netflix-like format of delivering their videos. Since my users don’t follow a linear path to what they are learning, I like that I can organize everything in a way that is best for them while still allowing them to search things on their own. I also like that their team is very proactive in fixing any issues and making improvements on a monthly basis. They take the time to learn about your business and also learn how you are using their product.

What do you dislike about Uscreen?
What I dislike about Uscreen applies more to my particular use case. Since my membership is designed for students taking college courses, I do wish Uscreen had quizzes so that I can include them after a video but it’s not that big of an issue since I can upload a pdf file where a student can take it and check their answers. Not as streamlined but it still works.