Thinkific Alternatives You Should Consider in 2024

Looking for the best Thinkific alternative in the market?

Check out these six alternatives to Thinkific you can choose from.

Best Thinkific Alternatives of 2024

#1. Teachable (Best Overall Online Course Platform)

If you dislike complexity, this is the best alternative for you. 

Teachable is known for its beginner-friendliness and simplicity. And it’s trusted by over 100,000 business owners, creators, and coaches worldwide.

The signing up and course creation process are straightforward to do. After answering simple questions, you will be able to access the dashboard. 

Everything you’ll need is available on the left-sidebar. You can access your dashboard, site, users, products, sales, and more with just one click. 

Course Customization

Teachable lets you lay out your lectures with different kinds of content. You can add images, audio, videos, codes, and quizzes by simply clicking them. Modify your courses under the “Curriculum” tab. 

The “Information” tab allows you to add a course image, edit your author bio, set course compliance, and edit default pages. 

The design template of your course is also changeable. Choose between Simple, Colossal, or Teachable Classic (default). 

Teachable made creating certificates easy-breezy. It provides simple templates to choose from but also allows you to create your own. 

Aside from the course, your site is pretty customizable too! 

Go over to the laptop icon on the left side to modify it. Once you click that, you’ll see new tabs under the site category.

Click “Theme” if you want to modify your site’s logo, favicon, thumbnail, font, and color in your entire site. 

Marketing

Teachable allows you to market your courses in different ways. We will discuss them one by one. 

Upselling a course. Offer your other courses to encourage your students to make another purchase. One way to do it is by adding an upselling section to your lecture layout under “Curriculum.” 

You can also include it on the “Thank you” page or “Order Bumps” if the course is a supplemental item to the purchased one.  

Order Bumps. This refers to offering additional courses on the checkout page. With one click, your customer can add another product to the transaction. 

Pre-selling a course. This feature lets you market your courses in advance. It allows you to build engagement and gain insights into what your potential customers expect from the course. 

Collect Email Leads. Another effective way to market your product is through email marketing. Teachable allows you to gather data from your subscribers and integrate it with third-party services like Mailchimp. 

Integrations

One advantage of using Teachable is it’s affiliated with useful third-party sites. But note that these sites’ customer support is beyond their control. 

If you have an issue using them, you need to contact the customer support of that application. 

Here are the integrations available as of the moment:

• Zapier
• Mailchimp
• Convert Kit
• Google Analytics
• Circle.so
• Sumo
• Segment
• Facebook Pixel
• Webhooks

Pricing Plans

Unlike Thinkific, Teachable doesn’t offer a free plan, but it offers a 14-day free trial and cheaper paid plans. 

You can choose to pay Teachable monthly or annually. You can get a discount if you opt for the annual plan. 

The Basic Plan ($39) is perfect for beginners. The Pro Plan ($99) is for experienced content creators, and the Business Plan ($249) is for online schools with more products and bigger teams.

Pros

• Teachable is navigable and straightforward. 
• Unlimited students and includes unlimited courses.
• The course content, site design, and course template are customizable. 
• It has cheaper price options than Thinkific for Basic and Business plans. 
• It is integrated with many useful third-party apps. 
• No credit card information is needed for the free trial. 

Cons

• No free plan. 
• The Basic Plan has a 5% transaction fee. You need to upgrade to Pro if you’re not okay with this. 

#2. Podia (Best Value Pick)

Podia isn’t only an online course creation platform. You can use it for other products such as webinars, one-on-one coaching, digital downloads, and creating an online community via a membership site. 

Like Thinkific and Teachable, Podia lets you sell and market your products on one platform. More details here.

It offers the best value at its price compared to its competitors. 

Podia has a simple and responsive interface. Once you sign up, you’d be directed to the dashboard. From there, you can start creating your product or choose to take a tour of the tool. 

Product Customization

Podia enables you to create different types of products that are all customizable. 

Under the Product section, you can choose to create an online course, digital download, webinar, and even a bundle of different products. 

You can add text, links, quizzes, and files to your content for courses. You can also modify the availability of the course you’re offering.

Rather than the design, Podia offers customization on your course setup. You can make it a standalone, drip, or cohort-based course. 

There’s also an option for you to pre-launch your course or bundle it up with other products. 

Products allowed for digital downloads are vast. You can sell eBooks, PDFs, Photoshop files, and even MP3 files to your audience. 

Another great product of Podia is its membership. It’s pretty customizable as you can add videos, text, images and control the access. You can customize the products you’re offering in a plan, plus you can use it to build a strong community through posting blogs. 

You can also provide a certificate of completion, but unlike Teachable and Thinkific, Podia doesn’t have any design template. Aside from the logo and content, it isn’t customizable. 

Marketing

Podia can help you build and grow your email list by adding sign-up forms on your preferred pages. Without leaving the site and using a third-party site, you can send an email broadcast to your email subscribers. 

Messaging is another fantastic tool of Podia. Build engagement by chatting with your visitors and customers on Podia in real-time. 

Besides email marketing and messaging, Podia lets you create an attractive and search-engine-optimized website for your brand. You can quickly build and customize your homepage, sales page, and email subscription page. This will help you market your products efficiently.

You can also upsell your courses. This is available on the Pricing tab under your chosen course. 

If you go for the higher plans, you can access affiliate marketing to help you automatically give out commissions. 

Aside from that, The membership works as a community/blog site for your business. You can modify the courses and products included, plus build engagement with your audience. 

Integrations

Podia caters to over a dozen of third-party sites. Here are some of them:

• GetResponse
• MailChimp
• ConvertKit 
• Stripe
• PayPal
• HotJar
• Trello 
• Lead Pages
• Deadline Funnel
• Sumo

Pricing Plans

There are three available plans for those interested in subscribing to Podia.

Mover is the cheapest plan, valued at $39/month. Shaker plan is priced at $79/mo, while Earthquaker is at $179/mo. 

If you opt for Podia annually, you’ll only pay 10 months’ worth of your chosen plan. 

Compared to the features of Thinkific and Teachable, you can offer more products on Podia. 

Pros

• Offers cheaper plans than some Thinkific alternatives. 
• Products aren’t only limited to online courses. It’s great for selling digital products!
• No transaction fee, even for the most affordable subscription. 
• Compatible with plenty of third-party sites. 
• The free trial doesn’t require credit card information. 

Cons

• No free plan. 
• No available design template for courses. 
• Some valuable features like course certificates, affiliate marketing, and embedded checkout aren’t available on the Mover Plan. 
• Selling membership isn’t allowed on the cheapest plan. 

#3. Kajabi (Best All-In-One Marketing Platform Pick)

Another close competitor of Thinkific is Kajabi.

Kajabi is a course platform that allows you to create, sell and market coaching programs, online courses, and memberships. 

Kajabi has one-click templates to help you build your products without the need to code or learn complicated systems. 

This all-in-one platform also allows you to collect and monitor customer progress, insights, engagements, and forecasting. These are all essential to create a better marketing plan and content. 

Course Customization

Kajabi’s goal is to make everything easy for you in building your website and products. So, they offer many pre-designed yet customizable templates you can select from.

Of course, it still gives you the option to start from scratch. You have the freedom to choose. 

Like its competitors above, you can add images, videos, documents, assessments, and more to your course content. 

You can also modify the type, of course, you’d like to publish. Do you want to create a mini-course, a regular online course, or a drip course? Easily pick one from the “Products” dashboard. 

Marketing

Kajabi provides practical marketing tools called “Pipelines.” This can help you automate sales and marketing campaigns. You’ll be provided with text and videos explaining how it works by clicking on a specific Pipeline. 

Once you choose a pipeline, you can easily edit and add pages to it. 

Other than this pipeline, Kajabi has built-in affiliate and email marketing features. However, the affiliate program is only available on Growth and Pro Plan. 

Integrations

Kajabi is integrated with powerful analytic sites like Facebook Pixel and Segment. Email marketing platforms like MailChimp, Drip, and ConvertKit. Sales funnel builder like Click Funnel. And if this isn’t enough, you can use Zapier to connect apps that aren’t directly integrated with Kajabi. 

Pricing Plans

There’s a big gap compared to the pricing options of the two platforms above. If you choose to pay for Kajabi annually, you can get a 20% discount. But I don’t know if that makes up for the Kajabi monthly price. 

Kajabi’s Basic Plan is $149/mo. Growth, its most popular plan, is valued at $199/mo. At the same time, the highest subscription is $399/mo. 

If you’re an experienced content marketer and want to see results, Kajabi is still worth the price. But if you’re just starting, it might be too expensive.  You can always try out a free Kajabi trial.

Pros

• Kajabi Assistant can quickly give answers to your questions. 
• Offers drag-and-drop and well-designed templates. 
• No coding is needed to create an excellent website. 
• No transaction fees. 

Cons

• No free plan. 
• Plans are more expensive compared to Thinkific, Teachable, and Podia. 
• The number of products you can create is limited. 
• There’s also a limit for the active members or students. 

Frequently Asked Questions:

• Can You Transfer Content From Thinkific to Kajabi?

#4. LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is also a great and advanced platform to build your online courses. Like Kajabi, it offers pre-made templates for your pages. It also supports codes like HTML and SCORM. If you want to 

Course Customization

Course and page customization can be done in one place. Everything is clickable, and all the tools you need to change, edit, or add something will be available on the right sidebar. 

Let’s use the “Course Lessons” for example. By clicking the layout tab on the side, you can easily change the design and color of this section. 

To change and edit your course content, hover your cursor at the table of contents, and an “edit your content” button will appear. Click it, and you’ll be directed to the “Content” section of the platform. 

LearnWorlds allows you to add different multimedia like videos, Youtube, eBook, PDF, Soundcloud, and more. You can also put multiple contents in one lesson. 

Marketing

This Thinkific alternative has built-in marketing tools as well. It allows you to upsell and cross-sell courses, create sales pages, and build partnerships through affiliate programs. 

Integrations

When it comes to integrations, LearnWorlds isn’t left behind. Here are some applications you can use together with this platform to create an effective campaign: 

• Zapier
• Zoom
• MailChimp
• FreshDesk
• ZenDesk 
• Convert Kit 
• HubSpot
• Active Campaign

Pricing Plans

LearnWorlds has the cheapest Starter Plan among the Thinkific alternatives presented here. For only $29/mo, you can already create 3 site builders, unlimited paid courses, and 2 Pop-Up Builders. The site you created inside LearnWorlds will also have a Free SSL Certificate. 

The only drawback of this plan is that you will be charged $5 per course sale. If you’re a newbie in selling online courses, this won’t be an issue. But if you’re a professional coach with experience, you should go for the Pro Trainer. This plan costs $99/mo. 

The other plans available are Learning Center ($299) and High-Volume & Corporate (TBD). The Learning Center is for companies that market multiple courses. If this isn’t enough, you may contact LearnWorlds’ team. 

Pros

• Offers a 30-day free trial. 
• Creating courses is very easy. 
• LearnWorlds has a built-in SEO. 
• Accepts multiple currencies.

Cons

• No free plan. 
• Charges $5 fee for every course sale on Starter Plan. 

#5. Teachery

Teachery is one of the market’s most straightforward and affordable Thinkific alternatives. Unlike Podia and Kajabi, you can access its affiliate program without the need to upgrade your plan. 

The best part of using Teachery is that you have unlimited access to everything on their simple course platform. Unlimited online courses, students, emails, and sales pages. 

What’s more, it doesn’t charge you any transaction fees. Nada.

Course Customization

Teachery offers two customizable templates for your courses – Minimal and Sidebar. The Minimal template is the most popular among the users of this platform. While Sidebar is the first template they’ve released. 

The difference between the two is Minimal offers a more sophisticated yet simple design. The sidebar looks more traditional. 

If you know how to code and wish to customize your course pages more, Teachery allows CSS and HTML. 

Once you create your course, you will see your course dashboard. You can start inserting your lessons, building your landing page, and designing. You can change their online courses’ color of bars, text, buttons, and courses.  

Teachery also allows you to pick your preferred font style, remove course progress, and add an image header. 

Other than your course page can also modify landing pages in Teachery. 

Marketing 

You can use your sales pages and free online courses to attract potential customers and introduce your paid courses to them. Unlike the other Thinkific alternatives, Teachery doesn’t have a built-in marketing tool, so you’ll need to use third-party sites to increase leads and build engagement with your audience.

One thing that you should take advantage of is the affiliate program. Building partnerships is great for marketing your brand and online courses in Teachery. 

Integrations

Among the alternatives mentioned, I believe Teachery has the least to offer regarding integrations. You can access PayPal, MailChimp, ConvertKit, and Zapier, to name a few.

But don’t worry! Zapier allows you to connect to other third-party sites, so you won’t feel that Teachery lacks integrations. 

Pricing Plan 

Depending on your preference, you might love or hate the pricing plan of Teachery. I love it because you don’t need to stress yourself in choosing the right plan. Hate it because you cannot upgrade or downgrade it. 

Teachery only offers monthly and yearly plans. By paying $49/month or $470/year, you’ll get to enjoy all of its features. 

Here are some of them: 

• Zero transaction fees.
• Custom HTML support.
• Customer analytics. 
• Promo codes and discounts. 
• Customer support. 
• Unlimited landing pages, students, and online courses. 

Pros

• Customizable interface.
• The price is reasonable. 
• An affiliate program is available. 
• Unlimited online courses, sales pages, and students. 

Cons

• No built-in marketing tool and community management. 
• Limited integrations. 

Other Types of Alternatives

The above Thinkific alternatives are what I’d call “direct competitors” as they all provide hosting, center around courses, and some have extra features.

In this section, I’ll present two different types of alternatives some course creators go with.

How are they different? First, Learndash requires you to have your own web hosting, and WordPress installed on your domain. Let’s dive in.

#6. LearnDash

Unlike Thinkific, LearnDash isn’t a standalone platform to sell online courses. It is a learning management system available as a WordPress plugin. 

LearnDash gives your existing website online course platform features and capabilities. This allows you to create and sell online courses inside your own website. 

Course Customization:

This LMS allows you to create online courses, certificates, topics, and quizzes. It is compatible with any WordPress theme, and you can customize it through CSS and add-ons. 

Learn Dash also works with WordPress plugins, so feel free to download your favorite ones and modify your course based on your liking. 

Marketing: 

You can offer free courses, subscriptions, memberships, and course bundles to market your products. LearnDash also lets you give discounts and coupons to attract customers. 

There are marketing plugins available out there to help you with your campaign. Some examples are Upsell Plugin, WPFusion, and Private Messaging. 

Integrations:

Don’t be surprised by the functionality and power of this plugin. LearnDash is integrated with a powerful application to improve your sales and business. 

Here are some of the third-party sites associated with this WordPress plugin:

• PayPal
• MailChimp
• Slack
• Zapier
• Gravity
• ConvertKit 
• SamCart 

Pricing Plans:

LearnDash only offers an annual subscription. Their plans start at $159 for the Basic one. Plus Package costs $189, and the Pro is valued at $329. 

The feature that isn’t available to the Basic Package is the ProPanel. This tool is quite necessary as it improves the admin part of LearnDash. It allows emailing features, provides learners data and reports. 

Another advantage of getting a higher plan is an upgraded number of licensed sites. Although the Basic Package isn’t bad as you can create unlimited courses. 

Pros

• Really affordable plans.
• It can be used in any WordPress Theme. 
• Compatible with most WordPress plugins. 

Cons

• No free trial. 
• It’ll take some time to learn how to use LearnDash. 
• Not beginner-friendly.

#7. ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is a popular tool among online marketers. This marketing software platform is primarily used for different types of marketing funnels.

Such as lead-gen, sales, webinar, quiz, and course membership funnels. With ClickFunnels, you can design advanced sales funnels (i.e., courses with bump offers and upsells) to sell your courses and create a members-only course.

It’s a great sales funnel tool but not great regarding online courses.

There are a few reasons for this that I’ve outlined here.

To name a few, ClickFunnels, does not provide video hosting for your video lessons. You’ll have to subscribe to a Vimeo or Wistia type of platform.

Another common complaint I often hear (and have witnessed) is the lack of mobile-friendliness that comes with the traditional ClickFunnels course templates.

That said, Vimeo is a decent video hosting solution with reasonable pricing, and mobile responsiveness is becoming a problem for longer courses.

Ultimately, ClickFunnels is a decent course platform solution for launching a first-time course, but I wouldn’t recommend it for extensive courses with many modules and lessons.

Note: if ClickFunnels had a baby with Thinkific, it would look like Kajabi.

In Conclusion

All the course platforms mentioned above are great & unique in their own way! It all comes down to your purpose and goal.

For creating, selling, and marketing digital products – Podia, Kajabi, or LearnDash are the best options.

These few platforms allow you to sell digital downloads, membership sites, coaching programs, and more.

If your main goal is only to sell courses online, go for simpler platforms like Teachable or Teachery.

Does a course platform with pre-made templates excite you? Try LearnWorlds or Kajabi.

Take note of the advantage and disadvantages of each platform. If you can live with the cons and feel like it’s the best course platform for you, go for it!

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