Thinkific Pricing for 2022: Which Plan is Right for You?
Thinkific is a top-rated online course platform for creating courses in the booming multi-billion dollar online learning industry, but how much does it cost to use?
And which Thinkific pricing plan is the right one for you?
While we might not be able to help you come up with a phenomenal idea for a course, we can give you an overview of Thinkific's various pricing plans (warts and all).
(For more about Thinkific, check out our comprehensive Thinkific review, and our list of real-world Thinkific examples.)
Thinkific Pricing Plans
There are four Thinkific pricing options:
- Free Plan: $0/month
- Basic Plan: $49/month or $39/month when billed annually
- Pro Plan: $99/month or $79/month when billed annually
- Premier Plan: $499/month or $399/month when billed annually
Key Features of All Plans
All of Thinkific's pricing plans — including the free one — offer these key features:
- Host multiple content types, including videos
- Basic quizzes and surveys
- In-course discussion
- Content delivered through native course player
- Website capabilities
- Payments accepted through PayPal and Stripe
- Email Customer Support
- Landing page builder
Best of all, none of the Thinkific pricing plans require you to pay a transaction fee for each course you sell.
Some platforms, like Teachable, charge a 5% transaction fee. This is a huge consideration when picking an online learning platform.
Who the Free Plan is Best For
Thinkific's Free Plan offers basic course creation, so you'll only be able to create, market, and administer your courses to your students.
On the plus side, you get unlimited students and instant access to your funds (some plans, like Teachable's Basic plan, require a 30-day hold on funds).
What's Not So Great?
The Thinkific Free Plan doesn't include several advanced features that the paid plans have, including:
- No content dripping
- No completion certificates
- No (or very little) digital marketing and sales tools
- No coupon creation
- No affiliate marketing tools
- Thinkific subdomain
- Only create three courses
- No email integration of student data to your email provider
Bottom Line?
While Thinkific's Free Plan may seem limited, considering most platforms only offer a free trial period, the Free Plan has a lot to offer.
Thinkific also offers free trials of their other plans if you're ready to dive into more advanced options right away.
So if you're a brand new course creator or if you just want to play around with a course creation platform, Thinkific's Free Plan is a great option.
Who the Basic Plan is Best For
The Basic Plan has all of the features of the Free Plan with some significant upgrades:
- Unlimited courses
- Drip your course content
- Coupons
- Affiliate marketing
- Custom domain
- Email marketing integrations (MailChimp, ConvertKit, etc.)
- Third-party integrations via Zapier
What's Not So Great?
The Basic Plan has its limitations. Several important features are missing, including:
- Certificates of completion
- Advanced quizzes & assignments
- Communities
- Content locking & course compliance
- Private & hidden courses
- Payment plans & subscriptions
- Membership site & bundles
Bottom Line?
The Thinkific Basic Plan is great if you're on a budget or you just don't need these features. But if you're serious about things like subscriptions and memberships - essential marketing automation tools — you will find the Basic Plan lacking.
Who the Pro Plan is Best For
Thinkific's Pro Plan is its most popular plan because of is its additional features:
- Subscription pricing
- Bundles
- Community features
- Completion certificates
- Content locking
- Assignments
- Zoom live lessons
- Customization options
- Two site admin accounts
- Five course admins
- CSS/HTML editing
- Drip content
- Advanced course builder
What's Not So Great?
Unlike many platforms at this price point, the Thinkific Pro Plan doesn't offer white-labeling or bulk emailing — which are crucial for your marketing.
Bottom Line?
For most course creators, the Pro Plan has everything you need to run a successful online course business.
But you will have Thinkific branding, and if you want to run an email marketing campaign, you'll have to do it one active student at a time.
Who the Premier Plan is Best For
Thinkific's Premier Plan is for established, high-volume businesses, and at $499/month (if you don't go with the annual subscription), you can see why.
Here are some additional features you get with the Premier Plan:
- Bulk emailing
- White-labeling
- Exam creation
- Groups
- Advanced integrations
- Five site admins
- 50 course admins
- Public API
- Single sign-on
What's Not So Great?
While Thinkific's Premier Plan offers some great additional features, most platforms provide marketing tools such as white-labeling and bulk emailing at a lower price tier. These features should be included in Thinkific's Pro Plan.
Bottom Line?
Thinkific's Premier Plan is great if you're a large business with more business-y needs. For solopreneurs, the price tag is pretty steep just to get some features that are offered for much less on other platforms.
But individuals shouldn't count Thinkific out just yet.
Thinkific's Growth Package
Thinkific offers a Growth Package that unlocks some key features of the Premier Plan if you are on their Pro Plan. Most notably, you can get bulk email and white-labeling.
In addition to the Pro Plan's monthly subscription ($99), you can get the Growth Package for $.10/user (the first hundred are free), and the Pro Plan + Growth Package is capped at $499 — at which point you're on Thinkific's Premier Plan.
And Finally: Thinkific Plus
Thinkific has recently added another plan called Thinkific Plus, which is specifically for high-volume businesses. Some industry bigwigs use Thinkific Plus, including Hootsuite and Later.
The pricing depends on the individual business's needs, so you'll have to contact Thinkific to get a quote.
Is There a Thinkific Alternative?
There are a lot of online course platforms for course creation available, so there are several Thinkific alternatives. Some popular platforms include Teachable, Kajabi, and Xperiencify. Check more alternatives out here.
So What Say You?
Is Thinkific the right online course platform for you?
And is there a Thinkific plan that suits your course creation needs to a "T"?
One of Thinkific's standout features is Thinkific's Free Plan. Unlike other platforms that only offer a brief free trial, you can stay on Thinkific's Free Plan as long as you like.
And you can also take advantage of Thinkific's free trial for their other plans.
Thinkific is one of the most popular platforms out there, and with plans ranging from free to $500, Thinkific has something for everyone.
So are you in?
Murray loves building software platforms that make life easier for marketers and entrepreneurs. It's all he does. He's built many tools over the years and helped thousands of people start and grow their business, which is his driving motivation.
His latest project is Xperiencify -- a new LMS / online course platform that fixes the "dirty secret" of the online course industry (which is that 3% of people get results from the course they buy.) They do it with a powerful combination of psychology 🧠, gamification 🕹️ and Silicon Valley "black magic". 🥷
