I began using Thinkific, a popular cloud-based e-learning platform to host my online courses but quit after a couple of months. I however intend to resume using it again for reasons you will get to see in this post.
I began using Thinkific, a popular cloud-based learning management system to host my online courses but quit after a couple of months. I however intend to resume using it again for reasons you will get to see in this post.
Why I Picked Thinkific
For me, it came down to the factors listed below:
- Costs: Thinkific’s costs seemed reasonable, with my preferred plan (Pro) costing $99 per month. If I opted for an annual plan, it would have come down to a monthly rate of $79. This was more reasonable, in my opinion, than Teachable’s $119 for similar features.
- Customisation: I was able to create the kind of design I wanted using Thinkific’s design interface and tools. I must mention that I had experience of web design, and was probably able to manipulate the interface better than a newbie would have been able to.
- Ease of Use: Creating my first course, and other courses after that, was simple and straightforward. The time-consuming part was the actual course creation (video production, editing, subtitling etc). The Thinkific platform took away software or function related worries.
- Availability of Resource Materials: Help was easily available whenever I needed it as there were tons of questions and help content available with just a Google search. At a point, I had to reach out to the customer service and while the response wasn’t instant, it came within a working day or thereabouts. I should mention that I believe that they need to work on making their response time faster.
- Control Over My Earnings: One factor that would have been a deal breaker for me was if I had to split my earnings with the LMS like some other platforms do. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case with Thinkific. I had complete control over my earnings on the Pro plan.
- White-labelling: I loved having a platform that I could customize fully- without letting the world know which platform it was. Thinkific offered almost complete white-labelling, with the exception to that being in email notifications from my e-learning school. Users could tell that the emails were being sent from Thinkific’s servers. Except for that, it would take an experienced Thinkific user to tell.
Given that I was having a great time with Thinkific, why did I quit? For me, it came down to one key challenge:
Thinkific’s software was designed around accepting payments through either Paypal or Stripe, which would be great options for most people. Sadly, as a resident of Nigeria, neither option was available to me for receiving payments.
Could I get around it? Yes. I set up payments using Paystack, a Nigerian payment processor, and used Zapier to automate the workflow. It worked great, but then, I had to start paying Zapier monthly in addition to paying Thinkific.
Besides having to pay Zapier, I felt I was losing out on an essential feature: the ability to natively give (and indicate) discounts to prospective clients. This was a feature I could only have if I was using Paypal or Stripe. I felt that it was essential to my marketing that customers could be drawn with a “25 percent off” or something similar as is common on platforms like Udemy.
So, I decided to pause my use of Thinkific and try a WordPress-powered LMS until I was able to accept payments via Paypal or Stripe.
I began using Thinkific, a popular cloud-based learning management system to host my online courses but quit after a couple of months. I however intend to resume using it again for reasons you will get to see in this post.
Why I Picked Thinkific
For me, it came down to the factors listed below:
- Costs: Thinkific’s costs seemed reasonable, with my preferred plan (Pro) costing $99 per month. If I opted for an annual plan, it would have come down to a monthly rate of $79. This was more reasonable, in my opinion, than Teachable’s $119 for similar features.
- Customisation: I was able to create the kind of design I wanted using Thinkific’s design interface and tools. I must mention that I had experience of web design, and was probably able to manipulate the interface better than a newbie would have been able to.
- Ease of Use: Creating my first course, and other courses after that, was simple and straightforward. The time-consuming part was the actual course creation (video production, editing, subtitling etc). The Thinkific platform took away software or function related worries.
- Availability of Resource Materials: Help was easily available whenever I needed it as there were tons of questions and help content available with just a Google search. At a point, I had to reach out to the customer service and while the response wasn’t instant, it came within a working day or thereabouts. I should mention that I believe that they need to work on making their response time faster.
- Control Over My Earnings: One factor that would have been a deal breaker for me was if I had to split my earnings with the LMS like some other platforms do. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case with Thinkific. I had complete control over my earnings on the Pro plan.
- White-labelling: I loved having a platform that I could customize fully- without letting the world know which platform it was. Thinkific offered almost complete white-labelling, with the exception to that being in email notifications from my e-learning school. Users could tell that the emails were being sent from Thinkific’s servers. Except for that, it would take an experienced Thinkific user to tell.
Given that I was having a great time with Thinkific, why did I quit? For me, it came down to one key challenge:
Thinkific’s software was designed around accepting payments through either Paypal or Stripe, which would be great options for most people. Sadly, as a resident of Nigeria, neither option was available to me for receiving payments.
Could I get around it? Yes. I set up payments using Paystack, a Nigerian payment processor, and used Zapier to automate the workflow. It worked great, but then, I had to start paying Zapier monthly in addition to paying Thinkific.
Besides having to pay Zapier, I felt I was losing out on an essential feature: the ability to natively give (and indicate) discounts to prospective clients. This was a feature I could only have if I was using Paypal or Stripe. I felt that it was essential to my marketing that customers could be drawn with a “25 percent off” or something similar as is common on platforms like Udemy.
So, I decided to pause my use of Thinkific and try a WordPress-powered LMS until I was able to accept payments via Paypal or Stripe.
If you wish to try Thinkific, please follow this link. It is an affiliate link that will get you a free trial and earn me a commission.
