Today we are presenting the best alternatives to Thinkific.

Despite being a top LMS tool, Thinkific has some serious drawbacks.

• It only supports courses and coaching. There are no dedicated memberships, so you must use course bundles (as a workaround) to sell membership content.
• Although it has a community feature, it is fairly basic. If you need complete control over the community and want gamification features to increase members’ engagement, you must go with third-party integrations like Circle.so.
• It lacks marketing features such as email marketing, sales funnels, and automations. If you want all these features integrated, consider tools like Kajabi.
• Currently, Thinkific doesn’t have a mobile app. If most of your audience is mobile users and you want to provide them the flexibility to access content on the go, you have to consider alternatives.

Let’s get started with the review and see which tool is best for your needs.

Podia

Podia markets itself as an all-in-one platform for selling online courses, memberships, webinars, coachings, and digital downloads.

In contrast to Thinkific and Teachable, Podia is not exclusively focused on online course creation.

It can be used as a course creation platform (like Teachable), a membership platform (like Kajabi), or a platform for digital downloads (like Gumroad).

Courses/coachings:

Podia’s course curriculum consists of sections and lessons. It supports various content types like texts, embeds, quizzes, coachings, and files. The downside is it doesn’t support custom codes.

It has LMS features like – course completion certificates and drip scheduling.

For scheduling the 121 coaching sessions, you can use Podia’s integrations with Calendly, SavvyCal, Acuity, or YouCanBookMe. You can sell unlimited coaching. To make it easier for students to book the sessions, you can include coaching modules inside your courses.

Community:

Similar to Thinkific, Podia has a basic community feature whose subscription levels feature can be used as an alternative to memberships, and not much! It can’t replace dedicated community platforms like Circle.so.

Webinars:

Podia also supports webinars to increase engagement in your community. But you need integrations with Zoom or YouTube Live. It includes features such as replaying videos, adding instructions to attendees, and sending reminders.

Marketing:

Podia just has basic Marketing features like coupons, discounts, and upsells. It doesn’t support order bumps and downsells, unlike tools like Kajabi.

It has built-in checkout. With the latest update, it now supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, and iDEAL payments (to make mobile payments much easier).

Like Teachable, it now supports EU/VAT tax handling. So you don’t have to worry about remitting the taxes.

Email marketing and automation

Podia also has a native email marketing feature that allows you to send broadcasts and campaigns (these are a series of emails). As opposed to Kajabi, there are no email templates available.

The campaigns can be executed with a few entrance and exit conditions. When conditions meet, users enter the campaign and begin receiving the emails (imagine sending emails by automation rules).

There are conditions available like –

• Purchased product
• Pre-launch email sign up
• Subscribed to plan
• Joins mailing list

Pricing:

Podia is a freemium platform with a premium plan starting at $39 per month. There is a forever-free plan, but every purchase involves an 8% transaction fee.

If you are a beginner, I recommend the Mover Plan. Its Shaker plan, which costs $89 per month, would be ideal for advanced users.

Pros

• It supports unlimited courses, coaching, webinars, and digital downloads on all its paid plans.
• It comes with an in-built messaging tool to connect with your customers.
• It has a built-in website builder that you can use to design your entire site, product pages, and checkouts.
• It has marketing features like coupons, upsells, embedded checkouts, and affiliates. It has sign-up limits and product access durations for scarcity marketing.
• The Shaker plan supports third-party custom coding just like Teahable’s power editor.
• Podia is very strong at integrations. It provides native integration with over 25+ tools and services. There is also Zapier integration available.
• It has built-in affiliate marketing to increase sales.
• Podia pays you instantly. There is no holding or waiting period. Whereas in other tools you have to wait for a number of days depending on the payment gateway you use.

Cons:

• The free plan comes with an 8% transaction fee.
• Most of the powerful features are restricted to the Shaker plan. To access features such as course completion certificates, affiliates, sign-up limits, and product access duration, you must pay $89/mo.
• It has a very basic community component. It cannot replace dedicated community platforms like Circle.so or Mighty Networks.
• It doesn’t support custom coding. So you have very limited customization features.
• Podia doesn’t offer course compliance features like enforcing video watch duration, lesson order, and graded quizzes.

Bottomline: Podia is the best option if you’re looking for an all-in-one digital product-selling platform at an affordable price. Unlike Thinkifc, which focuses mainly on LMS needs, Podia is a one-stop destination for all your marketing needs.

Teachable

Teachable (read review) is the most popular course platform out there. Dozens of top digital marketers and course creators trust Teachable as their platform of choice for online course creation.

In addition to courses, it supports coachings, course bundles, and digital downloads. Currently, it lacks dedicated memberships and community features.

Course features:

Creating courses in Teachable is a breeze. Its course curriculum consists of sections and lessons.

For adding the lesson content, it supports various content types like –

• Text
• Images
• Audio & video
• Banner images
• Files and attachments (For this, it has a PDF viewer)
• Graded and non-graded quizzes
• Marketing tools like- upsells and referrals.
• Custom coding

Unlike Thinkific or Kajabi, it does not support live lessons within courses. You have to use external integrations with YouTube Live or Zoom, and create live events to connect with your students.

Teachable‘s comment system is a game-changer – it’s easy for students to ask questions and engage in discussions, with comments available directly beneath each lesson.

With multi-threading of responses, conversations stay organized, and students can get their questions answered quickly. In comparison, Thinkific’s comment system is cumbersome, requiring multiple steps to leave a comment. With Teachable, students get a streamlined and user-friendly platform that facilitates enriched learning experiences.

To improve student’s course completion rates, Teachable gives course compliance features like enforcing –

• Graded quizzes
• Video watch duration
• Lesson completion order

Communities:

Unlike Thinkific, Teachable doesn’t support communities.

However, Teachable recommends integrating it with Circle.so.

Teachable provides a single sign-on with Circle. Students can use Teachable’s credentials to log into Circle. You even have the flexibility to embed Circle’s spaces inside of Teachable courses. This makes it easier for students to consume the course and participate in community activities inside the tool.

Pricing:

Teachable is also a freemium platform. It has a forever-free plan but is limited to just 1 course, 1 coaching, and 1 digital download.

Its Basic plan costs $59/mo. It is limited to just 5 courses. If you need the ability to sell unlimited courses, you have to go with the Pro plan, which costs $159/mo.

Click here to see all the pricing plan details.

Pros

• Decent free plan is available with a good number of features.
• It supports custom coding embedded inside of the lessons. Also, its power editor gives you more control over theme customization.
• It has built-in payment gateways, so you don’t have to go with external integrations like PayPal or Stripe.
• To handle complex payouts, it has a service called “Backoffice”. Along with this, it also handles EU/VAT tax calculations.
• On its higher plans, you will get advanced theme customization features. It would be really helpful if you were a developer.

Cons

• The Basic plan only supports five courses. If you want unlimited courses, you have to go with the Pro plan that costs $119mo.
• The Basic plan charges 5% on each sale.
• Unlike Thinkific or Podia, it doesn’t come with communities. So you have to spend money on external integrations.
• It doesn’t support the live lessons feature inside of courses.
• As of now, it has only an iOS app. It doesn’t support in-app purchases and push notifications.

Bottomline: Overall, Teachable is a great LMS tool if you are managing your communities on external platforms and you only need it to host your online courses. You must also use third-party tools for marketing.

Kajabi

Kajabi is one of the most expensive course platforms with excellent marketing options.

Although the platform is pricey, if you are an advanced course marketer and don’t want to worry about technicalities, you will find it very useful.

Thinkific supports only courses, coachings, and communities. While Kajabi supports podcasts and memberships, along with courses, coachings, and communities.

Course features:

Kajabi provides you with blueprints (a.k.a. templates) to help you get started with creating courses.

Its course curriculum consists of modules, sub-modules, and lessons. Submodules help in adding content in chunks for easier content consumption.

I really liked the fact that Kajabi supports live lessons inside of the courses. You can use this feature to conduct paid masterclasses, live coachings, live streams, etc.

As of now, the sessions are limited to just 200 participants. You can keep the rooms locked for security reasons.

So, what are the areas where Kajabi excels over Thinkific?

Communities:

Kajabi and Thinkific both have built-in communities. But Thinkific communities just have features like – members, topics, posts, and comments.

Previously, Kajabi also had a basic community.

But,

Recently, it acquired Vibely, an online community platform. It is now possible to create highly engaging gamified communities. It supports live rooms (meetups), challenges, accomplishments, badges, points, etc.

You can combine communities with emails and automation rules to create workflows that keep users engaged. For example – you can automate sending emails to inactive participants, add a tag for challenge takers, send live event reminders, and much more.

Marketing features:

Kajabi has advanced email marketing, automations, and sales funnels, unlike Thinkific.

• It supports both email broadcasts and sequences (series of emails). To simplify tasks further, you can combine emails with automation rules.
• For Pro plan users, Kajabi gives access to advanced automations (these have an additional conditional filter) to further specify the rules.
• Kajabi has native sales funnels. There are over 7+ pre-made funnels available. There is a blank canvas available to build your funnels. These funnels consist of pages, opt-ins, emails, and automations.

Pricing:

Kajabi is a freemium platform with pricing starting at $149/mo. There are no transitional fees on any of its plans. On the annual plans, you can save 20%.

Pros

• Along with courses and coachings, it also supports dedicated communities, podcasts, and memberships. You can consider it an all-in-one platform.
• It has recently acquired Vibely to help you build engaging online communities. You can make the community fun and engaging with its gamification features.
• It has integrated all the marketing features built-in. These include – email marketing, sales funnels, and automation rules.
• It has both iOS and Android apps. Apps support push notifications and in-app purchases.
• Kajabi provides several blueprints to help you create products easily.
• It has launched AI tools like content creator and course outline generator to speed up your content creation process.
• To analyze how well students are consuming the courses, Kajabi gives video analytics and heatmaps. With this, you can see at what point students are dropping, a portion of the content skipped, how many times they have watched the video, etc.

Cons:

• Kajabi has restrictions on the number of students and courses you create. None of its plans support unlimited products.
• If you want to access its code editor you need to pay $399/mo.
• The pricing is too high. Even though you spend $399/mo, you are limited to just 100 products and 100 funnels. None of its plans support unlimited products.

FreshLearn

FreshLearn is an all-in-one digital platform for selling online courses, digital downloads, product bundles, masterclasses, webinars, and memberships. If you are a course creator, entrepreneur, or business owner, looking for an affordable marketing platform, FreshLearn is the best way to go. 

Courses: 

With FreshLearn, you can create either on-demand courses or cohort courses. Unlike tools like Thinkific, it doesn’t offer ready-made templates for you to begin with. 

For adding the course content, you have videos, documents, text,  images, quizzes, and assessments. Similar to Kajabi, you can create graded assessments to make sure students are thoroughly going through your courses. 

There is also advanced assessments available with features like negative score, randomizing questions & answers, passing percentage, etc. If you are conducting entrance exam kind of tests, this feature would be really helpful. 

FreshLearn also comes with course completion certificates and a drip schedule. You can drip schedule the content based on the student enrollment date or previous chapter completion. 

When it comes to pricing, you can sell for free or set one-time or subscription-based pricing plans. FreshLearn lacks a native payment gateway, but it provides integration with Stripe, PayPal, and Razorpay. 

Sales and marketing features:

To increase sales, it has coupons and affiliates. You can host your affiliate program and motivate users to promote your products and get rewarded. 

When it comes to coupons, you can create both single-code and bulk-code coupons. If you running any special deals, bulk codes would be really helpful. 

What’s more. 

It has a landing page builder, and you can create your custom pages, sales pages, and checkout pages. To increase conversions, you can add countdown timers, testimonials, and FAQs, on the checkout pages. 

Gamification: 

Gamification is very crucial in taking your business to the next level. With FreshLearn, you have points, rewards, quizzes, and challenges. You can award points for course completions, quiz completions, achievements, etc. 

To motivate students to complete the courses, you can restrict the course’s access to specific days. Also, you can display the progress bar. 

FreshLearn premium pricing starts at $29/mo. If you need features like gamification, a question bank, an affiliate program, or custom themes, you need to go with its highest plan, which costs $59/mo. 

It doesn’t charge any transaction fees on its plans. 

Pros

• It has a generous free plan for you to get your hands on the tool. 
• Its advanced assessments are good if you ate hosting academic-centric courses. 
• Has a blog builder and website builder, so you don’t need to go with external tools. 
• It supports multiple currencies, meaning you can sell products in students’ native currency, which helps in increased sales. 
• It has a mobile app helping students to consume the content on the go. 

Cons

• It lacks video retention graphs and heat maps. 
• It doesn’t offer course templates, unlike tools like Kajabi. 
• It lacks community tools. So, to build a community, you need to go with external integrations with Circle.so or Mighty Networks. 

Bottomline: If you need an affordable all-in-one digital platform to sell your products and services, FreshLearn would be the best choice. 

Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks (read review) is an online community and LMS platform tailored toward creators, teachers, coaches, and marketers. Its main USPs (unique selling propositions) include feature-rich communities and custom-branded mobile apps.

Its communities have features like –

• Spaces (you can make these public, private, or secret). You can monetize your website by creating private spaces that are accessible only to paid members.
• Chats (Private messages, group chats, and direct messages).
• Online now (similar to Whatsapp). Members can see who is online and connect with them in real-time.
• Live streaming (use this to create live meetups, QAs, paid events, and masterclasses inside of the spaces).
• It has a built-in ambassador program (internal referral system) to motivate users to bring in new members and get rewarded for their work. There are three levels available – Silver, Bronze, and Gold. Read more here.

Courses:

Mighty Networks has a basic course builder. It supports both online courses and cohort courses. Unlike Thinkific or Kajabi, it doesn’t offer any course templates.

It supports drip scheduling of the content and has lesson wide comment section for student engagement.

If you think the LMS features are too basic, you can take a look at some other Mighty Networks alternatives.

Mobile apps (Mighty Pro):

Mobile apps are one of the strongest selling points of Mighty Networks. These are completely white-labeled apps, and you own the ownership of them.

You have full control over the creation, design, and launch of apps in Google and Apple Play Stores.

Users can access live streaming, courses & memberships, and communities all within the apps. You can create high-ticket programs, group coaching calls, and live events with your own branded notifications. The apps support in-app purchases and push notifications for increasing conversions.

You can refer to these case studies and see how brands are leveraging these apps to improve their conversions.

Pricing:

Mighty Network’s Community plan costs $39 per month. To access courses, go with its Business plan at $119mo. See all the plan details here.

Pros:

• Its built-in ambassador program motivates members to invite others and scale your community.
• It is one of the few tools that provide completely white-labeled mobile apps.
• Mighty also provides Done for you service where the team will create the apps for you. They will handle everything from the build, design, publishing, maintenance, and support. So you can focus on your business.
• It has match making feature to help members to connect with others based on their location, hobbies, interests, profession, etc. This is really a good feature to turn online connections into real-life relationships.
• It has a native calendar feature where you can get a bird’s eye view of all your sessions and events. It avoids integration tools like, say Google Calendar.
• None of its plans charge transaction fees.

Cons:

• Courses are restricted to a higher pricing plan that costs $99/month.
• Unlike tools like Skool, it lacks when it comes to gamification levels.
• It lacks advanced LMS features like course compliance, video analytics & heatmaps, certificates, assessments, etc.
• It lacks dedicated memberships. However, you can use private spaces combined with subscription pricing to sell membership content.
• It doesn’t provide community moderation features like – keyword blocking, profanity checking, or flagging posts & comments.

Bottomline: If your main focus is on creating course-specific communities and you are ready to compromise on advanced LMS needs, Mighty Networks would be the go to choice.

LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds (read complete review) is a great LMS tool suited for academic-centric courses. This is the only tool on this list that is SCORM-compliant. To engage learners, it has features like interactive videos, ebooks, 1:1 & group sessions, assessments, certificates, surveys, and much more.

You can sell courses, memberships, and bundles. For marketing, it has upsells, cross-sales, high-converting sales pages, 1-click funnels, and customizable checkout experiences.

Similar to Mighty Networks, LearnWorlds is also truly white-labeled. You can connect your custom domain, and customize the user experience to reflect your brand.

Mobile apps:

LearnWorlds allows you to build branded mobile apps for your school. These apps are –

• 100% white-labeled
• No-coding required
• Have a powerful visual editor
• In-App purchases
• Push notifications
• iOS & Android native
• Built-in publishing to app stores

You can trigger push notifications and send messages based on the user’s location, time, and segment. Furthermore, you can send offer updates, discount or coupon notifications, follow-up messages if the cart is abandoned, and many more.

Website builder:

Similar to tools like Kajabi, LearnWorlds also has a dedicated site builder that allows you to completely customize your academy. There are more than 50 industry-specific site templates available in various niches, such as arts, design, coaching, finance, healthcare, etc.

During special occasions, you can switch between multiple versions of your site quickly. You can, for instance, build a Black Friday-themed version of your website (during Black Friday and Cyber Monday ), activate it, and then switch back to your regular website.

Pricing:

Unlike Thinkific, LearnWorlds lacks a free plan.

The lowest plan costs $29/mo and is best for newbie course creators. The downside with this plan is you need to pay an extra $5 for every course sale.

The next is the Pro Trainer plan costs $99/mo. This plan is for professional course creators. It supports unlimited courses and landing pages.

The highest plan costs $299/mo. If you choose the annual billing, you can save 20% on each of the plans.

Pros:

• Unlike Thinkific, it has interactive videos to hook students in. For videos, you can add tables of content, watermarks, transcripts, and customize the player skin.
• It has a built-in survey builder and assessment builder to create quizzes, polls, assessments, and tests.
• It is SCORM/HTML5 compliant. This helps you easily import your content into your online school.
• It has white-labeled mobile apps. These support in-app purchases, push notifications, and built-in publishing to app stores.

Cons

• Mobile apps are available only in its Learning Centre plan, which costs $249/mo.
• It restricts most of its advanced features to higher plans.
• Its starter plan charges $5 per course sale. It also has a downside in that you cannot sell free courses in this plan.

Bottomline: LearnWorlds is best suited for academic-centered courses. It has all the essential features you need to increase the student course completion rate. Its integration with Webex and Zoom helps in conducting live sessions or meetings with staff or students.

LearnDash

LearnDash is not a cloud platform for you to host your online courses.

It’s a WordPress plugin, that lets you convert your WordPress site into an online course platform.

You also need to remember that if you are using LearnDash, you need to host your videos on platforms like Vimeo or Wistia for faster load speeds. To know more on this, refer my LearnDash review.

Interface: Like any other WordPress plugin, LearnDash registers a custom menu in WordPress upon installing.

Here, you can access your courses, lessons, topics, quizzes, certificates, etc.

Here you can create your new course, similar to how you create a new blog post on WordPress.

When you scroll down the course builder you can add the lessons and modules to your course.

If you have already created the lessons, you can add them here or you can create new lessons and add content inside it.

As you can see, it’s a WordPress plugin and so the interface is fairly basic without all those fancy UI and UX elements. It just helps you accomplish things in a simple way.

Customization: There are basic customization options and also you can customize the colors and layout using custom CSS of your WordPress theme.

If you want much more customization options, you may have to get the Visual Customizer addon for LearnDash.

With this addon there are over 20 color pickers that enable you to tweak the colors of every LearnDash template elements like progress bar, checkboxes, buttons, widgets, and also you can add your own custom CSS.

You can also use any of your favorite WordPress plugins on top of LearnDash to increase the customizability of courses.

Marketing: In LearnDash you can set the price for your courses and also create coupons for effective marketing.

You can also make use of other marketing plugins like Thrive Ultimatum, Deadline Funnels, etc for implementing scarcity marketing on your WordPress site.

Integrations: LearnDash out of the box comes with limited integrations (as it’s a WordPress plugin). However, it comes with dozens of both free and pro addons to extend the core functionality.