Teachable vs Thinkific: A How-To Guide On Deciding the Best Platform

When you’re about to launch your new offer (or heck, even new branch of your business), you will naturally wonder about the best ways to do things. And this is especially true if your new thing is an online course or membership offer. And personally, I’ve been running my own courses and memberships for the past few years and have made multiple six-figures from my efforts there.  I’ve tried out many course platforms and I’ve settled on what I personally believe to be the best. So here in this article, you’ll learn my feelings about Teachable vs Thinkific.

There aren’t many differences between Teachable vs Thinkific that stand out right away, but pay attention to the details.

Personally, I’ve been using Thinkific as my primary course platform (that I also tested out as a membership platform briefly), but I have some gripes about the user interface (UI) as well as the user experience (UX).

But don’t get me wrong, Thinkific is still a really strong platform. They have great customer service, and students inside of my own courses have gotten great results. And that’s really the only thing that matters here since you’re a course creator. But at scale, I wanted to make things BETTER. To really focus on the user experience. And to me, that’s my primary gripe about Thinkific.

Between Teachable vs Thinkific, I personally think that Teachable has a better user experience (UX).

That’s just my two cents though – but also based on the feedback that I’ve received from hundreds of real students.  And that’s also my opinion based on my own personal experience as a student of other people’s courses hosted via Teachable vs Thinkific.

My experience with Teachable vs Thinkific:

• I’ve been a part of $27 courses hosted on both platforms
• I’ve been a part of an $18,000+ mastermind that was hosted on Thinkific (see, it does work at even the high-end, high-ticket offer level)
• I’ve been a part of courses and memberships hosted on both platforms and found them both to be “okay” for what they were
• But here’s what I really think matters…

It matters what your students think of the platform, what they are experiencing, and what they want. Period.

As a course creator, your students pay your bills, right?

Well if that’s the case, it is your utmost responsibility to not just create content that gets them results but to have a course platform that makes that process as easy as possible. And that’s exactly why I wanted to write about Teachable vs Thinkific.

And yes, I could be writing about Podia, MemberPress, LearnDash, Kajabi, and the seemingly hundreds of other course and membership platforms available on today’s marketplace… but why would I?

Why would I confuse you with just regurgitating all the different options you have?

I want you walking away with absolute clarity if you should pick between these two platforms – Teachable vs Thinkific.

Now, let’s run through a Teachable vs Thinkific pros & cons list to help you decide.

Teachable pros:

• Super clean front-end design for both UI and UX
• Lots of third-party software platforms are able to integrate with Teachable easily (without the need for Zapier). For example, you’re able to integrate ThriveCart directly with Teachable, but you’re not able to integrate ThriveCart directly into Thinkific without a Zapier middle-connection.
• Mobile app (Thinkific currently doesn’t have this and this is a HUGE one that my students wanted between Teachable vs Thinkific)
• Ability to bundle courses (Thinkific can as well)
• Great customer service
• Really easy to use both as a student and as a course creator

Teachable cons:

• I haven’t honestly found any (truly). I’ve been looking. Possibly their native sales page design, but that also stands true for basically all course platforms. I like to keep the sales page design on my own website with a more custom approach.

Thinkific pros:

• Easy to upload content (but the same goes for Teachable here)
• Good customer service
• Ability to bundle courses (same goes for Teachable)

Thinkific Cons (my two cents):

• Doesn’t integrate with my cart software (ThriveCart) at the time of writing this article
• Requires Zapier integrations to enroll students
• Clunky feeling sales pages. (I decided to not use them because of this)
• Clunky feeling native cart
• Not enough data in their affiliate portal to really make it easy to use at scale
• Clunky student user interface
• Clunky student user experience
• Overall, just difficult to make it feel “pro” level with the aesthetic. And if aesthetic is important to you like it is to me, that’s why I prefer Teachable vs Thinkific.

Overall and final thoughts:

I don’t just want to write a thousand more words giving you all the details about everything. That’s what their company’s websites can really do – but bottom line… my choice is Teachable.

So, if you are thinking about creating a course of your own or you’re thinking about moving course platforms, Teachable is the one I recommend for you. And after reading countless books over the subjects, learned from countless other educators and business coaches – there’s a lot of different opinions. The bottom line… use one and market it well. All the main course platform options can technically work for you. Don’t let indecision work against you and delay your success.

I hope that honest comparison between Teachable vs Thinkific was helpful to you. And as always, let me know if you have any questions about my experience with either. I’m always here to help.

If you are a course creator (or you’re thinking about becoming one), here are some other blog posts I recommend you check out:

• The real, honest, and ugly truth about being a course creator
• My controversial opinions about community over competition
• My review about Danny Tran’s digital agency course
• If you’re looking for a great CRM to manage your client communication, contracts and invoices – make sure to read this post comparing
• And make sure to check out my podcast to help you make money and simplify your life