Thinkific

Kommentare: We are at the beginning stages of offering a high quality course to students from around the world.

Vorteile: We researched many Platforms before choosing Thinkific. We love that Thinkific is Canadian. We love the journey that students take from first encountering the site landing page, going to the course landing page and then immersing themselves in the course. I appreciate the helpful support from the Thinkific team. They do a great job of answering our many questions. I am fortunate that Thinkific rebuilt their course editing software quite soon after we began developing our course. Their new software is quite easy to use and easy to revise. I really like their flat-rate monthly subscription fee with no hidden costs.

Nachteile: I wish students could purchase this course in the currency of their own country.
I wish we could pay for our subscription in Canadian funds instead of American.
We have had to purchase a separate Discussion Forum because their Disqus Plug In is a social media plug in that is not confidential, and their built in Discussion Forum is very awkward and poorly organized with no ability to search, edit, or even manage posts.
Thinkific focuses much more on supporting marketing than on supporting online course development. We were fortunate that we had already taken two excellent courses in online course development that we could apply to the Thinkific Platform.
Thinkific is less responsive to good ideas for improvement than I would like them to be. For example, despite many, many requests from many course developers it is still not possible for the course author to copy, paste and edit quizes and so there is a lot of unnecessary labour involved in inputting quizes

Kommentare: Blackboard Course sites, Moodle, and Instructure Canvas are great products, but you have to invest in additional solutions to collect payments, etc. for selling the online courses. Thinkific does all this in 1 system with more options for site design than the big education players do. Some of the features could be more well-thought-out, but for a non-LMS company, it is incredibly easy to set up and allows you to design instructional sound materials.

Vorteile: I liked that you could design the access portal, the courses, and the payment methods all in 1 interface without any needs for additional products. I particularly enjoy how easy it is to set the courses up if you have your curriculum designed.

Nachteile: I wish there was an option to be able to have access to all the course features without fees. We are a startup and just are not in a position to charge for courses yet, meaning this would be a huge investment for us that we are not willing to make. It would be great if you could get a 6month burn-in period to test and market before going live.

Kommentare: No benefits realized yet as I just got my first course up and published. I have several courses written but finding the right software for me and my students was my Catch 22... never considered that would hold me back. I kept working on the courses... and finally, the solution was presented to me. I have tried so many different teaching platforms already and never actually published. Just wasn't confident in knowing the site well enough -- but in no time at all, I am published on Thinkific and so thrilled I made the leap. Finally! Pure FUN!

Vorteile: Thinkific is easy to use. Add a new Module, one click to add content, module after module. So easy! Better yet, I LIKE how it looks to the user. I LIKE how the site can look like mine -- not another platform. It does look different, but MY site name is on top, visible, so users know where they are immediately. I've tried others and never quite liked the look as I work with seniors who have retired... and wanted simplicity. This time I found just that. AND YET -- very functional, with every content option I'd like to add. Thinkific has a great Facebook group too. Very active and helpful, learned how others are doing their classes so gives me new ideas. Some groups were full of people whining about what the software didn't do or needed to be corrected... that didn't work for me either, yeah, picky picky! :)

Nachteile: I only had to ask Support one question while adding my first course. My only question was: how to add a manual student who paid me privately (or complimentary class) if they didn't purchase through Thinkific itself. I know its there, just chose to ask instead of searching! :) I didn't even use HELP pages to learn how to use it... it was pretty intuitive for me and I love that! Please don't think that means its not a fully integrated teaching service, it really is. They simply "got it" where the user (me, the instructor) and the other user (student) is concerned. Someone did the work to think about how both users will interact with the software. Kudos!

Kommentare: I enjoyed Thinkific and may yet return to it when my current contract is up with the LMS I moved to earlier this year. It's certainly as easy to use, and the sales page option is better designed. Everything else is about the same, but Thinkific is slightly more expensive and the pricing model is confusing.

Vorteile: I liked most that there was a free option to get started and that there is a front end option that shows all courses owned by an account native to the program. Thinkific is easy to use and now that it has added a community feature it's almost perfect.

Nachteile: At the time I switched from Thinkific, I did so to get a native community feature so my students wouldn't have to go to Facebook for community. Now that Thinkific has added it, there's only one complaint I have, and that is that I need another layer of complexity for my courses. Unfortunately, I haven't found an LMS that has that, so Thinkific is no worse in that regard than any other LMS I've explored. I do have an issue with the pricing model, which is too complex and confusing. That makes it hard to compare with other options.

Kommentare: It allows a person to publish an online course and customize everything, including the price you sell it for. Thinkific has everything you need to be successful. AND they offer lots of webinars and training as you need! I look forward to using it more as I grow my online publishing business!

Vorteile: I like that it is customizable. I like that Thinkific offers lots of webinars and help with all aspects of publishing online courses. It allows a couple ways to collect money for your courses. They spell out exactly what to do! For a newbie like me, I began setting things up months ago while I was working on my course. As I completed it, I began uploading the lectures and made some changes to my text and landing page and other info. Easy to make it your own. I am happy with how professional it all looks. Now I will get busy with the marketing end and Thinkific can help with info about that too! Customer service is awesome and they reach out frequently to see what they can do to guide you! I highly recommend this solution for getting an online course published. I am at the entry level, but am testing the waters until I need to go further and unlock more features.

Nachteile: As expected the free version is basic, so in order to get to some of the good stuff, you have to upgrade. Not a big deal really, since I am producing my first course and need to go slowly.