Thinkific Free Trial And Plan Guide
Have you ever wanted to earn money online? Do you want to turn your passion into a full-time income? Do you have skills and knowledge to share with the rest of the world?
If you answered YES to any of these questions, then you might want to consider becoming an online instructor. As an experienced online course creator, I can tell you how great it is to work on your own schedule, pursuing your interests while earning money.
However, the process, especially for beginners, can be quite complicated. This is why many people, including myself, use an all-in-one platform to help manage the technical side of things, while we work on content creation. If you are looking for a platform that accomplishes just this, helping you easily create and manage your courses, then consider Thinkific.
I have heard many great things about Thinkific. As one of the most popular online course platforms, Thinkific offers a completely free plan for anyone interested in creating their own courses.
Today, I will be reviewing the Thinkific free plan, and deciding if it is worth it. So whether you’re new to online education or an experienced online learning platform user looking to make a switch, consider reading this until the end.
Sell Online Courses For Free With Thinkific
Thinkific is an online course platform that helps you easily create and manage your courses.
Founded in 2012, the platform has helped over 40,000 entrepreneurs launch their own successful online businesses.
Thinkific markets itself as one of the best platforms for selling online courses. It comes with a number of key features the site has to offer. Such as:
- User-friendly interface. You can easily add text, images, videos, and other media to your courses to make them engaging and informative.
- A wide range of customizable courses to grow your skills. On the website, it says that no matter the topic there is always a course for you on Teachable.
- A community of like-minded individuals. You can connect with other instructors and learn from their experiences, or collaborate on projects to help each other succeed.
- A commitment to customer success. They offer 24/7 customer support, which is always helpful, especially when you are new.
All of these features are available on their free plan. It does seem too good to be true, so I went ahead and tested it myself to see whether or not you can launch a successful online course business on Thinkific for free. Without further or due here are my findings.
Thinkific Free Plan
First things first, I was quite impressed by the wide range of features available on the free plan. Usually, most free plans are a glorified advertisement for the paid plans, however, Thinkific is a clear outlier. Let’s start from the beginning.
The whole process feels like a video game, you even have a progress bar!
You get started by watching some Thinkific video instructions and move on to course creation.
It is very intuitive and is literally guiding you step by step. While I understand how important it is for beginners, for someone with years of experience like me the whole thing seemed a bit redundant. However, that was just my opinion, and I have heard many positive reviews about the layout of the platform. Now then, let’s review some of the features offered in this free plan.
I was surprised that the Thinkific free plan offered a video library. Most services don’t as they take up a large portion of space, especially high-quality long videos. The video library is easy to use and set up. Simply think of it as an archive keeping all of your video content. Although I have to mention that there is a limit to the video library, that being 2 GB, or about 2 hours’ worth of footage in high resolution.
This won’t matter much if all of your courses are on documents, but this will be a huge limitation for video content creators, which you will also need to account for.
Next up is the Thinkific communities. You can think of it as a social media platform for fellow course creators or for your students. You gain plenty of services such as live events, and you can even customize your groups.
Although it may not seem like a necessary feature, it actually plays a crucial role in your business. In order to garner an audience there needs to be a personal connection, which Thinkific communities provide.
As for the quality of the feature – it is great. The simple and intuitive design makes the platform feel almost like any other social media like Facebook. And the audio and live quality are on par with big tech companies like Google Meets.
Marketing features on the Thinkific free plan are offered but don’t expect much. They will provide student data and other key figures in a chart, so you can tell at first glance. I will say that they do a good job of making it easy to read, as statistics tend to be difficult to comprehend for beginners.
That being said aside from some tips and video lessons, they don’t provide a lot of services in this department. This is a big downside as marketing and SEO optimization are crucial to gaining new students. If you don’t already have a following, it will be difficult to grow on the free plan.
One thing that annoyed me the most was the “phantom” features. When you take a look at the management tab, it seems as if you get membership and bundle services, however when you click on them they are locked behind a paywall. This applies to advanced reporting beta as well. I am thankful that it is only just a couple of features, but it is still a useless add-on to the free plan.
I have compiled the major points below.
Advantages
- NO transaction fee
- Unlimited students
- Email and chat support
- 100% ownership of content
- Drag and drop course builder
- Access to website themes
- App store
- Thinkific Free Academy Course
- Fully integrated e-commerce
Disadvantages
- Thinkific branding
- Limited access to private and hidden courses
- Only 1 course
- Only 1 Community
- Only 1 administrator
- Limited exclusive features
Overall, I think that the evaluation of the Thinkific free plan will depend on your needs.
If you’re looking for a free platform where you can create an online course straight away and launch your own online course business, I would recommend checking out Thinkific’s free plan.
With it, you will gain a great deal of valuable information. And in this business, information is king. In my years in the field, I haven’t seen a platform with a learning management system so generous. You can learn all the basics such as how to create sales pages, course content, and sites – the backbone of any business.
With its robust features and no transaction fees, it’s a great option for anyone starting out in the online education space.
However, if you are an experienced online course creator looking for sustainability, then this is not the plan for you.
No matter how many benefits it has, you are only limited to 1 COURSE!
You can’t grow an audience with a single lesson! Not to mention the other limitations, which may not seem all too bad at first, but are detrimental in the long term.
Still, the choice is yours to make, and no matter which you choose you must have an account to get started.
Your First Online Course – How To Sign Up?
Creating an account with Thinkific is very simple and only takes a few minutes. Just go to the Thinkific website and click on the “Get started free” button in the top left corner.
You will then be asked to provide your name, email address, and credit card details. Once you have entered all the required information, you will have instant access to your new account.
Every new account falls automatically under the free plan. To transfer to a paid plan click on “Upgrade” in your dashboard, and choose the plan you want. Speaking of which, let’s discuss a little bit about the paid services that Thinkific offers.
Thinkific Free Trial
Before Thinkific used to offer a temporary free trial. During the free trial period, you had unlimited access to all of their features for 14 days, so you can really get a feel for what the platform has to offer with a money-back guarantee. However, just a couple of years ago they replaced the feature with the Free plan.
Even if they don’t have the time-limited free trial anymore, Thinkific’s paid plans are still worth considering.
Unlimited Courses – Thinkific Paid Plans
Currently, Teachable offers 3 premium plans. In ascending order they have all the features of the previous plan with some extra features added. These are the Basic Plan ($36-$49/month), the Thinkific Start Plan ($74-$99/month), and the Grow plan ($149-$199/month). Let’s take a brief look at what each has to offer.
Basic Plan
- Includes all Free features
- Custom domain
- Coupons & discounts
- Affiliate selling
- Thinkific Academy Advanced courses
This plan is similar to the Free plan, but you can create an unlimited number of courses. You also gain access to a custom domain, which is great for branding purposes, as well as scheduled content and coupons for your students. This ensures that your content will be more appealing to potential students.
However, the plan still has some downsides such as a limited number of community and administrators.
Unlimited Start Package
- Includes all Basic features
- Assignments
- Bundles and add-on packages
- Memberships & payment plans
- Live lessons
- Advanced course-building options
- Advanced website code editing
As you can see the Start plan is a big step up from the Basic plan discussed earlier. You can tell it is meant for more experienced content creators because it puts emphasis on small features that may seem insignificant, but play a decisive role in taking your business to the next level.
Take, for example, completion certificates. It may seem redundant at first since it’s just a verification that you finished a course. However, that simple verification is the reason many people take online courses, to begin with. After all, certification looks great on your CV and proves that you have gained additional skills and knowledge.
Still, as versatile as this plan is, we still can go higher.
Thinkific Premier Plan – Grow
- Includes all Start features
- Remove Thinkific branding
- Bulk student emailer
- Bulk enrollments
- API Access
The Growth Package is Thinkific’s most popular plan. And for good reason, it gives you complete control over your brand with the ability to remove all Thinkific branding from your site.
It also opens up a whole world of possibilities with features like the assignment engine, which allows you to create assignments and quizzes for your students, as well as API access, which ensures that only authorized users can obtain specific bundles of resources from your courses.
Now we are getting into the big league. Being the most expensive plan, you unlock practically every feature that Thinkific has to offer.
However, as they say, don’t pay for what you won’t use. The number of features you have doesn’t matter. If they are not useful to you, might as well go with the free plan or a cheaper one. This is why you need to look at your needs and make the most cost-efficient choice.
Final Thoughts
Summing up my thoughts, I was thoroughly impressed with the free Thinkific plan. Over the years I have reviewed countless services such as Thinkific, but I have always been disappointed in their free plans. Most free plans of online course platforms have exorbitant transaction fees or have such limited features that make the platform impossible to use.
However, Thinkific’s free plan includes some fantastic features such as a custom domain, unlimited students, phone support, and course marketing services. All the features in the free plan are essential for starting your own successful online course business.
With that being said, I would recommend Thinkific to people who are just beginning and looking for guidance. The platform offers a free way to start your journey as an online course creator, not to mention the abundant free high-quality lessons its library has.
Nonetheless, the downside of having a singular course is very detrimental. It pretty much limits you to one niche market, which is fine if you are just starting out, but as you expand, you will have to consider upgrading to a paid plan for sustainability.
Unfortunately, Thinkific stopped offering a temporary trial. Thinkific pricing plans start at $49/month and go up to $199/month for the month-to-month payment plan. With these paid plans, you get all the Thinkific features in the free plan as well as unlimited courses, students, bandwidth, private labeling, automatic tax calculations, and live chat support.
Overall, I would recommend Thinkific’s free plan to anyone who is looking to create and sell online courses. The platform is extremely user-friendly and offers a lot of features and resources, both in the free and paid plans. In addition, the customer support is fantastic and always willing to help with any issues you may have.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Do The Monthly Or Yearly Subscription Work?
It depends on the monthly or yearly cost of your specific Thinkific plan. All monthly and yearly prices are in USD. Monthly plans are billed on the same day each month, and yearly plans are billed on the same day each year. If a month is missing your plan renewal day, the billing date will shift to the last day of the month. The same concept with yearly subscriptions.
Who Owns My Content?
You always own your student data and your content. Thinkable will never market to your students, and you can export your data at any time.
Is Thinkific Free Plan Time Limited?
NO! The free plan will last indefinitely along with all your courses and student information. If you have any more questions about this topic or the platform I would recommend turning to Thinkific customer support.