Thinkific Pricing & Plans: Which Should You Choose? (2023 Guide)
Need help choosing the best Thinkific pricing plan for your business?
Thinkific is one of the most popular online course platforms used by entrepreneurs selling courses, educators, digital trainers, and more.
Why is Thinkific so popular?
Thinkific is super easy to use, makes it easy to manage your students, offers great customer support, and gives you all the tools and resources you need to run a successful online course business.
If you’re thinking about trying it out, it’s important to note there are a few different Thinkific pricing plans available. And the cost and features offered between them can vary significantly, so it’s important to know what each plan offers exactly.
Our article outlines the key differences between each Thinkific pricing tier so you can choose the correct plan for your company’s size and goals.
Before we go into each of the plans offered by Thinkific, it’s worth pointing out that you can get a free trial for a month for their Start or Grow paid plans.
Thinkific also offers a limited free plan is a great way to test out the platform a bit to get a feel for what it offers for online course creators.
The paid plans range in price from $49 (Basic) to $499 (Expand) a month (or 25% less if you pay annually).
In the guide below, we’ll analyze each of these Thinkific plans in depth to help you choose the one that’s best for your situation.
Table of Contents
Thinkific Pricing
Free
$0
Per month
- Core Features (See More Features)
- 1 Course
- Unlimited Students
- Content Hosting
- 1 Community
- 2 Spaces Per Community
- 1 Admin Spot
- Email (30 days) & chatbot
- 0% Transaction Fee
Core Features
√ Instant access to your funds
√ Full e-commerce
√ Easy drag and drop Builder
√ Build out your entire website
√ Multiple instructor profiles
√ Easy, built-in SSL certificates
√ Student notifications
√ Upsell offers
√ Discussion forums
√ Secure cloud hosting
√ Choose your site language
√ Email and phone support
Basic
$49
Per month
- Unlimited Courses
- Email Students
- Email Integrations
- Drip (scheduled) Content
- 1 Community
- 5 Spaces Per Community
- Free Access to Accelerator Program
- 0% Transaction Fee
Free features plus
√ Coupons & Promotions
√ Custom domain
√ Zapier triggers
√ Manual student enrollment & exports
√ Affiliate reporting
√ Export Your Data
Start
$99
Per month
- Unlimited Courses
- Email Students
- Email Integrations
- Drip (scheduled) Content
- 1 Community
- 10 Spaces Per Community
- Free Access to Accelerator Program
- 0% Transaction Fee
- Memberships
- Bundles & Add-Ons
Basic features plus
√ Advanced Customization
√ Priority Support
√ Assignments
√ Communities
√ Completion Certificates
√ Live Lessons with Zoom
√ Share Revenue with Partners
√ Advanced CSS/HTML Editing
√ Offer Payment Plans
√ Sell Add-ons like Consulting
√ Additional Course Prices
√ Randomized Quiz Question Bank
√ Require VIdeo Completion (No Skipping)
√ Prerequisite Lessons
Grow
$199
Per month
- Unlimited Courses
- Email Students
- Email Integrations
- Drip (scheduled) Content
- 3 Communities
- 20 Spaces Per Community
- Free Access to Accelerator Program
- 0% Transaction Fee
- Memberships
- Bundles & Add-Ons
- 2 Admins
Start features plus
√ Remove Thinkific Branding
√ Bulk Student Emailer
√ Bulk Enrollments
√ API Access
Expand
$499
Per month
- 15 Course Admins/Authors
- 5 Site Admin Accounts
- Email White Labelling
- Single Sign On (SSO)
Growth features plus
√ Onboarding Package
√ 15 Group Analysts
√ Unlimited Growth Package
√ Manual student enrollment & exports
√ Affiliate reporting
√ Export Your Data
Plus
Discuss With Sales Team
Per month
- Create 3 Thinkific Websites
- Course Specific Branding
- Unlimited Authors/ Administrators
- Ongoing Account Support
Premier features plus
√ Custome Migration Planning
√ Dedicated Customer Success Manager
√ Dedicated Sandbox Site
√ Industry Leading Uptime
√ Service Level Agreement (SLA) 99.5%
√ Master Services Agreement
√ Robust Launch Preparedness Review
√ Plus APi
Likes
- Very easy to design and launch courses
- All in one course and payment system without additional integrations required
- Key unlimited features in free plan means you can build audience without paying anything
- Clean and appealing page design
- Active and helpful customer support and facebook group
Drawbacks
- Cannot copy and paste quizzes
- Videos playback can be glitchy
Thinkific Free Plan ($0 per month)
For a free plan, you get a surprising amount of key features to get your business going.
Users of Thinkific’s free plan get unlimited students, instant access to your funds, and access to the full ecommerce platform. With these features, a business can comfortably run online courses without worrying about monthly payments.
Of course, you get what you pay for here, and you might expect, there are some limitations to Thinkific’s free plan for course creators.
Restrictions at the Free plan level come in the online course allowance – you can only run 3 with the free plan. You will also pay 10% transaction fees on every course sale you make in comparison to the paid plans which don’t charge a transaction fee on any sale.
With this in mind, course creators should upgrade to the paid Basic plan ($49 per month) once monthly transaction fees go over this $49 mark.
You also must use the Thinkific branded pages with the Free plan, custom domains are only allowed with paid pricing plans.
All that said, the free plan is a good choice for those who want to start selling online courses and get their feet wet a bit before diving in fully.
Basic Plan at $49 a month ($39 per month if billed annually)
Thinkific’s Basic plan will provide users with access to unlimited courses removing the restrictive 3 course limit of the Free plan.
The ability to email students and offer promotional coupons is also offered at this plan level. This email feature is a little restrictive as they only allow you to email one student at a time. To compensate, Thinkific offers access to integrations with the Basic plan including Mailchimp and Aweber.
Reporting is also provided at this level through the affiliate reporting feature and with Zapier triggers allowing you to send your Thinkific data to other tools.As noted in the Free plan section, you do not pay transaction fees at the Basic plan level upwards and you can use your own domain instead of relying on the messy www.brand.thinkific.com
Start Plan at $99 a month ($74 per month when billed annually)
Thinkific’s Start plan is designed for growing businesses providing 2 course admins/authors and 1 site admin accounts.
The online course features become more advanced at this tier with flexible pricing options available such as a subscription based model and payment plan option. This increased pricing opens your products up to a bigger audience with different budget constraints.
Membership areas as well as private and hidden courses become available at Thinkific’s Pro plan level which allows you to segment and monetize your more valuable users.
Grow Plan at $199 a month ($149 per month when billed annually)
Thinkific’s Grow plan is designed for bigger businesses providing 5 course admins/authors and 3 site admin accounts.
The online course features become more advanced at this tier with features like revenue sharing with partners, allowance for up to 3 communities, the ability to remove Thinkific branding, bulk enrollments, and bulk student emailer.
As is common with these higher priced tiers, you also get priority phone and email support.
Growth Add On (+ $0.10 Per Active Student + First 100 Is Free!)
Thinkific offers this package add on at the Pro tier level so businesses can get access to advanced features on an ‘as you grow’ basis. This means Thinkific will increase the monthly cost by $0.10 for every new active user you have over the first 100 users. For example, 200 active users would mean you pay $109 per month ($10 more per month).
Additional integrations are offered at the Growth Package tier with access to ActiveCampaign and Infusionsoft and the segmentation of your audience is more advanced with search filters and bookmarks utilized for reporting and progress tracking.
Groups provide you with the ability to filter and track your audience progress based on their interests or profession. 3 Group Analyst roles are supplied so your team members can assess this progression.
For those businesses looking to move from a different platform, this package allows you to bulk import students using XLSX or CSV files. Bulk emails to your students are also added here so you can remove the need to integrate with mass email software.
The ‘Powered by Thinkific’ branding is also removed from landing pages so your school appears fully customized.
Expand Plan at $499 a month ($399 when billed annually)
The Expand Plan targets bigger companies looking to provide online education at scale.
Admin user accounts are increased to 5 with 15 online course authors authorized.
With the increased scale, Thinkific also provide increased support in setting up the software. Companies get an onboarding call, training and a personalized review of their website to ensure it is ready for launch.
Email white labelling is provided with this package meaning you can send from your custom domain instead of customer seeing noreply@notify.thinkific.com
The features of the add-on Growth package also become unlimited at the Premier tier so businesses don’t have to worry about the monthly cost increasing by $0.10 with each new active user.
Plus Package
This is a bespoke package available for high volume businesses. The price is negotiated with the Thinkific sales team.
The onboarding process is much more tailored at this tier with a Dedicated Customer Success Manager, custom migration plan and dedicated server hosting provided to get the client started.
Pricing Summary
Below is a brief summary of the Thinkific pricing plans for their online course creation platform:
- Free plan at $0 a month
- Basic plan at $49 a month
- Start plan at $99 a month
- Grow plan at $199 a month
- Growth (add on) $0.10/mo per active student
- Expand plan at $499 a month
- Plus plan at negotiated price.
