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LearnWorlds vs. Thinkific: A Side-by-Side Comparison

May 12, 2020
8 min
Compare LearnWorlds vs Thinkific, which is the best course platform?

Looking for the best course platform to create, host, and sell your online courses? You probably landed here trying to figure out how LearnWorlds stacks up against Thinkific.

Well, the comparison table above should give you all the info you need. TL;DR The people have voted and LearnWorlds is the superior platform. Save your time and start now a 30-day free trial of LearnWorlds to build your school.

If you are looking for the details, though, we have prepared a super thorough and open-minded article to help you decide.

First, we would like to acknowledge the team over at Thinkific. They’ve built a great product and helped a large number of trainers and businesses get into online training. We have much respect for the work they have been doing.

At first glance, the two platforms seem to offer similar features, and indeed, there are many similarities between the two.

Our DNA is very much different, however. LearnWorlds didn’t just stumble onto e-learning. With three co-founders having spent over 20 years researching and designing e-learning products (two of them holding PhDs in EdTech), e-learning and user experience is in our blood.

LearnWorlds has been designed from scratch with the intention of creating beautiful, engaging and interactive learning experiences. We deeply “get” e-learning and we have been in the shoes of trainers so we know best how to help them transform their content into the best possible online course and maximize their results and earnings.

As a quick note, we would say that LearnWorlds focuses and offers more in terms of engaging learning content, powerful customization options, and beautiful design. With LearnWorlds, you really own the learning experience of your students while Thinkific focuses a little more on the sales process and sometimes takes learning as a commodity.

To make your life a little easier while choosing between LearnWorlds vs Thinkific, we have written a detailed overview of both platforms and how they compare.

Disclaimer: The information in this comparison is based on publicly available information on Thinkific’s pricing and support pages, as well as our individual research and review on their account. We are also comparing both platforms on the terms of their top tier plans where they can be compared in full with all features and capabilities enabled.

This comparison was updated in May 2020. If you find any discrepancies do let us know.

LearnWorlds is the top learning platform for creating, managing and selling your online courses. It beats Thinkific in every aspect of online learning and offers a higher degree of branding and customization to represent your brand.

LearnWorlds is the choice of top course creators, picky educators and serious corporate trainers who care about their students.

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*When comparing the differences between the two platforms, we use a ✔️ to identify where a feature exists and a ❌ where it does not. A slightly darker background indicates where a platform has a better or more advanced version of the feature. Both cells are dark where features are slightly different but equivalent.
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Not everything is about a side-by-side feature comparison, it’s also about quality. Feature-wise, Thinkific has more or less a similar number of features with LearnWorlds. The difference lies with the quality of those features.

Then, LearnWorlds is the best choice for you!

Do you want some unique features that Thinkific does not have?

Thinkific is a good option if you are looking to sell an online course, on the other hand, it lacks on the quality of what it can offer.

LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds aims to improve the way educators, professional trainers and companies teach online.

LearnWorlds’ customers are entrepreneurs, educators and small to mid-sized businesses who value education and look to offer the best learning experiences to their students, customers and employees.

Thinkific

Thinkific aims to enable professional course creators and midsized businesses.

Thinkific customers range from entrepreneurs to mid-sized businesses looking to grow their companies with education for their audiences.

Individual reviewers also prefer LearnWorlds over Thinkific giving it a higher score in every platform:

Are you ready to compare? You can get a 30-day free trial on LearnWorlds and then continue to read the most detailed comparison of LearnWorlds vs. Thinkific, side-by-side.

Get your fully social, engaging and interactive online school.

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With both course platforms, it is easy to create an online course. In course creation, they both offer basic and intermediate features, unlimited hosting for videos, PDFs, text and several options for quizzes and certificates.

Here is a quick break-down of the common features in both course platforms:

Although, here is where LearnWorlds really shines above Thinkific, as we go one step beyond simple course creation and offer more advanced teaching and learning tools.

This is evident in recent decisions by both companies, as Thinkific drops their SCORM support and LearnWorlds is working to expand and improve its SCORM hosting capabilities.

But, your most pressing question is where we differ. Here are the main differences between LearnWorlds and Thinkific in relation to the course creation:

When choosing a course platform another important part of your research should include the website building capabilities and design. Especially if you are looking for a white-labeled platform, you want to be able to customize the look and feel to suit your brand.

Both LearnWorlds and Thinkific offer an easy to use system to build, customize and white-label your elearning website.

However, LearnWorlds offers a more robust, modern and powerful website builder with full website templates and more control over the elements of each page.

So, here are first the similarities:

However, there are some clear distinctions when you dig into the details of what is actually offered by each platform:

With LearnWorlds’ new website builder you get full control over design, the user journey and comes with many different templates. It also comes with 8 full website templates, control over the color theme, and even the ability to design your own templates.

Also, an impressive new feature is the ability to control who sees specific zones in a page. For examples, if you want to have an offer for non-buyers, you can show the zone to registered users who did not purchase, and users who purchased will not see it.

LearnWorlds is a clear winner when creating an elearning website to sell online courses. You can have a course website with a few clicks or control your brand into the most minute detail. Check out the video below for a quick introduction to the website builder:

White-Labeling

With both LearnWorlds and Thinkific, you can use your own website or domain to connect your school/academy and you have different levels of white-labeling your website – removing the platform’s name and showing your branding only.

While Thinkific offers a basic white-labeling of the footer on their growth plan, email notifications are still being send from a [email protected] address and this can only be removed on their Premier plan that costs $499 per month, and no option to white-label the social logins of a school.

When all is setup and ready to go, you will need to start marketing your courses. Here, LearnWorlds and Thinkific have the most common features with a few slight differences and different implementations of the features (i.e. small settings or how they are used).

Both platforms tick all the boxes on the main features you need to market & sell your online courses like:

However, there are a few differences on:

Here, Thinkific has a slight advantage on the marketing side with email broadcasts), while LearnWorlds wins on the sales side with the option to include 1-click sales funnels for quicker checkouts on the pages.

Both platforms offer more or less the same features on marketing and sales.

A huge part of elearning is administration. Whether you are a course creator looking to better understand your students & sales, an HR or trainer interested in seeing the progress of your students or customize the experience of your users, the administration side is immensely important.

LearnWorlds and Thinkific both offer many options on managing and reporting on your students like:

Here at LearnWorlds, we also feel that administration and security is hugely important. For this, we are taking some additional precautions, offering more control, customization options and protection of your own and your students’ data:

If you are residing in Europe or have customers there, then the GDPR-compliance features of LearnWorlds are an absolute must for your online school.

Slightly less powerful when it comes to admin roles, LearnWorlds is a clear winner when it comes to the Administration & Security options of your online school.

Now, that most things are covered, you are probably wondering, what about scalability? How does LearnWorlds compare with Thinkific when my business is growing?

What about larger audiences and big surges of traffic?

The answer is that both platforms are able to support huge amounts of traffic and simultaneous users, as well as corporate level requirements with:

Although, on the premium services, you can see that there are differences between the platforms you might want to consider:

LearnWorlds is the clear winner by having the option of a white-labelled mobile app to be developed and a data processing agreement which Thinkific does not offer.

The crucial question for every business is how much will it cost me?

Both course platforms offer unlimited users & courses with most of their plans and different features in each level.

LearnWorlds’ pricing offers a lower barrier of entry at $29 while Thinkific offers a very limited free plan and starts it’s paid plans at $49 (monthly payments).

On the higher end, LearnWorlds’ full features come at only $299 per month, while Thinkific charges $499 per month. Both offer enterprise level pricing which you need a quote for.

In conclusion, LearnWorlds offers more for a better price in the higher plan, you won’t find unique features like the interactive video & ebook, gradebooks or so much control over the branding and look of your school at Thinkific or anywhere else.

While there are many similarities, LearnWorlds offers the most advanced capabilities for a better price.

LearnWorlds is an easy to use learning platform that gives you the capabilities to offer the best learning experience to your students, employees and customers.

It also offers all the tools you will need to create, manage, sell and deliver your online education, but also customize the look and feel of it to work well with your brand.

If you are looking for the best representation of your brand, LearnWorlds is the definite choice!

Get your fully social, engaging and interactive online school.

Launch your school!

See more comparisons:

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Nick Malekos is a Senior Digital Marketer in LearnWorlds. He is a results based and well-rounded Digital Marketer with years of experience in the education industry, writer and digital literacy trainer.

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