LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: A Definitive Comparison (July 2023)

I compared LearnWorlds vs Thinkific to figure out which app works best for what purpose and for which audience.

LearnWorlds is a professional LMS platform with an emphasis on creating courses and websites. You get an advanced course and website builder with customization, assessment, and marketing features, making it ideal for anyone looking to create and sell highly professional, no-code websites and engaging courses.

Thinkific, on the other hand, offers a simple course and website builder, making it ideal for small businesses, freelancers, or beginners trying to start out in the infobusiness world. To furtherly support course creators, Thinkific pushes marketing and sales to another level with its reporting feature and integrations with marketing apps.

But of course, it’s not that simple. I dug deep to compare LearnWorlds vs Thinkific based on the following criteria so you can find your perfect match:

1. Course Creation
2. Pricing
3. Course Marketing
4. Reporting
5. Customization

Let’s get into it: LearnWorlds vs Thinkific, who wins?

Comparison Summary: LearnWorlds vs Thinkific

LearnWorlds	Thinkific
Price
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐ No free plan, 30-day free trial. Annual billing saves 20%. The Starter plan starts at $29/mo and the Learning Center plan at $299/mo.	⭐⭐⭐ Free plan. Annual billing saves 25%. The Basic plan starts at $36/mo and the Grow plan at $149/mo.
Course Creation
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advanced course creation features including, exams, PDFs, interactive videos, etc. Also supports SCORM files.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Simple drag-and-drop editing. Supports multimedia, assignments, certificates, quizzes, etc.
Course Marketing
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ All plans come with marketing features like coupons, bundles, subscriptions, and more.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Paid plans have features like coupons, affiliates, add-on packs, and more.
Reporting
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Lets you track data related to student progress, sales, activity history, etc.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Detailed insights on orders, student engagement, enrollment, etc.
Website Creator
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 50+ customizable website templates. Allows adding images, animations, popups, blogs, etc.	⭐⭐⭐⭐ Limited but professional-looking website templates. Allows adding images, changing typography for desktop and mobile view, etc.
Integrations
🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Over 3000 integrations + Zapier + API.	⭐⭐⭐ Over 1500 integrations in Thinkific App Store, including e-commerce apps, email integrations, and site design tools.
Ease of Use
⭐⭐⭐ Intimidating at first, but very intuitive.	🏆 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Beginner-friendly and simple.
Best for
Entrepreneurs, schools, and educators that need advanced tools to develop highly professional courses and flexible pricing plans.	Beginner freelancers, educators, professionals, and small businesses, starting out in the online course creation world.
Try free for 30 days! (no card required)	Try free forever! (no card required)

What is LearnWorlds?
“Engaging content to your heart’s content” ♥️😌

Created by Panos Siozos, Fanis Despotakis, and George Palegeorgiou in 2014, LearnWorlds is helping many companies and entrepreneurs from numerous countries to create, sell, and market engaging online courses.

LearnWorlds offers advanced course creation features to build professional courses with content in many formats, self-assessments, and quizzes. Creators can easily align their courses with their brand identity using fully-customizable course templates and a no-code website builder. It offers marketing tools to help create irresistible offers to potential students and reporting tools to track progress.

LearnWorlds lets you quickly customize courses with videos, eBooks, texts, quizzes, question banks, assessments, and more…making the lives of creators, entrepreneurs, or educators much simpler.

What is Thinkific?
“Game in Simplicity” 💪😎

2012, the year Greg and Matt Smith decided to introduce their LSAT course to the online world. As they became more successful, other course creators asked them for help selling courses, which led them to found Thinkific.

Thinkific is an online course platform suited for all knowledge business beginners. With its drag-and-drop editor creators can simply build courses that support content in many formats: PDFs, videos, quizzes, and more. It offers comprehensive marketing tools and integrations to advertise your program to the widest audience possible. And its reporting feature supports your marketing efforts by offering insights into orders, enrollment, and student engagement.

Thinkific is perfect for first-time course creators looking for easy-to-use course creation software with marketing tools included.

LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: Course Creation

LearnWorlds has more advanced features, while Thinkific is more beginner-friendly.

LearnWorlds has advanced course creator features.

When you first open LearnWorlds, it can be a little intimidating visually. But once you get accustomed, you’ll notice how elaborate the course-making features are. The platform uses a simple tour-like guide to help you create your first-ever online course.

As for content formats, you can include a mix of videos, PDFs, exams, quizzes, audio, and more to make detailed courses. Once you have the basic content down, you can bring the course to a more professional level using LearnWorlds’ advanced e-learning tools like live sessions, forms, self-assessments, and interactive videos. For your own use as an instructor, you get to use the drip content feature based on student progression throughout the course, track their progress within the Gradebook feature, and give out customized certificates once your students complete your courses.

Thinkific course creator is easy to use and navigate.

Thinkific is right up there with LearnWorlds when it comes to essential functionalities. With less advanced features, its course maker is extremely easy to navigate, which makes it perfect for beginners.

Here’s a quick peek at some of Thinkific’s course-building features:

• Self-hosted and hosted video lessons
• Live lessons and webinars
• Downloadable content
• Presentation
• Assessments

Winner: LearnWorlds. LearnWorlds has every course-making feature Thinkific has to offer and more. However, Thinkific’s course builder is much easier to navigate through, making it more beginner-friendly.

LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: Course Marketing

LearnWorlds offers numerous affordable marketing features to boost sales, whereas Thinkific needs you to keep upgrading your plan to unlock more marketing tools.

LearnWorlds helps you reach and create offers for potential customers.

LearnWorlds has many of its own marketing tools to help you attract new students:

• Subscriptions that allow you to generate recurring revenue.
• Course bundles to create a collection of courses.
• Coupons (Promotions) to design deals and discounts.
• Customer feedback lets you add marketing forms or course surveys to your website.

You can further integrate LearnWorlds with email marketing and lead capture tools like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and Sumo to reach any potential leads, get them closer to the checkout, and increase sales on your course.

Thinkific offers robust marketing features in paid plans.

Thinkific is also big on marketing tools. The platform offers:

• Coupons/promotions to build your audience.
• An orders section to keep track of your order status, type of course, revenue, etc.
• Sales widgets in a form of buttons, which you can place on another site to let people purchase your product from anywhere.
• An analytics section for course-related data on revenue, enrollments, orders, etc., to improve your offerings and find potential leads.
• Integrations with marketing and sales tools like MailChimp, CartStack, etc.

Winner: Even though both platforms have similar marketing tools, LearnWorlds sheer width of marketing feature array gives it an advantage over Thinkific.

LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: Reporting

LearnWorlds offers in-depth insights into your business, while Thinkific focuses on a few main reporting features.

LearnWorlds helps you understand what drives your business.

In LearnWorlds, you can use the “Reporting Center” to get a better understanding of how each part of your coursing business progresses. It packs loads of information, including data on:

• Users to track student progress.
• Exams to collect grade-related data.
• Sales to track orders, product revenues, canceled sales, etc.
• Activity history to monitor all activities performed in your course.

Thinkific offers fewer but detailed reports to allow data-driven decision-making.

Thinkific’s analytics feature is similarly powerful. It houses all revenue records generated to date so you can easily spot trends.

But that’s not all. Thinkific offers more insights through features like:

• Orders to track courses ordered to date. You can also track which courses were purchased using which coupons, by product type, by returning students, by payment type, and by affiliate source.
• Student engagement to track your most and least engaging course content.
• Enrollment to track all free and paid enrollments.

Winner: Thinkific because of its less complex, straightforward insights that help you gain insight into your sales, enrollments, and student engagement without confusion.

LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: Customization

LearnWorlds has more detailed customization options than Thinkific.

LearnWorlds offers customization every step of the way.

With LearnWorlds, creating a professional school or course site is a breeze, thanks to its beautiful pre-made templates. They’re made with conversion in mind and allow for complete customization. For example, you can play around with text, borders, effects/animation, popups, and more.

That’s just the tip of the LearnWorlds’ customization iceberg. It also lets you:

• Create different assessment types, including exams, self-assessments, etc.
• Create interactive courses using raw content like videos, ebooks, PDFs, etc.
• Design your own certificates.
• Create your own website from scratch or connect your existing website with their WordPress SSO plugin.

Thinkific offers simple customization abilities.

Thinkific also offers all the features you need to carry out complete customization up to your standards. The platform has a very easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor that lets you add elements to a template and edit them to make them truly yours. Like LearnWorlds, you can play around with colors, template layouts, font, and more to create your website just the way you want it.

Website aside, Thinkfic lets you customize:

• Course player appearance,
• Sign up fields,
• How students progress and complete your course,
• Course page code.

But all-in-all, Thinkfic doesn’t have as many customization abilities as LearnWorlds. A good example is the lack of animation abilities in the site builder. But it all comes down to what you deem important for the design of your course.

Winner: LearnWorlds allows control over everything you put into your course while enjoying the benefits of ready-made templates and advanced customization features.

LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: Pricing

LearnWorlds has an affordable starter plan, whereas Thinkific has a feature-rich free plan.

LearnWorlds is perfect if you wish to create professional courses and access the more advanced features like Gradebook, custom domain, and interactive eBooks — at an affordable starter pack of $29 a month. Unlike Thinkific, LearnWorlds’ starter plan lets you create unlimited courses, but they charge a $5 fee per course sale. In the pro plan and forward there are no more fees.

Thinkific offers a free plan with one course, one admin, and all the basic features you’d need, making it perfect for beginners looking to test drive course building and LMS tools. Thinkific’s paid pricing plans start at $49 per month and offer the tools you need to successfully launch and grow your online learning business.

Winner: Thinkific because of its feature-rich free plan and no transaction fees.

LearnWorlds vs Thinkific: Pros & Cons

LearnWorlds Pros	LearnWorlds Cons
✅ Exams and question banks	❌ Bit of a learning curve, but there’s a large knowledge base
✅ White-label mobile app builder for Android and iOS	❌ White-labeling is expensive
✅ SCORM support	❌ Basic plan has a transaction fee
✅ Exciting website templates	❌ No free plan
✅ Automatic video transcription
✅ Payment gateways: Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, PagSeguro, Sandbox

Thinkific Pros	Thinkific Cons
✅ Beginner friendly	❌ No in-app exam feature
✅ Forever free plan	❌ No SCORM support
✅ No commission fees	❌ Expensive plan upgrades
✅ Super easy to use	❌ Limited site templates

Final Verdict: LearnWorlds vs Thinkific

Beginners and freelancers will love Thinkific, while large organizations and schools will prefer LearnWorlds.

While the battle was close, both LearnWorlds and Thinkific offer the complete package for different user groups.

LearnWorlds offers exams, question banks, SCORM support, and advanced customization, which is ideal for large online schools or educators with high professional course-building standards.

Thinkific, on the other hand, is a simple course creator with powerful marketing tools that can help small online businesses or individuals reach more consumers or students. With that said…

Use LearnWorlds if:

• You want professional-looking course templates.
• You want an affordable starter plan.
• You want to record user grades.

Click here to get started with LearnWorlds!

Use Thinkific if:

• You want a free plan for just yourself.
• You want an intuitive and simple course editor.
• You’re looking for a beginner-friendly course creation platform.

Click here to get started with Thinkific!