Learning is an essential part of professional life. In the digital era, online learning has surpassed the benefits of offline learning. As a result, businesses need a learning platform that makes online courses attractive and engaging. LearnWorlds and Thinkific are two platforms that can help businesses market and sell their courses online.
In this LearnWorlds Vs Thinkific comparison article, we will discover which tool is better suited for your business.
LearnWorlds focuses on creating powerful and intuitive courses that act as a popular training solution. On the other hand, Thinkific covers creating online courses and markets them with built-in marketing features.
LearnWorlds Vs Thinkific
What is LearnWorlds?
LearnWorlds is a fully customizable course builder with marketing integrations leading to high conversions. It offers a white-label solution that ensures you can brand your products as you desire. It is an all-in-one training solution through which you can educate and train your audience. You can create and sell courses in a few easy steps.
The platform aims to enhance how professional trainers, teachers, coaches, companies, and educators teach online. It caters to various customers, from entrepreneurs, MNCs, and small-scale businesses to educators and independent coaches, by offering best-in-market services to the users.
What is Thinkific?
Thinkific is a course builder focusing on monetizing memberships, scaling businesses, and building communities. It comes with analytics, in-class support, and drip scheduling, making it easier for the platform to read learners’ behavior and for businesses to create the type of courses required by the audience.
Thinkific’s target audience is midsize businesses and independent professional course creators. However, it also caters to entrepreneurs wanting to grow their education business.
Features: LearnWorlds Vs Thinkific
Course Builder
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds has one of the most powerful course builders in the market. What sets it apart from others and Thinkific is its SCORM support. Using SCORM-based software, you can create highly interactive courses, which is impossible with most course management platforms.
LearnWorlds’ course builder focuses on creating detailed courses using templates or creating one from scratch through its drag-and-drop builder.
You can add comprehensive videos to the courses and allow automated transcripts. In addition, its video captions and transcripts are editable and interactive, while several in-built languages can cater to a larger audience. Its interactive video editor has fascinating features like labels, elements, questions, etc. In addition, you can have a call-to-action on the video to increase interactivity.
Its course builder includes grade books, quizzes, auto-graded examinations, MCQs, question banks, and more which are not available with Thinkific. Furthermore, this tool is the only one in the market with a separate pop-up builder, assignment builder, app builder, and student survey builder. Also, you can watermark all your courses and other digital assets with its copyright protection feature.
Learn more about LearnWorlds website builder
Thinkific
Thinkific’s course builder is much easier to navigate than the former. It is best suited for beginners with zero technical knowledge, as it lets you create course pages, online websites, interactive lessons, and more with no coding. It comes with optimized themes and templates. You can also host all video content here for free.
Besides the mentioned features, Thinkific is best known for its drip content, allowing the business to release an entire course to students in different parts. You can also schedule when you want the other elements accessible or add graded assignments to decide whether the students can access the subsequent parts.
This results in precise segmentation and more engagement.
With Thinkific, you can import and download content from any source, like in LearnWorlds. From embeddable units to webinars, you can create student discussion forums, private courses, certifications, and more with a few clicks. One thing that this platform has and LearnWorlds does not is specific course content templates.
Winner
It is a close call in this section, but LearnWorlds’ advanced features win this round.
Marketing
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds does not provide inbuilt marketing functions, but its comprehensive integration suite makes up for it. The platform integrates many popular marketing tools to help you carry out marketing activities.
It helps you build a powerful ecosystem of sales and marketing tools that help generate leads and revenue. It has integrations for useful marketing tools like Google Analytics, MailChimp, Zapier, Convert Kit, Fresh Desk, HubSpot, and many more.
Thinkific offers integration with more expensive plans. However, almost all integrations are accessible with LearnWorlds, even with the lower plans.
The platform integrates with the 2Checkout payment gateway, Stripe, PayPal, and many other global payment sources. In addition, 1-click sales funnels, SEO-friendly pages, discounts, and memberships are other features that help build the course’s sales page.
Know more about LearnWorlds Marketing
Thinkific
Thinkific has several features that let you build marketing campaigns, schedule emails, and more. Its affiliate marketing segment, with a tracking dashboard, is among the strongest in the market. This makes affiliate management and timely rewards easier. For example, you can incentivize all the affiliates differently with different commission rates.
Email integrations, such as Constant Contact, MailChimp, and more, are available on the platform with more expensive plans. In addition, Zapier and similar integrations can help you with over a thousand sales, marketing, and automation features.Â
Audience support analytics is also available on the platform, connecting you with Facebook and Google ads, remarketing campaigns, and data tracking. This gives you the data and lets you make real-time decisions to optimize marketing campaigns.Â
This is an easy way to boost sales and revenue with automation. Like LearnWorlds, the platform offers more features, such as coupons, discounts, promotions, course expirations, and tracking tools.
Winner
In this LearnWorlds Vs. Thinkific comparison, Thinkific is the winner as it offers built-in marketing features, while LearnWorlds needs third-party integration that would cost you separately.
Customizations
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds offers complete customization of the course and sales page to build an attractive course.
The course builder is intuitive and interactive. You can upload any content from anywhere and use the features to customize it the way you want to. You can also add elements like PDFs, sound, logos, eBooks, videos, and more to the content to align it with your business.
You can create different assessments, and LearnWorlds extracts transcripts automatically from the videos. This boosts the business’s engagement statistics. The course-building process can also include customization features like live classes, interactive eBooks, quizzes, surveys, and more.
Learn more about website builder features
Thinkific
Thinkific is also big on customizations like LearnWorlds. It comes with hundreds of prebuilt and optimized mobile responsive templates. You can use the drag-and-drop editor to edit these themes and templates the way you want, saving you the time to build something from scratch altogether.
You can also experiment with font styles, colors, the layout of the template, the entire design, and style. This helps you create a unique course that reflects your business’s tone. All customizations on the platform are easy to implement.
It does not require any coding skills, making it non-tech savvy. Only drag and drop whatever element you require on the page, and you are good to go.
Lastly, it offers customizable interactive features, such as uploading files, images, surveys, questions, and quizzes to the premade template. This makes your course more engaging and closer to the business.Â
Winner
LearnWorlds won this segment, even though it was a close call. Its builder is more interactive, and its SCORM file support is unique.
Data Analytics Tools
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is known to have one of the most detailed learner analytics dashboards, which monitor students’ behavior. It tracks every move the student makes, progress, and course completion record. In addition, it comes with a conversion tracker which lets you track Facebook campaigns and Google Ads from a single dashboard.
The platform provides comprehensive reports and insights about how each course performs. This provides the business with areas for improvement, what they can do differently, and how to leverage the outperforming areas. Furthermore, it has one of the most intuitive dashboards, as it lets you handle multiple things under one roof.Â
Some things you can manage through your LearnWorlds dashboard are –
- Course insights optimizing the eLearning content
- User segments identifying content consumption patterns
- Automated reports unlock more business opportunities
- Advanced user progress depicting user interaction
- Course completion progress
Learn more about LearnWorlds reports and analytics
Thinkific
Thinkific is not far behind LearnWorlds in the data analysis segment. It provides users with detailed analyses that help them monitor the course and user progress. It also comes with specific filters that make it easier for the business or coach to track the student’s report and status.
Some features like data export, detailed segmentation, and account integration with Facebook and Google Ads make Thinkific stand out from most of its counterparts. In addition, the platform has some of the best reporting tools that help a business grow. You can track almost everything under the same roof and optimize your business from all aspects possible.
Winner
LearnWorlds is the clear winner in this segment, as it comes with more robust and detailed data analytics tools.
Click here to visit LearnWorlds
Student Experience Tools
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds has several retention tools focusing on student interaction and engagement. These features ensure students look forward to your courses and participate in as many of them as possible. Moreover, the platform allows you to add tests, graded exams, quizzes, surveys, assignments, and more in all course steps.
You can even add these graded assignments between course modules to ensure that each student passes them to access the next lesson.
With LearnWorlds, you can also provide all your students with certifications after they complete a course. This boosts their confidence and encourages them to do more. Drip content is another platform feature that makes scheduling content in part possible.
Some students experience tools, like mobile responsiveness, interactive eBooks, font customizations, and learner profiles, make the process more exciting.
You can also use its multi-lingual user interface and built-in social network for higher student retention.
Thinkific
Thinkific also has several student retention tools like welcome and completion emails, language translation, a customizable course completion page, certificates, and more. For example, it lets you add exams, quizzes, and assignments to the courses. In addition, it added graded and timed assessments to this platform with more advanced features.
A membership portal allows you to track each buyer’s memberships, subscriptions, and records. The mobile access feature, custom student dashboards, and white-labeled URLs are other features that improve the student experience.
Winner
LearnWorlds is the winner in this LearnWorlds Vs. Thinkific section is useful because it provides more educational benefits than Thinkific.
Click here to open a Trial account with LearnWorlds
Security
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds offers robust data security to ensure that all digital assets, information, and online financial transactions are safe. It protects your online school against data loss by regularly updating the system and isolating databases. It also regulates customer data to ensure that nothing goes wrong.
Besides the above safety measures, LearnWorlds has encrypted data storage, password hashing and salting, HTTPS, and more. This ensures that your online course traffic and user information are always encrypted and you do not face any data breaches or vulnerabilities.
Thinkific
Thinkific also offers 24/7 data security through cloud hosting. The platform has regular and automatic backups, which you can never lose. Periodic security updates come with an SSL certificate for your website built into the platform.
Its security team regularly monitors your website, information, financial transactions, and customer data 24/7. This allows them to act quickly in case of a data breach or informational fraud.
Winner
There is a tie in this LearnWorlds Vs. Thinkific segment, as both offer their users the best level of security.
Click here to visit LearnWorlds
Communities
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is a full-fledged learning community forum that focuses on increasing network and social dimensions. It enhances social interaction between businesses and customers and conversations between students. In addition, a dedicated comment section has content for people to converse with.
You can also set specific questions for people to answer. Students can also build forums within themselves as per their courses.
On the LearnWorlds platform, you can also access the community and comments outside the course section, which is holistically helpful. This bridges the gap between internal and external users of the platform.
Collections of resources are also available in the form of blogs, articles, webinars, tutorials, videos, documentation, and more, which help people learn more about the platform and what it can do.
Thinkific
You can also build a stand-alone community in Thinkific, which has fewer features than the former. It also has a discussion tab feature, which is not as robust as LearnWorlds’ comments feature. However, it offers people a platform to converse and discuss marketing strategies.
You can create and own a Thinkific community to create an online interactive learning environment. Students can interact by participating in these communities to connect. Also, each community works as a dedicated page where students can communicate through written posts.
Winner
LearnWorlds is the winner as it offers more community features than Thinkific.
Click here to visit LearnWorlds
Differences between LearnWorlds and Thinkific
- LearnWorlds comes with an interactive video builder, but Thinkific does not
- LearnWorlds offers more variety of quizzes than Thinkific
- LearnWorlds supports SCORM files, whereas Thinkific offers conditional support
- LearnWorlds comes with an automatic video transcription, but the latter does not
- LearnWorlds has interactive eBooks, unlike Thinkific
- LearnWorlds offers copyright protection, but the latter does not
- Thinkific offers course reviews, but LearnWorlds does not
- LearnWorlds can make custom, white-labeled apps, but Thinkific cannot
- LearnWorlds offers 1-click funnels, but the latter does not
- There is no customizable student login option in Thinkific like in LearnWorlds
- Thinkific offers more admin sub-roles and options compared to LearnWorlds
- LearnWorlds offers a 2Checkout payment, but Thinkific does not
- LearnWorlds offers a WordPress SSO plugin, but Thinkific does not
- LearnWorlds offers zone view control on the dashboard with tags, but the latter does not
- Thinkific has a free plan but LearnWorlds does not
- LearnWords has a transaction fee on their basic plan but Thinkific does not
Similarities between LearnWorlds Vs Thinkific
- Both offer unlimited courses on their paid plans.
- Both have a mobile application for ease of use
- Both come with a variety of course templates
- Both offer student segmentation and lead-capture zones
- Both offer affiliate management
- Both allow setting school languages in different languages
- Both come with a free trial plan
- Both offer regular daily backups
- Both offer 24/7 support
- Both offer multiple levels of administration
- Both offer a double payment gateway
- Both offer custom domains
- Both offer numerous website themes
Support
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds offers one of the most vital supports in the market, with a 24/7 support facility that is available via email.
As a new member, you can access the LearnWorlds Academy and access several resource materials that will help you educate yourself about the platform and its features. Furthermore, eBooks, how-to guides, webinars, and video tutorials are add-ons to the resources.
Thinkific
Thinkific also offers proactive support to all its users and is available 24/7. You can connect with the support team via email and get a personalized reply within a few hours. They also offer phone support, which helps new businesses understand how the platform benefits them.
The higher-level price plan gives you access to priority support via live chat. In addition, this live chat function has an expert who is always available to guide you through the platform and answer your queries. Lastly, the platform has its knowledge base, full of resources in hundreds of articles, blogs, and videos.Â
Tutorials and how-to guides are also available for users to understand how to leverage this platform.
LearnWorlds Vs. Thinkific: Which One is a Better Platform
I tested both platforms for my online school and selected LearnWorlds. My school is hosted on LearnWorlds.
For the following reasons, I selected LearnWorlds:
2Checkout Integration
I live in Kuwait, and Stripe does not offer its services there, so I have to integrate PayPal payments.
Many buyers do not have PayPal accounts, and many others do not even know about PayPal. Therefore, using only the PayPal payment option would cause many interested prospects not to buy the course.
2Checkout offers services in Kuwait and many other countries, whereas Stripe does not. So, with 2Checkout, I can accept credit card payments globally.
LearnWorlds has 2Checkout integration, so I used LearnWorlds to host my school.
Learn more on LearnWorlds integration
SCORM Support
I provide training and other courses to professionals preparing for the PMP exam. The PMP course requires a complex mock test unavailable on any course management software except SCORM-based solutions.
Thinkific offers conditional SCORM support, meaning I will need to send them the SCORM file, and then they will test it to see if they can upload the file, and this is a week-long process. This process is not so efficient. Therefore, I had no option but to look for other learning management solutions that could offer SCORM support.
I have never had any issues using LearnWorlds for over six years. It works.
Before selecting any course platform, you should identify your requirements and select the platform that meets those requirements.
Learn more about LearnWOrlds SCORM feature
Pricing: LearnWords Vs Thinkific
LearnWords Pricing
LearnWorlds has four pricing plans:
- Starter: The pricing is 29 USD per month but reduces to 24 USD per month if you go for an annual plan.
- Pro Trainer: The pricing is 99 USD per month, but it reduces to 79 USD per month if you go for an annual plan.
- Learning Center: The pricing is 299 USD per month but reduces to 249 USD per month if you choose an annual plan.
- High Volume & Corporate: This plan is for corporations or businesses with high requirements. Contact customer care for a quote.
Click here to see LearnWorlds detailed pricing features
Thinkific Pricing
Thinkific offers six pricing plans:
- Free: This plan costs nothing. You can open a free account and publish one course.
- Basic: The price is 49 USD per month, but on an annual plan, the price reduces to 36 USD per month.
- Start: The price is 99 USD per month, but on an annual plan, the price reduces to 74 USD per month.
- Grow: The price is 199 USD per month, but on an annual plan, the price reduces to 149 USD per month.
- Expand: The price is 499 USD per month, but on the annual plan, the price is discounted to 374 USD per month.
Plus: This is Thinkific’s pricing plan for high-end users. You need to contact the team to know the price.
Click here to visit the Thinkific Pricing Page
Conclusion
Both LearnWorlds and Thinkific are powerful platforms. They offer several course-building and marketing features that help businesses easily sell digital courses. In addition, their intuitive builders and drag-and-drop editors make the entire process seamless.
If you are a business that wants to focus only on creating high-converting courses with advanced features, LearnWorlds should be your go-to option. On the other hand, if you want to create a course and vigorously market it, Thinkific is the right choice for you.
Some links in this post are affiliate links, and I will earn a commission if you purchase after clicking. Please understand that I recommend these resources because they are useful, not just because of my commissions. Please do not purchase unless you need the materials to achieve your goals. Read the disclaimer.
I am Mohammad Fahad Usmani, B.E. PMP, PMI-RMP. I have been blogging on project management topics since 2011. To date, thousands of professionals have passed the PMP exam using my resources.
