# Thinkific > Course, community and membership platform for experts and academies Thinkific is a platform for creating and selling online courses, communities, memberships, digital downloads, coaching and webinars. It includes a site builder, landing pages, email automation and its own checkout, Thinkific Payments. A Plus plan adds SSO, SCORM and CRM integrations for academies and companies that train customers or partners. - **Category:** Courses & Communities - **Made by:** Thinkific - **Website:** https://www.thinkific.com - **Runs on:** Web - **Facts last checked:** Oct 17, 2026 ## Pricing Thinkific is a paid product with a free trial, starting at $40 per month, billed annually ($54 billed monthly). - **Pricing model:** Free trial - **Free plan:** None. - **Free trial:** 30-day free trial of the whole platform. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Basic | $40 per month, billed annually ($54 billed monthly) | Unlimited courses, 1 community with 5 spaces, 5 digital downloads, 1 admin, 100 GB of video a month, coupons and order bumps. | | Start | $82 per month, billed annually ($109 billed monthly) | Live cohorts with Zoom, certificates, assignments, memberships, bundles, upsells, payment plans, an HTML and CSS editor, 2 admins. | | Grow | $164 per month, billed annually ($219 billed monthly) | No Thinkific branding, 3 communities, group orders and invoicing for B2B buyers, API and webhooks, phone support, 6 admins. | | Plus | Custom | AI teaching assistant, SSO, SCORM and learning paths, HubSpot and Salesforce integrations, 10,000+ user seats and a dedicated success team. | Read from https://www.thinkific.com/pricing/ on Oct 17, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Thinkific before buying. ## Ways to pay less - **Save 25% with annual billing** (Annual discount): Thinkific's pricing page lists 25% off for annual billing: Basic $40 a month instead of $54, Start $82 instead of $109, Grow $164 instead of $219. Source: https://www.thinkific.com/pricing/ ## Key features - **Course builder:** Drag-and-drop courses with video, quizzes, drip schedules, discussions and compliance rules; assignments and certificates start on Start. - **Communities:** Standalone communities with topic spaces, live events and paid memberships: 1 community on Basic and Start, 3 on Grow. - **TCommerce checkout:** Thinkific Payments with order bumps, gifting, buy now pay later, payment plans, abandoned cart reminders and automated sales tax. - **Site builder and email:** Branded websites and landing pages on a custom domain, members-only pages, and email automation with pre-built sequences. - **B2B selling:** Grow adds group orders so companies can buy bulk seats, and invoicing to bill and collect from business buyers. - **Branded mobile app:** Your own iOS and Android app with push notifications, sold as a $199 a month add-on and included on some Plus contracts. ## Good for - Experts selling courses who want a long free trial before paying - Academies selling seats to companies as well as to individuals - Course businesses that already run a website elsewhere ## Worth knowing - There is no free plan; the 30-day trial is the only way to try it. - Stripe and PayPal carry an extra Thinkific gateway fee in some countries that varies by plan; Thinkific Payments charges 2.9%. - Basic, Start and Grow cap current students at 10,000, and Basic allows 1 admin and 5 digital downloads. - SSO, SCORM and the AI teaching assistant are only in the Plus plan, which is priced through sales. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.4 out of 4**, graded Oct 17, 2026. Thinkific covers the whole job: course builder, community, site, email and its own checkout, with no cut of sales when you use Thinkific Payments. Basic is $40 a month billed yearly, and you get 30 days free to build first. But certificates, assignments and memberships wait for Start at $82, and students get no app unless you pay $199 a month. - **Value for money: C.** Basic is $40 a month billed yearly with unlimited courses, and Thinkific takes no fee on sales through Thinkific Payments, whose 2.9% is card processing. So $2,000 of sales costs $40 a month, the middle of this category. Stripe or PayPal can add a gateway fee in some countries. - **Free plan and trial: C.** No free plan, but a 30-day trial of the whole platform, as long as any in this category. The listing doesn't say it needs a card. - **Features: B.** Drag-and-drop courses with quizzes and drip, a community with spaces and events, a site builder, email automation, checkout with order bumps and sales tax, and B2B group orders on Grow. Nothing in the listing shows a gap in the core job. - **Ease of use: C.** No App Store rating on record. It's drag-and-drop, but you're building a course, a site and a checkout, so there's some setting up before you sell. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web, with Zoom, Stripe, PayPal, Zapier, HubSpot and Salesforce, and an API on Grow. Students get no app unless you buy the branded one for $199 a month. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Thinkific's own pages on 17 October 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among course and community platforms - Thinkific's GPA of 2.4 is higher than 8 of the 18 other course and community platforms we grade, and level with 6. - It stands best on features (B, above 10 of 18) and worst on ease of use (C, above 0). - Its paid plans start at $40 a month, against a middle price of $41 for the category: 7 of the 17 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.7 out of 4. Nothing scores higher for less, though at least one tool matches that score at a lower price. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/courses-communities ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** The plain part of Thinkific you could make: online courses and invoicing. What surrounds it you could not. The 6 things listed below take a company, not a weekend. It costs $480 a year. - You could make: Online courses and invoicing: an app builder makes these well. - You could not: A members' space with posts, chat and events that people keep coming back to. - You could not: It plugs into other products, Zoom, Stripe and PayPal among them, and has an API. - You could not: AI features, unless you pay a model provider for each request yourself. - You could not: People on the other end: coaches. No app builder makes those. - You could not: What a company asks for before it lets staff use something: single sign-on. - You could not: The depth: we grade its features B, which means it covers the whole job. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with Zoom, Stripe, PayPal, Zapier, Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, HubSpot, Salesforce **Tags:** Online courses, Community, AI features, Public API, Invoicing ## Alternatives - [Teachable](https://toolgpa.com/tools/teachable): Online course, coaching and membership platform with its own checkout. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/teachable-vs-thinkific) - [Kajabi](https://toolgpa.com/tools/kajabi): All-in-one platform for selling courses, coaching and communities. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/kajabi-vs-thinkific) - [LearnWorlds](https://toolgpa.com/tools/learnworlds): Online academy builder for course creators and training teams. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/learnworlds-vs-thinkific) - [Podia](https://toolgpa.com/tools/podia): Website, store, courses, community and email for creators in one place. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/podia-vs-thinkific) - [LearnDash](https://toolgpa.com/tools/learndash): WordPress plugin for building and selling online courses. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/learndash-vs-thinkific) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Oct 17, 2026: - https://www.thinkific.com/pricing/ - https://www.thinkific.com/ - https://www.thinkific.com/about/ Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/thinkific Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).