Thinkific

Name: Thinkific
Brand: Thinkific
Price: 5440 USD

A serious course platform that grew a real community product on the side

Thinkific is a publicly traded learning commerce platform, listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange as THNC, that lets creators and small businesses build, sell, and deliver online courses, memberships, digital downloads, and communities under their own brand and custom domain; paid plans start at $54 per month with a 30 day free trial, community spaces and admin seats are tiered by plan, and Thinkific Payments charges around 2.9 percent per transaction while using your own Stripe or PayPal instead triggers a penalty fee of 5 percent on Basic falling to 1 percent on Grow.

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Overview

Thinkific was founded in Vancouver in 2012 by Greg Smith and three co-founders, after Smith built a course platform to sell his own LSAT prep material and discovered the platform was the better business. It went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange in April 2021 at roughly a billion dollar valuation, and has since settled into being a real, audited, unglamorous software company: trailing twelve month revenue of about $74M as of the first quarter of 2026, roughly 276 employees, and more than 35,000 businesses using it across 100 plus countries. In a category full of venture stage products that may not exist in three years, being able to read a vendor's quarterly filings is not nothing.

The core competence is courses, and it shows. Curriculum structure, drip scheduling, quizzes and assignments, completion certificates, cohorts, bundles, and student progress reporting are all more thought through than in the community first platforms. Thinkific also carries the sales side: a site builder, landing pages, coupons, order bumps, memberships, and a checkout. Where it sits differently from Kajabi is scope. Thinkific does not try to be your email marketing platform or your funnel builder; it expects you to bring Kit or Mailchimp and integrate.

Communities arrived later and are now a proper product rather than a comment thread. You get communities containing spaces, feed style posts with likes, comments, and follows, pinned content, live events scheduled inside a space, moderator roles with post approval and read only controls, and, as of the 2026 update, direct messages between members. The limits are the interesting part. Basic and Start allow one community, Grow allows three, and only the custom priced Plus tier allows unlimited. Spaces per community are capped at five, ten, and twenty as you climb.

Two numbers decide whether Thinkific is cheap or expensive for you. The first is the payment penalty: use Thinkific Payments and you pay roughly standard card processing, but connect your own Stripe or PayPal and Thinkific adds 5 percent on Basic, 2 percent on Start, and 1 percent on Grow on top of your processor's fee. The second is the branded mobile app, which is a $199 a month add on and effectively a Plus tier conversation, where Kajabi includes it at $179 a month total. Note also that Thinkific raised prices roughly 10 percent in August 2026 and no longer offers the free plan it was once known for.

Best for

Course businesses and training providers who take teaching seriously, need real curriculum tooling with quizzes, assignments, and certificates, want a community attached to those courses under their own domain, and already have an email marketing platform they are happy with.

Not the right fit for

Anyone whose primary product is the community rather than the course. Thinkific's community is good for a course platform and mediocre next to Circle, and the one community, five spaces cap on Basic will frustrate you inside a month.
Creators who want their marketing stack included. There is no email marketing platform, no funnel builder, and no affiliate engine of Kajabi's depth, so you are buying a second and third subscription.
Businesses that insist on running their own Stripe account. The 5 percent penalty on Basic for using your own gateway is one of the harshest bring your own payments charges in the category and can cost more than the subscription.
Buyers who need a branded app on a small budget. It is a $199 a month add on and practically a Plus tier conversation, against Kajabi including one at $179 a month all in.
Communities that want to be found. Community content is gated and not a search acquisition channel, and Thinkific's public surface is thinner than Kajabi's blog and site builder.

How it works

1
You start a 30 day free trial without a sales call, pick a subdomain, and point a custom domain at it on any paid plan. The site builder gives you a homepage, course pages, and a checkout under your own brand, though removing Thinkific's own branding entirely requires the Grow plan or above.
2
You build courses as chapters and lessons, with video, text, audio, PDFs, quizzes, surveys, assignments, and downloads. Drip scheduling releases content on a timeline or on prerequisite completion, and certificates issue automatically at the end.
3
You package what you sell as products and bundles. A course, a membership with recurring billing, a digital download, a coaching session, or a community can each be sold on its own or bundled, and purchase automatically enrolls the buyer in whatever the bundle includes.
4
You create a community, then spaces inside it. Every post lives in exactly one space, spaces carry their own permissions, and you can require post approval or lock a space to admins and moderators only. Members post, like, comment, and follow; moderators pin; live events are scheduled inside a space, including a private one.
5
Payments flow through Thinkific Payments at roughly 2.9 percent, or through your own Stripe or PayPal with a Thinkific penalty fee of 5, 2, or 1 percent depending on plan. Memberships handle recurring billing, failed payment retries, and cancellation.
6
Everything else you integrate. Email marketing goes to Kit, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or Klaviyo through native connectors and Zapier. Thinkific also publishes an API and webhooks, and Thinkific Plus adds SSO and deeper enterprise plumbing.

Feature breakdown

26 features in 4 modules

Communities

A real community product with spaces and moderation, tightly capped by plan.

Communities and spaces: A community contains spaces, and every post lives in exactly one space. Basic and Start allow one community with five and ten spaces, Grow allows three communities with twenty spaces each, and unlimited requires the custom priced Plus tier.
Posts, likes, comments, and follows: Feed style discussion with rich media, threaded comments, reactions, and the ability to follow a post so replies notify you.
Direct messages: Added in the 2026 Communities update. Members message each other and moderators privately, which removes the awkward pattern of asking a personal question in public.
Post approval and read only spaces: A space can require moderator approval before any post appears, or be locked so only admins and moderators can post, turning it into an announcements channel.
Community Moderator role: A distinct role scoped to a specific community and its spaces, so you can delegate moderation without handing out full course admin access.
Pinned posts and featured panel: Instructors and moderators pin posts into a featured panel that also surfaces the upcoming live events for that space.
Live events inside spaces: Scheduled sessions live inside the community, including inside private spaces, so events are gated by the same permissions as discussion.
Community bundled with course purchase: Buying a course or bundle can enroll the student into a community automatically, which is the retention mechanic most course sellers are actually buying.

Course building and delivery

The strongest part of the product and the reason people choose it over Circle.

Chapters and lessons: Video, text, audio, PDF, presentation, download, and multimedia lesson types organized into chapters, with unlimited published courses on every paid plan.
Quizzes, surveys, and assignments: Graded quizzes, ungraded surveys, and file upload assignments with instructor review, which is genuine instructional design tooling rather than a checkbox.
Drip scheduling and prerequisites: Release content on a fixed schedule, on a relative timeline from enrollment, or only after a prior lesson is completed.
Completion certificates: Automatically issued, customizable certificates, which matters for professional training and continuing education buyers.
Cohorts and scheduled starts: Run a course as a cohort with a shared start date rather than an always open self paced product, and pair it with a private community space.
Student progress reporting: Per student and per lesson completion data, which is the reporting community platforms with bolt on courses usually lack.
Video bandwidth allowances: 100GB a month on Basic, 200GB on Start, 400GB on Grow, and 7,500GB or more on Plus, which is the limit heavy video producers hit first.

Selling and payments

Competent commerce, with a payment penalty that shapes the whole decision.

Thinkific Payments: The native processor at roughly 2.9 percent, with no additional Thinkific platform cut, which is the intended and cheapest path.
Third party gateway penalty: Using your own Stripe or PayPal adds a Thinkific fee of 5 percent on Basic, 2 percent on Start, and 1 percent on Grow, charged on top of your processor's own fee. This is the harshest bring your own payments charge in the category.
Memberships and subscriptions: Recurring billing with tiered membership levels, so a monthly community plus course subscription is a native product rather than a workaround.
Coupons, bundles, and order bumps: Discount codes, multi product bundles, and checkout add ons, covering the standard creator commerce patterns.
Sales tax handling: Tax collection support through Thinkific Payments, which removes a real administrative burden for cross border sellers.

Site, branding, and apps

Your brand on your domain, with the app and full white labelling costing extra.

Custom domain on all paid plans: Available from Basic upward, so the course, checkout, and community serve from your own domain rather than a vendor subdomain.
Site builder and landing pages: Drag and drop themes for a homepage, sales pages, and course pages, with code editing available on higher tiers.
Remove Thinkific branding: Full white labelling requires the Grow plan. Below that, Thinkific's own branding remains visible in places, which is a real consideration for an agency or a B2B training provider.
Branded mobile app add on: A branded iOS and Android app is a $199 a month add on associated with the Plus tier, not something you can self serve onto Basic. Budget for it separately or choose Kajabi, which includes one.
Admin and analyst seats: One admin on Basic, two on Start, six on Grow, and a negotiated number on Plus. This is the limit small teams underestimate.
Thinkific Plus: The custom priced enterprise tier adding SSO, unlimited communities, higher bandwidth, migration support, and a dedicated account team. It is the only sales gated part of the product.

Use cases

4 documented

Professional training provider selling certification courses

Students need graded assessments, assignments reviewed by an instructor, and a certificate at the end, none of which a community first platform does properly.

Thinkific handles quizzes, assignments, prerequisites, and certificates natively, with student progress reporting, and a community space per cohort gives learners somewhere to ask questions without emailing the instructor.

Creator running cohort based programs

Each cohort needs its own private discussion space and its own live session schedule, but the course content is shared across all of them.

One course, multiple cohorts, and a private space per cohort inside the community, with live events scheduled inside those private spaces and post approval turned on where it is needed.

Small business moving off a free Facebook group

The group is unsearchable, Meta owns the members, and nothing can be gated behind a payment.

Grow at $219 a month gives three communities with twenty spaces each on a custom domain with the vendor branding removed, memberships handle recurring billing, and buying a course auto enrolls the student in the right space.

Course seller who already loves their email platform

The business runs on Kit with years of segmentation and automations, and moving to an all in one would mean rebuilding all of it.

Thinkific integrates rather than replaces, syncing enrollments and purchases to Kit, so the course, community, and checkout change but the marketing stack does not.

Pricing

from $54 per month (Basic), or $40 per month billed annually

Flat monthly subscription across four published tiers plus a custom priced Plus tier, with limits on communities, spaces, admins, and video bandwidth, and a transaction fee that depends on whether you use Thinkific Payments or your own gateway.

Plan	Price	Includes
Basic	$54 per month, or $40 billed annually	Unlimited published courses, up to 10,000 current students 1 community with 5 spaces 1 administrator, 5 digital downloads 100GB monthly video bandwidth Custom domain included Carries a 5 percent penalty if you use your own Stripe or PayPal instead of Thinkific Payments, and Thinkific branding cannot be removed at this tier.
Start	$109 per month, or $82 billed annually	1 community with 10 spaces 2 administrators Unlimited digital downloads 200GB monthly video bandwidth Memberships, bundles, and advanced pricing options Third party gateway penalty falls to 2 percent.
Grow	$219 per month, or $164 billed annually	3 communities with 20 spaces each 6 administrators 400GB monthly video bandwidth Remove Thinkific branding Advanced reporting and bulk enrollments The first tier where the product is fully white labelled, and where the gateway penalty drops to 1 percent.
Expand	$499 per month, or $374 billed annually	Higher limits across communities, seats, and bandwidth Deeper reporting and automation Suitable for multi brand or high volume operators Still self serve at a published price
Plus	Custom quoted by sales	Unlimited communities and spaces SSO and enterprise administration 7,500GB or more monthly video bandwidth Branded mobile app add on at $199 per month Migration support and a dedicated account team The only sales gated tier, and the only route to SSO or a practical branded app.

Add-ons

Branded mobile app ($199 per month): Associated with Plus contracts rather than self serve on lower tiers. Kajabi includes the equivalent in a $179 a month plan.

Billing notes

Prices reviewed in August 2026 following a roughly 10 percent increase that took effect on 13 August 2026. Annual billing saves about 25 percent.
Thinkific retired its free plan. The 30 day trial is now the only free path, which removes what used to be one of its best acquisition arguments against Teachable and Podia.
The gateway penalty is the number to model, not the subscription. On Basic, using your own Stripe costs 5 percent to Thinkific plus roughly 2.9 percent to Stripe, so nearly 8 percent of every sale.
Model it. At $5,000 a month in member revenue on Start using Thinkific Payments with 100 transactions, you pay roughly $145 in processing plus $109 subscription, about $254, or 5.1 percent of revenue. On the same $5,000 using your own Stripe, add 2 percent, so roughly $354, or 7.1 percent. At $50,000 a month on Grow with Thinkific Payments you pay roughly $1,450 plus $219, about $1,669, or 3.3 percent; on your own Stripe add 1 percent and it becomes about $2,169, or 4.3 percent.
Student limits are 10,000 current students on Basic, Start, and Grow. That is generous for most creators but a real ceiling for a large free audience.
Removing Thinkific branding requires Grow at $219, which is a meaningful jump for anyone who cares about looking like an independent brand.

Value assessment: Thinkific is fair value for a course business and poor value for a community business. At $54 a month the entry tier undercuts Kajabi by more than two thirds and gives you unlimited courses, up to 10,000 students, a custom domain, and a community, which is a lot of platform for the money. The catches are all structural rather than hidden: one community with five spaces, one admin, visible vendor branding until $219, and a 5 percent gateway penalty if you refuse to use Thinkific Payments. Where it genuinely wins is instructional depth. Quizzes, assignments, prerequisites, certificates, cohorts, and per student progress reporting are things Circle and Skool do badly or not at all, and if your product is education rather than access, that is worth paying for. Where it loses is everything Kajabi bundles: no email platform, no funnels, no affiliate engine, and a branded app that costs $199 a month extra.

Strengths & limitations

Strengths

The best course tooling among the platforms in this category, with graded quizzes, reviewed assignments, prerequisites, certificates, cohorts, and per student progress reporting.
A publicly traded company with audited financials, roughly $74M in trailing revenue and 276 employees, which is a materially different risk profile from a venture stage community startup.
Communities is a real product now: spaces with independent permissions, post approval, read only spaces, a scoped moderator role, pinned posts, live events inside private spaces, and direct messages as of 2026.
Entry price of $54 a month with unlimited courses, up to 10,000 students, and a custom domain undercuts Kajabi heavily.
Thinkific Payments at roughly 2.9 percent is straight card processing with no platform cut, so the effective fee rate falls as revenue grows.
Integrates rather than replaces. If you already run Kit, Mailchimp, or Klaviyo, you keep it, which is the opposite of the all in one lock in trade.
Thinkific Plus gives a genuine upgrade path with SSO and unlimited communities for organizations that outgrow the self serve tiers.

Limitations

Community limits are tight where it hurts: one community and five spaces on Basic, one admin seat, and unlimited only on a custom quoted plan.
The 5 percent penalty for using your own payment gateway on Basic is punitive, and even Grow charges 1 percent, so payment independence is never free.
Thinkific's own branding cannot be removed until the $219 Grow plan, which undercuts the white label promise at the price points most small businesses buy.
No email marketing platform, no funnel builder, and a thin affiliate story, so the real monthly cost includes at least one more vendor.
A branded mobile app is a $199 a month add on tied to Plus, against Kajabi including one at every tier.
The free plan was retired and prices rose about 10 percent in August 2026, so the value gap against Teachable's $39 Starter has narrowed.
Community content is gated and contributes nothing to search acquisition, and Thinkific's public marketing surface is weaker than Kajabi's site and blog builder.

Head-to-head comparisons

6 alternatives

Thinkific vs Kajabi

from $179 per month (Basic), or $143 per month billed annually

Kajabi costs $179 to Thinkific's $54 and buys you email marketing, funnels, affiliates, a stronger website builder, and a branded mobile app included on every tier. Thinkific is the better teaching platform, with real assessments, certificates, and cohort tooling, and it lets you keep the email stack you already have. Take Thinkific if education is the product and you have a marketing stack; take Kajabi if you want to delete four subscriptions.

Full Thinkific vs Kajabi comparison

Thinkific vs Teachable

from $39 per month (Starter), or $29 per month billed annually

Teachable starts cheaper at $39 and includes branded mobile apps on all plans, but caps active students at 100 on Starter and 1,000 on Builder until you pass $10,000 in platform sales, and its Starter plan takes 7.5 percent of every sale. Thinkific allows 10,000 students from $54 and has deeper assessment tooling. Teachable for a first course on a tight budget; Thinkific once you have students.

Full Thinkific vs Teachable comparison

Thinkific vs Podia

from $42 per month billed annually (Mover), or $49 billed monthly

Podia at $42 includes community, courses, downloads, coaching, a website, and email in one plan, which Thinkific does not. But Podia's email limits are tiny, its course tooling has no real assessments or certificates, and its entry plan takes 5 percent of sales. Podia is the simpler all in one for a small creator; Thinkific is the better platform once teaching quality and student volume matter.

Full Thinkific vs Podia comparison

Thinkific vs Circle

from $89 per month (Professional)

Circle is a community platform with courses attached; Thinkific is a course platform with community attached. Circle at $89 gives unlimited members, twenty spaces, native events, and a far better discussion experience, but takes 2 percent of paid memberships and has weak assessment tooling. If people are paying to talk to each other, Circle. If they are paying to learn something and be certified, Thinkific.

Full Thinkific vs Circle comparison

Thinkific vs Discourse

from $0 (self-hosted, or the free managed plan), then $100 per month for Pro managed hosting

Different jobs entirely. Discourse is a public, search indexed discussion forum that can bring you traffic and has the best moderation and spam tooling in the category, with no course or checkout layer at all. Thinkific sells and delivers education behind a paywall. Several training businesses run both, using Discourse as the open front door and Thinkific as the paid product.

Full Thinkific vs Discourse comparison

Thinkific vs Slack

from $0 (Free), then $8.75 per user per month (Pro), or $7.25 billed annually

Slack is a chat tool being used as a community by default, and its free plan hides messages older than 90 days, which quietly destroys the knowledge base a course community accumulates. Thinkific costs money but keeps every post permanently, ties community access to a purchase, and organizes discussion into spaces rather than an infinite scroll. If your course community currently lives in a free Slack, you are losing the answers your students already wrote.

Full Thinkific vs Slack comparison

Implementation & onboarding

Setup time: A day for a working school with one course and a community, a few weeks for a polished one. Domain, theme, first course, checkout, and a community with a handful of spaces are all achievable in an afternoon.
Learning curve: Low to moderate. The course builder is the most approachable in the category, and the community concepts (communities, spaces, roles) are only three ideas deep. The confusing part is the plan matrix, not the software.
Onboarding: Entirely self serve on Basic through Expand with a 30 day trial. Plus adds migration support and a dedicated account team. Thinkific also runs a large library of free training on running a course business.
Migration notes: Course content, students, and enrollments can be bulk imported, and Thinkific Plus includes hands on migration help. Moving out is partial: student lists and course files export, but community post history has no clean export path and active subscriptions do not transfer between processors without a Stripe migration arrangement. Because the gateway penalty pushes almost everyone onto Thinkific Payments, leaving usually means asking existing members to re-enter card details.

Platform, API & security

Platforms: WebiOS and Android via the Thinkific mobile appBranded iOS and Android apps as a paid add on
API: A public REST API plus webhooks covering users, enrollments, orders, and products, with native connectors and Zapier for the rest.
Compliance: GDPRPCI DSS via Thinkific Payments and StripeSOC 2 reporting available to Plus customers
Data residency: Primarily North American hosting; regional residency is a Plus tier conversation rather than a published option.
SSO: SSO is a Thinkific Plus feature and is not available on any published self serve tier.
Security notes: Card data is handled by Thinkific Payments on Stripe infrastructure. Role based access separates site admins, course instructors, and community moderators, with the number of admin seats capped by plan.

Support & resources

Channels: Email support on all plansLive chat on higher tiersDedicated account management on Plus
Documentation: A large and genuinely well maintained support center covering community setup, space permissions, moderation, payments, and the API.
Community: Thinkific runs its own official user community, and there is a substantial third party ecosystem of course business consultants and template designers.

Company

Founded: 2012
Headquarters: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Ownership: Publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (THNC)
Founders: Greg Smith, Matt Smith, Miranda Lievers, Matt Payne
Employees: Approximately 276 (2026)
Funding: Raised venture funding privately, then went public in April 2021 in an IPO that valued the company at roughly $1B. Trailing twelve month revenue was about $74M as of the first quarter of 2026.

Funding history

Round	Amount	Year	Notes
Series A	$22M	2019	Led by Rhino Ventures, the company's first significant outside round after years of bootstrapped growth.
Series B	$22M	2020	Raised as online course demand surged.
IPO	Approximately $160M raised	2021	Listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange as THNC at roughly a $1B valuation.

Timeline

2012Founded in Vancouver by Greg Smith and three co-founders after Smith built a platform to sell his own LSAT prep courses.
2019Raises a $22M Series A led by Rhino Ventures after years of largely bootstrapped growth.
2020Demand for online course platforms surges; Thinkific raises a further $22M and expands headcount rapidly.
2021Lists on the Toronto Stock Exchange as THNC in April at roughly a $1B valuation, one of the few course platforms to go public.
2022Launches Thinkific Communities with spaces, moving from course discussion threads to a standalone community product.
2023Launches Thinkific Payments as a native processor, and introduces gateway penalty fees for creators who use their own Stripe or PayPal.
2026Communities update adds direct messages and improved space navigation; prices rise roughly 10 percent in August and the free plan remains retired.

Integrations

Thinkific Payments (native)
Stripe and PayPal as third party gateways, with a penalty fee
Kit, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, and Klaviyo
Zapier and Make
Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, and Google Tag Manager
Zoom for live sessions
Accredible and other certificate services
Segment
Public REST API and webhooks

Frequently asked questions

10 questions

What is Thinkific and what job does it do here?

Thinkific is a learning commerce platform for building, selling, and delivering online courses, memberships, digital downloads, and communities under your own brand. In this category its job is course and membership business. The community is a genuine product with spaces, moderation, events, and direct messages, but it exists to support what you teach rather than to be the thing you sell.

How much does Thinkific cost?

Basic is $54 per month or $40 billed annually, Start is $109 or $82, Grow is $219 or $164, and Expand is $499 or $374. Plus is custom priced. There is a 30 day free trial and no free plan; the old free tier was retired. Prices rose roughly 10 percent on 13 August 2026.

What is the transaction fee on paid memberships and courses?

Thinkific Payments charges roughly 2.9 percent, which is card processing rather than a platform cut. Using your own Stripe or PayPal instead triggers a Thinkific penalty of 5 percent on Basic, 2 percent on Start, and 1 percent on Grow, on top of your processor's own fee. At $5,000 a month on Start with Thinkific Payments you pay about $254 all in including the subscription, or 5.1 percent of revenue; with your own Stripe that becomes about $354, or 7.1 percent. At $50,000 a month on Grow the figures are about $1,669 (3.3 percent) and about $2,169 (4.3 percent).

How many members, communities, spaces, and admins do I get?

Current students are capped at 10,000 on Basic, Start, and Grow. Communities are capped at one on Basic and Start, three on Grow, and unlimited only on Plus. Spaces per community are five, ten, and twenty respectively. Administrator seats are one, two, and six. The seat limit is the constraint small teams notice first.

Do I get a custom domain, and how white label is it?

A custom domain is included on every paid plan from Basic upward. Full white labelling is not: removing Thinkific's own branding requires the Grow plan at $219 a month. Below that, vendor branding remains visible in parts of the member experience, which matters if you are selling B2B training or running an agency.

Is there a mobile app, and can it be branded?

Members can use the general Thinkific mobile app on iOS and Android at no extra cost. A branded app under your own name in the app stores is a $199 a month add on tied to Plus contracts rather than something you can self serve onto a lower plan. If a branded app matters to you at a small budget, Kajabi includes one at $179 a month all in.

Is Thinkific community content indexed by search engines?

No. Communities are gated behind login, so nothing posted there helps you get found. Course sales pages and your site pages are indexable, but discussion is not an acquisition channel here. If you want the forum itself to bring traffic, Discourse or a self hosted Flarum is the right tool and Thinkific is not.

How does moderation and spam control work?

You can assign a Community Moderator role scoped to one community, require moderator approval before any post appears in a space, and lock spaces so only admins and moderators can post. Because members are authenticated accounts usually tied to a purchase, drive by spam is far less of an issue than on an open forum. There is no automated spam classifier of the kind Discourse ships.

Can I get my data out?

Students, enrollments, and orders export cleanly, and course files can be downloaded. Community post history does not have a clean export path, so treat years of discussion as effectively non portable. Recurring subscriptions taken through Thinkific Payments will generally need members to re-enter card details on a new platform unless you arrange a Stripe data migration.

Should I just run a free Slack or Discord instead?

For a free community with no product attached, yes, and honestly. But a course community has a specific problem those tools handle badly: Slack's free plan hides messages older than 90 days, so the answers your students wrote disappear, and Discord's search and threading make a knowledge base almost impossible to build. Neither can gate access to a purchase without bots. Thinkific keeps every post, ties community membership to enrollment automatically, and organizes discussion into permissioned spaces. If nobody is paying you, use Discord. If people are paying to learn, do not keep their answers in a tool that deletes them.

Editorial verdict

Thinkific is the most credible teaching platform in this category and a competent, deliberately limited community platform. If your members are students rather than an audience, the quizzes, assignments, prerequisites, certificates, cohorts, and progress reporting are worth more than the extra polish Circle brings to discussion, and the $54 entry price is a third of Kajabi's. Being publicly traded with audited numbers is also a real advantage over venture stage rivals whose roadmap depends on the next round. The reservations are specific and worth negotiating around: one community with five spaces and one admin on Basic, vendor branding you cannot remove until $219, a branded app that costs $199 a month extra, no email marketing included, and a 5 percent penalty if you insist on your own Stripe. Buy Thinkific to run an education business with a community attached. Do not buy it to run a community with some lessons in it.

Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.