Employee training and development can help companies gain a significant competitive advantage. As more companies engage remote workers, companies are also changing from traditional face-to-face training in a classroom setting to virtual training via a learning management system (LMS).
Corporate LMS software helps small, medium, and large enterprises save time and money. LMS tools are a centralized space where your HR team and managers can build, design, and host training courses. These tools also provide your employees with remote access to the educational material. Thinkific and Teachable are two leading online LMS platforms that help businesses onboard new employees and upskill existing ones. These tools can even be used to train customers and clients on new products or features. Let’s have a look at two of the leading LMS choices for business: Thinkific and Teachable.
Thinkific LMS for Business Overview
Thinkific is a leading online education technology platform that enables teachers, entrepreneurs, and businesses to deliver education and training online. Using Thinkific’s course creation tools, organizations can train their employees and build a sustainable competitive advantage for their businesses.
Thinkific offers several well-designed website templates with built-in course templates to help instructors create courses, upload training content, insert audio or video files. The tools also let course creators build quizzes, slideshows, and surveys, and the tools have a built-in forum where trainees can initiate discussions to enhanced the learning experience.
Thinkific Plus aims to provide mid-level to large enterprises additional scalability with more personalized and advanced options to take their businesses to the next level at reasonable rates. While Thinkific is designed for solopreneurs and small businesses (SMEs)—usually 10 or fewer employees—Thinkific Plus is built for large enterprises with more aggressive growth goals.
Teachable LMS for Business Overview
Previously known as Fedora, Teachable provides entrepreneurs and businesses with the opportunity to create, market, and sell customized online courses.
The cloud-based learning management system allows users to create online courses with many features such as audio/video files, pdf files, multimedia lectures, developing quizzes, monitoring performance, awarding course completion certificates, and much more.
Teachable provides a hassle-free experience to businesses by offering reliable and secure hosting so that you don’t have to worry about all the coding and website development. The platform provides many pricing options such as subscriptions, one-time payments, bundle plans, and more. It also lets you accept international payments in over a hundred currencies.
Feature Comparison Chart: Thinkific vs. Teachable
| Features | ||
|---|---|---|
| Unlimited Course Creation | ||
| Course Bundling Option & Survey | ||
| Customization | ||
| Multiple Themes | ||
| SSL Certificate | ||
| White Label Feature | ||
| Voice Over Presentations | ||
Core Features: Thinkific vs. Teachable
Thinkific and Teachable both are cloud-based learning management systems (LMS) that allow you to create courses and training modules online with several customizable templates and features.
Some of the important features of Thinkific are listed below:
- Upload, Drag & Drop and customize Content
- Rich multimedia experience
- Build & design your website with several templates
- Immediate and secure payment options
- Advanced marketing tools & email integration
- Certificates upon course completion
- Surveys to get feedback on the effectiveness of training
Now let’s list some of Teachable’s significant features:
- Customization and easy-to-use tools with bulk edits
- Track employees’ performance
- Quizzes and course completion certificates
- Flexible pricing and membership options
- SSL Hosted secure system
- Testimonials to boost sales
- Offers iOS app
- Handles EU VAT for business
Pricing: Thinkific vs Teachable
Both platforms offer you a free plan to try them out and then select the one suitable to your needs. Let’s have a look at each.
Thinkific Pricing
Thinkific LMS doesn’t charge any transaction fee for any of the plans: Free, Basic, Pro, and Premier.
Teachable Pricing
Although Teachable’s Basic plan is cheaper than Thinkific, it charges a 5% transaction fee. Here’s Teachable Plan comparison for Basic, Pro, and Business plans.
Thinkific vs Teachable: How they’re similar
Both of these LMS platforms are cloud-based and include hosting capabilities. This means you don’t have to install any additional software or plugins, and the web development is done for you. Both of the platforms also let you purchase a custom domain name for your business if you don’t already have one.
Thinkific and Teachable allow you to create unlimited training courses for your employees, host interactive virtual sessions through multimedia features, provide downloadable material, monitor employees’ performance through quizzes and discussion forums, and print course completion certificates. You can also designate multiple instructors and define their roles and authority within the platform.
Both of these platforms provide secure hosting with an SSL certificate. They offer coupons, promotional discounts, and affiliate payout options. Though businesses don’t normally charge their employees for training, the marketing features could be helpful if you’re looking to sell your courses to customers or partners.
Both platforms integrate with several third-party marketing tools directly or through Zapier, including and not limited to Google Analytics, PayPal, Shopify, Stripe, Stunning, MailChimp, CovertKit, and more.
Thinkific vs Teachable: How they’re different
Although Teachable and Thinkific have a lot in common, certain key differences set them apart.
Course Creation
Unlike Teachable, Thinkific allows you to create surveys to collect feedback on training. This tool can give you valuable insights into what trainings work and what can be improved by restructuring. Thinkific also has a voice-over presentation feature that records audio for each slide, making it easy to update and improve course material.
Teachable’s course edit feature is more user-friendly than Thinkific, as it provides bulk select and edit options. With Thinkific, you’ll have to select each course separately to change the settings.
Transaction Fees
Both Thinkific and Teachable offer monthly and annual subscription plans. The difference lies in the Basic Plan: Thinkific charges $49/month and Teachable charges $39/month. But Teachable charges a 5% transaction fee on courses you sell on the basic plan. Thinkific doesn’t charge a transaction fee, although you may incur one through your payment processing tool. Both LMS vendors also offer discounts for annual plans.
Customer Support
Both LMS vendors provide phone support, email support, and online ticketing. But Thinkific’s support is available 7 days a week, while Teachable support team is available only on business days. While their contact with support is more limited, Teachable has an edge over Thinkific in that they providing Live Chat support to customers in addition to email.
Web Design & Customization
Teachable only has one site theme, while Thinkific offers a site builder with multiple themes and styles. The full-featured Thinkific API allows developers to access and customize their Thinkific site.
Payment Feature
Both platforms offer comprehensive e-commerce tools with several third-party integration options like PayPal or Stripe. But Teachable is the only one with its own payment gateway, which can reduce the amount of time you spend setting up your course store.
Live Preview
With Thinkific’s custom site builder option, you can live preview any changes you made to the site or course before you hit publish. Teachable doesn’t offer this feature.
Mobile Application
Though Thinkific has a fully mobile-responsive design, only Teachable offers an iOS app to its customers. The application lets you keep track of training activities and manage notifications at your mobile convenience.
How to choose between Thinkific vs Teachable for business
So, what’s best for your business, Teachable or Thinkific? The answer depends upon your requirements and budget. Both of these tools provide course creation, customization, live video support and presentation, quizzes and assessments, and insights to monitor employees’ performance.
Teachable focuses more on marketing and e-commerce features, which you most probably aren’t looking for as a business. To train your employees or customers, you need an easy-to-navigate website design, with multiple templates, an interactive interface, and survey options. Thinkific LMS surely provides an edge over Teachable in these areas.
Thinkific’s free plan provides you a great starter option to test its features without any transaction fee.
Still, confused? You can have a look at our LMS top Products List to compare different products and choose which one caters best to your business needs.
