Thinkific vs. ClickFunnels: Which platform is right for you?

A course builder should be easy to use and allow you to create an engaging learning experience for students. Both ClickFunnels and Thinkific offer comprehensive course creation tools, but they differ in a number of ways.

ClickFunnels operates as an online tool for building websites and sales funnels. While they offer templates for creating courses, these templates aren’t highly customizable or focused on an optimized learning experience. ClickFunnels doesn’t currently offer online communities as a learning product that you can sell, making it difficult to engage the audience you're trying to sell your course to.

Thinkific, in comparison, has a much wider range of course creation tools and features. For example, Thinkific offers a number of templates for a variety of business goals and purposes like mini-courses, flagship courses, and webinar replay videos. Plus, unlike ClickFunnels, Thinkific has a Communities feature that allows you to build and sell a learning community to complement your course (or sell as a standalone product). 

Preparing course (and other educational) materials is made even simpler with Thinkific’s advanced AI technology. For example, creators can build course outlines and quizzes in a few clicks. Thinkific’s AI Course Outline Generator instantly creates a detailed course outline tailored to your audience's needs and Thinkific's AI Quiz Generator creates quizzes that keep learners engaged, test comprehension, and identify knowledge gaps.

A great learning experience will help students learn more effectively and make them want to share your course with others — ultimately, helping you grow your business.

The main difference between ClickFunnels and Thinkific is that ClickFunnels prioritizes helping you build a website to market and sell your digital products — something that means the learning experience comes secondary.

With Thinkific, you get functionality that goes beyond basic course platforms like ClickFunnels. Students can learn the way they want, with a variety of formats and mediums to help them stay engaged and motivated. For examples, students are able to take quizzes, exams, surveys, and participate in discussions that help provide an interactive learning experience. 

Thinkific also does more than just courses — they offer helpful digital learning experiences like Digital Downloads, 1-1 Coaching Sessions, and Webinars. With Digital Downloads, students can find value in quickly-downloadable guides, templates, exclusive resources, and more. With Coaching & Webinars, students can schedule coaching sessions and other forms of dedicated one-on-one time, attend workshops, and register for webinars.  

ClickFunnels and Thinkific both offer sales and marketing tools that help creators like you gain visibility and earn more revenue. 

As ClickFunnels’ main focus is marketing and selling, they offer solid options and features to help you promote your business. It lets you build funnels that move people through the buying process with features like a website and online store builder, membership sites, a CRM, email marketing, and analytics. However, because ClickFunnels’ learning experience is underwhelming and lacking, it makes it difficult to actually retain students once you’ve sold to them. 

With Thinkific, the sales and marketing tools complement the focus on course creation and the audience’s learning experience. Working holistically, Thinkific offers access to the best tools in the business for marketing and email automation, increasing sales, and enhancing the learning experience through gamification with 90+ integrations in the Thinkific App Store. 

Thinkific’s sales and marketing stack is also powered by AI. You don’t have to worry about list-building or creating sophisticated email flows with Thinkific, as Thinkific also offers an AI-supported email marketing feature. Creators can grow and manage email lists, launch personalized campaigns and roll out automated sequences that support their sales and marketing strategy.

Thinkific offers other sales and marketing digital learning products like Digital Downloads, Live 1-1 Coaching Sessions, and Webinars. Digital Downloads make it easy to maximize your earning potential, engage new audiences, and deliver more content to your existing audience. By offering digital products like eBooks, guides, templates, and more, businesses can open up a new stream of revenue and increase leads. 

Likewise, Coaching & Webinars make it easy to build a meaningful connection with your audience, and find and attract new customers — while boosting revenue by adding a price tag to these events.

Choose a course platform that you can always depend on. Getting help should be easy and your data should be secure.

If you need help while using ClickFunnels, your options are 24/7 email support, live chat support (limited to Monday to Friday), or a resource centre with support articles.

With Thinkific, you get access to support calls with our team of experts (for those on Grow Plans and above), 24/7 chatbot, live chat (Monday to Friday, available on the Basic Plan and above),  a network of experts, a community of peers, and a hyper-responsive support team. Plus, you’ll get even more security and support options as your business grows. 

Both ClickFunnels and Thinkific offer mobile apps for your audience to engage with your learning content from anywhere, at any time. 

The ClickFunnels mobile app gives you an overview of how your marketing funnels are performing while you’re on the go. That being said, the most notable feature of the ClickFunnels app is the at-a-glance statistics. It’s a quick and easy way for you to check in on the health of each of your funnels while tracking opt-ins, sales, and page visits. The app also provides resources to help optimize your marketing funnel.

Thinkific’s mobile offering is more robust with two mobile app options for you to choose from: Branded Mobile and Thinkific Mobile. Although the app isn’t focused on marketing funnels the way ClickFunnels is, the Branded Mobile ($199/month) is a white-labeled app that spotlights your brand with your own App Store listing and logo. With a fully-branded app, you have the opportunity — and features — to boost engagement and drive retention in a way that’s unique to you and your students. Thinkific’s other option, Thinkific Mobile (included with Start plans and above), is where students can manage their learning in the palm of their hand with a universal Thinkific branded app.

ClickFunnels and Thinkific both offer multiple pricing plans that can fit your budget and meet your current and future needs.

ClickFunnels currently offers three pricing plans, but unfortunately no permanently free plan. Their introductory plan is $127 per month, which includes just one website and limited sales funnels. While they offer a free trial period, all of their plan types require you pay upfront in order to see if ClickFunnels is right for you.

In addition to a 30-day free trial and free plan, Thinkific offers pricing tiers for early-stage businesses all the way to enterprise. No matter what stage you’re in, you have access to the functionality you need. Thinkific provides the tools that is trusted by many growing learning business.