Thinkific ‑ Online Courses , 20 reviews

The Thinkific app is average at best. There are lots of missing features for what is supposed to be a premium ($$$) LMS app. Support from the company is non existent, I've been waiting a month for a response to my latest query. Sadly, we will not be staying on this platform after our first year's experience. There are now lots of alternatives available, I would suggest looking at those.

Thinkific used to be solid and I stayed around, trusting that they would get better. Joke's on me! Their $99 level that offers subscriptions/memberships? You can't actually SEE who's in your courses or membership, unless you upgrade for another $100/month (so, their $199/mo level). So if being able to, say, email updates to your students is important (even if you're willing to go outside of the app to set up an email, but need to see who's all still enrolled first), you literally can't. Unless, of course, you want to go student account by student account and see if each one happens to be in that course/membership.

Additionally, if you want to downgrade your subscription, it's effective IMMEDIATELY. That means, if you've already paid for the month, you lose access and your money if you click that button. And if you're downgrading to a still-paid plan, you have to pay that on the spot. So you lose your money + access for the existing subscription, AND have to pay for your new subscription. There's no way around this, except to hope that you remember on your billing date (or very close to it), and handle it then.

Support is terrible. They will send you "how to" articles that don't pertain to your situation or offer "solutions" that literally don't work.

I honestly can't say how disappointed I am with this company - I wish I'd left a year ago, but I suppose the end of this month is the next best option.

Customer service? It's nonexistent! I made the mistake of using Thinkific for my primary course. I've been using them for nearly two years now, and suddenly my students aren't being enrolled in the course they paid for. Imagine how bad that looks on a business, when students put out hundreds of dollars for a course and can't access it. You'd think that in the case of a broken flow, I'd be able to manually enroll my students in the course. I can, if I pay $199 a month to have access to manual enrollment! I reached out to Thinkific through Shopify, and their automated system says someone will get back within 24 hours. It's been days! No response. I emailed again, the next day, no response. And when I tried reaching out through the Thinkific platform and going in circles with the help bot, I get met with the notice that support is only available at that low price of $199 a month! Kick rocks, Thinkific. I truly believe that this issue of broken enrollment was purposely done to force me back into the useless paid membership. I'd been paying that membership for over a year and recently downgraded because it served me no purpose. And just a few months after I downgrade, students can't enroll in my course. This is clearly a cash grab. There are way too many TRULY free platforms. Avoid this unethical company.

Password sync between Shopify and Thinkific is not consistent. There are many times that this sync fails and people cannot find the content they are subscribed to despite being able to log in to the Shopify website successfully.

OUR ADMIN HAS BEEN LOCKED OUT FOR 3 DAYS. ZERO PLATFORM ACCESS. SLOW AND UNAVAILABLE IS THINKIFIC AND EVEN SLOWER TO RESOLVE AN URGENT ISSUE. Thinkific says login to chat with a live agent if you have a paid account, which you cannot do when you are locked out. We emailed twice during business hours with no response, but received one some 14 hrs later when the help desk was supposed to be closed - then crickets again. I'm wishing we had chosen another LMS platform. Not worth the price and headache so far.

UPDATE: Thinkific eventually fixed the issue. The problem is that it took over a week, I never received an official notice from Thinkific that there was a problem, and although I was able to give away a lot of our product to soothe our customer's anger, we ended up giving away over $1,000 of free stuff to apologize for a mistake that was Thinkific's. I am having a conversation with someone at Thinkific today, and I will update more after that. ORIGINAL: I've been a Thinkific customer since 2017. They used to have customer service options that worked, but lately, they've eliminated phone customer service and the chat tool has broken every time I've used it, so the only recourse I have to get help is via email which is extremely slow and isn't useful for complicated situations. Their customer service is basically "one size fits all" which means it doesn't really do much unless you're a brand new customer of theirs. The app stopped communicating with Shopify a few days ago. Thinkific still hasn't notified users. There are others I've found experiencing this problem, and Thinkific's response is understanding my frustration, but still not making meaningful steps to ensure this problem doesn't keep happening like it currently does. Thinkific discontinued its phone customer service, so you're left with a chat feature for customer service that more often than not fails and so email becomes your only means with intricate, complicated problems. I've had to give my customers a lot of free stuff to apologize. Our value proposition is to get and access these things instantly. So having to manually create accounts and enroll students destroys the entire business model. At this point, I've had to refund, cancel, or comp items to the point that I've lost almost as much in revenue as I pay Thinkific in an *entire year.* That's too much to lose. I'm researching other options, but I don't want a single other course creator to experience this problem while I do.

Although I really love thinkific and would like to recommend this product, I'm having hard time because of the lack of customer service. Days to get a response, then another 24hrs to get a second one (And still no solution) is just not up to par for this late in the ecommerce game.

Thinkific is a great platform if you don't run into problems, and in all honestly there aren't many. But come on guys! Days to get answers is not acceptable. Its 2020...

Update: It has now been 9 days and still no fix. I realize Covid has caused caused strain on your customer support... while recording record profits. That aside, Im still paying monthly for software that does not work as advertised!

While it's a decent platform to host a course and has good capabilities, the customer service is appalling. Replies are condescending, they don't provide reasonable solutions to my issues (in one case, telling me to delete the app in order to stop being charged - without providing the correct instructions to downgrade to the free version).
I've since been charged when I shouldn't have been (I had to upgrade to a basic plan to enrol students as it didn't integrate seamlessly with shopify). I had heard great things about it, however their customer service needs improving immensely.

I'm sure the app is fine itself but I'm not happy I was led to believe that the free version would be compatible with shopify. It is not. I am required to purchase Pro at $100 per month. I have already uploaded my entire course and am connecting it to shopify THEN I am told it'll cost me $100 per month, after I've already done all this work. Then customer service sends me a canned copy-n-paste reply and doesn't even acknowledge my concern. I'm not thrilled but I am roped into this now.

I have a Youtube educational channel of 225k subs. (jazzduets) and have worked hard to build a solid positive trustworthy reputation. Thinkific has hurt this reputation with my VIP customers. Let me explain. This is lamentable to say but my nightmares started when I started selling my online courses on shopify with the Thinkific integration. The integration does work not seamlessly. Customers do not get the automatic emails, so they get infuriated at paying $300 dollars for the course but cannot access it immediately, so I have to enroll many manually! As well, when I add a new course, sometimes it appears in the shopify backend and other times it does not!
The support at Thinkific has been the worse that I have experienced in 4 years of e commerce. I have sent the support many emails, and still have not had my problem solved. They are very slow in getting back. I was asked for access to my store a few weeks ago and can see that they have still yet to log in. It seems there is a programming error that they are unable or unwilling to address. I cannot therefore recommend shopify with Thinkific.
------------------------ My response to your october 21 response----
FIRST, I cannot see how your team could have addressed and resolved my problem as you contest. You asked for permission to access my store, which I agreed to, but I can see that you have still have never logged in , even after my complaint. SECOND
I have wasted many hours trying to work this out (8 months so far!!!) I have upset clients and a damaged reputation.
THIRD - I am now looking for a better platform with an integration that works and with a support that does not pass me from person to person as you have done, wasting my time further.