From Gwen’s desk
Why I Like Thinkific.
I look at learning platforms from two sides: what it's like for the learners and what it's like for the people who have to manage it. Learners need an easy to navigate place where they can focus on the training, and teams need a platform they can easily manage after the training site is built.
That’s why I like Thinkific.
It gives me enough flexibility to create a polished learning experience without turning every update into a major technical project.
An Amazing, Intuitive Learning Experience
Learners shouldn’t have to figure out the platform before they can get to the training.
Some of the other learning management systems (LMSs) that I've used make it difficult for learners to access their training or navigate their profile and records. Thinkific’s course player is clean and straightforward, which gives a good foundation for organizing your content around how people will work through it. I find that Thinkific allows you to:
- Keep lessons manageable. I can break longer topics into shorter lessons, release content over time, and use prerequisites when learners need to complete one part of the training before moving to the next.
- Give learners different ways to work with the material. Depending on your training, lessons can include video, audio, text, downloads, quizzes, assignments, and other resources. That gives you the ability to choose the format that makes sense for what you’re teaching instead of forcing everything into a video-based lesson.
- Help learners stay on track. Thinkific tracks course progress so learners can come back and pick up where they left off. You can also use completion certificates, digital badges and other features when they fit your program goals.
- Add more interactive training when you need it. I like that Thinkific supports SCORM content created with tools such as Articulate and Adobe Captivate. This allows you to bring in unique interactive features that don't come native in the platform. Thinkific Plus also offers a direct Articulate 360 integration, which can be very convenient if you develop training in Rise.
Welcome to Everyone (Accessibility)
Accessibility is part of good instructional design, so it's important to know how the platform addresses it.
The Thinkific system natively supports screen readers, clear keyboard-only navigation, and easy video closed-captioning, ensuring none of your members or customers are left out. According to their latest statement (April 26) they say that they are actively working toward WCAG 2.1 AA conformance. Of course, the platform can’t do everything to make your training accessible for you. We still have to think about captions, documents, colors, headings, course content, and the materials we upload. But the platform gives you options for customization to help address these.
You Don’t Need Enterprise Software for Every Training Project
Just because you need a professional training platform doesn’t mean you need a huge enterprise learning system.
Thinkific offers standard plans as well as Thinkific Plus, so your organization has options depending on its needs. If you are a small non-profit or an SMB (less than 10K employees, customers, members), you might be able to get away with a standard plan. But if you're serving more than 10K learners or members, you can get a custom set up with Thinkific. All that to say, the platform is a good place to start and grow.
In addition, if you sell courses, memberships, or other digital learning products, you can do it all from one platform.
Your Team Should Be Able to Run It
This is often overlooked when larger companies are spec'ing out a learning management system (LMS).
You don’t want a nice-looking training site that becomes a tech headache the first time somebody needs to replace a video, upload a new PDF, enroll a learner, or check on progress.
Once your Thinkific site is set up, your team can handle many of those day-to-day updates from the admin dashboard. Thinkific handles the platform hosting so your team (or the IT department) isn’t responsible for maintaining it or worrying about software updates. Thinkific aims for a 99.5% uptime.
It Can Work With the Rest of Your Systems
Your training platform probably isn’t the only software your organization uses.
Thinkific can connect with a range of business, marketing, and automation tools, such as HubSpot and Salesforce. There are additional integrations are available depending on your plan. If you're using Claude or ChatGPT, Thinkific also has an MCP to connect directly to them. So there are many options available for your organization based on how Thinkific needs to fit with the systems you already have.
Reminder
No platform is right for every organization or project and there are so many great learning platforms and LMS options to choose from. You need to look at your training, your learners, your team, and what you need the platform to do.
For many organizations, Thinkific can provide a powerful combination of a clean learner experience, solid course management tools, options for more advanced training, and a system your team can continue to manage after the project is finished.
That’s why I like working with it.