Simplero vs Thinkific
With the wide variety of online course platforms available, it's important to choose one that not only meets your technical requirements but also supports your mission as an educator or entrepreneur. In this article, we dive into a comparison of two prominent platforms – Simplero and Thinkific - to examine the features, capabilities and pricing of each so you can make an informed choice.
What Is Simplero?
Simplero is an all-in-one platform specifically designed to streamline the process of creating, marketing, and selling online courses, coaching services and other online offerings. It prides itself on offering a comprehensive suite of tools that make course creation simple but also provide robust marketing and automation features. With this platform, your email marketing, sales pages, website hosting, course delivery and more coexist seamlessly - that's what Simplero is all about.
What Is Thinkific?
On the other hand, Thinkific is an online course platform designed to help course authors build and sell their course business. It is popular for its user-friendly interface and extensive course builder. Thinkific provides reliable and easy-to-use tools to build, market and sell online courses. Through its various integration options, users can add additional features, and connect to third-party marketing and sales tools.
Let's take a closer look at the key features and benefits of Simplero and Thinkific to see which one is right for your business.
Content Management & Course Creation
Content Management
Simplero
Content management in Simplero is streamlined, with features designed to help creators organise and deliver their content effectively. All content - whether audio, video, PDF, etc. - is natively hosted in a central Media Library. Adding content is easy (drag and drop) and is intuitive to access across the platform, so you can quickly add your content to courses, landing pages, emails or anything else.
Thinkific
Since Thinkific is course-centric, media content is uploaded as you create your lessons. You can upload audio, video and PDF individually or by using their Bulk Importer function. Once uploaded, content can be selected from your library whenever creating a new lesson.
Additional lesson types include downloads, live Zoom meetings, quizzes, surveys, assignments and exams (note that some features require integrations with third-party tools). A text editor is provided for the Text lesson type.
Course Creation
Simplero's Course Builder
Creating a course in Simplero is a breeze, thanks to its straightforward drag-and-drop course builder. Choose whether to group lessons into modules (or sections, chapters, or whatever you want to call it) or skip modules and create a simple list of lessons.
To create a lesson, just select the primary content type for that lesson (Video, Audio, Quiz, or Other) and select it from the media library or upload it right there inside the course builder. Add custom text in the full-featured text editor and add additional media as needed. Using these features, a variety of content can be provided inside each lesson, if desired.
For example, you can set a video as your primary content for a particular lesson, but also add some instructions below it and a downloadable handout. Quickly and easily done with Simplero.
Once your content is created, drag and drop your lessons and modules to easily rearrange them, if desired. You can even copy them into other courses, if you like, with just a few clicks.
When you're ready to publish, choose how your content will be delivered - all at once, over time (drip content), or on your custom schedule. With Simplero, you have complete control over how and when your course is served.
Additional features include quizzes and surveys, making lessons required or not, restricting or allowing content downloads, allowing users to consume lessons as a podcast (or not), and offering automatically generated certificates upon course completion (not included in the Starter plan).
Thinkific's Course Builder
The course builder inside Thinkific supports multimedia lectures, quizzes, and surveys to create an interactive learning experience. It doesn't require any technical skills to use effectively but be prepared to choose from a plethora of options.
The builder automatically starts with Chapters (which can be renamed as desired), inside of which you add your lessons. It is unclear if it's possible to offer lessons without the Chapter/module structure. If so, it's not obvious.
Next, click the Add Lesson button to get started creating your course. This will present you with a variety of content options, including video, PDF, text, audio, download, presentation, multimedia, live, survey, quiz, assignment and exam. Some features are only available with higher-tier plans.
Additional features include adding content via third-party apps that integrate with Thinkific (note that each of these may incur an additional cost) and offering automatic course completion certificates (higher plans only).
Membership Sites & Engagement
Membership Sites with Simplero
Simplero fosters community with powerful membership sites that you can customise with optional features such as:
- member directory, profiles and mentioning
- forums and member-to-member chat
- blogs and post comments
You can even create and host a fully functional, completely separate website for your program inside each membership site, which can even have its own custom URL. This is one of the most powerful and versatile features of the platform which can be used in a variety of ways.
To clarify, courses and memberships can each be offered separately as a standalone product, or you can include access to courses inside a membership. It's all customisable with Simplero.
Membership & Community with Thinkific
In Thinkific, Communities and Memberships are two different things:
- Community - a dedicated space for your students to share knowledge and support each other
- Membership - a package of content and communities
You can create a community to foster engagement among your students and choose whether they are included in a membership package or not. Note that anything you attach to a membership will be accessible to all participants of that membership.
Marketing and Sales Tools
Marketing & Sales with Simplero
As a true all-in-one business management platform, Simplero offers robust marketing and sales features, including:
- Build and host your website and blog right inside Simplero
- Landing page and funnel builders
- Email marketing
- Automation engine that connects it all together
- Affiliate program management (get others to promote your products and automatically track their activity with Simplero)
- Products and pricing with flexible payment, coupon and subscription options
- Multiple payment processors are available
- White labelling (no Simplero branding on your pages) for all but the Starter plan.
Virtually everything you need to build and scale your business is included and works together seamlessly to help you save money and avoid integration headaches.
Marketing & Sales with Thinkific
Thinkific offers integrations with popular marketing platforms, alongside customisable landing pages and email marketing tools. The platform offers secure payment processing, subscription options, and the ability to create and distribute coupons for promotions.
However, Thinkific's primary focus is still as an online learning platform, which is what most of its features and updates are centred around.
Also, note that white labelling (no Thinkific branding on your pages) is only available on the highest-tier plan.
Pricing Models
Simplero offers a tiered pricing structure that provides different levels of functionality and support to suit business needs of varying sizes. Prices range from $59 to $249 per month with the ability to adjust contact and storage limits within each tier.
Thinkific's pricing is also tiered, allowing content creators to start for free and scale with additional features as their business grows. Prices range from $36 to $374 per month, all of which offer unlimited courses but tiered access to communities and other features. Also, it's important to remember that taking advantage of Thinkific's various integrations will incur additional costs.
Both platforms offer discounts for annual payments.
The Difference Between Simplero vs Thinkific
At their core, both Simplero and Thinkific aim to streamline the digital learning experience, yet their paths diverge in how they approach this goal.
Simplero prides itself on being an all-in-one business solution. One where course creation, marketing, sales, and website management not only reside under one roof but also work in perfect harmony. Think of it as your digital Swiss Army knife – exceptionally versatile and ready to tackle a myriad of tasks with robust marketing and sales tools, seamless automation, and powerful membership site capabilities. Simplero doesn't just allow you to host courses; it empowers you to build a streamlined, successful business.
On the flip side, Thinkific zeroes in on the art of course creation and delivery. It provides you with the tools to create interactive and engaging learning experiences, even if you're not the best at tech. Thinkific's platform is rich with integrations, allowing you to play with a wide variety of third-party applications, albeit sometimes at an extra cost. While significantly less comprehensive in the all-in-one department, Thinkific excels in crafting a focused and dynamic learning environment.
In summary, if you want a bold, all-encompassing platform that handles everything from your morning emails to your midnight sales analytics, Simplero wears that crown.
On the other hand, Thinkific offers a robust, dedicated course hosting platform, perfect if you're seeking a specialised tool to bring your educational visions to life.
Your quest for the ideal platform boils down to one question: Are you looking to build a versatile business empire or stay focused on educational content?
As you might guess - our pick is Simplero for its comprehensiveness and versatility in a platform that just works. If you want to streamline your course business, reduce complications and recurring costs and still offer an amazing learning experience, Simplero is our choice.
