Thinkific vs LearnDash

Canvas

Google Classroom

Moodle

Canvas is a modern, cloud-based LMS that helps organizations of all sizes deliver impactful learning. Whether you're teaching students, onboarding new hires, or running a training program, Canvas makes it simple to build, manage, and scale engaging learning experiences.

Google Classroom is a collaboration tool for educators to create assignments, provide feedback, and track student progress. Features include materials and resource organization, contacts database, originality reports, comments bank, locked mode, custom fields, permissions management, and more.

With hundreds of millions of users around the globe and translated into over 100 languages, more organisations choose Moodle to support their education and training needs than any other system in the world.

Owner

There has been a bug in one of their core features for almost a full month now, and customer service only sends templated responses with no details about when it will be fixed.

Possibly didn't spend long enough or get the proper support, so may be my fault.

Learning Experience Manager

The customer success team was super helpful with helping us get up to speed and launched within a couple of months.

Customer Support and coach

Thinkific enables creators, educators, and businesses to design, build, and sell online courses. With intuitive tools for content creation, tracking, and learner engagement, users can transform knowledge into impactful courses. Thinkific Plus offers advanced customization, reporting, & integration.

Academic/Education

Access Controls/Permissions

Activity Dashboard

Alerts/Notifications

Assessment Management

Assignment Management

Asynchronous Learning

Audio/Video Recording

Billing & Invoicing

Bite-Sized Learning

Blended Learning

Built-in Course Authoring

Business Coaching

Certificates

Certification & Licensing

Classroom Management

Class Scheduling

Client Management

Commenting/Notes

Communication Management

Content Library

Content Management

Corporate/Business

Course Authoring

Course Management

Course Publishing

Course Tracking

Credit Card Processing

Customizable Branding

Customizable Forms

Customizable Reports

Customizable Templates

Data Import/Export

Discussions/Forums

Drag & Drop

eCommerce Management

eLearning Companies

Email Management

Employee Engagement

Employee Portal

Engagement Tracking

Enrollments/Onboarding

Event Calendar

Event Management

Feedback Management

For Higher Education

For Hospitality Industry

Gamification

Gradebook

Group Management

Instructor-Led Courses

Interactive Content

Interactive Learning

Learner Portal

Learning Management

Learning Paths/Tracks

Media Import

Membership Management

@mentions

Microlearning

Mobile Access

Mobile App

Mobile Learning

Monitoring

Multi-Language

Onboarding

Performance Management

Personalization

Program Management

Progress Reports

Progress Tracking

Quizzes

Real-time Broadcasting

Real-Time Data

Real-Time Monitoring

Real-Time Notifications

Recommendations

Reporting/Analytics

Reporting & Statistics

Scheduling

SCORM Compliance

Self-paced Learning

Self-Service Content Curation

Single Sign On

Social Learning

Storyboarding

Student Information/Records

Student Management

Student Portal

Surveys & Feedback

Synchronous Learning

Template Management

Tests/Assessments

Third-Party Integrations

Training Administration

Training Companies

Training Management

User Management

Video Conferencing

Most users consider Thinkific to offer good value for money, citing budget-friendly pricing, transparent plans, and a useful free tier. However, some reviewers feel the pricing is high, and they mention extra costs for integrations.

Value for money

By industry, Thinkific reviewers are most commonly professionals in e-learning (30%). The most frequent use case for Thinkific cited by reviewers is online course creation (44% of reviewers).

Thinkific

Web-based

Teachable

LearnWorlds

Blackboard

Podia

TalentLMS

CYPHER Learning

Udemy Business

LearnDash

SmarterU LMS

Litmos

iSpring Suite

 Basic

Start

Grow

Thinkific Plus

Inconsistent customer support experience

Supply Operations Director 

The customer support team is not responsive at all.

36% of reviewers feel negative about Thinkific’s customer support. Some users report frustration with slow or unhelpful responses, often receiving generic or repetitive answers that do not resolve their issues. Reviewers indicate difficulties in reaching knowledgeable representatives, experiencing delays, and having to repeat information. They mention problems with account management, billing, and technical bugs that are not addressed promptly. Some reviewers feel that support quality declines on lower-tier plans and that it is challenging to get personalized assistance, especially when dealing with ongoing or complex problems.

Comprehensive selling capabilities

Founder

Thinkific is an excellent platform for creating and selling online courses.

Director

It has all the features I really need to teach and sell my courses online

96% of reviewers feel positive about Thinkific’s selling courses functionality. Reviewers indicate that the platform offers an all-in-one solution for creating, marketing, and selling courses, making it accessible even for those without technical backgrounds. They appreciate the integrated marketing, affiliate, and payment tools, which allow them to launch and manage their online teaching businesses efficiently. Some users say the ability to sell not just courses but also digital products, memberships, and coaching programs is a significant advantage. They find the process of setting up and selling courses to be straightforward and professional.

Flexible course creation tools

Coach and Creative Strategist

Love the opportunity to build my course with so many options for various types of learners and delivering content in different ways to keep students engaged.

I wanted something that could handle the multi-media aspect of the delivery of my course, but that was also easy to set up for a non-techy beginner as I didn't have an assistant to set it up for me.  

84% of reviewers feel positive about Thinkific’s course creation features. Some reviewers find the platform easy to use, with a variety of options for presenting content, supporting multimedia, and engaging different types of learners. They appreciate the robust tutorials, templates, and analytics that help them design and refine courses. Users say the flexibility to customize course structure, offer free or paid lessons, and manage multiple courses from one interface is valuable. They indicate that the platform supports both beginners and experienced creators in building and delivering engaging online learning experiences.

Corporate Advisor

The platform’s structure helps maintain a high-quality learning flow, and the flexibility to integrate videos, quizzes, and marketing elements makes it suitable for both institutional and individual learners.

Senior Instructor

The help files' ability to walk me through every one of my problems or mistakes without needing to speak with a person is a real timesaver!

Lecturer

Its robust features as website builder, landing pages creator and the bunch of add-ons to integrate for third party uses as blog posts, make Thinkific stand away from the crowd. Though a beginner, and in few clicks, you can customize your course, enrol students, create and sell e-books, start conferencing and many other unlimited features at low costs.

Operations

I like how it gives you different options of how to organize the programs depending on your needs.

Program Director

Thinkific worked well when our needs were fairly simple — it’s reliable for basic course setup and delivery. But as things grew and we needed more advanced features and flexibility, it became clear that it wasn’t the right long-term fit for us.

A renowned platform built to deliver online courses, sell digital product and market personal expertise through webinars and conferencing facilities.

It’s fine for basic course delivery, but we eventually needed more flexibility and functionality than the platform could offer — which is why we decided to move on.

Coach

Customer support was great when I first began using Thinkific. Although there is no free account option publicly, I asked if they had a free plan and they set me up with one

Our company was looking for a new LMS to manage our enablement offerings and Thinkific ended up being the best fit for us!

Senior Comms Manager

What I liked least about Thinkific was that, as with any growing company, there were times when priorities shifted quickly, which could make long-term planning a bit challenging.

Computer Science Teacher

It is hard to view items and the way they are posted sometimes makes it hard to find what you are looking for.

It's nice to have documents for download imbedded in the system.

It's great to be able to create your own course on the platform.

I disconnected my domain before closing the account leading me to not be able to access my account.

The platform is intuitive and reliable, making it easy to design, host, and deliver courses to a wide range of learners.

They're one primary focus is MONEY. And yes, it's all about commerce at the end of the day. But if they don't deal with the end user as a human they have no place being in business.

Also, I am unsure if I am supposed to mark items as "done" in order to complete the module or not.

Chief Executive

The payment and seamless link to our website has also been revolutionary for us.

I love the student facing part of the platform as well.

I Alison like the social hub set up for my cohort students!

Before starting my online academy I looked at a number of options.

We have found the building process to be easy with our current systems and editing old courses is rather smooth.

An easy to use experience yet complex options and professional support these are what I get from think of definitely a good value for money

I tried closing my account by contacting support multiple times and they just don't get it!

Many of their features also don't allow for any customization, and the dashboard is not very easy to navigate.

ESL Coach

There is a bit of reading and experimentation necessary.

A super easy platform to launch your online teaching business and sell your expertise though unfamiliar with online learning experiences.

Senior Technology Administrator

There are types of lessons, but other than that you are stuck using their templates.

What stood out the most to us with Thinkific is the ease of use for the user and our admin team.

Loved it the entire time the company I work for hosted our programs on this platform and would return in a heartbeat if I could.

They also don't have an inbuilt API that when a subscription member cancels to remove a tag from your CRM.

I found it hard to get something that looked professional in terms of design.

As a trainer with limited tech experience I have found it intuitive to use.

Their sales team is great at what they do, but that actual service and platform are unfortunately not good.

Even though it can be a little clunky at times too. And the UI & UX is nowhere near as good. But it costs a fraction of the price of every other platform and you can do 10x more.

We had to manually import every student and bulk enroll them into every course individually.

This was the first site I used when I first started my coaching business.  

I have tested pretty much all of them, and they make the UI look and feel great. But then once you start working in there you become super limited in what's achievable.

It had some poor features, poor UI and UX, and customer experience. Once we went down to a lower plan, service went from average to absolutely terrible.

I created my first course with Thinkific.

The experience has been smooth and rewarding.

The only way Thinkific is useful is if you buy a bunch of plugins so you can build a proper website.

Thinkific vs LearnDash Comparison (2026)

Thinkific

LearnDash

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives