Thinkific

Thinkific suits experts and small academies whose business is the course itself. Every published plan allows unlimited courses and 10,000 current students, and sales through Thinkific Payments carry no platform fee, so the bill doesn't grow with the catalog. Cohort delivery, drip by course start date, assignments and groups give it enough structure for a school that runs classes.

The gaps show at the edges. SCORM 1.2 and 2004 are Plus-only, and xAPI and cmi5 aren't supported at all, so content from authoring tools means a custom-priced contract. The student limit also counts more people than its name suggests: students in free courses and free-trial subscriptions count, and finishing a course or deactivating a user doesn't lower the total. Affiliate payouts have to be sent outside Thinkific, and the branded app costs $199 a month and needs a D-U-N-S number, which can take up to 30 days.

Start is the plan to budget for: $109 a month, or $82 a month billed yearly, with certificates, memberships, payment plans, bundles, live cohorts and 2 admins. Basic costs $54 a month, or $40 billed yearly, and Grow $219, or $164 billed yearly, adding the API, branding removal and phone support. Thinkific Payments processing is priced in line with Stripe and PayPal at 2.9%, and a 0.5% fee applies to each paid sale where Thinkific assesses tax, which covers every paid sale to a US or Canadian buyer; in return, Thinkific collects and remits their sales tax. Selling through Stripe or PayPal instead adds a gateway fee on the first $1 million of sales a year: 5% on Basic, 2% on Start and 1% on Grow. On $2,000 of monthly sales that's $100 on Basic, almost twice the plan's price, and $40 on Start.

Choose Thinkific for a course business that wants unlimited courses and a built-in checkout, and skip Basic unless certificates and subscriptions can wait. Sellers with buyers in many countries may prefer Teachable, which collects and remits sales tax, VAT and GST in more than 45 countries and charges no transaction fee on Builder, $89 a month or $69 billed yearly. Anyone who needs SCORM on a published plan should look at LearnWorlds, whose Pro Trainer takes up to 20 packages for $99 a month or $79 billed yearly.