What to Look for in an Online Course Platform

When selecting an online course platform, there are several key factors to consider to ensure you choose the best fit for your needs. Here are some of the most important features to look for:

1. Ease of Use: The platform should be intuitive and user-friendly, even for those with limited technical expertise. A straightforward interface can save you time and reduce frustration, allowing you to focus on creating engaging course content.
2. Course Creation Tools: Look for a platform that offers a comprehensive suite of tools to help you create high-quality courses. This includes video hosting, quizzes, assessments, and multimedia support to make your courses interactive and engaging.
3. Customization Options: The ability to customize the look and feel of your courses is crucial. Ensure the platform allows you to add your own branding, logos, and design elements to create a unique and professional appearance.
4. Marketing and Sales Tools: Effective marketing and sales tools are essential for promoting and selling your courses. Look for features like email marketing, affiliate marketing, and seamless payment processing to help you reach a wider audience and increase sales.
5. Analytics and Reporting: Detailed analytics and reporting are vital for tracking student engagement, course sales, and revenue. Choose a platform that provides comprehensive insights to help you make data-driven decisions and improve your courses.
6. Integration with Other Tools: Ensure the platform integrates smoothly with other tools and services you use, such as email marketing software, CRM systems, and payment gateways. This can streamline your workflow and enhance your overall efficiency.
7. Support and Customer Service: Reliable support and customer service are crucial, especially when you encounter technical issues or need assistance. Look for platforms that offer extensive documentation, tutorials, and live support to help you navigate any challenges.

Which is the best platform for online courses? Thinkific or Shiken?

Have you discovered Thinkific yet? Marketed as an all-in-one learning management system (LMS), it is one of the top online course platforms and very popular amongst course creators and students alike.

It has been going since 2012, when Greg Smith created Thinkific to sell his LSAT course online where he could reach more students who could benefit from his teachings. It was supposed to be a way to earn extra income, but before long, he had quit his full-time job and was committed to building Thinkific into one of the best online course platforms around.

Now everyone can build courses online and share them with the world to boost their income. The creation process is very simple, but it includes advanced features that help make your course stand out in a busy marketplace. You can easily customise your products to suit your brand and teaching style, attracting students who can learn from you. Thinkific provides all the tools you need to create courses, from course design to student enrollment and payment processing.

When compared to Shiken, there are a few similarities, like the easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface, but there are also a few key differences that may sway your favour one way or the other. For those looking to launch their first online course, Thinkific offers user-friendly features and community engagement options to support new instructors.

What Is Thinkific Good For in an Online Education Business?

Thinkific aims to provide course-creators with everything they need to make detailed and interesting courses that will keep students engaged and lead to increased sales. Putting your courses together is incredibly easy with a drag-and-drop style into templates that you can customise to suit your teaching style, offering all the features necessary for a comprehensive learning experience. Treat your students to videos, text information, music and pictures to teach them in a holistic way, including tests and assignments to ensure their understanding is complete.

You can add any of the student engagement tools to your course to help boost completion rates. These include things like quizzes, learning communities and digital downloads. The Community is one of the best features, giving your students access to other learners on the course so they can swap notes and ask questions. You can also create Spaces, where you can host live lessons and discussions around your chosen subject, encouraging students to engage at specific points in their learning. This allows you to fully manage and control your own online courses.

And how your students access your courses is up to you. You can allow one-off payments, bundles and memberships. All of this is easily set-up on the platform.

Once your course is complete, there is a whole suite of marketing tools that will help you get the word out and encourage students to sign up. The biggest way to do this is via your website which you can also build through Thinkific. The platform offers hosting services too, so you don’t have to worry about additional costs. Additionally, the Thinkific Grow Plan allows you to remove Thinkific branding, providing a white-label experience that aligns with your professional presentation.

Unless, of course, you wish to use any of the many third-party tools that can be integrated into your website and courses. These include big names like Google Analytics and Mail Chimp, so you know they are definitely going to help you grow your business.

When you sign into your Thinkific account, you are greeted with your own personalised dashboard, which lets you see at a glance, how many courses you have, how many students have brought your courses and many other useful details. You can change this to suit your needs. And everything is stored on a Cloud, so you can access it from wherever you may be in the world, allowing you to keep up to date on your travels.

What does Thinkific cost?

Like many of the best online course platforms, Thinkific's Free Plan allows you to create and sell one course. This is a great way to get acquainted with the platform and decide if it is the one for you. Of course, this free version is limited and if you want to upgrade your courses and maximise your profits, you’ll have to upgrade.

The Thinkific Basic Plan is £42 a month and there are six packages in total, giving you time to upgrade as your business grows. You can save money on your packages too by buying annually, rather than monthly. And there is the option to go to Thinkific Plus, which gives you a custom-made package with prices available on request – this is perfect if you know exactly what you need but it doesn’t quite fit into any of the other packages.

The basic package allows you to create unlimited courses, making it a flexible and scalable option for users. As one of the better online course platforms on the market, it is reasonably priced and great value for money.

What's not so good about Thinkific?

With all these plus points, it's inevitable that there will be some negative aspects of the platform. The biggest complaint is that the design options are limited. Despite a variety of templates and customisation tools, there could still be a lot more to choose from. This lack of personalisation means that a lot of the courses look the same and it can be difficult to make yours stand out.

The other problem is that there is not currently an integrated email system built into the platform. While you can add MailChimp to your site, which is arguably one of the best email business providers out there, you do have to pay extra to add this integration. It would be much more efficient and cheaper for course creators if this was included in their membership.

Top Thinkific Alternatives

If you’re considering alternatives to Thinkific, here are some of the top options that offer robust features for online course creation, marketing, and sales:

1. Mighty Networks: This comprehensive platform combines course creation, community building, and marketing tools. It’s ideal for creators who want to foster a strong community around their courses.
2. Kajabi: A popular choice among course creators, Kajabi offers a wide range of features for course creation, marketing, and sales. Its all-in-one approach makes it a powerful alternative to Thinkific.
3. Teachable: Known for its user-friendly interface, Teachable provides a variety of tools for creating, marketing, and selling online courses. It’s a great option for those who prioritize ease of use.
4. Udemy: As a well-known marketplace for online courses, Udemy offers extensive features for course creation and marketing. It’s a good choice if you want to leverage an existing audience to sell your courses.
5. Podia: Podia focuses on simplicity and ease of use, offering a range of features for course creation, marketing, and sales. It’s perfect for creators who want a straightforward platform without sacrificing functionality.

So how does Thinkific compare to Shiken?

As the self-confessed best platform for online courses, Shiken has a lot to live up to when compared with the Thinkific site. While Shiken doesn’t have the integrated website feature, it does offer landing pages and an incredible marketing suite.

Thinkific makes it easy to sell courses with its integrated payment solutions and marketing tools.

Here are some of the other great things about this online platform.

Catering for all learning styles for Course Creators

You'll find standard on-demand video courses that provide a thorough overview of each topic and live courses that allow for more student interaction. But if passive learning doesn't suit the learning style you need, we also have live quizzes with leaderboards and deeper learning engagement that will help students progress their skills and really connect with their subject.

Getting to grips with AI

Shiken has really embraced the era of AI by incorporating it into almost every part of course creation to make for the most streamlined process. Use it to create PDF write-ups and quizzes related to your content or build wikis, databases and project management boards for your students to work from. This sophisticated tool will really help reduce the amount of time spent on building out courses, so you can get on with building an empire!

The Shiken Store

Ready to share your courses with the world? Head to the Shiken Store! We help share your courses with the Shiken community, giving learners the chance to purchase your courses, sign up to subscriptions or use one-time vouchers to gain access. You can also share your courses on your own dedicated landing pages.

Fantastic value for money with Marketing Tools

Like other course platforms, Shiken offers a free version that gives you a taster of what you can do with just one course. If you only ever intend to offer one simple, stand-alone course, then you can do so without spending a penny! If, however, you decide to upgrade your membership, prices start at £39 a month and increase depending on your needs. This is highly competitive in today's busy online course world.

Now it's up to you!

Which of these options do you think is the best platform for course creation? Will you go for the simple but limited Thinkific platform? Or the sleek, sophisticated Shiken? Both have a similar pricing structure that means you can take budget out of your decision and look solely at the different things that each offers. Do you need a website for your courses? Would an efficient AI developer help solve all the barriers you've faced when creating courses in the past?

The best way to decide is to sign up to the free versions of both platforms and test them out for yourself. Once you've spent some time exploring and moving things around on both sites, you will know which one will be your best partner for course creation.

Evaluating Alternatives

When evaluating alternatives to Thinkific, consider the following factors to ensure you choose the best platform for your needs:

1. Features: Compare the features offered by each platform. Look for tools that align with your course creation needs, such as video hosting, quizzes, and multimedia support.
2. Pricing: Examine the pricing models of each platform. Consider both the initial costs and any ongoing fees to determine which option offers the best value for your budget.
3. Ease of Use: Assess how user-friendly each platform is. A platform that is easy to navigate and use can save you time and reduce frustration, allowing you to focus on creating high-quality courses.
4. Customization Options: Look at the customization options available. Ensure the platform allows you to add your own branding and design elements to create a unique and professional appearance.
5. Integration with Other Tools: Check how well each platform integrates with other tools and services you use. Seamless integration can streamline your workflow and enhance your overall efficiency.

Key Features to Consider

When evaluating online course platforms, consider the following key features to ensure you choose the best option for your needs:

1. Course Creation Tools: Look for platforms that offer a comprehensive suite of tools for creating high-quality courses. This includes video hosting, quizzes, assessments, and multimedia support to make your courses interactive and engaging.
2. Marketing and Sales Tools: Effective marketing and sales tools are essential for promoting and selling your courses. Look for features like email marketing, affiliate marketing, and seamless payment processing to help you reach a wider audience and increase sales.
3. Analytics and Reporting: Detailed analytics and reporting are vital for tracking student engagement, course sales, and revenue. Choose a platform that provides comprehensive insights to help you make data-driven decisions and improve your courses.
4. Customization Options: The ability to customize the look and feel of your courses is crucial. Ensure the platform allows you to add your own branding, logos, and design elements to create a unique and professional appearance.
5. Integration with Other Tools: Ensure the platform integrates smoothly with other tools and services you use, such as email marketing software, CRM systems, and payment gateways. This can streamline your workflow and enhance your overall efficiency.

Analytics and Reporting

Analytics and reporting are critical features for any online course platform. Here are some key metrics to consider when evaluating a platform’s analytics capabilities:

1. Student Engagement: Track how many students are enrolled in your courses and how engaged they are. Metrics like time spent on course content and participation in quizzes and discussions can provide valuable insights.
2. Course Sales: Monitor the number of courses sold and the revenue generated. This helps you understand the financial performance of your courses and identify trends over time.
3. Revenue Growth: Analyze how your revenue is growing over time and identify the key drivers of growth. This can help you make informed decisions about pricing, marketing strategies, and course offerings.
4. Student Retention: Measure how many students are completing your courses and what the retention rate is. High retention rates indicate that students find your courses valuable and engaging.
5. Course Completion Rates: Track the percentage of students who complete your courses. High completion rates suggest that your course content is effective and engaging, while low rates may indicate areas for improvement.

By considering these metrics, you can gain a deeper understanding of your course performance and make data-driven decisions to enhance your online education business.

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