If you’re curious about Thinkific and what it has to offer, check out this quick demo I’ve put together for the Start plan.
I’ve explored all its features, and I have to say—they’re great quality!
Key Takeaways:
- The Start plan lets you create and sell unlimited courses
- Also, sell unlimited digital downloads and coaching products
- You can build a website and sales funnel to showcase your offers
Thinkific Start Plan Demo: Which Features Can You Access?
Thinkific has recently revamped its platform and leveled up its features. Unfortunately, it has now dropped its free plan, but a 30-day free trial is available (on this page).
This gives you access to the Start plan, which means you can kickstart your business and start making sales without spending a penny.
Build a Course
You’ll find the Courses feature inside the Products tab. Thinkific has introduced AI to its platform, and the tool will generate a full course outline for you. All you do is enter a short course description, and the tool will work its magic! It’s super quick, too.
Let’s check out the course features!
You can see that the AI has generated a whole course outline for me, which is great.
- Clicking into a lesson opens all the editing options. The lesson I’ve opened is called a Text lesson.
- There are plenty of formatting options to make your text look interesting.
- To add variety, you can insert images, videos, audio files, and more.
- Add more lessons if you like. There’s lots to choose from, including videos, quizzes, downloads, and more.
- At the bottom of each lesson are the settings where you can switch on certain things, like making the lesson available as a course preview and enabling course comments.
- Chapters act as course modules. You can add as many of these as you like, too.
Along the top of the screen, you will find all the course settings and options.
- If you have preexisting content, you can save time by uploading it directly. Thinkific will automatically transform it into a lesson for you.
- In the Settings area, you can customize the appearance of your course, add SEO, and edit the progression stages.
- Drip scheduling is also available on the Start plan.
- You have plenty of pricing options. Offer it free, as a one-time purchase, or as a subscription or payment plan.
- Thinkific will generate a landing page for your course (this template will start to look very familiar as we move through the demo). Click to edit and customize it.
- When you’re ready, publish your course or make it available as a pre-order for your eager customers!
Start a Community
Establishing a community is one of the best ways to drive engagement. Thinkific’s new community tool is pretty decent and offers many ways to reach your audience.
- Setting up your community takes a matter of moments.
- To get things going, you can start by posting comments. Other members can reply using text and emojis. Or, they can upload video files and images (as can you).
- Like people’s posts and follow the members that interest you most to create a customized newsfeed.
- You can also set up and run events. The tool includes space for a live video link and a scheduler.
- Spaces are separate areas within your community dedicated to specific topics.
- You can even attach a course to a space, creating a hub for discussions around the course content. This is worth doing because it adds more value to your product.
To invite people to join your community, add the join link to an email or embed it on a web page. Like the course feature, you have pretty much the same settings and sales options.
Create a Digital Download
This is probably the easiest product feature to master. If you have a digital download you want to sell, this is where you can do it.
- Type a short description of your digital download, and the AI will generate a full landing page for you. Neat, huh!
- Then, all you do is add the details about your download and upload the file.
- Offer it as a free lead magnet, sell it as a one-time purchase, or for a payment plan.
- And finally, publish it, and you’re ready to go!
Set Up a Webinar or Coaching Product
I believe this is where Thinkific lets itself down slightly. Although you can create webinars and coaching products, the platform doesn’t provide the necessary tools to run them.
Therefore, you must:
- Use an external live stream tool like Zoom to facilitate the live sessions.
- Use an external calendar app to schedule coaching sessions.
- Once again, the AI will generate a landing page for your product, which you can customize.
- In the Event tab, you can choose between a coaching or webinar product.
- In both cases, you need to add an external link for the live stream.
- Webinars can be scheduled, and the date and time of the event will be shown on the landing page. However, customers cannot pick and choose a preferred time.
- Sell as a one-time purchase or subscription or offer for free.
Craft Your Website
Thinkfic features a full website-building tool where you can craft a site that hosts all your learning products. It’s fully customizable, so you can make it fit your brand just the way you want it.
- Choose from three themes and a selection of styles (don’t worry, you can change the theme at any time).
- Thinkific automatically generates all the relevant web pages for your site.
- The editing tool is simple to master. Click on the section you want to edit and adjust everything in the left-hand sidebar.
- Add new sections—there are lots to choose from!
- Add your preferred theme settings (fonts, colors, etc.) for consistency across the whole site.
If you already have a website hosted elsewhere, it’s not a problem. You can still use Thinkific to create and sell products.
The platform has a handy sales widget tool that will create a piece of code and allow you to embed your products onto an existing web page.
Build a Funnel
Now you have your products and website set up, what can you do to promote them?
Unfortunately, Thinkific does not have an email marketing tool, but it does have a funnel-building feature.
Thinkific offers two prebuilt templates—one for offering a free preview lesson of a course and another for selling a product.
Here, I’ve chosen the sale funnel. I really like the AI feature. It asks in-depth questions about your product so it can generate the perfect landing page and save you lots of time and effort.
Once the AI has done its work, you are presented with the workflow (kinda like a map) of how your funnel works.
To edit the landing page, click the relevant stage in the workflow, and the editing tool will open.
- This is a basic version of the page editing tool we saw earlier.
- Edits are made directly on the page rather than in the sidebar.
- You can add additional sections, but there’s a limited selection.
Overall, this is a rather simplistic funnel-building tool that won’t offer enough for an advanced user. However, if you’re new to funnels, this is a great place to familiarize yourself.
Where Can I Find Other Thinkific Demos?
I appreciate that this has been a whistlestop tour of the Thinkific Start plan, and it didn’t go in-depth into every tool and feature available.
Thinkific does provide a demo, which you can find in its help center. However, it’s less than four minutes long and only provides a quick overview.
If you want more detail, I recommend checking out our other Thinkific articles here on SupplyGem. Otherwise, you can browse the Thinkific Help Centre and find individual guides for all the platform’s features.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Thinkific Have a Demo Available?
Thinkific has a short video demo of the platform that gives an overview of its features. However, to get a better idea of how Thinkific works, it’s recommended that you sign up for a free trial.
Can I Include a Demo for My Thinkific Courses?
Yes, you can include a demo for your Thinkfic courses by offering a free preview lesson. Include a video that showcases the course content so potential customers know what to expect.
