Today we’re excited to announce a new plan option, available to all new and existing Thinkifc customers. Thinkific Plus is designed to make online education at scale simple.
Here at Thinkific, we’ve always focused on serving the SMB and solopreneur market, and that isn’t changing. Thinkific’s core offerings will continue to lead the market and help solopreneurs and small businesses provide the best online education experience available today, and into the future.
But, as our CEO Greg Smith points out:
“Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen more and more mid-sized and Enterprise companies knocking on our door wanting to use Thinkific. We’ve found fast growing software brands like Later and Hootsuite need something that’s simple to set up, but powerful from a feature standpoint. Thinkific Plus provides all those things and more.”
While we’d never want to shift our focus away from small businesses, mid-sized companies share many of the same core technology needs as our current audience. Thinkific Plus lets us continue our core focus on solopreneurs and small businesses while giving high-volume Thinkific users what they need from the platform as they scale. It also gives mid-sized companies, focused on revenue generation or customer education at scale, a cost-effective alternative to bigger, clunkier, traditional LMS platforms.
Educating customers at scale means Thinkific Plus will focus on the more intensive infrastructure required to support a higher volume of students concurrently. Thinkific Plus is the most cost-effective solution on the market for education at scale while also providing the most customizable and extendable platform. Thinkific Plus also lets us provide a tailored sales and marketing experience for a different group of people educating online.
We want to give high-growth, high-volume businesses the scalability, reliability and flexibility they need, without all the hassles, long timelines and expenses of the legacy enterprise LMS providers. Built on top of the Thinkific platform — which supports over 40,000 course creators worldwide — Thinkific Plus is allowing companies like Hootsuite, Brit+Co, and Later to use education to drive their business forward.
Hootsuite is an excellent example of the scalability and flexibility of the Thinkific platform, with more than 400,000 students worldwide. They’ve seen real business value from their Thinkific-hosted Hootsuite Academy, providing amazing video content and certifications to a global audience. Hootsuite’s Online Education Manager Ryan Chynces agrees:
“Thinkific offers the power and flexibility for us to produce high quality content to educate and inspire social media professionals worldwide — a value-add that differentiates Hootsuite in the market. In 2018, Hootsuite awarded nearly 20,000 certifications through Thinkific, a 12% increase year-over-year.”
Adam Jones, our VP Sales, sees the increasing focus on Customer Success in the world of online software as a massive opportunity for Thinkific Plus: “Improved onboarding and reduced churn are widely viewed as the key business metric investors are looking at these days, almost more than monthly recurring revenue. Scalable, self-serve education is a huge part of this strategy, particularly for Customer Onboarding and ongoing Customer Support. Online software leaders are looking for speed, flexibility and integration into existing processes, and Thinkific Plus gives them all three, often at a third of the price compared to other LMS providers.”
To help this type of customer succeed, we’ve built a new team here at Thinkific to address their unique needs. Customers on the new Plus plans have access to a dedicated project manager, a customer success manager, personalized support contacts, unlimited user access, advanced hosting infrastructure, early access to new features, and additional course hubs, so that they’re fully supported in building exactly the experience they want for their business.
We’re excited to better support this new audience while staying dedicated to our core vision. Not only does it serve an ever-growing demand for online education, but it also provides additional support to our current audience as their course businesses grow and scale. As Greg, our CEO, is keen to point out, this in no way means Thinkific is rethinking our approach to online learning:
“Our mission remains the same, we’re here to revolutionize the way people learn and earn online, Thinkific Plus gives customers who need additional scalability and more personalized service an option to work with our team and elevate their business to the next level.”
FAQs
1) What’s the difference between Thinkific and Thinkific Plus?
Thinkific Plus will focus on the more intensive infrastructure required to support a higher volume of students concurrently. Thinkific Plus is the most cost-effective solution on the market for education at scale while also providing the most customizable and extendable platform. The ‘Plus’ Service model gives you a Customer Success Manager to work with, advanced customization and integration options, compliance documentation and Plus security features.
2) Who should use Thinkific vs Thinkific Plus?
Thinkific is designed for small businesses and solopreneurs, usually 10 or fewer employees. Thinkific users will generally be self-managed, with a quick call to set up and standard access to Thinkific’s industry-leading support team.
Thinkific Plus is built for larger ventures with a bigger team (10+ employees) and more aggressive growth goals requiring a more scalable hosting infrastructure. As companies grow larger they require additional security features and compliance documentation — they should be using Thinkific Plus.
3) Why may you not want to use Thinkific Plus?
Smaller businesses generally won’t need the more enterprise-level features which come with Thinkific Plus. Thinkific is designed to be completely self-driven with everything most small businesses and solopreneurs need to create a thriving online education business.
4) How much does Thinkific Plus cost?
Generally, Thinkific Plus is based on the size of your active audience, so as your academy continues to scale and become more successful, we can continue to support your business from a service and infrastructure standpoint. You can schedule some time with our amazing Sales Team!
5) How do I sign up?
We thought you’d never ask! Go ahead and book some time with our team and we can get you set up in seconds.
6) Can I get help customizing my site or building my course?
Absolutely, your Customer Success Manager will, of course, be providing guidance and support.