Thinkific Reviews 851

This system deceives customers, automatically deducting money that cannot be refunded. I have been using the $199 package since 2024. By the time my card had an error, after fixing it, they automatically deducted an additional $279. I contacted the administrator, they said I could not get a refund, explained. roundabout. Too bad service

Just an insane experience. I launch a course in two weeks time and no one can enrol. The enrolment process is stuck in an endless loop. On 'escalating' my problem, a support person thanked me for the feedback and promised to provide it to the developers as an improvement opportunity. Upon subsequently asking 'what about my problem ? ' the support person very kindly replied that they understood my frustration and again promised to provide my suggestions to the developers and thanked me for my feedback - AAAAAARRRRGGHHH!!!!!!

All I can think is that it's a Bot - no real person could be that stupid.

And now - when I try to record the problem to help them understand that it's not just feedback, I can't get past Cloudflare - imagine how many students are going to say screw it and give up....

I have been doing online training for years and decided to move my courses to an LMS platform. I've created my first course on Thinkific, and the image resolution and quality of the slides are dreadful! Most of the colours are gone, and the images are full of JPEG artefacts. I was planning to get the Start or Grow plan for my courses, but it is too embarrassing to present my content to my clients in such a poor quality. I am looking for an alternative platform now.

My website courses.wellform.academy
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I need help, I have free plan. Not able to get access to my account. And no Human support of whatsoever....very dissapointing, not being able to intervene... my site is under attack... I have been running my website for more than two years being a loyal client....

So far, There are two specific things that have really soured my experience with Thinkific.

1. Their class platform is serviceable. But it lacks polish. For example: in the class videos, there is a feature that allows for students to post questions to the instructor.

However, after I reply to their messages, it's spaced out in a really awkward way, and looks sloppy. Additionally, I cannot go back and edit the message (even though it's the 21st century, and practically every website offers this?)

2. My biggest gripe is an absolutely abysmal customer service experience I had. One of my students wanted to delay their payment from March 24th to March 29th. So I chatted with a customer service rep, April, and she told me to pause the student's payment plan, and that they would take care of ther rest. I get an email from April, a little while later, and she tells me to un-pause the plan and then they will move the billing date forward a few days.

However, as soon as I did this, the student immediately got charged. And I had to refund her $100. I told customer service about this, and the next day they said "We didn't know unpausing the payment plan would do this".

That's right.. customer service DOESN'T EVEN KNOW THEIR OWN PRODUCT!

Since they charged her a few days before her payment was due, I didn't think it would be right to charge her the remaining $100 (after refunding the first premature charge), so I told Thinkific this, and that it would only be fair for them to reimburse the $100 that I lost since they led me astray.

They refused (though I think my ask was a reasonable one).

This is not a single-incident though where they were completely clueless. There was another time where I asked them if I could create a special 8 month payment plan for someone (Even though I usually offer 5-month payment plans). They told me it was not possible if I already had a payment plan setup. Yet I figured out how to do it 1 day later...

I will soon be migrating to Kajabi, and I suggest others do the same. This company is a stinking mess.

I've already provided a 1-star review right after we signed up and spent a month moving our entire member's area there. We are kind of stuck now because to move again is another lost month or two of work.

If you have affiliates, do not use thinkific. It's the most ridiculous system I've ever seen.

You have to approve every single individual commission one-at-a-time. There's no bulk approvals. You can't even sort the list of affiliates by "only those with commissions".

We have hundreds of affiliates, and each time we need to pay someone we need to click through dozens of pages to try and find the few affiliates who have commissions.

Then we have to spend time in their profile clicking dozens of approval buttons one at a time.

Paying Affiliates should take 10-15 minutes. We've done it with other platforms. With Thinkific it's going to take one of my team members half a day to a full day per month to do.

Again, let me reiterate, that moving to this platform was the worst decision I've made in 8 years of business. Don't make the same mistake.

They squeeze money out of you at every opportunity. Basic features you'd expect to find are not even available with their mid-tier plan.
Pure scammers

These thieves keep trying to remove my post, but you don't get to steal over 1,000 euros from someone and not expect them to react. You people have no integrity!

They blackmail you by turning off basic features in 2nd upgraded plan even and asking you to upgrade again.
I can’t believe they turned off the basic course feature and asked to upgrade again.

There is NO human contact with this company. I've been trying to cancel my service, and all I get are emails that do not help me. My username and password are not working, so I need help.

I'm responding to Thinkific's response. I did not open a ticket yesterday, I have been communicating with them unsuccessfully since last week. Somepne contacted me now, which leads me to believe that my poor review may be working. To respond in more depth. I wanted to leave Thinkific and use a local web designer. The local person built the site and redirected to it. Now, I can't cancel Thinkific because I can't get into the site. Someone says they will help me. I've got to believe there are other unsatisfied customers who have done the same and there is a way to leave. I will keep readers updated.

We signed up for Thinkific under the impression it was a trial account, but were unknowingly charged for a paid account. Our experience with the platform was challenging – just adding a URL caused problems, the customization of templates was difficult, leading us to eventually pick another LMS.

Despite no activity or logins for over a year, we continued to be billed. This was surprising, as we had only used the supposedly free first course feature. In the software industry, it's common practice to check in on inactive users, which unfortunately did not happen in our case.

We acknowledge a misunderstanding from both sides, but we are disappointed with the lack of outreach from the company regarding our inactivity and continued billing.

Setup a course and started selling it online.

Integrated with my Paypal Business Account to manage the checkout. This was difficult as Thinkific tries to push you to use their own platform.

After launching the course and making sales, I try to transfer the money out to my bank account. Now my account is 'On Hold' - waiting to be verified. None of this was mentioned prior to signing up, and given I'd already connected a bank account and my business information, I would have thought this was sufficient.

This additional verification process requires me to also sign up via Stripe. I don't see why this is necessary as I've already connected my verified Paypal Business Account. I don't intend to use Stripe to process any payments. There's no way around this, so I have also had to setup a Stripe account.

2 days after doing this, I find customers have been refunded without my approval via Paypal. I've used Paypal for more than a decade and never had a single issue like this.

So far 25% of all the sales of my course have now been refunded.

I've been using Thinkific to host my course for 6 months, but recently it went down for weeks due to a checkout page issue.

Thinkific support informed me that the problem was due to missing address verification on my part.

After RUSHING to submit the documents, I learned verification takes 24-48 hours on business days. On Friday this means a potential 5 more days of wait for my customers.

This is unacceptable, especially considering the high stakes of a significant course launch. Imagine having to tell your community that a basic course will be unavailable for 5 days...

Terrible service. Do not use. They do not offer custom domain capability. If you use a custom domain and if an issue exists you are locked out of your account. I requested a refund and they refused to refund me my money. Choose someone else.

Thinkific are undergoing maintenance for a few hours without notice during our live training

What is happening is absurd!
I decided to drop my Thinkific subscription and they immediately downgraded my plan, which will end in 20 days!
Since my plan is now basic, I cannot receive assistance from any human customer service operator.

Why will I stop using this platform?
1 After logging in, you realise that if you want to have access to any kind of tool, you need to upgrade your plan more and more until you get to the most expensive one.

2 The customisation of the sales page is very bad.

To summarise. Thinkific's only interest is your money. They do not consider you a customer or a person.

A Crucial "Bug" and Unfulfilled Promises Lead to One-Star Rating

I upgraded to Thinkific's app feature specifically to take advantage of its capabilities on mobile devices. The key motivation for this move was to sell a new course that requires video playback in portrait mode—a feature that, astonishingly, remains unsupported.

Early on, I was reassured by Thinkific's customer service that the absence of portrait mode was a "bug" they were actively working on. Trusting their word, I didn't cancel my subscription within the initial 30-day refund period, fully expecting a quick resolution. Now, nearly four months in, I'm still waiting. Not only has this affected my ability to sell my course, but it's also a severe hindrance to my business operations as a self-employed individual.

To make matters more exasperating, Thinkific's "reasonable timeframe" for resolving this issue remains undefined, leaving me in a state of perpetual uncertainty. I find it particularly galling that Wix, a platform primarily designed for website building, manages to support video playback in both portrait and landscape modes, yet Thinkific—a specialized course platform—fails to do so in their mobile app.

I've been a customer of Thinkific for nearly a decade and have generally had a good experience, which makes this current situation all the more disappointing. Their no-refund policy beyond the first 30 days, coupled with unclear communication around feature limitations, has eroded my trust.

If you're contemplating using Thinkific, especially for mobile-based courses, please consider my experience as a cautionary tale. The lack of a key feature and opaque customer service practices have led to a level of dissatisfaction I find difficult to articulate. Hence, my one-star rating.

I have been trying to close our thinkific account for a year, it is impossible! It will let you downgrade to a free account but there you are stuck! You might think, that’s ok, they’re now charging you. Well, the problem is that every time you disable a course another one is reactivated. I have just had to refund a load of learners who have managed to sign up and pay for courses that we no longer run.. Not good for business!!!! There are other, better and more cost effective platforms out there.
Impossible to speak to a person, Help pages are a joke

We are already working on our first video's for Thinkific. We are shooting the video's to create an e-learning platform for new teammembers at my marketing firm in the Netherlands. Was really impressed by the platform. I've selected monthly on basic (cheapest level) in the ''free trail'' ad-flow. Something I always do when I try software.

Now I got billed (not charged) for a full year, but customer service (not the bot that does not give me the right answers) is only available in paid plans. Now I see more people in 1-star reviews with comparable issues and I can't reach out to a real person.

Bad start.

My recent experience with Thinkific's online course platform has left me both impressed by their customer service but deeply disappointed by their refund and cancellation policies. I feel compelled to share my story to warn others against making the same mistake I did.

Having heard positive reviews about Thinkific, I decided to take the plunge and commit to their platform by purchasing a year-long subscription. Unfortunately, what I didn't anticipate was that this commitment would come back to haunt me. After using Thinkific for just three months, it became painfully clear that it was not the right fit for my needs, especially in conjunction with the Storyline 360 platform I had chosen for my courses.

I reached out to Thinkific's customer service, hoping for some flexibility given my short usage and the mismatch with my other tools. While their customer service team was prompt and courteous in their response, I was met with an unfortunate reality: Thinkific's refund and cancellation policies for annual subscriptions are incredibly rigid. Despite my valid reasons for wanting to cancel early, I was informed that there was no possibility of a refund for the remaining nine months that I had paid for in advance.

This experience has left me frustrated and disappointed. I understand that companies need to have policies in place, but the lack of any consideration for individual circumstances is disheartening. It's particularly concerning when one's needs change and the service no longer fits, yet there's no recourse for those who find themselves in this situation.

If I could turn back time, I would unquestionably choose the month-to-month subscription plan instead of committing to a year upfront. This would have allowed me the flexibility to evaluate Thinkific's compatibility with my requirements without the risk of being stuck with a service that doesn't suit me.

While Thinkific's customer service is commendable in its responsiveness and willingness to help, their annual subscription policy is a significant drawback. If you're considering using Thinkific, my advice is clear: steer clear of the year-long commitment and opt for the month-to-month subscription instead. It could save you a great deal of frustration and financial regret in the long run.