For the expert whose course is great — and whose calendar of buyers is empty
The free checklist that tells you exactly which Thinkific limits you can live with, which one's about to hit you, and when it's time to move.
The 7-Step Checklist: Is Thinkific Still Right for You? — know exactly which Thinkific limitations are costing you, which ones will hit you next, and whether the platform can stay or has to go.
Or apply to run KBD in your business nowAn early application, unpaid, honest feedback only, not for everyone
Thinkific did its job — the lessons, the quizzes, the member area all work. That was never where the ache came from.
The course sits ready, and filling it is a whole separate role: the funnel, the emails, the launch, the follow-up — none of which the course platform was built to do.
Seven questions tell you which Thinkific limit is quietly costing you now, which cap you'll hit as you grow, and whether it stays or has to go.
The checklist ends by showing the alternative: a system where the course arrives with the funnel, the email, and the launch already built — not a blank box waiting for your evenings.
Thinkific is a course platform, and a serious one — it has done only this since 2012, and it shows. People land here not because Thinkific failed at teaching, but because filling the course turned out to be a whole separate job the platform was never built to do.
| Thinkific plan | Published allowances | Monthly | Annual /mo |
|---|---|---|---|
| BasicTheir words: for experts publishing their first course and building an audience from scratch. | Published courses: Unlimited · Current students: 10,000 · Communities: 1 · Spaces: 5 · Digital downloads: 5 · Video bandwidth: 100 GB/month · Custom domain: Included | $54 | $40 |
| StartTheir words: everything you need to sell, engage, and grow — with full commerce tools from day one. Marked most popular. | Published courses: Unlimited · Current students: 10,000 · Communities: 1 · Spaces: 10 · Digital downloads: Unlimited · Video bandwidth: 200 GB/month · Memberships: Memberships, bundles, upsells and payment plans | $109 | $82 |
| GrowTheir words: more selling power, deeper analytics, and professional support. | Published courses: Unlimited · Current students: 10,000 · Communities: 3 · Spaces: 20 · Video bandwidth: 400 GB/month · Branding: Removes Thinkific branding · API: API access and webhooks | $219 | $164 |
| PlusCustom-priced — talk to sales. The enterprise tier. | Current students: Custom · Communities: Unlimited · Video bandwidth: Starting at 7,500 GB/month | — | — |
Prices read from thinkific.com/pricing on 6 August 2026. A “—” means Thinkificpublishes no figure — we don’t estimate. Billed on top: The branded mobile app is $199/mo, included only on select Plus plans; Using a payment gateway other than Thinkific Payments adds a third-party gateway fee that varies by plan; Thinkific Payments itself processes at 2.9%. Transaction fees: No platform fee on your sales. Thinkific Payments processes at 2.9%, which their FAQ calls in line with Stripe and PayPal; other gateways add a per-plan fee.
If you want the finest course-building craft and you already have a way to fill the seats, pick Thinkific — it's excellent at what it does. If the course is done and it's the filling of it that's eating your evenings, that's the exact gap KBD was built to close.
You poured months into the curriculum and it's genuinely good. But a great course with nobody in it feels like a shop with the lights on and the door locked. The platform never promised to bring you the people — that part was always left to you.
Selling the course is its own full role — writing the emails, building the funnel, running the launch, chasing the follow-up. You became an unpaid marketer on top of being the teacher. That's the job the course platform quietly handed you and called it yours.
Imagine opening the laptop and the next move is already drafted in your voice — the funnel live, the emails queued, the launch built. You approve it and it ships. The course stops being a box you have to fill by hand every single week.
A course platform is one piece. Here's the rest of the stack most experts end up paying for just to fill the seats:
| What you’re paying for today | Like | Typical /mo |
|---|---|---|
| Course & membership platform | Thinkific, Teachable, Kajabi | $99 |
| Email marketing & automation | ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Mailchimp | $49 |
| Funnel & landing page builder | ClickFunnels, Leadpages, Instapage | $97 |
| CRM & contact tagging | HubSpot Starter, Keap | $45 |
| Checkout & cart | ThriveCart, SamCart | $39 |
| Scheduling & booking | Calendly, Acuity | $15 |
| Webinar & launch tools | WebinarJam, Demio | $49 |
| Automation connectors | Zapier, Make | $29 |
| Copywriting & content AI | Jasper, Copy.ai | $39 |
| The tools alone | $461/mo |
None of these tools write your funnel, your emails, or your launch for you — they hand you empty fields and wish you luck. That's 15–20 hours a week of your own life, every week, wiring it together and filling it in. The tools aren't the price. Your evenings are.
The alternative is paying an operator or agency to run it — typically $500 to $2,000 a month, plus onboarding calls that never quite capture your voice. You get your evenings back, but you've handed the thing that made your business yours to a stranger.
KBD replaces all three — the stack, the hours, and the operator — by shipping the funnel, the email, and the launch already built, in your voice.
Seven questions now, and an email the day KBD opens — nothing sold today.
We never sell your information.
Or apply to run KBD in your business nowAn early application, unpaid, honest feedback only, not for everyone
Read off thinkific.com/pricing on 6 August 2026: Basic is $54/month, or $40/month billed annually. Start is $109/month, or $82/month billed annually. Grow is $219/month, or $164/month billed annually. Plus has no price published on that page. There is no free plan. The free trial is 30 days.
Yes — on 6 August 2026 their own pages listed: The branded mobile app is $199/mo, included only on select Plus plans; Using a payment gateway other than Thinkific Payments adds a third-party gateway fee that varies by plan; Thinkific Payments itself processes at 2.9%. On transaction fees specifically: No platform fee on your sales. Thinkific Payments processes at 2.9%, which their FAQ calls in line with Stripe and PayPal; other gateways add a per-plan fee.
Unlimited published courses on every plan, including the cheapest. The deepest course craft in this set: quizzes, assignments, certificates, drip schedules, cohorts and communities, from a company that has done only this since 2012. TCommerce is real commerce — order bumps, buy-now-pay-later, gifting, group orders, abandoned-cart reminders and automated sales tax in the checkout. A 30-day free trial — double the category's usual 14. Your school runs on your own custom domain on every plan. That is from their own pricing and product pages, read on 6 August 2026.
Current students are capped at 10,000 on every self-serve tier — the one number growth actually hits. Course video bandwidth is metered — 100 GB a month on Basic — a limit almost nobody prices in before they buy. Removing Thinkific branding waits until the $219/mo Grow tier. The marketing engine around the course — email sequences, funnels, a CRM, launch campaigns — largely lives in integrations, and the course itself is still yours to write. That is our reading of their published plans and limits as of 6 August 2026 — check thinkific.com/pricing before you decide anything on it.
Thinkific's lowest published tier is $54/month, read off thinkific.com/pricing on 6 August 2026. Of the 11 platforms priced on this site, these publish a lower entry tier: Systeme.io at $0/month, Skool at $9/month, Teachable at $39/month, Podia at $49/month. Systeme.io publishes a permanently free plan. Read that carefully before switching on price alone: the entry tier is not the bill. Thinkific's own pages list these on top of the plan: The branded mobile app is $199/mo, included only on select Plus plans; Using a payment gateway other than Thinkific Payments adds a third-party gateway fee that varies by plan; Thinkific Payments itself processes at 2.9%. On transaction fees: No platform fee on your sales. Thinkific Payments processes at 2.9%, which their FAQ calls in line with Stripe and PayPal; other gateways add a per-plan fee. Several of the cheaper options above charge a percentage of your sales or per-message usage instead, and every one of those is listed per vendor, in their own words, at /data/platform-pricing — all of it read on 6 August 2026. The alternative this page is about is KBD Systems, which is priced at /pricing; the difference it is arguing is not the monthly figure but what you still have to do yourself after you have paid it.
That depends on who is going to run it, and their own pages make it answerable. Thinkific is a course platform for building, marketing and selling online courses and communities on your own site, sold to experts and educators turning what they know into courses, memberships and communities. What it genuinely does better: Unlimited published courses on every plan, including the cheapest. The deepest course craft in this set: quizzes, assignments, certificates, drip schedules, cohorts and communities, from a company that has done only this since 2012. Where it is hardest on a small business owner running it alone: Current students are capped at 10,000 on every self-serve tier — the one number growth actually hits. Course video bandwidth is metered — 100 GB a month on Basic — a limit almost nobody prices in before they buy. Its lowest published tier is $54/month. There is a 30-day free trial, so this is testable before it is decided. That is our reading of their published plans, limits and product pages as of 6 August 2026, not a rating — we publish no scores, and you should check thinkific.com/pricing yourself before deciding anything on the strength of ours.