Thinkific vs. Squarespace Courses
This week we migrated our flagship course, Video Agency™ SEO, from Thinkific to Squarespace Courses.
When I did my initial research on course hosting platforms, Thinkific was always ranked #1. So when the course launched last year, we decided to host the course there.
But recently Squarespace launched their own course platform, so I took it for a test drive to see how it compares. After a week of comparing the two platforms side-by-side, we decided to go all-in on Squarespace Courses and cancel our Thinkific subscription.
In this post I’m going to explain the biggest reasons behind the decision, and share my real-world experience using both platforms - including the biggest quirks, limitations and differences between them.
Key Takeaways
First, some Disclaimers:
I’m a huge fan of Squarespace. I have multiple websites hosted there (including this one), and we even started designing professional Squarespace templates for creators. It’s hard to not be biased; but I aimed to be as subjective as possible for this comparison.
These opinions are based on my own personal experience. It’s not meant to deter you from using either platform. They’re both great for different reasons. Do your own research and make the decision that’s right for you.
All the Squarespace links below are affiliate links, since I’m a part of their Circle partner program. I actually applied to be an affiliate for both platforms, but Thinkific didn’t approve my application. I still recommend them in our software stack page though.
📝 Table of Contents
Backstory
I created my first course at the end of 2022 as a way to bring in extra revenue for my business.
I was doing 1-on-1 consulting at the time with videographers who wanted to grow their business with SEO. Organic search was our main acquisition channel at Brand Stories, so I was always happy to share how we were doing it. My clients kept asking if there was an SEO course specifically for videographers, and after saying “no” dozens of times, I decided to build one.
The course took a little over a month to build & launch. Drafting the content and recording the videos took 2-3 weeks. Once that was done, I spent an additional 2-3 weeks getting things set up in Thinkific.
I drafted all of my content in Notion, which I assumed I could just copy & paste into Thinkific. Unfortunately I learned that doing it this way wouldn’t retain any images or formatting, so this took way longer than expected.
It was a monumental time investment to get my content formatted properly in Thinkific. But once the course launched, I knew it was worth all the time & effort. The course sold generated more than $10k in the first week, and the reviews that came in afterwards were way better than I could’ve hoped for.
The original sales page that I built in Thinkific. This page has now been completely redesigned in Squarespace (see it here).
My experience with Thinkific
If I could define my experience with Thinkific in one word, it would be ‘adequate’.
It allowed me to build & host my first online online course without much fuss, even for a complete beginner like me. I had no major complains from our students, and it was pretty stable throughout the entire time I used it. Basically, it did what it was supposed to do.
However, Thinkific wasn’t exactly a joy to use. While everything technically works, it feels rough around the edges in terms of design, UX and content creation. There were many small hiccups that I experienced while creating my course that made the process much longer than it needed to be.
What I like about Thinkific:
It was straightforward to get set up. Their platform is pretty easy to use for beginners, and they walk you through all the necessary steps for launching your first course. However, this process took me MUCH longer because I didn’t create the content directly within Thinkific. If I did that from the start, this step would’ve been so much easier.
They don’t take a % of your revenue. Even if you’re on their free plan, you retain 100% of the revenue you earned (minus the credit card processing fees). This is a huge bonus if you’re selling a huge volume of courses.
It offers a decent sales page builder. Your sales page is probably the most important part of your funnel, so being able to build a beautiful landing page that captivates your audience is super important. Although their landing page builder is lacking a lot of design flexibility, it is really easy to use, even if you don’t have a background in design.
The checkout page is fantastic. Thinkific’s checkout page looks really clean & professional. I don’t have any analytics to back this, but I feel like it would convert quite well. It allows you to include up-sells and accepts a number of different payment options (including Afterpay, Affirm and Klarna). I just wish it allowed embedding things like reviews like you can on Teachable.
Thinkific’s checkout page is surprisingly good. I would guess that this actually converts pretty well.
What I don’t like about Thinkific:
Very limited design options. Thinkific has an integrated sales-page builder, but it’s very limited in terms of design functionality. You can only choose from preset themes and page-sections (like banners, checklists and image galleries). And if you want to embed custom content, you need to be on their $79/mo plan. Thinkific also has a basic content builder for the course modules, so all of your course chapters will basically look the same.
The best features are locked to their most expensive plans. While I’m grateful that Thinkific has a ‘Free’ plan, it’s not going to be useful for most creators. Features like custom domains, coupon codes & email support are locked to their ‘Basic’ plan ($36/mo), and advanced features like add-on’s and payment plans are reserved for their ‘Start’ plan ($74/mo). And if you want to remove the Thinkific branding? That will cost you $149/mo.
Want revenue & sales analytics? You have to pay for it. This is something that I feel is particularly ridiculous. If you want to see basic analytics, such as number of sales, orders, revenue, etc…. you have to pay $199/month (or $149/mo on their annual plan). I can’t understand why they did this, since you will be motivated even more to grow your course if you can see your analytics. Your only option is to manually export the data into a .CSV and import it into Google Sheets to calculate revenue, orders, etc. Crazy.
In my opinion, having to pay $149 - $199/mo for basic revenue & order reports is a little ridiculous.
You have to pay $79/mo to embed reviews on your sales page. I use an awesome tool called Senja to collect & display testimonials across my websites, which increases our conversion rates significantly. Unfortunately, Thinkific doesn’t allow you to embed external content on your sales page unless you’re on their $74/mo plan (which is absurd to me).
Your courses are hosted on a different domain. Unfortunately there’s no way to host your courses directly on your website, and instead they will live on either a Thinkific domain (justinveenema.thinkifc.com) or a sub-domain (learn.justinveenema.com). This makes SEO for your course much more difficult, and even adds the risk of competing with your own website in Google.
Copying + pasting from other apps is a nightmare. Unfortunately, Thinkific doesn’t paste content from other apps properly, which meant I needed to download/re-upload ALL of the images, and reformat ALL of the content a second time in Thinkific. This took weeks of extra effort and was a huge pain to deal with.
My experience with Squarespace Courses
Squarespace Courses is a very different beast. Their platform is built on their famous 7.1 Fluid Builder, which is the same underlying technology that allows people to build gorgeous custom websites for their business.
Why is that important? Because it allows you to build a completely custom course experience that you can’t get anywhere else. You can design your modules to your heart’s content, and embed rich-media like videos, audio, downloads and more. Moving the content over to Squarespace was much faster, and it took about 3 days to migrate all of my content from Thinkific.
If you want to build a custom course that matches your branding & design aesthetic then this is the platform for you.
What I like about Squarespace Courses:
The courses integrates directly with your website. This is a HUGE advantage for course creators, since you don’t have to send your students to a different domain to sign-up. Not only does this help from an SEO perspective, but it also increases the likelihood of students purchasing additional products/services, since they never leave your site.
Features are available on ALL plans. Squarespace has a few different pricing options to choose from (see below), but ALL of the plans come with the same core features. This is a huge difference from Thinkific, who saves their best features for their top plans.
Their mobile app is fantastic. Getting an instant push-notification when someone signs up for your course is a huge motivating factor. With Thinkific, these notifications got buried in my inbox. Plus if you need to quickly add/edit content to your website, landing pages or courses, you can do it all from the app. This is insanely useful and I’ve used this feature multiple times after catching typos or copywriting mistakes.
Here you can see a comparison of the student dashboard in both Thinkific and Squarespace Courses. Thinkific’s style is very rigid and clinical, whereas Squarespace’s aesthetic looks more modern and dynamic, with smooth animations and scroll effects.
Analytics dashboard showing traffic, sales, revenue & conversion rate. Squarespace includes a dashboard to track all of your most useful data. It even integrates with Google Search Console so you can view things like traffic sources, search keywords, average order value and conversion rate. I use this frequently and can’t imagine trying to grow this part of my business without it.
It only just launched, and it’s already really good. This is basically their V1 and it’s already more feature-rich than most course platforms on the market. Their team is dedicated on improving it in the future. Even though it’s only been available for a short time, they’ve already made huge improvements, like adding free content previews and new formatting options, all which were based on user feedback.
You can have ALL of your tools under one roof. This is a huge advantage that I don’t think many creators think about. I’ve spent countless hours trying to connect different tools together to make my business run smoothly. That means juggling multiple subscriptions, API’s and Zapier integrations to make everything connect.
It just works. Similar to the Apple ecosystem, when all your tools are built by the same company, everything just works. For us, this means that almost all of our business infrastructure operates through one central dashboard, including our:
Website, domain & hosting
Business email & email automations
Digital products, memberships & ecommerce
Blogging & newsletters
Appointment scheduling
… and now courses!
Nearly unlimited design options. You can truly build the course & landing pages of your dreams. Want to embed gifs, videos, widgets & galleries? Easy! Want to embed a third-party tool like Senja to capture reviews and display them on the landing page? No problem! You can even purchase custom squarespace templates that are tailored to your industry.
What Squarespace Courses is missing:
Advanced course hosting features. Thinkific has features such as live lessons, branded mobile apps, quizzes, surveys and assignments. If you’re a professional course creator, these might be valuable… but personally, I don’t find these features very uesful, so I won’t personally be missing them.
Community, comments and Q&A. One benefit that Thinkific has is the ability to build a private community where people can leave comments, ask questions & get support. While this could be a handy feature for large, active cohorts… it’s not really necessary for smaller course creators, who can provide support over email when necessary.
Bulk importing & API Access. This is one feature that I wish Squarespace had. Moving our students from Thinkific to Squarespace was painful without a way to bulk-add students on the back-end. I think this feature will be necessary if they want to lure big creators away from other platforms. This is also one of the top requested features in the Squarespace forums, so I’m pretty confident this feature will be available in the future.
Thinkific vs. Squarespace Courses: Feature Comparison
There are a ton of useful features on both platforms. However the biggest difference is that Thinkific price-gates most of their features for their more expensive pricing tiers, while Squarespace offers you pretty much all features even on their cheapest plan.
Note: All prices listed are in USD, and listed with their respective Annual Discounts.
Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a definitive feature list. I will do my best to keep this list updated, but since new features are added frequently, I recommend researching each provider yourself.
Last Updated: December 15, 2023
| Platform & Plan | Squarespace - Business Plan | Squarespace (Digital Product - Starter) | Squarespace (Digital Product - Core) | Squarespace (Digital Product - Professional) | Thinkific Free | Thinkific Basic | Thinkific Start | Thinkific Grow |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Fee | N/A | $9/mo | $29/mo | $89/mo | $0 | $36/mo | $74/mo | $149/mo |
| Hosted Video | 30 Minutes | 10 Hours | 50 Hours | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Transaction Fee | 9% | 7% | 3% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Coupons & Discounts | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Built-in Themes | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Website Code Editing | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Email & Livechat Support | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Memberships & Payment Plans | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Bundles & Add-ons | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Remove Platform Branding | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Unlimited Courses | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Accept multiple payment types | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Affiliate Selling | ✅ via Impact | ✅ via Impact | ✅ via Impact | ✅ via Impact | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Custom Domain | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Sales & Analytics Dashboard | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
| Integrates Directly on Website | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Unlimited Design Flexibility | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Mobile App & Notifications | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Community Features | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Quizes & Surveys | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Live Lessons | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Assignments | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Bulk Enrollments | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ |
Thinkific vs. Squarespace Courses: Pricing Comparison
This is where things get a little tricky. Each platform prices their products very differently, which makes it difficult to do a 1:1 comparison. I’ve included a few breakdown tables below, but I’ll summarize their biggest key differences here:
Thinkific draws you in with ‘Unlimited’. You get unlimited courses, students, videos and 0% transaction fees. This looks good on paper, but as you’ll see below, you will end up paying significantly more for this in the long-run. Plus, most course creators will never actually need these ‘unlimited’ features. Squarespace offers ‘Unlimited’ too - but only if you need it (and it costs significantly less).
Thinkific makes you pay for basic features. They lock the most useful features such as coupon codes, memberships, bundles, payment plans and even basic reporting behind their higher-tiered plans. On Squarespace, you get access to ALL major features, regardless of the plan you’re on. The only differentiator between their plans is the transaction fee percentage, and how many videos you can host.
With Thinkific, you don’t need a website to host courses. Instead, you can just host your course on a Thinkific sub-domain (ie. justinveenema.thinkific.com). The price you see is exactly what you’d pay. With Squarespace, you do need a Squarespace website to host courses. But this is actually a good thing, as it allows you to build other pages that can rank in SEO and help your business grow (such as an about page, portfolio, contact page, etc.).
The minimum you would pay for Thinkific is $0/year. The free plan looks enticing, but the lack of basic features (like coupons, bundles and reporting) makes it very difficult to scale. If you jump up to their cheapest plan, you’re looking at $432/year and you’re still missing many major features. The minimum you would pay for Squarespace Courses is $276/year, but this includes ALL major features, course hosting, memberships, bundles, payment plans, reporting, discounts, a dedicated website, and an entire year’s worth of website hosting. 🤯
Thinkific Pricing Plans
Thinkfic’s pricing is pretty straightforward. They have four different packages, and each package gives you a different set of features (see above for feature breakdown).
| Thinkifc Plan | Free | Basic | Start | Grow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $36/mo | $74/mo | $149/mo |
| Transaction Fees | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| Hours of Hosted Video | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Hosted Courses | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Members/Students | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Squarespace Website Plans
In order to add Squarespace courses, you first need a website plan. Each plan offers different benefits, but most people choose either the Personal or Business plan. You can find a breakdown of Squarespace’s website plans here.
| Squarespace Hosting | Personal | Business | Commerce Basic | Commerce Advanced |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | $16/mo | $23/mo | $27/mo | $49/mo |
Squarespace - Digital Product Add-on’s
Note: If you pay for the ‘Business’ plan or above, you automatically get Squarespace Courses (with a 9% transaction fee). If you don’t want to pay the 9% transaction fee, you can add a ‘Digital Product’ add-on package to any Squarespace website plan (even their Personal plan).
| Add-on Package | None *requires business plan or above | Starter | Core | Professional |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | N/A | +$9/mo | +$29/mo | +$89/mo |
| Transaction Fees | 9% | 7% | 3% | 0% |
| Hours of Hosted Video | 30 minutes | 10 hours | 50 hours | Unlimited |
| Hosted Courses | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Members/Students | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Squarespace Pricing Examples
If you are on the Personal Website Plan ($16/mo) and want access to courses, you would simply add the Starter Digital Product Add-on for ($9/mo). Your total would be $25/mo, and you would pay 7% transaction fees on each course sale.
If you wanted 0% transaction fees, you would just pay for the Professional Digital Product Add-on ($89/mo), and your new total would be $105/mo.
How much can you earn with Thinkific vs. Squarespace?
The biggest difference between the two platforms is that Squarespace charges you a % transaction fee on their lower plans, whereas Thinkific offers 0% transaction fees on all plans. It might sound like you’ll earn more on Thinkific, but it’s not always the case as you’ll see.
Pricing Example:
Let’s say you sell a course for $100 USD
You’ll always earn the most with Thinkific’s ‘Free’ plan because there’s $0 plan fees and $0 transaction fees. Unfortunately you would miss out on most of the features that would actually drive sales for your course, which would result in less sales overall, so I would skip this option entirely.
If you compare the lowest plans for each platform (Thinkific Basic vs. Squarespace Business + Starter), then you will typically earn more having your courses hosted on Thinkific. However, you’re giving up a LOT of useful features going this route, such as memberships & payment plans, so it might not be worth the trade-off.
If you compare the highest plans for each platform (Thinkific Grow vs. Squarespace Business + Professional), then you will pretty much always earn more by having your courses hosted on Squarespace.
If you’re making 50 sales/month, then I think the best value is Squarespace Business + Professional, which gives you all the features, a reasonable platform cost and 0% transaction fees.
Even if you’re making 200 sales/month, the differences in earnings between the platforms are relatively minor. You would earn $19,888 on Squarespace’s best plan, and $19,851 on Thinkific’s best plan (a difference of $37).
| Platform | Gross | Squarespace | Squarespace | Squarespace | Squarespace | Thinkific | Thinkific | Thinkific | Thinkific |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Plan & Add-On | N/A | Business | Business + Starter | Business + Core | Business + Professional | Free | Basic | Start | Grow |
| Plan Fee | N/A | $23 | $23 | $23 | $23 | $0 | $36 | $74 | $149 |
| Add-on Fee | N/A | $0 | $9 | $29 | $89 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Transaction Fee | N/A | 9% | 7% | 3% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
| 5 Sales/mo | $500 | $432 | $438 | $435 | $388 | $500 | $464 | $426 | $351 |
| 10 Sales/mo | $1,000 | $887 | $906 | $921 | $888 | $1,000 | $964 | $926 | $851 |
| 50 Sales/mo | $5,000 | $4,527 | $4,651 | $4,808 | $4,888 | $5,000 | $4,964 | $4,926 | $4,851 |
| 100 Sales/mo | $10,000 | $9,077 | $9,333 | $9,668 | $9,888 | $10,000 | $9,964 | $9,926 | $9,851 |
| 200 Sales/mo | $20,000 | $18,177 | $18,696 | $19,387 | $19,888 | $20,000 | $19,964 | $19,926 | $19,851 |
What course platform should you choose?
If you’re a creator (or a business looking to add another revenue stream) go with Squarespace:
It’s fast, infinitely customizable, beginner friendly & easy to get started. Plus you get ALL features unlocked right away.
If you’re just getting started and you don’t know how courses you will sell, then go with Squarespace Business Plan. If you already have a Squarespace website, there’s a good chance you’re already paying for this plan (so there’s non extra cost).
If you end up selling 5+ courses/month, I would add the ‘Core’ add-on to get lower transaction fees.
If you sell 20+ courses/month, I would add the ‘Professional’ add-on to eliminate transaction fees entirely.
You can sign-up for Squarespace Courses here.
If you’re a full-time educator, consider going with Thinkific:
Their platform is built for professional course creators, and you’re likely making enough income from your courses that the cost difference between the two platforms will be negligible.
If you make courses for a living, you’ll benefit from their advanced features such as bulk-enrollments, assignments and communities.
You can sign-up for Thinkific here.
Wrap up
If you’re thinking of adding online courses to your business this year, then I hope you found this breakdown useful. If you have any specific questions about either platform, I’d be happy to answer them. Get in touch here, or give me a shout on twitter.
