Thinkific Reviews 

I've been using Thinkific since June 2023, trusting them to have a safe, dependable and secure platform for clients to learn from my tutorials. Well, come to find out three years later that the platform was not allowing people to click on the lessons and complete them. I kept receiving, "You're verified! Start using Thinkific Payments" messages. When I checked, it was always verified. When I finally logged in as a customer, I realized noone was able to use my material because Thinkific's link wasn't working. They were consistently making sure their payments were received monthly on time. That part never failed. They failed me and my customers by not allowing anyone to access my lessons and going past the purchase link. This has been a horrifying experience for anyone to trust them and they fail us. I'm mortified to even think that I've supported and lead others to this company, only to be disregarded, disappointed, and let down by them. After receiving three years of successful payments, they only want to refund one month of payments they've received consecutively for NO SERVICE OR ACCESS TO MY LESSONS! Way to go Thinkific. God Bless You!
I only had access to a chatbot and that was horrible. I had to make consecutive complaints about not being able to have communication with a human until Von finally responded to assist as much as she could on the matter. Jeric was the final person to humiliate me with kind words that I had already spoken about my trust in the company and bid me farewell with there being nothing they could do to help in the finances I lost paying them and the money I lost on the platform because people could not pay for the lessons since 2023. This was an all around failure and scam. God bless Thinkific company for confidently taking my hard earned money for three years, consecutively and on time. What a way to be used!

Would choose 0 if possible, my request was handled by a customer service agent called Yinyi, strangely enough she chose to take our ticket off of their dedicated ticketing system and email my personally on my yahoo account,.

She was extremely rude, even though I am supposedly a VIP, Premium Customer, is it really that difficult to import a list of students?

My Mom uses this platform separately and I'd hate for her to have this kind of experience.

She also let me know that huge layoffs were coming and AI would likely be answering my requests from now on.

I am writing an update to my review AGAIN, for the THIRD time, because their "customer service" did NOTHING to help me retrieve my OWN course materials after I stopped paying Thinkific $45 every month when my courses were not selling at all. I paid them many times what I earned from what few sales I made. But they were TOTALLY obstinate and uncooperative, and SAVAGELY greedy. I hope they go out of business because OTHER platforms are MUCH better and many times superior. DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!!

doesn't click, doesn't switch, doesn't work, doesn't play. What a piece of trash. And no, it's not my browsers.

'' the course creator manages your account. We recommend reaching out to them directly for support''

Eh, what a cheap excuse. You expect the course creators to fix your website?

Your website works very badly, and that's that. Take a course yourselves and try it out, Thinkific. Or should I say, Thinkifix.....

I've tried to cancel my subscription for ages but an error keeps on coming up. I've reported this company and will never use them again. Please DO NOT use Thinkific. If you're reading this review, process my subscription cancellation please

I have hosted a community on Thinkific for four years. I was pressured into using it by a collaborator who uses it for her personal venture. She assured me that it could handle the needs of our new community. I felt we should have built a new site on Wordpress. I was right. She left the project at launch four years ago. Since then every step has been a headache. This is an expensive product, and for every request I've sent to support to try to make changes and edits to meet our needs, the answer has been no, we can't do that. Now, we are finally building the site that we wanted all along on Wordpress, and Thinkific is holding our subscriber data hostage. They refuse to allow us to port our subscriber data to our new site. The truth is that they should want to help us. They should want us to leave since we are not doing, nor have ever done courses. We are not in that business at all. We are a non-profit religious group and mostly simply host Zoom sessions for meditation practice. (And we don't use their zoom integration because of the challenges we ran into on the platform.)

We wanted users to be able to change their subscriptions as well as removing the "Course" language on the site. (Sorry, nope. Can't do that.) I had to hire one of their authorized designers to make those custom changes. The solutions were clunky, but they worked...for about five months. Then one day they suddenly disappeared. I had paid over $1000 to an authorized developer to make changes that were suddenly just gone. I reached out to Support and they were no help at all in helping us figure out what happened. They simply said that we must have done it. They disavowed any involvement and would not help us sort out what had happened or why. Any time we have reached out to them for help with a problem, or the need to have something done differently on the site, they have said that it's not possible.

Our Thinkific site is so bad, our subscribers won't use it. They simply use the links in our newsletter to access our zoom discussions and meetups. (which is what we do, not "courses.")

The "Community" feature is a joke. It was the thing that most drove me to try Thinkific, but it doesn't do what we need it to do. It does not do push notifications (even though there is a place to say you want notifications.) It will only send to the author. No one else ever sees the posts and now few people post anything there. I end up having to lift any posts to put in our newsletter so folks will see them.

To be clear, we are not a "for-profit" Courseware business. We are a small non-profit religious community looking for a community site where we can gather - mostly through zoom. We are not making money hand over fist, nor do we want to. And we are not trying to recruit members or sell anything. We ask for donations from our subscribers to cover our costs and give back to the community. That's all. This has been a nightmare from start to finish... and I can hardly wait until we're finished with them for good. Good Riddance! I expect to lose a large portion of our subscribers when we transition, but we simply have to take that risk.

Almost a year building out my course on Thinkific, paying a monthly
subscription the entire time, and my checkout does not reliably take
money.

I tested a live purchase on my own site this week. Paid by credit card
through the checkout Thinkific provides. The transaction reached the
payment confirmation screen, then hung on a loading spinner and never
came back. No charge on the card. No payment received. No order created.
No enrollment. And critically — no error message shown to the buyer at
any point.

The purchase just silently failed.

Think about what that means if you are running a course business here.
A customer who hits that has no idea whether they were charged. On my
end there is no record they ever tried. A failed sale looks exactly like
someone who changed their mind. No report, no log, no alert. I have no
way of knowing how many purchases have already died this way, and no
tooling exists to find out.

Then I contacted support. Their answer is what moved this from a bug to
a review.

I was told that if Stripe and PayPal are not viable, I should consider:
setting up an external payment gateway and managing enrollments manually;
a paid third-party checkout app; Stripe Atlas, which exists to help
founders incorporate a US entity so they can access Stripe; or regional
processors serving Sri Lanka and Africa.

I am a US business. I already have a US entity. I am in a market where
Stripe is fully supported. I was handed a copy-paste answer written for
creators in countries Stripe does not serve.

And here is the part that tells you everything: Thinkific Payments —
their own native payment processor, the default option for US accounts,
built on Stripe — was not on that list at all. Their support team walked
me through four external workarounds and never mentioned the payment
system they built and promote.

"Manage enrollments manually" is not a solution. Automatic enrollment on
purchase is the core function you are paying for. Strip that out and you
are paying a monthly subscription for a video host with a landing page
builder.

I am a CPA. I build systems where transactions reconcile. A payment
platform that can fail silently, leaving no record on either side, is not
something I would have accepted had I understood it going in.

I was days away from spending money on paid advertising into that
checkout. I would have been paying for clicks to a page that cannot
reliably close a sale, and the reporting would have told me my offer was
the problem.

If you are evaluating Thinkific: run a real end-to-end purchase with a
real card before you build anything on it. And ask directly, in writing,
which payment processors are actually available to your account, in your
country, on your plan. Do not assume the answer matches the marketing.

after i signed up for a trial to build my site i fell really sick and totally left everything in the middle. i never published a single thing but they still charged my card for 2 whole years anyway. i just found out now and when i reached out their remote support completely denied me any refund or credit. they are heartless, even a setup like Road to Millions always deliver on its obligations every time I used the service. totally disappointed with these greedy thieves.

This company will not stop spamming be about some fake-looking "Institute for Professional Development" which I've never signed up for. It's sent to the email I give out when I suspect my email will be sold to some marketing or spam company, so I know they likely just bought a roll of emails to spam to.

I cancelled the trail, I contacted them and they were still taking the money even when there were no card details on record and no plan. They can not be trusted. Even if this is a good enough product be careful.

Terrible experience, customer service is basically non exisitent. They have witheld my funds for nearly a month now for no reason. I have done the KYC. I have emailed every single day and nothing. I will be moving to a competitor.

I am absolutely furious with this platform. I recently launched my online masterclass, and Thinkific’s completely broken, deceptive checkout design utterly destroyed my business launch.
During my first week, my traffic numbers were phenomenal. My Wix landing page did its job perfectly: I achieved a massive **37% cart-to-visitor ratio**. 400 interested buyers clicked through to purchase, fully intending to sign up.
Do you know how many sales I actually got? **Two.**
The reason for this catastrophic drop-off is Thinkific's rigid and downright deceptive multi-payment checkout interface. When a buyer selects the 3-month payment plan option, the cart only displays the dollar amount of a *single* payment. To the customer, it looks exactly like a bait-and-switch. They think they are purchasing the course for a third of the price, get to the finish line, realize the hidden catch, and walk away angry. Thinkific actively scared away nearly 400 eager customers at the exact moment they had their credit cards out.
I reached out to them immediately to flag this. What followed was a flood of numerous emails over a three-month period that offered absolutely no resolution, no apology, and a total refusal to take ownership or responsibility for how their setup was hurting my business.
After getting nowhere via email, I finally managed to get someone to agree to a Zoom call. I showed up to the meeting on video, ready to look them in the eye and solve this, but they couldn't even accord me that basic professional courtesy—they hid behind a Zoom audio-only call.
Even on that call and in their follow-up emails, the lack of accountability was insulting. They didn't offer a single real software solution, they didn't mention alternative checkout integrations, and they didn't offer a discount on an integrated app. Nothing.
Instead, their official "expert" recommendation was for me to change my marketing strategy, plaster the full sticker price at the top of my sales page (completely defeating the purpose of offering a payment plan), and constantly mention the full price on my YouTube channel and socials. They even suggested I create a coupon code named after the full price so that the code itself has to do the heavy lifting of explaining the total cost! To top it off, they backtracked on providing an analytics trial and told me to go install a third-party app (Mixpanel) to track the problem myself, while admitting their own built-in tools hide recipient data from creators.
They expect creators to use their own extra labor and change their entire brand messaging to fix psychological barriers created by poorly designed software. They have taken zero responsibility, made absolutely no accommodations, and have no intention of fixing a platform flaw that is actively bleeding revenue. If you are launching a business and plan to offer installment options, do not trust this company. They will ruin your launch and blame you for it.

Site is a scam the free trial locks you in and cancelling doesn't work. Support is useless and does not help, ended up having to call the bank to prevent further billings.

I signed up for a free trial last month. I saw I wasn't going to need it early on. Within a couple days I went on to cancel (not renew) the subscription. Then, about a week before the trial was set to expire, I went on to make sure there was no subscription. I saw I had zero subscriptions and assumed the cancellation went through accordingly.

Fast forward, I get a charge for $99 earlier this week. I log back on to ensure I don't have any subscriptions - still says zero. So I contact Thinkific to let them know and ask them to refund the money. I even sent a screenshot showing I did not have a subscription.

The response I got was almost patronizing. They made no mention of the screenshot I shared showing I had zero subscriptions, and instead told me I still needed to cancel the account. So I replied - again asking them to review the screenshot I took showing I had zero subscriptions, and asking them to please refund my money.

Their response was again, patronizingly “we are so sorry” BUT that’s the wrong place to cancel, and that isn’t “this” subscription. Didn’t even address my second request for a refund. Their name was “Gazelle”.

At best, their ui/ux is meant to confuse users into thinking they don’t have a subscription and make it hard to cancel. At worst, it is purposefully fraudulent and trying to deceive customers.

Terrible company, and terrible customer service.

So after I signed up for trial and started building website in 2025, I fell sick and totally left in the middle and have not used, not published anything and they charged me for 2 years, found out now and went I reached out I have been denied of any refund or credit, support is remote and probably they don't know anything either...Totally disappointed

I’ve had an extremely frustrating experience with this platform.

I have been charged monthly for a subscription, yet when I try to log in, I’m told I don’t have an active subscription. After resetting my password multiple times just to gain access, the system still shows no record of my account.

What makes this worse is the complete lack of customer support. Despite claims of a live chat function, there is no visible or accessible support option. This leaves you stuck with no way to resolve urgent issues.

As someone who has created courses on this platform, this is not just inconvenient — it is actively affecting my business. My clients are unable to access the content they’ve paid for, and I’m left spending hours trying to fix something that should be straightforward.

Paying for a service that you cannot access, combined with no meaningful customer support, is completely unacceptable.

I would strongly advise others to think carefully before using this platform.

Many 1 star reviews of Thinkific seem to be payment related.

I wanted to let everyone know my experience with the company.

I sent an email to cancel the free trial, and subsequently was charged $888 (annual subscription fee).

I had decided to go with a different Wordpress based LMS platform.

When I reached out to Thinkific and explained the situation, they immediately resolved this issue.

I was processed a refund for the full $888.

So as far as "questionable payments" or "unexpected charges" as mentioned in other reviews...

That has not been my experience. I really appreciated the customer service.

If I hadn't chosen to have a Wordpress website developed, I would have explored this platform.

I set up an account in order to create online classes for my past employer. I set up the account using my company email, and I used my social security number as verification. Late last year, I was laid off from my former company. This is now appearing on my tax record, but I have no way to access the account. I spoke to my former employer, and, since the paid version of Thinkific was deactivated, they only have limited access to the platform.

Thinkific does not seem to offer any customer service at all unless you are a CURRENT playing customer. I tried calling them and got a recorded message saying that in order to get service I would need to log into the platform, which, again, I don't have any access to. I also reached out to them on LinkedIn and got no response.

⚠️ STRONG WARNING – Stay far away from Thinkific!

Just got slammed with a completely outrageous €97 charge for a “Monthly Start” plan from Thinkific — even though we never ran a single test, never used the platform, and never touched any trial. Zero activity. Zero confirmation. Zero anything.

We were actually looking for a training platform, but their sneaky auto-billing after a phantom 30-day trial, combined with absolute zero support, zero outreach, zero reminders, and zero basic customer care, has turned this into a total disaster. We have now permanently blocked Thinkific across our entire organisation and every single one of our owners’ companies.

A simple “Hey, do you need help?” or even a basic reminder would have stopped this nonsense. Instead, their total lack of professionalism and willingness to silently drain your card is disgraceful and unacceptable.

If you’re even considering Thinkific — don’t. Cancel any trial the second you sign up, set three calendar alerts, and prepare for the worst customer service you’ll ever experience. There are far better platforms that actually respect their customers.

Has anyone else been burned by this stealth-charging nonsense? Share your story.
#Thinkific #OnlineLearning #BadBusiness #CustomerServiceFail #AvoidAtAllCosts

WARNING!!! They will keep charging the account even if you cancel, and they block you from deleting your card within the account.... I not only contacted support to make sure they cancelled the subscription but I also cancelled the subscription within the account, and they STILL charge the card! Support will never address cancellations, and will never refund you for the f r a u d they commit. They constantly reactivate a cancelled account. This is f r a u d. It's a common tactic shady tech companies use to retain paying customers against their will when they have a large volume of cancellations.

This is the absolute WORSE company I've ever dealt with. And they also block you from access to backup or transfer your content, and force you to manually have to copy page by page - another form of IP theft. Customer support will never refund you despite how many times they illegally charge you after you cancel the subscription. They owe me over £400.

I have now reported the company to the Canadian fraud division. So should the hundreds of other people who are scammed by Thinkific. There should be a class action l a w s u i t filed against them. They know exactly what they're doing and this has nothing to do with tech issues!