Canvas vs. Thinkific

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Canvas
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Instructure is an educational software company based in Sandy, Utah. It is the developer of the Canvas learning management system, which is a comprehensive software package that competes with such systems as Blackboard Learning System, SumTotal and Saba.N/A
Thinkific
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Thinkific Plus is a scalable learning platform that’s designed to be easy to use for teams and customers. Thinkific Plus offers enterprise-grade features that scale with the needs of enterprises, and the service includes a people seriously dedicated to helping users to reach their goals.N/A
Pricing
CanvasThinkific
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
CanvasThinkific
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsMust contact vendor for pricing information.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
CanvasThinkific
Features
CanvasThinkific
Learning Management
Comparison of Learning Management features of Product A and Product B
Canvas
9.8
Ratings
18% above category average
Thinkific
-
Ratings
Course authoring9.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Course catalog or library9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Player/Portal9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning content9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile friendly9.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Progress tracking & certifications9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Assignments9.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance management9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning administration9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning reporting & analytics9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Social learning9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Gamification9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
CanvasThinkific
Small Businesses
iSpring Learn
iSpring Learn
Score 9.6 out of 10
iSpring Learn
iSpring Learn
Score 9.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Schoology Learning
Schoology Learning
Score 9.7 out of 10
iSpring Learn
iSpring Learn
Score 9.6 out of 10
Enterprises
Schoology Learning
Schoology Learning
Score 9.7 out of 10
Articulate 360
Articulate 360
Score 9.3 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
CanvasThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.3
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
In-Person Training
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
8.5
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
8.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
CanvasThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
If you have a school you can let teachers easily create new deadlines which [automatically] get shown in the calendar. Teachers can also [temporarily] hide deadlines [until] they've given the explanation about the tasks. [Besides] that the teacher can also choose what should be uploaded, should it be a link, file, pdf, link,...
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Thinkific is well-suited if you want to host an online course and have a variety of materials, such as videos, PDFs, and assignments. A plus is that you can host a community linked to your course, making it easy to give feedback.
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Pros
  • Learning management - Even as the educational landscape rapidly shifts due to current events, Canvas is a great LMS for providing a consistent learning environment for students.
  • Mobile accessibility - Students can access their courses on Canvas from a variety of devices, including their smartphones.
  • Rich content - Instructors have the ability to create dynamic and engaging content for their courses.
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  • Enables course creators to deliver high quality courses very fast
  • Offers unlimited hosting for videos included in the subscription price
  • Provides an easy to use administration interface that's powerful and accessible
  • Easy to scale subscription tiers on B2C plans, cost effective highly scaleable B2B plans (Thinkific Plus) ideal for companies who want to start a customer education program
  • Amazing support and account management team - great mindset and people in the teams.
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Cons
  • Their integration with Big Blue Button was a bust for distance learning. Would be great to see them collaborate with Zoom or Google Meets.
  • Their "feature request" process is slow and cumbersome at times because it relies on user "up votes" to get ideas addressed by the developers.
  • They seem to have a lot of turn-over with their staff. We get a new Customer Success Manager far more frequently than with other vendors.
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  • I would add some more blocks for page design to have more options as to what I can do, like a proper gallery where you can open and close images.
  • I would expand the text options within specific blocks, like being able to hit enter inside a text box and having my paragraphs separated if I wanted to.
  • Adding new integrations would be awesome, so you don't have to pass through Zapier. Maybe a ClickFunnels integration?
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Likelihood to Renew
Several factors contribute to my "10" rating. First, our university just made an enormous switch to Canvas, after we were with Blackboard for almost a decade. So garnering buy-in was critical, and not something we took lightly. After nearly 18 months (start to finish) of training faculty, educating stakeholders, and migrating courses, I am not looking to make a change again anytime soon. But I am happy with the result and the product overall and that is also demonstrated in my rating.
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We will continue to use Thinkific for our company pieces of training. Until we are able to create our own in house portal, this is an excellent source to have a learning management software tool that is easy to use and easy to implement without much technical training to administer
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Usability
The functions in Canvas are well integrated and consistent across the application, and mostly intuitive. Overall navigation and setup is streamlined through integrated features and navigation. The feedback we've gotten from our program participants is that it is easy to learn to use. It also integrates well with third party software like Google Docs and Blackboard Collaborate web conferencing software
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Under Site Builder, when trying to add a new section, so many templates appear; however, preview is not shown, which makes it super difficult and time consuming to identify a template that suits the purpose. Customization of certification designs is a bit difficult too. There are limitations to the type of quiz questions I can create - for example, there's no option to have fill in the blank questions.
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Reliability and Availability
No answers on this topic
I've never had any issues with accessing Thinkific but I can see when it has been a problem for others. When I get updates on when they are doing maintenance to their platform I tend to make sure that is not the day I plan to be working on my school so as not to get frustrated
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Performance
No answers on this topic
When it comes to the performance of Thinkific for me I find that it's good but could be better. I tend to think that the larger the files and videos you upload on your courses may add to the impact of it's uploading (not sure if that's actually true or not). But overall the performance of Thinkific via my tablet and desktop is very good when I have a fast speed broadband speed
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Support Rating
I do not personally use Canvas support since we have a central office that helps us. However, our central office always has the answers we need and are always able to solve our issues - so I would assume that get great support from the Canvas team on their end. They also offer great training, which uses materials directly from Canvas
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I rate Thinkific a ten because of its excellent customer service, ease of use, high-quality product, fair price with excellent ROI, and because they keep making improvements. Using Thinkific solved the problems of piecing together our course with various WordPress plugins, iframes, and payment processing software. It's easy to create a course website for people who can't write code.
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In-Person Training
The training sessions were broken down into several days as well as different levels depending upon the knowledge of the user
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No answers on this topic
Online Training
The online tutorials and videos are very clear and addressed the issues/questions that I had about using the system.
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No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Once you purchase and sign the contract there is nothing to install or hardware to buy. You can almost immediately start using it and have courses up and going within weeks. We signed in December and had pilot courses online ready to go for the start of school in January
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The implementation period took time like it would in earning and using any new tool. It was more about being organised, having better time management processes in place and having people you were able to reach out to if you were every able stuck. The other key ting with the implementation period was giving yourself a realistic time scale to get the job completed.
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Alternatives Considered
Canvas is in the experience way better than Google Classroom. Canvas has a
more robust agenda system that also allows adding in new personal
deadlines. [Assignments] can be submitted past [the] deadline (if allowed),
this isn't allowed by Google [Classroom], If you're too late you can't
submit anything anymore. In Classroom [assignments], presentations/theory, and [announcements] are all put in 1 feed instead which gets confusing way
faster.
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I think Thinkific is way better than Udemy. The Udemy platform was not user friendly, they require you submitting for approval before you can even upload a course and have so many restrictions. They never even approved my course, nor did they email me as to why. The support is not there like it is for Thinkific. Also, with Udemy, it feels like you are competing with so many people because they are given other options in comparison to you vs on Thinkific, it truly is your own. You do your own marketing and when people come to your landing page, it is all they see. They can't venture off of it to go to the next person who is on Thinkific. I love Thinkific and tell everyone to get on it. People say to me they want to know my ROI before they decide to invest in it. They want to know that it actually works.
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Scalability
No answers on this topic
The opportunities to scale your online course business with Thinkific is endless. They provide a great range of plans with features, integrations and support to suit the needs of any business as different levels. The key here is knowing where to start with the budget you have and then knowing when it's time to scale up and the tools and resources it will require.
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Return on Investment
  • Teachers have consolidated their content onto one platform which has decreased reliance of students on so much support staff assistance to access content.
  • Canvas has helped make technology transitions more seamless for the school community.
  • Once teachers have set up their page, Canvas really takes care of it all- they have much more time to focus on content creation and synthesis rather than the actual learning management system.
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  • pre thinkific vs post thinkific launch for sales training, our sales reps are getting their first solo sale on average 0.6 days faster. Before it was 5.7 days on average to sell by themselves, now it is 5.1 days on average accross 1500 sales reps that have completed the training since launching the training in May 2024
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ScreenShots