Google Classroom vs. Thinkific

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Google Classroom
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$0
per license/per month
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
Google ClassroomThinkific
Editions & Modules
Education Fundamentals
$0
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Standard
$3
per student/per year
Teaching and Learning Upgrade
$4
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Plus
$5
per student/per year
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google ClassroomThinkific
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsEducation Fundamentals Version - 30-day free trial for qualifying institutions.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google ClassroomThinkific
Features
Google ClassroomThinkific
Learning Management
Comparison of Learning Management features of Product A and Product B
Google Classroom
7.8
Ratings
5% below category average
Thinkific
-
Ratings
Course authoring8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Course catalog or library8.90 Ratings00 Ratings
Player/Portal9.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning content5.10 Ratings00 Ratings
Mobile friendly5.80 Ratings00 Ratings
Progress tracking & certifications8.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Assignments8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Compliance management8.20 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning administration7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Learning reporting & analytics9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Social learning7.70 Ratings00 Ratings
Gamification6.50 Ratings00 Ratings
Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning9.00 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Google ClassroomThinkific
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
Google ClassroomThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
1.9
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
2.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Google ClassroomThinkific
Likelihood to Recommend
- During the pandemic, the college needs a fast and easy solution to conduct Google Classroom. The integration with Google Accounts and Google Meet allows the university to run and access the Classroom on a large scale. - The teacher wants to conduct some exams in third-party software like Moodle. But we have not found any plugin for this famous open-source learning platform. The exam system in Google Classroom is so poor that it doesn't even fully screen the test when students are writing their exams.
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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
  • Student-teacher communication - I love using Classroom for this because my students can always go back and check what was on Classroom by looking through the stream. This way they don't have to go dig through emails to find what they're looking for.
  • Posting to multiple classes - I can post the same announcement or assignment to multiple classes at once without having to repeat the process or send separate emails.
  • Streamlining grading - when students turn work in on Classroom, it all goes to one place and then when I'm grading I can open their documents directly from Classroom or my Drive folder. This way, I'm not looking through emails and Google Doc shared files for their assignment.
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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
  • Although usually in the discussion with other LMS apps such as Schoology and Canvas, Google Classroom doesn't possess as in-depth of a platform. There is no ability to set individual learning paths, pace student work with completion settings, or embed other apps directly into teacher-created assignments.
  • The assignment creation options are limited. Teachers can only choose from creating an assignment (usually a link with directions), a material (usually a doc/slide/website, etc), a question, and a quiz.
  • With gamification taking on a new lens in education, there really isn't any way to use gamification elements with Google Classroom. There isn't any way to create Individual learning paths, or use badges and micro-credentials within Classroom. Outside programs would have to be used.
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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
Testing is particularly important in online learning, and Google Classroom falls far short of other learning management systems in this regard. Security is also a concern: while account control is reasonable for the account used with Google Classroom, the person controlling a particular account is often able to, for example, forward or download proprietary materials.
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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
This is only a product I would recommend to a humanities teacher. Math and science teachers cannot use this product the same way that I can as an English teacher. It is great for word process and for reading, but unable to handle the demands of math and science. Therefore, I would highly recommend this product to English or Social Studies teachers, but NOT math or science teachers
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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
We have had very little trouble in accessing Google Classroom. Our issues, if any, have risen from our server and not the Google servers.
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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
Since this platform is provided by Google, the technical support is better than any others, and we are not required to bother about the space constraints for adding the contents. If we have a good uninterrupted internet facility we can access Google Classroom without any delay or lag. They have app support in both Android and iPhone.
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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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Implementation Rating
It was relatively easy to implement due to the simplicity of the platform. Even our more technology challenged teachers found it easy to get started with Google Classroom.
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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
Skyward and Google Classroom are completely different programs that are used for completely different things. The only comparable areas are communication with students. Skyward does so through the class rosters and message center and Google Classroom does so through the classrooms for each student and their teacher, but each is unique in their own way.
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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
It is very easy to push out this program across our buildings. Teachers are able to use it without much trouble.
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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
  • Students are able to continue learning in a remote environment
  • Parents have a single, consistent organization structure to make it easy to track assignments and progress for multiple children
  • Much better solution than the quickly assembled Zoom-and-gloom of the previous spring when school abruptly went remote with no planning
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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