"Their support is pretty bad"

Their support is pretty bad. It's like they don't read your email.

In one message, I asked for account 'B' to be cancelled. I'd set that up as a test. But it had the same name as my main active account 'A'.

I had a separate support ticket open with account 'A'. They replied to it saying that they'd seen my request to close my account, as if it was account 'A'. No!

Another support experience overnight has me in the very unusual situation where I'm seeking out a 3rd party review site. Because I don't know how else to get a message to Thinkific's leadership: your support is AWFUL. I'm stuck in your platform now, but there's no way I'll ever use it again in the future.

"Support is horrible"

Support is horrible. Platform autorenews with no notification and there is no way to turn off auto review.
Its a scam.

"Platform: 5 star; Customer Appreciation: 0 star!!"

A 5-star platform, but 0-star customer loyalty and appreciation. Couple of years ago, they changed all their plans and removed features that were already included in our plan and asked to upgrade and pay more if we wanted to keep those features.

This year, they are adding a 5% extra charge per transaction if their customers keep using Stripe or PayPal instead of their TCommerce solution. Again, asking to pay extra for a feature that was already included in their plans.

It's understandable that they have probably heavily invested in TCommerce and probably haven't seen enough uptakes. But perhaps some customers are not interested in using their payment gateway and prefer to use well-known and well-established internationally recognized Stripe or PayPal.

With both Stripe and PayPal, if we have any payment issues, we get in touch with a live call agent support in a minute and they are extremely helpful. With our current Thinkific plan, we only have email support. Does that mean that we should now upgrade yet again and pay more if we want to get same customer service as we get with Stripe and PayPal? Besides, Stripe and PayPal are specialized in payment processing, they know every in's and out's of payment management, especially if you have to deal with complex payment issues (more specifically international payments), not sure the level of expertise Thinkific has with international payment management compared to Stripe and PayPal.

Thinkific sends an email from their CEO explaining why it's much better for their customers to switch and why they decided to charge extra. According to the CEO's email, apparently this extra charge is an "incentive"! Here is the full sentence: "As an incentive to move our customers onto TCommerce, all transactions processed on third-party payment providers will incur a fee as of July 3, 2024." Although the message is well crafted, that doesn't sound like a proper use of the word "incentive".

I also wonder about some of the marketing campaigns that TCommerce will save you from tax problems. Is that a way to make customers worried about tax issues to switch to TCommerce?! And they seem though as giving tax advice to the customers. Here is one of those marketing campaigns:

"Pop Quiz: If you have a single paying student in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, do you need to register for VAT?
If you answered no, you may be at risk for an audit!
Don’t Panic! We’ve got you.
TCommerce’s Sales Tax solution takes care of automatically calculating, collecting, and remitting sales tax for your US & Canadian students."

They make a lot of claims that TCommerce is better than other payment gateways. Let's say that is true and TCommerce is indeed much better, in that case your customers are smart enough to switch and if they are not smart enough, well, it's their loss. But they don't need to be incentivized by being charged more or panic about tax audit so then they decide to switch. How about instead of charging your customers extra, as a "real" incentive you offer no payment transaction fee for a year for your customers who switch to TCommerce?!

In my opinion, Thinkific is in the business of learning platforms NOT payment processing. Their competitive edge (which they are great at, by the way) is into enhancing unique "learning" features of their platform for their customers and their customers' students NOT investing into payment processing just because it's more profitable (or less costly) for them to do so. But of course that's their leadership decision on what strategic investments to make but again I don't agree that customers have to pay extra to cover their investments.

It's unfortunate that a Canadian-based company which provides a great learning platform is not thinking deeply about its customer loyalty and appreciation. For a small learning provider, like us, any small extra charge has a big impact on the bottomline.

Now as a Canadian training provider and after being with Thinkific since we started offering online courses years ago, we are forced to go back to market and research all other alternatives to hopefully find one that suits our needs and our students' needs, spending our valuable time away from supporting our students and enhancing our courses.

All in all, if you are just deciding on which platforms to partner with or still haven't been deep into using Thinkific maybe you want to expand your search. It looks like there are good alternatives out there.

"The looney tunes support continues."

The looney tunes support continues.

So - never got a resolution on the endless enrolment loop - seems it was best just to ignore that one - makes for better report on the ‘number of issues resolved KPI’

Having spent hours working the problem - I found more - including the enrolment process now skipping the screen where students enter their personal details - Thinkific response is :

With regards to the Thinkific Built-in Checkout, this is the default process and once the students make a purchase they will automatically create a user profile.

Well no - this was precisely my point in the video I sent - it’s not happening- but - as usual - let’s sweep that one under the rug.

Secondly - I need to give users the option to select which language they choose for the site. It’s not working,

Response - let’s use Edge- one of the least used browsers to prove that it does work - really? Why deliberately not use Safari or Chrome? - Obfuscation perhaps?

Regardless - let’s sweep that one under the rug as well - best to keep those KPI’s where management expects…

Thirdly - it appears that students can quite easily be charged twice for a course following a simple mistake- response… crickets…

Well - that’s awkward - best to ignore and hope it goes away?

I have never been involved in a more convoluted kafkaesque nonsensical support process. It would be laughable if it wasn’t my livelihood. I would also note that my courses have had 1000’s of enrolments - it’s not as though I am irrelevant- not that that should matter.

"Non-existent customer service; a cow being milked"

The set-up and design of the backend for my online education site was good, and fairly simple to set up, but when a customer had a chargeback, their customer support fell apart.

They let me know the customer asked for a refund, which was fine, so I reached out to the customer for more information, and to see if we could work it out, but didn't get a response.

On pretty much every online purchase, the seller and the buyer have to communicate, on some level, before a refund takes place. Verify the refund request, can another product be offered in exchange, verify refund information, something.

Then about 30 days later, Thinkific says you didn't provide their bank the proper information, so we are sending the money back.

Sending the money back isn't the issue. Why didn't you tell me there was a process with the customer's bank? Why didn't you tell me they needed more information from me?

Thinkific was derelict in their duty to serve my interests, or just flat out incompetent. Either way, I closes my account with them. If this is how they handle, or don't handle, disputes, I don't need them. They didn't earn their cut as middleman. I didn't feel like one of their customers. Just a cow being milked.

"This system deceives customers"

This system deceives customers, automatically deducting money that cannot be refunded. I have been using the $199 package since 2024. By the time my card had an error, after fixing it, they automatically deducted an additional $279. I contacted the administrator, they said I could not get a refund, explained. roundabout. Too bad service

"Just an insane experience with Thinkific"

Just an insane experience. I launch a course in two weeks time and no one can enrol. The enrolment process is stuck in an endless loop. On 'escalating' my problem, a support person thanked me for the feedback and promised to provide it to the developers as an improvement opportunity. Upon subsequently asking 'what about my problem ? ' the support person very kindly replied that they understood my frustration and again promised to provide my suggestions to the developers and thanked me for my feedback - AAAAAARRRRGGHHH!!!!!!

All I can think is that it's a Bot - no real person could be that stupid.

And now - when I try to record the problem to help them understand that it's not just feedback, I can't get past Cloudflare - imagine how many students are going to say screw it and give up....

"Dreadful image quality for presentations"

I have been doing online training for years and decided to move my courses to an LMS platform. I've created my first course on Thinkific, and the image resolution and quality of the slides are dreadful! Most of the colours are gone, and the images are full of JPEG artefacts. I was planning to get the Start or Grow plan for my courses, but it is too embarrassing to present my content to my clients in such a poor quality. I am looking for an alternative platform now.

"My website issues courses.wellform.academy "

My website courses.wellform.academy
ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
I need help, I have free plan. Not able to get access to my account. And no Human support of whatsoever....very dissapointing, not being able to intervene... my site is under attack... I have been running my website for more than two years being a loyal client....

"Terrible Customer Service"

So far, There are two specific things that have really soured my experience with Thinkific.

1. Their class platform is serviceable. But it lacks polish. For example: in the class videos, there is a feature that allows for students to post questions to the instructor.

However, after I reply to their messages, it's spaced out in a really awkward way, and looks sloppy. Additionally, I cannot go back and edit the message (even though it's the 21st century, and practically every website offers this?)

2. My biggest gripe is an absolutely abysmal customer service experience I had. One of my students wanted to delay their payment from March 24th to March 29th. So I chatted with a customer service rep, April, and she told me to pause the student's payment plan, and that they would take care of ther rest. I get an email from April, a little while later, and she tells me to un-pause the plan and then they will move the billing date forward a few days.

However, as soon as I did this, the student immediately got charged. And I had to refund her $100. I told customer service about this, and the next day they said "We didn't know unpausing the payment plan would do this".

That's right.. customer service DOESN'T EVEN KNOW THEIR OWN PRODUCT!

Since they charged her a few days before her payment was due, I didn't think it would be right to charge her the remaining $100 (after refunding the first premature charge), so I told Thinkific this, and that it would only be fair for them to reimburse the $100 that I lost since they led me astray.

They refused (though I think my ask was a reasonable one).

This is not a single-incident though where they were completely clueless. There was another time where I asked them if I could create a special 8 month payment plan for someone (Even though I usually offer 5-month payment plans). They told me it was not possible if I already had a payment plan setup. Yet I figured out how to do it 1 day later...

I will soon be migrating to Kajabi, and I suggest others do the same. This company is a stinking mess.