Thinkific ‑ Online Courses vs. LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Thinkific ‑ Online Courses vs. LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products: At a Glance
3. Analyzing the Infrastructure and Core Workflows
4. Feature Comparison: Educational Tools and Student Engagement
5. Customization and Branding Control
6. Pricing Structure and Long-Term Value
7. Integration and Technical Fit
8. The Alternative: Unifying Commerce, Content, and Community Natively
9. Conclusion
10. FAQ

Introduction

Adding digital content to a Shopify storefront represents a significant opportunity for brands to diversify revenue and build authority. However, the path to successfully launching an online course or a digital membership is often cluttered with technical decisions. Merchants must decide between robust, external learning management systems (LMS) that bridge to Shopify or lightweight utilities that facilitate simple file delivery. This choice impacts everything from the customer login experience to the long-term scalability of the brand.

Short answer: For merchants requiring a specialized, external environment with advanced pedagogical tools like quizzes and drip content, Thinkific ‑ Online Courses offers a mature, albeit disconnected, ecosystem. If the goal is a simple, budget-friendly way to sell links to external assets like Google Drive or YouTube, LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products provides a streamlined delivery mechanism. However, merchants seeking to avoid the friction of fragmented logins and external platforms often find that a natively integrated solution offers a more professional and higher-converting customer journey.

This analysis provides a feature-by-feature comparison of Thinkific ‑ Online Courses and LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products. By examining pricing, workflows, and user feedback, merchants can determine which tool aligns with their current operational capacity and future growth goals.

Thinkific ‑ Online Courses vs. LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products: At a Glance

Analyzing the Infrastructure and Core Workflows

Understanding how these two apps operate requires looking at where the content actually lives. This fundamental difference dictates the customer journey and the amount of administrative effort required to maintain the system.

The Thinkific Ecosystem Approach

Thinkific ‑ Online Courses operates as an external platform. When a merchant installs the Shopify app, they are essentially connecting their Shopify store to a Thinkific account. The digital products are created and hosted on Thinkific’s servers, using Thinkific’s proprietary course builder. When a customer makes a purchase on Shopify, the app triggers an enrollment on the Thinkific side.

This separation allows Thinkific to offer specialized tools that are difficult to replicate in a basic file-delivery app. Merchants gain access to a drag-and-drop course builder, website themes specifically designed for education, and advanced student management tools. However, this infrastructure comes with the challenge of "platform bridging." Customers often have to manage two different accounts or navigate a transition from the Shopify checkout to an external learning portal. This friction is reflected in the current merchant rating of 1.9, where users often cite difficulties in syncing and user management.

The LinkIT Delivery Workflow

LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products takes a fundamentally different approach. It does not attempt to be an LMS. Instead, it serves as a sophisticated delivery gate for links. Merchants host their content wherever they prefer—be it Google Drive, Dropbox, YouTube, or Amazon S3—and use LinkIT to automate the delivery of those links to the customer after a purchase.

The workflow is intentionally minimalist. There is no course player, no quiz engine, and no progress tracking. The merchant simply pastes the link to the asset in the LinkIT dashboard and associates it with a Shopify product. This makes it an ideal choice for brands that are not yet ready for a full course structure but need a reliable way to sell PDFs, private video links, or access to a Facebook Group.

Feature Comparison: Educational Tools and Student Engagement

The depth of the "learning experience" is the primary differentiator between these two applications. Merchants must decide if they are selling a "result" (through a structured course) or simply an "asset" (a file or link).

LMS Capabilities and Content Delivery

Thinkific is a feature-rich environment built for education. Its "Start" and "Grow" plans include:

• Drip content scheduling to release lessons over time.
• Quizzes and surveys to validate student learning.
• Assignments and live lesson capabilities for interactive cohorts.
• Course certificates to reward completion.

In contrast, LinkIT provides none of these structured learning features. If a merchant sells a "course" through LinkIT, the customer receives a link to a folder or a video playlist. The burden of organizing that content falls entirely on the merchant's hosting platform (like YouTube or Google Drive). There is no way to see if a student has completed a lesson or to gate content based on their progress.

Community Management and Interaction

Thinkific includes built-in community features even on its lower tiers. This allows students to interact with each other and the instructor within the Thinkific portal. This is a critical component for high-ticket courses where peer-to-peer support is part of the value proposition.

LinkIT approaches community by facilitating "access." A merchant can use LinkIT to sell a link to a private Facebook Group or a Discord server. While this achieves the goal of monetizing a community, the interaction happens entirely outside the Shopify environment and the LinkIT app. This creates a fragmented experience where the brand's community is hosted on a third-party social media site rather than on the brand’s own domain.

Customization and Branding Control

A professional brand appearance is vital for building trust with digital customers. Because digital products are intangible, the "container" they are delivered in represents the quality of the product itself.

Thinkific Branding Limitations

Thinkific allows for significant customization of the course player and the landing pages, but true brand unity is often locked behind higher pricing tiers. For example, removing Thinkific branding requires the "Grow" plan at $199 per month. Until a merchant reaches that level, students will see Thinkific's logos and signatures throughout the learning experience. Additionally, because the content is hosted on a Thinkific subdomain or a custom domain that is separate from the Shopify store, there is always a slight visual "jump" when a customer moves from the shop to the classroom.

LinkIT Email Customization

LinkIT focuses its customization efforts on the delivery email. Since there is no "classroom" to brand, the app allows merchants to style the digital download emails to match the store's colors and voice. This ensures that the moment of delivery feels on-brand. However, once the customer clicks the link to go to Google Drive or Dropbox, the branding is lost to the interface of the hosting provider.

Pricing Structure and Long-Term Value

The financial commitment for these apps varies wildly, reflecting their different scales of utility.

Thinkific’s Tiered Growth Model

Thinkific uses a traditional SaaS pricing model that scales with features and administrative seats:

• Free Plan: Good for testing, allowing 3 courses and 1 community with unlimited students.
• Basic ($49/mo): Adds unlimited courses and custom domains, but keeps the Thinkific branding.
• Start ($99/mo): Includes assignments, live lessons, and membership bundles.
• Grow ($199/mo): The tier required to remove branding and access the API.

While Thinkific does not charge transaction fees, the jump from $49 to $199 is significant for growing brands. Merchants must evaluate whether the advanced features of the $99 or $199 tiers will generate enough additional revenue to justify the monthly overhead.

LinkIT’s Volume-Based Pricing

LinkIT is much more affordable but places limits on the number of products and orders:

• Business ($14.99/mo): Allows for 30 digital products and 100 digital orders per month.
• Unlimited ($29/mo): Offers unlimited products and up to 1,000 digital orders per month.

For a brand selling a single high-value digital asset, the $14.99 plan is an excellent entry point. However, high-volume stores selling low-cost digital goods may find the 1,000-order limit on the $29 plan restrictive if they experience a viral growth period.

Integration and Technical Fit

The "Works With" list for an app indicates how well it will play with the rest of a merchant's marketing stack.

Thinkific has a wide range of integrations, particularly with email marketing tools like ConvertKit, MailChimp, and ActiveCampaign. It also works with Zapier, which allows for complex automations between the LMS and other business tools. This makes it a strong contender for "tech-heavy" businesses that rely on intricate marketing funnels.

LinkIT is much simpler. Its primary integration is with Shopify Customer Accounts. It doesn't offer direct connections to email platforms, meaning merchants might need to rely on Shopify’s native notifications or third-party automation tools to bridge the gap between a sale and a long-term email nurturing campaign.

The Alternative: Unifying Commerce, Content, and Community Natively

While both Thinkific and LinkIT solve specific problems, they often leave merchants dealing with "platform fragmentation." This occurs when a brand's presence is split across multiple URLs, login screens, and dashboards. By replacing duct-taped systems with a unified platform, merchants can eliminate the friction that causes customer support tickets and abandoned carts.

A native Shopify integration means that the "classroom" lives inside the Shopify store. There is no separate login for the student to remember; if they are logged into their Shopify account, they have access to their courses. This seamlessness is a major driver of conversion and retention. For instance, some brands have doubled its store's conversion rate by fixing a fragmented system that previously confused customers during the hand-off from the store to an external site.

Furthermore, a native platform allows for the effortless bundling of physical and digital goods. A merchant selling crochet kits can include a "how-to" video course directly in the customer’s account area upon purchase. This strategy was highly effective for how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses with their existing product line, showcasing the power of keeping everything "at home."

The technical burden is also significantly reduced. Instead of managing a complex bridge between Shopify and an external LMS, merchants can manage their entire digital catalog from within the Shopify admin. This leads to solving login issues by moving to a native platform, as customers no longer face "account not found" errors that frequently occur when syncing two separate databases. Large-scale communities have successfully scaled by migrating over 14,000 members and reducing support tickets through this exact consolidation.

For merchants concerned about the escalating costs of external platforms, a native solution often provides a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses. This avoids the steep climb to $199/month just to remove third-party branding. By choosing a platform that prioritizes predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees, businesses can focus their capital on marketing rather than software overhead.

Success in the digital space is often a result of volume and repeat purchases. Using strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively shows that the closer the content is to the "Buy" button, the higher the lifetime value of the customer becomes. When the learning experience is excellent, the customer is already in the store, ready to buy their next physical or digital product.

Conclusion

For merchants choosing between Thinkific ‑ Online Courses and LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products, the decision comes down to the desired complexity of the learning experience versus the ease of setup. Thinkific is a powerhouse for those who need a traditional LMS structure, though its 1.9 rating suggests that the integration with Shopify can be a point of frustration for many. LinkIT is the ultimate "quick fix" for delivery links, but it lacks the professional classroom environment that modern students expect.

The strategic shift in e-commerce is moving away from these fragmented, external tools toward native integration. By housing courses and communities directly within the Shopify ecosystem, brands can provide a frictionless journey that turns one-time buyers into lifelong community members. This approach not only simplifies the merchant's workflow but also seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify helps maintain a consistent brand identity from the first click to the final lesson.

To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ

Is Thinkific better than LinkIT for big courses?

Thinkific is generally better suited for complex courses because it includes dedicated features for quizzes, assignments, and student progress tracking. LinkIT is a delivery tool for links and files, so it does not provide an actual "classroom" interface. If a merchant has dozens of lessons and needs to ensure students are following a specific path, Thinkific’s LMS tools are more appropriate than LinkIT’s simple delivery system.

Can I sell digital products on Shopify without an external subscription?

Shopify has basic digital delivery capabilities, but apps like LinkIT or native course platforms are usually required to handle more complex needs like automated link delivery from external hosts (Google Drive, YouTube) or creating a structured student portal. External apps like Thinkific require a separate subscription on their own platform in addition to the Shopify app, which can increase monthly overhead.

How does a native, all-in-one platform compare to specialized external apps?

A native platform lives entirely within the Shopify admin and uses the Shopify customer account system. This eliminates the need for customers to have a second login for an external site. While specialized external apps might offer highly niche pedagogical features, native platforms focus on commerce-first education, making it easier to bundle digital courses with physical products and keep customers on the merchant’s own domain for better SEO and conversion.

Do these apps charge transaction fees?

According to the provided data, neither Thinkific ‑ Online Courses nor LinkIT ‑ Sell Digital Products lists specific transaction fees on their Shopify plans. Thinkific uses a tiered monthly subscription model, while LinkIT uses a volume-based model based on the number of products and orders. Merchants should always verify if the payment processor (like Shopify Payments or PayPal) still applies their standard transaction fees to the sale.