Tevello vs. Thinkific: Which Platform Is Better For Shopify-Based Educators?

Are you at a standstill, wondering which Shopify app to purchase for your e-learning courses? It can be quite the gamble to jump into purchasing an app, hoping it has everything you need, without doing any thorough research. Fortunately, we’ve done the work for you. Let’s look at two of the most popular platforms for Shopify-based educators.

We’ll take a look at Thinkific and how it compares to our own platform, Tevello. We’ll compare many elements such as price tiers, features, website and multimedia compatibility, and much more.

It’s not always about finding the best-quality platform, but one that will deliver what you need for all the classes and resources you’d like to manage. You’re sure to find robust e-learning solutions that can help you make a lot of money this year.

Tevello vs Thinkific Features

While Thinkific has a good two-year head start on Tevello, Tevello has closed the gap quickly with what the platform offers, compared to premium features found in Thinkific. From digital materials and community forums to live lectures and courses, our system provides many essential features necessary to run a course right from your website. 

Whether you hold courses on a term or semester basis, or allow students to enroll and learn at any time, we offer a simple and versatile package suitable for any teacher running any website.

Video Hosting

The main appeal to online courses on Shopify is allowing students to watch and download course videos. Both apps allow students to do this. The difference is how the videos are made available.

With Tevello, you can import videos from video hosting channels such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Spotlightr. You can set these videos to private while still allowing your class access. You can also upload videos to your list of files. 

Thinkific also allows instructors to upload videos for lessons, as well as links from YouTube. In addition, videos and other multimedia files can be embedded into lessons like widgets. While these options are nice, a lot of them are pretty technical and may take some learning on your part.

Overall, we found that Tevello’s video hosting features are easier to use. Getting a video to play for a single lesson takes less time overall, and that can go a long way for many instructors who don’t have the patience to understand HTML or coding.

Communities

We offer communities and online forums for students that pay for online courses. Students will be able to socialize and message other students for ideas, advice, and more. This is a big must-have if your classes aren’t tied to any campus or university website. 

Tevello allows instructors to create unlimited communities, send internal emails, and provide direct messaging among students and instructors. But on the other hand, Thinkific gives you limits on how many communities you can create. If having unlimited communities and fewer restrictions is important to you, Tevello is the way to go.

Physical Materials

Being on Shopify, you may have physical goods available in addition to digital services like online courses. Tevello offers bundles of both physical and digital items. This is crucial for courses that are done online, but also require physical materials such as textbooks, kits, computer software, and more. Tevello makes selling both physical and digital items easy. 

Whether you have books you want to sell or lend to students, bundles work like typical Shopify purchases where you can ship books and supplies to each student’s address.

Bundles can be created on Thinkific for instructors that want to send students physical course materials. That said, it’s not as much of a focus on this app as it is with Tevello.

Tevello vs Thinkific Pricing

Thinkific caters to a variety of instructors by providing several different price tiers. The higher the tier, the more options you have. 

In contrast, Tevello provides all of its features through a one-tier system. With one monthly payment, you have access to everything. 

Even with just a $19.99 tier, we offer a package that each instructor can mold into his or her own. No matter what kind of courses you teach or what kinds of content you want to use, Tevello is a plan for all kinds of instructors. Even at the pricier tiers for Thinkific, they still impose some nagging limits for things like multiple communities and more storage space.

Below you’ll find comparison to price tiers found in Tevello and Thinkific.

Tevello vs Thinkific Live Classes

Essentially, Thinkific scales back many of the features and tools until you upgrade to a more expensive tier. One of these is the ability to conduct a Zoom class live. You won’t be able to do this with Thinkific’s Basic plan, so you’d have to pay at least $74 per month just to use Zoom and speak with students on video calls.

That’s why Tevello comes at an incredible value. Tevello’s Unlimited plan comes with live Zoom classes and many other essential features at a low monthly cost. This means you keep more money in your pocket with every class you teach.

Tevello vs Thinkific Platform Architecture

Tevello’s app and services are run on CloudFlare, a serverless platform that allows instructors to deliver materials lightning fast. Thinkific doesn’t have a proprietary host or platform, but you can use any compatible domain. The list includes CloudFlare, GoDaddy, Bluehost, and Hover.

If you have a compatible domain for Thinkific, you’ll likely find it better to use for getting your courses live as soon as possible. If you don’t have a domain host, Tevello provides CloudFlare for you so you don’t need to spend time shopping for domains

Tevello vs Thinkific User Interface

It matters that instructors use a platform that’s easy for users to navigate through.

Thinkific functions like WordPress in multiple ways. You have a lot of menu items but no sense of where you’re going or where you came from. It can take a while to get used to if you aren’t seasoned with e-learning. While Thinkific tries to make it easy, all the toolbars and text boxes can feel overwhelming for the common teacher.

If Thinkific is to WordPress, Tevello is to Wix. The platform features a very user-friendly interface where you can drag-and-drop links, items, and more onto your pages. And with backgrounds that are easy on the eyes and customisable, Tevello’s usability is a huge plus.

Tevello vs Thinkific Customer Service

On paper, Thinkific’s customer service sounds more robust, as you’re sure to get helpful advice no matter what time of day. Though if you have more complex issues, you’ll need to wait until the human customer support team is in business again, as the AI chat agent won’t be able to help you outside of basic troubleshooting. 

You’ll always get a human on Tevello’s live chat. The developer, Or Moshe, will respond to messages any time he is awake, even after business hours. And at that, you’re getting the creator of the app who will help you sooner than later and work to resolve any kind of problem with the app.

Both customer services have advantages and disadvantages, but we give Tevello the edge for having a human that’s potentially more available throughout the day and not just regular business hours and days of the week.

Why We Recommend Tevello Over Thinkific

Tevello is easily the simpler platform to use while still having plenty of features instructors need to lecture, manage students, and make learning fun and exciting. While we haven’t been around for as long as Thinkific and other e-learning solutions, we’ve closed the gap when it comes to speed, service, and reliability.

Thinkific is quite a powerhouse and has some incredible features, but the value found in Tevello can’t be ignored. Tevello is the service we most recommend if you’re looking for an easy-to-use app that works with all your resources and ambitions for a series of successful online courses.

We’ve taken what makes Thinkific and other apps great and built on that by significantly improving the user experience. And we did it without scaling back on features or content. You get everything with one low monthly payment.

Lastly, we can provide stats and analytics to help you keep tabs on how your courses and other products are selling on Shopify. You can take this data and import it into Excel or Google Sheets for a seamless migration into your pre-existing data. Thinkific has its own analytics tool only available in its highest tier.

Tevello’s Future Plans And User Feedback

We at Tevello are constantly updating and adding to our app to make the experience even better for instructors This includes:

• More flawless ways to migrate pre-existing online courses over to Tevello on Shopify,
• More onboarding classes and tutorials to help new users make the most of Tevello and its features,
• More features for students in communities such as the ability to send direct messages to instructors, and
• Careful considerations of user feedback as a means to improve the Tevello product as a whole

We’re always listening at Tevello as we keep ideas and suggestions in mind for new updates and additions for the platform in the future. Tevello as a project will continue to welcome and embrace new customers with an evolving product as we strive to make life-changing differences for both instructors and students alike.