So you’re ready to take the plunge. You’ve got something to teach, maybe even some interested students, and you’re going to create an online course. Yay!

Creating a course is such an awesome, life-changing thing when it’s done right. And with online learning still growing – expected to hit $1 Trillion by 2030 – there’s room for all sorts of different teachers.

In this article, we'll compare two popular software options: Mighty Networks and Thinkific.

• Mighty Networks is an all-in-one course and community builder that’s a one-stop shop for everything you need for your online business.

• Thinkific is a solid course platform and website builder that gives you lots of good tools to work with.

Both are established players in the online course space AND they both have some great things to offer. So which is right for you? Let’s figure it out!

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• Course Building & Delivery: What each gives you for creating courses, content types, and formats (async, drip, live, cohort).

• Assessments & AI Tools: What each offers for quizzes, assignments, SCORM compliance, and AI course outlines.

• Community Features: What they give for forums, discussions, engagement tools, member connections, and flexibility.

• Gamification & Member Experience: How each handles gamification and onboarding to wow your members.

• Live Teaching & Events: What each offers for native livestreaming, event scheduling, and RSVPs.

• Marketing & Branding: How each builds landing pages, sites, emails, and branding.

• Monetization & Payments: We'll compare business models, currencies, transaction fees, and bundles.

• Apps & Mobile Access: We'll compare native apps, branded app options, ratings, and in-app UX.

Let's start by comparing course platforms, breaking down what each offers as a Learning Management System (LMS).

Mighty Networks gives you a full LMS, letting you build and customize your course every step of the way.

Here's what you get with Mighty:

• Flexible course structure & building, native video, audio, PDFs, images, documents, and slides.

• Quizzes, assessments, + discussion built into each lesson.

• AI-powered course outline generator.

• Deliver self-paced, drip, or timed unlock courses.

• Teach live courses with native livestreaming, high-velocity chat, and multi-speaker view.

• Build live course Spaces with event calendar, RSVPs, and event chat

One of the best parts about the Mighty Networks course platform is that it gives you more ways to deliver a course than a traditional course platform.

• Want to pre-record video and upload it like a traditional course builder – e.g. Thinkific? You can do that.

• Want to teach a course LIVE as a cohort course? Yup, you can easily do that with the live stream tool.

• Want to add bonus live streams or events to supplement your existing course? You can do that too.

And, of course, everything we do with courses is wrapped in a community – more on that in a minute.

The end result is a great LMS that could be a standalone product, but in fact, comes built into the many other amazing features of a Mighty Network.

Thinkific gives you the power to create courses on a drag-and-drop builder that works well. It also comes with an assessment engine that lets you handle evaluating what students have learned.

You can add assignments, exams, quizzes, and surveys to test your students’ learning goals. Building course modules is simple, and you can add audio, video, and PDFs to the course – it has a bulk uploader for all this. And, like Mighty, Thinkific has lots of ways to deliver the course, including self-paced and dripped content.

Thinkific has also added some good AI features to course building, including AI course outlines and AI quiz generation. This includes advanced quiz features with randomization, question banks, and quiz import. Its LMS is SCORM compliant (on the higher tiers).

Thinkific can also be integrated with other apps to give features like a booking calendar, chat boxes, or live streaming.

• Both platforms have great options for asynchronous courses with flexible building, powerful delivery, and lots of intuitive features.

• Thinkific's LMS has more power for async courses, with more quiz features and SCORM compliance.

• Mighty is much better for live teaching and events, with more robust scheduling and RSVPs plus native livestreaming — both in-app and on web. (Thinkific does not have native livestreaming).

• Mighty's app-based course features (both live and async) are more powerful (more below).

Communities add value to a course. They breathe life into a prerecorded course since you can offer your students connections and conversations LIVE in the community after. OR you might opt to go for a cohort course, bringing students together, letting them meet each other and you, and getting support in real time!

Here's what each platform offers for communities

Mighty is G2's #1 community management software, with software built for engagement.

Mighty Networks has a powerful community engine that gives you a ton of great features right out of the box, integrating community into courses.

Mighty Networks includes:

• Powerful multi-feature community Spaces that can hold chat, discussion forums, livestreaming, events, resources, posts, and activity feed.

• AI designed to boost engagement with member profile assists, surfacing interesting people, auto-introductions, and generated discussion questions. You can also re-engage lapsed members with 1 click.

• Reactions, threaded comments, and pinned posts, plus emojis, GIFs, and AI-boosted text creation.

• Gamification designed by expert game designers, focusing on collaboration over competition: recognitions, streaks, leaderboards, unlocks, and customizable new member journeys.

• Member chat and messaging built in (1:1 or group) to keep conversations going.

• Member management at scale, with triggers, easy plan controls, and useful analytics for your course and community business.

You can sell courses as standalone, on a membership basis, or as an upsell. Mighty is designed for courses and community to fit seamlessly together.

Thinkific has an extremely basic community model that can be added as a separate product on your Thinkific site. It gives you a forum engine to host community discussions, and you can choose to either give access to all your students or bundle it with a particular course.

Thinkific includes:

• Separate community product alongside courses in the same platform.

• Forum-style discussion spaces where members can post, comment, and interact.

• Messaging, Reactions, threaded comments, pinned posts, and activity feeds.

• A few gamification options like badges and learning paths.

Mighty Networks contains a suite of community features that Thinkific doesn't have.

• Mighty has advanced AI engagement tools designed to start conversations, help members get integrated and meet other members. But it also has text-boosting AI for making content better, iterating, and starting messages. Thinkific's AI is limited to content creation—it has no people magic.

• Mighty's gamification is world-class, designed by Jane McGonigal—a leader in the gaming space. It's collaborative, and uses the latest in design theory. Thinkific's "gamification" is mostly just badges, with learning paths and rewards on the higher tiers.

• Mighty's community platform is ranked #1 by G2 for its innovative features, ease of use, and constant feature updates. Thinkific's community platform is still catching up.

• Mighty does a better job of courses and communities together, integrated into the same Space with flexible delivery and design.

Marketing

• Customizable landing pages for your course and/or community, with different styles to choose from.

• Community & course branding with light/dark mode, logos and brand colors, optional custom domains, and custom fields.

• Multi-language support for English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Monetization

• Sell courses and communities with 1-time or recurring payments, build bundles, run multiple plans, and sell in 120+ currencies with options for coupons or token-gating.

• Built-in ambassador program with integrations for 3rd-party affiliate programs.

• Rich Mighty Insights™ with charts & graphs, Space-level data, tracking both engagement and earnings.

• Built-in Kit integration for email function.

Also, Mighty lets you charge for Spaces that can hold memberships, courses, events, or all of the above.

When it comes to building your business, Thinkific gives you the option to monetize with courses, but also with membership subscriptions and digital products/downloads.

Marketing

• Drag & drop website and landing page builder with website templates and custom domains.

• Customization and branding features for courses and community.

• AI landing page builder with copy, headlines, and CTAs.

• Lead generation forms with email capture.

• Built-in email with templates, and basic nurture sequences.

Monetization

• TCommerce (built-in payments) includes coupons, order bumps, abandoned cart recovery, and auto tax-collection (note that it costs more to use Stripe/Paypal)

• Sell courses, downloads, memberships, and bundles.

• Sell in 100+ different currencies, add sales with coupons and discounts, and built-in affiliate program.

• Thinkific has a more robust website-builder, with the option to build a multi-page site. Mighty's focus is on landing pages with community access.

• Thinkific's built-in email is better. But Mighty's "nearly-native" Kit integration makes it really easy to pair Mighty with a more powerful email platform.

• Mighty includes more on every plan. Thinkific's memberships, landing pages, and sites not available on lower plans.

• Mighty has more branding power and stronger branded apps (below).

Last, let’s talk about apps and access. It’s not enough to create a course. You need to make sure that your students can get access to it when and how they want it.

• Mighty's native iOS and Android App is routinely top-rated (4.7 Stars on Google Play as of writing). Includes full-features with amazing UI, courses, chat, events, livestreaming, feed, and light/dark mode, and push notifications built-in.

• Sell on web, iOS, and Android with the same purchase features across all platforms.

The branded app version of Mighty Networks gives you a premium branded app. That's YOUR brand in the App Store and Google Play Store. Mighty has built branded apps for Tony Robbins, Marie Forleo, Jim Kwik, Matthew Hussey, TED, and Cambridge University.

Mighty Pro includes:

• Your own branded app with splash screens, icons, and branded notifications.

• Unlimited everything, including Spaces, hosts, moderators, profile fields, and landing pages.

• Strategy support from a team that has launched 500+ branded apps!

• Proactive updates, feature launches, and app store submissions.

• Thinkific has a course app for every device.

• It offers a simple branded app as a white-label add-on, giving you simple customization like app name, icon, and colors.

• In-app limitations on certain types of purchases.

• Mighty is WAY better rated for apps. Thinkific's apps are consistently rated low (1.9 Stars on the App Store & 3.2 Stars on Google Play as of writing this). By contrast, Mighty is ranked 4.8 Stars in the App Store and 4.7 Stars on Google Play.

• Mighty offers premium, well-reviewed branded apps. Thinkific's white-label apps are a lower price, but since their apps get consistently bad reviews this isn't a big surprise.

Both Mighty and Thinkific are powerhouse platforms. They just excel at different things.

• Thinkific is strongest at asynchronous courses and website building. These are the features that shine, and probably make it a good choice for someone who wants a build-it-and-forget-it course with a multi-page website.

• Thinkific has some better, built-in marketing tools like more flexible basic email (Mighty uses a Kit integration).

• Mighty Networks is stronger at community and live teaching. With more robust community engagement, people magic AI, native livestreaming, better live teaching, Mighty is a better option for courses with a community integrated OR courses taught live.

• Mighty Networks has much better apps: better-rated, better UX, and more power, while Mighty Pro's branded apps are premium and well-reviewed.

We hope this comparison between Mighty Networks and Thinkific has you super excited to get started with building your amazing course.

If you want an awesome course and community platform that brings together a solid LMS, live streaming, events, loads of community features, and a great app, come give Mighty Networks a try! Mighty will grow with you too, and when you’re ready you can also take the jump to Mighty Pro and get a totally branded app! We always love it when our Hosts see so much growth they make that transition.