Heights Platform vs Thinkific: The Best Alternative to Thinkific
Are you looking for the best Thinkific alternative to sell online courses?
Then you are in the right place. If you've heard about Heights Platform and Thinkific but you don't know which course creation platform to choose, keep reading below for our detailed comparison!
Both Heights and Thinkific offer all the basic features course creators need to get started with their online knowledge business. Depending on your particular needs and goals, you may choose one platform over the other for its additional features.
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Migrating from Thinkific? Annual Heights customers can get free hand-migration help for existing course content. Review the Thinkific migration guide.
So let's have a closer look at how Heights differentiate from Thinkific, what features you might prioritize as a course creator and why Heights is the best Thinkific alternative:
Clear, Transparent and Creator Friendly Pricing
When you are getting started with your online business, the last thing you need is to waste time trying to understand a complex pricing structure - or worse, discovering hidden prices when it's too late.
Heights Platform is a Thinkific alternative that offers you the choice between four pricing tiers, depending on your unique creator needs. The amount you see on the pricing page is exactly what you are going to pay at the end of each month or annually. Plain and simple!
Our most widely chosen plan is the Pro Plan ($99/month paid annually or $119/month monthly). This plan includes the core features an independent creator needs, while Thinkific now separates its comparable advanced capabilities across its Start and Grow plans.
What you might not notice right away is that Thinkific charges $164/month billed annually for its Grow plan if you want to use certain features, features that are already included in the Heights Pro plan for no additional charge. Grow costs $219/month when billed monthly, compared with $119/month for Heights Pro billed monthly.
These features include white-label branding, multiple community channels, Zapier actions, bulk student enrollments and emails, student import, segmentation, public API and other integrations.
Most of the features listed above are pretty important for any course creator, especially the ability to bulk import or enroll students and remove the platform branding.
So choosing the Heights Pro plan instead of Thinkific Grow can provide many comparable creator-business features while saving $780 a year at annual pricing. But this doesn't end here, let's see what else makes Heights Platform stand out:
Heights vs Thinkific - Feature Comparison
| Pricing | From $19/month | From $40/month billed annually ($54 monthly) |
| Free Trial | ||
| Unlimited Courses | ||
| Online Challenges | ||
| Sell Digital Products | ||
| No Transaction Fees | ||
| Custom Domain | ||
| Branding Customization | ||
| White-Label Branding | Yes, with Pro Plan | Yes, with Grow Plan |
| Gamification | Limited | |
| Student Projects | ||
| Completion Certificates | ||
| Additional Authors | Up to 25 included | Up to 5 included |
| Student Analytics | ||
| Climb Outline (Course Builder) | ||
| Built-In Blog | ||
| Affiliate Program | ||
| Email Marketing | ||
| Landing Page Builder | ||
| Website Theme Builder | Color Themes + further customization with CSS | |
| Course Categories | ||
| Coupon Codes | ||
| Bulk Student Import | Only with Pro + Growth Plan | |
| Live Streaming / Webinars | ||
| AI Features | Heights AI |
Features and pricing compared and updated as of July 2026.
Sell Digital Products
Most creators don't just sell online courses, they offer additional resources to their students by selling digital downloads, coaching sessions, membership sites, private community, lead magnets etc...
Aside from the membership aspect, Thinkific does not allow creators to sell any other digital product.
On Heights, anything can be a digital product. Simply create a new digital product, assign a price, customize your preference and decide whether to offer a download, a service, a coaching session or a time-sensitive event.
Communities & Tools to Help Students Learn
Communities are extremely valuable when it comes to online education. The content and lessons in your online course are important, but personal interaction and community space can really increase the value of your program.
This is why at Heights Platform we put a lot of effort into creating the best experience both for you and your students when it comes to interacting and creating a community space.
Discussions in Heights give you full flexibility in how you structure your community. You can create multiple community channels, set up topics, groups of students, moderate the discussions, and sell access to specific community channels along with a bundle of products.
Thinkific also has a community feature, however the possibilities are more limited: you can only access this feature in Thinkific's Pro plan, and you get to only create one community. If you want to option to create more than one community, you need to upgrade to the Grow plan for an additional $50/month or purchase the next pricing tier. The same goes for creating groups of students.
Creates courses about business growth
"I absolutely love how Heights has taken online courses as we know it and turned it into community.
And I love, speaking of community, that I have a vibrant membership community all in one place. I absolutely appreciate all the thoughts that Heights put into making their platform even better."
Boost Sales and Student Engagement with Online Challenges
An online challenge is a feature you didn't know you needed, and it is unique to Heights Platform.
Heights is the Thinkific alternative that allows you to create online challenges, a type of online course with a calendar start and end date, where lessons are also released on specific dates and can potentially expire after some time.
What's so great about challenges is that students go through the content together at the same time. They get to interact with each other via comments under the lessons, engage with the content have feel more accountable to complete the course.
Once a challenge is completed, you can simply restart it at a future date with the click of a button!
Heights is The Best Alternative to Thinkific
You are the ultimate judge of which online course platform better suits your needs. Why is Heights the best Thinkific alternative?
Both Heights and Thinkific are great picks for creators and with each platform you will get all the tools you need to get sell an online course.
Are you looking for a platform that allows you to grow and scale your business? Do you care about the students' experience in your online course and how they learn? Do you want full flexibility on how to structure your online knowledge business?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then Heights is the best online course platform for you.
Create Your Platform TodaySee the full feature list and learn why Heights Platform is everything you need to build and sell a successful online course.
Why trust Heights Platform?
Built by creators, informed by 10,000+ creator businesses
Since 2019, Heights Platform has helped more than 10,000 creators in over 100 countries build and grow online knowledge businesses with courses, communities, coaching, and digital products. We are a small, creator-led team that takes pride in giving creators thoughtful, personal service, not simply access to software.
Our team can work directly with you to help build your program in Heights, drawing on what we have learned from helping thousands of creators launch and improve their offers.
We design for both sides of an education business: helping creators grow while giving their students and members a clearer path to apply what they learn and achieve meaningful results.
We run our own courses and community at Creator Climb, where more than 10,000 members learn alongside other creators.
Our experience also extends beyond the platform. On The Creator's Adventure, Heights founder Bryan McAnulty has interviewed nearly 200 creators, educators, and entrepreneurs from around the world, bringing those practical lessons back into how we build Heights and support creator businesses.