Education Cloud Plus vs Thinkific
Features, use cases, pros and cons, and pricing side by side — and which one to pick.
Best for: Entrepreneurs who need practical marketing skills without hiring an agency, Small business owners handling their own marketing
Read the full Education Cloud Plus reviewBest for: Experts and coaches selling courses, memberships, coaching, or digital downloads, Training academies scaling professional education programs
Read the full Thinkific reviewCommission may apply at no extra cost
Education Cloud Plus vs Thinkific: features compared
Compare key features side by side
Feature Comparison Summary
Which should you choose?
Choose Education Cloud Plus if
- You need to learn marketing, SEO, or AI skills yourself
Choose Thinkific if
- You're selling courses, memberships, or coaching to an audience
- You need built-in checkout, community, and B2B invoicing
- You want integrations, API access, and phone support
Education Cloud Plus vs Thinkific: pros and cons
Education Cloud Plus
Education Cloud PLUS packs 50+ marketing courses with quizzes, a Learning Assistant, and custom learning plans, plus a genuinely free tier with three rotating courses each month. The library carries strong third-party ratings, though plans cover just one seat and no refund policy is posted. Overall, it's a solid pick for self-guided marketers who want structure without guesswork.
Pros
- Quizzes score your knowledge instantly and the built-in Learning Assistant recommends which of the 50+ courses to take next, so you follow a guided path instead of guessing what to study
- Lessons come in video, audio, and text formats with images and infographics, and work on desktop, laptop, mobile, and tablet, so you can switch formats and devices to fit your schedule
- Custom learning plans let you save entire courses or single lessons from different courses with one click, building a study list around your exact goals rather than a fixed curriculum
Cons
- Every plan, including the $399 Lifetime Pass, covers just 1 user account, so teams must buy a separate subscription for each member, which raises the true cost
- No refund policy is listed on the pricing page, so you have to review the checkout terms through FastSpring or Paddle before committing
- There is no offline access option — lessons run through the platform's web app, which limits learning without an internet connection
Thinkific bundles courses, community, and checkout on one platform, with flat per-site pricing that covers up to 10,000 students, verified security credentials, and a 4.5/5 G2 rating. The trade-offs: no free plan or refund guarantee, tier-gated features, and bandwidth caps. Overall, it's a strong pick for creators and teams serious about selling what they know.
Pros
- Courses, community, and checkout run on one platform with a single learner login, so you avoid stitching together a separate course builder, payment processor, and community app.
- Commerce goes beyond basic payments — subscriptions, payment plans, bundles, upsells, order bumps, multi-currency checkout, automated sales tax and VAT, and failed-payment recovery are all built in.
- Pricing is flat per site rather than per student — every self-serve plan covers up to 10,000 current students and unlimited published courses, so costs don't climb with enrollment.
Cons
- There is no free plan — only a 30-day trial — and Thinkific advertises no money-back guarantee.
- Video bandwidth is capped by tier at 100–400 GB per month, the main limit that scales with price, which can constrain video-heavy course catalogs.
- Important capabilities sit behind higher tiers — API access and webhooks start at Grow, Thinkific branding removal requires Grow, and SCORM, SSO, and HubSpot/Salesforce integrations are reserved for quote-based Plus.
Education Cloud Plus and Thinkific in detail
Education Cloud Plus
Education Cloud PLUS is an online learning platform from Squirrly (AISQ) with a library of over 50 premium marketing courses. Topics include AI, SEO, social media, and content marketing. It's built for entrepreneurs, marketing teams, content creators, small business owners, social media managers, SEO beginners, affiliate marketers, and bloggers. More than 139,000 students have taken its courses.
Standout features
- Learn Without Limits, on Any Device
- Quizzes That Show You What to Study Next
- Build a Custom Learning Plan in One Click
- Turn Spare Minutes into Real Progress
- A Library That Keeps Growing
Use cases
- Close Your Skill Gaps in Order
- Learn in Spare Minutes
- Build a Plan Around Your Goals
- Try It Before You Pay
Thinkific
Thinkific is an all-in-one platform for creating, selling, and running online learning. It covers courses, communities, memberships, coaching, digital downloads, and the checkout to sell them. It's built for experts turning knowledge into revenue, academies scaling training, companies running customer education, and associations powering member learning. Thinkific says 20,000+ teams use it, and customers have earned $4.23B.
Standout features
- Build courses learners actually finish
- Community that lives beside your lessons
- Sell more with built-in commerce
- AI that handles the busywork
Use cases
- Turn your expertise into revenue
- Scale a professional training academy
- Train customers and partners
- Build member education that renews
Pricing compared
List prices from each vendor's pricing page, before taxes and add-ons. Costs are per month.
| Pricing compared | Education Cloud Plus | Thinkific |
|---|---|---|
| From (cheapest paid plan) | $13.33/mo YEARLY Plan | $54/mo Basic |
| Free plan | Yes Limited to 3x free courses per month; 1 user account | No |
| Free trial | Not stated | 30 days |
| Money-back guarantee | Not stated | Not stated |
| Annual billing savings | — | Up to 26% |
| Pricing model | Flat price | Flat price |
| Cost for 1 user | FreeCheaper FREE Plan plan, billed annually | $40/mo Basic plan, billed annually |
| Cost for 5 users | — | $40/mo Basic plan, billed annually · price per account (user limit not stated) |
| Cost for 10 users | — | $40/mo Basic plan, billed annually · price per account (user limit not stated) |
| Cost for 25 users | — | $40/mo Basic plan, billed annually · price per account (user limit not stated) |
| Plans | 4 | 5 |
| Prices checked | Checked Oct 12, 2026 | Vendor page checked Oct 13, 2026 |
| Price history | Tracking prices since Oct 1, 2026. No price change detected yet. | Tracking prices since Oct 1, 2026. No price change detected yet. |
- Cheapest plan that fits each team size. Per-user plans are multiplied by the number of users (respecting stated minimums and seat packs). Plans that include some users cost their base price plus the extra-user price for each user beyond those included. Flat-priced plans with no stated user limit are counted as one licence per user.
Cheaper for your team size
For 1 user (billed annually), Education Cloud Plus costs $0/mo vs Thinkific at $40/mo.
- Only Education Cloud Plus has a free plan.
Computed from published list prices on the dates shown. Excludes taxes, add-ons and promotions.
More comparisons
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sell courses with Education Cloud Plus?
No. It's built for learning marketing skills, not selling. If you want to sell courses, memberships, or coaching, Thinkific is the purpose-built choice.
Which scales better for teams?
Thinkific. Its plans cover up to 10,000 students, and Plus adds 10,000+ seats, SSO, and SCORM. Education Cloud Plus limits every plan to one user account.