Leaving Thinkific? Move the courses, not just the sales page.
Thinkific is the deepest course LMS you can rent, and most owners already run their marketing site on WordPress. Here is what exports (users and progress), what is rebuilt (the courses), what the fees and caps cost, the order we move it in with LearnDash, and the version where you stay.
“Because Thinkific’s native page builder is limited, we want our front-facing sales pages built on a dedicated, high-performance platform… and seamlessly connected to Thinkific’s checkout and CRM systems.”
“We have moved all our courses to a new platform, but finalizing it takes more time than we thought and it takes time from what we should work with.”
“I need a dedicated Thinkific Course Manager who owns the day-to-day operations of the platform so I can focus on developing new courses and clinical content.”
“I’m trying to decide on a software like GHL, Kajabi, Kartra etc where I can have everything for my business in one place.”
Thinkific is the best course engine you can rent. The rest of the business lives somewhere else.
Thinkific has the deepest LMS in the category: quizzes, assignments, certificates, cohorts, learning paths. Owners start looking at the door when the page builder cannot make the sales page they want, when the community cap or the student cap bites, or when they are paying a fee for using their own Stripe. Most of them already have a WordPress site for the marketing; the courses are the last thing on the other side of the fence.
First we test whether you should move at all.
If the LMS depth is what your business runs on, Thinkific may be the right place to stay. The Audit answers these before anything moves.
If you move: courses into LearnDash, everything on one login.
Nothing is turned off until the new site has taken real money and let real students in. The order below is the one we use on every course-platform migration.
- 1Export users and progress, inventory the coursesThinkific’s CSVs for students and progress, your own video files, and a list of every course, chapter, quiz and certificate. The unused courses do not move.
- 2Rebuild the courses in LearnDashSame names and order so links in old emails keep making sense. Quizzes, certificates and drip rebuilt; cohorts become LearnDash groups.
- 3Wire payments and access, then test the chainStripe or PayPal into the membership or shop plugin, tags into the CRM, the access rule on every course. A test purchase, a failed card, a cancel, as a student on a phone.
- 4Import students, re-apply progress, send one emailUsers created from the export with their courses attached; completed lessons marked from the progress CSV. One “set your password” email, in batches, with a reply address a human reads.
- 5Run both for one billing cycle, then close ThinkificSubscriptions move at renewal so nobody is double-charged. Old Thinkific links redirect. Then the plan, the fee and the add-ons stop.
Do my students lose their progress?
Thinkific exports users and their course progress as CSVs, which is better than most platforms. Lesson-level completion can be re-applied in LearnDash for students who were mid-course; the course content itself is rebuilt, with videos re-uploaded from your own copies.
I rely on quizzes, certificates and cohorts. Can WordPress do that?
Yes, with LearnDash: quizzes, assignments, certificates, drip, groups for cohorts. Thinkific’s LMS is the deepest in its category and we say so; LearnDash is the WordPress equivalent and it is the one we build on.
My sales pages are already on WordPress. Is that most of the move?
Half of it, and the common starting point: many owners already run the marketing site on WordPress and only the courses on Thinkific. Moving the courses puts checkout, courses, community and email on one login, which is usually the real reason to move.
What happens to Thinkific Payments and my sales tax?
Payments move to your own Stripe or PayPal through a membership or shop plugin; you pay the processor’s fee only. Thinkific’s automated sales tax add-on covers the US and Canada; on WordPress a tax plugin or your accountant takes that over, and we flag it in the Roadmap.
What if the answer is to stay on Thinkific?
Then that is what the Roadmap says: stay, and fix these three things. If the LMS depth is what your business runs on, staying is often right, and you keep the Roadmap either way.
The Audit runs the stay-or-move test on your Thinkific school, maps every LMS feature you use to its WordPress equivalent or says there isn’t one, and writes down the answer with the cost of each path.
Strategy Audit: $1,500, two weeks, a written Membership Operations Roadmap you own. Refundable in week one if we can’t help. The $1,500 counts toward a fix or Support Block started within 30 days.