Thinkific's Built-In Checkout

When you connect your account with one of our payment processors, students can pay and enroll in your course, community or bundle using the Thinkific checkout!

In this article:

About This Feature

Performance Checkout

Performance Checkout with TCommerce

Customer Testimonials at the TCommerce Checkout

Full Address Collection at the TCommerce Checkout

Performance Checkout Limitations

Two-Step Checkout

Opting Into the Performance Checkout

Opting Out of the Performance Checkout

After the Checkout

Important Considerations

About This Feature

The Thinkific checkout is a default page that is available on your Thinkific site - you do not need to create a separate page to collect student payments! It allows your students to purchase and enroll in your products seamlessly. Students can sign up with their email address, input their payment details and immediately access their product. Our built-in checkout is regularly updated following industry-wide best practices, providing an easy and secure experience for your students. We keep your checkout experience up-to-date, so you don't have to.

By default, new creators in a Thinkific Payments-supported country will have access to the TCommerce suite of business tools, including Thinkific Payments, as a payment processor. To start using the Thinkific checkout, all you need to do is verify your checkout settings, and set your product pricing! Then, you can simply link any call-to-action buttons to your product checkout and students can start purchasing your product.

If you are not located in one of the supported countries, you will still be able to use Stripe or PayPal as your payment processor and utilize Thinkific Checkout.

Performance Checkout

Available to all creators, our default Performance Checkout is built on checkout best practices and is regularly updated to ensure a smooth, secure experience for students.

The Performance Checkout:

• Works out of the box, with no additional effort or customization required
• Prioritizes a frictionless experience for students, increasing conversions and reducing drop-off
  • Minimizes required fields and validates information in real-time
  • Auto-populates fields for returning students, encouraging repeat business
  • Includes a mobile-ready, responsive design that works on devices of any size, with a focus on accessibility and ease of use
• Is safe and secure, using a TLS-encrypted connection backed by Stripe to ensure full compliance with the latest security requirements

Most importantly, our team is constantly working on optimizing the checkout, ensuring that your students will always have the most up-to-date experience — without the need for any additional effort or updates on your part.

Performance Checkout with TCommerce

Enhance your student checkout experience by enabling TCommerce, powered by Thinkific Payments!

When used with TCommerce, our Performance Checkout becomes a powerful tool that helps you convert and sell more! In addition to the performance checkout benefits listed above, by enabling TCommerce, you get access to:

• TCommerce-exclusive features at the checkout: additional payment options (like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) and digital wallets), Gifting, Group Orders and more!
• A Sales Tax and VAT Solution, where Thinkific automates tax management for your US, Canadian, UK, and EU sales (where tax is applicable)
• Abandoned cart emails, helping you recover lost sales and increase conversions
• Optimized checkout that reflects your brand and products
• Customer testimonials and full address collection at the checkout

Note that your checkout might look slightly different, depending on what features you enabled.

Customer Testimonials at the TCommerce Checkout

When using a Performance checkout with TCommerce, your students will see product reviews at the checkout, encouraging them to complete the purchase by offering social proof! Important considerations for customer testimonials at the checkout include:

• Only the last ten approved reviews will be shown automatically at the checkout
• Two or more reviews will be displayed in a carousel
• It is not possible to handpick which reviews appear at the checkout
• Reviews will be truncated to 4 lines with a See More option

Learn more about reviews here: Course Reviews.

Full Address Collection at the TCommerce Checkout

This feature is currently in Beta and we are continuing to build this functionality. If you have any feedback, please reach out and let us know.

When using a Performance checkout with TCommerce, you can collect students' full address information for tax or reporting purposes without the need for custom fields! To enable the full address collection:

1. From your Admin Dashboard, select Settings
2. Select Payments
3. Scroll down to the Billing Info Collection section
4. Toggle the Collect full billing address at checkout on

When enabled, the students will see additional address fields, which include Address line 1, Address line 2 (optional), City, and Province / State, in addition to the existing Country and Postal code / Zip Code fields that already appear on Performance Checkout.

Important considerations for the full address checkout:

• When a VAT Solution is enabled, the full address is automatically collected from students in the UK and the EU, even if the full address collection is turned off.
• If a student had an existing account before the feature was turned on, they will be asked to provide missing address information the next time they check out / purchase a new product.
• Existing students can edit their address information the next time they check out / purchase a new product.
• At the moment, the collected address information will only be visible in the Transaction report export. Learn more about it here: TCommerce: Transaction Report.
• The full address collection is only available on the Performance checkout with TCommerce and for creators in the TCommerce-supported regions.

Performance Checkout Limitations

Our performance checkout is designed to be secure, frictionless, and ready to be used out of the box. Therefore, some advanced customizations might not be possible. See the list below.

Have a question about a specific feature or customization not covered here? Get in contact with us! Your feedback will help our team decide where to focus their efforts as we continue to improve the Performance Checkout.

Two-Step Checkout

Available to creators with accounts created prior to February 24, 2022, our Two-Step Checkout allows for a fully customizable experience, providing greater control for those who want to make use of specific third-party apps or want to directly modify their student's checkout experience. The Two-Step Checkout separates the account creation and payment details steps, which makes it easier for students to leave the checkout without completing payment. Learn more: Understanding User Sign-Ups Versus Enrollments.

While Thinkific will continue to support both versions of our checkout, we are putting our efforts into improving the Performance Checkout. This includes building support for apps and customization, but also general, ongoing optimization of every facet of the checkout process. Opting into the Performance Checkout means that you can take advantage of these ongoing improvements, with no additional work on your part.

Opting Into the Performance Checkout

This section only applies to creators with accounts created prior to February 24, 2022, who are not using Thinkific Payments as their payment processor. All other creators are already using the Performance Checkout by default — there's no need to opt-in!

If you are currently using our Two-Step Checkout, you now have the option to opt-in to the Performance Checkout and take advantage of the many improvements we've made to the checkout experience.

Before making the switch, please review the Performance checkout limitations listed above to make sure the transition goes smoothly for you and your students. Note that when switching to the Performance checkout you might lose the following:

• apps and integrations that are currently not supported on Performance checkout
• checkout page them customizations
• site footer code that targets the checkout page

The rest of the experience will remain the same, including but not limited to:

• New Sign Up email notifications (if enabled) - emails will include custom fields, if enabled and
• Site Welcome emails (if enabled)
• Product Welcome emails (if enabled)

To switch over to the Performance Checkout, start by logging in to your Thinkific Admin Dashboard, then:

1. Select Settings
2. Scroll down to the Performance Checkout section (or click Performance Checkout in the menu navigation)
3. Set the Activate Performance Checkout toggle to the On position

That's it! You should see a pop-up message confirming the change, and the status next to the Performance Checkout section will show it as Active.

Opting Out of the Performance Checkout

If your account was created before February 24, 2022, you can return to the Two-Step Checkout at any time by following the same instructions and turning the toggle back off. Just remember that these changes go live as soon as you flip the switch, and any students purchasing your course will use whichever checkout is currently active.

After the Checkout

With the Performance Checkout, once a student purchases the product, they are taken to a page where they can create their password and populate any custom fields, finalizing their account creation.

Afterwards, students are taken to a default Thank You page where they can click to continue straight into your product.

If you would like to customize the Thank You page or send the student to a different page after checkout, try out our After Purchase Flow feature!

Important Considerations

• The Thinkific checkout can only be used when integrating directly with Thinkific Payments, Stripe, and/or PayPal. If you are using an external payment solution, you will need to use an external checkout page outside of Thinkific. Learn more about that here: External Payment Solution: What to Consider
• By default, only one product can be purchased at a time using the Thinkific checkout. If you would like to offer additional products to your students during the checkout experience, take a look at our guide on how to sell more with Order Bumps! You can also sell multiple products as a package. For more info check out our Product Bundles feature!
• Country and Zip/Postal Code required fields can't be turned off at checkout (either through Settings or by technical support) when using Thinkific Payments.

More About Thinkific Payments

Thinkific Payments: Managing Student Payments

Thinkific Payments: Payouts

Thinkific Payments: Refunds

Migrating Subscriptions and Payment Plans from Stripe to Thinkific Payments

Thinkific Payments FAQs

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