Drive Revenue with New Thinkific Communities

Take your existing Communities to the next level by pricing, packaging, and selling your Community just like your courses - giving you a whole new way to engage and monetize your audience!

About This Feature

Thinkific Communities represent major untapped potential for your business. They provide an opportunity for students to engage and collaborate with one another on an ongoing basis. They work with courses, memberships, coaching, and events—or as a completely standalone experience.

To provide you with more flexibility in managing communities to support your business goals, you now have the ability to create a sellable, comprehensive experience for your students—by building, configuring, and pricing communities as an entirely new learning product!

This means you can grant access to your community by purchase in addition to course or bundle enrollments, groups, and site login.

How It Works

We’ve optimized Thinkific Communities to help you create a community that can act as a standalone sellable product, or work in tandem with your existing courses—putting more control in your hands, and providing new learning and growth opportunities for your students!

With new learning communities, you are now able to:

Create, configure, price, and publish a community using our new Community Builder tool
Sell communities as an independent product at checkout (with or without a course)
Sell a community within a bundle or a membership (subscription)
Sell a community as an order bump, or with coupons!

You can convert any of your existing communities to a sellable product if desired or keep access associated with courses, bundles, groups, or site login. Before making any changes or building a new community, read through this article to make sure you have everything you need to be successful!

Take your community to the next level by utilizing the Thinkific Mobile app! Allow your learners to connect, learn, and share knowledge on the go using a native mobile app. With features like push notifications and activity feeds you can drive higher engagement and keep your content top of mind.

Looking for a mobile app that spotlights your brand with your logo and own App Store listings? Check out our Branded Mobile App solution: Maximize Your Brand Potential With the Branded Mobile App

Important Considerations

You'll need to be using the Performance Checkout to enable communities as a sellable product. If you created your Thinkific account after February 24, 2022, you have the Performance Checkout enabled by default. If you created your account earlier and have not opted in, check out Switching from the Two-Step Checkout to the Performance Checkout.
Make sure you are on the latest version of your theme in order to enable Communities as a sellable product. Learn how to update your theme to find out how to upgrade.

Getting Started

Communities will still be accessible directly from your Admin Dashboard. When you edit an existing community or click + NEW COMMUNITY to create a new, sellable community, you'll have access to our new Community Builder tool.

In addition to the original options you are familiar with, you will be able to set your Community pricing, update your publish state, and more!

Before taking any action on an existing Community, make sure to read through the next section to ensure your students have a seamless experience.

Common Scenarios

Take a look at the scenarios below (expanding the dropdowns for a more comprehensive explanation) and find the option that most closely fits your current situation. Each of these scenarios will help you learn more about what this update means for you, and how you can begin building and selling your Community as a learning product.

I have never created a Thinkific Community before

To begin using your Learning Communities, follow the steps below:

From your Admin Dashboard, go to Products
Select Communities
Select the + NEW COMMUNITY button in the top right-hand corner
From here, you will be able to input a name for your Community
Once you have named your Community, you will be redirected to your Community homepage.

From this page, you will see helpful hints and tips on how to start building engagement, how to get set up, and how to welcome your students to your new Learning Community!

Learn more about available customization options in the Community Builder.

I already have a community created, but I want to make a new 'purchase-only' community in addition to my existing community

You can keep your existing Community as a free product, and then create additional Learning Communities as purchase-only options for your students. To create a new purchase-only Community:

From your Admin Dashboard, go to Products
Select Communities
Select the + NEW COMMUNITY button in the top right-hand corner
From here, you will be able to input a name for your Community
Once you have named your Community, you will be redirected to your Community homepage.

From this page, you will see helpful hints and tips on how to start building engagement, how to get set up, and how to welcome your students to your new learning community!

Learn more about available customization options in the Community Builder.

I already have a community created, and I want to make it 'purchase-only' access

Converting your existing community will take some initial setup, but don't worry, we've got you covered!

Learn how to convert and sell your existing Thinkific Communities.

I am not using T-Commerce

Although it is not mandatory to be using T-Commerce to enable the new learning communities feature, it is both recommended and beneficial!

Thinkific Communities works closely with one of our existing products, Order Bumps. Offering communities for sale via Order Bumps allows you to embed complementary product offers directly in the checkout, enabling your customers to purchase them with one click!

If you choose not to enable T-Commerce, you will still be able to create and sell Thinkific Communities however, you will not be able to access Order Bumps.

Learn how to set up your account with Thinkific Payments, for access to T-Commerce.

I am not using the Performance checkout

To use the new learning communities feature, you will need to be using the Performance Checkout. If you created your Thinkific account after February 24, 2022, you have the Performance Checkout enabled by default.

If you created your account earlier and have not opted into the Performance checkout, you will still be able to create a draft version of your Community before updating your checkout. Once you have created your draft version, you will be prompted from within the Community Builder to update to the Performance checkout—once this is done, you will have access to the after-purchase and pricing configuration screens for your Community!

If you choose not to enable Performance Checkout, you will still be able to update and edit the draft version of your Community Learning Product, however, you will not be able to access selling features until you have upgraded your checkout.

Learn how to switch from the two-step checkout to the Performance checkout.

I am not using the latest version of my Theme

While the new Learning Communities feature does require you to have the most recent version of your theme installed, you will still be able to create a draft version of your Community before updating your theme. Once you have created your draft version, you will be prompted from within the Community Builder to update your theme—once this is done, you will have access to the after-purchase and pricing configuration screens for your Community!

If you choose not to update your theme, you will still be able to update and edit the draft version of your Community Learning Product, however, you will not be able to access selling features until you have upgraded your theme version.

Learn how to update your theme.

What happens to my existing communities?

You may have already created communities as part of your learning experience - here's what you need to know about the changes you can expect in your existing communities.

What you will see:

A new purchase option is available under Access in your community settings. This allows you to convert an existing community from free to purchase only. Make sure to review our detailed guide on how to do that here: Converting and Selling Your Existing Thinkific Communities
The 'Only me' Access setting has been replaced by the new ‘Draft’ publish option. If you had the ‘Only me’ access option selected in your community before these updates, ‘Only me' will still be visible until you change it and save your community. Once you save the new access level, the 'Only me' option will disappear and you will now see the replacement status 'Draft'. A Draft community can only be viewed by a Site Admin.
All of your existing communities where the ‘Only me’ access option was not selected will be Published; however, they will also be set to both Private and Hidden under Visibility in the community settings. This means your communities will not be immediately accessible on your external facing site. You can remove/update these options as needed.
You can manually enroll and unenroll individual students into all of your existing communities.
A default community page will be available on your Site pages
Your existing communities can be added to a bundle, without requiring you to change Access settings

What you will not see:

Your existing communities will not suddenly display publicly on your site as available products. They will be set to Private and Hidden by default.
Your existing communities will not be accessible via the public REST API

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I keep my communities the way they are? Do I have to update them?

Although we are updating communities to offer all of our Creators the ability to sell, package, and price communities, you are not obligated to create purchase-only communities! How you choose to use communities to best fit your students and your business is entirely in your hands.

What selling features are available to Communities?

Communities will have all of the same selling features that are currently available to courses. This means you will be able to create coupons, add order bumps, create sales widgets, set affiliates, and share revenue in your communities!