Migration
Moving from LearnWorlds to Thinkific
The common trigger is scale on a budget. LearnWorlds Starter adds a $5 fee per course sale and caps you at 1,000 monthly active learners; even Learning Center tops out at 2,000. Thinkific counts 10,000 current students on Basic, Start and Grow, and takes no platform fee with Thinkific Payments. The trade is published SCORM and client groups, which Thinkific reserves for quote-based Plus. The move is still a migration project: inventory, written export answers, a reconciliation test, then cutover.
Why teams consider this move
Three registry facts drive most of these switches. None of them is about export tooling, which we do not claim either way.
- Learner cap. LearnWorlds counts monthly active learners: 1,000 on Starter, 2,000 on Pro Trainer and Learning Center. Thinkific counts 10,000 current students on Basic, Start and Grow. A growing audience hits the LearnWorlds ceiling long before Thinkific's.
- Fees. LearnWorlds Starter adds $5 per course sale. Thinkific Payments takes no platform fee at all; bringing your own gateway adds 5%, 2% or 1% depending on plan.
- What you give up. LearnWorlds publishes SCORM from Pro Trainer and client groups from the same tier. Thinkific reserves SCORM for quote-based Plus, so a SCORM catalog is a reason to stay, not to move.
Plan mapping and the cost delta
Map your LearnWorlds plan to the Thinkific tier that matches your real needs, then run the yearly math including fees.
| Platform | Entry plan | From (annual billing) | Platform fees on the entry plan | Runs on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thinkific | Basic | $40/mo | 5% only with your own gateway | Hosted (SaaS) |
| LearnWorlds | Starter | $24/mo | $5 per course sale | Hosted (SaaS) |
| Teachable | Starter | $29/mo | 7.5% transaction fee | Hosted (SaaS) |
| Podia | Mover | $42/mo | 5% transaction fee | Hosted (SaaS) |
| LearnDash | Essentials | $259/year license | No platform fee | Your WordPress site |
A school on LearnWorlds Starter ($24 per month on annual billing) selling $2,000 a month pays about $288 a year in subscription plus roughly $1,200 a year in per-sale fees, near $1,488 total. Thinkific Basic ($40 per month on annual billing) with Thinkific Payments adds no platform fee, closer to $480 total. Put your real sales volume into the cost calculator before deciding.
Apply the checklist to your LearnWorlds school
Follow the full LMS migration checklist and adapt it here.
- Inventory. Count courses, SCORM packages if any, learners, client groups, certificates and active payment plans.
- Ask both vendors in writing. Request a sample export from LearnWorlds for each object type and ask Thinkific what it imports and in what format.
- Run the reconciliation test. Build a fictional dataset, export it, import it into a Thinkific trial, and compare object counts before and after.
Cutover order
Rebuild and verify before touching anything live. Recreate courses in Thinkific, confirm Thinkific Payments is active so you actually escape the fee, and run the reconciliation test on fictional data. Keep LearnWorlds live and billing throughout.
If your catalog is SCORM, stop here: Thinkific does not give you a published SCORM price below Plus, so the move only pays off if SCORM is not the reason you are leaving.
Frequently asked questions
Will I lose SCORM support by moving to Thinkific?
Does Thinkific really charge no per-sale fee?
Will my LearnWorlds courses and learners import into Thinkific?
Keep deciding
LMS migration checklist: what really moves, and what you rebuild
A migration matrix by object type, courses, learners, progress, subscriptions, with what to inventory and what to demand from each vendor in writing.
Thinkific vs LearnWorlds: the answer depends on three things
SCORM, client groups, learner caps and price compared. LearnWorlds for SCORM, Thinkific for a big learner base on a budget. See the split.
Course platform pricing calculator: Thinkific vs LearnWorlds vs Teachable, Podia and LearnDash
Selling courses? Compare the yearly cost of Thinkific, LearnWorlds, Teachable, Podia and LearnDash from your sales, students, admin seats and transaction fees.
SCORM support across all five platforms
SCORM needs import, playback and score reporting back. LearnWorlds sells it self-serve, Thinkific gates it to Plus, and video-course platforms often skip it.