Thinkific is a leading course platform known for its clean interface, transparent pricing, and strong student experience tools. For Showit website owners who want to add an online course business to their existing brand, Thinkific offers a capable and reliable back end that works well alongside Showit’s design strengths.
This guide covers how to connect Thinkific to your Showit website, from basic checkout linking to embedded experiences, so your course business feels like a natural extension of your existing brand rather than a bolt-on addition.
What Thinkific Brings to a Showit Course Business
Thinkific hosts and delivers your course content, manages student accounts, processes payments, handles completion certificates, and provides analytics on student progress. According to Thinkific’s platform overview, over 50,000 course creators have used the platform to build course-based businesses.
For Showit users, the primary appeal of Thinkific is its no-transaction-fee pricing model on paid plans, its clean and professional student experience, and its straightforward integration options for connecting to external marketing sites.
Thinkific is particularly strong for creators who want a structured course experience with quizzes, assignments, and completion tracking without the higher subscription cost of platforms like Kajabi.
The Showit and Thinkific Integration Model
Showit and Thinkific are connected through the same model used for most course platform integrations with Showit: strategic linking combined with design consistency.
Your Showit site handles marketing. This includes your course sales pages, your about page, your testimonials, your blog content, and your brand story. When a visitor is ready to enroll, they transition to Thinkific for checkout and course access.
The Thinkific side hosts your course curriculum, your student portal, and your checkout flow. By matching your Thinkific branding as closely as possible to your Showit brand identity, you minimize the visual transition that students experience.
Step 1: Build Your Course in Thinkific
Before setting up the Showit integration, your Thinkific course should be complete or nearly complete. Log in to your Thinkific admin and set up your course with its curriculum, lessons, and pricing options.
In your Thinkific school settings, customize the visual presentation as thoroughly as Thinkific’s tools allow. Upload your brand logo. Set your primary and accent colors using your Showit brand hex codes. Choose a font that approximates your primary Showit typeface.
Thinkific allows custom subdomain connections. Connect a subdomain like courses.yourdomain.com or learn.yourdomain.com to your Thinkific school so that students access your courses under your own domain rather than a generic Thinkific URL. This is one of the most impactful steps for brand continuity between your Showit site and your Thinkific school.
Step 2: Collect Your Thinkific Enrollment and Checkout URLs
For each course you want to sell, locate the enrollment or checkout URL in your Thinkific course settings. Thinkific provides direct enrollment links and checkout page URLs that send a prospective student to the payment flow for a specific course and pricing option.
Note the URL for your free course enrollment (if you offer a free course as a lead magnet) separately from your paid course URLs. You will use each appropriately throughout your Showit setup.
Step 3: Build Your Course Sales Page in Showit
Create a dedicated sales page for your Thinkific course in the Showit editor. This page is your primary enrollment driver and should be designed with the same care as your highest-priority service pages.
Structure your sales page content as follows:
A headline focused on the primary outcome or transformation. An empathetic opening that articulates the problem your ideal student is experiencing. A description of your course as the solution to that problem. A curriculum breakdown showing what is inside. Your credentials and relevant experience that justify your teaching authority. Student testimonials or documented results. Pricing and enrollment details with clear calls to action.
For photography educators, coaches, and creative professionals whose brand is built around their aesthetic, the visual quality of this sales page is inseparable from the perceived quality of the course itself. A beautifully designed Showit sales page signals before a word is read that this creator takes quality seriously.
For practical guidance on building sales pages that convert, the Showit sales page design guide covers the elements that drive enrollment decisions.
Step 4: Add Thinkific Enrollment Buttons to Your Showit Page
At multiple points throughout your Showit sales page, add call-to-action buttons linked to your Thinkific course checkout URL. Use clear, action-oriented button labels: Enroll Now, Start Learning Today, Get Instant Access, or Join the Course.
In the Showit editor, set each button’s link to your Thinkific checkout URL. After publishing, test each button to confirm it redirects correctly to the Thinkific payment page and that the correct course and pricing option are pre-selected.
For courses with multiple pricing options, such as a standard enrollment and a VIP package with added support, create separate buttons for each option linked to their respective Thinkific checkout URLs.
Step 5: Use Thinkific’s Embeddable Checkout Widget
Thinkific offers an embeddable checkout widget that you can place directly on your Showit page. This allows visitors to complete enrollment without leaving your Showit site.
In your Thinkific course settings, look for the checkout widget or embed code option. Copy the provided code.
In the Showit editor, add a custom code element to your canvas and paste the Thinkific embed code. Position this element where you want the checkout form to appear on your sales page, typically after the pricing section or at the bottom of the page.
Publish and test the embedded checkout using Thinkific’s test mode. Confirm that enrollment completes correctly and the student receives course access.
Be aware that the embedded checkout form will reflect Thinkific’s styling, not your Showit design. The form colors will match your Thinkific brand settings, but the layout is determined by Thinkific’s checkout template rather than your Showit canvas design.
Step 6: Create a Free Preview Course or Mini Course
Thinkific allows you to create free courses with no payment required. Use this capability to build a free mini-course or sample experience that introduces prospective students to your teaching style.
A free course of three to five lessons that delivers genuine value and naturally leads into your paid course serves multiple marketing functions. It builds trust by demonstrating your expertise before asking for payment. It grows your email list because Thinkific requires email signup for course enrollment. It creates a warm audience of students who have already experienced your teaching and are primed to purchase your paid course.
On your Showit site, promote the free course in your navigation, homepage, and blog content. Link directly to the Thinkific free course enrollment URL from these placements. Once a student enrolls in the free course, you have their email address and a direct pathway to upsell the paid course through email marketing.
Connecting Thinkific to Your Email Marketing System
Thinkific integrates with email marketing platforms including Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Drip, and others through its native integrations and through Zapier. Setting up this connection allows new Thinkific enrollments to automatically trigger actions in your email marketing system.
Common automation workflows include:
Adding new paid students to a dedicated email list for ongoing course-related communication and future product announcements.
Triggering a course welcome email sequence immediately after enrollment.
Adding new free course students to a nurture sequence that delivers additional value and introduces the paid course.
For Showit users who run their email marketing through tools like ConvertKit or Flodesk, the Showit email marketing integration guide covers how these tools connect to your broader Showit marketing ecosystem.
Building a Courses Page in Showit
If you offer multiple Thinkific courses, build a dedicated courses page in Showit that presents your full curriculum library. This page helps visitors discover all of your educational offerings and find the course that matches their current stage or goal.
Design each course entry as a visual card with the course title, a brief outcome description, the price or a free indicator, and an enrollment or learn more button. Sort courses in a logical progression if they build on each other, or by topic category if they address different audiences.
Link to this courses page from your main navigation, your homepage, and relevant blog posts. For a Showit site with an active blog, linking from blog post content to relevant courses is one of the highest-converting internal linking strategies available.
Tracking Thinkific Enrollments in Your Analytics
To understand which marketing efforts are driving course enrollments, you need conversion tracking that bridges your Showit analytics and your Thinkific enrollment data.
Thinkific and Google Analytics
In your Thinkific school settings, add your Google Analytics measurement ID. Thinkific will fire enrollment events to your Google Analytics account when students complete checkout. Review these events in your Google Analytics reports to understand which traffic sources, pages, and campaigns are generating enrollments.
Thinkific and Meta Pixel
If you run Facebook or Instagram ads to promote your courses, configure your Meta Pixel in Thinkific’s tracking settings. Thinkific will fire a Purchase event when a student completes a paid enrollment, which Meta uses to measure your ad campaign’s return on investment and optimize for future enrollments.
For Showit-specific tracking configurations, the server-side tracking setup guide for Showit covers advanced tracking approaches that complement your Thinkific analytics.
Thinkific Communities and Engagement Features
Thinkific includes built-in community features that allow students to interact with each other and with you as the instructor. Enabling your Thinkific community creates an ongoing student experience that extends beyond the course content itself.
Promote your Thinkific community on your Showit site as a selling point. If your course includes community access, feature this prominently on your Showit sales page. The community element is a meaningful differentiator that increases perceived course value and can justify a higher price point.
FAQ
Does Thinkific have a free plan that works with a Showit site?
Thinkific offers a free plan that allows you to create and sell courses with limited features. The free plan includes Thinkific branding on checkout pages and does not include custom subdomain connection. For a professional integration with your Showit site, a paid Thinkific plan that allows custom domain connection is recommended.
Can I have my Thinkific courses on a subdomain of my Showit domain?
Yes. Thinkific supports custom subdomain connection on paid plans. You configure this by adding a DNS record at your domain registrar pointing a subdomain (such as courses.yourdomain.com) to your Thinkific school. Thinkific’s documentation provides the specific DNS values needed.
What is the difference between Thinkific and Teachable for Showit users?
Both platforms integrate with Showit through the same strategic linking approach. Thinkific is often preferred for its no-transaction-fee pricing on paid plans and its quiz and assignment features. Teachable has a slightly larger creator community and some different plan structures. Both are solid choices; the decision typically comes down to your specific feature needs and price sensitivity.
Can I offer payment plans through Thinkific on my Showit sales page?
Yes. Thinkific supports payment plan pricing options. Each payment plan option has its own checkout URL, which you can link to separately on your Showit sales page. Present payment plan options clearly on your sales page so visitors can choose the payment structure that works for them.
How do I handle students who have questions about course access if they enrolled through my Showit site?
Student support happens within your Thinkific school. You can direct students to your Thinkific school’s support email or support page. Consider adding a brief student support FAQ to your Showit courses page that covers common questions like how to access the course, how to reset passwords, and what to do if a lesson is not loading
