Thinkific Online Courses: Why Do You Need Video Hosting?

Online courses are extremely popular today and the COVID-19 pandemic has made them even more popular.

Thinkific Official Logo Online Course Platform

One of the ways you can make an impact and earn money is to turn your knowledge into an online course.

All you need to create an online course is a topic you’re passionate about and the type of knowledge that could help other people.  

Doing some market research is essential to find out whether there is a demand for the course you want to create and you will need to differentiate your topic in some way from other online courses already out there.

Various platforms, such as Thinkific, make it very easy to create online courses without having any coding experience.

Create an Online Course with Thinkific

Create your online courses with Thinkific online course creator

Thinkific is easy to set up and you can quickly get started with creating your online course.

It has a free option which is a great way to test out the platform before signing up for their online course plans..

Benefits of using Thinkific as an Online Course creator
  • Thinkific allows you to create a course curriculum and build a customizable website to deliver your courses. You can set up your course so that Thinkific hosts it but you have a custom domain.
  • Marketing and selling your courses is efficient because Thinkific integrates with your favorite business and marketing tools. 
  • You can deliver your courses in a student-focused environment using tools like quizzes and knowledge checks to assess how well participants are doing. 
  • Accepting payment for doing a course is easy with secure payment options like PayPal and Stripe. 

What features does Thinkific online course platform offer?

Some of the features available on Thinkific include customizable online course pages, private and hidden courses, membership sites, multiple instructors and a drip schedule that enables you to send out content at pre-set times. 

Managing students is easy with a user-friendly tool.

Security for your website includes regular automatic back-ups and built-in SSL certificates.

Basic analytics are available and online support is good.

Can you make online video courses on Thinkific?

Online course open on a laptop screen with a notepad in front of the laptop

Today videos are one of the most popular ways to engage students undertaking online courses.

Thinkific hosts videos for online courses and you can create video-based lessons for your students.

You can even host live video lessons and webinars within Thinkific by combining it with Zoom’s video and webinar capabilities.   

You must create your videos for courses outside of Thinkific and then upload them to the online course platform.

Video hosting on Thinkific platform is unlimited but there is a 2GB size limit per video and it’s recommended that your videos are compressed to reduce file size.  

You can upload to a video library, at lesson level, or using a bulk importer. When you create a video lesson on Thinkific, you can select an existing video from the library or choose to upload one directly to a lesson.

Videos will play in a video lesson and setting options include volume, captions, speed, resolution, and full-screen mode.

Thinkific Video-specific features

Various video-specific features on Thinkific can expand the functionality of video lessons, such as being able to change the color of the video player, add closed captions, remove the video play-bar, enable lesson autoplay and allow students to download videos to watch offline. 

Changing the color of the video player means you can match it to your brand colors.

Removing the play bar is a way to prevent students from skipping through a video. You can specify a completion percentage for the course and students can’t mark a video lesson as complete before they reach it.

Thinkific Video library

Your video library stores all of your videos so you have a central location to upload videos, add captions, and view analytics. 

Thinkific Monthly fee

Thinkific charges a flat monthly fee based on technical features, third-party integrations, and course volume.

You can host up to three courses for free, after which you need to upgrade your subscription. 

Drawbacks and Disadvantages of videos on Thinkific

A proper video CMS offers far more in terms of organization, in-video search features, built-in video SEO, advanced video security and much more.

Video hosting platforms are built specifically for hosting online course videos and paid video platforms have a great deal to offer when it comes to customization and enhancing videos.   

In-video search, for instance, is more advanced on video hosting platforms.

Video chaptering divides videos up into segments and viewers can go straight to a specific segment.

Video hosting platforms make video content instantly accessible and easy to find.

Another way in which using a video hosting platform can help is that SEO features are automatically included in the video embed code.

Titles and meta descriptions of videos can include keywords people use to search and find videos. 

Why you should use a video hosting platform for videos on Thinkific

Online Course can effectively add video to their courses with a video hosting platform

There are many benefits to using a private video hosting platform for your Thinkific videos, such as being able to use video enhancements like CTAs and lead generation forms.

CTAs

Calls-to-action in videos can encourage views to perform actions such as signing up for a newsletter or downloading an ebook.    

Lead generation forms

Adding lead generation forms to videos helps you to grow your email subscriber list.

Integration of your email marketing tool with your video hosting platform means you can use videos in your emails. 

Customizable video player

You can brand your customizable HTML5 video player with your logo and brand colors, customize the controls and use many interactive elements. 

Advanced video analytics

Video hosting solutions offer advanced video analytics that are extremely useful for online course creators.

Data captured from users in real-time from video analytics can give important insights when it comes to marketing. Personalizing messaging according to user behavior means that students receive the individual attention they expect.

For example, you can send reminder emails to students to complete watching a video. 

Customizable thumbnails

When you customize your thumbnails, you can give users more incentive to click.

Animated thumbnails can further increase the play rate of videos.  

Integrations

A video hosting platform offers extensive integrations with many of the other systems and tools you use. 

Cincopa & Thinkific: Video enhancement and powerful Video CMS with video hosting capabilities

video hosting platforms offer additional video features for online courses

Cincopa offers a video content management system (CMS) that helps you to manage all your videos with ease.

You can create, upload, store, organize, share and analyze videos with a video CMS

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) 

Video content delivery is important if you want to know how to ensure video quality.

Cincopa has a CDN (Content Delivery Network) which makes delivery fast and secure with a buffer less viewing experience. This is because servers are distributed widely and content can be served from the one closest to the user’s device. 

Cincopa supports many types of video formats and ensures that they are accessible on any device and browser.

The video hosting platform automatically transcodes videos after they are uploaded into multiple versions so students can watch them in high quality even on mobile devices.    

Adaptive bitrate streaming allows you to deliver quality videos to users with fast internet speeds and at the same time deliver lower-resolution videos to viewers with slower internet.  

High-level Video Encryption & Video Security

One of the benefits of using a video hosting platform like Cincopa is the high level of video security it offers.

The last thing you want when you’ve spent time creating your online course is for unauthorized users to access your material.

Cincopa offers multiple layers of security and video encryption that helps to secure transmitting, storage and delivery of videos with its enterprise video content management. 

Uploaded videos and related metadata are encrypted, stored securely in the server databases with backups and delivered for secure video viewing.

You can password-protect galleries on the online course so sensitive information does not get into the wrong hands.

The information can be anything from student data to your marketing strategies. 

You can also stop unwanted downloads by enabling Right Click Protection or video encrypt content to prevent unwanted interception and download of video assets.

Domain Lock means your videos can only be embedded on specific domains. Attaching branding and watermarks to your content prevents commercial competitors from using it for their gain.  

Easy embedding

You can easily embed your enhanced videos directly from Cincopa into your video courses on Thinkific or on any other website by copying and pasting the HTML code. 

Conclusion

Thinkific is a good platform to use for creating courses as it is easy to use and offers tools to help you all the way from creating a course curriculum to managing students post-launch. 

Managing videos can be a complex task and Thinkific was not made specifically for videos so it does not offer extensive customization and video enhancement options.

Thinkific video security and video analytics are fairly basic. 

Using a video hosting platform like Cincopa offers many benefits, such as extensive customization options and video enhancements.

Cincopa enterprise video content management offers multi-layered video security, which is essential when you want to monetize your online courses.

The advanced video analytics Cincopa offers can also help you to optimize your online courses and make them the best they can be. 

Originally published on February 4th, 2022, updated on February 17th, 2022
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Thinkific Online Courses: Why Do You Need Video Hosting?

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