Neutral mentions of Thinkific

For an online school with multiple instructors + revenue sharing, I’d avoid trying to make the LMS handle the entire financial workflow. The cleanest setup is usually:

My recommended stack

The key piece is Stripe Connect. It is explicitly built for platforms/marketplaces that collect money from customers and distribute portions to multiple sellers or service providers. It supports connected instructor accounts, onboarding/verification, payment splitting, scheduled payouts, refunds, and tax reporting. Stripe Docs Stripe Docs

stripe.com

How I'd structure it

Suppose a student pays $500 for Instructor A's course.

Your system records:

• Gross sale: $500
• School share: 30% = $150
• Instructor share: 70% = $350
• Stripe/payment costs: handled according to your chosen accounting/revenue-share rules
• Refund/chargeback: automatically attributed according to your agreement
• Instructor payout: weekly or monthly

Stripe Connect can route funds to connected instructor accounts and gives you control over payout timing. Stripe Stripe Docs

That is much better than paying instructors manually from a spreadsheet once a month.

One important caveat with Thinkific

Thinkific does have a Revenue Partners feature for tracking revenue sharing, but its own documentation says that payments to the partners are made manually outside Thinkific. It also only supports one PayPal and one Stripe account per Thinkific account for built-in checkout. Thinkific Support

So if your revenue-sharing model is going to be a core part of the business, I'd use Thinkific/Kajabi primarily for access and course management, while making Stripe Connect the financial backbone.

If you want the simplest possible setup

I'd choose:

Thinkific + Stripe Connect + QuickBooks Online

Students buy through your school → Thinkific controls access → your backend associates the sale with the instructor → Stripe Connect calculates/routes the instructor's share → QuickBooks records the transaction.

If you're building a larger school/marketplace where instructors can independently publish courses, I'd go one step further and build a lightweight custom "instructor/revenue" layer around Stripe Connect. Connect supports onboarding instructors, KYC/verification, split payments, payouts, reporting, and 1099 support, which makes it much more suitable for this model than ordinary Stripe payments. Stripe Stripe

If you tell me (1) roughly how many instructors, (2) whether they create their own courses, (3) whether revenue splits vary by course, and (4) whether students pay subscriptions or one-time fees, I can recommend the exact architecture and 2–3 software options at different budgets.

For a university adjunct building mini-courses, I would prioritize software that can do four things well:

1. Academic assessments (quizzes, exams, rubrics, question banks, grading workflows)
2. Learning analytics (engagement, completion, performance trends)
3. Student experience (easy navigation, feedback, accessibility)
4. Low administrative overhead (important if you are not running a full university IT operation)

The best choice depends on whether you are creating credit-bearing university courses, professional development, or independent online courses.

Best overall options

1. Canvas LMS — best fit for university-style mini-courses

Best for: adjuncts who want a traditional higher-ed classroom experience

Strengths:

• Strong quiz and assignment tools
• Rubrics and SpeedGrader-style grading workflows
• Question banks and item analysis
• Modules that mimic academic course structures
• Good student analytics dashboards
• Integrates well with publisher tools, video platforms, plagiarism checkers, and assessment systems

Canvas is widely used in higher education and is designed around academic workflows rather than just content delivery. Instructure G2

Good setup for an adjunct:

• Canvas + institutional account (if your university provides one)
• Canvas Free for Teacher for experimenting
• Add external tools only when needed

Analytics you can get:

• Student participation
• Assignment submission patterns
• Quiz performance
• Module completion
• Engagement trends

Best if: you want your mini-course to feel like a real university course.

2. Moodle — best for flexibility and academic rigor

Best for: instructors who want control and customization

Strengths:

• Excellent assessment engine
• Very strong question bank capabilities
• Randomized quizzes
• Competency-based assessment
• Detailed activity logs
• Custom reports
• Large ecosystem of plugins

Moodle is open-source and can provide deep analytics and customization, though it generally requires more technical management than hosted LMS options. MooDIY Blog

Good setup:

• MoodleCloud for simplicity
• Self-hosted Moodle if you have technical support

Best if: you want to build a reusable academic platform or competency-based courses.

3. D2L Brightspace — best analytics-heavy choice

Best for: courses where measuring learning outcomes matters

Strengths:

• Strong learning analytics
• Adaptive learning options
• Competency tracking
• Detailed reporting
• Good support for institutional programs

This is often chosen by institutions that care heavily about student success metrics and program-level analytics. Raccoon Gang

Best if: your mini-courses may grow into certificates or continuing education programs.

If you want something lighter than a university LMS

4. Thinkific or Teachable

Best for: public-facing courses, professional learners, paid micro-courses

Pros:

• Fast setup
• Payments
• Video hosting
• Completion certificates
• Basic quizzes
• Learner analytics

Cons:

• Less academic assessment depth
• Weaker grading/rubric workflows
• Less like a university classroom

5. Open edX

Best for: MOOCs, large-scale public education

Pros:

• Designed for university-scale online learning
• Strong analytics possibilities
• Supports complex course structures

Cons:

• More infrastructure than a solo adjunct usually wants

Assessment-specific tools worth adding

If your LMS is good but you want more sophisticated assessment:

• Gradescope — excellent for rubric-based grading, especially STEM, handwritten work, and structured assignments
• Turnitin — originality checking and feedback workflows
• Qualtrics — surveys, course evaluations, research-quality feedback
• Respondus — exam creation and proctoring support in many university environments

My shortlist for an adjunct creating mini-courses

For most adjunct faculty, I would start with Canvas (if your institution provides access) or MoodleCloud. They give you the academic structure—modules, assessments, grading, analytics—without requiring you to build a technology stack from scratch. Dynamic Pixel Raccoon Gang

If you tell me whether your mini-courses are intended for enrolled university students, continuing education/professional learners, or a public paid audience, I can narrow this to a more specific stack.

Yes. For a business selling certification courses + high-stakes proctored exams + verifiable certificates, I’d look beyond a normal LMS and use a dedicated assessment/certification platform.

Strong options

• Questionmark — probably the strongest fit if exam security is the priority. It supports certification programs, question banks, secure-browser lockdown, identity verification, AI/record-and-review proctoring, live proctoring, audit trails, and digital credentials through Credly. It can also integrate with an existing LMS via LTI, SCORM, AICC, and xAPI. Questionmark Online Assessment Platform Questionmark Online Assessment Platform

questionmark.com

• Moodle + a proctoring/credentialing integration — attractive if you want to own the learning experience and have more control over course delivery. You'd typically assemble Moodle with separate assessment/proctoring and credential components, rather than getting everything from one vendor.
• Talview — worth evaluating if automated/live proctoring and identity verification are central requirements. It is more assessment/proctoring-oriented than a conventional course LMS.
• LearnWorlds / Thinkific — better suited to the commercial course-selling side (landing pages, payments, learner access, course content). For genuinely high-stakes certification exams, I'd pair them with a dedicated assessment/proctoring system rather than relying on their native quizzes.

What I'd recommend for your model

If you're building a serious professional certification business, I'd consider this architecture:

Course platform/LMS → secure assessment platform → proctored exam → pass/fail → digital credential → public verification page

The important distinction is that course completion isn't the certification. The certificate should be issued only after the candidate passes a controlled assessment, with the exam attempt, identity verification, score, and credential all traceable.

Questionmark is particularly interesting because it explicitly covers the certification lifecycle: assessment authoring, secure delivery, proctoring, reporting, and credential issuance/integration. It offers live proctoring as well as recorded/AI-assisted review and secure-browser controls. Questionmark Online Assessment Platform Questionmark Online Assessment Platform

For verifiable certificates, I'd also make sure the credential contains a unique credential ID/URL, recipient, certification name, issue date, expiration (if applicable), issuer, and verification status. Questionmark's certification offering supports digital badging through its Credly integration. Questionmark Online Assessment Platform

If you tell me your approximate number of candidates per month, course price, whether you already have an LMS, and whether exams are low-, medium-, or high-stakes, I can narrow this to 3–5 platforms and compare pricing, proctoring, certificates, payments, integrations, and security for your specific business model.

For selling certification courses, you usually need more than an LMS. A strong certification stack combines:

• Course delivery (videos, lessons, payments, learner tracking)
• Secure assessments (question banks, randomization, lockdown browser, anti-cheating controls)
• Remote proctoring (ID verification, webcam monitoring, live or AI review)
• Credential issuance (tamper-resistant certificates, verification URLs, badges)
• Audit trails (proof that a certificate was earned legitimately)

Here are software options commonly used for secure certification programs:

Common architecture choices

Option 1: All-in-one certification platform

Good if you want to launch quickly.

Example stack:

• LMS + course sales: LearnWorlds, Thinkific, or Moodle
• Exams: Questionmark / YouTestMe
• Certificates: Credly or built-in credential tools

Option 2: Enterprise certification body

Better if certificates have professional value.

Typical requirements:

• Large question banks
• Exam forms and randomization
• Psychometric analysis
• Recertification cycles
• Public certificate verification
• Accreditation reporting

Platforms like Questionmark and YouTestMe are designed more for this use case. Questionmark Online Assessment Platform YouTestMe

Option 3: Build your own branded academy

A common setup:

• LMS: Moodle / custom portal
• Payments: Stripe or similar
• Assessment engine: Questionmark, YouTestMe, or API-based exam provider
• Proctoring: integrated provider
• Credentials: verifiable digital certificates with unique IDs and public lookup pages

Features I would prioritize before choosing

1. Identity verification

• Government ID checks
• Face matching
• Candidate authentication
• Exam security

• Browser lockdown
• Randomized questions
• Question pools
• Time limits
• Attempt limits
• Certificate verification

• Unique certificate ID
• Public verification page
• QR code
• Expiration and renewal status
• Business features

• Coupon codes
• Corporate enrollments
• Affiliate sales
• Subscription access
• API integrations

For a commercial certification business, I would shortlist:

• Small/medium training company: BrainCert or Moodle + assessment add-on
• Professional certification provider: Questionmark or YouTestMe
• Enterprise academy: Intellum + a dedicated assessment/proctoring layer

The best choice depends heavily on whether your certificates are meant as course completion certificates or high-stakes professional credentials that employers must trust.