18k+ learners, zero downtime: how one academy rebuilt from the ground up

In this edition:

• Carrick Institute delivers continuing education to licensed healthcare providers across four continents through 385 courses and 4,400+ hours of curriculum

• After years on a fragile tech stack that required constant maintenance, the academy migrated to Thinkific Plus – and has experienced zero unplanned downtime since
• Below, Dr. Matthew Antonucci shares the growth strategies behind the respected clinical education academy

​​1. Don’t patch a failing tech stack – rebuild it

Carrick Institute was an early adopter of online learning. By 2012, it had already implemented a flipped classroom model where learners completed asynchronous content before attending live sessions. While the pedagogy was ahead of its time, the technology holding it together wasn’t.

The academy’s previous tech stack with numerous third-party plugins was fragile and difficult to maintain. Downtime was common. It disrupted learners, eroded confidence in the platform, and pulled the team into constant fire-fighting.

Carrick made a deliberate call: rebuild from the ground up using best-in-class tools connected through open APIs. The team landed on Webflow for the website, a CRM for learner relationship management, and Thinkific Plus for course delivery. As Dr. Antonucci puts it, “Have we had any downtime with Thinkific since we started? No. Zero downtime.”

2. Use platform migration as an opportunity to improve your curriculum

Moving 300+ courses onto a new platform could have been treated as a purely logistical task. Instead, Carrick Institute saw it as an opportunity to raise the standard of how their curriculum was structured and presented online.

“For a long time, the platform didn’t match the quality and integrity of the material,” Dr. Antonucci says. “The migration was our chance to change that.”

Rather than simply migrating content onto Thinkific, the team reorganized course structures, standardized how material was presented, and consolidated institutional knowledge that had accumulated across years of content development.

Carrick Institute’s courses support licensed clinicians deepening their practice – and the platform behind it has to be just as dependable as the curriculum itself.

3. Use access windows to encourage learner accountability

One thing Carrick did after rebuilding its tech stack was rethinking how learner access worked. Previously, learners had indefinite access to any course they purchased. But without a deadline, many deprioritized the material for months or years.

With Thinkific, Carrick has redesigned the model. Learners now receive roughly one month of access per eight hours of education. After that window closes, a $20/month subscription keeps access open for those who need more time. The fee is modest by design – it’s about keeping learners progressing at a pace that actually serves them.

4. Connect your free courses to an automated conversion funnel

Thinkific is the learning hub in Carrick’s tech stack, but it’s also the connective tissue. Through the Thinkific API, learner activity flows into the academy’s CRM, which triggers automated nurture sequences designed to move leads from free introductory content toward paid programs.

After launching a series of free evergreen courses, Carrick added more than 400 new enrollees in the first few weeks alone. The open API also allowed Carrick to solve a compliance-specific requirement unique to healthcare continuing education – enabling rewind functionality for learners without enabling fast-forward, a precise accreditation requirement handled cleanly on Thinkific.

5. Find a support partner, not just a support queue

At the scale Carrick operates – 18,000+ learners, 385 courses, a tech stack connected by API, compliance requirements, and 63 faculty members across four continents – standard support isn’t enough. What the team needed was a partner willing to bring the right people to the table when the situation required it.

“If you're [offering online learning] at enterprise level, you can’t do it on your own,” Dr. Antonucci says. “You need someone who knows the inside of the tool. Thinkific has always been able to give us that.”

That support went further than he expected: “I was flabbergasted that I was able to speak with someone that high up at Thinkific, and we were that much of a priority. Not just once. Multiple executives on meetings saying, ‘Let's figure out how we can help you.’”

Learn more about Carrick Institute and explore its extensive course catalog.