The Ultimate Podia Review & Comparison to the 6 alternatives

Online courses are becoming more and more popular as an alternative to traditional education. However, there are many platforms out there that have the same goal: creating and selling online courses. Which one is best for you? In this article, we will compare Podia with two other competitors in the market to help you decide which platform fits your needs best!

What is Podia

Podia is an all-in-one marketing platform for businesses that want to create online courses, run webinars, provide digital downloads and sell membership subscriptions.

What does Podia Offer?

Podia can be used by creators for various purposes, from running an online business or using it to market your products and services to your audience. But let’s take a closer look at how Podia distinguishes itself.

Online Courses

Podia offers a sleek online tool for creators who want to create and sell courses and charge for them through one-time payments or membership subscriptions. With Podia, you can design your course on the site from scratch or with templates and then add quizzes, images, videos, etc.

Memberships

The Podia platform allows businesses to create and launch a membership site. You can customize and build your membership site to match your branding, offer subscription plans at different points, and engage with your community by providing members-only content like video lessons, blog posts, and downloadable digital content.

Digital Downloads

If you are a digital content creator and you want to sell your product online, Podia will allow you to do that, too. Whether you’re selling e-books, drawings, music, quizzes, or any other type of digital file, you can do it here. What’s more, there are no limitations regarding the number of files, downloads, sales, etc.

Messaging

Building a close relationship with your audience is one of the most important factors in converting them into paying customers. That’s why Podia also offers a messaging feature that allows you to chat with interested customers directly on your website.

Email Marketing

Podia provides an email marketing automation feature to send out newsletters, drip automated messages, and build out email marketing campaigns for a product and service.

Website Builder

Podia allows you to build landing pages, newsletter sign-up pages, and websites without having to learn how to code with their easy-to-use drag-drop website editor.

Embeds

If you already have your own domain but you want to optimize it for digital sales, you can use Podia’s embeddable buy button. This button will allow buyers to purchase your products without having to leave your page.

How much does Podia Cost?

Podia offers three pricing options for businesses and restricts features depending on the plan you are using. Let’s take a look at each plan.

Mover Plan: Podia movers plan starts at $39/month or $390/year, saving you $78/year compared to the monthly subscription plan. This plane is great for anyone just getting started with their business or needs just the basics that Podia offers.

Shaker Plan: The Shaker Plan starts at $79/month or $790/year, saving you $158/year compared to the monthly subscription plan. This plan is built for emerging businesses and creators looking for features like course certificates, affiliate marketing, embedded checkout, and the ability to add third-party code to your pages. The number of email receipts increases from 5k to 15k on the shaker plan.

Earthquaker Plan: The mover plan is Podias, the most expensive plan starting at $179/month or $1790/year, saving you $358/year. With the Earthquaker plan, your email receipts increase from 15k to 50k, and you get white-labeling options for your website and a dedicated account rep to help you onboard and monthly group coaching calls.

Alternatives to Podia

Podia is built to offer everything from courses, memberships, emails, websites, and digital download sales. With Podia being an all-in-one solution for businesses, their product won’t be the best online course creator, offer the best membership community, or website creation experience. So let’s take a look at some of the alternatives to podia that existing in the market and how podia stack up.

Teachable Vs. Podia

Teachable is a platform tailored to creators who want to offer online courses. It allows you to add multimedia guides, including images, videos, voice recordings, PDF files, and quizzes. You can also create your own website there.

The starting price for Teachable is the same as for Podia – $39 a month. However, Teachable is strictly tailored for online courses, and it doesn’t offer e-mail marketing or memberships. It also charges a 5% transaction on their basic plan.

Patreon Vs. Podia

Patreon is one of the biggest competitors Podia has when it comes to memberships and member-only products and features. There are three different service packages you can choose from depending on your needs. These packages don’t have a fixed price but are based on a percentage of your sales.

Some of the major advantages Podia has over Patreon and Patreon alternatives is the lack of transaction fees and the ability to create online courses. Also, Patreon can’t be connected to your own membership website – you have to offer memberships on Patreon directly. Unlike Podia, however, Patreon does offer a free plan.

Gumroad Vs. Podia

Gumroad is yet another platform that allows you to sell your digital products – be it eBooks, music, videos, images, or anything else you can think of. You can also sell physical products, offer subscriptions and preorders.

The starting price for Gumroad is lower than Podia’s – $10 a month. However, there are transaction fees you’ll have to pay. Other features Gumroad lacks are memberships and custom storefronts.

Thinkific Vs. Podia

Thinkific is a platform tailored mostly to those who want to market and sell their online courses. It allows you to easily design a website, add your course content, and advertise it to potential students. You can add different media, make your courses private, introduce prerequisite lessons, and so on.

Thinkific offers most of the same services that Podia does (memberships, drip content, e-mails, and website design). However, the starting price is $49, which makes it slightly more expensive than Podia. Also, there is no live chat support and you can’t sell downloads.

Kajabi Vs. Podia

Kajabi is yet another platform that claims to offer all-in-one services to digital creators. You can sell products and offer memberships, as well as access tutorials and courses made to help you grow your business. They also have 24/7 live chat support.

Let’s be honest, Kajabi is as good as it gets in the world of all-in-one marketing platforms for digital creators. The one thing that Kajabi doesn’t have, however, are affordable prices. If you want to join the platform, be prepared to pay a three-digit monthly fee.

LearnDash Vs. Podia

LearnDash is yet another highly comprehensive platform. Their features are divided into four categories–Courses, Monetize, Administration, and Tech. These include things such as quizzes, memberships, drip-feed content, certificates, subscriptions, and so on.

One problem with LearnDash is its pricing. Starting at $329/year, it is not necessarily expensive, but the fee is charged annually, which could present a bigger blow to your budget than Podia’s monthly billing.

Podia Customer Reviews

There’s no better way to find out if a product is any good than by asking those who have bought it before. That is why reviews are an invaluable source of information when shopping around for the right platform. We took a look at Podia reviews and highlighted some of the best – and some of the worst – things we came across.

Pros

One of the things that reviewers seem to highlight the most is Podia’s customer service. Another feature most people mention is the simplicity and ease of use. They say that the platform is quite intuitive and that anyone could learn how to use it.

Cons

Some users say that the effort to make Podia easy to use comes at the cost of the scope of features offered. For example, not being able to customize email notifications (e.g. add the recipient’s name to the letter) or to categorize products offered on the storefront are some of the things reviewers complain about.

Our Verdict

Overall, Podia’s biggest advantage over its competition is that it is an all-in-one solution. There are numerous membership websites out there, as well as countless online course platforms. However, only a handful offer as wide of a variety of services as Podia does. While there are some drawbacks, when compared to its competition, Podia seems to be one of the best choices for online content creators.