Podia Circa Home

{podia-vs}

Knowledge is the greatest gift that life has to offer. Without the knowledge we currently have, life would have been really really different and so is our way of life.

For most of human history, the way we learn and give knowledge has remained largely unchanged. This usually involves a teacher/student relationship or a master/apprentice relation. One mostly provides the instruction, while the other receives it.

There are also those who learn on their own. Advancements in reading and writing have made self-study possible. WIth detailed instructional books, it became possible for people from all walks of life to gain knowledge without a teacher or a master.

The internet revolution followed. The internet revolution has been widely believed to have transformed education and learning. However, the internet did not change the way people consume and receive information.

In my opinion, what the internet really did best was to democratize knowledge in a scale that had been unseen since the rise of instructional films and even the invention of the printing press even before that.

Teachers and teachers of the heart were able to share their knowledge via the internet to people they didn’t know. It enabled education and knowledge to cross borders without the need for visas or a flight ticket.

Most of it began on unorthodox websites like vimeo and youtube, but some even started as blogs. We now have dedicated websites that allow people to teach courses.

podia-logo

For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Legit Marketing Reviews’ YouTube channel. Do check out our article below, however, because it has a comprehensive overview of Podia.

Podia a Brief Overview Podia Circa Home

Podia allows users to share their knowledge online and make money. Podia customers create online courses that can be tailored to their students. They can then put these courses on the platform and sell them to their own customers.

Podia gives you the tools and hosts your online courses.

Podia’s market does not only cover online courses. Podia is one of the most popular digital content selling platforms. These content could include the mentioned online courses. This content could include coaching, webinars and community as well as digital products.

The company behind Podia has New York City as its headquarters. Additional offices are located in Austin, Texas. Although it is relatively new, it seems somewhat old in internet terms. It launched in 2014 and behind it is a guy named Spencer Fry.

Fry wanted a platform to give online creators an easier way to sell their products and connect with their audiences. Fry wanted it to be easier, but also provide a friendly and welcoming environment for people.

Podia, a website that is intuitive, powerful, and user-friendly, was created from scratch.

Why use Podia?

Podia is a standout among the many online platforms, mainly because of its creator-friendly policies. Podia has a digital shopfront that allows for instant payment from sales and does not charge any transaction fees. Yes, podia does not charge any transaction fees.

Podia extends its creator-friendly policies in the way their platform works. Creatives can execute their visions and ideas with an intuitive platform that is comprehensive and easy to use, even if they don’t have the technical knowledge.

Podia makes it simple to get digital content on the market.

Even for those who already have an established digital content, Podia is still a very viable platform to transfer to. Some digital platforms offer too many features and could be considered overkill. Too many options may look fine at first, however it could lead to an overwhelming experience.

Your business may be in decline because of this lack of focus. Podia’s easy-to-use platform is an excellent choice. Podia Circa Home

Podia’s website also allows your membership site as well as your selling platform to be integrated with each other. This is preferable to most cases where the membership site is hosted separately from your product. This is not only a hassle but it also takes away valuable time that you could have spent creating.

Podia lets you focus more on the “creating side” of things than the business and logistics.

What Podia Can Do

Podia promotes themselves as ” Everything you need to know about creating, validating, and marketing online courses, all in one convenient place.” As such, to be able to back this claim, the platform has a bunch of features geared exactly for that.

A Custom Website Builder

Their custom website builder enables users to create custom landing pages that suit what you ad your brand are selling. Podia offers you to build this custom website with a custom domain or as a subdomain to Podia.

So podia offers you the flexibility of a more customized website and the simplicity of everything in one place.

Podia Circa Home

> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <

An Email Marketing System

Podia allows you to have an automated email marketing system that allows you to send one-time broadcasts, as well as automated campaigns. Although you can also access this service via other websites, Podia’s tool is sufficient.

You can save even more money by using the one Podia offers.

The email editor is very user-friendly. It even allows you to create automated sequences that are geared depending on the buyer.

A live messaging widget

Live messaging is always important when you want to offer a fast and quick response to any questions fielded by your customers. People nowadays want quick customer service. WIth this live messaging widget, you are able to provide just that.

Affiliate Marketing Program Capabilities

Affiliate marketing is important especially if you want to sell your products to a wider market. Podia users can take advantage of the capabilities afforded by the platform. Users can increase their reach and sales by using partner promotion.

Digital Storefronts

Of course, you won’t be able to show your products without a place to display them. A Digital Storefront also allows you to advertise the new or featured products in your website. Podia allows you to build an online store that holds your products exclusively.

Any customer can set-up this storefront even without the coding, programming or even the design skills to do this. It’s all thanks to the no coding approach implemented by Podia.

Course Dashboard

For services like Podia, the way customers are able navigate their content is another crucial factor on which service they would like to avail. For Podia, you are able to navigate this with just a few clicks using Podia’s intuitive interface.

Uploading and sharing your lessons, whether they are videos, audio podcasts or PDF documents, has never been easier.

Drip Content

Podia also gives you control on the schedule of your posting. This is particularly important if you don’t want to take on too many lessons at once.

Course creators have the option to “choose when they want to schedule their content”. This system benefits both the teacher and student (Main Podia customer), as it allows students to stay focused and not get overwhelmed.

Meanwhile with automatic Drip Content, the teacher does not need to manually update each post to give another lesson or release another product.

Payment Integrations

Of course every feature would be useless if there is no payment integration for where you are selling. Podia’s payment integrations include credit cards, PayPal payments for customers worldwide. Podia Circa Home

Membership Areas

Through Podia, you can create a membership area for your customers. You can offer your customers a membership area for a monthly or annual fee. They will receive exclusive content in return. You can even host giveaways there.

Membership Areas are also a great way to build customer trust and even a tight community, so having a prepared place where you can easily set it up is surely a welcome one.

What is Podia like?

This review wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t give you a true picture of the service. For Podia, we will look at its Course Creation and Engagement Section, Site Design and Customization, and Sales and Marketing and see how they feel.

typing-on-laptop

Course Creation and Engagement

We must first look at how Podia manages course creation. This is particularly important because this is why most users want to pay for the Podia Service.

You can create unlimited courses with Podia. There is no limit to the number of courses you can create on Podia.

As for the lessons proper, Podia allows text, embed, quiz, coaching, and files. That said, Podia offers very few lesson types. It also lacks assessments, Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, HTML5 content types and custom codes.

However what it lacks, it can embed and Podia can embed a lot. Podia can embed on over 1900+ platforms. These include, but aren’t limited to:

  • Youtube, vimeo, dailymotion for video content
  • Spotify SoundCloud, and PodBean for Audio podcasts
  • Speaker Deck, Slide Share, Presentation and Google Slides
  • Twitter, TikTok and Behance.
  • Github and Codepen
  • Typeform, Paper Form, and Google Forms

Podia was designed to make it easy for students. They can guide themselves through your course with no problem at all. To make it more enjoyable, you can use your drip content and automated emails.

You can even add in a quiz and offer a certificate of completion to your students for completing a course. These features can be added or removed at your discretion.

Another thing to note is that courses are just the tip of the iceberg on what products you can feature in Podia. The service allows you to sell webinars, bundles, coaching, as well as other digital files.

You can make webinars and offer replays of the webinars to your customers by integrating multiple websites. You can even bundle them along with your courses to create a more comprehensive package.

Site design and customization

For your websites, Podia offers templates that allow you to get on the exciting part easily and quickly. This holds true for product landing pages as well.

As stated, creating your product website or your landing pages is quite easy. Each page is divided into a section wherein you can decide what to put in. These pages can be rearranged by simply dragging and dropping. The same goes for removing sections that are not needed.

Podia has a good selection of customization options. Podia offers both the basics of fonts and colors, as well as customizable text box options. But that’s not all you get. Many people think that Podia can be too restrictive when it comes to design.

That said, it seems this is what Podia has to sacrifice to maintain a ready to use and flexible website creator. Bear in mind, Podia’s site design page requires no coding. It is all drag and drop.

They say that custom code can be added, but I have not found the location.

As stated above, Podia allows you to sell other stuff aside from courses. However, you need to have more than one digital product in the storefront for this feature to work. That is an easy job though. Similar to how you design your websites, you can also do this for these products.

To create unique sections for each product, you can use your landing page or front page. That way, it is simple for your students and customers to navigate and buy what they need.

Speaking of buying, the checkout page for the products has a smart and simple design. There is little to no clutter. It is simple to convert every customer into a buyer because there are no distractions distracting their attention while they pay.

Overall, when it comes to customization, Podia offers a decent number of features. You won’t feel overwhelmed by all the options available.

Podia’s design offerings may feel restrictive to some but for non-techies, the simplicity is what they could ask for. Podia Circa Home

Marketing and sales

Let’s lastly talk about Podia’s sales and marketing capabilities. This is an essential part of the Podia experience or any course-creating platform overall. It gives you an idea of how easy it can be to sell to potential customers.

smiling-man

> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <

You have two options for payment: Stripe and PayPal. You can offer your customers a flexible and customizable payment plan. You can either give them a one time big time payment or you can spread the payment overtime.

It is up to you.

As for the payment processing, Podia handles everything for you, so you don’t need to worry about anything. Stripe, a PCI compliant payment processor, securely stores your credit card and payment information.

Unlike other services, Podia offers no transaction fees. That means what you sell is yours alone and Podia does not get a cut of it. However, Stripe and PayPal fees still apply so you will have to pay those. This is the same throughout all available platforms.

Podia provides basic tools for lead generation. They even allow you to offer a pre-launch sign-up form as well as a newsletter signup form to collect email addresses.

You can send both automated and one-off emails through their email marketing. This allows you send email campaigns to both existing and potential customers.

You can even customize your campaign emails in a drip out fashion, and define when the emails will be sent.

However, what they provide is very basic, and as such it cannot replace your email service provider.

A real landing page capability and list management are two things that are missing. These are two very important things, but they are essential for your email marketing platform. Luckily, you can use third party integration to remedy these problems.

Some third party email service providers that have native integration with Podia include MailChimp, ConvertKIt, Drip, Active Campaign, GetResponse, and MailerLite.

Podia has a Zapier integration too, which allows other email solutions that does not integrate directly to podia to pass users data via this service.

Zapier also enhances Podia’s integration to reach some other useful third-party applications like FreshBooks and ClickFunnels. You can even add third-party scripts to your website. You can add third-party scripts to your website, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and ConvertBox.

Customer Support

Podia has the best customer service in the industry. For any queries you can contact support by emailing them or using the small widget that allows you to reach support via live chat.

Podia has received praises from other customers for their excellent customer service. The Podia team will usually respond within 5-10 minutes of you asking. This is provided you reach them during working hours. You can still contact them during work hours, but it may take longer to get a reply.

Podia also offers their own extensive knowledge library that can be used as a reference on how to do different things on the platform. You can also use this resource to find the answer to your question yourself if you prefer to search it on your own.

If you’re on one of their paid plans, they will migrate your customers or audiences for free. They will help move your content as well as your audience from another platform to Podia free of cost. Podia Circa Home

Price

Of course any review is not complete without talking about price. Afterall price is one of the most important factors that may make or break your decision to avail of a service. In this case, Podia offers three types of plans: Mover ($39/mo), Shaker ($79/mo), Earthquaker($179/mo).

Prices can change from time-to-time. At the time this review was written, they were offering a discount on all plans. So visit the website to check out on their latest pricing.

Plan Free ($0 per month) Mover ($33 per month)
Features

  • 8% fees
  • Full website
  • Email Marketing
  • Live Chat
  • Community
  • 1 Download
  • 1 Coaching Product
  • Create Courses
  • Draft webinars

  • No Transaction Fees
  • Full Website
  • Email marketing
  • Chat live
  • Community
  • Unlimited Downloads
  • Unlimited Coaching
  • Unlimited courses
  • Draft Webinars

 

Plan Shaker ($75 per month) Earthquaker ($33 per month)
Features

  • There are no transaction fees
  • Full Website
  • Email marketing
  • Chat live
  • Community
  • Unlimited Downloads
  • Unlimited Coaching
  • Unlimited Courses
  • Unlimited webinars
  • Affiliates

  • No Transaction Fees
  • Full website
  • Email marketing
  • Live Chat
  • Community
  • Unlimited Downloads
  • Unlimited Coaching
  • Unlimited Courses
  • Unlimited Webinars
  • Affiliates
  • Priority Support
  • Onboarding Calls
  • Monthly Creator Call

meeting> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <

The Mover Plan is a great option for anyone just starting out. The Mover Plan by Podia could provide enough for even small-time creators.

The Shaker Plan offers the most value, as it includes everything in the Mover Plan and adds unlimited webinars and affiliates. As talked about earlier, these features are especially useful when talking about growing your business and such. Podia Circa Home

The Earthquaker plan, however, is for those who want to spend a lot on their subscription. It actually benefits most who are looking for a bigger business. The Earthquaker plan also gives you 100,000 community members.

All paid plans allow you to set up a custom domain and a matching logo for your Podia storefront.

Speaking of brands, the Shaker and Earthquaker plans allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. The Mover plan does not allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. Instead, your product will be branded with the P symbol for Podai.

An important thing to note is that Podia offers a free plan. However, it is very limited and unlike the paid plans, it takes an 8$ transaction fee from all your transactions.

Pros and Cons

Pros

  • Super easy to use and setup
  • Instant payouts that don’t require you to wait for payment
  • Has affordable price for the features it offers
  • Offers great support no matter the customer tier
  • Has integrated email marketing
  • This tool allows you to track the progress of your students
  • Hosts both free and paid content
  • Unlimited bandwidth
  • Podia offers free migration of products and customers from other websites to Podia

Cons

  • Course builders can feel rigid to most people
  • Lacks important learning tools including graded quizzes, course compliance, assignments etc.
  • No mobile app feature
  • Reporting tools are essential
  • This is not the right platform for building a full-fledged website.
  • Only Shaker PLan members can access the membership feature
  • Email composer lacks personalization fields
  • You can add team members to your admin team for $20 per month.

The Verdict of Podia

Now that we’ve seen what Podia can do, we can finally judge if availing of the website is all worth it.

Podia continues to gain ground in e-learning despite all the competition. This is probably because of its less complicated and easy to use user interface.

Podia’s “rigid” and limited design is the most common complaint from customers. However for people who have limited knowledge on designing websites, such a feature is a god send. Podia Circa Home

With the influx of people bringing their businesses online, an easy to get and easy to understand UI can bring the focus back to the “creation” part of content creation and less with dealing on the logistics and admin side.

Another highlight in Podia’s case is its price point. It is fairly cheap compared to other course-creation services. With an amount that’s lower than $50,you can almost set up your website to a functional state.

There might be limits to what it can do but it is possible to think about it this way. You can Podia’s Mover plan to test the waters while getting the hang around of things. Sometimes simplicity is key. Too many features could be overkill and might overwhelm the user.

Their customer service is also something that we should take note of. With a customer service that responds quickly and efficiently to queries, it is easy to overlook the absence of a telephone number for assistance. You can count on them to answer all your questions, no matter what time it is.

Overall, Podia is an excellent service especially for those who are just starting to get the hang of bringing their stuff on the online world. They have the basic necessities needed by someone to put up a successful website without overwhelming then.

This site is highly recommended.

couple-with-laptop

> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <

Frequently Asked Questions

Podia Circa Home

What plan is best to choose when I purchase my Podia subscription

The Shaker Plan is the best one to get.

You can get the most features and additional stuff at $79 per month. Some of which includes affiliate marketing and the ability to integrate many other apps and services like Zoom.

What are Podia’s payment plans?

Podia uses Paypal and Stripe for processing payments.

Your customers and students can pay with paypal or through credit or debit card to pay for your products.

Why Use Podia?

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use platform, Podia is the right choice.

Another reason to choose podia over other competitors is that it does not charge transaction fees. It also offers reliable and excellent customer service. It also has a low price.

What Products can you make with Podia?

You can create online courses with Podia.

You can also download community memberships, webinars, coaching, and other digital content.

error: Content is protected !!