Knowledge is the greatest gift that life has to offer. Life would not be the same without the knowledge that we have today.
For most of human history, the way we learn and give knowledge has remained largely unchanged. It usually involves a teacher and student relation or a master and apprentice relation. The one who receives the instruction is the most likely to be the teacher.
There are also those who learn on their own. Self-study has become possible thanks to advances in writing and reading. WIth detailed instructional books, it became possible for people from all walks of life to gain knowledge without a teacher or a master.
Then came the online revolution. While the popular opinion is that the advent of the internet revolutionized learning and education in general, it did not really change much except the way how people receive and consume information.
My opinion is that the internet did the best job of democratizing knowledge on a scale not seen since instructional films were created and the invention of the printing presses.
Teachers and teachers of the heart were able to share their knowledge via the internet to people they didn’t know. It allowed education and knowledge to break boundaries and borders, even without a plane ticket and a visa.
While most of it started on unlikely websites such as youtube and vimeo, or maybe even written blogs. Now, we have dedicated websites that act as a platform for people to teach courses.
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Legit Marketing Reviews’ YouTube channel. To get a comprehensive overview of Podia, you may still want to check out our article below.
Podia a Brief Overview Podia Features
Podia allows users to share their knowledge online and make money. Basically, Podia customers make online courses that they can tailor to their students. These courses can be put on the platform by customers and sold to them.
Podia gives you the tools and hosts your online courses.
Podia’s market is not limited to online courses. Podia is one of the most popular digital content selling platforms. This content could be the aforementioned online courses. It could also be coaching, webinars, community, as well as other digital products.
The company behind Podia has New York City as its headquarters. It has additional offices also in Austin Texas. It is fairly new but somehow old by internet standards. It launched in 2014 and behind it is a guy named Spencer Fry.
Fry created a platform that would make it easier for online creators to market their products and to connect with their audience. He wanted the experience to be less hassle, but at the same time, provide these people with a welcoming and communal environment.
This resulted in Podia the website, which is intuitive, powerful and user friendly tool that was designed from scratch
Podia: Why do you use it?
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 even makes it easy to navigate the hurdle of getting the digital content to the market.
Podia can be transferred to even if you already have a digital content. Other digital platforms can offer too many features that could be considered as an 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 Features
Your membership site and your selling platform can be linked to each other through Podia’s website. This is much better than if your membership site is hosted separately from the 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 claims that they have everything you need to create, validate, and market online courses.
A Custom Website Builder
The custom website builder allows users to create landing pages that are specific to what your brand is 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.
> > 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. While you can avail of this service through other websites, the tool that Podia provides you is already enough.
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
If you want to respond quickly to customers’ questions, live messaging is a great option. People nowadays want quick customer service. WIth this live messaging widget, you are able to provide just that.
Capabilities of Affiliate Marketing Program
Affiliate marketing is essential if you wish to expand your product line. Podia users have the opportunity to take advantage of the platform’s capabilities. By using partner promotion, users can widen their audience as well as exponentially enhance the number of sales
Digital Storefronts
You won’t be allowed to showcase your products if you don’t have a place to put them. A Digital Storefront also allows you to advertise the new or featured products in your website. Podia makes it possible to create an online store that only sells your products.
Any customer can set-up this storefront even without the coding, programming or even the design skills to do this. Podia has a no-coding approach that allows you to do this.
Course Dashboard
Podia is a service where customers can navigate their content easily. This is a crucial factor in deciding which service they want to use. With Podia’s intuitive interface, it is easy to navigate these pages with just a few clicks.
Putting up and uploading your lessons be it videos, audio podcasts, PDF document downloads, ebooks and more, have never been this easy.
Drip Content
Podia also gives you control on the schedule of your posting. Such a feature is especially important if you don’t want to blow your load of lessons at just a single opportunity.
With the drip content feature, course creators can “choose to schedule their content” at a more manageable time. This benefits both the student and the teacher (Main Podia customer) as this system allows the student to avoid being overwhelmed and burnt out of the course.
Automatic Drip Content means that the teacher doesn’t have to manually modify each post in order to add another lesson or create a product.
Payment Integrations
Without payment integration, every feature is useless. Podia’s payment integrations include credit cards, PayPal payments for customers worldwide. Podia Features
Membership Areas
You can set up a membership area through Podia. A membership area is an option you can sell to your customers for a monthly or yearly fee where they get special and exclusive content in return. There are even giveaways you can host.
Membership areas are a great way of building customer trust and even a close community. It is a good idea to have a place you can set it up easily.
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.
Course Creation and Engagement
We must first look at how Podia manages course creation. This is especially crucial as of course, this is the main reason why users would like to pay for the Podia Service.
For course creation, you can create an unlimited number of courses on Podia. This means that there is no limit and no additional fees whenever you feel offering a new course.
Podia supports text, embeds, quizzes, coaching and files for lessons. That said, Podia offers very few lesson types. Podia also does not offer assessments, Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline, HTML5 content types, and custom codes.
It can embed, but it has a few limitations. Podia can embed lots. Podia can embed on over 1900+ platforms. This include but are not limited to
- Dailymotion, vimeo and Youtube for video content
- Spotify SoundCloud and PodBean Audio podcasts
- Slide Share, Presentation, and Speaker Deck
- Twitter, TikTok and Behance.
- Github and Codepen
- Typeform, Paper Form, and Google Forms
As for the side of the students, Podia made itself easy to navigate especially for your potential students. Your students can navigate your course easily. You can use your automated emails and drip content to make for a more enjoyable experience.
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.
It is important to remember that Podia can only feature courses. The service allows you to sell webinars, bundles, coaching, as well as other digital files.
By integrating the multiple websites mentioned above, you can create webinars as well as replay of these webinars to your customers. To make a complete package, you can also bundle them with your courses.
Site Design and Customization
For your websites, Podia offers templates that allow you to get on the exciting part easily and quickly. This is also true when making your product landing pages too.
It is easy to create your product website, or landing pages. 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. You can also remove sections that you don’t need.
Podia has a good selection of customization options. Podia offers both the basics of fonts and colors, as well as customizable text box options. However, that’s almost what 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.
Podia lets you sell other things, in addition to courses. This feature requires that you have at least one digital product on your storefront. This is not a difficult task. You can do the same for these products like how you designed your websites.
You can use the front page or landing page of your website to create sections that are unique for each product. This makes it easy for customers and students to find what they are looking for and allows them to buy the product that is right for them.
Speaking of buying, the checkout page for the products has a smart and simple design. There is little to no clutter. As such, it is easy to convert each customer into a buyer as there are no distractions taking away their attention as they are about to pay.
Podia has a good selection of customization options. It provides only the essential things needed and thus, you have no worries of being overwhelmed by the options being presented.
Podia’s design offerings may feel restrictive to some but for non-techies, the simplicity is what they could ask for. Podia Features
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.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
You have two options for payment: Stripe and PayPal. For your payment plan, you can offer a customizable and flexible plan option for your customers. Either you give them a lump sum payment, or spread it out over time.
This is entirely up to you.
As for the payment processing, Podia handles everything for you, so you don’t need to worry about anything. As for credit card and payment information, it is all securely stored by Stripe, a PCI-compliant payment processor.
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.
As for the marketing side, Podia offers some basic lead generation tools. You can offer both a sign-up form for the pre-launch and a sign-up form for the newsletter to collect email addresses.
Their email marketing allows you to send automated emails as well as one-off emails. This allows you to send email campaigns to your customers both current and potential.
You can even customize your campaign emails in a drip out fashion, and define when the emails will be sent.
But, they are very basic and cannot replace your email service provider.
Some things that are lacking include a real landing page capability, and list management. Two very basic things but are entirely essential when doing 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.
Zapier allows Podia to integrate with other email solutions, which allows podia users to share their data through this service.
Zapier allows you to connect Podia with other third-party applications such as FreshBooks or ClickFunnels. You can even add third-party scripts to your website. Like Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, ConvertBox, Deadline Funnel among others.
Customer Support
Podia’s customer support is among the best in the business. 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. That is of course provided that you contact them during work hours. Outside that, you can still get a response, but it takes a longer time.
Podia also has a vast knowledge base that can be used to help you do different things on the platform. If you feel like finding the answer to your question independently, you can use this resource at hand to do it themselves
If you’re on one of their paid plans, they will migrate your customers or audiences for free. They will move your content and your audience from any other platform to Podia at no cost. Podia Features
Price
Price is an important aspect of any review. 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 do change from time to time. For example: at the time of writing this review, they are currently offering a discount to all their plans. Visit the website to see their most recent pricing.
Plan | Free ($0 per month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
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Plan | Shaker ($75 per month) | Earthquaker ($33 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
The Mover Plan is a great option for anyone just starting out. The Mover Plan by Podia could provide enough for even small-time creators.
The Shaker Plan offers the most value, as it includes everything in the Mover Plan and adds unlimited webinars and affiliates. As talked about earlier, these features are especially useful when talking about growing your business and such. Podia Features
Meanwhile, the Earthquaker plan is something for those looking to go all out on their subscription. This plan is beneficial to most people who are interested in a larger business. The Earthquaker plan also gives you 100,000 community members.
All the paid plans also allow you to create a custom domain for your Podia storefront as well as a logo that matches up with your brand.
Brands aside, the Shaker or Earthquaker plans let you remove the Podia branding from products. This is not true with the Mover plan and your product will have that P branding that stands for Podai.
Important to remember is that Podia provides a free plan. However, it is very limited and unlike the paid plans, it takes an 8$ transaction fee from all your transactions.
Both the 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
- Integrates email marketing
- Gives you the ability track student progress
- 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
- Important learning tools are missing, such as graded quizzes, course compliance, and assignments.
- No mobile app feature
- Reporting tools are basic
- Not suitable for building a fully-fledged website
- Membership feature is only available in the Shaker PLan
- 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.
Amidst the competition, Podia is steadily gaining ground as a player in e-learning. 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. This feature is great for those with limited web design knowledge. Podia Features
An easy-to-use and understand UI is key to allowing people to focus on content creation instead of the logistics.
Another highlight in Podia’s case is its price point. It is fairly cheap compared to other course-creation services. You can set up your website in a functional state with a cost of less than $50
Sure, there might be a limit to what it can do, but you can think of it this way. Podia’s Mover allows you to try the waters and get the hang of it. Sometimes simplicity is the best option. Too many features could be overkill and might overwhelm the user.
We should also pay attention to their customer service. WIth a customer service who answers queries fast and efficiently, one could even forgive the lack of a phone channel to ask for help. They have people who will will answer your questions on the clock as long as its work hours.
Podia is a great service, especially for people who are just getting started with the internet. They have the basic necessities needed by someone to put up a successful website without overwhelming then.
This site is highly recommended.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Most Frequently Asked Questions
Podia Features
What plan is best to choose when I purchase my Podia subscription
The Shaker Plan is the best one to get.
At $79 per month, you can get most features with additional stuff that are not available at the Mover Tier. Affiliate marketing is possible, as well as the ability to integrate other apps and services such Zoom.
What are Podia’s payment plans?
Podia uses Paypal and Stripe for processing payments.
Customers and students can pay by paypal, credit or debit card for products.
Podia: Why use it?
You can use Podia if you are looking for a platform that is extremely easy to use.
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 using Podia?
You can create online courses with Podia.
Aside from that, you can also make digital downloads, community memberships, and webinars and coaching.