Knowledge is one of life’s greatest gifts to mankind. Without the knowledge we currently have, life would have been really really different and so is our way of life.
The way we give and gain knowledge remained mostly unchanged for most of history. 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.
Then there are those who learn by themselves. Self-study has become possible thanks to advances in writing and reading. With detailed instruction books, anyone can learn without the need for a teacher or 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.
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. We now have dedicated websites that allow 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 Free Plan
Podia is an online platform that allows people to share their knowledge of different things while also making money. Podia customers create online courses that can be tailored to their students. These courses can be put on the platform by customers and sold to them.
In a way, Podia not only gives you tools to create an online course, it also hosts them.
Podia’s market is not limited to online courses. In fact, Podia is among the best of many all-in-one 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.
Podia, a website that is intuitive, powerful, and user-friendly, was created from scratch.
Podia: Why do you use it?
Despite the number of online platforms available on the internet, Podia still stands out especially due to its creator-friendly policies. Podia has a digital shopfront that allows for instant payment from sales and does not charge any transaction fees. Yep, that’s right, podia takes no money for any transaction you make.
Podia extends its creator-friendly policies in the way their platform works. With an intuitive and comprehensive platform, creatives are able to execute their great ideas and visions even if they lack the technical know-how.
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.
This lack of focus may even be the cause of why your business is going into decline. Podia’s easy-to-use platform is an excellent choice. Podia Free Plan
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.
In short, using Podia allows you to focus on the “creating” side of things rather than the logistics and business side.
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
The custom website builder allows users to create landing pages that are specific to what your brand is selling. This custom website can be built by Podia with either a custom domain, or as a subdomain.
Thus, podia gives you the advantage of a more custom website or the simplicity of having everything all in one place.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
A 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. You can even create automated sequences that are tailored to the buyer.
A Live Messaging Widget
If you want to respond quickly to customers’ questions, live messaging is a great option. Quick customer service is something that most people look for nowadays. This widget allows you to communicate with customers instantly.
Affiliate Marketing Program Capabilities
Affiliate marketing is important especially if you want to sell your products to a wider market. Podia users have the opportunity to take advantage of the platform’s capabilities. 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. You can also advertise new or featured products on your digital storefront. Podia allows you to build an online store that holds your products exclusively.
This storefront can be set up by any customer without the need for programming, programming, or design skills. It’s all thanks to the no coding approach implemented by Podia.
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. For Podia, you are able to navigate this with just a few clicks using Podia’s intuitive interface.
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
Of course every feature would be useless if there is no payment integration for where you are selling. Podia offers payment integrations that allow customers to pay with credit cards and PayPal worldwide. Podia Free Plan
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. You can even host giveaways there.
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
First and foremost, we should tackle how the Podia handles 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. 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. Podia has 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. In fact, there are over 1900+ platforms where Podia can embed from. These include, but aren’t limited to:
- Dailymotion, vimeo and Youtube for video content
- Spotify SoundCloud, and PodBean for Audio podcasts
- Slide Share, Presentation, and Speaker Deck
- Twitter, TikTok, Behance, and, Pinterest
- Github, Codepen
- Google Forms, Typeform, and Paper Form
Podia was designed to make it easy for students. Your students can navigate your course easily. You can use your automated emails and drip content to make for a more enjoyable experience.
For students who have completed a course, you can add a quiz to the page and give them a certificate of completion. 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
Podia provides templates for your website that will allow you to quickly get to the fun part. This is also true when making your product landing pages too.
It is easy to create your product website, or landing pages. You can choose what you want to include on each page. You can even rearrange these pages just by dragging and dropping. You can also remove sections that you don’t need.
For customization, Podia offers a decent amount of options. You get the basic stuff of fonts and colors as well as customizable text boxes. However, that’s almost what you get. This is why there are a lot of people who think Podia can be a little restrictive when talking about design.
Podia must make this sacrifice in order to keep his website design page flexible and ready-to-use. Bear in mind, Podia’s site design page requires no coding. Drag and drop is all that’s required.
As for adding custom code they say it is available, but I haven’t found the option of where it is.
Podia lets you sell other things, in addition to courses. This feature requires that you have at least one digital product on your storefront. That is an easy job though. Similar to how you design your websites, you can also do this for these products.
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 very little 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.
Overall, when it comes to customization, Podia offers a decent number of features. It provides only the essential things needed and thus, you have no worries of being overwhelmed by the options being presented.
Although Podia’s design offerings might seem restrictive to some, for others the simplicity of Podia’s designs is all they need. Podia Free Plan
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 < <
For the basics, Podia has two payment options you can use: Stripe or 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.
Podia takes care of all aspects of payment processing so that you don’t have to worry. 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. You will still have to pay Stripe and PayPal fees. 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 also customize your campaign emails to be sent in drip-out fashion and specify when they will be delivered.
But, they are very basic and 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.
Zapier allows Podia to integrate with other email solutions, which allows podia users to share their data through this service.
Zapier also enhances Podia’s integration to reach some other useful third-party applications like FreshBooks and ClickFunnels. Third-party scripts can be added 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.
Other customers have noted Podia’s excellent support. 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. If you feel like finding the answer to your question independently, you can use this resource at hand to do it themselves
Lastly, one of their favorite features is their free offer to migrate your customers and audiences if you are on one of their paid plans. They will move your content and your audience from any other platform to Podia at no cost. Podia Free Plan
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. 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 ($33 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
The Mover Plan is a great option for anyone just starting out. The Mover Plan by Podia could provide enough for even small-time creators.
The Shaker Plan offers the most value, as it includes everything in the Mover Plan and adds unlimited webinars and affiliates. These features are particularly useful for growing your business, as we have already mentioned. Podia Free Plan
The Earthquaker plan, however, is for those who want to spend a lot on their subscription. This plan is beneficial to most people who are interested in a larger business. The Earthquaker plan also gives you 100,000 community members.
All paid plans allow you to set up a custom domain and a matching logo for your Podia storefront.
Speaking of brands, the Shaker and Earthquaker plans allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. The Mover plan does not allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. Instead, your product will be branded with the P symbol for Podai.
Important to remember is that Podia provides a free plan. It is limited and, unlike paid plans, charges an 8$ transaction charge for all transactions.
Both the pros and cons
Pros
- Super easy to use and setup
- Instant payouts that don’t require you to wait for payment
- It is affordable for the features it provides
- Offers great support no matter the customer tier
- Integrates email marketing
- This tool allows you to track the progress of your students
- Hosts both free and paid content
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Offers free migration of customers and products from other websites to Podia
Cons
- Most people find course builders rigid.
- Lacks important learning tools including graded quizzes, course compliance, assignments etc.
- No mobile app feature
- Reporting tools are essential
- 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.
Podia the Verdict
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. Its user interface is simpler and more intuitive.
While most customer’s common complaint about Podia is its limited and “rigid” design. This feature is great for those with limited web design knowledge. Podia Free Plan
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.
Podia’s price is another highlight. 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. 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 that responds quickly and efficiently to queries, it is easy to overlook the absence of a telephone number for assistance. 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. Podia has all the essentials needed to create a website that is successful without being overwhelming.
This site is highly recommended.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Most Frequently Asked Questions
Podia Free Plan
What plan is best to choose when I purchase my Podia subscription
The Shaker Plan is the best.
You can get the most features and additional stuff at $79 per month. 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?
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use platform, Podia is the right choice.
Other reasons why you should choose podia over its competitors is because it takes no transaction fees. Furthermore, it has good and reliable customer service. It also has a low price.
What products can you make using Podia?
The main thing that you can do with Podia is to create online courses.
You can also download community memberships, webinars, coaching, and other digital content.