One of the most effective ways to make money online is by sharing knowledge, teaching others, coaching, or any other similar activities. There are a lot of things to go about this.
Blogging is the most popular form of blogging. It is almost as old and well-known as the Internet itself. While some do think that it’s younger cousin, vlogging has replaced it, there are still those who prefer to read what they want to study and not just videos.
And speaking of videos, another angle into which you can learn from is through video essays. These videos can provide a lot more insight than just a short presentation, especially when it comes to music, literature or film.
Education is also becoming more popular thanks to video lectures and tutorials. Back in school, Math was a subject that I loved, and my classmates and me would search YouTube tutorials to find solutions to word problems.
Growing up, it was such a novel way to educate and learn. It seemed like once again, the knowledge was able to spread wider and was more accessible to a lot more audience.
It was only a matter time before formal education and education would also be available online.
It was then, the Course Building Websites were born.
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.
Course Building Websites Podia Vs Down To
Learning Management Systems, also known as course building websites, are platforms, services or websites that provide digital content to a targeted audience.
One could even say that these websites allow for learning to be delivered remotely. LMS is capable of remote and distance learning. However, it’s not the only one that can do this. Distance learning is a reality since 1924. Podia Vs Down To
LMS, or distance learning via the internet, is therefore, more precise. LMS can be either hosted locally or through a vendor. Most vendors usually use the cloud to host courses or learning materials. This is a SaaS (Software as a Service) model.
Learning Management Systems were especially popular during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic, when face-to-face school learning was impossible due to social distancing and isolation measures taken by different governments around the globe.
LMS websites have been around since then and vendors sites are still in existence. A lot of these websites that have long existed are now becoming household names due to their popularity and usage during the pandemic.
Then new websites have also come out, generating buzz and trying to be the next big thing.
These sites all share the same goal of creating and learning courses on the best platform, but some specialize in specific areas.
Podia an Overview
Podia is a Learning Management System that markets itself as an all-in-one platform. You can either sell individual courses, coaching, webinars or digital downloads online, or all of them together.
Among all LMS, it probably is one of the most affordable price plan. It is a great choice for course creators who are searching for an affordable LMS solution. It is affordable and allows you to create unlimited courses and products, which are great for digital product sellers.
The Podia website builder is easy to use and requires no coding. It is ideal for people who want to quickly get their digital courses or products online. That said, this simplicity sacrifices customization.
Many users feel that Podia can be too restrictive when it comes to designing websites. This is because Podia’s website builder doesn’t require coding.
Podia has many integration options for those features that are not available. From Zoom to Zapier, it allows for various email service providers, payment gateways, and analytics tools to be added to your website.
Podia Features
Podia offers a number of features that allow its users to create a website and customize it in a way they want. It also offers enough tools to conduct your business.
Podia is probably the most affordable LMS website. It has the best integration and membership communities. You can even get it on all Podia plans.
Talking about plans, except for the free one, every tier on Podia’s subscription doesn’t take transaction fees from any of your purchases. This means that you own the money no matter what you sell. Podia Vs Down To
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
- Interface – Podia’s interface is a minimalistic and sleek UI that greets you when you log in. It is very simple and intuitive that you can access most features mostly within just three clicks. Podia’s Interface is simply far from overwhelming.
- Course Creation – Podia’s course creation supports text, quiz, coaching, files, as well as embeds. However, it does not have all lesson types and may fall behind the competition.
This is where Podia’s Embed feature comes in clutch, with over 1900+ platforms to embed from like Youtube, Soundcloud and even TikTok. Podia allows you to drip content/lessons, so that you can move them around in any way you like.
It has a great course creation feature. However, the absence of retention reports keeps it from being perfect.
- Marketing – Podia’s marketing features allows for email marketing, however it is a very basic email marketing tool that allows you to send broadcasts and email campaigns. It lacks email templates and there is not really a place for more personalization and automation features.
Other marketing features offered by Podia include the ability to sell more products, give coupons to customers and pre-launch courses that can be used to generate interest.
All in all, Podia’s marketing platform is more than enough to boost the potency of your sales. The only thing that really lets it down is the absence of advanced automation. This is to be expected from a basic platform such as Podia.
- Design and Customization – This is probably where Podia falls the hardest. Although they have a lot of customization options available, it is not very “customizable”. Most of the things you can do are only about the texts and colors. Podia Vs Down To
There are very few templates available. It does not allow for HTML/Custom CSS customization. While at first this may seem like a bad thing, there are those who would prefer it that way. {Non-techies would probably not notice and would prefer the ease of use.|The ease of use would be preferred by non-techies.
- Payment Processors – For Payment Processors, Podia integrates Stripe and Paypal for collecting payment from your students. Podia also does not take any transaction fees for any transactions or sales you make with your website.
That said, there might be additional fees that come from Stripe or Paypal, as such, you still have to pay for them. Usually these fees are very low so you probably won’t have a problem with them.
Podia Price
There are four plans available from Podia. Each plan has its own unique features. These include:
| Free ($0 per month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
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| Shaker Plan ($75 per month) | Earthquaker Plan ($33 per month) |
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Podia Pros and Cons
Pros
- Podia’s UI/UX has been refined so that even non-techies can easily understand it. It is easy to set up and users will be satisfied.
- You can sell a variety of digital products through Podia, including courses, webinars, memberships and digital downloads. These products can be sold together.
- Podia offers unlimited products and courses in all of their plans.
- Their unlimited offer also applies to storage and bandwidth where you can host your videos. While you have the option, you don’t need to use Vimeo, Wistia or other video hosting sites.
- You can use Podia’s built-in affiliate program to increase your reach. This function can only be used if you are on the Shaker or Earthshaker plans.
- You can send broadcasts and campaigns through their built-in email marketing. These campaigns can be customized with exit and entrance conditions.
- Podia offers over 1900+ integrations across various apps, email service providers and payment gateways. Zapier is an integration that can be used by those who don’t have native integration.
- Podia’s pre-launch mode is useful for testing out the waters and analyzing interest before going all in and full effort on a course.
- Podia claims to be creator-centric and they charge 0% on all sales
- Podia also offers built-in certificates, community, and quizzes. For memberships, you can use the community page.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Cons
- The Email Composer lacks more option for personalization. The Email Composer lacks pre-made templates and a drag-and-drop editor. Split-testing is also not available.
- Podia’s system doesn’t have a course compliance feature. The most common report that you will get is the number of people who have completed a course. It lacks details.
- Podia has very limited customization options. There is no support for custom CSS/HTML customizations
- To create sales funnels and landing pages, you might need third-party apps or services such as WordPress or ClickFunnels.
- Only a handful of lesson types are supported. Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline are not supported. HTML 6 Content, assessments, and other lessons may be missing.
- Affiliate program is also lacking. There is no affiliate commission tiers and affiliate-specific commissions.
- Podia does not have a mobile application.
Podia versus Kajabi
Kajabi: An Overview
Kajabi is a Learning Management System that provides the user an all-in-one platform to create courses and products while at the same time hosting them.
The platform is very sophisticated, and has many features like automation. This makes it ideal for marketers and course creators who have previous experience in this field. Of course, to make use of its full potential, users must have the technical know-how to utilize all of Kajabi’s offerings.
Kajabi also allows you to sell coachings, memberships, communities, podcasts as well as other digital products.
Kajabi offers a mobile app that is different from other LMSs. This is because smartphones have quickly become the most preferred device for almost everyone. It really gives the company a boost in terms of the market.
Kajabi Features
Kajabi offers many features that will make it worth the extra cost. Most of Kajabi’s features, such as their website builder, are extremely customizable.
Probably where Kajabi shines the most is in its marketing tools. It offers all the standard bells and whistles but what investors and Kajabi’s rivals really envy is its automation system. Yes, that’s correct! Kajabi offers automation in lots of its features, especially their emails.
Kajabi’s Pipelines are another unique feature. Kajabi’s Pipelines offer many benefits that can be used to replace ClickFunnel or other website funnel-building tools.
- Interface – Logging into Kajabi will bring you to the dashboard. It is clean and minimalistic with minimal clutter. It has a modern, minimalist aesthetic. The accessibility is also satisfactory. You can get to all of Kajabi’s features within 3 to 5 clicks.
Kajabi’s homepage includes a search assistant. This can be used to help you navigate the site if you get lost or are too lazy to click on things. This can redirect you to features and tools inside of the Kajabi app.
Kajabi’s page loads very quickly and provides a smooth experience.
- Course Creation – Kajabi’s course creation is very robust. First of all, it allows you to make different types of categories. This flexibility allows you to choose the best option depending on which course you are presenting to students.
You can choose from: mini-courses, online courses, drip courses, or do a custom one of your own. Kajabi offers templates or blueprints to help you create your courses. It already gives you a “skeleton” of the course, and all you have to do is fill it up with content.
Kajabi allows you to organize your course in categories or subcategories. That way, you can decide how you present these courses to your students. This is especially useful when you are “dripping” your content slowly.
As for content, Kajabi allows you to use the following to make your courses: text, audio, vidoe, assessments, images and files. You can even combine these content and add them on a single course. At the moment, Kajabi doesn’t offer live lessons.
The student’s side. Kajabi’s course delivery offers a sleek and minimal design. There is no clutter that can serve as a distraction to your students.
- Marketing – Kajabi provides all the products you need to sell your products. It allows you to sell coupons, upsells, and order bumps. You can even customize this stuff to ensure more value for your money.
Email marketing is probably where Kajabi stands out the most. It allows you to do the basic functions of sending broadcasts as well as email sequences. Kajabi’s email marketing also provides you with various email templates. Podia Vs Down To
Kajabi can send any type of email, no matter what it is. Kajabi’s email marketing is even more powerful when it is combined with an automation function.
It makes your job easier and faster. You have many options. Kajabi makes it easy to use third-party sales funnels. They got you covered with their pipelines that you can customize as well.
When used properly and effectively, it will increase your customer conversion rate leading to more sales. Podia Vs Down To
- Kajabi offers a wide range of design and customization options. Even the lower plans provide you with various themes that you can use to fit your course or brand. These themes look professional.
You can even upload your own theme if you want to. You can access their code editor if you purchase the top Kajabi plan. This allows you to customize even the smallest details.
As for the Page Builder, Kajabi allows you to design course pages, membership site, checkout pages, landing pages and even more. They also utilize a block system and each block can be customized. Even then, they are already page-specific and function specific.
- For Payment Processing, Kajabi unfortunately does not have its own native payment gateway. It integrates Stripe, PayPal and other third-party integrations. Some regions even have more gateways available.
For those regions that don’t have integration, third-party integration can be used through Webhooks and Zapier.
Kajabi provides the checkout page on one page. This page can be personalized to include testimonials and sales videos to increase your product sales.
Kajabi Price
It is robust and features-rich. Kajabi has the highest rates among all the LMS services found on the internet. You cannot also get a free trial. It has also become a common practice to include names for the different tiers that their plans have.
In the case of Kajabi they have the Growth, Basic, and Pro. All plans include access to Kajabi University. This knowledge base is Kajabi’s own and can be used to assist users with its functionality.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
| Basic ($149 per month) | Growth ($199 per month) |
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| Pro ($319 per month) | |
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Kajabi Pros & Cons
Pros
- Kajabi offers various types of courses for you to make
- Helps you get started with Blueprints and Templates
- Their email marketing solutions are the most advanced in the market with their automations
- Provides you with built-in assessments that allows you to grade and assess your students. These assessments can also be automated
- Has a mobile app that is perfect for students who want to consume the courses on their phone
- Also comes with a membership feature where you can sell or give exclusive products to members with different tiers
- Automation and advanced automation (with conditional filter) helps you finish tasks in your website easily and swiftly
- It has a powerful theme builder that can be customized to suit your needs. By paying more, you can even access a code editor to really flesh out your website
- Comes with a blogging feature for promoting your brand
- This eliminates the need to use third-party funnels that have their own version. You can even choose from many different templates for your pipeline. Podia Vs Down To
Cons
- It is more expensive. Their lowest plan costs $149 per month
- There are no plans available that support unlimited products. The lowest plan offers only 3 products and 3 pipelines, the highest offers 100 products and 100 funnels.
- Kajabi lacks course completion certificates and course compliance features
- There are no page templates available for thank you pages, landing pages, or other pages. You will need to edit the default page templates as needed
- Does not offer guarantee badges on the checkout page
- Kajabi doesn’t have their own payment gateway
- Kajabi’s community lacks some features that make it as engaging as the others.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Podia versus Teachable
Teachable an Overview
Teachable is among the best online course platforms currently in the market. This LMS is used by course creators, teachers, professionals, coaches, entrepreneurs for business as well as teaching. You can even sell these courses, and coaching in a single bundle
Teachable’s greatest strength can be found in its course compliance feature. This feature is mostly missing from most LMS and online course platforms. This feature is not usually available on most LMS and online course platforms.
Teachable’s course compliance even gives out advanced reports on student progress, and video analytics to show student engagement.
Teachable does not require integration to access its payment gateways. Instead, they can choose their own system. It also handles EU/VAT, making your life easier and that of your European Students.
Teachable is also one of the most affordable LMSs available. Teachable even has a free plan that allows one course to be sold. It does have its limitations. However, this free plan can be very useful when you just want to test out the waters.
Teachable Features
- Interface – Teachable’s interface looks very modern and is quite neat. The right sidebar contains most features. Getting to the sub-features may need three to four clicks.
Although it does not include a search function, this is due to how easy it is for users to navigate from one option to the next.
Lastly, Teachable seems to load its pages slower compared to other LMS, however this lag is negligible and I would have not noticed if I was not actively comparing websites.
- Course Creation – Teachable doesn’t provide any templates or pipelines to help you create courses. Such set-up can be very difficult especially for those newer at designing websites.
The sections of a course or content are divided into sections. Lectures can be found within each section. Content type can be text, video, files, quizzes, code examples, custom codes, and upsells.
These files can be combined into one lecture. For example, you could add a quiz to a video lecture. Although this may seem like a difficult task, Teachable offers a bulk upload option that makes it easier to upload your files quicker.
These files can be uploaded once they are saved.
As for delivery, Teachable also allows for drip scheduling, meaning you can drip your content depending on when your student enrolled. That said, this feature only drips sections and not lectures. Podia Vs Down To
There is also the course player. This allows students to add notes to their learning experience. The only problem is that you will need to use the power editor to modify this player.
In which case, people who do not know how to code might find themselves lost.
Also something to take note is Teachable’s Course Compliance Feature. This is the area where Teachable stands out from the rest. This feature allows you to control the way students see and consume your lectures.
From deciding the lecture order to making sure they watch the whole video lecture. Quizzes can be used as a way to check their understanding before they are able to continue or pass a lecture.
You can then pass the results on to Teachable for detailed reports. This is yet another tool you can use in order to teach students effectively.
- Marketing – Teachable offers basic marketing features such as free previews, coupons, and pre-selling a course. These features function in the same way as the LMS marketing features, and serve the same purpose: to encourage others to purchase your products.
Teachable offers basic email marketing features. However, it lacks some key features such as sequences, templates and automations.
One thing that Teachable lacks is a dedicated affiliate program. You will need to create affiliates by yourself. It does however allow you to create affiliates for your product.
These affiliates will be paid through the website’s own payment gateways by Teachable. Podia Vs Down To
- Design and Customization – In terms of overall theme, Teachable is really not that customizable. The service only gives you one theme. You can only customize very few things like the logo and branding, the fonts, as well as the theme and background color.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
That said, paying for the business plan will give you access to its power editor wherein you can use custom code that allows you to further modify the theme of your page.
The page builder proper is more customizable than expected. You can choose from a variety of building blocks to suit your needs. You can even find block layouts to make banners, images with text and email. And even pricing for your products.
Like the themes, you can also use CSS/HTML to code in stuff to personalize your website more.
- Payment Processors – Teachable is among the only LMS services that has their very own Payment Gateway. There are two payment options: Monthly Payment Gateway and Teachable Payments. Students from EU can use the Monthly Payment Gateway to handle EU/VAT calculations.
Teachable has a “Back Office”, which handles all affiliate payouts. Unfortunately, to access the old Stripe or PayPal services, you will need to be on their professional plans.
Teachable Payment Processors simplify the payment and checkout process for customers and students.
Teachable price
If we include the free plan, Teachable has four plans total. Like the others, these plans differ in accessibility and features. We have listed the features and prices of each plan to help you choose which plan is right for you. That said, you can try the free plan, which acts as a free trial to test Teachable’s environment.
| No cost ($0 per Month) | Basic ($39/month) |
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| Pro ($119 per Month) | Businesses ($299 per month) |
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Teachable Pros and Cons
Pros
- You can host unlimited courses with the paid plans
- It has the best course compliance features making it the best option if your focus is on teaching
- You can combine the built-in certificate of completion with the course compliance to allow you to host academic courses
- Its course player allows your students to take notes while watching or listening to your lecture, thus promoting a pro-active learning environment. It even has a subtitle feature
- HTML/CSS scripts can be embedded to lectures, opening up a lot of interesting and engaging opportunities.
- It has unlimited bandwidth for video hosting
- It has a robust membership feature to allow for exclusive content depending on membership tiers
- Bulk upload makes your workflow easier
- You can choose to have comments added to your courses
- Has an ios App to allow your students consume the content whenever or wherever
- Payment processing platforms has an ability to handle EU/VAT sales
- It does not need to be integrated with other services, as it has its own payment gateways.
- Its native payment gateways also has “Back Office’ that process payouts for affiliate commission and other complex payment
- Has an in-depth student reports and video analytics, Podia Vs Down To
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Cons
- The free plan does not have enough features to be called a plan.
- Your sales are subject to a 5% commission under the Basic Plan
- They do not use a drag and drop builder. Instead, they use custom CSS and power editors. This is bad news to non-techies
- Lacks a proper community feature
- To customize the course player, you would need to be able to code
- You will need third-party services to issue refunds
Thinkific versus Podia
Thinkific an Overview
Thinkific, another LMS service, puts course building at its forefront. You can create a website and then start building your courses.
Thinkific is also very easy to use and as such, it is one of the most beginner friendly online course creators on the market. It is so user-friendly that Thinkific offers a free plan which allows you to create up to three courses with no investment. Granted, they do take a transaction fee.
Thinkific flaunts itself as the “go-to platform for running an online course business”.
Thinkific’s core focus is on its curriculum creation capabilities. This is why the course creation features are the most important.
This means their selling and marketing aspects are poor.
Thinkific Features
- Interface – Logging into Thinkific brings you to the admin area. This is your central point for all things Thinkific Platform.
The sidebar allows you to access every feature that Thinkific has to offer. Usually, these features are found and arranged in a logical manner. You might not be able to find certain features in the places you think they should be.
Overall, the thinkific interface may be decent, but there are parts where it feels clunky and unoptimized.
- Course Creation – Thinkific’s greatest strength is found on its course creation mechanism. Even its free plan offers a lot of options to make your course as enjoyable as it can be.
Thinkific’s platform allows you to use different types of media such as videos, pdf, audio, Google docs, captivates, storylines, among others. You can also bulk upload your content to Thinkific. However, this bulk upload is limited and you will have to look at and organize each lesson individually in order to fully customize them.
Thinkific also allows for drip-feeding your content to easily pace out and manage your course. Podia Vs Down To
While it does not have a course compliance option like that of Teachable, Thinkific allows you to incentivize your students by using awards, leaderboards as well as scoring to motivate them in finishing your course.
Thinkific also allows you to manage your course in different ways. You can manage discussions, answer questions from students, and even approve or hide discussions.
Thinkific also allows you to manage quizzes and assignments as much as possible.
- Marketing – This is where Thinkific is weakest. Most of their marketing features only include the essentials. Worse, it may only be available for a specific tier or higher.
Thinkific allows for course bundles which can also be used for creating a membership site.
Thinkific does not have a sales funnel builder. You will also need integration. Even then, the whole checkout is a bit clunky with limited customization.
Thinkific’s email marketing is also severely limited. You can only send your marketing emails to students who are already enrolled in your courses. As such, the best you can do is to tell them about new courses or products as well as send the email updates.
Thinkific allows you to add affiliates for your products and courses. The best part of it is that it allows you to select how many percent commission you can offer.
Your affiliates will also receive their own private dashboard to monitor the performance of the unique affiliate links. However, the affiliate tracking pixel cannot be changed and is permanently set to 30 days.
- Design and Customization – Thinkinfic’s level of customizability is fairly decent. They offer three themes to choose from. You can then select from these three themes, your theme styles. These styles can be thought of as presets that allow you to choose your site’s aesthetic.
That said, their level of customizability is not as good as Kajabi. Thinkific also allows you to import developer coded themes. You can customize your themes with code if you have the technical knowledge.
Thinkific also uses a drag and drop page builder. In this builder, each block is called a section and there are 20 of them. It’s very simple to use, and you can add sections to your page in just one click. Podia Vs Down To
- Payment Processors – Thinkific has its own payment processor, Thinkific Payments. This is part of a tool called TCommerce suite of tools. This tool provides for a seamless experience especially for one time purchases, subscriptions, and payment plans.
However, it seems like this is only available for the USA, UK, and Canada. Outside of those regions, Stripe and Paypal integrations are the other alternatives.
Thinkific Price
Thinkific offers four basic plans which includes a free plan. Their free plan is one of the best as it give you the most features only being limited to the number of courses you can make and sell with them.
Thinkific also offers a Growth option that provides more powerful tools to their Pro plan. Other than that, they also offer Thinkific Plus for enterprise clients.
| Free ($0 per month) | Basic ($39 per month) |
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| Pro ($79 per month) | Premier ($399 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Thoughtific Pros and Cons
Pros
- Thinkific’s permanent free offer is the Thinkific Free Package
- Different course payment options available for different students and schools
- There are no transaction fees on payments made by learners
- The premium packages gives you an unlimited number of online purses
- Their page builder is easy to use, and it can be further customized if you have the coding know-how
- It has a robust course builder to make your course as engaging as possible.
- Thinkific allows you to put incentives like leaderboards, awards and scores as a way to motivate your students.
Cons
- Many of the features they offer are not user-friendly.
- The lack of custom options would be disappointing for beginners, and it could lead to them getting lost in the ocean of code.
- Very weak marketing features.
- Checkout page very clunky
- Chat support is not available. For a prompt response, email support can take up to one working day. This includes time zones.
Verdict Podia Vs Down ToPodia Vs Down To
With all those laid out in hand, we can finally see how Podia compares to other Learning Management Systems. This will help you find the best platform for your courses, products, and businesses.
Verdict: Podia versus Kajabi
Both Kajabi and Podia function very similarly, as they both offer all-in-one solutions. Choosing one or the other comes down to two factors: price and customizability. Podia Vs Down To
You should choose Podia if you want an affordable all in one platform and you don’t need much customization for your product. An important thing to note is that, in its low price point, Podia allows you to upload an unlimited number of courses.
If you don’t have the budget but still want a personal touch, Kajabi is the right choice. Kajabi offers advanced automation and automation for marketing that will make it easier to update your customers and market to them.
Verdict: Podia versus Teachable
It is more difficult to compare this matchup to the one mentioned above. Teachable and Podia specialize in different things and as such, your choice would depend on your business’ direction.
You should choose Podia if what you need is mostly to sell courses, coachings, memberships, and other digital products, you would need more of a digital platform. As such, Podia would better fit your needs.
Teachable is the best choice if you are looking to concentrate more on the “course” rather than “teaching”. Teachable has a more robust course building platform compared to Podia. Teachable’s most distinctive feature is its course compliance, which allows you to monitor the progress of your students.
Verdict: Thinkific versus Podia
There is nothing really much to say here except for the fact that Thinkific is basically like a cheaper version of Teachable, as such picking between these two would be basically the same as picking between Podia and Teachable
If you want to sell your digital products, Podia is the right choice. Podia also has a more robust marketing tool compared to Thinkific, so that would be a plus for some people.
If you prefer to make courses than pay Teachable’s high prices, Thinkific is the right choice. Though their plan is more limited, Thinkific can be used to learn how to make online courses. Thinkific does not have a course compliance feature. Instead, it focuses on positive and incentivized motivation. Podia Vs Down To