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. This usually involves a teacher/student relationship or a master/apprentice relation. The one who receives the instruction is the most likely to be the teacher.
Then there are those who learn by themselves. 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.
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.
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.
The internet allowed teachers and teachers at heart to impart their knowledge to people that they never imagined they would meet. 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.
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 Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
Podia allows users to share their knowledge online and make money. Basically, Podia customers make online courses that they can tailor 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 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.
Podia is headquartered in New York City. It has additional offices also in Austin Texas. It is fairly new but somehow old by internet standards. It was launched in 2014 by Spencer Fry, a man who is behind it.
Fry created a platform that would make it easier for online creators to market their products and to connect with their audience. 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?
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’s platform is designed to be creator-friendly. 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.
Podia can be transferred to even if you already have a digital content. Some digital platforms offer too many features and could be considered overkill. Although too many options might seem appealing at first glance, it can lead to overwhelming experiences.
This lack of focus may even be the cause of why your business is going into decline. That is why Podia’s simple and easy to get platform is a much better option. Podia Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
Podia’s website also allows your membership site as well as your selling platform to be integrated with each other. This is much better than if your membership site is hosted separately from the product. Not only is this a hassle, it removes precious time that you can use to create.
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
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.
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 < <
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.
Using the one Podia provides allows you to save even more money.
Their email editor is also very elegant. 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. Quick customer service is something that most people look for nowadays. WIth this live messaging widget, you are able to provide just that.
Affiliate Marketing Program Capabilities
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. Users can increase their reach and sales by using partner promotion.
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.
This storefront can be set up by any customer without the need for programming, programming, or design skills. 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. 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. This is particularly important if you don’t want to take on too many lessons at once.
With the drip content feature, course creators can “choose to schedule their content” at a more manageable time. This system benefits both the teacher and student (Main Podia customer), as it allows students to stay focused and not get overwhelmed.
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 Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
Membership Areas
Through Podia, you can create a membership area for your customers. 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 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’s Podia Like?
Of course, this wouldn’t really be a full review if we can’t tell you how the service really feels. 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.
You can create unlimited courses with Podia. There is no limit to the number of courses you can create on Podia.
Podia supports text, embeds, quizzes, coaching and files for lessons. Podia has very few lesson types. It also lacks assessments, Adobe Captivate, 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 for Audio podcasts
- Speaker Deck, Slide Share, Presentation and Google Slides
- Twitter, TikTok and Behance.
- Github, 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. They can guide themselves through your course with no problem at all. 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.
Another thing to note is that courses are just the tip of the iceberg on what products you can feature in Podia. You can sell webinars, bundles and coaching as well as 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 holds true for product landing pages as well.
As stated, creating your product website or your landing pages is quite easy. You can choose what you want to include on each page. 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. You get the basic stuff of fonts and colors as well as customizable text boxes. But that’s not all you get. This is why there are a lot of people who think Podia can be a little restrictive when talking about 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. However, you need to have more than one digital product in the storefront for this feature to work. This is not a difficult task. You can do the same for these products like how you designed your websites.
To create unique sections for each product, you can use your landing page or front page. 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.
The checkout page for products is smart and simple. There is very little 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 Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
Marketing and sales
Lastly, let’s talk about Podia’s marketing and sales 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.
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. This means that the sale is yours and Podia doesn’t get any commission. You will still have to pay Stripe and PayPal fees. The same applies to all 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.
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 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.
Some things that are lacking include a real landing page capability, and list management. 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.
MailChimp and ConvertKIt are some third-party email service providers that integrate with Podia.
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. You can email support with any questions or use the widget to chat live.
Other customers have noted Podia’s excellent support. 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. You can still contact them during work hours, but it may take longer to get a reply.
Podia also has a vast knowledge base that can be used to help you 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.
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 help move your content as well as your audience from another platform to Podia free of cost. Podia Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
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. So visit the website to check out on their latest pricing.
Plan | No cost ($0 per Month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
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Plan | Shaker ($75 per month) | Earthquaker ($33 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
The Mover Plan is a great option for anyone just starting out. The Mover Plan by Podia could provide enough for even small-time creators.
However, the best value can be seen in the Shaker Plan which offers everything the Mover Plan has while adding Unlimited Webinars and Affiliates. These features are particularly useful for growing your business, as we have already mentioned. Podia Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
The Earthquaker plan, however, is for those who want to spend a lot on their subscription. It actually benefits most who are looking for a bigger business. You also get 100,000 members of the community with the Earthquaker plan.
All the paid plans also allow you to create a custom domain for your Podia storefront as well as a logo that matches up with your brand.
Speaking of brands, the Shaker and Earthquaker plans allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. This is not true with the Mover plan and your product will have that P branding that stands for Podai.
Important to remember is that Podia provides a free plan. It is limited and, unlike paid plans, charges an 8$ transaction charge for all transactions.
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
- Gives you the ability track student progress
- Hosts can host both paid and free 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 essential
- Not suitable for building a fully-fledged website
- Membership feature is only available in the Shaker PLan
- Email composer lacks personalization fields
- Adding team members and providing them with admin access can cost you $20 per month per admin team member.
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. This is probably because of its less complicated and easy to use user interface.
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 Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
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. This course-creation service is quite affordable compared to others. 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 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.
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. Podia has all the essentials needed to create a website that is successful without being overwhelming.
I would highly recommend this site t
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Frequently Asked Questions
Podia Vs Teachable Vs Thinkific
Which Plan is the best option to get when I buy my Podia subscription?
The Shaker Plan is the best.
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 Stripe and Paypal to process 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 using Podia?
The main thing that you can do with Podia is to create online courses.
Aside from that, you can also make digital downloads, community memberships, and webinars and coaching.