Knowledge is the greatest gift that life has to offer. Without the knowledge we currently have, life would have been really really different and so is our way of life.
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.
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.
Teachers and teachers of the heart were able to share their knowledge via the internet to people they didn’t know. It enabled education and knowledge to cross borders without the need for visas or a flight ticket.
Most of it began on unorthodox websites like vimeo and youtube, but some even started as blogs. We now have dedicated websites that allow people to teach courses.
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Legit Marketing Reviews’ YouTube channel. Do check out our article below, however, because it has a comprehensive overview of Podia.
Podia a Brief Overview Podia Vs Thinkific Vs Teachable
Podia is an online platform that allows people to share their knowledge of different things while also making 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.
Podia is headquartered in New York City. It has additional offices also in Austin Texas. Although it is relatively new, it seems somewhat old in internet terms. It was launched in 2014 by Spencer Fry, a man who is behind it.
Fry wanted a platform to give online creators an easier way to sell their products and connect with their audiences. 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?
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. Yes, podia does not charge any transaction fees.
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. 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 Thinkific Vs Teachable
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. 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. 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 lets you have an automated email marketing platform that allows for both one-time broadcasts and automated campaigns. Although you can also access this service via other websites, Podia’s tool is sufficient.
Using the one Podia provides allows you to save even more money.
Their email editor is also very elegant. 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. 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. 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. 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
You can also control the posting schedule with Podia. This is particularly important if you don’t want to take on too many lessons at once.
Course creators have the option to “choose when they want to schedule their content”. This 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 offers payment integrations that allow customers to pay with credit cards and PayPal worldwide. Podia Vs Thinkific Vs Teachable
Member 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. There are even giveaways you can host.
Membership Areas are also a great way to build customer trust and even a tight community, so having a prepared place where you can easily set it up is surely a welcome one.
What is Podia like?
This review wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t give you a true picture of the service. We will be looking at Podia’s Course Creation and Engagement Section as well as Site Design and Customization and Sales and Marketing to see how they feel.
Course Creation and Engagement
First and foremost, we should tackle how the Podia handles course creation. This is particularly important because this is why most users want to pay for the Podia Service.
You can create unlimited courses with Podia. There is no limit to the number of courses you can create on Podia.
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.
However what it lacks, it can embed and Podia can embed a lot. Podia can embed on over 1900+ platforms. These include, but aren’t limited to:
- 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 and Codepen
- Google Forms, Typeform, and Paper Form
Podia was designed to make it easy for 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. Of course, these features are optional.
It is important to remember that Podia can only feature courses. 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. You can even bundle them along with your courses to create a more comprehensive package.
Site Design and Customization
For your websites, Podia offers templates that allow you to get on the exciting part easily and quickly. This holds true for product landing pages as well.
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. You can even rearrange these pages just by 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. 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. 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. 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.
Speaking of buying, the checkout page for the products has a smart and simple design. There is little to no clutter. It is simple to convert every customer into a buyer because there are no distractions distracting their attention while they pay.
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.
Although Podia’s design offerings might seem restrictive to some, for others the simplicity of Podia’s designs is all they need. Podia Vs Thinkific Vs Teachable
Marketing and sales
Let’s lastly talk about Podia’s sales and marketing capabilities. This is also an important part of the Podia experience, or any course-creating platform in general as this gives you an idea how easy it is to sell to your potential customers.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
For the basics, Podia has two payment options you can use: Stripe or PayPal. You can offer your customers a flexible and customizable payment plan. You can either give them a one time big time payment or you can spread the payment overtime.
It is up to you.
As for the payment processing, Podia handles everything for you, so you don’t need to worry about anything. Stripe, a PCI compliant payment processor, securely stores your credit card and payment information.
Podia does not charge transaction fees, unlike other services. 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. The same applies to all platforms.
As for the marketing side, Podia offers some basic lead generation tools. They even allow you to offer a pre-launch sign-up form as well as a newsletter signup form to collect email addresses.
You can send both automated and one-off emails through their email marketing. This allows you send email campaigns to both existing and potential customers.
You can also customize your campaign emails to be sent in drip-out fashion and specify when they will be delivered.
However, what they provide is very basic, and as such it cannot replace your email service provider.
A real landing page capability and list management are two things that are missing. These are two very important things, but they are essential for your email marketing platform. Luckily, you can use third party integration to remedy these problems.
MailChimp and ConvertKIt are some third-party email service providers that integrate with Podia.
Podia has a Zapier integration too, which allows other email solutions that does not integrate directly to podia to pass users data via this service.
Zapier also enhances Podia’s integration to reach some other useful third-party applications like FreshBooks and ClickFunnels. You can even add third-party scripts to your website. 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.
Podia has received praises from other customers for their excellent customer service. Generally speaking, the Podia team will give you a response in 5-10 minutes from 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. 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 move your content and your audience from any other platform to Podia at no cost. Podia Vs Thinkific Vs Teachable
Price
Of course any review is not complete without talking about price. Price is a key factor that can make or break your decision about whether you want to use 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. At the time this review was written, they were offering a discount on all plans. So visit the website to check out on their latest pricing.
Plan | No cost ($0 per Month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
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Plan | Shaker ($75 per month) | Earthquaker ($33 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
At a quick glance, the Mover Plan can be enough for those just starting out. Even for small time creators, what Podia offers in the Mover Plan could be enough.
The Shaker Plan offers the most value, as it includes everything in the Mover Plan and adds unlimited webinars and affiliates. As talked about earlier, these features are especially useful when talking about growing your business and such. Podia Vs Thinkific Vs Teachable
Meanwhile, the Earthquaker plan is something for those looking to go all out on their subscription. It actually benefits most who are looking for a bigger business. The Earthquaker plan also gives you 100,000 community members.
All paid plans allow you to set up a custom domain and a matching logo for your Podia storefront.
Speaking of brands, the Shaker and Earthquaker plans allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. The Mover plan does not allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. Instead, your product will be branded with the P symbol for Podai.
Important to remember is that Podia provides a free plan. It is limited and, unlike paid plans, charges an 8$ 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
- Has affordable price for the features it offers
- Offers great support no matter the customer tier
- Has integrated email marketing
- Gives you the ability track student progress
- Hosts can host both paid and free 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
- Only Shaker PLan members can access the membership feature
- Email composer lacks personalization fields
- Adding team members and providing them with admin access can cost you $20 per month per admin team member.
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. Its user interface is simpler and more intuitive.
Podia’s “rigid” and limited design is the most common complaint from customers. However for people who have limited knowledge on designing websites, such a feature is a god send. Podia Vs Thinkific Vs Teachable
An easy-to-use and understand UI is key to allowing people to focus on content creation instead of the logistics.
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. You can Podia’s Mover plan to test the waters while getting the hang around of things. Sometimes simplicity is key. Too many features could be overkill and might overwhelm the user.
Their customer service is also something that we should take note of. With a customer service that responds quickly and efficiently to queries, it is easy to overlook the absence of a telephone number for assistance. You can count on them to answer all your questions, no matter what time it is.
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 < <
Frequently Asked Questions
Podia Vs Thinkific Vs Teachable
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 Stripe and Paypal to process payments.
Customers and students can pay by paypal, credit or debit card for products.
Why Use Podia?
You can use Podia if you are looking for a platform that is extremely easy to use.
Other reasons why you should choose podia over its competitors is because it takes no transaction fees. It also offers reliable and excellent customer service. Lastly, it is has a very low price point.
What Products can you make with 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.