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. One mostly provides the instruction, while the other receives it.
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. 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 Vs Thinkific
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. 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 does not only cover 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.
Podia is headquartered in New York City. Additional offices are located in Austin, Texas. Although it is relatively new, it seems somewhat old in internet terms. It launched in 2014 and behind it is a guy named Spencer Fry.
Fry wanted a platform to give online creators an easier way to sell their products and connect with their audiences. 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.
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. It has a digital storefronts that offers instant payout from sales while not even asking for any transaction fees. Yes, podia does not charge any transaction fees.
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 even makes it easy to navigate the hurdle of getting the digital content to the market.
Podia can be transferred to even if you already have a digital content. 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.
Your business may be in decline because of this lack of focus. That is why Podia’s simple and easy to get platform is a much better option. Podia 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. 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 claims that they have everything you need to create, validate, and market online courses.
A Custom Website Builder
The custom website builder allows users to create landing pages that are specific to what your brand is selling. This custom website can be built by Podia with either a custom domain, or as a subdomain.
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.
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
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 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 makes it possible to create an online store that only sells your products.
Any customer can set-up this storefront even without the coding, programming or even the design skills to do this. Podia has a no-coding approach that allows you to do this.
Course Dashboard
For services like Podia, the way customers are able navigate their content is another crucial factor on which service they would like to avail. With Podia’s intuitive interface, it is easy to navigate these pages with just a few clicks.
Uploading and sharing your lessons, whether they are videos, audio podcasts or PDF documents, has never been easier.
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 system benefits both the teacher and student (Main Podia customer), as it allows students to stay focused and not get overwhelmed.
Meanwhile with automatic Drip Content, the teacher does not need to manually update each post to give another lesson or release another product.
Payment Integrations
Of course every feature would be useless if there is no payment integration for where you are selling. Podia’s payment integrations include credit cards, PayPal payments for customers worldwide. Podia Vs Thinkific
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 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. 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. This means that there is no limit and no additional fees whenever you feel offering a new course.
Podia supports text, embeds, quizzes, coaching and files for lessons. 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 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. To make it more enjoyable, you can use your drip content and automated emails.
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. The service allows you to sell webinars, bundles, coaching, as well as other digital files.
You can make webinars and offer replays of the webinars to your customers by integrating multiple websites. 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.
It is easy to create your product website, or landing pages. Each page is divided into a section wherein you can decide what to put in. These pages can be rearranged by simply dragging and dropping. The same goes for removing sections that are not needed.
For customization, Podia offers a decent amount of options. Podia offers both the basics of fonts and colors, as well as customizable text box options. 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. 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. 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. That way, it is simple for your students and customers to navigate and buy what they need.
Speaking of buying, the checkout page for the products has a smart and simple design. 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.
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
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.
It is up to you.
As for the payment processing, Podia handles everything for you, so you don’t need to worry about anything. As for credit card and payment information, it is all securely stored by Stripe, a PCI-compliant payment processor.
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. This is the same throughout all available platforms.
Podia provides basic tools for lead generation. They even allow you to offer a pre-launch sign-up form as well as a newsletter signup form to collect email addresses.
Their email marketing allows you to send automated emails as well as one-off emails. 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.
Some things that are lacking include a real landing page capability, and list management. Two very basic things but are entirely essential when doing your email marketing platform. Luckily, you can use third party integration to remedy these problems.
Some third party email service providers that have native integration with Podia include MailChimp, ConvertKIt, Drip, Active Campaign, GetResponse, and MailerLite.
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. You can add third-party scripts to your website, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and ConvertBox.
Customer Support
Podia has the best customer service in the industry. 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. 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 has a vast knowledge base that can be used to help you do different things on the platform. If you feel like finding the answer to your question independently, you can use this resource at hand to do it themselves
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 Thinkific
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 can 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 | Free ($0 per month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
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Plan | Shaker ($75 per month) | Earthquaker ($33 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
The Mover Plan is a great option for anyone just starting out. Even for small time creators, what Podia offers in the Mover Plan could be enough.
However, the best value can be seen in the Shaker Plan which offers everything the Mover Plan has while adding Unlimited Webinars and Affiliates. As talked about earlier, these features are especially useful when talking about growing your business and such. Podia Vs Thinkific
The Earthquaker plan, however, is for those who want to spend a lot on their subscription. It actually benefits most who are looking for a bigger business. You also get 100,000 members of the community with the Earthquaker plan.
All paid plans allow you to set up a custom domain and a matching logo for your Podia storefront.
Brands aside, the Shaker or Earthquaker plans let you remove the Podia branding from products. The Mover plan does not allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. Instead, your product will be branded with the P symbol for Podai.
An important thing to note is that Podia offers a free plan. However, it is very limited and unlike the paid plans, it takes an 8$ transaction fee from all your transactions.
Both the pros and cons
Pros
- Super easy to use and setup
- Instant payouts that does not make you wait to be paid
- Has affordable price for the features it offers
- No matter what customer level, they offer great support
- Integrates email marketing
- This tool allows you to track the progress of your students
- Hosts both free and paid content
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Podia offers free migration of products and customers from other websites to Podia
Cons
- Most people find course builders rigid.
- Important learning tools are missing, such as graded quizzes, course compliance, and assignments.
- No mobile app feature
- Reporting tools are basic
- Not suitable for building a fully-fledged website
- Membership feature is only available in the Shaker PLan
- Email composer lacks personalization fields
- You can add team members to your admin team for $20 per month.
The Verdict of Podia
Now that we’ve seen what Podia can do, we can finally judge if availing of the website is all worth it.
Podia continues to gain ground in e-learning despite all the competition. 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
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.
Sure, there might be a limit to what it can do, but you can think of it this way. Podia’s Mover allows you to try the waters and get the hang of it. Sometimes simplicity is key. Over-features can overwhelm users and cause them to lose their sense of control.
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. You can count on them to answer all your questions, no matter what time it is.
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. 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
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. Some of which includes affiliate marketing and the ability to integrate many other apps and services like 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.
Another reason to choose podia over other competitors is that it does not charge transaction fees. Furthermore, it has good and reliable 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.
You can also download community memberships, webinars, coaching, and other digital content.