Sharing knowledge, teaching people, coaching, and similar other things has become one of the best ways to earn money on the Internet. This can be done in many ways.
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 short video presentations can offer a lot of insight into certain topics especially when talking about music, literature, film, or arts in general.
Video lectures and tutorials are also gaining popularity in terms of education. I remember back in school, especially when Math is the subject, my classmates and I would often search tutorials on youtube to solve specifically confusing word problems.
Growing up, it was such a novel way to educate and learn. The knowledge seemed to be spreading wider and more easily accessible to more people.
It was only a matter of time when formal courses, and education would also build a branch on the online world.
Then there it was, the Course building websites have come.
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.
Course Building Websites Podia Vs Under The Table
Learning Management Systems, also known as course building websites, are platforms, services or websites that provide digital content to a targeted audience.
These websites even allow learning to be done remotely. While LMS can be used for remote or distance learning, it isn’t the only one capable of this. Distance learning has been a thing since 1924. Podia Vs Under The Table
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. These vendors usually follow 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.
Ever since then, LMS websites and vendor sites seem to be here for good. 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. It enables you to sell online courses, coaching, webinars, digital downloads, or you can sell all of them in a bundle.
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. At its economical price, it offers to allow you to create unlimited products and courses, perfect for markets who want to sell digital products.
Podia website builder is very simple and there is no coding required. It is ideal for people who want to quickly get their digital courses or products online. However, it does not sacrifice customization.
It is for this reason that there are a lot of users who think that Podia is a bit too rigid and restricting when designing websites. It is only expected as its website builder does not need 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. It even comes available on all Podia plans.
Speaking of plans, with the exception of the free plan, all tiers on Podia’s subscription does not take any transaction fees from all your purchases. This means that you own the money no matter what you sell. Podia Vs Under The Table
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
- Interface – A sleek and minimal UI greets you upon logging in to Podia. 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 supports course creation with text, quiz, coaching and files. It does not support all lesson types, so it may be slower than the competition.
Podia’s Embed feature is a game changer. There are over 1900+ platforms you can embed from, including Soundcloud, Youtube, and 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 has a few marketing tools that allow you to email market. However, it only allows you send emails and broadcasts. It does not have email templates, and it doesn’t offer automation or personalization options.
Podia also offers other marketing features such as the ability to upsell your products, to giveaway coupons to potential customers, and even to pre-launch courses to drum up interest before really going all in.
All in all, Podia’s marketing platform is more than enough to boost the potency of your sales. What really brings it down however is the lack of advanced automation. But that is to be expected of a basic platform like 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”. The majority of what you can do is limited to the colors and texts. Podia Vs Under The Table
It also only has a very few templates to offer. 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. These fees are usually very low, so they shouldn’t cause any problems.
Podia Price
Podia offers four types of plans. Each plan has its own unique features. These include:
No cost ($0 per Month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
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Shaker Plan ($75/month) | Earthquaker Plan ($33/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. Users will find themselves satisfied when setting it up.
- Podia allows you to sell various digital products, from the usual courses, to memberships, webinars, and community or digital downloads. You can even sell these things in a bundle.
- 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.
- To increase your reach, you can use Podia’s integrated affiliate program. This function can only be used if you are on the Shaker or Earthshaker plans.
- You can send campaigns and broadcasts through their integrated email marketing. These campaigns can be customized with exit and entrance conditions.
- Podia has over 1900+ integration across different apps, email service providers, payment gateways, and analytic tools. For those without native integration, you can use the Zapier integration along with its many triggers and actions.
- 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. It even lacks pre-made templates, a drag and drop editor and split-testing.
- 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 is very basic in terms of customization. Podia does not support 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 few lesson types are supported. Some that are missing include Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline and HTML 6 Content, assessments, etc.
- The affiliate program is also missing. There is no affiliate commission tiers and affiliate-specific commissions.
- Podia doesn’t have a mobile app.
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.
It is also very advanced, with a lot of features such as automation that the platform is perfect for course creators and marketers who already have the experience in the 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 allows you to also sell memberships, coachings, communities and podcasts along with other digital products.
Unlike most LMS, Kajabi has a mobile app, given that phones have become the preferred device to use by almost everyone, this really gives it a boost in the market.
Kajabi Features
Kajabi also offers a lot of features to ensure that their higher price point is worth every cent that you pay for. Kajabi’s website builder and many other features are highly 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 right! Kajabi provides automation in many of its features, including their email.
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 in to Kajabi brings you to its dashboard. It looks neat and minimal with little to no clutter. Overall it gives off a very modern aesthetic. The accessibility is also satisfactory. You can get to all of Kajabi’s features within 3 to 5 clicks.
Kajabi’s homepage also includes a search assistant that can help you navigate the site whenever you are lost or just too lazy to click on stuff. This will redirect you to the Kajabi App’s features and tools.
Kajabi’s page load times are very fast and provide you a smooth experience.
- Course Creation – Kajabi’s course creator is extremely 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. Kajabi already provides a “skeleton” for your course. All you need to do is add content.
Kajabi also allows you to structure your course in categories and subcategories. This allows you to decide how these courses will be presented to your students. This is particularly useful if you are slowly introducing your content.
Kajabi lets you use text, audio, video, assessments, images, and files to create your courses. 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. Your students will not be distracted by clutter.
- Marketing – At its most basic, Kajabi offers all of the expected products to make your products enticing to buyers. It allows you to sell coupons, upsells, and order bumps. This stuff can be customized to give you more value for money.
Kajabi’s strongest point is email marketing. 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 Under The Table
Kajabi can send any type of email, no matter what it is. However, Kajabi’s email marketing really gets powerful when you combine it with an automation function.
Not only does it make your job faster and easier. It opens up a lot of options too. Kajabi makes it easy to use third-party sales funnels. You can also customize their pipelines.
It can be used effectively and correctly to increase customer conversion rates, which will lead to increased sales. Podia Vs Under The Table
- Design and Customization – Kajabi’s design options are among the most customizable in the market. 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. If you pay for the highest plan Kajabi offers, then you will be given access to their code editor where you can even customize the most minute details.
Kajabi’s Page Builder allows you to create course pages, membership sites, checkout pages, landing pages, and many other pages. Each block can also be customized using a block system. They are page-specific and function-specific.
- Kajabi does not have a native payment gateway for Payment Processing. 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.
As for the checkout page, Kajabi offers it in a single page. That said, this single page can be customized to add sales videos and testimonials to further upsell your products.
Kajabi price
Because of its robust and feature-rich nature. Kajabi offers the best rates of all LMS services on the internet. They also do not offer 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 also give you 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 and Cons
Pros
- Kajabi offers various types of courses for you to make
- Provides Templates and Blueprints to help you get started
- 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 can also be automated
- A mobile app is available that allows students to access the courses from their phones.
- You can also sell or give products to members of different tiers through the membership feature
- Automation and advanced automation (with conditional filter) helps you finish tasks in your website easily and swiftly
- Has a very powerful theme builder that you can customize according to your needs. You can also access a code editor by paying more. This will allow you to truly flesh out your website.
- It comes with a blog feature to promote your brand
- This eliminates the need to use third-party funnels that have their own version. There are even many different pipeline templates available for use. Podia Vs Under The Table
Cons
- Is more on the expensive side. Their lowest plan costs $149 per month
- There are no plans available that support unlimited products. The lowest plan has only three products and three pipelines. The highest plan includes 100 products and 100 funnels.
- Kajabi lacks course completion certificates and course compliance features
- There are no page templates for your landing pages, thank you pages, and some others. You can edit the default templates for your pages as you need.
- Does not offer guarantee badges on the checkout page
- Kajabi does not own their own payment gateway
- Kajabi’s community is missing some features that make it as interesting as the rest.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Podia versus Teachable
Teachable an Overview
Teachable is one of the most popular online courses platforms. This LMS can be used by teachers, course creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs to teach as well as for business. 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 offers advanced reports about student progress and video analytics to demonstrate 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 among the cheapest LMS available out there. It even offers a free plan that allows you to sell one course only. 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. It may take three to four clicks to get to sub-features.
It does not have a search function but that is primarily because of how easy it is to get from one option to another.
Teachable’s pages load slower than other LMSs, but this is not noticeable and I wouldn’t have noticed it if I wasn’t actively comparing websites.
- Course Creation – Teachable doesn’t provide any templates or pipelines to help you create courses. This setup can be difficult, especially for newbies in web design.
Courses or Content are also divided into sections and lectures found inside each section. Content type can be text, video, files, quizzes, code examples, custom codes, and upsells.
You can even combine these types into one lecture, like adding a quiz after a video lecture in the same course. 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.
Teachable allows you to schedule drip delivery. This means that your content can be dripped depending on the time your student enrolled. This feature does not drip lectures, but sections. Podia Vs Under The Table
There is also the course player. This allows students to add notes to their learning experience. One downside however, is that to customize this player, you need to use the power editor.
People who don’t know how to code could find themselves in this situation.
Teachable’s Course Compliance feature is also worth noting. 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.
They can decide the order of the lectures and make sure they have watched the entire 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. They function like the other LMS marketing features and they serve the same purpose of enticing others to buy your products.
Teachable offers basic email marketing features. However, it lacks some key features such as sequences, templates and automations.
Teachable does not have an affiliate program. Because of this, you need to make affiliates on your own. That said, it does allow you to make affiliates for your product.
These affiliates will be paid through the website’s own payment gateways by Teachable. Podia Vs Under The Table
- Design and Customization – In terms of overall theme, Teachable is really not that customizable. The service only gives you one theme. The only thing you can customize is the logo, branding, fonts, background color, and theme.
> > 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 itself is much more customizable than you might expect. You can choose from a variety of building blocks to suit your needs. They even include block layouts for banners, images with text, email. You can even get 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 the only LMS service that has its 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.
Overall, Teachable Payment Processors make it easier for your students and customers to easily make payments and checkouts.
Teachable Price
If we include the free plan, Teachable has four plans total. These plans are similar to the others in terms of 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) | Business ($299 per Month) |
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Teachable Pros and Cons
Pros
- You can host unlimited courses with the paid plans
- It is the best choice if you are a teacher and want to focus on teaching.
- It’s built-in course completion certificates can be combined with the course compliance giving you the ability to host academic courses
- The course player lets your students take notes and listen to your lectures, promoting active learning. You can even add subtitles to the program.
- HTML/CSS scripts are easily embedded in lectures to open up many interesting and engaging possibilities.
- It has unlimited bandwidth for video hosting
- It offers a strong membership feature that allows for exclusive content depending upon membership levels
- Bulk upload makes your workflow easier
- You can opt in for a comment feature in 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
- Includes video analytics and student reports. Podia Vs Under The Table
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Cons
- Their free plan lacks a lot of feature to even call it a plan
- Basic plan charges a 5% fee for your sales
- They don’t 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
The Overview of Thinkific
Thinkific is another LMS service that puts course building at the forefront. It has everything you need to create a web page and start building your courses.
It is easy to use, making it one of the best online course creators. In fact, it is so beginner friendly that Thinkific’s very own free plan allows you to create three courses, with no investment required. They do charge a transaction fee.
Thinkific is the “go to platform” for online courses.
Thinkific’s core focus is on its curriculum creation capabilities. As such, most of the best features in this service can be found on the course creation.
However, this means that their marketing and selling aspects are not that good.
Thinkific Features
- Interface – Logging in to Thinkific will take 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. There are some features though that might be found in places you don’t think that they should be in.
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. You have many options to make your course enjoyable, even if you don’t pay for it.
Thinkific’s platform allows you to use different types of media such as videos, pdf, audio, Google docs, captivates, storylines, among others. Thinkific also allows you to bulk upload your contents. 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 Under The Table
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.
You can also manage your course with Thinkific in many different ways. You can manage discussions, answer questions from students, and even approve or hide discussions.
You can also manage assignments and quizzes with Thinkific.
- Marketing – This is probably where Thinkific is at its 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 also lacks a sales funnel builder and as such, you will need to use integration. Even so, the checkout process is somewhat cumbersome and offers limited customization.
Thinkific’s email marketing is also severely limited. Your marketing emails can only be sent to students 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 also allows you to add affiliates to promote your courses and products. It allows you to choose how much commission you want.
Affiliates will have their own dashboard that allows them to track the performance of each unique affiliate link. The affiliate tracking pixel can’t be modified and remains in place for 30 days.
- Design and Customization – Thinkinfic has a decent level of customizability. They offer three themes to choose from. You can then select from these three themes, your theme styles. These styles are like presets which allow you to select your preferred site aesthetic.
However, they are not as customizable as Kajabi. Thinkific also allows you to import developer coded themes. If you have the technical know-how, you can also customize your themes using code.
Thinkific also offers a drag-and-drop page builder. In this builder, each block is called a section and there are 20 of them. It is very easy to use and you can add a section to your page with only just 1 click. Podia Vs Under The Table
- Payment Processors – Thinkific has their own payment processor called 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 plans, including a free one. 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.
That said, Thinkific also offers a Growth feature that gives more powerful tools in their Pro plan. Other than that, they also offer Thinkific Plus for enterprise clients.
No cost ($0 per Month) | Basic ($39/month) |
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Pro ($79 per month) | Premier ($399 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Thinkific Pros and Cons
Pros
- Thinkific’s permanent free offer is the Thinkific Free Package
- Has different course payment options for different types of students and schools
- No transaction fees for any 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 comes with a strong course builder that will make your course engaging.
- Thinkific allows you to put incentives like leaderboards, awards and scores as a way to motivate your students.
Cons
- Most of their features are not exactly 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
- Does not have chat support. Email support might take up to one day for a proper response. This also includes time zones.
The Verdict Podia Vs Under The TablePodia Vs Under The Table
We can now see how Podia compares with 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. The two main factors that will determine which platform you choose are price and customization. Podia Vs Under The Table
Podia is the best choice if you are looking for an all-in-one platform that’s affordable and doesn’t require much customization. Podia is affordable and allows unlimited course uploads.
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
This matchup is much more difficult to compare to the one above. Teachable and Podia are experts in different areas. Your business’s direction would determine your decision.
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 offers a stronger course-building platform than Podia. Teachable’s most distinctive feature is its course compliance, which allows you to monitor the progress of your students.
Verdict: Podia versus Thinkific
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
You should choose Podia if you wish to focus on selling your digital products and you would prefer an all in one digital platform. 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 Under The Table