Sharing knowledge, teaching people, coaching, and similar other things has become one of the best ways to earn money on the Internet. There are a lot of things to go about this.
Blogging is the most popular form of blogging. It is almost as old and well-known as the Internet itself. While some do think that it’s younger cousin, vlogging has replaced it, there are still those who prefer to read what they want to study and not just videos.
And speaking of videos, another angle into which you can learn from is through video essays. These short video presentations can offer a lot of insight into certain topics especially when talking about music, literature, film, or arts in general.
Education is also becoming more popular thanks to video lectures and tutorials. Back in school, Math was a subject that I loved, and my classmates and me would search YouTube tutorials to find solutions to word problems.
Growing up, it was such a novel way to educate and learn. It seemed like once again, the knowledge was able to spread wider and was more accessible to a lot more audience.
It was only a matter of time when formal courses, and education would also build a branch on the online world.
It was then, the Course Building Websites were born.
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Legit Marketing Reviews’ YouTube channel. To get a comprehensive overview of Podia, you may still want to check out our article below.
Course Building Websites Podium Vs Zendesk
Learning Management Systems, also known as course building websites, are platforms, services or websites that provide digital content to a targeted audience.
One could even say that these websites allow for learning to be delivered remotely. 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. Podium Vs Zendesk
LMS, or distance learning via the internet, is therefore, more precise. LMS can either be hosted locally or via 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 especially gained popularity during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic as face-to-face and regular school learning became impossible and impractical due to isolation and social distancing measures put in place by different governments across the world.
LMS websites have been around since then and vendors sites are still in existence. Many of these websites, which have been around for a while, are now household names because of their popularity and use during the pandemic.
New websites are also popping up, creating buzz and trying their hand at being 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 an online Learning Management System. It claims to be all-in-one. You can either sell individual courses, coaching, webinars or digital downloads online, or all of them together.
Among all LMS, it probably is one of the most affordable price plan. As such, it is best suited for course creators that are looking for an inexpensive LMS solution. It is affordable and allows you to create unlimited courses and products, which are great for digital product sellers.
The Podia website builder is easy to use and requires no coding. Thus, it is a perfect fit for those who are in a rush and just want to get their courses or digital products out there. That said, this simplicity sacrifices 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. This is because Podia’s website builder doesn’t require coding.
Podia has many integration options for those features that are not available. It allows you to add various email service providers, payment gateways and analytics tools to your website, from Zoom to Zapier.
Podia Features
Podia provides many features that enable users to create websites and personalize them in their own way. You can also run your business with enough tools.
Podia is probably the most affordable LMS website. It has the best integration and membership communities. You can even get it on all Podia plans.
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. Podium Vs Zendesk
> > 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 simple and intuitive.
- 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’s marketing features allows for email marketing, however it is a very basic email marketing tool that allows you to send broadcasts and email campaigns. It lacks email templates and there is not really a place for more personalization and automation features.
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. The only thing that really lets it down is the absence of advanced automation. This is to be expected from a basic platform such as Podia.
- Podia is most vulnerable in this area. While they offer a decent number of customization options, It really isn’t that “customizable”. The majority of what you can do is limited to the colors and texts. Podium Vs Zendesk
It also only has a very few templates to offer. It lacks 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: Podia integrates Stripe with Paypal to collect payment from students. Podia also does not take any transaction fees for any transactions or sales you make with your website.
However, Stripe and Paypal might charge additional fees. You still need to pay them. Usually these fees are very low so you probably won’t have a problem with them.
Podia Price
There are four plans available from Podia. Each plan has its own unique features. This include:
| Free ($0 per month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
|
|
| Shaker Plan ($75/month) | Earthquaker Plan ($33 per month) |
|
|
Podia Pros and Cons
Pros
- Podia’s UI/UX is refined to the point that even non-techies are able to grasp its use easily. It is easy to set up and users will be satisfied.
- 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.
- You also have unlimited storage and bandwidth to 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. You do have to be on the Shaker and Earthshaker plans to utilize this function.
- You can send campaigns and broadcasts through their integrated email marketing. You can even add entrance and exit conditions for these campaigns.
- Podia offers over 1900+ integrations across various apps, email service providers and payment gateways. 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 markets itself as creator-centric, as such, they take 0% transaction fee on all of your sales
- Podia also provides built-in quizzes, community, certificates, and community. For memberships, you can use the community page.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Cons
- Email Composer does not offer personalization options. 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 handful of lesson types are supported. Some that are missing include Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline and HTML 6 Content, assessments, etc.
- Affiliate program is also lacking. There is no affiliate commission tiers and affiliate-specific commissions.
- Podia does not have a mobile application.
Podia versus Kajabi
Kajabi: An Overview
Kajabi is a Learning Management System. It allows users to create products and courses while simultaneously 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.
Kajabi offers a mobile app that is different from other LMSs. This is because smartphones have quickly become the most preferred device for almost everyone. It really gives the company a boost in terms of the market.
Kajabi Features
Kajabi 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.
Marketing tools are probably the best area where Kajabi shines. While it offers the usual bells and whistles, what investors and the Kajabi’s competitors really envy is their automation system. Yes, that’s correct! Kajabi offers automation in lots of its features, especially their emails.
One more thing that is unique to Kajabi is its Pipelines. Kajabi’s Pipelines offer many benefits that can be used to replace ClickFunnel or other website funnel-building tools.
- Interface – Logging into Kajabi will bring you to the dashboard. It is clean and minimalistic with minimal clutter. It has a modern, minimalist aesthetic. The accessibility is also satisfactory. You can get to all of Kajabi’s features within 3 to 5 clicks.
Kajabi’s homepage 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 loads very quickly and provides a smooth experience.
- Course Creation – Kajabi’s course creator is extremely robust. First of all, it allows you to make different types of categories. You can choose the best option based on the course you’re 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. That way, you can decide how you present these courses to your students. This is especially useful when you are “dripping” your content slowly.
As for content, Kajabi allows you to use the following to make your courses: text, audio, vidoe, assessments, images and files. You can even combine these content and add them on a single course. At the moment, Kajabi doesn’t offer live lessons.
As for 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. You can even customize this stuff to ensure more value for your 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 offers a variety of email templates. Podium Vs Zendesk
Depending on what type of email you want to send, Kajabi has got it covered. However, Kajabi’s email marketing really gets powerful when you combine it with an automation function.
It makes your job easier and faster. You have many options. Kajabi makes it easy to use third-party sales funnels. You can also customize their pipelines.
It can be used effectively and correctly to increase customer conversion rates, which will lead to increased sales. Podium Vs Zendesk
- Design and Customization – Kajabi’s design options are among the most customizable in the market. Even the lowest plans offer a variety of themes you can choose to match your brand or course. These themes have a very professional look.
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.
As for the Page Builder, Kajabi allows you to design course pages, membership site, checkout pages, landing pages and even more. Each block can also be customized using a block system. Even then, they are already page-specific and function specific.
- For Payment Processing, Kajabi unfortunately does not have its own native payment gateway. It integrates Stripe, PayPal and other third-party integrations. Some regions have even more gateways.
As for those regions who don’t have integration, you can use third party integration through Webhooks or 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. You cannot also get a free trial. It is also a standard practice to name the different plans they offer.
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/month) | Growth ($199 per month) |
|
|
| Pro ($319 per month) | |
|
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
- It has a powerful theme builder that can be customized to suit your needs. You can also access a code editor by paying more. This will allow you to truly flesh out your website.
- Comes with a blogging feature for promoting your brand
- Removes the need for third-party funnels with their own version of a pipeline. There are even many different pipeline templates available for use. Podium Vs Zendesk
Cons
- It is more expensive. Their lowest plan costs $149 per month
- They have no available plans 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 available for thank you pages, landing pages, or other pages. You can edit the default templates for your pages as you need.
- There are no guarantee badges available on the checkout page
- Kajabi doesn’t have their own payment gateway
- Kajabi’s community lacks some features that make it as engaging as the others.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Podia versus Teachable
Teachable an Overview
Teachable is among the best online course platforms currently in the market. This LMS is used by course creators, teachers, professionals, coaches, entrepreneurs for business as well as teaching. These courses and coaching can be sold together.
Teachable’s greatest strength is its course compliance feature. This feature is mostly missing from most LMS and online course platforms. If they do have this feature, it will probably be lacking or not as advanced or robust.
Teachable offers advanced reports about student progress and video analytics to demonstrate student engagement.
Teachable also does not depend on integration for its payment gateways, opting for their own system instead. 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. This plan is free and can be extremely useful if you are just starting out.
Teachable Features
- Interface – Teachable’s interface is actually very neat and brings about a modern feel. The right sidebar contains most features. Getting to the sub-features may need three to four clicks.
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 – As for course creation proper, Teachable does not provide templates or pipelines for you to use. 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. This might seem a hassle to set-up at first,but Teachable has a bulk upload feature that allows you to put up your files faster.
Once uploaded, these files will become individual lectures themselves.
As for delivery, Teachable also allows for drip scheduling, meaning you can drip your content depending on when your student enrolled. This feature does not drip lectures, but sections. Podium Vs Zendesk
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.
Also something to take note is Teachable’s Course Compliance Feature. This is the area where Teachable stands out from the rest. This feature allows you to control the way students see and consume your lectures.
From deciding the lecture order to making sure they watch the whole video lecture. You can even use quizzes as a checkpoint before they can proceed or pass a lecture.
The results can then be passed on the various detailed reports you can get from Teachable, which is another tool that you can use to effectively teach your students.
- Marketing – Teachable provides basic marketing features like free previews, coupons and pre-selling courses. They function like the other LMS marketing features and they serve the same purpose of enticing others to buy your products.
As for email marketing, Teachable has the basic features that can get you what you need, however it does lack some features like, templates, sequences, and automations.If you think you want better options, you can integrate popular email services like MailChimp and ConvertKit as needed.
One thing that Teachable lacks is a dedicated 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.
The website will handle the commissions of these affiliates through Teachable’s very own payment gateways. Podium Vs Zendesk
- 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 < <
Nevertheless, if you pay for the business plan, you will have access to the power editor. This allows you to use custom code to modify the theme of the page.
The page builder proper is more customizable than expected. They provide you with several building blocks depending on your needs. You can even find block layouts to make banners, images with text and email. And even pricing for your products.
You can use CSS/HTML, just like the themes, to add more personalization to your website.
- Payment Processors – Teachable is among the only LMS services that has their very own Payment Gateway. They have Teachable Payments and the Monthly Payment Gateway. Students from EU can use the Monthly Payment Gateway to handle EU/VAT calculations.
Teachable also has “Back Office” which is a service that will handle all affiliate payout. 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. To ensure which plan is for you, we have placed what they offer in each price point. That said, you can try the free plan, which acts as a free trial to test Teachable’s environment.
| Free ($0 per month) | Basic ($39/month) |
|
|
| Pro ($119 per Month) | Businesses ($299 per month) |
|
|
Teachable Cons and Pros
Pros
- You can host unlimited courses with the paid plans
- It has the best course compliance features making it the best option if your focus is on teaching
- It’s built-in course completion certificates can be combined with the course compliance giving you the ability to host academic courses
- Its course player allows your students to take notes while watching or listening to your lecture, thus promoting a pro-active learning environment. You can even add subtitles to the program.
- HTML/CSS scripts are easily embedded in lectures to open up many interesting and engaging possibilities.
- You can use it for unlimited video hosting
- It has a robust membership feature to allow for exclusive content depending on membership tiers
- Bulk upload makes your workflow easier
- You can opt in for a comment feature in your courses
- Use an ios app to let your students access the content wherever they are.
- Payment processing platforms can handle EU/VAT transactions
- It does not need to be integrated with other services, as it has its own payment gateways.
- Its native payment gateways have a “Back Office” that processes payouts for affiliate commissions and other complex payments.
- Has an in-depth student reports and video analytics, Podium Vs Zendesk
> > 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 for non-techies
- A lack of a community feature
- To customize the course player, you would need to be able to code
- When issuing refunds, you would need to avail of third-party services.
Podia versus Thinkific
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. Granted, they do take a transaction fee.
Thinkific is the “go to platform” for online courses.
As such, Thinkific puts its core focus on it’s curriculum creation capabilities. As such, most of the best features in this service can be found on the course creation.
This means their selling and marketing aspects are poor.
Useful Features
- Interface – Logging into Thinkific brings you to the admin area. This is your central point for all things Thinkific Platform.
You can access all features that Thinkific offers via the sidebar. These features are usually found and organized in a logical way. You might not be able to find certain features in the places you think they should be.
The interface is overall decent but it has its flaws.
- Course Creation – Thinkific is known for its unique course creation system. Even its free plan offers a lot of options to make your course as enjoyable as it can be.
Thinkific’s platform allows you to use different types of media such as videos, pdf, audio, Google docs, captivates, storylines, among others. Thinkific also allows you to bulk upload your contents. You will need to organize each lesson separately to make the bulk upload work.
Thinkific allows you to drip-feed your content, allowing you to manage and pace your course. Podium Vs Zendesk
Although it doesn’t have a course compliance option, Thinkific lets you incentivize students using leaderboards, awards and scoring to motivate them to complete your course.
You can also manage your course with Thinkific in many different ways. You can also manage discussions, answer students’ questions, and approve or deny discussions.
You can also manage assignments and quizzes with Thinkific.
- Marketing – This is where Thinkific is weakest. Their marketing features are limited to the essentials. Worse, it may only be available for a specific tier or higher.
Thinkific offers course bundles that can be used to create a membership website.
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. You can only send your marketing emails to students who are already enrolled in your courses. You can only send marketing emails to students who are already enrolled in your courses.
Thinkific also allows you to add affiliates to promote your courses and products. The best part of it is that it allows you to select how many percent commission you can offer.
Your affiliates will also receive their own private dashboard to monitor the performance of the unique affiliate links. However, the affiliate tracking pixel cannot be changed and is permanently set to 30 days.
- Design and Customization – Thinkinfic has a decent level of customizability. First of all, they give you a choice of three themes. 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.
That said, their level of customizability is not as good 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 uses a drag and drop page builder. In this builder, each block is called a section and there are 20 of them. It’s very simple to use, and you can add sections to your page in just one click. Podium Vs Zendesk
- Payment Processors – Thinkific has its own payment processor, Thinkific Payments. This tool is part of the TCommerce suite. This tool provides for a seamless experience especially for one time purchases, subscriptions, and payment plans.
This is not available in Canada, the UK and the USA. Other than those countries, Stripe integrations and Paypal integrations can be used.
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.
| Free ($0 per month) | Basic ($39/month) |
|
|
| Pro ($79 per month) | Premier ($399 per month) |
|
|
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Thoughtific Pros and Cons
Pros
- Thinkific’s permanent free offer is the Thinkific Free Package
- Different course payment options available for different students and schools
- No transaction fees for any payments made by learners
- Premium packages give you unlimited online purse options
- The page builder is simple to use and can be customized with coding knowledge.
- It comes with a strong course builder that will make your course engaging.
- You can use Thinkific to give incentives such as leaderboards, awards, and scores 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.
- Marketing features are very weak.
- Very clunky checkout page
- Chat support is not available. Email support might take up to one day for a proper response. This includes time zones.
Verdict Podium Vs ZendeskPodium Vs Zendesk
We can now see how Podia compares with other Learning Management Systems. Through this, I hope you can find the right platform to host your products, courses and businesses.
Verdict: Podia versus Kajabi
Both Kajabi and Podia function very similarly, as they both offer all-in-one solutions. Choosing one or the other comes down to two factors: price and customizability. Podium Vs Zendesk
You should choose Podia if you want an affordable all in one platform and you don’t need much customization for your product. An important thing to note is that, in its low price point, Podia allows you to upload an unlimited number of courses.
If you don’t have the budget but still want a personal touch, Kajabi is the right choice. Kajabi offers advanced automation and automation for marketing that will make it easier to update your customers and market to them.
Verdict: Podia versus Teachable
It is more difficult to compare this matchup to the one mentioned above. Teachable and Podia specialize in different things and as such, your choice would depend on your business’ direction.
You should choose Podia if what you need is mostly to sell courses, coachings, memberships, and other digital products, you would need more of a digital platform. Podia is more suited to your needs.
Teachable is the best choice if you are looking to concentrate more on the “course” rather than “teaching”. Teachable has a more robust course building platform compared to Podia. Teachable’s most distinctive feature is its course compliance, which allows you to monitor the progress of your students.
Verdict: Podia versus Thinkific
This is a simple statement that Thinkific is essentially a cheaper version Teachable. As such, picking between the two would be the same as choosing between Podia or Teachable.
If you want to sell your digital products, Podia is the right choice. Podia also has a more robust marketing tool compared to Thinkific, so that would be a plus for some people.
You should choose Thinkific if you would rather focus on making courses, but you don’t want to pay Teachable’s high prices. Thinkific is also a good platform to get used to making online courses with, as their free plan requires little to no investment, despite being more limited. Thinkific does not have a course compliance feature. Instead, it focuses on positive and incentivized motivation. Podium Vs Zendesk