One of the most effective ways to make money online is by sharing knowledge, teaching others, coaching, or any other similar activities. This can be done in many ways.
First and foremost, there is blogging, which is almost as old as the Internet itself. Although some believe that vlogging is its younger cousin, blogging has not lost its appeal. However, there are still people who love to read the content they’re interested in and not just videos.
Video essays are another way to learn about videos. 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 R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
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. LMS is capable of remote and distance learning. However, it’s not the only one that can do this. Distance learning is a reality since 1924. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
Therefore, to be more precise, LMS is basically distance learning through the internet. LMS can either be hosted locally or via a vendor. Cloud hosting is a common method used by most vendors to host learning materials and courses. This is 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.
LMS websites have been around since then and vendors sites are still in existence. 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.
While these sites mostly share a common goal (to be the preferred platform of learning and creating courses) more or less, some of them specialize in certain areas.
Podia an Overview
Podia is an online Learning Management System. It claims to be all-in-one. 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. As such, it is best suited for course creators that are looking for an inexpensive 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.
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.
Many users feel that Podia can be too restrictive when it comes to 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 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.
Talking about plans, except for the free one, every tier on Podia’s subscription doesn’t take transaction fees from any of your purchases. This means that you own the money no matter what you sell. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
> > 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 also allows you to drip your content/lesson, so you can pace them in whatever way you want.
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.
Overall, Podia’s marketing platform does more than enough to increase 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.
- Podia is most vulnerable in this area. 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. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
It also only has a very few templates to offer. It lacks HTML/Custom CSS customization. Although this may sound like a problem, some people 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.
However, Stripe and Paypal might charge additional fees. You still need to pay 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:
| Free ($0 per month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
|
|
| Shaker Plan ($75/month) | Earthquaker Plan ($33/month) |
|
|
Podia Pros and Cons
Pros
- Podia’s UI/UX has been refined so that even non-techies can easily understand it. 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.
- Their unlimited offer also applies to storage and bandwidth where you can host your videos. You don’t have to use Vimeo, Wistia, or any other video hosting site.
- 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 broadcasts and campaigns through their built-in email marketing. These campaigns can be customized with exit and entrance conditions.
- 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 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. The Email Composer lacks pre-made templates and a drag-and-drop editor. Split-testing is also not available.
- 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 has very limited customization options. Podia does not support custom CSS/HTML customizations
- You might need to use third-party apps and services to really create landing pages and sales funnels such as WordPress, or ClickFunnels
- Only a few lesson types are supported. Adobe Captivate and Articulate Storyline are not supported. HTML 6 Content, assessments, and other lessons may be missing.
- Affiliate program is also lacking. Affiliate-specific commissions are not available.
- 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.
The platform is very sophisticated, and has many features like automation. This makes it ideal for marketers and course creators who have previous experience in this field. To fully utilize Kajabi’s capabilities, users need to have technical knowledge.
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 offers many features that will make it worth the extra cost. Kajabi’s website builder and many other features are highly customizable.
Probably where Kajabi shines the most is in its marketing tools. 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 provides automation in many of its features, including their email.
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 in to Kajabi brings you to its dashboard. It is clean and minimalistic with minimal clutter. Overall it gives off a very modern aesthetic. It is also easy to use. All of Kajabi’s features can be accessed in as little as 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 can redirect you to features and tools inside of the Kajabi app.
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. You can choose the best option based on the course you’re presenting to students.
There are many options: online courses, mini-courses and drip courses. You can also create your own custom course. To help in creating your courses, Kajabi provides you blueprints or templates for each product. Kajabi already provides a “skeleton” for your course. All you need to do is add content.
Kajabi allows you to organize your course in categories or subcategories. This allows you to decide how these courses will be presented 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. These content can be combined and added to 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. There is no clutter that can serve as a distraction to your students.
- Marketing – At its most basic, Kajabi offers all of the expected products to make your products enticing to buyers. You can sell upsells and order bumps using Kajabi. You can even customize this stuff to ensure more value for your money.
Email marketing is probably where Kajabi stands out the most. 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. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
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.
Not only does it make your job faster and easier. It opens up a lot of options too. WIth Kajabi, you also don’t need to avail of 3rd 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. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
- 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.
If you wish, you can upload your own theme. 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 and PayPal as well as 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.
Kajabi provides the checkout page on one page. This page can be personalized to include testimonials and sales videos to increase your product sales.
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 include access to Kajabi University. This is Kajabi’s very own knowledge base that can help users with its functionality.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
| Basic ($149 per month) | Growth ($199 per month) |
|
|
| Pro ($319 per month) | |
|
Kajabi Pros and Cons
Pros
- Kajabi offers a variety of courses that you can choose from
- 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 assessments can also be automated
- A mobile app is available that allows students to access the courses from their phones.
- Also comes with a membership feature where you can sell or give exclusive products to members with different tiers
- 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. By paying more, you can even access a code editor to really flesh out your website
- Comes with a blogging feature for promoting 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. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
Cons
- Is more on the expensive side. The lowest plan is $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 does not have course completion certificates or 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 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 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 often missing in most LMSs and online courses platforms. If they do have this feature, it will probably be lacking or not as advanced or robust.
Teachable’s course compliance even gives out advanced reports on student progress, and video analytics to show 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 one of the most affordable LMSs available. It even offers a free plan that allows you to sell one course only. Though it does come with its own 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. Most features can be accessed through the right sidebar. 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.
Lastly, Teachable seems to load its pages slower compared to other LMS, however this lag is negligible and I would have not noticed if I was not 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. You can choose to use text, video, files or quizzes.
These files can be combined into one lecture. For example, you could add a quiz to a video lecture. 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. That said, this feature only drips sections and not lectures. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
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 feature is where Teachable really shines among the competition. 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. 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. These features function in the same way as the LMS marketing features, and serve the same purpose: to encourage others to purchase 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.
Teachable does not have an affiliate program. Because of this, you need to make affiliates on your own. It does however allow you to create affiliates for your product.
The website will handle the commissions of these affiliates through Teachable’s very own payment gateways. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
- Design and customization – Teachable is not very customizable in terms of the overall theme. You can only choose 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 itself is much more customizable than you might expect. They provide you with several building blocks depending on your needs. They even include block layouts for banners, images with text, email. You can even get 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. There are two payment options: Monthly Payment Gateway and Teachable Payments. The former is a godsend to EU students as they can 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
Teachable offers four plans in total if we count the free one. 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. You can also try the free plan to get a feel for Teachable.
| 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 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
- Its course player allows your students to take notes while watching or listening to your lecture, thus promoting a pro-active learning environment. It even has a subtitle feature
- HTML/CSS scripts can be embedded to lectures, opening up a lot of interesting and engaging opportunities.
- You can use it for unlimited video hosting
- It has a robust membership feature to allow for exclusive content depending on membership tiers
- The bulk upload feature makes your workflow more comprehensive
- You can choose to have comments added to your courses
- Use an ios app to let your students access the content wherever they are.
- Payment processing platforms has an ability to handle EU/VAT sales
- It has its own native payment gateways bypassing the need to integrate other services
- Its native payment gateways have a “Back Office” that processes payouts for affiliate commissions and other complex payments.
- Includes video analytics and student reports. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
> > 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 do not use a drag and drop builder. Instead, they use custom CSS and power editors. This is bad news for non-techies
- Lacks a proper community feature
- You would need to know how to code in order to fully customize their course player
- You will need third-party services to issue refunds
Podia versus Thinkific
The Overview of Thinkific
Thinkific is another LMS service that puts course building at the forefront. You can create a website and then 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.
Thinkific’s core focus is on its curriculum creation capabilities. This is why the course creation features are the most important.
This means their selling and marketing aspects are poor.
Thinkific Features
- Interface – Logging in to Thinkific will take 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. There are some features though that might be found in places you don’t think that they should be in.
The interface is overall decent but it has its flaws.
- Course Creation – Thinkific is known for its unique course creation system. You have many options to make your course enjoyable, even if you don’t pay for it.
Thinkific’s platform lets you use many media types, including videos, pdf, audio and Google Docs. You can also create storylines and captures. 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. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
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.
Thinkific also allows you to manage your course in 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. What’s worse is that it might only be limited to a certain 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 then, the whole checkout is a bit clunky with 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. 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. 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. 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 allows you to import themes that have been developed by developers. 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 is very easy to use and you can add a section to your page with only just 1 click. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
- Payment Processors – Thinkific has their own payment processor called Thinkific Payments. This is part of a tool called TCommerce suite of tools. This tool offers seamless shopping, 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.
| 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 free package is permanently free
- Different course payment options available for different students and schools
- There are no transaction fees on 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 has a robust course builder to make your course as engaging as possible.
- Thinkific allows you to put incentives like leaderboards, awards and scores as a way to motivate your students.
Cons
- Many of the features they offer are not 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.
- 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.
The Verdict R Pod Vs Wolf PupR Pod Vs Wolf Pup
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
Podia and Kajabi function pretty similarly as they are both all-in-one platforms. The two main factors that will determine which platform you choose are price and customization. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup
Podia is the best choice if you are looking for an all-in-one platform that’s affordable and doesn’t require much customization. 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. Also, if you would want an easier time in marketing and updating your customers, Kajabi’s automation and advanced automation has got you covered.
Verdict: Podia versus Teachable
It is more difficult to compare this matchup to the one mentioned above. Teachable and Podia are experts in different areas. Your business’s direction would determine your decision.
If you are looking to sell digital products such as memberships, coachings and courses, Podia is the right choice. As such, Podia would better fit your needs.
You should choose Teachable if you want to focus more on the “course” and “teaching” part. Teachable has a more robust course building platform compared to Podia. Also, Teachable’s greatest and most unique feature is its course compliance which helps to properly monitor your student’s course completion.
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
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. 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. R Pod Vs Wolf Pup