Knowledge is the greatest gift that life has to offer. Without the knowledge we currently have, life would have been really really different and so is our way of life.
The way we give and gain knowledge remained mostly unchanged for most of history. This usually involves a teacher/student relationship or a master/apprentice relation. One mostly provides the instruction, while the other receives it.
There are also those who learn on their own. Self-study has become possible thanks to advances in writing and reading. With detailed instruction books, anyone can learn without the need for a teacher or master.
Then came the online revolution. While the popular opinion is that the advent of the internet revolutionized learning and education in general, it did not really change much except the way how people receive and consume information.
My opinion is that the internet did the best job of democratizing knowledge on a scale not seen since instructional films were created and the invention of the printing presses.
The internet allowed teachers and teachers at heart to impart their knowledge to people that they never imagined they would meet. It allowed education and knowledge to break boundaries and borders, even without a plane ticket and a visa.
Most of it began on unorthodox websites like vimeo and youtube, but some even started as blogs. We now have dedicated websites that allow people to teach courses.
For those of you who prefer a more visual experience, here is a video review from Legit Marketing Reviews’ YouTube channel. Do check out our article below, however, because it has a comprehensive overview of Podia.
Podia a Brief Overview Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
Podia allows users to share their knowledge online and make money. Basically, Podia customers make online courses that they can tailor to their students. These courses can be put on the platform by customers and sold to them.
In a way, Podia not only gives you tools to create an online course, it also hosts them.
Podia’s market does not only cover online courses. Podia is one of the most popular digital content selling platforms. These content could include the mentioned online courses. It could also be coaching, webinars, community, as well as other digital products.
The company behind Podia has New York City as its headquarters. It has additional offices also in Austin Texas. Although it is relatively new, it seems somewhat old in internet terms. It launched in 2014 and behind it is a guy named Spencer Fry.
Fry created a platform that would make it easier for online creators to market their products and to connect with their audience. Fry wanted it to be easier, but also provide a friendly and welcoming environment for people.
This resulted in Podia the website, which is intuitive, powerful and user friendly tool that was designed from scratch
Podia: Why do you use it?
Despite the number of online platforms available on the internet, Podia still stands out especially due to its creator-friendly policies. Podia has a digital shopfront that allows for instant payment from sales and does not charge any transaction fees. Yes, podia does not charge any transaction fees.
Podia’s platform is designed to be creator-friendly. With an intuitive and comprehensive platform, creatives are able to execute their great ideas and visions even if they lack the technical know-how.
Podia makes it simple to get digital content on the market.
Even for those who already have an established digital content, Podia is still a very viable platform to transfer to. Other digital platforms can offer too many features that could be considered as an overkill. Although too many options might seem appealing at first glance, it can lead to overwhelming experiences.
Your business may be in decline because of this lack of focus. That is why Podia’s simple and easy to get platform is a much better option. Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
Podia’s website also allows your membership site as well as your selling platform to be integrated with each other. This is much better than if your membership site is hosted separately from the product. This is not only a hassle but it also takes away valuable time that you could have spent creating.
In short, using Podia allows you to focus on the “creating” side of things rather than the logistics and business side.
What Podia Can Do
Podia promotes themselves as ” Everything you need to know about creating, validating, and marketing online courses, all in one convenient place.” As such, to be able to back this claim, the platform has a bunch of features geared exactly for that.
A Custom Website Builder
The custom website builder allows users to create landing pages that are specific to what your brand is selling. This custom website can be built by Podia with either a custom domain, or as a subdomain.
So podia offers you the flexibility of a more customized website and the simplicity of everything in one place.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
An Email Marketing System
Podia lets you have an automated email marketing platform that allows for both one-time broadcasts and automated campaigns. While you can avail of this service through other websites, the tool that Podia provides you is already enough.
You can save even more money by using the one Podia offers.
Their email editor is also very elegant. You can even create automated sequences that are tailored to the buyer.
A Live Messaging Widget
If you want to respond quickly to customers’ questions, live messaging is a great option. People nowadays want quick customer service. WIth this live messaging widget, you are able to provide just that.
Affiliate Marketing Program Capabilities
Affiliate marketing is essential if you wish to expand your product line. Podia users can take advantage of the capabilities afforded by the platform. By using partner promotion, users can widen their audience as well as exponentially enhance the number of sales
Digital Storefronts
Of course, you won’t be able to show your products without a place to display them. A Digital Storefront also allows you to advertise the new or featured products in your website. Podia makes it possible to create an online store that only sells your products.
This storefront can be set up by any customer without the need for programming, programming, or design skills. Podia has a no-coding approach that allows you to do this.
Course Dashboard
Podia is a service where customers can navigate their content easily. This is a crucial factor in deciding which service they want to use. For Podia, you are able to navigate this with just a few clicks using Podia’s intuitive interface.
Uploading and sharing your lessons, whether they are videos, audio podcasts or PDF documents, has never been easier.
Drip Content
You can also control the posting schedule with Podia. Such a feature is especially important if you don’t want to blow your load of lessons at just a single opportunity.
Course creators have the option to “choose when they want to schedule their content”. This benefits both the student and the teacher (Main Podia customer) as this system allows the student to avoid being overwhelmed and burnt out of the course.
Meanwhile with automatic Drip Content, the teacher does not need to manually update each post to give another lesson or release another product.
Payment Integrations
Without payment integration, every feature is useless. Podia’s payment integrations include credit cards, PayPal payments for customers worldwide. Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
Member Areas
You can set up a membership area through Podia. You can offer your customers a membership area for a monthly or annual fee. They will receive exclusive content in return. There are even giveaways you can host.
Membership areas are a great way of building customer trust and even a close community. It is a good idea to have a place you can set it up easily.
What is Podia like?
This review wouldn’t be complete if it didn’t give you a true picture of the service. For Podia, we will look at its Course Creation and Engagement Section, Site Design and Customization, and Sales and Marketing and see how they feel.
Course Creation and Engagement
We must first look at how Podia manages course creation. This is particularly important because this is why most users want to pay for the Podia Service.
For course creation, you can create an unlimited number of courses on Podia. There is no limit to the number of courses you can create on Podia.
As for the lessons proper, Podia allows text, embed, quiz, coaching, and files. That said, Podia offers very few lesson types. It also lacks assessments, Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, HTML5 content types and custom codes.
It can embed, but it has a few limitations. Podia can embed lots. In fact, there are over 1900+ platforms where Podia can embed from. This include but are not limited to
- Dailymotion, vimeo and Youtube for video content
- Spotify SoundCloud and PodBean Audio podcasts
- Speaker Deck, Slide Share, Presentation and Google Slides
- Twitter, TikTok, Behance, and, Pinterest
- Github and Codepen
- Typeform, Paper Form, and Google Forms
Podia was designed to make it easy for students. Your students can navigate your course easily. To make it more enjoyable, you can use your drip content and automated emails.
For students who have completed a course, you can add a quiz to the page and give them a certificate of completion. These features can be added or removed at your discretion.
It is important to remember that Podia can only feature courses. You can sell webinars, bundles and coaching as well as digital files.
You can make webinars and offer replays of the webinars to your customers by integrating multiple websites. You can even bundle them along with your courses to create a more comprehensive package.
Site Design and Customization
Podia provides templates for your website that will allow you to quickly get to the fun part. This is also true when making your product landing pages too.
As stated, creating your product website or your landing pages is quite easy. You can choose what you want to include on each page. You can even rearrange these pages just by dragging and dropping. The same goes for removing sections that are not needed.
Podia has a good selection of customization options. You get the basic stuff of fonts and colors as well as customizable text boxes. However, that’s almost what you get. Many people think that Podia can be too restrictive when it comes to design.
That said, it seems this is what Podia has to sacrifice to maintain a ready to use and flexible website creator. Bear in mind, Podia’s site design page requires no coding. Drag and drop is all that’s required.
They say that custom code can be added, but I have not found the location.
As stated above, Podia allows you to sell other stuff aside from courses. This feature requires that you have at least one digital product on your storefront. This is not a difficult task. You can do the same for these products like how you designed your websites.
To create unique sections for each product, you can use your landing page or front page. That way, it is simple for your students and customers to navigate and buy what they need.
Speaking of buying, the checkout page for the products has a smart and simple design. There is very little clutter. It is simple to convert every customer into a buyer because there are no distractions distracting their attention while they pay.
Podia has a good selection of customization options. You won’t feel overwhelmed by all the options available.
Podia’s design offerings may feel restrictive to some but for non-techies, the simplicity is what they could ask for. Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
Marketing and Sales
Lastly, let’s talk about Podia’s marketing and sales capabilities. This is an essential part of the Podia experience or any course-creating platform overall. It gives you an idea of how easy it can be to sell to potential customers.
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
You have two options for payment: Stripe and PayPal. You can offer your customers a flexible and customizable payment plan. You can either give them a one time big time payment or you can spread the payment overtime.
This is entirely up to you.
As for the payment processing, Podia handles everything for you, so you don’t need to worry about anything. Stripe, a PCI compliant payment processor, securely stores your credit card and payment information.
Podia does not charge transaction fees, unlike other services. This means that the sale is yours and Podia doesn’t get any commission. You will still have to pay Stripe and PayPal fees. This is the same throughout all available platforms.
Podia provides basic tools for lead generation. They even allow you to offer a pre-launch sign-up form as well as a newsletter signup form to collect email addresses.
You can send both automated and one-off emails through their email marketing. This allows you to send email campaigns to your customers both current and potential.
You can also customize your campaign emails to be sent in drip-out fashion and specify when they will be delivered.
But, they are very basic and cannot replace your email service provider.
Some things that are lacking include a real landing page capability, and list management. These are two very important things, but they are essential for your email marketing platform. These problems can be solved with third-party integration.
MailChimp and ConvertKIt are some third-party email service providers that integrate with Podia.
Podia has a Zapier integration too, which allows other email solutions that does not integrate directly to podia to pass users data via this service.
Zapier also enhances Podia’s integration to reach some other useful third-party applications like FreshBooks and ClickFunnels. You can even add third-party scripts to your website. You can add third-party scripts to your website, such as Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and ConvertBox.
Customer Support
Podia has the best customer service in the industry. You can email support with any questions or use the widget to chat live.
Podia has received praises from other customers for their excellent customer service. Generally speaking, the Podia team will give you a response in 5-10 minutes from asking. This is provided you reach them during working hours. Outside that, you can still get a response, but it takes a longer time.
Podia also has a vast knowledge base that can be used to help you do different things on the platform. You can also use this resource to find the answer to your question yourself if you prefer to search it on your own.
Lastly, one of their favorite features is their free offer to migrate your customers and audiences if you are on one of their paid plans. They will move your content and your audience from any other platform to Podia at no cost. Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
Price
Of course any review is not complete without talking about price. Afterall price is one of the most important factors that may make or break your decision to avail of a service. In this case, Podia offers three types of plans: Mover ($39/mo), Shaker ($79/mo), Earthquaker($179/mo).
Prices do change from time to time. At the time this review was written, they were offering a discount on all plans. Visit the website to see their most recent pricing.
Plan | No cost ($0 per Month) | Mover ($33 per month) |
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Plan | Shaker ($75 per month) | Earthquaker ($33 per month) |
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> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
The Mover Plan is a great option for anyone just starting out. Even for small time creators, what Podia offers in the Mover Plan could be enough.
The Shaker Plan offers the most value, as it includes everything in the Mover Plan and adds unlimited webinars and affiliates. As talked about earlier, these features are especially useful when talking about growing your business and such. Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
Meanwhile, the Earthquaker plan is something for those looking to go all out on their subscription. This plan is beneficial to most people who are interested in a larger business. The Earthquaker plan also gives you 100,000 community members.
All paid plans allow you to set up a custom domain and a matching logo for your Podia storefront.
Brands aside, the Shaker or Earthquaker plans let you remove the Podia branding from products. The Mover plan does not allow you to remove the Podia branding from your products. Instead, your product will be branded with the P symbol for Podai.
Important to remember is that Podia provides a free plan. It is limited and, unlike paid plans, charges an 8$ transaction charge for all transactions.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Super easy to use and setup
- Instant payouts that don’t require you to wait for payment
- It is affordable for the features it provides
- Offers great support no matter the customer tier
- Integrates email marketing
- This tool allows you to track the progress of your students
- Hosts can host both paid and free content
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Offers free migration of customers and products from other websites to Podia
Cons
- Most people find course builders rigid.
- Lacks important learning tools including graded quizzes, course compliance, assignments etc.
- No mobile app feature
- Reporting tools are basic
- This is not the right platform for building a full-fledged website.
- Only Shaker PLan members can access the membership feature
- Email composer lacks personalization fields
- You can add team members to your admin team for $20 per month.
Podia the Verdict
We can now see what Podia can do and decide if it is worth the effort.
Podia continues to gain ground in e-learning despite all the competition. This is probably because of its less complicated and easy to use user interface.
Podia’s “rigid” and limited design is the most common complaint from customers. However for people who have limited knowledge on designing websites, such a feature is a god send. Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
An easy-to-use and understand UI is key to allowing people to focus on content creation instead of the logistics.
Podia’s price is another highlight. This course-creation service is quite affordable compared to others. You can set up your website in a functional state with a cost of less than $50
Sure, there might be a limit to what it can do, but you can think of it this way. You can Podia’s Mover plan to test the waters while getting the hang around of things. Sometimes simplicity is key. Too many features could be overkill and might overwhelm the user.
We should also pay attention to their customer service. WIth a customer service who answers queries fast and efficiently, one could even forgive the lack of a phone channel to ask for help. They have people who will will answer your questions on the clock as long as its work hours.
Podia is a great service, especially for people who are just getting started with the internet. They have the basic necessities needed by someone to put up a successful website without overwhelming then.
I would highly recommend this site t
> > Click Here to Check Out Podia < <
Frequently Asked Questions
Teachable Vs Thinkific Vs Podia
Which Plan is the best option to get when I buy my Podia subscription?
The Shaker Plan is the best one to get.
At $79 per month, you can get most features with additional stuff that are not available at the Mover Tier. Some of which includes affiliate marketing and the ability to integrate many other apps and services like Zoom.
What are Podia’s payment plans?
Podia uses Stripe and Paypal to process payments.
Customers and students can pay by paypal, credit or debit card for products.
Why Use Podia?
You can use Podia if you are looking for a platform that is extremely easy to use.
Other reasons why you should choose podia over its competitors is because it takes no transaction fees. It also offers reliable and excellent customer service. It also has a low price.
What products can you make using Podia?
You can create online courses with Podia.
You can also download community memberships, webinars, coaching, and other digital content.