If you’re a marketer, entrepreneur, or digital creator, you know that selling online courses can be a great way to build your business and expand your skill set. But with so many course platforms out there, it can be tough to choose the right one for you. In this article, we’ll take a close look at Podia, a popular online course platform to see if it’s the right fit and has all the tools for you and your business to succeed.
What is Podia?
Podia is an all-in-one platform that helps users launch, scale, and grow their online businesses. This one-stop shop enables users to create and sell digital downloads, memberships, and courses without the need for a website or complicated apps. Users can also use Podia’s integrated marketing tools, such as contact forms and automated email campaigns, to reach out to more customers.
Podia makes it simple to connect with customers while building a successful e-commerce business – without worrying about coding or hosting fees – thanks to an intuitive dashboard that gives you total control over your storefront.
It also has an affiliate program through which others can promote and sell your courses on their own websites. This means you can reach out to more potential customers while doing no extra work. Advanced analytics can also be used to track the performance of each course you sell and make improvements as needed.
Who Should You Consider Using Podia?
Podia is great for anyone wanting to start their own online course business. There are numerous benefits to using it to create and sell online courses and digital products. The simple tools make it easy to get started, and comprehensive features like automated emails, live webinars, and custom domains provide plenty of options to help boost sales and attract students.
You can also use popular payment processors such as Stripe or PayPal, and you’ll get instant notifications on all transactions. Podia’s useful analytics features provide a clear picture of your client’s engagement with your content. This can be really invaluable when deciding how to continue growing your business.
Pricing
The Podia pricing schemes are fairly simple. Here’s an overview of their offering and inclusions:
Free Plan
- Full website
- Email Marketing
- Chat support
- Community
- 1 download
- 1 coaching product
- Draft courses
- Draft webinars
Mover – $33/month
- No transaction fees
- Full website
- Email marketing
- Chat support
- Community
- Unlimited downloads
- Unlimited coaching
- Unlimited courses
- Draft webinars
Shaker – $75/month
- No transaction fees
- Full website
- Email marketing
- Chat support
- Community
- Unlimited downloads
- Unlimited coaching
- Unlimited courses
- Unlimited webinars
- Affiliates
Earthquaker $166/month
- No transaction fees
- Full website
- Email marketing
- Chat support
- Community
- Unlimited downloads
- Unlimited coaching
- Unlimited courses
- Unlimited webinars
- Affiliates
- Priority support
Key Features
Here is an overview of some of the key features Podia has to offer.
Website Builder
Podia includes a basic website builder with which you can create your online storefront. Your community, courses, and digital products will all be hosted on your own website. Customers can purchase products directly from your website and access them by logging in to their member’s area. You can switch between mobile, tablet, and PC views to see how each page appears on various screen sizes. All pages are fully responsive.
Although the website builder is simple to use and excellent for beginners, it isn’t very flexible. Additionally, you don’t have as much control over it as you do with WordPress or other content management systems, or with specialized website builders like Squarespace.
Online Course Builder
The online course builder offered by Podia is one of its standout features. It can be used to create your entire eLearning course. Lessons and sections are used to organize courses. You can start by adding sections to give your course a general structure before adding lessons to add the actual course material.
Your lessons can include text, videos, audio files, embeds, and other types of multimedia content. Additionally, you can include coaching sessions as separate lessons within each section.
Apart from multiple-choice quizzes, Podia does not provide any other types of assessments. This could be a problem if you want to sell a more advanced course with advanced assessments. However, the Podia platform is extremely simple to use, allowing you to launch your online course business with minimal effort.
Affiliate Program
Podia also has an affiliate marketing system built in. Affiliate Marketing is an excellent way to
increase the number of digital products sold without spending a fortune on advertising.
After joining the program, affiliates can begin promoting their affiliate links in order to earn commissions. The affiliate dashboard will allow you to track the sales, revenue, clicks, and conversions that your affiliates generate.
Communities
Podia’s Community feature is another of its biggest selling points. It can help you establish a thriving online community for your digital products and develop a steady flow of income.
With Podia you can create a community area that is similar to an online forum. Here you and your members can post, leave comments, and engage in conversation. You can organize posts into various themed discussion boards in your community forum area by adding Topics.
Webinars
Access to webinars run by Zoom and YouTube Live can be sold using Podia. You could also offer them as a free lead magnet to expand your email list.
If you want your customers to be able to access recordings after the event has ended, you also have the option of including a Replay video, which is a pretty cool feature. To increase attendance rates, you can also configure reminder emails to be sent to customers before the event.
Email marketing
Podia’s email marketing features are pretty solid. You can send out email broadcasts, create automated campaigns, and monitor all the vital metrics that need tracking, such as open rates, click-through rates, bounce rates, and unsubscribes. You can track revenue metrics. Podia is one of the online course platforms that offer this feature.
Integrations
Podia provides native integrations with a variety of third-party systems, including email service providers, analytics platforms, scheduling tools, ad platforms, landing page builders, and CRMs.
Customer Support
Podia makes it easy to create and manage an online presence for your business. Its simple and straightforward process is made possible by its user-friendly interface, which requires almost no technical knowledge. And, if you do get stuck, the Podia team is always happy to help with comprehensive customer support. From chatbots to live support calls, they make sure you have the help you need, ensuring a smooth sailing journey using their platform.
Podia vs. The Competition
Podia is a fantastic option for anyone who wants to start an online business. But It’s always wise to check other available platforms before you make the ultimate decision to sign up. Here are just a few of the Podia alternatives that you should give a good look at.
Teachable
Teachable is the industry leader in online course platforms. It shares a lot of similarities with Podia in terms of product scope and cost. However, when it comes to memberships, Podia excels in it. Teachable only permits you to bundle courses as a part of a membership; in contrast, Podia offers more flexibility by enabling the creation of individual posts.
When it comes to creating courses, Teachable has a lot more to offer. The course builder, graded quizzes, course compliance, certification, and analytics are more adaptable in Teachable. Their paid plan subscriptions start at $39 per month.
Kajabi
Kajabi is one of the most widely used platforms for online education. It is an all-in-one platform, so you can use it for everything, including your website, blog, marketing funnels, email marketing, etc. Price-wise, Kajabi is much more expensive than Podia, its Basic Plan is $149/month.
In contrast to Podia, Kajabi’s pricing will not be suitable for all customers, particularly new ones. For those seeking a comprehensive solution that goes beyond the design and delivery of courses, it is unquestionably a good fit.
Thinkific
is a dedicated platform for online courses that you can use to power your knowledge-based online business. includes a number of strong tools to aid in the creation of exceptional eLearning materials, such as tests and assignments, live lessons, adaptable learning community spaces, and more.
It outperforms Podia in terms of website development. Thinkific allows you to build a full-featured website because it has a library of website themes and a more potent page builder. But when it comes to sales and marketing tools, Podia beats it quite easily.
Thinkific’s Basic Plan costs $49 per month while their Pro Plan costs $99 per month.
Drawbacks
You may find yourself limited when it comes to customizing any unique designs; while Podia offers plenty of templates and design elements, their customization capabilities may be lacking compared to other platforms.
The website builder offered by Podia falls short of dedicated site builders and lacks some high-end features, such as customer support for live events, cloud imports, and email automation workflows. It also doesn’t provide any features for selling physical products.
And lastly, Podia doesn’t have a mobile app which could serve as a deterrent for potential users who are always on the go.
Conclusion
Podia is a great platform all around for those looking for a user-friendly system to help them in creating and selling courses or launching a membership site. It stands out from the competition because it’s so simple to use and because customer support goes above and beyond to ensure that users have a positive experience.
Even though it lacks some functionality compared to what a dedicated tool can offer, not everyone requires these features. For some, it’s better to have everything contained within a single platform like Podia, which just makes things so much simpler.
