Are you an expert in a particular field? Do you want to start making money by sharing your expertise? And, of course, you don't know the right platform that can help you do that, so checking Podia Review whether it is right for your needs?
Well, choosing a platform for your online courses can be challenging to determine. First, you need to consider which online course platform is the best fit for your students and for you.
Today, I'm presenting you with an in-depth review of Podia, an online learning platform.
- But how do you get started?
- What are the Podia features & how it works?
- How much does it cost?
- Can it fit your business?
- Are there other alternative tools that are better than Podia?
I'll guide you and help you decide whether or not Podia is the right platform for your online courses.
Let's dive in!
Podia Overview
Podia is an online learning & “all-in-one” digital product platform for hosting and selling online courses, subscriptions and digital download content.
It's easy to sell online courses, memberships, webinars, and digital downloads to your audience with Podia. It helps digital creators as you feed off their passion.
You can easily create beautiful digital products and start selling them. You don't need any technical knowledge or third-party plugins.
Podia lets you control everything from content creation to sending newsletters to your audience to secure payment processing, all from one single platform.
Podia Summary Overview
Podia Review | Info |
|---|---|
Overall Rating | 4.7 |
Price range | $0/M - $199/M |
Core Feature | Digital Products |
Free Trial | Yes, 14-Day Free Trial |
Easy of Use | 5 |
Course Creation & Engagement | 4.5 |
Customer Support | 4.5 |
Free Plan | No |
Year Founded | 2014 |
Founder | Spencer Fry |
Cell |
Is Podia Right for Me?
Podia is suitable for you if you want to reach more people to build an online business by selling online courses, memberships, downloads, and webinars.
Podia has an easy to understand user interface. If you're creative with many great ideas but lack the technical know-how required to build and host courses online, Podia would be valuable for you.
Podia can be used by:
Podia Review & Detailed Features Guide
Here's a quick list of all the features Podia offers, followed by more detail:
Podia Online Courses
Podia lets you share your knowledge and expertise through videos, links, PDFs, quizzes, and more. In addition, Podia offers a variety of online course features to fit your business and the needs of your customers.
You can easily host all of your content, with no limit to what you can upload and sell to your students.
With Podia, you can offer different categories of courses to your customers, including standalone courses, Drip Courses, pre-sell courses, etc.
You can sell standalone courses to your students. Your students can quickly view them at their discretion. In addition, you can offer flexibility and self-paced learning to your students.
Podia allows you to create Drip courses so you can create structured training programs for your students. Drip courses will enable you to harness the power of microlearning. You'll be able to have more control over the learning experience of the students. This will allow you to explain things to them well.
You can offer similar courses to your customers in bundles by creating bundles. You can offer your clients value-based courses as a complete learning option.
Instead of wasting resources and time on tasks that don't lead to sales, you can Pre-launch your courses. This way, you can validate your next course idea and accept upfront payments before launching a course.
Cohort-based courses allow you to set a future date for your learners to complete your course. As a result, you can teach and interact with all your learners at the same time.
How to Setup a Course with Podia?
Setting up an online course is easy.
- In your dashboard, click "Create" and select "Product."
- In the pop-up, add the title you want to keep, then choose "Online Course", and select Create Product option.
- In the "Content tab", you can create quizzes, add sections, upload files, etc.
- In the " Settings tab", you can group your course, set a start date, open and close enrollments, and in the "Pricing" tab, you can set your prices, offer payment options, and add upsells to other products.
- When you're ready to launch, simply click the Draft drop-down menu and then click "Publish".
This is how you can easily create your course with the Podia platform.
Podia Digital Downloads
At Podia, you can sell your products, and your customers can buy and download them without a physical copy. You can offer ebooks in pdf or EPUB format, templates and presets such as Photoshop files, music as WAV or mp3 files and much more.
Digital downloads allow you to sell or give away your products as lead magnets. In my opinion, digital downloads are the first step to building an audience, attracting new customers and eventually creating a profitable website.
How to Setup Digital Downloads with Podia?
This is how you can create your digital downloads with Podia.
Podia Memberships
Podia allows you to launch your membership site. This way, you can build solid and long-lasting relationships with your customers.
There are no reasonable restrictions on members, plans, emails sent, or content hosting. Since there is no restriction on any of these, you can generate recurring revenue to any extent.
With the help of a membership site, you get the freedom to grow your business. Podia gives you complete control and flexibility to grow your business.
With Podia, you can create unlimited membership plans for unlimited members. You get the flexibility to offer different perks, content and pricing to each member.
You can create Public Posts that are visible to anyone who visits your membership site.
You can offer free trials to your new members to show them what your product or service can do, and they can try it out without risk before they buy it.
Your audience can get involved by commenting and liking and can share their thoughts and ask questions.
For your most loyal customers, you can publish members-only content. You can add pinned posts, schedule content in advance, and control which membership plans see which posts.
You can seamlessly bundle your products with a few clicks. Your customers can look to a single source that offers multiple solutions. And you can significantly increase profit on individual sales over time.
You can bill your customers on a monthly or annual basis, You can allow your paying members to connect with Facebook, Slack, or Palapa.
Setting up a membership plan is child's play.
Click on the "Memberships" tab in the top menu tab.
Then name your membership and click on "Create Membership".
Now click on the "Plans" and select "Create Plan." Now, you can name your plan, set pricing, and select any existing products you want to include as part of your membership.
Drop into the "Posts" tab to create your first post with Podia's easy-to-use text editor that enables you to format your text, add images and videos, and control access to the platform.
After your first post is published, click Publish so that you can officially launch your membership site.
Podia Webinars
Podia lets you host video sessions with unlimited attendees. You can effortlessly and conveniently extend your reach to anyone around the world. Signing up for access to your webinars and live streams is easy.
Your audience can register and pay for your events through your Podia site. In addition, with Podia's webinar feature, you can build a solid image of your brand.
Podia allows you to integrate with YouTube Live and Zoom. Plus, you don't have to go live publicly. Instead, you can ask your attendees to sign up through Podia and turn your anonymous YouTube fans into engaging email subscribers.
Deliver unique premium content for your paid webinars or give them away for free to grow your email list. Podia gives you the ability to sell your webinars or offer them for free.
You can schedule and sell your webinars in advance. This gives you a bigger window to build attendance and remind attendees.
Podia automatically records your webinars. Your customers can access the recordings for those who paid for the event but didn't show up. You can also sell recordings of your previous events to new clients.
Podia offers fast and straightforward checkout pages. In less than 10 seconds, your customers can fill out their information and purchase their product. With Podia, you'll get more sales and fewer abandonments.
With Podia's no tractions fee policy, you don't have to pay any transaction fee. Instead, all you have to pay is a standard processing fee charged by PayPal or Stripe, and you're good to go.
How to Setup Webinars with Podia?
Let's take a look at how to set up a webinar.
You're done!
Podia Email Marketing
Podia is an email marketing platform designed for creators to connect with their audience. You don't have to pay extra money, and it's easy to use.
With Podia, you can easily create broadcast emails and set up automated email funnels to send targeted messages at a low cost.
Podia gives you unrivaled ROI and comprehensive email analytics on every email you send.
Podia gives you a complete email marketing solution. It has all the tools you need to grow your email list and market to your audience.
Its email capture helps you build an email list by adding email sign-up forms to each page so you can communicate one-to-one with your users.
You can share updates with your entire list through broadcast emails.
Broadcast emails allow you to share updates with your entire list. You can also send updates to specific target segments of your list. You can send targeted emails to particular groups based on their email responses and activity on your website and send them the most relevant offers.
Podia's automated campaigns feature allows you to create automated drip email campaigns so you can easily target your subscribers at any stage of the sales funnel.
With full sales funnels, you can trigger your drip campaigns. For example, you can start your campaign when someone accesses a free download and move them down the funnel to your paid products.
Revenue metrics help you get complete metrics for every email you send to your customers. Podia also has standard email analytics that works well. You can easily see how much sales and revenue you generated with each email you sent.
With embeddable forms, you can add email sign-ups to any page on the web.
Segmentation helps you break down campaigns based on what products your subscribers bought. This way, you can offer them other products that meet their needs.
With professional-looking emails, you can deliver a clear and focused message to your customers. Podia's email templates are clean and professional, which helps you give your brand a professional look.
The customizable design allows you to add your brand colors and logo to show off your brand in every email you send.
Rich text, images, and GIFs help you stand out in recipients' inboxes. You can add any type of media you want to showcase in your emails.
With engagement analytics, you can track and analyze various analytics like open rates, clicks, conversion rates, and more in your dashboard.
Podia Messaging
Podia offers a powerful messaging feature that you can use to grow your business. Podia's messaging tool helps you target leads, increase sales, and build strong customer relationships. And you don't have to pay extra for it.
With messaging, you can understand your customers' challenges and know what they want. This way, you can also improve your products and services.
Suppose someone is browsing your website; you can have a conversation with them and convert them into customers. Your customers can have a live chat with your team by using their accounts. You can help your visitors for getting more out of your products.
Live chat makes contacting the support team very convenient. Your customers can reach you at the exact moment they have questions or issues they can't resolve.
If you are not available to answer your customers' questions, you can easily capture their complaints and respond to them later.
Podia's messaging feature is fully integrated into your website, so all your conversations and sales data are stored in one place.
Podia Website Builder
With Podia, you can create a beautiful, modern and mobile-friendly website for your brand. You get a Podia subdomain, or you can even bring your own URL. Podia's editor is easy to use. You don't need any experience to create your website. You can easily create a stunning website without any knowledge.
You only get a few seconds to make a good impression on your customers. So, you need to make sure that your first impression is a brilliant one. With Podia, it is possible to create that impression. You can create a professional homepage that suits your style and brand.
You can talk directly to your visitors by creating pages that target specific audiences and interests. Plus, with Podia, you can create unlimited specific pages. You can freely create any type of page you can imagine.
Podia has everything you need to create the best sales pages. You can make a product irresistible to customers so that you can achieve high conversion rates.
Newsletters are trendy these days, Newsletters can help you grow your social media community and increase sales. You can provide a simple sign-up form or embed your free products to increase opt-ins through newsletters.
Podia Affiliate Marketing
Podia helps you build your own sales team. You can turn your most prominent and most loyal fans into sales reps. You can easily set custom commission terms, invite affiliates, and reward them for helping you grow your business.
Your customers, partners, and supporters can easily give you a shout-out about your products with the help of Podia's affiliate program. It can be set up with just a few clicks, and no additional software is required. You have the option to make your affiliate program public or make it available only to invited guests.
The affiliate program works with all Podia programs, be it online courses, digital downloads, webinars, membership plans or bundles.
Podia helps you pay your affiliates quickly and easily. You don't have to worry about the amounts you owe your affiliates; Podia does it for you.
You can send broadcasts or automated campaigns to your affiliates from Podia itself. You don't need a separate email marketing platform to do this.
Where is Podia Best?
Podia platform is one of the best online course creators that hosts and sells online courses, subscriptions, and digital download content. As a result, you can brand, launch, and market your online courses and scale your business.
Within seconds, you can create an impressive storefront and sell your digital products. You don't need any technical information or 3rd party extensions. You can do everything from a single platform - Podia.
Podia gives you the smoothest interface UX you'll find in an e-learning system. It's easy to use and effortless to set up.
The support team at Podia is excellent. They offer you very personal and caring support.
Podia is priced very well. You get quality features at a low cost compared to its competitors.
Podia Pricing Plans
Plan Name | Monthly Pricing | Annual Pricing | Savings |
|---|---|---|---|
Free | $0/m | $0/m | $0 |
Mover | $39/M | $33/m (paid annually) | $72/Yr |
Shaker | $89/M | $75/m (paid annually) | $168/Yr |
Earthquaker | $199/M | $166/m (paid annually) | $396/Yr |
Podia offers a 14-day free trial in all plans. You do not need a credit card to take advantage of the free trial. You don't have to confirm your email. Instead, you can simply explore all of Podia's features and determine if it meets all of your needs
Other than this, I couldn't find any additional visible discount for Podia.
If you decide that Podia is suitable for you then check my Podia pricing & cost guide, I recommend an annual subscription to save 17% of up to $396/y.
Podia Pros and Cons
Pros:
Cons:
Podia Customer Service & Platform Security
A secure website or checkout page makes your platform trustworthy in the eyes of your visitors. So, it's better to have a secure website or checkout page to make your customers stay and shop. Yours and your customer's data is secured on Podia.
All tractions on Podia are encrypted, and Podia regularly updates its products to match global security standards like GDPR.
Podia offers free SSL certificates for both pricing plans to add an extra layer of security to your transactions.
Providing good customer support is essential for any business, and its importance increases when it comes to software or tools. Podia offers email and live chat support. However, they lack phone support. This is a major shortcoming.
During working hours, the Podia team answers in 5-10 minutes, which is impressive! Otherwise, you'll have to wait a bit longer to get your questions answered.
Not only that, Podia has an extensive knowledge library where you can find resources on how to do different things on the platform. You can find blogs on course creation, sales funnels, marketing, video tutorials, and various other topics.
All these resources can solve your questions even without getting customer support.
One thing Podia lacks is a Facebook Community for its users. Many of Podia's competitors have these Facebook groups for their users to ask questions and network with others.
Ease of use for your Customers
Podia's interface is easy to use, but that's to your advantage and what about your customers? What kind of experience do you offer your customers with the help of Podia? - A remarkable one!
While accessing your courses, your students get an easy-to-use and intuitive interface. You can provide your students with a seamless flow between navigation, multimedia, content structure and graphic design to achieve a high-quality user experience.
You can provide your students with a user-friendly experience to facilitate and stimulate learning.
Once a customer purchases a product, it is added directly to their Podia account. The customer can simply log into their account whenever they want to access all the products purchased.
Your students can also re-download products when they need them, they can repeat courses as many times as they want, and they have unlimited access to your membership site.
How Podia Differentiates itself from its Competitors
The two features that differentiate Podia from its competitors are:
1. Affordable and low-cost plans
Podia's plans are among the most affordable plans among other online course platforms.
Not only are the plans affordable and inexpensive, but they also offer a lot of value. You won't find such a vast variety of features in this price range at any other online course platform.
Plus, the quality of almost all the features is really high.
2. Customer Support
Podia's customer service is one of the best in the market. Although Podia only offers live chat support, the chat agents are very knowledgeable and respond quickly.
Podia offers customer service that understands your problem and strives to resolve it ASAP in a professional manner.
Once your conversation is over, you'll receive an email of the conversation for your reference.
Podia Customer Review & Success Stories
Gigi D says, "My experience has always been amazing!"
Yann I. says, "A solid platform for packaging and selling your knowledge into courses, memberships & more."
Holly S. says, "Excellent, I would highly recommend them any day."
Podia Alternative Platforms for 2021
Podia is a really good platform but if you need an alternative option then here is the good alternative platform to consider.
1. Thinkific
Thinkific is an excellent platform if you just want to create courses. With Thinkific, you can easily create well-structured online courses that you can divide into modules or chapters.
However, if you want to host a webinar, you need to use a third-party service. With Podia, you don't have to search for a third-party service to host webinars. You can easily integrate your webinars with YouTube Live and Zoom.
Thinkific offer a 100% free plan, You can use this to get started and sign up your first students before signing up for the paid plans.
When we compare Thinkific vs Podia then go with Thinkific for more professional and complete online course platform and stick to Podia if you need easy to use affordable platform.
2. Teachable
Teachable is an excellent option and the most popular Podia alternative. Teachable offers several advanced features, including a user-friendly interface and excellent navigation for your backend.
You get advanced features from robust analytics tools to course certificates, engagement tools, hosting custom domains, etc., making Teachable one of the best platforms for selling courses.
Teachable is best platform and excels at one thing - online courses.
So when we compare Teachable vs Podia then go with Teachable for easy to use most beginner friendly feature rich platform and choose Podia for affordable and simple course platform.
3. Kartra
Kartra is one of my favourite all-in-one platforms. Kartra can help you sell your course, products and services. You can even sell your physical products with Kartra.
Kartra offers you everything you need to build a successful online business: Hosting, Sale Funnels, email marketing, video, webinars, split testing, shopping cart checkouts, and a variety of other useful tools - all designed to integrate seamlessly.
Kartra offers several pages and block templates that look clean and highly professional. Whereas Podia doesn't provide any block templates and the page templates look pretty outdated as well.
Kartra's funnel feature is very popular, it is more flexible and advanced. When talking about courses, Podia has excellent marketing and course customization features.
So comparing Kartra with Podia then choose Kartra for an all-in-one complete marketing platform and choose Podia if you only need course platform that is affordable enough.
4. Kajabi
Just like Podia, Kajabi is also an all-in-one platform. Kajabi is akin to Podia; it offers courses, memberships, digital products and email marketing. You can easily create, manage, and market your courses with Kajabi.
Kajabi is more of an online business platform than a learning platform. So, you have to expect some limitations in terms of course design features. However, when it comes to marketing, Kajabi has a lot to offer. The marketing and sales features of Kajabi are excellent and detailed. But you need specialized knowledge and formal training to use them.
If you want to create highly customized websites with tons of built-in themes for your landing pages, Kajabi leaves Podia behind. But Kajabi has an expensive price tag, while Podia has an affordable price tag.
Kajabi's Basic Plan costs $149/M, where you can only sell up to 3 products. In contrast, Podia's Shaker Plan lets you sell unlimited products and offers the same features plus affiliate marketing for only $89/M.
So when we compare between Kajabi and Podia then Kajabi is good for all in one platform but very costly so choose Podia for an exclusive online platform with affordable pricing tier.
Is Podia Platform Worth It?
Yes, Podia is worth your money.
And why is that?
Podia does a great job of helping you establish and grow your business.
Podia is worth it, especially if you are a course creator destined to create courses and have an online business to sell digital products.
Cost-effective pricing, robust functionality, ease of use, optimized platform, excellent customer support, etc. is all you can get from this platform.
With Podia, here's how you benefit;
Besides all these great features, whether this platform is suitable for your business or not now depends on your business needs.
If you find that Podia is not for you, then check out the Podia alternative platforms that I have recommended above. But if you want to know my opinion, Podia is the most cost-effective choice for everything you would need.
You can choose Thinkific If you need most advanced & professional course platform or select Teachable If you need beginner friendly feature rich course tool.
However, I think Kartra would be a better choice. Although Kartra is expensive, it offers more features compared to Podia. You can easily do all your business through Kartra.
If you want to conduct webinars, marketing automation, advanced funnels then you should definitely choose Kartra because Kartra has excellent marketing tools.
Podia FAQ's
Q. What languages and currencies do Podia support?
Podia supports 11 languages and more than 20 global currencies.
Q. Can I cancel my Podia subscription?
You can cancel your Podia subscription at any time. You can do this by logging into your account, going to "Settings", and clicking "Cancel Account". You won't be asked any questions, and there are no hidden fees when you cancel.
Q. Does Podia integrate with other tools?
Yes! You can integrate Podia with your favorite tools.
Q. Are changing plans easy with Podia?
Yes, it is! Follow the steps below to change your plans:
Step 1: In your dashboard, click on your account name in the upper right corner.
Then, select Billing.
Step 2: Once you are in Billing, scroll down to Current Plan. To change your plan, simply click on "Change Plan".
Step 3: After clicking on the link, you can change your Podia plan. Simply click the button for the plan you like to change. Then select whether you'd like to be billed monthly or annually and confirm your payment method.
You'll see a detailed breakdown of what you'll be billed for. Then, when you're done, confirm your choice.
Q. How do I switch from monthly to annual Billing or vice versa?
Step 1: From your dashboard, click on your account name in the upper right corner.
Then select Billing.
Step 2: Once you are in Billing, scroll to "Current Plan". To switch to annual/monthly Billing, simply click "Switch to yearly/monthly".
You will then see a detailed breakdown of the charges you will be billed. Any amounts you've already paid on your current plan will be prorated to the new plan.
When you're done, confirm your choice. And that's it!
Q. How can I get a refund?
You can contact Podia's support team within 72 hours of your monthly or annual renewal or upgrade, and they will refund your final payment.
Podia Review Final Conclusion
Now you know everything about Podia, from prices, features, pros, cons, functionality and more. You can easily decide what to do. In my opinion, Podia is a great tool to consider for your business.
You can try Podia to understand it better by signing up for Podia free plan before deciding whether it suits your needs or not.
If Podia is not an option, you can consider other alternatives in the market. Such as Kartra for the best all-in-one business and marketing platform that can replace any platform. Thinkific for the best online course platform that offers advanced features and lets you work with a free plan.
Hope you enjoyed this detailed Podia Review, and if you want a complete breakdown of the Best Online Course Solutions, you can read it here to make a better decision.
