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Podia Alternatives To Know About In 2023
When I wanted to put my decades of digital marketing experience into a course that cpuld benefit everyone and earn a neat revenue for me, I began looking around for a platform that can host courses and support digital marketing.
My research led me to Podia, and so far, I’ve been very happy with it (see why in my Podia review). Podia has a ton of useful features that make it a great platform for building websites, selling courses and digital products, and building communities.
In the process though, I also looked at other promising alternatives like Kajabi, Kartra, Thinkific, and Teachable and wanted to share my research findings with you. This is why I will be comparing Podia against these platforms to help you decide the right fit for your business.
But before that, note that Podia offers a 14-day free trial.
Table of Contents
What Is Podia and Who Is It For?
Podia is a comprehensive digital marketing platform with the key features needed for selling courses, webinars, ebooks, digital content downloads, and more. It also comes with powerful marketing tools to boost your sales, from pre-launch to post-purchase.
This platform is a good choice for content creators who want to share their expertise with the world and in turn, get rewarded for their efforts. It is also a good choice for digital marketers looking to promote content-based products.
All in all, it’s a great online course platform and community platform as well as a tool for selling all types of digital products really.
Areas Where Podia Is Superior To Competitors
Podia is superior to its competitors in many ways.
Affordability
One area that stands out is affordability. The core features are common across all plans and include free migrations, no transaction fees, 24/7 support, custom websites and landing pages, free online community, digital content hosting, unlimited members, and webinars.
Podia pricing means you get all these for just $33/month! There’s even a free plan available with limited features and some transaction fees, but it’s still a great way to get started.
This is what makes Podia affordable to everyone including startups and first-time content creators who want to test these waters.
Simple
Another highlight is Podia’s simplicity and you don’t need a ton of technical expertise or experience to set up a course and get it running. It doesn’t require extensive testing or customizations either, so your digital content is ready for sale within minutes.
Comprehensive Platform
Besides being simple to set up and affordable, Podia is a comprehensive platform that handles all your digital marketing needs.
It supports email marketing with features such as broadcasts and campaigns that allow you to reach out to people to boost your sales. You can also use this channel to generate interest in your upcoming products and services.
It is also a good choice for affiliate marketing as you can get your fans and followers to promote your offerings and in the process, earn a commission for their efforts. It comes with intuitive dashboards for tracking the performance of your affiliates, so you can reward them accordingly.
All in all, Podia has some great marketing features for running an online business where you sell digital products.
Advanced Analytics
Analytics is an integral aspect of all Podia’s features, which means, you get in-depth insights about how your different digital marketing campaigns and channels are performing, from your landing pages to your email marketing campaigns. It integrates with Google Analytics and Facebook Pixels to give all the information you need about your marketing campaigns.
Based on these insights, you can determine the most effective and profitable marketing channels for you and your customers.
Customer-centric Approach
Another area where Podia stands out is its customer-centric approach.
It creates a custom URL and offers a modern and user-friendly website, an on-page chat widget, and anything else you need to interact with site visitors and customers.
Extensive Support
The Podia team backs all the above features with good customer support, that’s available all seven days of the week.
Plus, there are many knowledge base articles and tutorials that guide you through the setup and other common problems.
The combination of all of the above features makes Podia a good choice for hosting and distributing digital content.
Next, I’ll compare Podia against specific platforms to understand which one is better in what areas.
Key Competitors
In this section, let’s see how Podia fares with respect to its competitors.
Thinkific
Both Thinkific and Podia support a wide range of digital downloadable products such as webinars, online communities, memberships content, ebooks, and more.
That said, Thinkific is more a course-centric platform whereas Podia is an all-in-one digital marketing platform. What does that exactly mean?
Email Marketing
Let’s take the case of email marketing. Though both tools support email marketing, the automation is more advanced in Podia as it supports one-off emails, drip email marketing campaigns, trigger-based activations, and bulk emailing.
Though Thinkific does support some of these features such as bulk emailing, it is only available in the higher plans while Podia offers advanced email automation and marketing across all plans.
Blogging
Another key difference is the built-in blogging that Podia offers on all its plans while Thinkific doesn’t offer this feature at all.
At the time of writing this piece, the only way to create a blog in Thinkific is through the Custom Pages feature. Unfortunately, this is cumbersome and doesn’t have the look and feel of a blog.
Customized Certificates
Though Podia and Thinkific allow you to issue certifications, the templates designs are more and better in Thinkific than Podia.
In Podia, you can only change the layout, add a logo, and a name but you can’t alter the design completely. Thinkific, on the other hand, allows you to upload background images as well.
Additional Admins
Thinkific allows you to add additional admins to your plan, while Podia only allows you to add additional users who won’t have admin rights.
While this is not a significant difference for most people, still it’s something you must know, especially if you have a co-creator.
Cost-value
When it comes to costs, Thinkific has a free plan that allows you to host up to three courses while Podia offers only a 14-day free trial to both its paid plans. If you’re someone who is testing the waters for creating and selling online courses, Thinkific may be a good choice to start though Podia is more cost-effective in the long run.
Pros of Podia in Comparison to Thinkific
- Comes with built-in blogging
- Advanced email automation
- Better value for your money in the long-run
Cons of Podia in Comparison to Thinkific
- No free plan
- Doesn’t support additional admins
- No custom design for certificates
Overall, go for Thinkific if you just want to focus more on the content while Podia is the platform if you want to create content and market it to different audiences.
Check out our full Podia vs Thinkific comparison guide for more details.
Teachable
Teachable is geared mainly for those who want to create courses while Podia is your all-in-one digital storefront for all forms of content that include downloadable materials, ebooks, and more.
Let’s see how they differ.
Course Creation and Delivery
Both platforms offer an intuitive course content builder and delivery player that make it easy to set up courses, add different content formats, include interactive components such as quizzes, and issue certificates on completion.
However, when you compare the two, Teachable has an edge over Podia in this aspect as it comes with custom templates for certificates and its pages are built for SEO.
Membership Sites
When it comes to membership sites, both platforms have similar capabilities. However, Podia is slightly better in this aspect as it puts no cap on the number of members, subscriptions, and packages, and hence is a cost-effective option when compared to Teachable.
Additional Features
Podia comes with a bunch of additional features such as native blogging, a live chat option with your visitors and customers, the ability to embed your checkout button on other sites, and free migration from other platforms.
Teachable, on the other hand, doesn’t offer such extensive features. The only advantage is that it has an iOS app.
Pros of Podia in Comparison to Teachable
- Integration with more sites and products than Teachable
- Ideal for delivering different types of digital content besides online courses
- Helps to create a personalized storefront for different products.
- No transaction fees
Cons of Podia in Comparison to Teachable
- Podia doesn’t offer a one-page checkout summary for a streamlined payment processing experience.
- Analytics related to student performance including leaderboard dashboards can be better in Podia.
- Doesn’t come with built-in SEO.
Overall, choose Teachable if you want to create and sell online courses and track the performance of your students. For all other forms of digital content and their marketing, Podia is your choice.
Check out our full Podia vs Teachable comparison for more info.
Kajabi
Kajabi is a popular content creation platform, so let’s see how Podia compares with it.
Online Course Creation
Both platforms are excellent for creating and hosting educational courses. However, Podia has a simple user interface and is a lot less overwhelming to set up and host online courses, especially for beginners.
For its part, Kajabi has way more template choices than Podia for designing your course pages.
Affiliate Marketing
With robust affiliate marketing programs, both Podia and Kajabi are equally adept in helping you earn through your affiliates.
A key difference is that in Kajabi, the buyer should use the same browser to buy, otherwise it won’t go towards your affiliate’s earning. Podia, on the other hand, has a more innovative way of tracking affiliates’ performance, but the purchase must happen within 15 days of affiliate link generation.
As you see, both are just different ways of tracking affiliate performance, though one is not necessarily better than the other.
Automation
Kajabi is renowned for its wide range of automation. Right from sending emails on certain triggers to conditional implementation in pipelines, Kajabi’s automation is extensive.
Podia doesn’t have the same level of automation as Kajabi as most of its capabilities are limited to just email marketing.
Customer Engagement
One area where Podia stands out is customer engagement. It has a unique messaging feature that allows you to interact with all visitors on your site, provide the personalization they need, and gather valuable feedback in real-time.
Kajabi doesn’t have this feature.
Pros of Podia in Comparison to Kajabi
- Easy to set up and use.
- Integrates with more apps and no technical expertise is required.
- You get to talk to “real” people through live chat
Cons of Podia in Comparison to Kajabi
- Templates are not as extensive as Kajabi
- A/B testing is limited
In all, Kajabi and Podia are similar in many ways, but also have many unique features. So, make a choice based on your business needs.
However, it merits to note that Podia is way cheaper than Kajabi and can be an important factor if you’re on a budget.
Kartra
Kartra and Podia allow you to create modern-looking membership sites and online courses, but which is better when? Let’s find out.
Funnels
One of the distinguishing features of Kartra is its funnels, also called campaigns. You can create funnels for any business, customize them, share them with team members, and more.
Podia’s funnels are not so well-developed and it is best implemented through triggers in email marketing only.
So, if you’re looking for sales funnels, Kartra is your hands-down choice.
Digital Content Creation
Kartra is a platform for selling both physical and digital products whereas Podia is designed exclusively for creating, hosting, and selling digital content.
This is also why Podia comes with many features that are geared towards content creation and marketing. Also, it supports a wide range of content such as webinars, downloadable content, online courses, and more.
Customer Support
Podia is more customer-focused than Kartra, as one of the highlighting features of Podia is its messaging feature.
With this feature, you can reach out to all those who come to your site, interact with them to understand their preferences, and create products geared for their needs. Such personalization greatly increases your chances of selling.
Pros of Podia in Comparison to Kartra
- No limit on memberships on all the plans.
- Free migration from other platforms
- Supports webinars
- Great all-in-one platform
- All the tools you need to create and sell courses, memberships, coaching, and more
Cons of Podia in Comparison to Kartra
- Doesn’t support funnels
- Limited A/B testing
In all, Podia is your hands-down choice for all kinds of content-related offerings while Kartra is a broader platform with advanced features for selling physical and digital products with your online business.
Conclusion - Podia Summary
To conclude, Podia is a comprehensive digital platform for creating and selling any content-based product such as courses, webinars, downloadable materials, and more.
Some of the features that make it so conducive for content marketing are:
- Supports a wide range of content formats such as quizzes, drip content, and webinars to help you deliver unique and compelling content that in turn can lead to more purchases.
- Offers upsells and bundles for higher conversions.
- No transaction fees, so more money in your pocket.
- There are no limits on courses or members across all plans, so you get more value for your money.
- Provides a customer-focused approach to help build relations with your potential clients.
Podia offers three plans and they are:
- Mover – $39/month
- Shaker – $79/month
- Earthquaker – $179/month