Podia describes itself as a ‘digital storefront’. It allows creators to sell online courses, webinars, memberships and other digital downloads in an easy to use format, without needing specialist technology. Selling through a third party has several benefits, including being able to sell digital products all in one place, customization options for your online course, and the ability to use Podia’s email marketing features and live chat support through the site. However, there are also downsides, such as regular pricing plans and a lack of flexibility in some aspects of your course creation.
It can be hard to know which membership site is best for you. There are so many possible all in one platforms you can use to host your online courses and other digital downloads.
We’ve created an in-depth Podia review to discuss some of the key issues you consider when choosing a right online course platform, including Podia pricing, transaction fees, and user experience. We’ll tell you the things we like about Podia and the things we would like Podia to improve so that you can review all the facts and decide if it’s the right online course platform for your course.
How does Podia Work?
Creating a Podia Website
There are five steps to using the Podia platform to host your online courses. Firstly you need to create a custom website for your online business. This is an area where experienced users may find Podia restrictive. Podia specifies certain pre-launch features your website should have and only provides 11 languages and 22 currencies for your sales page. However, if your online course is catered to a specific target audience or in a common language this shouldn’t be an issue. However, Podia offers the option of migrating content from where it has previously been hosted. This makes it easy to use if you already have digital content elsewhere. Once you have completed and published required fields, the Podia platform is easy for you and your customers to use.
Added Bonus
Podia emphasizes ease of use and customer service, making it perfect for beginners. If you’re struggling with things like knowing what to put on your sales page or how to set up an email marketing the 24/7 live chat that Podia provides will be very helpful. Podia also provides you with a custom domain URL, making it easier for people interested in your online courses and digital content to find you. With integrations to all in one platforms like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel available too, it’s easier for you to manage your e-commerce and use Podia to create and sell custom content according to consumer trends.
Customizing to Match Your Brand
Although you have own custom domain, it’s natural to want to create and sell a distinctive brand too. Before you can start selling online courses memberships, it’s important to customize your membership site. Although again using a third-party online course platform like Podia can sometimes impede on your creativity, Podia emphasizes the ease of adding your own course videos, images, and audio. The brand also notes that the all in one platform is compatible with all devices, so you don’t need to use any additional software to make your membership site pages and online course easily accessible. The downside is that Podia does not provide an app, meaning that the most tech-savvy consumers may be put off.
- Build your website
- Sell your course
- Grow your community and brand
“Sales page, emails and course all in one place, amazing!”
Adding Your Products
A major bonus of using Podia is that you can easily migrate unlimited online courses or digital products you have elsewhere onto your right online course platform. There are also several customization options allowing you to start selling your items quickly and easily. You can create a sales page that’s as personal as your online course itself, meaning that online courses hosted by Podia are all unique.
Podia provides unlimited bandwidth for your online course platform. This means that whatever your course’s digital content you’ll be able to easily host it on the online course platform. Podia also lets you market your online course before the course content is finalized. This allows you to review the popularity of different course advanced features during course creation to create and sell a better product. You can also alter the checkout process and options for memberships online courses provide, making it compatible with a credit card or bank transfer as suits you.
Is There a Catch?
One downside is that Podia only allows memberships if you subscribe to the higher-cost shaker plan, which costs $79 per month. However, once you create an account Podia make it easy to change your plan, so you can start with a simpler online course platform, review at a later date, and upgrade if necessary. There are many great things about both all in one platforms and only you can choose which is best for you — but we want to make sure you have the best information possible before you do.
Marketing
Podia as online course business encourages a range of different ways of marketing your digital product. For example, input email addresses and the online course platform will help you create resources like newsletters to fine-tune your integrated email marketing. Podia also helps you create a sales funnel, and has several customization options to help you target the required audience for your digital products and online course.
Extra Information
One of the best things about using Podia is how much it improves the customer support on your online course — as well as the personalized email marketing, even pre-launch Podia helps you create live chats and easy customer feedback streams. Podia is one of the best platforms for user experience, particularly if you subscribe to the shaker plan which gives access to a useful blog.
The main downside we found in this Podia review is that again there is quite a tight email marketing framework. This is great news for those inexperienced in e-commerce and creating a digital storefront, but more experienced course creators may find this lack of flexibility a little frustrating. Ultimately, Podia will help you sell online courses, but isn’t always great for letting you be flexible while you do it.
Starting to Sell on Podia
As we’ve previously mentioned in this Podia Review, the platform is great for those selling a course or digital product for the first time. One of the main things we like about Podia is how easy it is for you to set up your online courses and other digital downloads, and the same applies to creating a membership site. You can easily harness affiliate marketing, a paid or free plan, and cross-sell products. This helps to both create a sales funnel builder and boost your online courses memberships. As well as this, Podia offers the ability to sell access to your online course or digital downloads per month and makes the checkout process easy and secure.
Podia Alternatives
There are many alternatives to Podia when it comes to building an online course, online course business or membership platform. Here are our favourites:
How much does Podia cost?
Podia offers a two-week free trial to allow you to review the WordPress site and check that it’s compatible with your course. This is useful for those who have a bit more experience with different online course platforms and know what they’re looking for. After that, there are two pricing Podia options.
Podia Mover
The mover plan is the more basic Podia option. This allows you access to a wide range of resources for only $39 per month. These include:
- Your own custom website
- Integrated Email marketing
- Messaging
- Free migrations
- Webinars
- Digital downloads
- Zero transaction fees
- Online courses
- Support every day of the week
- Build your website
- Sell your course
- Grow your community and brand
“Sales page, emails and course all in one place, amazing!”
Essentially, this Podia option gives you everything you need to create course, unlimited video hosting and attract consumers. The platform is great for people getting started in course making, and Podia has great customer support to help you get started. It’s also a very reasonable price compared to many other online course providers. However, this pricing Podia option is lacking some key advanced features you need for a more sophisticated Podia course. For example, membership can be important when creating a successful online following.
Podia Shaker
The more advance Podia pricing option is the shaker plan. This gives you access to all the Podia features that the mover plan provides with some additional ones too:
- Blog access
- Offsite buy buttons
- Third-party code
- Affiliate marketing
- Membership
- Zoom Integration
This upgrade is significantly pricier — this Podia’ transaction fee costs $79 per month. We would recommend that you start with the mover Podia plan and review after a month or two whether upgrading would be useful.
How Does Podia Compare?
Podia Review Summary
The Best Three Things about Podia
- One of our favorite things about Podia is its high-quality customer phone support. As well as helping you to set up your digital products, unlimited video hosting and sales pages, it helps your course to be better at customer service itself. The email marketing tools strategy and interactive options, such as the ability to leave a comment, allow your customers to feel well-supported by your online business..
- Podia is a reliable site that will keep your selling digital products secure. It’s important to check the third party code of any site you’re using to make sure that what you see as the required fields are marked and your course and digital products will be safe. The site has a great track record of protecting credit card payments and digital downloads, allowing you and your customers to feel safe.
- A great thing about Podia is how versatile it is. You can use it to organize everything from course to digital downloads to transaction fees and to create more specific content like a table of contents or affiliate marketing.
The Worst Three Things about Podia
- The biggest negative of using another platform like Podia to host your site is the cost or transaction fee. As mentioned, if you want to use all the Podia features that Podia provides you’ll be paying $79 per month and transaction fee for their shaker plan. Even if you only want the mover plan which contains the basic features it will still set you back $29 a month. Although there is a free trial, there isn’t a free plan.
- If you’re already an expert at creating online other platforms you might find Podia restrictive. Although features like Podia’s email marketing features and learning management are great to help you get set up if you have a very specific idea of what you want your platform to be like, Podia might not be for you. Consider trying the free trial and deciding what Podia can offer you.
- Although Podia is compatible with desktop, laptop, and phones, it doesn’t have an app. This can make the platform and your course less appealing to some consumers.
- Build your website
- Sell your course
- Grow your community and brand
“Sales page, emails and course all in one place, amazing!”
Features & Operational Detils
Interface of podia
When the users login to any website, they are welcomed at a screen called an Dashboard or interface. The same happens when someone login to a Podia, the interface is subtle and user-friendly. Users see a simple and intuitive interface. Users can easily get everything with a few simple clicks, particularly three. Podia is very easy and direct. It has no learning curve. Users can obtain everything explicitly from the dashboard.
All editing and setting options, particularly site settings, account settings, billing, and site editing options can be found under the profile section
Course Creation in Podia
Course creation is the core feature of Podia. Here we will discuss in detail how to create the course that is being offered by Podia.
In order to design a course, firstly we need to go to the “Products” section and create a new course there. The product section will display the online courses that were recently developed. In the process of editing the course, our next step is to add the content of a course that includes the lessons (like topics). and sections (nothing particular, only modules).
The elements that is supported by Podia are quiz, embed, text, files, and coaching. In comparison with the Thinkific, only a few lesson types get are being supported by Podia. Articulate Storyline, Assessments, HTML5 content types, Adobe Captivate, and custom codes are not present in Podia.
But the greatest thing about Podia is that users can insert content from 1900 and above course platforms.
Following are a few of the top platforms it supports:
- YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo
- Spotify, Podbean, Soundcloud
- Speaker Deck, Presentation, Slide Share, Google Slides
- Twitter, Pinterest, TikTok, Behance
- Typeform, Google Forms, Paper Form
- Codepen, Github
In Podia, the option of drip access for every section is being provided to individuals. Following the example, People can also unlock the second section right after one day of acquiring, it if they want to do it.
This technique would be helpful in making people punctual to log into their unlimited courses and find new content there. On the basis of our marketing strategies, this technique is quite beneficial if people want their students to stop binge-watch the lessons.
When any new section gets unlocked for students to make posts, students would get notified via email.
The feature of a quiz inside Podia is also very easy, a single quiz can have multiple questions inside it which ensures that students are completely occupied during quizzes.
Certificate upon completion
There are a few updates in Podia and a certificate after completing the course is one of them. After completing a course from Podia, students will receive an email that contains a link to download their certificates. However, there is also a negative side of it which is it does not have the option of certificate designs, templates, and customization options.
Memberships and communities
There is other positive and negative side of Podia. It lacks memberships but it has communities that are being utilized as membership site. All Podia plans have this feature.
Free and premium plans of communities are also being offered in Podia. There is access to create paid plans and products are also free accessible. This would lead our members to sign up for different communities and multiple pricing options would also be available, particularly monthly or annual subscriptions.
Community supports topics, posts, likes, and comments. Students can also interact with each other on the basis of various topics.
Other digital products on podia
There are not only courses and memberships available on Podia, but it also sells webinars, coaching, bundles, and other digital files. Multiple upsells can also be added for all of these products. In order to work out this feature, there should be an option of several digital products in the storefront of Podia.
Email marketing and automation
Podia also have an option of email marketing to promote their products and courses, after creating a solid list. Email marketing has an option to send broadcasts and email marketing campaigns. Email marketing campaigns are the series of emails that are being sent to the people after a little delay.
Podia just has a basic text editor to design our emails. It doesn’t have any pre-made email templates, say unlikeKajabi which provides email templates for affiliate announcements, cart abandonment, new community posts, community connect requests, and much more. Also, it lacks personalization tags and lacks email split testing features.
Design and Customization
Podia accompanies a fundamental course builder to plan our sales pages and the storefront. It gives not very many modules to plan sales pages which incorporate text, picture, testimonial course videos, FAQs, and so on. The page course builder isn’t so highlighted rich as Kajabi which accompanies great amount of blocks and design choices. Likewise, Podia offers no pre-made formats/subjects to plan product sale pages.
Marketing Features
What’s the purpose of producing and selling digital products for that we don’t have an appropriate promotional strategy?
Podia offers the major feature of email marketing, where there is an option of making drip and even campaigns. There are multiple options to build a complete funnel or stream (using a customized course builder, sale pages, and upsells), either through Podia or ClickFunnel or funnel setup having WordPress in it and to use Podia as LMS for product fulfilment.
There are few other features that supports effective marketing in Podia.
- Coupons
- Upsells
- Prelaunch
- Embed
- Affiliate programs
Affiliate Marketing
Podia has an option of affiliate marketing in case we want to market our selling courses.
Affiliate programs can be added to online store and build innovative affiliate links with Podia for all items.and build innovative affiliate links with Podia for all items. There is a private dashboard where people can obtain affiliate links and follow commissions and sales.
With regards to affiliate commissions, either a percent of the sale or a basic commission will be given to affiliates. Also, the commission can be customized at a product level that is really convenient.
Currently, there are a couple of things about the affiliate tools that can be gotten to the next level. First and foremost, it is absolutely impossible to upload any swipe records or resources for your affiliates.
Furthermore, every one of our items will display on the affiliate dashboard as a matter of course and it is basically impossible to conceal explicit items from appearing. The workaround clearly is to fix a zero percent commission for those items.
Thirdly, we are unable to change the cookie following period for affiliate links.
At last, there is no simple method for gathering and oversee tax documents from affiliate Programs.
Aside from that, Podia’s affiliate Program is straightforward and has every one of the essential elements and all the tools, so it ought to function admirably for most course makers.
There are several other valuable sales and advertising methods that Podia offers. The first is the local ‘live talk’ trait which permits our site guests and students to begin a discussion with us by means of the gadget.
The subsequent one is the capacity to create webinars through the local Zoom reconciliation or by inserting YouTube Live. A price can be set for webinar or can be offered free of cost and besides, Podia deals with sending reminder emails that is just simply perfect.
Third-Party Integrations
All the built in email marketing capacities are quite basic in Podia. we will probably utilize an outsider email service provider. Fortunately, Podia incorporates with a considerable well-known email marketing platforms.
It has recon ciliated with ConvertKit, MailChimp, Drip, ActiveCampaign, MailerLite, and GetResponse. As soon as one user signs up for one of our courses, it directly passes the user’s data to email service provider which directly adds him/her to a particular list or tag.
Curently, Podia has integrated with Zapier too. So if somebody utilizes any of the email solutions that Podia doesn’t coordinate with, he can in any case pass client information by means of Zapier.
Additionally, we can utilize Zapier to coordinate with a great number of third-party applications including FreshBooks (private venture bookkeeping programming), Accredible (declarations), ClickFunnels (pipes and checkout), and so forth.
At last, Podia permits people to add third-party content to their site which will permit them to coordinate with tools like Facebook Pixel, Google Analytics, ConvertBox, and so on.
Payment processors
People are required to associate their bank accounts or PayPal accounts to these payment processors before making any transaction or selling any product
Podia has integrated with Stripe and PayPal in order to collect dues from their students.
It is important to take care of that Podia doesn’t uphold PayPal for local plans. Since there are a few Programming interface inconveniences on PayPal’s end, particularly while handling repeating installments. Thus, at this point, for the local area plans, just Stripe is supported.
The customers can utilize their credit cards to checkout. Normally, payments get processed in the span of 2 days and credited to your PayPal account or bank. This process is quite fast.
There are three pricing options in Podia-free, one-time payments, and monthly payments.
Podia Pricing and Discount
The free plan has been recently introduced by Podia. Yet, it isn’t loaded with features as the free plan presented by Thinkific. Only 1 coaching product can be sold with eight percent transaction fee. In the free arrangement, you can sell just 1 training item with 8% exchange charges. All selling courses do not get supported by this plan. Lest, can only make draft selling courses..
Second, Premium plan begins at $39/mo, yet it needs to include features like affiliate programs, indefinite coaching products, and need support. In order to gain the affiliate programs, shaker plan at $89/mo would be required.
For the great amount of users, the Shaker plan would be great.
Checkout Process
The checkout process in Podia has a multi-step yet it’s very much improved. Users are not required to make Podia account before any transaction. Moreover, users are expected to enter just enter a couple of information in order to finish the payment.
There is no genuine checkout page and the whole checkout occurs in a popup. The positive side of this kind of checkout process is that user can finish the payment without leaving the page.
“Sell coaching and consultations in the same place you sell everything else. No new tech to figure out.” It’s quite easy at Podia to sell one-to-one coaching. At Podia, simply connect with your suitable scheduling course platform, then customers can book and clear the payments for coaching sessions one planning stage and your crowd will actually want to book – and pay for – an instructing meeting, all from your Podia site.
People Management
In the audience section of Podia, individuals can clearly look at the list including names and subscriptions of their students. They would be able to differentiate that whether their user is a paid customer, email subscriber or a subscriber.
Though, filter options are
Though, the filter options are bounded. For instance, it is not possible to filter the users based on any particular course enrollments or course completions, or their purchase value.
One more issue with how student management functions in Podia. There are no mass actions. So if there is a need to add various students to a course or remove them, it can’t be possible in one go. Though, it can only be done by selecting a particular individual student. It is possible to look at and remove the user’s enrollments in products and memberships
Besides, Podia additionally allows you to alter a user’s personal information like email, name, and password.
Reporting & Administration
With any internet based course-platform, we would like to manage our selling courses and students too and to keep track of course income as well as student engagement. In this part, we’ll assess what Podia brings to the table for something similar.
Reporting & Analytics Tools
In the first place, all the tools related to course reporting abilities at Podia are limited, and some crucial elements are missing too. The only thing that is possible at Podia is to track the performance of each individual in each course. So, it is easy to look at the completion rate of each individual student and track the status of their course completion.
Customer Support
If we look at the one thing that is absolutely great from the start is Podia support.
There is consistently a ton to hear incredible things about Podia’s customer care from our clients and readers. In any event, during our limited interactions with customers, we have consistently observed them be amicable and responsive.
As far as help choices, we can either connect with them by means of email or we can simply leave a message in the chat box from our administrator dashboard.It’s not precisely a live chat option but rather it’s far superior to going this way and that over email.
During work hours, generally Podia’s team responds in 5-10 minutes which is astonishing. Outside the work hours or during the end of the week, individuals have to wait somewhat longer to get answers to their queries.
In addition to that, Podia has a broad knowledge library that has a ton of resources on the most proficient methods to do various things. So people can essentially look through the knowledge base and Podia has also a ton of free guides on their site related to course creator training. So individuals can find articles on course creation, sales funnel, email marketing and a few different topics.
One thing that we couldn’t want anything more than to see Podia do is make a Facebook people group for its users. Most of the Podia’s rivals have these Facebook groups for their clients where they can clear their queries and interact with others which is amazing.
At last, at Podia has something wonderful that is Podia support trait. In the shaker plan of Podia, it offers free migration services in which they will move your target audience and content from some other platform to Podia without any charges.
This is enormous assuming that you’re wanting to switch to Podia from another channel and there isn’t some other channel stage that offers a trait like this.
Summary
We hope that our Podia review has helped you to better understand the pros and cons of the product. Ultimately, we highly recommend Podia to beginners due to the course platform’s high level of customer service and ease of use. For more advanced users it might be more beneficial for you to try the free trial and conduct your own Podia review specific to your course’s needs. Podia has many benefits as a course platform to host your online course on, and with the technical knowledge you’ve gained from this Podia review, you’ll easily be able to choose which course platform and/or plan is best for you.
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