Who Owns Podia: Company Profile & Features

Podia is a digital platform that is becoming more and more popular. In short, it helps creative people make money by selling online courses, memberships, and digital downloads to supporters and students.

It’s a lot like Patreon but focuses more on being an educational platform than just content sharing or community based – Podia tries to do it all.

Podia does ask for your money, though, so many people want to know the real story behind the company, where they came from, and who owns them, to see if they can glean the authenticity of the company through this information.

Keep reading to learn more about Podia, who they are and what they are about, and more! Find out who owns Podia below.

What Is Podia?

Podia Labs is a digital media that allows creators, and businesses, such as a musician, to sell online courses and other content to students and supporters. It acts as a framework for these creatives, helping them quickly create digital storefronts, and online courses to help you teach students.

The idea is that Podia has an intuitive and well-engineered user interface that makes all these things much easier than they would be on your own, without much IT knowledge.

With this bit of help from Podia, you too can start selling more online courses than you may have done on other platforms.

Speaking of other platforms, like Thinkify or Skillshare, if you are already registered on one of these competing websites, Podia can offer to transfer all your data to their website for no extra charge, so you don’t lose any sales.

Podia offers a lot to those who want to sell courses online, if you have particularly high numbers of selling courses, Podia will get a lot of value from their uncapped approach to sales.

What Does Podia Offer?

To get a good idea of what Podia offers, and how that may benefit you, here’s a more in-depth breakdown of the specific things that Podia offers, and what it doesn’t.

The important factor to consider here is the volume of sales.

A Single Flat Transaction Fee

One cool thing that Podia offers is one simple flat fee. There are no transaction fees, only the monthly Mover or Shaker fee, this means this is the only fee you will pay to use the platform.

If you have a great month and end up making $10,000, Podia won’t be charging you more or looking for a slice of that pie, but treat you like you still earn $10 a month, which is ideal for these high-volume sellers.

Instant Payout

No matter how much or little you earn, the payout is near instant and Podia never holds it.

Current uses say no matter how you choose to pay or be paid, the money is deposited and should show in your bank account after 2 business days.

For comparison, other platforms only payout once or twice a month, making it harder to get an idea of your finances or success.

Uncapped Approach To Features

Certain platforms that are similar to Podia can cap your success by withholding features behind paywalls or specific fine print that may restrict how many courses you can sell, your bandwidth, or other variables. 

Podia does none of this, which is a huge benefit for high-volume sellers. You can have as much bandwidth, send as many emails, and have an unlimited amount of customers, courses, and whatever you need for success.

This again is super ideal when selling high numbers and means you never have to settle for less.

Email Marketing Features

It’s often said in the online course selling world that ‘the money is in the list’ which refers to your email list, suggesting those who want the courses are out there we just need to get in contact with them.

Podia understands this and has an in-built mail marketing tool, helping you efficiently and effectively market directly through the platform where it matters.

You can send newsletters, one-off marketing emails, send to your entire list, or even specifically target certain groups.

Lots of other platforms that are similar to Podia don’t offer this and those who are part of Podia suggest this is a really useful tactic that helps those low-volume sellers climb the ladder efficiently, plus the no cap on how many emails you send is super helpful.

Beyond this great feature, Podia also has great tracking and review tools to help you track interactions and see when things are working and when they aren’t helping low-volume sellers continue to improve their approach.

Memberships

A little like Patreon, you can offer memberships to your fans and learners, which is great for the creators as it means they can have more of a reliable income from this role, able to plan finances more efficiently.

Yet, in comparison to a crowdfunding and community-based platform such as Patreon, many creators have moved to Podia for their unique membership policies.

The aforementioned competitors will take around 5-15% of your revenue, this doesn’t happen on Podia, and theoretically, if memberships are a main source of income you can earn a lot more on Podia due to their more lenient pricing policies, with pretty much the same control over membership levels and what’s offered.

Digital Downloads

Like other platforms, Podia can simply be used as a way to offer digital downloads to your supporters.

Whether that’s exclusive free tracks for your members, a podcast for exclusive tiers, PDF cheat sheets, or digital downloads of your new art pieces, Podia members love the versatility of being able to offer these downloads.

Free downloads are another great way to get people involved in your selling memberships and courses and see what’s on offer, whether that’s a download that shows off what kind of stuff you do, or perhaps the 101 of your course, giving them a taste of the teaching you offer.

Webinars

Webinars are a great way to be connected with your audience and members, and Podia offers a few different useful Webinar options.

Whether you offer your webinars for free, or to a select group of paid members, a great way to be present in your member’s journey, or just to pull in new members.

To show the versatility of this feature, you could even offer paid replays of your webinars for those who want it, showing how you can draw more and more eyes to your page as well as helping create a passive and recurring income.

Sales Page

One cool thing is that due to Podia being an all-in-one service, you can handle your sales pages within Podia’s reach.

This means you don’t need third-party apps for things like testimonials, or image creation. When you have something to sell, Podia provides everything you need to start marketing it within Podia’s closed system.

Messaging

Another cool feature is an in-built messaging feature, allowing you to talk specifically to paid members, or enquiring learners, within the app, without the need to use a third-party app.

No need for a server like Discord, with Podia you can achieve everything you want within their system – great!

What Could Podia Change?

So far Podia seems like the ideal platform for those who are looking to monetize their skills through teaching and skillshare, but are there parts of Podia that aren’t the best? Let’s look into it.

Collaborative Marketing and Branding

Podia understands marketing well, which is why they offer so many great features, but part of this exchange is a collaborative marketing and branding approach from Podia itself.

Put simply, there’s not any way you can remove Podia branding from your digital storefront and general branding on your courses or website. As you promote yourself, you naturally have to promote Podia too.

Many find this a little cheapening and it can stop their storefront or website from feeling like their own, but it makes sense from an objective marketing standpoint. While you can have this removed, you do have to pay for this privilege.

End of Module Quizzing is Limited

If you have ever done online learning you will either hate or love the quizzes you get at the end of the course or module, for this is a really useful and great way to consolidate learning effectively.

However, on Podia, their end-of-module/course quizzes can be quite basic in their functionality. You can’t offer graded quizzes for example, and there isn’t any way to provide students with certifications or anything. It’s also hard to provide feedback on work directly.

Other platforms overshadow Podia when it comes to this interactive learning part, other platforms have much more breadth when it comes to their quizzes and interactive learning features.

Lack Of Community

So, while you can directly message learners on the platform, a great feature on Podia, there isn’t a learner-to-learner network.

Students can’t talk to each other and there are no discussion boards or forums, there is effectively no community area.

Other services can have things like an integrated social network within the service, but not even pad members can talk to each other within Podia’s system, they would have to do this elsewhere which is still possible.

Who Owns Podia?

Podia offers all this great stuff to content creators and artists who want to share their knowledge with supporters, but who’s benefiting from this, and who makes the decisions that will change the platform?

The man we’re looking for is Spencer Fry, founder, and CEO of Podia.

Podia was founded in 2014 under a different name, Coach, which was Fry’s company as well. The coach was similar to Podia, with even more of a focus on tutors and being a more traditional education platform.

Yet, Fry claims that many of the more traditional education tools on the early website were not being used so often, things like scheduling and invoicing, but instead most of the users of Coach were content creators using it like Patreon or other member-based learning operations.

Fry changed directions and renamed the website ‘Podia’ changing the website into what we recognize it as now.

He decided to cast a larger net, creating a service that benefits both traditional tutors looking to skill share while also catering to more freelance content creators looking for a similar platform, the Podia we know today is now mutually beneficial to both types of teachers, with traditional tutors gaining things from the content creators such as membership programs, while content creators can benefit from the traditional course approach as well.

Funding has changed over the years, part of the big move from Coach to Podia was a result of Fry raising nearly $3 million in seed funding, allowing him to make these larger changes.

Funding continues to keep coming and it is reported that Zelkova Ventures, Designer Fund, and Notation Capital are all on board for the long run.

Final Thoughts

It should be clear that Podia is certainly a service worth considering if you are looking to monetize your skill or offer unique learning options as a content creator.

The service offers a lot and can be perhaps better than a lot of other learning platforms out there, albeit with a few areas to work on within Podia’s service itself.

Part of the service’s ability to be so wide-ranging and innovative is thanks to its owner Spencer Fry, who has worked on his platform for a long time even amidst large increases in funding.

Having created a course-sharing platform for more traditional tutors and skill sharers, he adapted his original website to reach the ever-increasing world of content creators looking to share their skills and earn a more consistent income. 

Fry’s ability to merge the two approaches creates a platform where these two groups can benefit from each other, creating a platform that is unique among other course-sharing and membership-based platforms.