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Straight up: Podia is a fantastic online platform that pitches itself as an all-in-one, one-stop shop.
It comes with a multitude of capabilities, including features that give you the ability to:
- Sell online courses
- Sell digital downloads
- Create a community
- Sell webinars
- Have a custom website
- Email marketing
- Live chat with your customers
- Affiliate marketing
The thought process behind Podia is that it takes the need out of having multiple subscriptions to loads of different sites and apps and housing them all under one convenient subscription to Podia.
It’s a fantastic thought.
After all, as an online course creator, it can be annoying having your online courses on one platform, having a separate app for your email subscriber list, another to sell your digital downloads, somewhere else to sell webinars…
You get the point. Podia really solves the problem of having everything in one convenient login and accessible through one dashboard.
Podia has been around since 2014, boasts over 50,000 creators on its platform, and focus on 4 key principles:
- Creators first
- For everyone, equally
- Friendly and fun
- Looking to the future
And with the features available in each of their plans, it’s easy to see that Podia do place the content creator at the heart of everything they do and provide on each of their plans.
Podia Pros
- Tonnes of features – As you’ll gather from below (keep reading!), Podia has a tonne of features which means that you don’t need multiple subscriptions for your online courses, sales funnels, webinar hosting, community, mailing list, etc. You can do it all from within Podia which makes it very attractive for anyone who wants an all-in-one solution for running their online courses and school.
- Customer support – I have personally found the customer support from Podia second to none. They reply to queries and help solve your issues incredibly quickly. Not only this, but they have a great help centre which is available 24/7 and is packed with how-to’s and guides. I’ve used these multiple times and find them well-written and often avoid the need to contact a member of the Podia team.
Podia Cons
- Website builder – Whilst I love the site builder for its simplicity to use, it is still simple and follows pre-formated templates. The results which you can create are beautiful, but if you want more customisable website pages then Podia might not cut it for you.
- Certificates – Whilst it’s great that Podia offers customisable certificates within its platform, they follow a standard template and aren’t as customisable as you might find in other platforms.
Does Podia have a free plan?
Straight up, the answer is no. Podia does not provide a free plan.
It does provide a 14-day free trial to each of their plans, but beyond this free trial, you need to subscribe to continue to access the plan’s features.
Are free plans even worth it?
In my humble opinion, however, it’s not a bad thing that Podia don’t offer a free plan.
Free plans that some online course platforms offer aren’t as ‘free’ as they make out. For example, some ‘free’ plans take a $5 cut of every course sale you make. Therefore, by the time you’ve sold just a handful of courses, you’ve already paid the equivalent of a payment plan to that online course provider, but you haven’t benefited from the upgraded features.
My advice is always to be wary of free plans. By all means, use them when setting up your course or if you’re trying to get the feel of a platform, but long term, you’ll quickly learn that they aren’t as ‘free’ as their marketing makes out.
Does Podia take a percentage of course fees?
No, Podia does not take a percentage of course fees for any courses, digital products, or memberships that you sell.
Unless you pay for subscriptions outside of Podia which you integrate into the platform, there are no additional fees outside of your monthly/annual plan fee to Podia.
This is one of the reasons why I think Podia’s pricing plans are so good. What you see is what you get and there are no hidden charges.
Mover Plan ($39 per month)
The Mover Plan is $39 per month. If you pay annually, this price drops to $33 per month, giving you an annual saving of 17%.
Within the Mover Plan, you get the following features:
- Custom website
- Email marketing
- Customer messaging
- Free community
- Unlimited courses
- Unlimited downloads
- Unlimited webinars
- Migration of content and customers is available for free when you choose a yearly subscription
Shaker Plan ($89 per month)
The Shaker Plan is $89 per month. If you pay annually, this price drops to $75 per month, giving you an annual saving of 17%.
Within the Shaker Plan, you get the following features:
- Custom website
- Email marketing
- Customer messaging
- Paid community
- Unlimited courses
- Unlimited downloads
- Unlimited webinars
- Unlimited coaching products
- Affiliates
- Migration of content and customers is available for free when you choose a yearly subscription
Earthquaker Plan ($199 per month)
The Earthquaker Plan is $199 per month. If you pay annually, this price drops to $166 per month, giving you an annual saving of 17%.
Within the Earthquaker Plan, you get the following features:
- Custom website
- Email marketing
- Customer messaging
- Paid community
- Unlimited courses
- Unlimited downloads
- Unlimited webinars
- Unlimited coaching products
- Affiliates
- Priority support
- Onboarding calls
- Monthly creator call
- Migration of content and customers is available for free when you choose a yearly subscription
Podia Features
No Transaction Fees
On all of Podia’s plans, the money which you earn through sales is yours.
Podia doesn’t take a cut of any of your sales. The only charges taken from your course sales will be from Stripe of PayPal (depending on which you choose to manage your payments) and this covers your standard processing fees.
Integrations
Podia can easily be integrated with many platforms and services, including:
Email marketing
- Mailchimp
- ConvertKit
- AWeber
- Drip
- ActiveCampaign
- MailerLite
- GetResponse
Payment processes
- Stripe
- PayPal
Analytics
- Google Analytics
- HotJar
Webinars and livestreams
- YouTube Live
- Zoom
Embeds
- Google Forms
- Spotify
- Vimeo
- GitHubs
- Dribbble
Scheduling
- Calendly
- Acuity Scheduling
- YouCanBook.Me
- SavvyCal
Advertising
- Goodle Ads
Zapier
- LeadPages
- Trello
- ThriveCart
- Dubsado
- Google Sheerts
Third-party snippets
- Suma
- Fomo
- Deadline Funnel
Coupon Codes
Every plan of Podia’s comes with the ability for you to create discount coupons.
These coupons can be given to your current or prospective students to gain a discount on their next purchase.
You can set up coupons that are ongoing, or set them to expire on particular dates. This works great for both introductory offers and offers you might run for a limited amount of time, for example, Black Friday offers.
Certificates of Completion
Certificates of completion are a nice touch to engage your students and entice them into completing the whole of your course.
Certificates help students show off what they have learned and achieved through completing your course. This is great for students to then use for CPD, show to their employers, or just to add to their social media profiles (which also acts as some advertising for you!).
For Podia users, certificates of course completion are available on the Shaker and Earthquaker plans only.
Within the certificate of completion features, you can:
- Edit certificates to include your logo, certificate title, name subtitle, certificate subtitle, course name, completion date, unique certificate serial number
- Preview certificates before including them in your course
- Send a notification email to your students from within Podia when they have completed all of the lessons to your course. You can customise this email to congratulate your student for completing your course. Podia will include a link within the email which directs the student to their student dashboard where they can view and download their certificate.
Digital Downloads
A huge pro of Podia in comparison to some of its competitors’ platforms is its ability to sell downloads from within the platform. This negates the need to have a separate e-commerce platform to sell your downloads from, saving you time and money in setting up and sales.
From within Podia, you can sell:
- eBooks
- Templates and presents
- Free lead magnets
- Bundles
- Music
- Audio files
You can also sell access to podcast episodes behind a payment wall, meaning that those episodes are only available to those who pay to listen to them.
Webinars, Live Streaming & Video
You can include as many videos in your online courses as you’d like because Podia offer no limit on video bandwidth on any of its plans.
That means that you can pre-record videos and upload them to your courses to your heart’s content with no worries about maxing out your bandwidth space.
On the note of video, you can also use Podia to integrate YouTube Live (available on all plans) or Zoom (Shaker and Earthquaker plans only) to present webinars to your students. These webinars can be charged for, or given away for free. You can schedule your webinars to sell in advance, and once they are finished, you can sell replays of your webinars in your Podia to earn passive income!
Membership Site Capability
Within Podia you can also set up an online community. The benefits of this are to connect with your audience through discussions and engaging topics.
This is more exclusive than a Facebook Group, where you have access to all of the information about your customers so you can offer a tailored membership site for them.
The community options allow you to moderate your community as well, helping maintain safety and keeping things on track.
Payment Plans
If you set up Stripe as your payment gateway then you can collect your course’s fees via recurrent payments rather than as a one-time payment.
This works great for high-ticket items or memberships. It also means that a product that might be a little costly upfront for some students is suddenly more affordable on a payment plan.
Payment plans are easy to set up from within Podia and, if used for memberships, can mean a good steady stream of income.
Upsells
Your customers and students who purchase your courses and/or downloads can be upsold other products you offer.
When they checkout, you can select for the student/customer to get money off another bundle or product if they purchase it whilst purchasing their current course or download.
It’s a win-win situation where your student gets more for a discount and you make an additional sale.
Drip Content
When you create an online course, you might not always want all of the course content available to your student as soon as they sign up.
This is where drip content comes in.
Available on all of Podia’s plans, drip content keeps students engaged and means that students are more likely to complete your course.
When creating drip content, you can set when you want your students to access certain modules of your course and in which order. For example, you might want to have someone access module 2, 7 days after they have purchased and accessed module 1 of a course.
Equally, you might want lesson 2 to be made available 24 hours after accessing lesson 1. It’s completely up to you.
Within the drip content feature, you can access drip emails. This means that you can customise and automate emails within Podia which are automatically sent to your students when a new section of their course is available to them.
Affiliate Program
Podia has an in-built affiliate marketing platform available on its Shaker and Earthquaker plans. The affiliate marketing platform means that you can give your students a custom commission for any product, course, or download which they sell through their affiliate link.
You can keep your affiliate programme private, or make it available to anyone to use. Another bonus is that you can email your affiliates with any updates or campaigns from within Podia.
Custom Domains & Subdomains
Every Podia school will automatically be given a subdomain which will be something like https://MYAWESOMEPODIASCHOOL.podia.com.
All of Podia’s plans allow you to have a custom domain name, for example, https://MYAWESOMEPODIASCHOOL.veritysangan.com or https://MYAWESOMEPODIASCHOOL.com.
Setting up a custom domain is an easy process within Podia and is usually active within 24 hours (although my experience was a lot quicker!!).
This is a nice touch as having a custom domain/subdomain brings your domain in line with your branding.
Messaging & Chat
Including a messaging and chat function is usually something that most online courses provide. However, they provide it as an integration meaning that you need to purchase a subscription from another company to use.
Podia have created their own messaging and chat function which can be used on any of their plans.
The messaging and chat function can be turned on or off, depending on your needs.
Using this function can help you turn visitors to your Podia school into customers, helps you interact with your students, helps students interact with you more easily, helps you help students and customers even when you aren’t there, receive chat notifications when you aren’t available to chat, set your status to let your customers know if you’re available or not, chat to students and customers in 11 languages.
Podia Alternatives
Podia’s Customer Support
My personal experience with Podia’s customer support has been nothing short of amazing. Regardless of which pricing plan you are on, you have access to Podia’s live chat, email contact, and help centre.
I have contacted them a couple of times and find that they get back to me within minutes using their live chat feature.
The downside of their live chat is that it’s only available weekdays 9am-6pm ET, and 9am-5pm ET at weekends. If you need them outside of these times you will need to wait for them to email you back, but on the odd occasion I’ve needed this, I’ve found that they’ve got back to me within 24 hours.
There’s a handy help centre that is available 24/7 that has over 150 articles and how-to guides to help you with pretty much any issue you might have. I’ve used it a few times and it’s meant that I haven’t had to contact Podia customer support to help me with my query. This shows that the articles are well written and that Podia understands its customers’ most common issues to be able to provide guides to solve common questions and issues.
There’s no telephone support, which doesn’t suit everyone, but for me, this isn’t an issue. I’m someone who much prefers live chats and emails.
Summary of Podia Pricing
Overall, Podia has 3 plans ranging from $33-£199 per month. Pricing depends on which plan you go for and if you pay monthly or yearly. But ultimately, there is a plan to suit all budgets.
Every plan comes with a 14-day free trial which you can take advantage of by clicking here.
What do you think? Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments!
