Online courses are one of the most influential business concepts for online entrepreneurs. According to research, e-learning has already grown into a multibillion-dollar industry. People are happy to pay for the benefit of obtaining the knowledge and skill they require from the comfort of their own offices or homes – at their own convenient time.
If you’re thinking about creating a course, there’s no better time to start than now. All you require are all the tools necessary to build, advertise, sell, and sustain your online course.
Today, let’s talk about Podia.
Podia is a fully featured online content-selling tool that lets you sell coaching, webinars, online courses, community, and other online services. It is a fantastic low-cost online course-building platform with many features.
Tag along and learn about this all-in-one digital solution that simplifies the process of creating online courses and converting customers once your brand is on the market!
What exactly is Podia?
Podia is a platform for digital learning. It provides course development tools to assist instructors in creating, marketing, and selling courses. In addition, it includes all the features like a typical website builder, memberships, e-commerce functionality, downloads, email marketing, live chat, and many more.
Podia is primarily a content creator monetization channel for selling memberships, online courses, and other digital products. Two features that distinguish this service from others are its low pricing and ability to sell digital products.
A Short History of Podia
Podia was established in 2014 by the company’s CEO, Spencer Fry. Its main aim was to offer a slew of creator-friendly tools that help beginners get started online.
Additionally, Podia wants to ensure that every content creator can share their knowledge and skills with the public. The Podia solution is user-friendly and enjoyable to use, and it includes a slew of marketing tools to help you attract students.
Podia began as a coaching tool called Coach before renaming it to Podia in 2017. The platform then had a new focus on assisting creators in monetizing their content.
Who is Podia Meant For?
Podia is ideal for a variety of creators. If you are planning on selling webinars, memberships, and other digital services, Podia is the perfect product for you. Podia is also an ideal option for you if:
- You want an all-inclusive, simple, affordable, and intuitive course platform.
- You want to trade online courses, digital downloads, and memberships.
- You’d like to include live chat on your storefront and sales pages.
- Every day of the week, you want quick, helpful, and friendly customer service.
- You do not wish to have any limited features in your plan.
- You are opposed to paying transaction fees.
What Does Podia Offer? Features and Benefits
The main advantage of using Podia is that it provides a single storefront where you can manage your courses, membership sites, digital downloads, and other digital services.
This is the primary feature that distinguishes Podia from competitor platforms. The competitor platforms often have limitations, such as only allowing you to host your membership sites and not simultaneously with your courses or downloadable products. Moreover, they require you to connect to a third-party app like Dropbox to access those other items.
As a result, keeping track of and organizing your products can be challenging, particularly as your sales increase. Podia allows you to keep all your online services, whether paid or free, in one place.
The primary benefits and features of Podia include the following:
Digital Downloads
Podia is a perfect platform for creatives who produce audio or written content. The platform allows you to sell audiobooks, eBooks, videos, audios, PDFs, checklists, cheat sheets, guides, and other one-time downloads.
You can promote your courses using the same advertising tools that are available. You can even develop a sales funnel to entice customers to purchase digital products in addition to your course. Even better, you can include it in a package.
You do not need to be technically savvy to add digital downloads. Choose the files on your hard drive or computer and attach them to Podia.
You can also give the items away for free by checking the appropriate box.
Memberships
You want to create and develop communities while selling digital products as a digital content creator. It’s a nice thing that Podia includes a membership management solution. You can initiate a membership program with unlimited members and tiers. Each tier can have its prices, benefits, and content. You can also provide a free trial period to give your audience a taste of what they’ll anticipate when they join the membership platform.
If you want to build an exclusive subscription for your patrons, you can do so even if you don’t know how to code. You can publish various media types for your members, such as videos, MP3s, and PDFs. Your members can also communicate with admins and other members.
The comments system allows users to communicate with one another. They can also leave a comment or a like, just like Facebook.
You can request that members pay annually or monthly. You can also link their Membership to Palapa, Slack, or Facebook to ensure that only subscribers can join. To use the membership feature, you must link it to your Stripe or PayPal account.
Significantly, Podia’s website builder allows you to personalize your site.
Online Courses
Podia has an easy-to-use platform so anyone can get started as quickly as possible. You can add courses to your online catalog from the primary dashboard. Moreover, the Podia platform allows users to upload unlimited files and videos, so you don’t have to bother about exceeding capacity limits or any other limitations.
We should emphasize that having unlimited video uploading is significant because other competitor platforms charge you for third-party hosting. However, you can only upload your course recordings to Podia if you already have them on your device. However, it can even aid in migration if they get hosted on some other site.
You can also package your course with other products if they are all housed on Podia. Would you like to indulge your students or evaluate their knowledge of your course? Podia provides multiple-choice quiz questions that you can customize to assess how well your resources are understood.
If you want to sell additional products, Podia has a feature that allows you to sell more digital products. You can also create drip campaigns where students can unlock lessons in sections. Students can then complete a course together. Nobody can go any further than they intend.
Free Lead Management
Lead Management enables businesses to optimize and track sales efficiently. From the exact location, you can nurture and manage leads. Lead Management has the benefit of preventing lost leads and filtering out underqualified leads. However, it may become more complicated as your company expands and your lead figures increase.
In this scenario, paying attention to leads is even more essential to prevent losing potential clients. The data received can be overwhelming, so it is critical to stay on top of it and generate a high ROI (Return on investment).
Podia assists users in acquiring and managing leads. For example, when students use the email capture tool to arrive at your online course, they become leads. Customer leads are then added to your email list.
Webinars
You can also grow your digital business by providing webinars and charging individual or group rates. In addition, Podia integrates YouTube Live and Zoom, so you don’t have to learn about third-party tools that aren’t as well-known as the two.
Of course, if this is your business strategy, you can give free webinars. You can plan time and sell webinars. Webinar replays can be monetized, allowing you to earn money long after the webcast has ended.
Some of the tools offered by Podia that can take your Webinar to the next level include:
- No service charges on paid plans: Podia never takes a percentage of your sales on premium services. PayPal or Stripe will only charge you the standard service fee.
- Schedule and sell ahead of time: Set a date and time for your Webinar, and allow your listeners to purchase access before going live.
- Choose between two integrations: Podia integrates with Zoom and YouTube Live allowing you to provide webinars to your followers.
- Reclaim your brand from YouTube: Instead of struggling to go live on YouTube, require patrons to sign up through Podia. Then, you can convert inactive YouTube fans into active email subscribers.
- Earn income stream from replays: Podia stores your playbacks automatically. Consumers who have paid for the replays will be able to view the recordings, and new clients can purchase the replays.
- Combine with other products: Sell webinars separately or with other online services, such as digital downloads and online courses.
Coaching and Consultations
Podia provides you with everything you require to run a creative business. This means your consultation and coaching products will benefit.
What if you would like to include coaching in an online program or package it alongside other products? Podia does this while providing the necessary tools to make your training more effective.
Some of these coaching tools include:
- Sell your expertise: One-on-one coaching is among the most effective ways to commercialize your expertise while connecting with your target audience.
- Simple to set up: Podia allows you to connect your scheduling, sales, and payments pages all in one location in minutes.
- Coaching without limits: Unlimited training sessions can be sold through your own website.
- Easily incorporate coaching into courses: Include a coaching session in your classes, allowing students to reserve directly via your Podia site.
- Choose between four integrations: Podia links with various well-known scheduling platforms, such as Acuity, Calendly, SavvyCal, and YouCanBookMe, or you can utilize your custom link.
- Earn extra money with upsells: Offering coaching as just an upsell is an excellent way to link with your audience and generate additional revenue.
- Checkout that converts well: Podia payment system is simple and quick (under 10 seconds!), which results in more sales and minimal drop-off.
- No service charges on paid plans: Podia never takes a percentage of your sales on premium services. PayPal or Stripe will only charge you the standard service fee.
Marketing
Using Podia’s marketing functionalities, you can interact with your intended audience. For example, email marketing allows you to send email messages to your lead list or specific segments. Furthermore, you can optimize campaigns to keep customers engaged throughout the sales funnel.
Also included is a messaging tool that allows you to communicate with customers when logged in. And when you’re offline, the same feature enables users to leave feedback, requests, and questions.
Then there’s affiliate marketing. Again, it is straightforward to set up. You have complete control over all the commission payments to affiliates. You can make it invite-only or public. Podia will manage the payouts, so you don’t have to worry about it once the system is up and running. The affiliate network applies to digital products and memberships.
You can email affiliates directly from the platform, eliminating the necessity for third-party software. This is one of the email marketing benefits offered by Podia.
Payments
You can accept payments through PayPal or Stripe. You will determine the cost per payment and the number of charges a customer must make in a month. Besides its ease of use, Podia also has another advantage. This platform doesn’t charge any transaction fees. That cannot be said of some of Podia’s rivals. All you must pay is the PayPal and Stripe processing fees.
It means Podia does not take a percentage of your earnings, providing you with more funds in your account.
Another advantage is that users are not required to register an account before submitting a payment. Removing a potential roadblock improves your chances of gaining a user. Users will only need to fill out a few pieces of information in a popup window.
Podia also makes collecting tax for your coursework simple. They assist over 200 various tax jurisdictions. It includes Canada, the entire United States of America (all 50 states), Europe, and so on.
Third-party integrations
Here’s a complete list of third-party applications compatible with Podia.
- Stripe
- PayPal
- MailChimp
- Deadline Funnel
- Aweber
- Drip
- MailerLite
- GetResponse
- Sumo
- Google Analytics
- HotJar
- Zapier
- ConvertKit
- Google Ads
- Fomo
- ActiveCampaign
To install the application you’re integrating, copy and paste the code from its third-party platform into your Podia analytics. That’s all. The real fun starts at Zapier. You can use this powerful application to allow integrations with various platforms. Trello, Dubsado, Leadpages, ThriveCart, Google Sheets, and other tools are included.
Support
Podia provides various types of support to its users. If you want to try things out on your own, you can visit Podia’s Help Centre or participate in one of their weekly demos.
You can also attend one of Podia’s daily question-and-answer sessions.
However, if you want to speak to someone immediately, you can also use the live chat option. During the week, live chat is accessible from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. (ET), and then on weekends, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (ET).
You can contact customer support through email if live chat is unavailable. Podia does not appear to offer phone support currently.
Reporting and Analytics Tools
To begin, Podia’s reporting and analysis capabilities are limited, with some vital components missing. So, the only thing you can do is students progress for each course.
Additionally, you can view individual students’ completion rates and what classes they have completed in the session.
Besides, Podia has an entirely separate dashboard for sales analytics where you can get an overview of your sales volumes. Furthermore, the sales report can be filtered by specific plans or products.
However, the Podia sales summary report is once again basic. For example, it lacks filters for either dates or other things, such as affiliates, coupon codes, etc.
People Management
With Podia, you can successfully view the students’ names in the application’s Audience area. You can also filter the list based on whether they’re a paid customer, an email subscriber, or an ordinary subscriber.
The filter options are, however, limited. You cannot, for example, filter the members based on course completions, specific course enrollments, or purchase value.
Another problem with Podia’s student management system is the lack of mass actions. So, you can’t do it all at once if you want to register or unenroll several students in a class.
However, you can efficiently complete these actions by selecting one student. In addition, you can view the memberships and products a user is enrolled in and monitor their progress or revoke their access from this page.
In addition, Podia allows you to change a user’s personal information, such as password, name, and email.
User Roles and Privileges
Podia not only allows you to add affiliates and students to your school, but it also allows you to add group members. So, if you have a virtual assistant who will assist you in setting up your web page or a business associate who will collaborate with you, you can give them access to your Podia store.
Adding teammates to your Podia profile is a simple process. First, enter the member’s email address and name, and then select the areas of your Podia app that you would like them to access.
Remember that you do not have the role of ‘course creator’ in Podia. So, if you want to collaborate with other writers and sell their coursework on your webpage while sharing revenue with them, Podia is not for you.
Podia Page Builder
You’ll love the Podia page builder if you want to beautifully personalize your Podia landing pages, sales pages, or storefront. The site builder contains many in-built components you can add to your site with a single click.
You can quickly create a course summary, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), testimonials, and a product banner.
Standard features that you can use to create custom sections for your product pages include “Video with Text,” “Image with Text,” “Columns,” and so on.
Section themes enable you to customize your text and background colors at the segment level, which is an excellent feature. Overall, the site builder is exceptionally straightforward, and you can quickly build a professional-looking online store even if you have no coding or design experience.
Podia Pricing Plans
The Podia review would be incomplete without addressing pricing. It is because it won’t be possible to decide on Podia unless you understand how much it costs.
Podia’s pricing structures are intuitive. It has two plans:
- The Mover Plan, which costs $39/month
- The Shaker Plan costs $89/per month
The best part about its cost is that there are no extra fees and both tiers offer instant payouts. In terms of what the various plan includes, the Mover Plan consists of all the functionalities you need to develop and sell digital downloads and online courses.
Affiliate Marketing, Zoom Integration, Memberships, Third-Party Code, and Embedded Checkout, which are only accessible on the Shaker Plan, are omitted.
Furthermore, free migration is only accessible on the Shaker Plan.
Podia’s cost is reasonable, and I appreciate how clearly, they kept the game. However, there are a few things that bother many a lot. The first issue is that neither of the plans includes the option to remove Podia branding from your digital products, which must be paid for separately.
Another issue is that you cannot add teammates to your Podia account with any of the two plans. Additionally, you must pay an additional $20 a month per user besides your monthly subscription.
The main issue with their selling prices is that they do not allow the use of third-party applications on their lower tier. So, for example, you can’t utilize a countdown timer like Deadline Funnel, a popup solution like ConvertBox, or even connect with Facebook Pixel with the Mover Plan.
This is an item that nearly everyone will require, so I don’t see why it should be limited to the upper tier.
If you want to try the Podia platform, you can sign up for a 14-day free version on any of its pricing options. The good news is that you do not require a credit or debit card to begin the trial.
Podia Course Development and Student Engagement Interface
Users can build as many courses as they want with Podia. You don’t need technical knowledge because creating and managing your courses is simple.
Podia’s user-friendly student engagement interface makes a distraction-free learning environment possible.
We’ll walk you through using Podia’s course player and course creator.
Course Content Upload
Many experts concur that adding content to your course is quite simple. You may easily upload files, text, or links using Podia’s one of the easiest-to-use user interfaces.
There are, however, several drawbacks. Because of this, you cannot import files directly from services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive.
Additionally, there are some difficulties with downloading specific kinds of files. For example, videos cannot be made downloadable, and the ability to download audio files cannot be disabled.
However, you may create stunning courses with Podia’s user-friendly course-building tool.
Lessons and sections are the two levels on which the course structure should be organized when creating a course.
Lessons hold the actual content you post, including video, audio, text, and other media, while sections serve as organizers for your content. Finally, drag and drop is an option for adding all stuff.
In essence, any file you upload turns into a lesson. You can arrange all of the modules by dragging them between sections.
Course Player
Since the Course Player is where your students watch the course material, its design is essential to their understanding.
Podia features an attractive and expertly-made interface that is simple to use. Going back and forth between lessons allows students to move throughout the sessions.
Your students can view the material in the central area and explore the course using the table of contents on the left side of the screen. You can also quickly conceal the table of contents for a distraction-free study environment.
Without leaving the course player, students can post questions and comments in the open comment box under each lesson.
One drawback is that there is only one default template and no modification options for the course player’s design. Nevertheless, it has a highly contemporary look, so the course material is focused without interruptions.
Learning Tools
With Podia, you can create quizzes for each class and include as many questions as possible. You can add these and click the appropriate option if there is more than one response to each question.
There are a few limitations, like the inability to add graphics to the questions and failing to grade tests or establish a passing mark automatically.
Podia does not provide certificates of completion for courses or assignment management. However, for users to create program certificates through Podia, there is a workaround.
Additionally, users must have a Google account to use Google Slides, Google Forms, and a Zapier account. You can instantly link Podia with dozens of apps using the automation platform Zapier, which interacts with Podia.
Zapier is accessible through Podia for free with a monthly capacity of 100 tasks, and Podia provides a detailed guide on how to make certificates.
Additionally, content locking is not an option. Because of this absence, you can’t prevent students from moving on to the subsequent lesson if they haven’t finished the prior one.
Courses can be drip-fed, with a delivery date designated for the sequential release of each portion. This tool’s ability to keep students interested is one of its best features.
Besides, some students might finish a portion fast and want to move on right at once. For your more determined students, you may manually unlock sections of your drip course with the Podia interface.
Pre-Launch and Pre-Sell Courses
A pre-launch can generate interest in your course, resulting in pre-orders and early student feedback on a new course.
It would be best if you first informed potential students of the course and the skills they will be studying. Therefore, you must expand your email list before your pre-launch. You will then require a pre-launch landing page to entice your subscribers to enroll in your course.
Using the Podia Editor, you can design landing pages that convert well and look good. For example, you may include a signup form to gather email addresses on the landing site.
Podia offers insightful guidance and illustrations of pre-selling and pre-launching courses.
Pros and Cons of Podia
There is no such thing as a perfect digital course platform. While Podia has many advantages, it also has some disadvantages.
Let’s go over Podia’s advantages and disadvantages.
Pros
- Excellent customer service with responsive, 24-hour live chat.
- Affordable plans
- Podia’s in-built email marketing tool allows you to notify students when events such as completing a course or enrolling occur.
- You can provide students with payment options such as a month-to-month payment plan for more expensive courses.
- Custom domain with the ability to personalize it to match the feel and look of your company or website.
- A membership scheme can provide a recurring monthly membership for ongoing access to a course.
- Podia’s platform is frequently updated with new features.
Cons
- There are fewer site and course customization options than on other platforms.
- For example, a sales funnel developer would require using a third-party platform (such as LeadPages or ClickFunnels ).
- There is no phone support available.
- No marketplace, of course.
Why is Podia the Recommended option?
Podia is the simplest method for building and selling online courses and memberships. Even if you don’t have any specialized programming knowledge, you can host and share your content, make a good storefront, and start selling it in a short period.
By far the best interface UX connections I’ve had with a digital learning system, and I’ve tried a few. It also provides high-quality products at reasonable prices.
The Podia framework is excellent because of its clarity and significance. For example, when creating a wealth-building curriculum, you can’t even think of investing as much as Podia on another platform as you know someone else how to generate wealth while being fiscally responsible.
You could want to link your membership website to your online store. However, your membership site must be hosted separately from your items in most other situations.
However, Podia is one of the few platforms that host both and does so expertly. As a result, you may increase your customer conversion rate by simplifying this process for your clients. In addition, Podia has thoroughly tested its checkout process and UI to ensure the best conversion rates.
Podia was picked as a side business start-up company because it became simpler to comprehend. In addition, quality is essential to everyone; they answer your questions before you sign up.
Is Podia Legit?
From the several positive client reviews, Podia is a legitimate platform. Over 50,000 content producers presently sell online courses, memberships, and a variety of downloadables using online course software and Podia stands among the best in the market for anyone wanting to start an online course business.
You can build a personalized website, including affiliates, run sponsored advertisements, and execute email marketing campaigns from one handy location. The platform also offers a ton of resources, like a blog, help center, video lessons, guidelines, live demos, free tools, and much more, to assist you along the way. Register for a free trial to begin risk-free if you’re ready to design and market your online class so you can make a living doing what you love. Regardless of your experience level, you will start selling your online courses in no time.
Frequently Asked Questions About Podia
Below are some of the frequently asked questions about Podia:
Can I Link Podia with third-party extensions?
Podia has native integrations with several well-known extensions and email marketing tools, including GetResponse, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign Drip, MailChimp, Drip, and MailerLite.
You can also integrate with Zapier to link to thousands of third-party apps, such as Accredible (for certificates), Quickbooks (for accounting), ClickFunnels (for funnels and checkout), and many more.
What can the Podia Page Builder do?
The Podia course builder includes several pre-built elements that you can have on your site with a single click. For example, you can quickly create a course summary, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), testimonials, and a product banner.
Standard features that you can use to create custom sections for your product pages include “Video with Text,” “Image with Text,” “Columns,” and so on.
Section themes enable you to personalize your text and background colors at the segment level, which is an excellent feature.
Overall, the site builder is exceptionally straightforward, and you can quickly build a professional-looking online store even if you have no coding or design experience.
Is the Podia Good for Affiliate Networking?
Podia also provides a native affiliate program framework to assist you in marketing your projects. For example, using Podia, you could link affiliates to your shop and develop new affiliate links for each item.
Furthermore, affiliates will have exclusive access to the dashboard, where they can manage their affiliate relationships and track profits and commissions.
You can pay a percentage of your revenue or a flat price for partner fees. It is also possible to configure the commission at the product stage, which is very useful.
Can I use Podia to create Membership posts?
Podia offers a product type called Membership that enables developers to produce original Posts for your users in addition to merging your courses. Such Posts function independently in the member area and are ideal for providing sporadic material that doesn’t adhere to a schedule, like online courses.
Can I use Podia to handle my Email marketing campaigns?
Yes! To start, Podia offers a few essential lead creation tools. First, you can collect email addresses by including a previously released registration form on your product pages or a newsletter signup form for your marketplace.
Then, you will be able to send an automated email campaign to both people who purchase your program and people who join the waiting list for your program. Then, with the help of their campaign designer, you can create various messages, establish a schedule for everything to be sent, and choose how and when to distribute the emails.
What problems does Podia Solve?
Podia is a digital learning platform that houses and offers online courses, subscriptions, and digital downloads. Access to everything is unrestricted, there are no technological problems, and there are no processing expenses.
You will provide your customers with online courses, webinars, memberships, and digital files. Podia enables you to quickly build a beautiful storefront and eventually sell digital goods—no need for any third-party plugins or technical knowledge. With the platform, you can handle everything from content production to message delivery to clients to securely processing transactions with just one platform.
Does Podia Provide Quizzes for Its Courses?
Podia does provide interactive tests for its courses. After each module, you can quiz your students on their knowledge with one or more questions. Then, before moving on to the next session, your students can view their outcomes, and you can view the results by reviewing their academic progress.
Final Verdict
Podia is gradually emerging as a significant e-commerce player, with the ability to rival the prominence of leading competitors in the industry. Nonetheless, the platform caters to creators by providing unlimited everything, ultimate convenience, and no transaction fees as a one-stop digital shop solution.
Significantly, it’s the only e-commerce platform that allows you to package your digital products with your membership site. While Podia is not the cheapest option, its intuitive and straightforward interface provides excellent value. In addition, its customer interface not only does much of the heavy work, which is especially helpful for non-techies, but its sleek and modern nature is ideal for high client conversion rates.
If you are a tech whiz or a developer who wants complete control over the feel and look of your landing pages and storefront, Podia may be lacking in options. Regardless of your background, many entrepreneurs and creatives are abandoning alternatives like Thinkific and Teachable in favor of Podia.
