Home Reviews Podia Evaluation: A Creator-Focused Online Course Platform (2022)

Podia Evaluation: A Creator-Focused Online Course Platform (2022)


Podia Evaluation: A Creator-Focused Online Course Platform (2022)


Rosie Greaves

Professionals

Podia’s pricing is clear and simple.

You unlock all important options with the Shaker plan for a low month-to-month worth.

It comes with easy electronic mail and online marketing instruments.

The day by day reside Q&As and reside chat supply personalized help choices.

You’ll be able to create course completion certificates.

You’ll be able to promote varied merchandise, together with webinars, teaching, memberships, and digital downloads.

There aren’t any transaction charges on any plan.

You’ll be able to promote limitless merchandise with limitless video bandwidth on any plan.

Cons

The month-to-month prices rapidly rack up if you wish to add extra workforce members.

Whereas Podia covers a spread of options, many aren’t as in-depth as specialised third-party instruments.

It doesn’t supply a cellular app.

Website customization is proscribed. There’s no drag-and-drop editor, so it’s important to work throughout the confines of the sections and parts Podia supplies.

Reporting instruments are comparatively primary.

It doesn’t supply course compliance necessities or grading options, which could be a deal-breaker for some course creators.

Abstract

Podia is a creator-focused on-line course platform that lets you create, market, and promote programs, webinars, memberships, and different digital merchandise.

Podia is a creator-focused on-line course platform that lets you create, market, and promote programs, webinars, memberships, and different digital merchandise.

Whether or not you might be searching for your subsequent ardour mission, a further earnings stream, or a fully-fledged enterprise enterprise, promoting on-line programs is a well-liked market price contemplating. 

However, how do you hit the bottom working? Cue, an intuitive on-line course platform similar to Podia. 

This easy-to-use resolution supplies every part newbies must create and promote on-line programs, digital downloads, and on-line memberships.

Nonetheless, that’s simply the tip of the iceberg in terms of what Podia presents.

In mild of that, I’ve outlined every part you could find out about Podia. So hopefully, by the top of this overview, you’ll have all the data you could determine whether or not that is the suitable platform for you. 

There’s tons to cowl, so seize a cup of espresso, and let’s get to it.

What Is Podia

Based in 2014, Podia is a creator-focused on-line course platform. Quick ahead to at the moment, and because of Podia’s ease of use, vary of options, and inexpensive pricing, it’s amassed a person base of over 50,000 creators. 

Podia guarantees to exchange at the very least 5 instruments you’d usually must get your on-line enterprise off the bottom, together with:

  • Online course creation
  • Digital product creation
  • Online membership space creation
  • E mail and online marketing
  • Web site creation 

Suppose you’ve already finished some analysis into Podia’s opponents. In that case, you may know that platforms similar to Kajabi present an identical providing (see my Podia vs Kajabi comparability). So what makes Podia totally different?

In brief, Podia is geared in the direction of solopreneurs who’re simply getting began. Its options are intuitive, and most significantly, inexpensive. Whilst you can’t construct multi-site on-line faculties with Podia, you’ll profit from versatile options developed with unbiased lecturers and content material creators in thoughts. 

Podia homepage

Ease of Use

As I’ve already hinted at, one of many most important causes new creators flock in the direction of Podia is its intuitive interface. 

Podia doesn’t complicate the person expertise with too many choices. As an alternative, it merely guides you thru the method of making a brand new course or digital product. Simply click on by means of the tabs and fill out the knowledge fields as requested to develop the framework of your product. Easy, proper?

Podia’s web site and gross sales web page builder is equally simple to make use of. It comes with a reside preview in an effort to see precisely what your website appears like earlier than you launch it. Nonetheless, there isn’t a drag-and-drop editor. As an alternative, every part is customizable from the sidebar. The method is straightforward and tidy, however your freedom to customise your web site’s aesthetic is considerably restricted. 

If you have already got an internet course hosted on a special platform, relaxation assured, Podia makes the migration course of a breeze. On the Shaker plan or larger, you get entry to Podia’s free migration service that may switch all of your recordsdata over for you, so that you don’t should elevate a finger!

Podia landing page editor

Key Options

As you’ve most likely gathered already, Podia comes with a flexible set of options protecting a variety of enterprise facets. 

Let’s take a extra in-depth look.

Online Programs and Digital Merchandise

A very powerful function of any on-line course platform is its course creator.

Thankfully, Podia doesn’t disappoint on this division.

Right here, you’ll discover a variety of product varieties to select from and a number of methods to promote them. For instance, you’ll be able to create standalone programs, drip-fed programs, bundles, and pre-sales and pre-launches. With the latter, you simply set a begin date on your course. Then, consumers solely get entry as soon as the course is formally open. This is a superb method for producing hype surrounding your digital merchandise!

Except for conventional programs, Podia additionally lets you promote digital downloads, similar to eBooks, templates, lead magnets, audio recordsdata, and music. Like on-line programs, you can even add, title, and describe your product. 

Podia online courses and digital products

To help your advertising and marketing, you’ll be able to generate buyer coupons. Extra particularly, you’ll be able to customise coupon codes with utilization caps, product limitations, and expiration dates. You may also implement an upselling technique by providing different complementary merchandise in your checkout pages. 

You’ll be able to populate your programs with any content material kind you want, together with textual content, photographs, video, audio and MP3 recordsdata, hyperlinks, PDFs, Photoshop recordsdata, quizzes, and extra. Every plan comes with limitless video bandwidth, so Podia is effectively price contemplating if that is your most well-liked content material kind.

On prime of that, creating your course construction may be very easy. First, you choose into creating a brand new product, select the product kind, and begin including sections. From there, you’ll be able to title your course, add a picture to go along with it, add an outline, and start importing media to your content material sections.

Podia create a course

Podia additionally permits you to supply college students course completion certificates, a well-liked function amongst course creators and college students alike. For you, it cuts out utilizing middlemen similar to Canva, and for the scholars, it makes your course appear extra formal and works wonders for creating a way of tangible achievement.

College students may toggle to distraction-free studying. This blends out all navigation areas so customers can solely focus in your content material. 

That mentioned, the place the coed expertise is anxious, that is just about the place Podia attracts the road. You get little or no management over how college students progress by means of your programs. For instance, you’ll be able to’t create task certificates, grade quizzes, or set course compliance standards. Your solely choice for controlling course development is to create a drip-fed course.

Webinars and Teaching

You may also use Podia to supply webinars and training providers through their YouTube Stay and Zoom integrations (the latter is barely out there with the Shaker and Earthquaker plans). You’ll be able to even require customers to enroll through Podia to show these nameless YouTube followers into engaged subscribers. 

Podia makes it simple to schedule your webinars prematurely. You may also earn passive earnings from replays; Podia saves all of your webinars in order that new prospects should purchase the recordings.

To supply teaching providers, you’ll be able to pair Podia together with your favourite scheduling platform, together with Calendly, Acuity, SavvyCal, and others. That approach, college students can ebook and pay for teaching classes out of your Podia website. You’ll be able to even add teaching as a course module, do you have to want!

Podia embed a live video

Podia additionally permits you to create membership packages that allow you to construct a loyal and worthwhile neighborhood surrounding your content material. With Podia’s neighborhood options, you’ll be able to publish members-only content material, pin posts, schedule content material prematurely, and even decide which membership plans can entry which items of content material. 

The membership isn’t one-sided, both. Podia permits customers to remark and like your posts, which boosts engagement and develops an amazing sense of neighborhood. 

With Podia communities, you’ll be able to create totally different membership ranges, invoice prospects month-to-month or yearly, and supply free trials to entice new prospects. On prime of that, you can even bundle your membership packages with different merchandise to create a extra interesting providing. 

Paid communities, nevertheless, are solely out there with the Shaker and Earthquaker plans.

Podia communities

Web site Creation

Podia permits you to create your individual web site and product touchdown pages, the place there isn’t a restrict on the variety of gross sales you’ll be able to course of. 

Thankfully, the web site editor may be very beginner-friendly and requires no coding data. It’s additionally Search engine optimization-friendly and lets you embed subscription kinds or free merchandise to spice up conversions.

Podia website editor

Messaging

Podia comes with a messaging widget you’ll be able to add to your website. This isn’t a third-party plugin. On the time of writing, Podia is the one on-line course platform that comes with built-in reside chat.

That is nice for interacting with new prospects and guests. For instance, you’ll be able to supply on-page reside chat help for logged-in prospects when you’re out there. And in the event you’re out of the workplace, the messaging widget can seize buyer questions, suggestions, and requests that you may reply to at your leisure. 

The chat software helps 11 languages and pings you notifications to make sure you by no means miss a factor.

Example of Podia's live chat widget

E mail Advertising and marketing

E mail advertising and marketing is important — some would go as far as to say that you may’t run your small business with out it. Thankfully, with Podia, you don’t should. The platform comes with an in-built electronic mail advertising and marketing service that empowers you to host limitless subscribers irrespective of which fee plan you go for.

Nonetheless, the variety of emails you’ll be able to ship per thirty days varies based on your fee plan. For instance, the most affordable plan lets you ship 5,000 emails per thirty days.

Podia’s electronic mail advertising and marketing course of begins with electronic mail seize. You’ll be able to add subscription kinds to all of your touchdown and gross sales pages.

Upon getting an electronic mail listing, you’ll be able to create and ship automated drip electronic mail campaigns to construct a gross sales funnel. You’ll be able to set the triggers that ship these emails, as an example, when somebody downloads a lead magnet or purchases a course. On prime of that, you can even ship one-off broadcast emails at any time.

You may also ship broadcast emails or total campaigns to segments of your viewers. These segments may very well be based mostly on product purchases, membership plans, particular subscription kinds, and extra. These are only a few examples, however you get the gist. By segmenting your electronic mail listing, it’s a lot simpler to focus on particular prospects with personalized content material related to their wants. 

The E mail tab highlights all of the essential stats you want for each campaigns and broadcasts, for instance, what number of emails had been despatched, opened, clicked on, led to gross sales, or induced unsubscribes.

Podia’s electronic mail advertising and marketing function is superb for small companies that must ship frequent updates or bulletins. Nonetheless, in the end, you will have to spend money on a extra superior electronic mail advertising and marketing software to essentially unlock the ability of this technique.

For instance, Podia’s electronic mail segmentation is sort of primary. It doesn’t mean you can add customized tags to separate your viewers. The emails themselves additionally solely permit for wealthy textual content enhancing and file uploads. In distinction, many third-party electronic mail advertising and marketing suppliers supply high-quality templates, higher design choices, extra fine-tuned segmentation, and extra superior automation options.

Podia email marketing

Affiliate Advertising and marketing

Internet online affiliate marketing is one other widespread advertising and marketing method you wouldn’t wish to miss out on. Podia permits you to rapidly arrange your individual associates program with no extra software program required. You’ll be able to set a site-wide commissions construction or assign particular commissions to particular person merchandise. 

You may also make your associates program public or invite-only — the selection is yours!

Once more, whereas an in-built online marketing platform is sweet to have, you may miss out on a number of the extra superior online marketing options supplied by third events. For instance, Podia doesn’t mean you can set totally different affiliate tiers or handle the fee charges of particular person associates. This makes it difficult to ascertain VIP relationships together with your most loyal companions.

Podia affiliate marketing

Integrations

Podia integrates with electronic mail service suppliers similar to AWeber, ConvertKit, and Mailchimp. It additionally presents analytics integrations, together with Google Analytics.

By Podia’s Zapier integration, you’ll be able to additional unlock connections with instruments similar to Leadpages, Trello, Google Sheets, and extra.

That mentioned, total, Podia’s listing of native integrations remains to be fairly restricted and solely falls into choose classes. You’ll be able to browse the entire listing of integration right here. 

Podia integrations

Pricing Plans

With three easy premium plans to select from, Podia retains its pricing clear. As soon as your 14-day free trial is up, you’ll be able to select between the Mover, Shaker, and Earthquaker plans. If you happen to go for annual billing, you’ll save the equal of two months price of subscription. 

The under costs are based mostly on month-to-month billing.

The Mover plan is $39 a month and comes with “limitless every part” (merchandise, prospects, messages, gross sales, and recordsdata hosted) and no transaction charges. As well as, you get entry to all of Podia’s core course creation performance. 

To unlock paid communities, teaching, online marketing, course completion certificates, you’ll must improve to the $89 per thirty days Shaker plan. 

Lastly, the Earthquaker plan at $199 a month empowers you to white-label your website. It comes with the very best month-to-month electronic mail allowance and 5 workforce seats included, plus unlocks entry to a devoted account supervisor and month-to-month group creator calls.

You may also add further workforce seats on any plan for a further $20 per thirty days.

Documentation and Assist

Podia presents a spread of self-help sources, together with two how-to guides protecting membership website creation and the way to revenue from on-line programs. The guides supply a several-step define explaining in-depth the way to profit from Podia’s options.

The Podia Creator Wiki covers different options intimately. Nonetheless, identical to there are solely two how-to guides on the web site, the wiki doesn’t have too many articles to boast about.

There’s additionally a video library of Podia guides. Right here, you’ll discover lots of Podia’s options showcased, alongside loads of helpful ideas and tips.

As a further useful resource, Podia lists a handful of free content material creation instruments, together with a generator for gross sales and electronic mail copy.

All of those sources stand along with the official Podia Assist Middle, the place you’ll discover extra technical documentation on all of Podia’s options and instruments.

If these self-help sources don’t reply your questions, you’ll be able to contact Podia’s help workforce straight. Stay chat is obtainable from 9 AM – 6 PM ET on weekdays and 9 AM – 5 PM ET on weekends. You may also contact them through electronic mail in case your question falls exterior of those hours. Right here, Podia guarantees to get again to you inside a day.

That’s not all, nevertheless! The workforce additionally presents day by day Q&A classes and weekly reside demos. These are incredible for getting a good suggestion of the software program earlier than you enroll — particularly when you’ve got questions you need answering earlier than you signal the dotted line.

Podia knowledge base

Podia Evaluation: Ultimate Verdict

In terms of on-line course platforms, there’s hardly ever a one-size-fits-all strategy. As such, you’ll must rigorously think about what you need out of your on-line faculty earlier than you make a selection.

For instance, within the case of Podia, the platform caters properly to unbiased creators searching for an inexpensive however feature-rich choice. With limitless merchandise, bandwidth, and no transaction charges, you’ll be able to rapidly promote a variety of digital downloads with out breaking the financial institution. 

Podia’s Shaker plan additionally covers every part you could get began with affiliate and electronic mail advertising and marketing. To not point out, you’ll be able to create limitless touchdown and gross sales pages and likewise use these touchpoints to construct your electronic mail listing.

That mentioned, Podia doesn’t change specialised electronic mail and online marketing instruments. That is the place related all-in-one platforms similar to Kajabi overtake Podia rapidly, albeit with a a lot larger price ticket. Podia’s affiliate and electronic mail advertising and marketing options are simply too primary to completely change a specialised third-party software. Its design and customization capabilities are restricted, and even the general scholar studying expertise is on the easy aspect. 

Whereas this implies Podia is straightforward to make use of and combines all of the necessities into one interface, it’s simply that: the necessities. 

For extra superior performance to scale your small business, you’ll ultimately should combine with extra third-party software program or change to a special on-line course platform fully.

In case your wants aren’t too complicated and also you simply need an intuitive and creator-friendly software to get began, I encourage you to take a look at Podia and provides its free trial a go. Then again, in the event you’re already a course creator seeking to scale your small business, I might level you in the direction of different course platforms similar to Kajabi as an alternative.

What do you assume? Let me know within the feedback what your expertise with Podia has been, or in the event you’re considering of checking it out after studying this overview!