What is it, Exactly?
Podia is an online course platform with a spin. You can create, market, and sell courses, webinars, digital downloads, and bundled products (including courses). You also get memberships, a website builder, a built-in email marketing tool, e-commerce functionality, live chat, and more.
What’s the Cost?
Podia offers three plans and a 14-day no-credit card trial. Here’s a look at what each plan offers:
- Mover - $39/mo: Core feature: unlimited customers, messages, files hosted, and sales. Sell features: sell courses and digital downloads, additional teammates added at $20 a seat. Market features: build a custom website. Email marketing features: reach unlimited subscribers, max 5,000 subscribers can be emailed each month.
- Shaker - $79/mo: Everything on the Mover plan including selling memberships, affiliate marketing, emailing 15,000 recipients each month.
- Earthquaker - $179/mo: Everything on Shaker plan including 5 free teammate seats, a dedicated account manager, personalized onboarding call, monthly group creator call, and a white-labeled website.
All annual plans get free migration from whichever platform your course is hosted on.
Is It Easy to Setup and Use?
As a course creator platform, Podia handles onboarding really well, offering a tour or a free webinar to get you going. The layout may take a little getting used to but when you know where everything is, getting stuff done is easier. The dashboard gives an overview of your course business. You’ll see how many customers you have, sales completed, and the revenue generated.
Creating course content is something you’ll quickly get the hang of. In Podia, you can create more than online courses. Options include digital downloads, webinars, or bundles of products (including courses). Drip content, a way to systematically release content to students, is available. It may seem counter-intuitive, but might be useful. Content can be ‘dripped’ based on intervals or be sent after purchase.
Certificates, Assignments and Accreditation
A gripe may be the certification feature, and the lack of assignments and accreditation for courses. But there’s a reason why Podia and other course platforms don’t include some of these.
Let’s start with certificates. These are available, but through a Zapier integration with Accredible. Assignments aren’t available, and Podia sees them as less of a benefit to the learning experience. Instead, the platform’s goal is self-paced learning. Accreditation is a pickle. It can only be issued by an institution of a credible body, hence the limited information or lack of thereof on the subject. But truth be told, other course platforms have the same issue. Yes, there are some accredited courses on Udemy, but overall, offering accreditation as a feature is the road less traveled by for many.
Features we think make this platform attractive are:
Site Creation
Build a custom website and assign your domain to it using Podia’s website builder. While not a drag-and-drop tool, it’s still flexible and easy to use. You won’t be able to track website analytics through Podia, though. A Google Analytics integration is required. Speaking of integrations, there are 22 native integrations with email marketing platforms, payment providers, analytics tools, advertising platforms, third-party snippets, and over 1000 Zapier options.
Create Memberships
Memberships are a big revenue generator. They offer a set-and-forget money-making method. Podia doesn’t limit the number of plans you can create, but that doesn’t mean you should offer too many. Variety is great but too much can overwhelm buyers and lead to fewer sales.
Quizzes
Quizzes can be created after each section and make for an interactive learning experience.
Promote Your Memberships
Have a standalone site and want to advertise your course there? Podia offers code embeds for that.
Messaging
Communication is a big deal. It breeds community. You’ll get an inbox in Podia to use for all comms with students.
Email Marketing
Podia comes with a built-in email marketing platform that manages email broadcasts and newsletters. If you find it too limited in functionality, integrations with Drip and ConvertKit are possible.
Upsells
Something few course platforms offer is an upsell feature. Podia provides one that includes standalone and add-on products like Zoom calls, additional courses, or bundles.
Managing Your Audience
Beyond dashboard analytics, Podia provides a look at student activity. It’s not an in-depth analytics approach but shows when they joined, were last active, whether they have a membership, the number of products they’ve purchased, and revenue they’ve contributed.
How to Make Money With Podia
Making money on Podia is possible by selling courses, digital downloads, webinars, or product bundles. Podia’s also created an affiliate program that pays up to 30% of revenue for each course you sell as an affiliate. This comes with a clean dashboard for a course creator and payments are managed through PayPal.
Getting paid on Podia is possible through Stripe or PayPal. Once set up and you have sales, your sales dashboard will show the number of sales made, monthly recurring revenue, total revenue, and any sales pending (in dollars).
The Bottom Line
Podia’s a great alternative to platforms like Udemy and Teachable. The option of offering webinars and upsells isn’t something many course platforms have caught on to. While the lack of accreditation and assignment facilities may feel like a setback, other course platforms have the same issue. Podia’s drip content feature is helpful, too. It makes the learning experience feel progressive.
Membership plans are another big win, and you can attract as many students as possible. 24/7 email and chat support are also reassuring to have. If you’re looking for control, more ways to upsell and make more money, Podia’s a good option.
Images sourced from Podia
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