Passion.io

Passion.io is a platform specializing in helping creators build an app to deliver the best learning experience to their customers.

To date, they’ve helped over 7,500 people and a combined of 400k+ users:

The main promise of Passion.io is to help you easily create a mobile app without coding knowledge to host your programs, bringing a new feel to online course creation.

The different features we’ll explore in this review, allow users to craft an engaging experience and more convenience.

Specifically, by having your own customizable and branded mobile app!

Passion.io is slightly different from a typical online course platform but many of its users still use it as such for many aspects.

It provides and fills the need for many features among which:

This is a solid set of fundamental features for any course creator.

Before we break them down, let’s make a note about some of the things that you may need and that Passion.io doesn’t help with (as much as all-in-one platforms do such as Kajabi):

Most creators will also need a proper funnel builder and email marketing system to complete their tech stack.

Custom branded Mobile App

This is the main appeal for Passion.io and the biggest promise the platform makes: create your very own creator-branded mobile app!

In just a few clicks, you can customize with a live preview your own app from the back-end of Passion.io:

This app will then be available on the Apple store and Google Play (after a few days while it goes through the approval process).

If you don’t want to wait you can also access it right away through the PassioApps centralized mobile application.

Lastly, you'll also have the option to make your app available from Desktop with the WebApp version:

The mobile app’s branding and colors can be easily adjusted and you will see the changes happening live!

In other words this is a fully custom branded application, which includes customization of the Welcome screen and 1 sales page.

The changes are made with a drag and drop editor with a front-end preview builder:

Other online course platforms have a mobile app at the disposal of their users, but almost none allow for this level of customization, and certainly not at this price point!

Online Course Building

When customizing your Passion.io branded app, you will have access to 5 tabs.

Discover (which is your home/sales page), Learn (online courses), Community, Tracking and Profile.

It’s very easy to add new content to your online programs, which you can drip over time.

You can manage and organize them, and then add between 2 types of modules: Lesson and Sequences.

Lessons are the standard type, which you can build with the excellent drag and drop feature.

You can add videos (depending on your plan), audio, a timer for your members to start using as a stopwatch, text and integration with Typefrom and Calendly among other elements.

A sequence is a combination of several exercises for your users to run through at one time.

This is ideal for workouts or other routines you’re wanting members to complete:

All of these can be done offline if you’ve enabled your users to download the course to their mobile device.

Of course, all of these are also available on the desktop app.

This feature compares really well to other online course platforms, the one thing that might be missing are learning and testing tools such as quizzes, assessments and homework.

The next tab to edit is the Community page.

This is sort of a group chat you can invite members to join as part of their program (or not).

The functionalities are pretty basic but useful: you can create different channels and attach documents to your messages.

This is also where you can enable users to send each other direct messages to connect and network.

One last note about this part of Passion.io is that you can manage push notifications from the desktop app for your users to receive on their phone.

Live Streaming & Trackers

There are 2 more features worth breaking down here that you can find in Passion.io.

The first one is a little misleading when reading the website and until you try it…

Passion.io mentions many times in their marketing material that you have the ability to use Live Streaming on your app.

The reality is that you will do so through YouTube rather than a native functionality as you would expect.

What you’ll essentially do is create the live stream on YouTube and then share it on your app.

This isn’t a terrible user experience but takes away from the simplicity of using the app for everything (on your end)...

The truth is that you could do that using any other online course platform, so this feature isn’t necessarily as much of a differentiator as Passion.io makes it look.

The last tab, which does make the platform stand out, is the Tracker feature.

This is rather straightforward but very interesting.

You can enable members to manually enter and track their progress for a metric you determine.

Two other options you can setup:

• Determine a maximum value for the metric: the minimum being 0
• Make the data available to other users: and use the power of accountability.

Members can keep track of this and other activity in their profile tab:

Checkout & Payments

Passion.io enables you to take payments to sell your online programs.

Since transactions are meant to happen directly on the mobile app, you have 3 options to enable this:

Option #1: Use the in-app native purchasing capabilities through Apple or Google Pay.

• Pros: It’s very convenient
• Cons: The transaction fee is 30%

Option #2: Use PassionPayment, which is the native checkout system all Passion.io apps can use by connecting a Stripe account.

• Pros: Fee is only 3.9%
• Cons: not as convenient as the user has to type their credit card details in.

Option #3: Use an external checkout system and connect through Zapier

• Pros: more flexibility and lower fees
• Cons: less seamless user experience

If you choose to go for Option #1 and #2, you should also be aware of the pricing type options available:

You can set up one-off payments or subscriptions with a free trial.

You cannot set up split payments or paid trials.

Passion.io offers an exceptional user experience, both for you and your members.

The desktop admin platform is very intuitive and easy to use:

Specifically, the live preview helps make it simple to understand what you’re editing and exactly how it will look to the end user.

We also appreciate the thorough customization of the app’s branding that’s possible.

The mobile app your member will use is fast and reliable too!

It’s also great to have a desktop experience available for people wanting a bigger screen to follow through at home.

Passion.io pricing is fairly straightforward, but there are a few things to understand.

First, note that there aren’t any free trials, but instead a 30 day money back guarantee.

You then have the choice between 3 pricing plans:

The Pro plan at $79 per month is a great value. It’s possibly one of the most affordable ways to create your own branded mobile app!

Note that you won’t get all of the custom branding elements, drip content and the community feature on that plan.

You’ll get up to a 100 videos (which should be enough for most creators).

To get all of these things you’ll need to hop on the $239/mo plan, which is a bit of a steep increase!

If you want a done-for-you support, then you’ll have to submit an application.

Overall Passion.io is relatively affordable for such a platform, remember that as a course creator you’ll probably also need to pay for a proper funnel builder and email marketing service.

Passion.io doesn’t have a private community for its users to connect and network.

It does have however several other way to get support:

One of them is their Help Center filled with helpful articles and videos on how to use every part of the platform:

There is no live chat but you can submit a support request anytime.

Passion.io FAQ