Podia

Podia is one of the newest all-in-one platforms in the market and promises to make a big splash in the market! It has everything you need to market, create, and sell your online course. 

Podia started in 2014 but has changed a lot in the past years as it has grown.

It's half-way between an all-in-one platform (like Kajabi) and on that only provided the essentials (like Teachable).

Of course however, the company is adding features regularly and increasing the value you get for your money!

Podia has a lot of cool features and pretty much everything you need to sell your courses, including:

Let's break this down!

Page Building

Podia’s page builder is possibly one of the biggest drawbacks of the platform comparing to other popular platforms. 

Especially since Podia is selling itself as an all-in-one, you would expect this feature to be a bit more rich.

The drag and drop page builder only allows for a simple grid of blocks of text and images, and only basic design and branding.

This can be limiting, and if you're looking to build high converting sales funnel, you may need a 3rd party tool for it.

In terms of site building, there are no global elements (headers/footers) and no way to save and re-use sections from one page to another.

Note as well automations and funnel capabilities are limited in Podia.

Meaning that if you want to create a free opt in and trigger an automated email sequence, you won't really be able to.

This is one of the main reason we don't categorize Podia in the all-in-one category (although they do).

Checkout & Affiliates System

Unfortunately, Podia's checkout design isn't flexible either, although it's simple layout can be satisfying enough for most.

A simple popup will appear from your sales page to capture payment information and offer several prices

You can then add an upsell after this first purchase to increase the average basket value.

A cool feature to note is the ability to embed this checkout on any external site.

Therefore a good setup for course creators might be to build their sales funnel externally and use Podia for payments and course delivering as well as email marketing.

The platforms supports Stripe and PayPal payments, and allow for flexible pricing such as recurring subscriptions, split payments and trials.

Lastly you do have access to an affiliate program from the Shaker plan onwards.

This allows you to invite partners to spread the word and keep track of their sales. 

Not that affiliate payments will have to be manual.

This feature is pretty standard compared to other online course platforms with unique links, specific affiliate commission override and a cool dashboard for your partners to see their stats.

Course Design & Building

When it comes to course hosting and design, Podia is similar to Teachable.

You will build and upload your course content in the back-end such as video, audio, downloadables,etc.

Which will then be populated in the front-end with a standard layout: a handy sidebar to go through modules and a main body with the content of that lesson:

The interface, although you can't design it differently, is fairly sleek and easy to use for the end user (your students).

Content can be drip fed and scheduled out. 

Other Features

There is still a few other things you can do with Podia.

Best of all, you can have a nifty community/membership tool which allows you to communicate with your students without needing them to leave the platform

The best part is that you have full control over who can see and comment on these community threads!

Although you can create a webinar as a product, you cannot natively host it in Podia; you will still need a webinar hosting tool to integrate with (like Zoom or YouTube).

The last thing worth noting on the feature side is the somewhat limited email system. You can easily create emails, but be aware the designs will be simple and text-based, and you will have limited automation options for your email sequences.

Podia does have most of the bells and whistles of an all-in-one, but it has a lot of limitations that could hinder you as a creator.

When talking about user experience, I try to take two things into account: the user experience for you, the course creator navigating the platform, and the user experience of your student taking the course.

And for Podia, I think it's important to break down the two separately.

User experience for the course creator:

The platform is simple and easy for a course creator to use. The design is slick, easy on the eye, and very intuitive.

This means you won’t have to waste too much time on the back-end because it is easy to use and intuitive.
User experience for the student:

With Podia, everything is minimalist. The courses don't look bad, but it is simple. But you won't have the ability to influence much of the customer journey.

Podia is very affordable for an all-in-one. That's probably one of the most attractive things about the platform, and the price has been one of its main selling points.

As mentioned in the feature section with the limitation of the email system and page builder you may want need external tools to accomplish everything you want. 

Still, you get a big bang for your buck with Podia! 

You can see our dedicated article if you want to dive into what each plan gives access to!

Podia has some great support and instant messaging capabilities to contact support and get a response fairly quickly!

On top of that, you'll find an extensive documentation section on not only how to use the platform but also how to market your courses and different selling strategy.

But the community feature is another story! Podia is one of the only platforms in the industry that doesn’t have a Facebook group where their community can gather and share ideas.

Instead, in late 2019 Podia used their own membership product to create a bit of a forum for their fans and host Q&As. 

There is little engagement there right now, but most external forum platforms do have little engagement, which is why Facebook is much better to use.