Podia is an all-in-one platform that allows users to sell online courses, webinars, digital downloads, and memberships. Users can manage their email marketing campaigns and make money through drip campaigns and affiliate marketing.
However, most people seem to have challenges with Podia’s email marketing tool. It gives you the ability to create newsletters, but it’s not as comprehensive as other email marketing tools such as Mailchimp.
The email marketing feature is only ideal for promoting online courses, webinars, and digital products. You may have to integrate with other email marketing tools such as Mailchimp so you can automatically add new leads to your mailing list and follow up with them through the marketing funnel.
Furthermore, Podia lacks robust customization and design options. There are no templates, and the simple layout may not be enough for those looking to create a more professional online store.
Additionally, Podia doesn’t have phone support. While you can contact the support team via email, this may not be the best way to get help when you need it.
Support aside, Podia doesn’t offer the most competitive pricing plans, especially for low volume sellers. They’ll have to pay more to access crucial features such as embedded checkout, course certificates, affiliate marketing, and dedicated access to a support agent.
On the brighter side, Podia isn’t the only platform giving users the capability to sell courses, webinars, digital downloads, and memberships. If Podia falls short of your expectations, here are 15 fantastic alternatives you can try out.
Best Podia Alternatives
1. Thinkific
Thinkific is a platform for building and selling online courses. It offers tools to improve user engagement with quizzes, course templates, drip schedules, certificates, live sessions, and communities.
Users can create learning materials with ready-to-use professional templates that match modern design trends. Unlike Podia, Thinkific is more student-centric; it offers features that promote engagement and interaction between learners and instructors.
Although Podia has a more intuitive user interface with a sleek design, Thinkific offers greater functionality for marketing, selling, and managing courses.
In addition, it has full-featured integrations with trusted tools to automate emails, convert leads, and leverage customer success. Like Podia, Thinkific offers 100% secure SSL protection, ensuring that user information is safe by encrypting their connections.
Thkinfic allows you to create a landing page before you can start selling online courses. The presale pages help build email lists and gauge the demand for the course.
Although Podia does offer a pre-sale page, users have to follow a different process and may discover the tool exists when it’s too late. As such, Thinkific is ideal if you want to gauge interest and invite leads to sign up for your course before you launch it.
Thinkific offers live sessions that deliver a dynamic learning experience. Instructors can gauge students’ learning process through comprehensive quizzes, assignments, and engagement surveys.
Like Podia, students receive a certificate of completion once they finish the course. Instructors also can offer discounts, coupons, and freebies to market and sell their courses.
Thinkific lets you set your domain and use intuitive website themes with advanced customizations. Additionally, you can integrate with the CRM of your choice or other tools to manage contacts and follow up with leads.
Thinkific pricing plans make it easy for new users to start selling courses without worrying about initial capital investments. Check out their updated pricing here.
2. Kajabi
Kajabi is another excellent platform for creating and selling online courses. It’s an all-in-one platform with everything you need to grow your knowledge business, including analytics, marketing automation, communities, landing pages, products, and website hosting.
Kajabi lets you create premium products and sell them through your website. Members can create coaching programs, host podcasts, design newsletters, and engage in communities to help foster learning.
Customization is an important selling point for Kajabi. Unlike Podia, users have access to customizable templates and a wide range of design options, which allow them to create learning products that match their brand and market demand.
Like Podia, members can track students’ learning progress and connect with them on a deeper level. However, Kajabi’s in-depth reports go beyond Podia’s performance tracking, giving users detailed analytics on individual and group learning effectiveness.
Kajabi boasts a fully customized website builder with unlimited hosting and full business integrations. Unlike Podia, the website is SEO-friendly which means you have more control over your site’s visibility in search engines.
You can generate marketing sequences using built-in templates, track leads, and follow up with subscribers. Kajabi’s marketing automation tools allow users to personalize their interactions with customers individually.
Kajabi offers three pricing plans with full-fledged features that allow you to launch your online learning business. Visit this page for a detailed breakdown of the plans and features.
3. Teachable
Teachable is another powerful online course creation and selling tool. It offers flexibility in creating a wide range of learning products, including videos, tests, PDFs, articles, and live classes.
Like Podia, the Teachable website has an intuitive design interface with powerful drag and drop editing tools. However, unlike Podia, you can use your web development knowledge to unlock advanced customization options.
You can track your numbers and monitor your students’ progress in one place with Teachable’s comprehensive analytics and reporting tools. Additionally, the platform allows you to bring forth authors and team members, customize their roles, and assign them specific responsibilities.
Customer support is a strong point for Teachable. Although most of its clients find the live chat support extremely helpful, it only becomes available once you sign up for the professional plan.
Thus, it puts a price tag on a service that Podia offers for free. Teachable pricing plans and hefty transaction fees may easily turn you away if you are budget-conscious.
However, the platform has a full range of features, including a free package to test and see whether the platform meets your needs. The best thing is that you get unlimited products and students for every pricing plan you choose.
Teachable has four pricing plans, with the pro plan as the most common at $199 per month. For an updated and more detailed Teachable pricing plan, click here.
4. LearnDash
LearnDash is an excellent option for creating and selling courses. Unlike Podia, LearnDash is a WordPress plug-in that lets you create online courses using WordPress’ core features.
LearnDash features structures designed to maximize content engagement, including quizzes, assignments, and user tracking. You can use these features to create a valuable learning experience and increase user acquisition and retention rates.
LearnDash, like Podia, allows you to give certificates to students who complete courses. You may also add more content layers or split the material into smaller, more organized chunks.
LearnDash gives you complete control over the pricing model, letting you set a different price for each course. You can opt for one-time sales, subscriptions, and even bundle several courses together.
The 30-day money-back guarantee ensures that you are protected from all kinds of uncertainty. The only downside is that there is no free plan like the one that Podia offers.
LearnDash only accepts online payments from Visa, Mastercard, Discover Card, American Express, and PayPal. The pricing plans are reasonably flexible but may inconvenience a small business owner with a limited budget.
5. ClickFunnels
ClickFunnels is all-around marketing software for creating sales funnels. It lets you generate leads, follow up on funnels, and sell your products and services.
The software comes with integrated order pages, allowing you to increase sales by creating a product that sells itself. It’s a funnel builder ideal for creating and selling courses and memberships alongside digital and physical products.
Podia only lets you sell digital products and services, which is a significant downside compared with ClickFunnels. Using ClickFunnels, you can build and launch your sales funnel in just a few minutes.
It makes an excellent Podia alternative but with added features for conversion optimization. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to build your funnel with images, videos, text, and forms.
Using the drag and drop editor with corresponding templates, you can create pages for upsells, contact collection, and down sells. It also allows you to track user activity and analyze your marketing results.
ClickFunnels offers two pricing plans. You can opt for $97 per month or $297 per month but click here for a more detailed pricing plan.
Check out the best and cheapest alternatives to Clickfunnels.
6. Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks started as a social network but later expanded into a full-fledged platform where users can host events, highlight successes, sell courses, and spark engaging conversations.
Unlike Podia, it allows you to create a community of followers and fans around a particular course and access data and insight into how your community engages with your brand.
Mighty Networks allows you to customize your brand with fonts and colors. Like Podia, the customizations have limitations but are good enough for most professional needs.
The bright side is that you can create a website, set up a community, and begin selling products and services without wasting much time designing. The downside is that Mighty Networks doesn’t have a drag and drop editor.
Its focus on community building makes it a suitable alternative for Podia. However, its extensive social networking features make it a destructive option, especially for courses requiring the highest concentration.
Customer support isn’t the strongest point of Mighty Networks. Unlike Podia, which offers support for every tier, Mighty Networks doesn’t provide chat support or offer expectations for response time.
Mighty Networks has three flexible pricing plans with a 14-day trial period that gives access to all the features. This page provides a pretty detailed pricing plan.
7. LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is another platform where you can create and sell courses online. Unlike Podia, it’s more professional with an online community and a complete support system.
The tool allows you to create effective and engaging training videos, ebooks, and surveys. Moreover, you can build high converting websites, complete with eCommerce capabilities, and sell your products and services.
Like Podia, you can set up marketing funnels that let you sell and upsell your products. It’s a true white label website builder that enables you to create, design, and sell your course while accessing all the data related to its success.
Through LearnWorlds, you can integrate with payment gateways, manage coupons and discounts, handle refunds, and follow up emails. It provides a complete set of features for creating and hosting digital courses, making it an excellent Podia alternative.
LearnWorlds’ community and support system is one of the best in the business. It has an extensive knowledge base with up-to-date content, comprehensive tutorials, and video guides.
LearnWorlds offers four flexible pricing plans. The learning center comes with iOS and Android apps to help you plan, budget, and execute your marketing campaigns, although at an extra cost.
8. Udemy
Udemy is one of the best Podia alternatives because it helps you create and sell online courses. It offers thousands of courses for sale, making it a suitable platform for entrepreneurs, professionals, and students.
Unlike Podia, users must apply to get approved for creating courses. The application process can take some time, but it provides Udemy with the option to accept only experienced instructors with relevant qualifications.
It doesn’t offer memberships, downloads, or email marketing. Neither can you host webinars nor perform downloads.
However, it comes with several features that Podia lacks, such as quizzes and certificates. Its flexibility is also another strong point, especially when considering that it’s free to join and use.
9. Sellfy
Sellfy is an easy-to-use eCommerce platform that lets you create an online store to sell your digital products. It’s ideal for creators and business owners who want to sell eBooks, video courses, images, and other digital files.
Sellfy has built-in marketing features that are missing in Podia. These features are essential for generating leads, including email marketing with an autoresponder, tools to create landing pages, social media integration, and webinars.
Like Podia, it features a 14-day trial period. You can use the trial period to check out their platform and ensure it meets your needs.
Moreover, it allows you to design exciting storefronts, connect your domain, change colors and create intuitive layouts that match your brand. Unlike Podia, Sellfy will enable you to design mobile-optimized, responsive web pages with flawless checkouts.
More than that, Sellfy lets you sell on its website, social media, or any other website by embedding your store. You can also synchronize your storefront to update it with new purchases automatically.
Sellfy offers four pricing plans. A free plan lets you sell unlimited products with no transaction fees.
You can upgrade to starter and premium plans once you’re ready to start selling. For updated and detailed pricing information, check out Sellfy’s website.
10. Gumroad
Gumroad is a powerful platform ideal for selling digital products such as memberships, courses, and books. Its customization options allow you to set up your store or embed a store on your website.
You can link the website to a custom domain and manage coupons and discounts on your storefront. Unlike Podia, you can sell software and generate license keys in Gumroad.
On top of that, the platform offers several in-built features to help you create conversion funnels and run marketing campaigns. You can grow your audience by posting new updates and using powerfully automated workflows and emails.
Gumroad gives you a detailed picture of the analytics to make data-driven decisions. You can use their comprehensive reports to segment your audiences and design more efficient marketing plans.
Gumroad University is full of tutorials that help you learn how to create great content, get more traffic, and improve your sales. That means that you are always learning and improving your skills.
Gumroad doesn’t have monthly plans. Instead, you only pay transaction fees depending on your chosen pricing plan.
11. Simplero
Simplero is an online education platform for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and professionals. It allows you to create websites, landing pages, courses, and communities and engage with your customers with email marketing and automation.
Unlike Podia, Simplero frees your mental and financial resources allowing you to focus on what matters the most to your business. Moreover, it creates better websites with intuitive layouts, professional designs, and smooth checkouts.
The content you create may include videos, virtual events, audio files, and ebooks. If you want to gauge the performance of your content, Simplero will give you detailed reports with all the metrics that matter.
For instance, you can view who opened your email and who unsubscribed. This feature allows you to optimize the content based on performance metrics.
Simplero offers three pricing plans. The three plans differ by their features but are flexible to suit your needs and budget.
Its free trial feature comes with all the features you need to get started and test the platform’s capabilities. You can check out their website for a more detailed comparison of Simplero plans.
12. Ruzuku
Ruzuku is a simple yet powerful online platform that lets you create, sell, and distribute your courses. It features a simple yet organized interface that makes designing, selling, and launching educational courses easy.
Ruzuku simplifies the process of building your online educational empire. It’s more of an amateur-friendly platform that makes it easy for you to create, manage, and deliver courses.
Like Podia, it doesn’t have sophisticated customization options and eCommerce features. However, it offers robust onboarding processes with structured guides that help you get started.
The course analytics feature is one of its most powerful features that help track how students engage with your courses. You can use the detailed reports to understand students’ behaviors and make informed decisions.
One more feature that makes Ruzuku stand out is hosting live webinars and teleconferences. While most platforms support virtual events, live webinars, and teleconferences provide a more personal experience for students.
Its pricing plans are affordable enough to fit most budgets. You can get started with the University plan starting at $125 per month, but visit their website for a more detailed plan comparison.
13. Memberful
Memberful is a flexible WordPress membership plug-in that allows you to turn any WordPress site into an online membership platform. It has everything you need to run a membership site, a blog, or a store.
The tool has optimized checkout options that allow you to reduce shopping cart abandonment. Like Podia, it allows you to sell online courses and recurring memberships.
Its dashboard and analytics features are its primary strength. You can use the detailed reports to understand your audience better and create more engaging content.
Moreover, member management tools let you manage your membership site more efficiently. You can set up new membership plans, upgrade or downgrade members, send invoices, and view specific details for each member.
As a custom WordPress plug-in, Memberful is more secure for your WordPress site. Unlike other hosted services, its custom integration allows you to use all the WordPress site and theme features.
You can sell memberships without owning a website or using WordPress. However, its main features are still compatible with popular themes and website builders.
Memberful has flexible pricing plans. You can start with the starter plans, which go for free, or upgrade to the pro or premium plans to unlock all the features.
Visit their pricing page for a detailed feature comparison.
14. WizIQ
WizIQ is a comprehensive platform for creating, hosting, and distributing educational courses. Users can create interactive course materials and parent-friendly portals through its comprehensive features.
It allows you to train external stakeholders outside of your organization. WizIQ’s advanced features help you record the training sessions, edit them with annotations, and publish them for future viewing.
Unlike Podia, it has corporate training functionalities with advanced features. It also has a responsive design that is more user-friendly for mobile learners.
If you’re an instructor, WizIQ has detailed course progress analytics to help you track your students’ success. You can see detailed reports of how many students have enrolled, completed specific lessons, and accessed the course materials.
Unlike Podia, it aims at providing a scalable solution for educational organizations and businesses. It has advanced features to help you conduct training sessions over the phone or video chat.
Its customer support is top-notch, and its support team is always willing to help you. It also has FAQs and support documents covering most topics and walking you through the feature set.
WizIQ offers two types of plans with dedicated pricing, professional, and enterprise. However, you have to contact them to get a quote for your specific requirements.
15. Kartra
Kartra is a comprehensive tool that allows you to sell products, follow leads, memberships, and courses. Unlike Podia, it allows you to hire experts and discover professionals on its platform.
You can build your leads database with detailed contact information, social media profiles, and background info. Its multi-page funnel allows you to convert leads into paying customers and generate more leads.
You can deliver content and course training materials through drag and drop functionalities. Moreover, it provides quality products and lead segmentation with analytics reports.
Kartra comes with calendars to register and schedule sessions with clients. You can also create forms through the Kantra forms and powerful automation features.
Kartra has four pricing plans. It may not be the most flexible platform, but its features are enough for many small and large businesses.
You can visit their website for a detailed comparison of the pricing plans.
Wrapping it Up: What is the Best Podia Alternative?
The best Podia alternative is Thinkific. The platform offers a fully integrated eCommerce solution to host and sell your courses in a single place.
Other Podia alternatives such as Kajabi and Teachable offer competitive features and functionalities. However, they lack the flexibility that both Podia and Thinkific have to offer.
