Struggling to find an affordable, all-in-one course creation platform to sell your digital products, build a community and market your online content? Podia has got you covered.
Though Podia specialises in online course creation, it is the most versatile platform of all it’s competitors. With Podia, you can sell any digital product or service, all in one place. Whether you begin with the free version and gradually build from there, or you go straight to a tier with more features, Podia has options for your course creation needs and more!
So, If you want to sell online courses as well as a range of other digital products, then Podia is the platform for you!
In this guide, we’ll take you through Podia’s features and give you our honest review of what it’s like to build host and market and online course with podia.
Table of Contents:
- Choose a Pricing Tier
- Free Version
- Mover
- Earthquaker
- Products
- Community
- Coupons
- Audience
- Affiliates
- Sales
- Pros & Cons of Podia
- Summary of Podia
Choosing a Pricing Tier
Podia has generous 4 pricing tiers for you to choose from based on your needs, allowing you to choose the membership option that works best for you.
(We all know how frustrating that can be!)
All tiers have essential elements to build your online course including:
Free version
The free version of Podia is perfect for those who are just starting out or are planning to launch a bit further down the line.
Unfortunately, your business might not bring in as much revenue with the free version as you are only permitted to sell 1 coaching product and allow 1 download, both with a fee of over 10% for transaction fees altogether.
However, it gives you the time to get to know Podia, build your community and create online courses and webinars ready for your big launch!
Mover version ($33/month)
The Mover has major upgrades including no transaction fees and unlimited downloads/courses.
Although you can only draft webinars, this is made up for with the option to provide unlimited coaching to your students that is supported by reliable appointment scheduling software such as Calendly and YouCanBook.Me
Shaker version ($75/month)
The Shaker is ****arguably the best deal on Podia.
It includes everything in previous tiers but reaches a whole other level with its live chat function, unlimited webinars and affiliates.
This gives your business a superb way to connect with prospective customers, deliver interactive webinars to a large audience, and have your happy customers bring traffic to you (bringing both of you revenue!)
A win-win, wouldn’t you say?
Earthquaker version ($166/month)
This showstopper tier is truly an explosive game-changer.
The Earthquaker gives you a leading head start with priority support, 2 personalized 1:1 onboarding calls to help grow your business, and a monthly creator call to learn best practices, tips and strategies, as well as hear from other content creators.
Essentially, you get everything you’d ever need.
For today, we’ve picked the Free tier to build our online course and website.
Set-Up
Once you’ve signed up to Podia and selected your tier, you can start creating your website.
The setup is extremely flexible. You can do this after you’ve gone through Podia’s dashboard or before you’ve even uploaded anything.
Here’s an example we made earlier with the free version:
With a simple block-based web builder, you can EASILY build a website where your students can purchase and access your online course.
For the next stage of the set-up, let’s move on to the dashboard.
Dashboard Tour
Your Podia dashboard has a number of options, as you can see below.
Not only does Podia’s dashboard easily help you set up your website, but its help centre provides you with guides for everything you need to know, as well as numerous articles to answer any questions.
Podia are known for its customer support and easy-to-navigate user interface, and it’s easy to see why!
Now, let’s give each option an overview, step by step.
Products
Here, you can create products to add to your website.
Simply press ‘+ New product’ and choose the type of product you wish to create, from online courses to coaching sessions.
Once you’ve created a product, you can add all the information you need:
Publish, and hey presto!
Community
The community tab allows you to write posts for your members, add members, create content plans and manage community settings.
Home
Write new posts and assign them to your topics.
Members
Add and find members.
Search
Search for posts, topics or members.
Settings
Manage community settings and billings.
This free community allows students to actively engage and encouraged discussions that you can be involved in, too.
Here, you can manage either one-off emails, or send bulk email campaigns.
You can effortlessly create professional email designs (with no professional experience at all) that can be sent to members from selected categories or subscriptions.
Clear reports allow you to see how your email campaigns and broadcasts are performing through clear data:
Coupons
Engage your current audience and entice prospective members by offering discounts on your products and subscription plans.
Press ‘+ New coupon’ and you’re off!
There are 5 different coupon options to choose from:
- Products only
- Membership plans
- Specific membership plans
- Specific products
Coupons can be applied by % or $, and you can even limit total uses.
Audience
The Audience tab makes the tedious parts of being a course creator easy.
This function allows you to manage your subscribers, view subscriptions, plans and products purchased, edit customer information and delete accounts, all in one place!
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Affiliates
Podia makes affiliate marketing easy with this all in one tab to invite and track your affiliates to spread the word of your online course!
All you need to do is press ‘Invite affiliate’, insert their email and Bob’s your uncle!
When new customers come through affiliate links, Podia shows you which affiliate needs to be paid, which is easily done through PayPal.
Sales
For a course creator, tracking your sales is crucial and Podia makes sales tracking easy.
You can view sales separately for each digital product you sell, enabling you to identify patterns, predict future sales and adjust your sales strategy accordingly.
Pros and Cons of Podia
At ClassGrowth, we love Podia for its simple and practical interface for allowing course creators to sell any digital product with ease.
It’s as easy as pie!
Though there are some noteworthy drawbacks.
Pros
- Affordable
- Supports multimedia content
- Very user-friendly
- Great customer support
- Great free version
- Marketing tools
- Integration services for emails, payments and webinars
Cons
- No apps available
- Reporting tools are basic
- No native analytics
- Basic website builder
So, we’ve established Podia is easy to use. But is it too easy? If top-notch design is important for your brandingPodia may be a bit too stale. What’s more, basic reporting tools and a lack of native analytics can fail to give you a high-level overview of your product performance.
Nevertheless, if the ability to upload multiple types of digital products is what’s important for your business, Podia could be your perfect platform.
Summary of Podia
Podia is great if you’re wanting something easy to use, flexible and affordably priced. This all-in-one platform is excellent for your business needs, from integrated marketing, communities and unlimited uploads for courses, coaching and webinars (for higher priced tiers). However, it does have its downfalls with the basic website design and basic reporting tools.
Here’s a recap of its top features:
Products
Allows you to add any digital product:
- Online courses
- Coaching & consultations
- Webinars & workshops
- Digital downloads
Community
Write posts, engage with your students and manage community settings and billing information all in one place.
Effortlessly create professional one-off emails or email campaigns and track their performance to give you an insight into the actions your customers are taking and the content they’re interested in.
Coupons
Give your members and prospective customers discounts on a range of products and memberships.
Audience
You can handle everything customer-related here, from viewing subscriptions to products bought and deleting accounts with ease.
Affiliates
Turn happy customers into your best salespeople and pay them a fee when their affiliate link is used.
Sales
Keep track of everything you sell and gain valuable data on your sales trends.
What’s Next?
If you’re looking for a place to build, host and sell your online course, you can’t go wrong with Podia.
But choosing the right online course platform is only half the battle.
You can have all the tools at your disposal, but without an expert team of online course marketers at hand, putting your course in front of an audience can be exceedingly difficult. At Class Growth, we know online courses. We have years of experience in turning underperforming online courses into massive revenue machines that can see a 10X ROI in just months.
If you want to know how you can start building an online while your course is still in development, get in touch with our friendly team, below!
