15 years helping Canadian businesses
choose better software
Podia
What Is Podia?
Your website, email marketing, and products. All under one roof.
Thousands of people like you use Podia to bring their entire business into a single platform. Podia is free. And as you grow, it has all the tools you’ll need to keep growing.
Who Uses Podia?
Creators, developers, marketers, consultants, entrepreneurs, and more who want to reach more people to build online business by selling online courses, downloads, memberships, coaching, and webinars.
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Podia
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Reviews of Podia
Alternatives Considered:
Number one ALL IN ONE website builder for Creative Business Owners.
Comments: I have tried out so many website builders over the years and did not have the same ease of setup or all in one setup like Podia has. I have everything I need to run a successful digital business with Podia!
Pros:
The easy setup and all in one services allowed me to set up my business in a week and make several sales in my first month of launching. I'm really pleased with how I could set up my entire business including email marketing and an affiliate program!
Cons:
I honestly have no complaints right now. I wish Merch could be listed but I'm very satisfied with the design capability and features.
Stress-free course commerce
Comments: Podia lets me focus on teaching, and I never have to think about handling payments or tech support. The WYSIWYG website builder has also improved tremendously over the years, which allows us to continue bulking up our marketing site without hiring a designer.
Pros:
As a software guy, I'm used to spending a lot of time fine tuning features, fixing bugs, and troubleshooting issues for customers. Thankfully with Podia all of these tasks are non-issues. Within a few minutes of opening our first of 2 schools in 2019, we had Stripe and Paypal payment gateways configured and were already making money with the simple presale landing page feature. Over the last few years we've done multiple six figure revenue through Podia, and enjoy the "all in one" nature of the product -- email newsletters, community, courses. The referral program has also been a great avenue for us, as we've shared Podia with enough creators to now essentially have a free account for life. This means I can focus more on making good content, and less on weighing the pros and cons of a monthly bill vs our enrollment traction at the time. I've used a couple Podia competitors as well over the years, but overall this is my #1 recommendation for no-code LMS.
Cons:
There are several features (both big and small) that would make me rate Podia a 10/10 instead of ~8.5 / 10. For starters, an open API. Currently the Zapier integration is too limited to help us achieve what we want, namely trigger based emails linked to specific lectures in the course. I'd also like better analytics, such as seeing which students are in a given "cohort" (e.g. who finished Module 1 vs Module 3), so we can better nudge them along toward completion. Lastly, there are a few improvement opportunities to the course editor itself. For us this would include more rich text options, as well as embedded code snippets.
Excellent platform for course creators
Comments: Great, easy to use and has helped generate income and add a user-friendly course for my audience
Pros:
I was looking for an easy way to start creating courses and found Podia was the perfect balance of affordable and easy to use.
Cons:
There needs to be an automated email platform included. I can’t see why I should pay extra to implement this.
Alternatives Considered:
Wish there were better reviews of Podia functionality before I bought
Comments: Horrible. Customer service is so kind, but that's it. They have advised me to change my domain, without telling me it could crash my site. Now the site has crashed, and they're all asleep so can't help fix it. The functionality is so bare-bones it's crazy. There's no concept of building out to have stronger/better functionality. I will be moving to Wix/Wordpress ASAP
Pros:
Yes, it's easy to use and customer support is fantastic...but that's where the pros end
Cons:
Horrible horrible functionality. Some BASIC website features aren't included, period: 1) No website backup functionality 2) No ability to have SKUs/units tracking 3) They sell you "coaching", but there's no way to track when someone books. 4) No way for a customer to book a coaching session twice (really?) 5) No way for a customer to book a "bundle" of coaching sessions (all you can do is "title" it 3 sessions) 6) No way to have dynamic settings for affiliates...all affiliates get the same kick-back 7) 0 ability for bulk updates of ANYTHING 8) No expiry date on courses 9) No ability to size images (what you upload is what you get) 10) No "contact us" form 11) Super rigid text/page design (i.e. don't even have Elementor) 12) No CSS customization 13) No dynamic course creation (as in, you can't create "pieces" and move them around) 14) Editing courses is SO painful. They default an image/thumbnail and to change it you have to manually upload. If you have a long course, then ANY update you make scrolls you all the way back to the top. No quick editing of titles. No ability to set title preference (they insist on defaulting to .mp4). 15) You need to pay $100 EXTRA a month JUST to get conversion tracking installed
Alternatives Considered:
Podia is it for me!!!
Comments: Amazing so far …and I’m just getting started!!
Pros:
Loved building my website and programs in Podia. I’ve been able to figure out many things on my own, so I appreciate the simplicity and the video tutorials etc. I’ve recently been trialing their new email platform and so far, it’s another user friendly win!!I feel like Podia offers everything in one place (courses, email, website, community)
Cons:
Nothing really. I think the only thing that slows me down is “me” haha …and I’m constantly learning.
