We have compared Thinkific vs Podia in this post to help you determine which online school offers you the superior course.
E-learning attracts new students and instructors every day because of its rapid growth.
No matter how long you've been doing what you do, or how much you enjoy doing it, developing an online course may be the ideal method for you to share your knowledge and talents with others.
It's considerably easier than you might think to generate and sell educational stuff online these days.
You don't have to write a single line of code to develop great online classrooms using platforms like Podia and Thinkific!
Differences between Thinkific vs Podia
There are a lot of people who love Thinkific and Podia. We've outlined the primary distinction between the two here.
- When it comes to approved institutes of higher learning, Thinkific is the better choice, while podia are more suited to those who are self-publishing their own content.
- In comparison to Thinkific, Podia's pricing is more complex, with three tiers rather than just two.
- When comparing Podia with Thinkific, it's clear that Podia is the more user-friendly option.
- The “Pro” account on Thinkific is the only one that supports mass emailing, whereas Podia permits it at lower pricing Plans.
- There is more flexibility with Thinkific, allowing for more complex customization and technical integrations.
- Compared to Podia, Thinkific provides more interactive elements in the classroom.
Thinkific Overview
Use the well-regarded platform Thinkific to create, promote, and sell your own online courses and membership websites.
Through the development of an all-in-one platform for both course authors and their viewers, the platform has completely transformed the way people earn and learn online. To know in-depth information about Thinkific, read our article Thinkific review.
Thinkific got its start in 2021 with just one instructor and a significant problem. To reach a wider audience, CEO Greg Smith and co-founder Matt Smith decided to put their LSAT course on the internet.
Since then, more than 50,000 independent creators and enterprises have already utilized Thinkific to share their knowledge, earn money, and educate students globally.
Podia Overview
Relaunched in December 2017, Podia has a new look and feel. And did they succeed in getting businesses to take them seriously as a venue for hosting online training courses?
In terms of online marketing, Podia is one of the most adaptable platforms on the market. Online courses, digital downloads, webinars, membership sites, and even coaching sessions can all be sold through it.
You may use Podia to sell online courses, coaching, webinars, a community, and other digital products from a single platform. It's a fantastic low-cost platform for creating online courses with a wide range of options.
Thikific vs Podia: Features compared
- Membership Sites
- Student Experience and Engagement
- Customization
- Sales & Marketing
- Course Builder
- Course Marketing
- Student Experience and Retention Tools
1. Membership Sites
Members pay a monthly or annual fee to access password-protected membership pages on your website.
Thinkific
Learners are able to view the content of your course whenever they want through their Thinkific membership site.
If you want to use Thinkific to construct membership sites, the first thing you need to do is establish a Bundle.
You are able to bring together a number of different classes and sell them as a single unit by using bundles.
You can create a new bundle by going to the Courses page, clicking on Memberships & Bundles, and then selecting the +New Bundle option.
After giving your Bundle a name and clicking “Create,” you can proceed.
To pick all of the courses that you wish to make available to members as part of this bundle, click on the plus sign that is located next to Member Courses.
Podia
Podia, much like Thinkific, enables users to construct a range of membership plans and course bundles for their users to choose from.
Members have the ability to join pages devoted to a variety of topics, important announcements may be “pinned,” and postings can be prepared in advance.
2. Student Experience and Engagement
Thinkific
Thinkific allows you to start by developing a business website or a separate checkout page for your students to use.
To access the course materials, a student must register for the course.
Students are required to enter their contact information, such as their name, email address, and credit card information when registering for classes.
After signing up for a free account, students can also take courses.
Podia
It is not necessary to sign in to a separate platform in order to communicate with the other members or the people who create the courses.
Community gives you the ability to publish a variety of posts, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and subjects that your users may follow, comment on, and even post themselves depending on the level of access you grant them.
You will be able to restrict who can see what and what they can do in your community by adjusting the privacy settings.
3. Customization
Thinkific
Thinkific offers a wide variety of customization options, including interoperability with a variety of website builders.
When you upgrade to a higher plan, you'll have the option to replace the Thinkific branding with your own. Additionally, you have the ability to establish custom domains in addition to additional pages.
Podia
Podia gives you the ability to build an unlimited number of pages, and you have full control over how they are organized. You also have the option to preview your site before it goes live.
You don't need any prior experience with coding in order to effortlessly personalize your sales pages.
4. Sales & Marketing
Thinkific
Thinkific offers additional marketing capabilities than Podia does, provided that you subscribe to one of their more expensive plans.
Using the marketing analytics tool that Thinkific provides, you are able to keep track of your efforts.
Podia
Podia may be able to offer new strategies to use email marketing to generate traffic to your online courses.
Email marketing tools in Podia allow you to embed forms, automate campaigns and develop your email list naturally.
5. Course builder
Thinkific
If you're looking for a platform that gives you more freedom in terms of design, Thinkific may be for you. Beautifully designed templates that are simple to modify with knowledge of web development.
Thinkific surpasses Podia in the breadth of its course-building features; by combining quizzes, surveys, attached templates, and more, and also compliance standards and certificates, you can guarantee that your learners will stay interested throughout the duration of your course.
Thinkific is a touch more costly than Podia, and if you want access to superior email marketing services, you'll have to subscribe to third-party products.
Podia
Podia is a great choice if you want a service that is easy to use and honest. Everyone loves their customer service, and their online course editor is very easy to use. It won't take you long to figure it out.
Podia is also a flexible service that lets you sell more than just online courses.
It has tools for live chat and email marketing and lets you sell digital goods other than online courses. In the long run, this low-cost option provides you with the ability to add different kinds of content.
6. Course Marketing
Thinkific
Thinkific is far superior to other platforms in its capacity to create a feeling of community among your students.
Thinkific's combination of exams, surveys, discussion boards, and achievement certificates does a much better job of building a sense of coherence than Podia's option for course authors to set up their own quizzes. Podia does offer this option.
MailChimp, Constant Contact, Active Campaign, and various others may all be integrated with Thinkific. All of your email marketing and material drip-feeding to students can be managed in one location with this method.
Podia
Podia also provides wonderful marketing options, all of which are geared toward assisting course developers in realizing the maximum return possible on their investments.
The all-in-one course development platform is primarily intended for use by sole proprietors and other types of entrepreneurs; however, the capabilities can be beneficial to organizations of any size.
7. Student Experience and Retention Tools
Thinkific
Thinkific provides a variety of tools for building the optimal learning environment for your students. For example, students receive a personalized dashboard, and you have the option to fully configure their sign-in experience with videos, special pages, etc. that only course members can view.
With the platform's language translation capabilities, you may provide your course to students in over 30 different languages.
Podia
However, there are limited alternatives for personalising the site to make quizzes and assignments stand out.
You can't provide students with a completion certificate, but you may make your course more interesting by releasing new material in little chunks at regular intervals.
Thinkific vs Podia: Pros & Cons Comparision
Thinkific Pros Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Tinkific's templates are professional and gorgeous. | Pricey for beginners. |
| Course certifications. | |
| Create Amazing Advertising Pages. | |
| Easy to use Integrations. | |
| Superior Customization. | |
| Seamless automation | |
| Over 100 million students have enrolled in online courses. |
Podia cons & cons
| Pros | Cons |
| A free trial is available. | Poor back-end member management. |
| Excellent user interface design. | Insufficient automation. |
| Flexible in terms of marketing courses and webinars. | |
| Regular upgrades and enhancements. | |
| Excellent student experience | |
| A variety of personalization choices. |
Thinkific vs Podia: Pricing & Plans
Thinkific Pricing & Plans
Mainly Thinkific has four pricing plans.
Free Plan
The free plan enables you to keep ownership of your courses while also providing tools for creating content on the go.
This plan does not offer support for custom domains or membership sites, nor does it include the Thinkific app.
Start Plan
Thinkific app, limitless courses, and student feedback surveys are all included in the Start Plan, which costs $99 per month or $74 per month(if paid annually).
There is neither a Randomized Quiz Question Bank nor any required lessons.
Grow Plan
Included in the Grow Plan (which costs $199 per month or $149 per month(if paid annually) are unlimited student conversations, live sessions via Zoom, and unlimited course access.
Expand Plan
The Expand Plan includes everything that is included in the other versions, as well as group analysts, SSO, and an onboarding package for an additional cost of $499 per month or $374 per month(if paid annually).
Thinkific is offering massive discount coupons to its users, read our article Thinkific coupon code to get massive savings.
Podia Pricing & Plans
Mainly has three pricing plans.
Mover Plan
The mover plan costs $33 per month(if paid yearly). This service offers free migrations, and unlimited customers, and does not charge any transaction costs.
There is no requirement for membership or participation in affiliate marketing, and the monthly fee for additional team members is only $20 apiece.
Shaker plan
The shaker plan is an all-in-one solution that includes affiliate marketing, subscriptions, and free migrations. It costs $75 per month(if paid yearly).
No white-labeled websites or dedicated account managers were provided. The monthly cost for each additional member of the team is $20.
Earthquaker Plan
The earthquaker plan costs $166 per month(if paid yearly).
It includes everything in other packages as well as 50,000 email subscribers, customized onboarding calls, monthly group creator calls, and five team members included.
To know more information about each Thinkific pricing plan, check out our article Thinkific pricing.
Thinkfic Vs Podia: Customer Experience
Podia provides its consumers with a straightforward checkout procedure, which is absolutely necessary in order to increase sales.
Thinkific performs a much better job than Podia does at creating a sense of community among your students, despite the fact that Podia is quite good in this particular area.
Thinkific's combination of exams, surveys, discussion boards, and completion certificates does a much better job of building a sense of coherence than Podia's option for course authors to set up their own quizzes. Podia does offer this option.
Having said that, it is important to point out that Podia gives students the opportunity to provide feedback on the material covered in their courses.
Students are able to publish their inquiries and engage in conversation with one another in this forum. You and the rest of your support team will be able to provide more accurate advice thanks to the ability to track the progress of individual students.
Thinkific vs podia: Customer Support
Thinkific's website has instructor self-help resources.
This contains a demo of their capabilities and subjects such as content migration, getting started, managing learning content, personalizing your site, and marketing and selling.
You can fill out an online form to contact the staff. Thinkific offers phone assistance Monday-Friday, 9-5 PST.
Podia's live chat is all-human, no-bot. Their website has a contact form. Here you can check how long it will take for a team member to answer.
Podia rejects support tickets and AI-generated replies. It emphasizes human-to-human contact.
Their live chat is open 9 AM-6 PM ET, Monday-Friday, and 10 AM-2 PM ET on weekends, with a two-minute average response time.
Podia urges you to send a message beyond these hours if you need help. They'll answer quickly, often outside of business hours.
Social Media Platforms
Thinkific social media profiles
Thinkific shares information about your available classes on social media using a variety of social media platforms, which helps to draw in more students. Thinkific also makes use of several social media websites, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.
There are now 33,785 people following Thinkific. On its Facebook page, Thinkific regularly provides tips and strategies for promoting and selling online courses.
Thinkific has 152.2k tweets and 11.2k followers. On its Twitter profile, it tweets new ideas for creating, marketing, and selling online courses.
On its Linkedin profile, Thinkific is followed by a total of 33,041 people at this time.
Podia Social media profiles
Podia uses a wide range of social media platforms in order to notify its users about its course and to keep those users up-to-date about the most recent online courses. It utilizes social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and others.
Podia posts innovative ideas to create and sell online courses. It has 5.3k followers on its Facebook page.
Podia tweets about ways in which creators can improve themselves at every level of the creation process. It has tweeted 3,187 tweets and 7,218 followers on its Twitter profile.
Podia has posted 252 posts and 3,763 people follow its Instagram profile.
Customer reviews and testimonials
Thinkific
Here is what users say about Thinkific:
“Excellent online learning platform for associations”
What do you like best about Thinkific Plus?Source: g2
Thinkific is an intuitive and easy-to-use platform. Building classes to respond in an agile manner to the learning needs in our association has been seamless. Thinkific's support team is also helpful and responsive. Registering participants and managing student needs is also easy, and the automated communication and certification offer stress-free class management options!
The FREE version works well!
I like that the FREE version allows me to actually have a course that people can take. This way I didn't have to pay $ just to find out that the platform doesn't work for me.
It's user friendly and support is timely, even for the free version.Date of experience: October 15, 2022
Source: Trustpilot
Podia
Here is what users say about Podia:
“To the point. Exactly what I needed.”
What do you like best about Podia?Source: g2
I enjoy Podia for its simplicity and beauty. I appreciate the entrepreneurial smartness in creating such a precise and lean product, ease of use, very fast and thorough support, balanced functionalities outweighs the frustrations. As far as I know I'll keep using it. From many angles, it's obvious that it wasn't just designed to be the next average thing, but it was carefully planned and optimized to solve specific problems and really make a difference. It was precisely what I was looking for for a solopreneur that is looking for lean features that just work. I loved how they were honestly able to compare themselves to other solutions and companies without bragging or other ego dynamics, and how they presented themselves as the solution with clarity. It shows a lot of great signs of a company I'm inclined to work with.
Legit swiss army knife for creators
Literally, everything I need to build, market and deliver an online course – with a bunch of room for growth (consultancy, digital products, etc.)Super impressed – one SaaS that includes a site builder, email platform, course hosting, billing management and community features. Very happy customer.
Date of experience: September 26, 2022
Source: Trustpilot
Conclusion
Packages from Podia include everything you need to develop multimedia courses at an affordable price.
There aren't quite as many things as Thinkific has, such as the ability to create hybrid courses or issue certificates of completion. If you're looking for a simple course builder, Podia is the best option.
If your online course business has progressed past the start-up phase and you are ready to invest and expand, Thinkific may be the ideal platform for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Thinkific better than podia?
Podia is more user-friendly than Thinkific, which necessitates more expertise. Podia's video presentation features are superior to those of Thinkific, which offers more interactive classroom capabilities. Customizability and technical interconnections are more advanced in Thinkific, although Podia provides the most functionality.
Is Thinkific or Kajabi better?
Thinkific and Kajabi both have course builders that are simple to use. Kajabi outshines Thinkific in terms of functionality and ease of use, even if Thinkific has a larger selection of course templates. On top of that, Kajabi offers a mobile app, so you can connect with consumers from all over the world wherever you are.
Is Thinkific any good?
Thinkific is an integrated LMS. Most integrations aren't free, but they help construct a stronger LMS. Pros: Students can contribute videos and gifs in thinkific school communities.
Who are podia for?
Podia is one of the most adaptable internet marketing systems available. It can be used to host online courses, digital downloads, paid webinars, membership sites, and even coaching sessions.
Why should I use Thinkific?
It enables you to design and sell a single course to an unlimited number of students! I subscribe to the $39/month Basic plan. It has enough functionality, a smooth performance, an excellent UI, and adequate customer service. I believe Thinkific's Basic plan would be adequate for most people.
Is Thinkific a marketplace?
We are lucky to have tens of thousands of people developing courses on Thinkific. Many of these people are professionals in a variety of fields, including content creation, graphic design, and marketing.
