LearnWorlds and Podia offer very similar-looking features but are vastly different in price.
In this comparison, we discover which platform offers the best value.
- Plans cost from $29/month
- LearnWorlds is ranked as the #5 platform on SupplyGem
- Rated 3.4/5 on Trustpilot
- LearnWorlds is our top pick of this comparison
- Plans cost from $9/month
- Podia is not currently ranked in top 10 on SupplyGem
- Rated 4.0/5 on Trustpilot
- Podia is a low-cost choice for basic learning products
Key Takeaways:
- LearnWorlds is a premium platform with excellent, high-quality features
- Podia is very cheap, but users may find its features too basic
LearnWorlds vs Podia at a Glance
| Feature | LearnWorlds | Podia |
|---|---|---|
| Free Trial? | 30 days | Free plan available |
| Transaction Fees | ✅ | ✅ |
| Customizable App | ✅ (add-on cost) | ❌ |
| Course Builder | ✅ | ✅ |
| Communities | ✅ | ✅ |
| Coaching Products | ✅ | ✅ |
| Webinars | ✅ | ✅ |
| E-Books | ✅ | ✅ |
| Native Live Streaming | ❌ | ❌ |
| Exams and Quizzes | ✅ | ✅ |
| Certificates | ✅ | ✅ |
| Website Builder | ✅ | ✅ |
| Funnel Builder | ✅ | ❌ |
| External Email Marketing | ❌ | ✅ (additional charge) |
| Automation | ✅ | ✅ |
| Checkout | ✅ | ✅ |
| Coupons, Upsells, etc. | ✅ | ✅ |
| Student Reporting | ✅ | ❌ |
| Analytics | ✅ | ❌ |
| SCORM Compliance | ✅ | ❌ |
| Email Support | ✅ | ✅ |
| Live Support | ❌ | ✅ |
| Integrations | ✅ | ✅ |
What Is LearnWorlds?
LearnWorlds is a platform that enables you to create, promote, and sell courses, coaching products, and other learning products.
The platform is also SCORM compliant. This means it can be used as a lightweight learning management system (LMS) by organizations and businesses to meet their staff training requirements.
What Is Podia?
Podia is a low-cost platform that enables you to monetize your knowledge and skills by creating and selling learning products.
The platform contains tools for building courses, webinars, coaching products, and more, allowing you to diversify your learning content and provide exceptional value to your customers.
Key Differences
Both LearnWorlds and Podia essentially allow you to do the same thing – create learning content. But there are some key differences, the main one being the price.
Podia is very cheap and has a free plan, but you have to watch out for the high transaction fees and add-on costs. In contrast, LearnWorlds’ plans are more expensive, but only its cheapest plan applies a transaction fee.
LearnWorlds is also SCORM compliant which means the content you create can be integrated with other LMS platforms. This gives it more flexibility in how it can be used.
Additionally, LearnWorlds has a customized app-building feature, which is unique to a platform of this kind.
Conversely, Podia offers neither of these features, and the platform is generally more basic overall. However, it can be used for external email marketing – something that LearnWorlds lacks.
Pros and Cons
LearnWorlds Pros
- Good value plans
- High-quality course builder
- Interactive video feature
- Excellent AI content generator
- Plenty of modern templates
- Customizable app
- SCORM compliant
LearnWorlds Cons
- No external emailing feature
- No live support
- White-labeling is only available on the highest-paid plans
- Starter plan is very limited
Podia Pros
- Free plan
- Beginner friendly
- Native emailing feature
- Live chat widget feature for websites
Podia Cons
- Very high transaction fees
- Lots of add-on costs
- Can’t sell courses on the Free and Starter plans
- Too basic for long-term use
- Templates are dated
LearnWorlds vs Podia: Platform Comparison
Affordability
LearnWorlds offers its users four plans to choose from:
- Starter $29/month or $24/month paid annually + $5 transaction fee
- Pro Trainer: $99/month or $79/month paid annually
- Learning Center: $299/month or $249/month paid annually
- High Volume: Bespoke pricing
The platform charges extra for creating a customized mobile app; however, it is unclear exactly how much this costs.
Podia also has four plans available which appear very cheap. However, ensure you pay attention to the transaction fees which are applied on all plans except the Shaker plan:
- Free: Free for life + 10% transaction fee
- Starter: $9/month or $4/month paid annually + 8% transaction fee
- Mover: $39/month or $33/month paid annually + 5% transaction fee
- Shaker: $89/month or $59/month paid annually
Podia also has optional add-on costs for emails and additional team members:
- Emailing:
- First 100 subscribers are free
- From $7/month for 500 subscribers
- Up to $330/month for 100,000 subscribers
- Additional team members:
- One: $20/month
- Five: $50/month
- 20: $100/month
| Plan | Transaction Fees | Monthly Cost | Monthly Cost Paid Annually |
|---|---|---|---|
| LearnWorlds Starter | $5 | $29 | $24 |
| LearnWorlds Pro Trainer | – | $99 | $79 |
| LearnWorlds Learning Center | – | $299 | $249 |
| Podia Free | 10% | – | – |
| Podia Starter | 8% | $9 | $4 |
| Podia Mover | 5% | $39 | $33 |
| Podia Shaker | – | $89 | $59 |
In summary, Podia is definitely the more affordable platform from the get-go, but it’s likely you will quickly become frustrated with the exorbitant transaction fees and add-on costs once your business starts to scale.
LearnWorlds will cost more for beginners, but its lack of additional fees will make it cheaper once the sales start to roll in.
Course and Learning Product Builder
The LearnWorlds course builder works like a dream, and the end result looks fantastic. There are a ton of options you can add to your content, including audio files, live sessions, exams, etc.
The platform even has an interactive video feature and auto transcription. For example, you can set quiz questions to pop up on the screen as the content is playing to really make it dynamic.
The real winner, though, is the AI content generator. While it’s not going to create your entire course for you, it can whip up a complete outline and associated content based on the prompts you provide. It does a decent job of this and considerably speeds up the process.
We feel that beginners are going to enjoy using the LearnWorlds course builder because it’s so easy to master, while advanced users are going to love the extensive options for enhancing learning content.
Podia ticks all the boxes in terms of what you can create; online courses, webinars, coaching sessions, etc., and its tools are straightforward to use.
We had no trouble creating a basic course and found we were able to embed video and upload files to make the content more dynamic.
However, nothing about these features is going to set your world on fire. At this point, most course creation platforms incorporate AI content generators and allow you to create different kinds of quizzes.
Podia, on the other hand, only has a basic multiple-choice quiz feature and no AI in sight whatsoever.
The real kicker is that neither the free plan nor the Starter plan allows you to publish and sell courses, webinars, or product bundles. You’re allowed to create them, but you must upgrade to at least the Mover plan to sell them.
The only products you can sell on these plans are a single digital download and a single coaching product.
Considering the transaction fees applied to these plans, we find it odd that they’d restrict this in such a way.
Website and Page Builder
LearnWorlds allows you to create a single website for your school. When you first set up your school, you get to choose from a range of themes (essentially prebuilt website templates).
These look really modern and attractive and can be entirely customized. Plus you can add additional pages, a blog, and sales funnels.
The page editing tool takes a hot minute to get used to, but once you do you’ll find endless customization options along with the ability to add some cool effects like a background video player and element animations.
One feature we really like is the ability to clone your school and try out different website themes (since these cannot be changed once you have selected one for your school).
All you do is create a carbon copy of your school and add the new theme. If you decide you like it better, you can switch to using it without any disruption.
Much like LearnWorlds, Podia’s website builder is exclusively for hosting your learning content. The key difference is that it is ultra-basic.
There are only a couple of templates – you get one for a full site, a landing page, and a link page – or you can create one from scratch. We do like that you can pick the website’s language right from the get-go, although the language choice isn’t huge.
In our opinion, the template looks dated and doesn’t utilize drag-and-drop, but it is easy to edit.
Page elements are limited, and if you want to include a blog you will need to connect it to an external blogging service. Additionally, you can’t use video on your web pages unless you’re on at least the Mover plan.
What we did find cool, was the live chat widget that you could add to your site which allows you to engage directly with site visitors. It’s definitely a useful feature for enhancing the customer experience.
Marketing Tools
LearnWorlds has now included a funnel-building feature within its website creator. You get a few templates to pick from, and there are more funnel step templates available once you start editing the funnel.
The LearnWorlds email feature is disappointing. You can’t use it for email marketing. Instead, there are a few preset emails that you can customize, but they are just for things like confirming course enrollment and registrations and sending login details.
To remedy this, LearnWorlds supports several native integrations with emailing apps such as Mailchimp and ConvertKit.
Besides that, you also have the usual coupon creator, and you can also create and embed data collection forms onto your web pages.
Podia has a full email marketing tool that you can use for email broadcasting or full campaigns.
Unlike its website builder, you will find a decent choice of templates here with lots of options for making them engaging such as adding images, videos, and call-to-action buttons.
As we’ve previously mentioned, there is an add-on charge for using this feature. You get your first 100 email subscribers for free, but anything above this will cost you.
Besides the emailing feature, there’s not a lot else provided for marketing beyond creating coupons and upsells.
AI Tools
As previously discussed, the LearnWorlds AI content generator is fab. It’s still in beta mode too, so we can only assume it’s going to get better, or rolled out across other areas of the platform.
Podia, on the other hand, has yet to jump aboard the AI train. You won’t find any native tools on the platform. However, you can use Zapier to connect Podia to AI tools like ChatGPT.
Analytics and Administration Tools
You get an entire reports center in LearnWorlds with extensive reporting and analytics on student performance (it’s this feature that makes LearnWorlds a lightweight LMS).
We can look at student grades and progress, view course insights, sales figures, and more. Each section can be customized and filtered, so it displays precisely the data needed.
Reports can be exported as a CSV or XLS file, which is handy for organizations using this platform.
Shockingly, Podia doesn’t seem to have any kind of analytical or reporting tools for your learning products, so it’s going to be really hard for you to see how your students are progressing or how your content can be improved.
It has basic analytics for your email campaigns, and you can view basic overall sales data. The platform also supports integration with Google Analytics.
Customer Support
You will find a comprehensive learning center inside LearnWorlds containing high-quality courses and guides to help you learn how to use the platform.
At any point, you can click the “Ask for Help” button in the bottom right corner, where you can contact a support agent for assistance. Responses are delivered by email and typically arrive within 24 hours.
It’s a real shame that live support is only available on the Corporate plan. All other plan holders are stuck with just email support. Given how expensive the plans are, we would have expected at least a live chat option.
Podia claims it offers seven-day support via chat and email no matter which plan you are on.
While we could easily access the option for email support, there didn’t seem to be anyone available for live chat, nor could we find the option for it.
User Experience
There’s no competition here. LearnWorlds offers a much better user experience in just about every aspect of the platform. The interface is modern, the features are intuitive, and it’s simply a pleasure to use.
In contrast, Podia feels clunky and most definitely basic. The templates could do with updating, and we wish the website editor had more to it.
However, its basicness does make Podia fast to learn, so beginners won’t have an issue using the platform.
LearnWorlds vs Podia: Final Verdict
You pay a premium for LearnWorlds for a reason. It’s a far superior platform to Podia, with high-quality features that have the capability to scale as you grow your business.
Beginners with tight budgets may prefer Podia from the offset, but once their business starts to grow, the limitations of the platform will become painfully apparent and the additional fees will feel like a rip-off.
Overall we say:
- Choose LearnWorlds if you want to create premium learning products and grow a course creation/coaching business.
- Choose Podia if you want a cheap tool for creating ebooks, freebies, and basic tutorials.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is LearnWorlds or Podia Better?
LearnWorlds is a much better platform than Podia. Although it is certainly more expensive, you get high-quality features and the ability to create beautiful-looking and engaging learning products. In contrast, Podia is a basic tool with limited features.
Is LearnWorlds or Podia Cheaper?
Podia is far cheaper than LearnWorlds with plans starting from $9/month, but most plans incur a hefty transaction fee on all sales and severely restrict available features.
LearnWorlds is more expensive, but you get better value for money overall.
Does LearnWorlds or Podia Have a Free Plan?
Podia has a free plan, and you can use it to sell one digital download and one coaching product. You cannot use it to sell courses. LearnWorlds does not have a free plan, but instead offers a 30-day free trial.
Which Platform Is Easier to Use – LearnWorlds or Podia?
Both LearnWorlds and Podia are easy to use. Podia is a basic platform and, therefore, does not take long to master. LearnWorlds is more complex, but you get lots of support and the platform is intuitive and easy to master.
Is LearnWorlds or Podia Better for Course Creators?
LearnWorlds is better than Podia for course creators. The platform offers a wide selection of features such as interactive video, advanced quizzes and exams, and an AI content generator. In comparison, Podia’s course builder is basic and lacks standout features.
Is LearnWorlds or Podia Better for Marketing Features?
LearnWorlds is better than Podia for marketing features. While Podia does offer email marketing, it costs extra. LearnWorlds includes a funnel builder and you can integrate the platform with a third-party emailing app.
