Thinkific vs Podia — In-Depth Comparison (2023)

Are you looking for a dynamic platform on which you can market and sell your online course? If so, you’ll want to examine this comparison between Thinkific vs. Podia.

Both Thinkific and Podia are online platforms that allow you to host and sell online courses.

But how do they differ from one another? And how do you decide which platform is ideal for your requirements?

In this breakdown, we’ll explain what Thinkific and Podia have to offer regarding plans, features, and what they do best.

The comparison between these two platforms will help you choose the right one for your business.

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Thinkific

Thinkific is a platform that allows businesses and people to create courses based on their knowledge and then sell them online.

The site is pre-loaded with tools to help you structure your courses in a way that’s easy for your learners to follow.

Thinkific lets you drag and drop to structure your curriculum. It’s an affordable course builder with pricing plans ranging from $0 to $499 per month.

Podia

Podia is another course builder platform that requires no technical experience.

The platform allows you to customize your website so that you can add your branding.

It has excellent marketing features to sell memberships, and it permits unlimited email subscribers.

Each plan provides various features for you to build informative online courses.

Prices for these plans range between $39 and $179 per month.

Thinkific vs. Podia at a Glance

	Thinkific	Podia
Free Trial	Yes, 14 days.	Yes, 14 days.
Pricing Range	Free Plan – $0 Basic Plan – $49/month Pro Plan – $99/month Premier Plan – $499/month *Save 20% when signing up annually Growth Package add-on with Pro Plan (charges based on active students) Lower monthly rates for annual subscriptions	Mover – $39/month Shaker – $79/month Earthquaker – 179/month Savings on annual subscriptions
Best For	Online course creators who want to build and design an online school using a full suite of tools and customizable templates	Course creators who want to create drip or stand-alone courses and webinars and develop email campaigns to drive traffic to their site
User Interface Features	User-friendly that doesn’t require coding. Utilizes drag and drop tools and customizable templates	No coding skills are needed. Clean interface that provides all you need on one dashboard.
Online Courses	Unlimited courses Quizzes and surveys HTML and CSS coding Live lessons with Zoom Prerequisite or Drip courses (Section unlocks with completion)	Unlimited products and customers Quiz creation Monthly group creator call Cohort based courses Stand-alone courses Drip courses
Monetization Options	Pre-sell courses Ads through YouTube partner Membership sites Digital product sales	Pre-sell courses Membership sites Digital product sales
Marketing Options	Free trials on courses Javascript tracking Search Engine Optimization Coupons Course Bundles	Monthly email recipients Unlimited email subscribers Affiliate marketing

Thinkific and Podia offer 14-day free trials so you can test the features on both platforms before making a decision.

The free plans are limited, but it gives you a feel for the usability of each site.

Podia is feature-rich but doesn’t provide as many features as Thinkific, such as the following:

SEO to further optimize content
Selling non-course items such as consulting time
Marketing analytics

Podia has marketing features such as affiliate marketing, pre-launch, and pre-sell courses.

You can also track your students’ progress so you can nudge them along with emails or on-page messages.

Thinkific allows you to do live Zoom lessons, whereas Podia allows you to create webinars for your students. Looking at pricing, Podia is more affordable, but Thinkific offers more plans and more features for each service.

Thinkific vs. Podia: Pricing Comparison

Thinkific has four plans to choose from and a Plus plan that you can customize based on the features you want.

Podia has three plans from which to choose.

Thinkific Pricing:

Free ($0 per month) – Allows you to retain ownership of your courses and has built-in content creation tools. This tier doesn’t support custom domain or membership sites or the Thinkific app.
Basic Plan ($49 per month or $39 per month if paid annually – Includes Thinkific app, unlimited courses, and student surveys. No Randomized Quiz Question bank or prerequisite lessons.
Pro Plan ($99 per month or $89 per month if paid annually) – Includes live lessons with Zoom, unlimited courses, and student discussions.
Premier Plan ($499 per month or $399 per month if paid annually) – Includes everything from the previous packages and group analysts, SSO, and onboarding package.

Podia Pricing:

Mover – ($39 per month or $390 per year if paid annually) – Includes free migrations, unlimited customers, and no transaction fees. No memberships or affiliate marketing, and extra team members cost $20 each per month.
Shaker – ($79 per month or $790 per year if paid annually) – Includes affiliate marketing, memberships, and free migrations. No dedicated account manager or white-labeled website. Extra team members cost $20 each per month.
Earthquaker – ($179 per month or $1,790 per year if paid annually) – Includes everything in other packages and 50,000 email subscribers, personalized onboarding calls and monthly group creator calls, and five team members included.

As you can see, Thinkific offers affordable packages with a free plan that comes with tools and ownership of your courses.

Podia doesn’t offer a free plan at this time, but the three plans do offer you plenty of marketing and course-building tools.

Thinkific does have a customizable plan if you want to pay for specific features.

This way, you won’t pay for the tools you don’t need and only for the ones that you do need for your requirements. Podia doesn’t have a customizable plan.

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Thinkific vs. Podia: A Comparison of Features and Tools

Now we’ll look at the tools and features Podia and Thinkific have to offer. By comparing the tools, you can see if it’s worth paying the price for their plans. Find out how to structure online courses, market them, and what the student experience features are.

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Online Courses

Thinkific and Podia allow you to create multimedia courses with video, text, and images. Both platforms allow you to create online courses that are desktop and mobile-friendly. Podia supports 11 languages, and Thinkific supports 39 languages.

Which Platform Offers Better Solution for Hosting Online Courses?

It’s difficult to say which platform is better because both allow you to create dynamic courses without coding skills. You may want to use Podia if you want to create an aesthetically pleasing site. On the other hand, if you want to increase your reach, use Thinkific because it allows you to create your courses in 39 languages.

Sales & Marketing Features

Podia may offer more ways to drive traffic to your online courses using email marketing.

With Podia’s email marketing features, you can embed forms, automate campaigns and organically grow your email listing.

Thinkific has more marketing features than Podia if you choose the higher plans. With Thinkific, you get a marketing analytics tool so you can keep tabs on your campaigns.

You can also create free courses that will attract more learners to your paid courses.

Which Platform Offers Better Sales & Marketing Solutions?

Thinkific wins this round, even offering Shopify integration and affiliate reporting. You can also sell packaged courses or put different prices on each course.

Student Experience Features

Thinkific allows you to structure your site so that your students can have a positive user experience.

With your course, you can include interstitial and progress pages in between lesson modules. Students can keep track of their progress through the course, which prevents drop-off.

Both Thinkific and Podia let you drip content on a schedule to keep your students engaged.

Which Platform Offers Better Student Experience?

We think the ideal choice in this section is Thinkific.

Students want to know what their progress looks like before continuing to the next task. It boosts their confidence and encourages them to take the next course.

Analytics Features

If you want to track analytics, you’ll appreciate Thinkifics’s features. You can see how many students have viewed your videos and understand how your students engage with your site.

To do this with Podia, you must integrate Google Analytics onto your platform.

Which Platform Offers Better Analytics Features?

Podia only allows you to integrate Google analytics. You may want to use Thinkific instead if you want a greater selection of third-party integrations. With Thinkific, you can use Mixpanel, Facebook pixels, and Google Analytics.

Customization Features

Thinkific has plenty of customization features, including compatibility with other website builders like WordPress and Wix. With higher plans, you can replace Thinkific branding with your own. You can also create custom domains and additional pages.

Podia allows you to create unlimited pages, and you control their setup. You can also preview your site before launching it. You can customize your sales pages easily with no coding experience.

Which Platform Offers Better Customization?

Both offer excellent customizable options, but the less expensive plans on Thinkific offer limited customization. So you may want to choose Podia for its customization options if you’re on a budget.

Final Thoughts

Choose Thinkific if: You’re looking for a Learning Management System that offers complete packages for marketing, student experience, and customizable designs. If you are already well-established and have a sizeable budget, then Thinkific is probably your better option.
Choose Podia if: You want a custom site for selling digital products, courses, and membership sites that are media-rich and work on all devices. If you’re on a budget, you may choose Podia for its better customizability at the low end of the price range.

Podia has affordable packages and provides everything you need to create multimedia courses.

It doesn’t offer as many features as Thinkific does, such as hybrid courses or completion certificates. But Podia is ideal if you want basic course builder features.

If you are already beyond the entry-level, and you are ready to invest and scale, Thinkific may be the fully-featured platform to help you take your online course business to the next stage.

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