Podia vs Teachable: Which is the Best Option for Your Online Courses?

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If you’re reading this review, you’re looking for which platform is a better option for your online courses/memberships, Podia or Teachable.

While Teachable has been a market leader in the online course platform space for a long time, Podia is a relatively new entrant which has gained in popularity in the past year or so.

While these platforms are compared quite often, there are hardly any in-depth articles on the topic and most course creators struggle to answer the Podia vs Teachable question.

That’s the reason I’ve created this Teachable vs Podia guide where we’ll take a deeper look at the two platforms and highlight the important differences between them. 

By the end of this comparison article, you’ll know what each platform has to offer and be able to decide which one is a better fit for your business.

Podia vs Teachable Summary

Teachable vs Podia Summary

The main difference between the two platforms is that Teachable offers more powerful learning tools like graded quizzes, certificates, and content locking while Podia has better features for creating a membership site. Otherwise, the two platforms have similar site building and sales & marketing capabilities.


Podia Logo
Teachable Logo
Course Creation & Engagement
Site Design & Customization
Sales & Marketing
Customer Support

What I like about Podia vs Teachable?

  • Course player has a cleaner design and has an option to go full-screen.
  • Ability to create individual “Posts” for your membership.
  • Native ‘live chat’ feature for your customers.
  • Flexible pricing options for your membership.
  • Ability to embed checkout/buy buttons on an external website.
  • Offers free migration to Podia.
  • Friendly customer support.
  • Zero transaction fee on all plans.

What I like about Teachable vs Podia?

  • Course builder is more flexible and supports cloud import.
  • Offers learning tools like graded quizzes, certificates, course compliance, etc.
  • Has an iOS App.
  • Better course reporting tools.
  • Offers services like automated affiliate & author payouts, remittance of VAT, etc.
  • Allows you to add admin users.
  • Offers a lifetime free plan.

Both Teachable and Podia are very similar to each other in terms of their broader offering. The idea behind these platforms is to provide you an easy-to-use option to create and sell online courses.

So, they provide you the tools to host your content (including videos) and deliver it in a structured manner to your students. And then they also offer you some essential tools for building sales pages and processing payments.

What is Podia?
What is Teachable?

However, neither of these platforms are all-in-one systems, and so they aren’t really focused on offering tools for building funnels, marketing automation, etc.

With this in mind, let’s discuss some of the key features of the two platforms and do a head-to-head comparison of their capabilities:

Course Builder

The course builder is what allows you to upload your content and create a structure for your online courses and so, it is a very important feature.

At a high-level, both course builders are easy to use and allow you to set up an online course quickly. Both allow you to bulk upload your content and easily reorder your lessons and modules by dragging-n-dropping.

However, when you get into the details, you’ll find that there are some very important differences between two and that the Teachable course builder is easier to use as well as more flexible.

Firstly, Teachable course builder supports cloud importing. So, you can import content into your course directly from Google Drive/ Dropbox which is currently not possible on Podia.

Cloud importing is much faster than uploading from your computer and is a really handy feature to have for course creation.

Content Upload Teachable
Teachable Cloud Import

Another difference is that Teachable builder is more user-friendly. Let’s take an example. Say if you want to delete certain lessons or change their settings (e.g. published/draft, preview, etc.), with Podia you’ll have to do it one by one.

On the other hand, on Teachable, you can just select the multiple lessons and delete them or change the settings at once.

Teachable Curriculum Area
Teachable Course Builder

However, the most important difference between the two course builders is in terms of supporting multiple content types. 

With Teachable, you can add multiple videos, quizzes, text, PDF, etc. in the same lesson and you can place them in any order you want.

With Podia course builder, you don’t get this sort of flexibility. Each lesson can only have a single content type. 

For example, you can’t have a video and a PDF file in the same lesson or, you can’t have a video and a quiz in the same lesson.

Teachable Lesson Builder
Multiple Content Types in Teachable Lessons

Apart from these, there are a few minor differences as well. For example, you can make your videos downloadable on Teachable but on Podia, you don’t have that option.

Overall, Teachable vs Podia course builder is easier to use, more flexible and has more to offer in terms of features.

Content Delivery (Course Player)

Course player is where your students watch your content and they will spend most of their time here. As a result, their experience is influenced a great deal by the course player design.

Now, both Podia and Teachable have a course player which is very well-designed from a user experience point of view and they look attractive.

Actually, the design in both cases is very similar. The course navigation is on the left while the content area is on the right. Plus the embedded comments appear below your lesson content, making it easy for students to engage in a discussion.

Teachable Course Player-min
Teachable Course Player

However, one thing that I like about Podia vs Teachable course player is this feature which allows you to hide the navigation sidebar and go full-screen which is good for distraction-free learning.

Plus Podia course player has a cleaner design and it looks a little fresh.

Podia Course Area
Teachable Course Player

That being said, there are no major differences in terms of design or user experience between the two course players.

When it comes to mobile learning, both course players are mobile-friendly. The only difference (but a major one) is that Teachable offers you an iOS app as well which offers additional features like offline viewing, etc.

Finally, if you’re planning to create more of a membership site than an online course, there’s something more that you should be aware of.

With Teachable, what you get in the name of memberships is the ability to bundle your courses and sell them together for a monthly or an annual subscription.

However, Podia allows you to do more than just creating product bundles. It allows you to create individual “Posts” for your members which are separate from your courses and are great for delivering one-off content on an ongoing basis.

Memberships in Podia
Memberships in Podia

This is a really handy feature for delivering membership content.

Learning & Engagement Tools

Learning and engagement tools are where both platforms differ the most and Teachable vs Podia is the clear winner in this case.

Both Teachable and Podia allow you to drip your content. So, you can set a drip schedule and send emails automatically when the content is released.

With Podia, the only other learning tool that you get is quizzes. Plus the quizzing feature is kind of incomplete because you don’t even have the ability to automatically grade your students.

Podia Quizzes
Quiz Editor in Podia

Moreover, Podia doesn’t have the ability to let you create certificates or lock your content.

Now, Teachable has much more to offer here. To start with, you get the ability to create graded quizzes and restrict the number of attempts. In addition, you have the ability to create certificates of completion.

Teachable Certificates
Teachable Certificates

Finally, Teachable has some very handy course compliance features. So, you can force your students to progress through lectures sequentially or, you can require them to pass the quiz before advancing to the next lecture.

There is also a Video Watch compliance which will require your students to watch at least 90% of a video before they can mark the lesson complete and watch other lessons.

Teachable Course Compliance
Teachable Course Compliance

Another important set of tools that Teachable offers are for course reporting and analytics. With Teachable, you can get reports for course completion, quiz scores, video analytics, etc.

The good thing is that you can see these stats at individual student’s level plus you can also track the aggregated metrics at the course level.

Course Completion Report
Course Completion Report in Teachable

With Podia, there are no real course reporting tools available. The only thing that you can track is course progress for individual students.

You can’t see aggregated completion rates or quiz scores at the course level. Plus you don’t have any video analytics available which is a serious drawback.

Site Design & Customization

With both Podia and Teachable, you have the ability to build a website for your online school. In fact, there is a lot common between the two platforms in terms of their site-building capabilities.

Firstly, you get free hosting and SSL as part of your subscription. Plus you don’t need to worry about things like security, backups or maintenance because their team will take care of all these.

Secondly, every school gets a free subdomain by default. You can also use a custom domain (www.mywebsite.com) if you want.

When it comes to site themes, neither platform has any theme options available. Each website built on these platforms has a default template enabled and you can use their page builder to build and customize your pages.

In the case of both Teachable and Podia, what you can control at the site level is just the text fonts and colors of various elements. So, you have no control over the style of your header or navigation menu or other elements like buttons.

Teachable Theme
Teachable Theme Settings
Podia Theme Settings
Podia Theme Settings

As far as the page builders are concerned, both are easy-to-use and have pre-built sections that you can add to your page in a single click. Moreover, you can use the page builders to build your sales pages or custom pages.

Both page builders have very similar capabilities and only minor differences exist between the two. 

For example, Teachable has a better text editor with a lot of formatting options. So, you can change the font style, font size, add image between your text, etc. which won’t be possible with Podia.

Teachable Text Editor
Teachable Text Editor
Podia Text Editor
Podia Text Editor

Similarly, Podia’s page builder has more number of pre-built sections. So, you have pre-built sections for testimonials, FAQs, author bio, etc. which aren’t there in Teachable.

Podia's Page Builder
Podia Text Editor

Having said that, neither of the page builders are very flexible. They don’t give you any control over the width of various sections or their paddings and it’s not possible to create any custom layouts.

Plus you can’t do things like adding animations or showing/hiding certain elements on mobile vs desktop.

So, both platforms do an average job when it comes to site building and to be honest, you can’t really build a unique website on either platform.

Product Pricing & Payment Processing

With Podia and Teachable, you have various options for pricing your products. So, you can create a one-time price, a payment plan or a recurring subscription.

What’s good about pricing in Teachable is that you can have pricing in multiple currencies for the same product. With Podia, you can choose the currency only at the site level and so, there’s no way to have multi-currency pricing for your products.

Teachable Multi-Currency
You can choose currency at a pricing plan level in Teachable

As far as recurring pricing is concerned, both platforms allow you to create a monthly subscription or an annual subscription. 

However, neither are very flexible with creating subscriptions of custom duration. For example, you can’t create a weekly or a quarterly subscription.

One difference between the two is that Podia lets you create a free trial of any length between 1-365 days while Teachable doesn’t let you create a free trial at all. You can use coupons as a workaround but it doesn’t work that well.

Another thing that I like about pricing in Podia is that you can select which “Posts” and “Products” are included in which membership plans. 

You don’t have this option with Teachable and you’ll need to do some workarounds in order to create multiple tiers for your membership and assign unique content to them.

Podia Membership Pricing Options
Membership Pricing Options in Podia

In terms of payment processing, both platforms take a very different approach.

With Podia, it is all straightforward. You integrate your Stripe/PayPal account and all the money goes straight into your account.

Now Teachable has a couple of options. First is the “Custom Gateway” where you process payments using your own Stripe/PayPal account and you get paid immediately. This is similar to how Podia processes payments.

The second option is “Teachable Gateway”. The downside of using this option is that you get paid after a delay of 30-60 days if you’re outside US/Canada. If you’re in US/Canada, you’ll be paid immediately.

However, there are certain benefits of using the Teachable Gateway as well. Firstly, you can use Stripe/PayPal to process payments even if these aren’t supported in your country.

Secondly, you can use their suite of services called BackOffice where they collect tax forms from your authors and affiliates, automatically pay out to them every month, and they even remit EU VAT to the respective authorities. 

While there is a 2% fee for BackOffice, it reduces your admin work a lot and is really worth it.

Enable BackOffice
Teachable BackOffice

Thirdly, if you use their native gateway, Teachable supports Apple Pay/Google Pay as payment options which improves the checkout experience even further.

Overall, I like the additional options that Teachable vs Podia offers for payment processing.

Checkout

Both Teachable and Podia have a checkout process that is well optimized from a conversion point of view. 

Both ask the users to create an account after they have made the payment successfully and completed the checkout which is super awesome. You can also add 1-click upsells on the thank you page.

Moreover, they can handle EU VAT. So, based on user location, they automatically calculate the VAT rate and add it to your course price.

However, there are some very important differences between the checkout processes on the two platforms.

So, Teachable has a 1-step checkout page where the user enters his email as well as the payment information. 

Plus you can add these conversion boosting elements — testimonials, product benefits and money-back guarantee badge to your checkout page.

Teachable Checkout Page
Teachable Checkout Page

On the other hand, Podia has a multi-step checkout process where the user first enters the email address and then completes the payment in the next step. 

The entire checkout happens in a popup and you don’t have a separate checkout page as Teachable does. Plus you can’t show any custom conversion elements like testimonials or guarantee badge in the popup.

Podia Checkout Step2
Podia Checkout Step1
Podia Checkout Step3
Podia Checkout Step2

The good thing about this checkout style is that you can embed it on an external website as well and people can complete payment without leaving that website.

However, this checkout process might not work as well for high-ticket products. To be honest, I don’t have any data to back this up but then I have never seen any influencer use a popup style checkout for their products.

Now there are a few other sales and marketing tools that both the platforms offer. So, you have the ability to create coupons, run your affiliate program, do email marketing, etc.

However, both platforms have very similar capabilities as far as these features are concerned and so, we haven’t highlighted them.

Third-Party Integrations

Let’s first talk about direct integration with email marketing solutions. Teachable has direct integration with just MailChimp and ConvertKit.

On the other hand, Podia integrates natively with MailChimp, ConvertKit, Drip, Aweber, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse and MailerLite.

So, Podia integrates with most of the popular email marketing platforms while Teachable integrates with just two. 

Now, both Teachable and Podia have a Zapier integration, so you can send your student data to 1000s of third-party apps when they make a purchase.

Similarly, if you use a third-party platform like ClickFunnels or ThriveCart to process payments, you can add users to your Podia/Teachable school automatically via Zapier.

Having said that, Teachable’s Zapier integration is more robust and has more options. For example, you have triggers like Course Completion, Lecture Completion, Quiz Result, etc. which aren’t available with Podia’s Zapier integration.

Teachable Zapier Triggers
Teachable Zapier Triggers

Finally, both platforms allow you to add third-party scripts to your website, so you can easily integrate with analytics solutions like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, popup solutions like ConvertBox and Sumo, conversion tools like Deadline Funnel, Proof, etc.

Customer Support

When it comes to customer support, Teachable offers email support on Free and Basic plans while if you’re on Professional Plan or above, you get access to their live chat support as well.

Teachable Help
Teachable Support Options

On the other hand, Podia offers chat support to customers on all the plans. While it isn’t necessarily a live chat support, you’ll generally get a response from their team in 5-10 minutes during work hours.

Based on the options they provide plus my experience of interacting with them, I have found Podia vs Teachable customer support to be more responsive as well as more friendly, and this is more true for the lower pricing tiers.

Apart from this, both platforms have an extensive knowledge base where you can search through various how-to articles about doing things on the platforms.

Podia Knowledge Base
Podia Knowledge Base

Another thing that I like about customer support in Podia is the free migration they offer to new creators. 

So, if you’re switching to Podia from another platform, their team will migrate your content and your users for free.

Finally, there is something about Teachable that I like a lot and that is their Facebook community for their users. 

So, they have a highly engaged Facebook Group where the users can ask questions and get help from their team as well as other Teachable users. Now Podia doesn’t have a community like this for their creators.

Pricing Plans

In order to choose between Podia vs Teachable, you need to know how they are priced. 

Let’s start with Podia pricing plans. The first tier in Podia is their Mover Plan which costs $39/month and you get most of their features except Memberships, Affiliate Marketing, Free Migration, etc.

To get these features, you’ll need to upgrade to their Shaker Plan which costs $79/month.

Podia Pricing: How much does cost?
Podia Pricing

The good thing is that you don’t need to pay any transaction fee and you get instant payouts on both the plans.

Plus if you upgrade to either plan during the first five days of starting your trial, Podia offers you an additional 15% discount.

As far as Teachable is concerned, the pricing works very differently. The first option is their lifetime free plan where you can do only the most basic things like creating a course, setting up your sales page and processing payments.

Plus the free plan allows you to have only up to 10 students which makes it good only while you’re building your online school but not if you want to actively sell your courses.

The next tier is the Basic Plan which costs $39/month plus you need to pay a 5% transaction fee to Teachable. On the Basic Plan, you get the ability to use your custom domain, drip your content, do affiliate marketing, etc.

The third and the most popular plan on Teachable is the Professional Plan which costs $119/month (0% transaction fee) and you get access to almost all the Teachable features.

Teachable Pricing: How much does Teachable cost?
Teachable Pricing

Both Teachable and Podia pricing have their pluses and minuses and you’ll need to consider them in order to make a decision. 

While Teachable has a free plan, Podia doesn’t have one. So, if you’re still in the building phase, you can start on Teachable’s Free Plan and upgrade to the Basic Plan once you’re ready to sell.

On the other hand, Podia doesn’t charge any transaction fee on any of its plans, Teachable charges you a 5% transaction fee on the Basic Plan. Plus Podia’s Shaker plan is less expensive than Teachable’s Professional plan.

So, if you’re looking to actively sell your online courses, Podia will generally be a more affordable option than Teachable.

Having said that, you’ll need to consider the specific features available on the plans to determine the exact price you’ll be paying and which platform will work better for you.

For example, membership features are available on the Basic Plan ($39/month) on Teachable while it’s available only on the Shaker Plan on Podia ($79/month).

Similarly, if you need to place any third-party scripts (e.g. Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, etc.), you’ll need to be on the Shaker Plan while you can do that on the Free Plan itself on Teachable.

Podia vs Teachable – Final Verdict

We have discussed all the important features that Podia and Teachable have to offer and based on that, we can say that both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses.

As far as Teachable is concerned, it does a much better job when it comes to learning and engagement tools.

It offers you features like graded quizzes, certificates, course compliance and course reporting which are either missing from Podia or are very basic.

So, if these learning tools are important for delivering your courses, Teachable will be a better platform for you.

If you want to give Teachable a try, you can either start on their Free Plan or you can get a 30-day free trial of their paid plans.

When it comes to Podia, it offers you more features and flexibility for building a membership site. Plus Podia also has a more affordable pricing than Teachable.

If you want to give Podia a try, you can get a 14-day free trial of the platform. The good thing is that you don’t need to enter your credit card details.

Otherwise both Podia and Teachable have very similar capabilities in terms of site building tools and sales & marketing features.

I hope this Teachable vs Podia guide helped you pick the right platform of the two. If you have any questions, please let me know in the comments below.

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