Podia vs Thinkific 2024: Which Is Best for Your Courses?

Podia and Thinkific are two top choices for creating and selling online courses.

But how do they compare? What features make them stand out? Which is a better fit for your specific needs?

This Podia vs Thinkific comparison will dive into the pros and cons of both platforms to help you make an informed decision for your online course business.

We’ll explore the key areas of consideration, including features, usability, and pricing. Let’s get started!

What Are Podia and Thinkific?

Podia and Thinkific are both cloud-based course platforms, but their approach is different in two ways.

Thinkific has a strong focus on course creation. It offers a range of learning and engagement tools for building interactive courses.

Also, Thinkific makes the platform extendable with its App Store. There are dozens of integrations that go beyond the core features.

On the other hand, Podia prioritizes simplicity in every aspect of the platform. It focuses on letting you create simple video courses rather than interactive course experiences.

Additionally, Podia operates as a more closed system than Thinkific. It offers only essential integrations, such as email marketing and payment gateways. It’s not possible to add new features or custom integrations.

Apart from these key differences, both platforms offer the standard features you would expect from a course platform, including site-building capabilities and eCommerce tools.

Let’s take a closer look at the two platforms now.

Ease of Use

Usability is an essential aspect of any good course platform. In this regard, both platforms are pretty even.

Both have well-organized interfaces where the features are logically organized and easily accessible. In the case of Thinkific, the menus appear in the left sidebar, while Podia opts for a top menu, but both are intuitive to use.

The individual tools are easy to use as well. Both platforms have drag-and-drop course builders that make it simple to create and organize course content.

In both cases, all product pages (sales, checkout, and thank you) are tied to the product by default, so minimal setup is involved.

A walkthrough of Thinkific’s admin interface

A walkthrough of Podia’s admin interface

While Podia may look slightly easier to learn and use than Thinkific, that’s primarily because of fewer features.

For instance, certificates are just an option within your course settings in Podia. You can customize a few settings right there, but there’s no certificate builder.

In contrast, while you can select your certificate in the course settings in Thinkific, there’s a separate certificate builder to create and manage certificates.

Otherwise, both platforms are user-friendly and easy to navigate, with minimal learning curves.

Course Creation and Engagement

These two online course platforms offer various features for course creation and learner engagement; however, they vary quite a bit in their capabilities. Let’s take a closer look at what Thinkific vs Podia has to offer.

Course Builder

Both platforms have an easy-to-use course builder that lets you divide your content into chapters and lessons to keep it organized.

Regarding supported lesson types, both support videos, audio files, PDFs, quizzes, and text lessons. They also include unlimited hosting for all media types, including videos.

However, Thinkific supports more lesson types, such as live lessons, surveys, and assignments.

When it comes to adding content to lessons, both allow you to add downloadable resources as attachments and a text section to your lessons apart from the main content.

However, Thinkific has a more flexible text editor, which also supports adding videos and audio files within the text. So, you can add multiple videos in the same lesson in Thinkific, which you can’t do in Podia.

Both platforms also support bulk lesson uploading so that you can upload multiple files simultaneously, and the platform will automatically create lessons for each.

Additionally, Thinkific has a video library feature that allows you to reuse videos across multiple courses. You can also import content from another lesson in an existing course.

Otherwise, both course builders are straightforward, and you can get your course up and running quickly.

Learning and Engagement

Learning and engagement tools are crucial for enhancing the impact of your online courses and maintaining student interest. Here’s a breakdown of what each platform offers in this area.

Quizzes and Certificates

Thinkific and Podia support quizzes, specifically multiple-choice questions with one or more correct answers. However, their capabilities differ significantly.

For starters, Podia doesn’t support graded quizzes, which is a huge drawback.

Besides that, your questions are purely text-based, with no media or formatting options.

Thinkific, on the other hand, has a more flexible quiz editor, so you can format your questions and answers and add images and videos.

It has a few other features that Podia lacks, such as graded quizzes, answer explanations and randomized question banks. It also lets you import quiz questions from an external file.

Moreover, Thinkific has introduced an AI quiz creator that can generate multiple-choice questions based on your text lessons.

Besides quizzes, Thinkific also supports assignments, allowing your students to upload their work for you to approve or reject.

If you need even more advanced assessment tools, you can use Thinkific’s Brillium integration to create full-blown exams.

Finally, Thinkific allows you to create surveys with a variety of question types, including rating scales, free text, multiple-choice, and more, which you can seamlessly integrate into your course.

Regarding certificates, Podia and Thinkific have built-in features.

In Thinkific’s case, you get a selection of templates. You can further customize the design and display custom information on the certificate.

On the other hand, Podia just has one default template, and you can’t customize the design or add any additional information. You can just add your logo and change the default text.

Overall, Thinkific offers a broader range of assessment tools and better certificate features than Podia.

Content Dripping and Locking

Thinkific lets you schedule your content based on:

• Student enrollment date
• Course start date
• Specific date

You assign the drip schedule at the lesson level, giving you the flexibility to release content at your desired pace.

In the case of Podia, you can set the drip schedule at the section level and drip based on the enrollment date or course start date.

Moreover, the platform lets you automatically email students when new content is released. Thinkific doesn’t support drip notification emails.

Another useful feature of Thinkific is content locking. You can set specific lessons as prerequisites, so students can only advance to the next sections once they complete that lesson or pass the quiz.

Podia doesn’t have a content locking feature.

Online Community

Podia and Thinkific have a native community feature that allows students to interact with each other and the instructor.

The communities look good out of the box, and you can create spaces to organize your community, such as for general discussions, Q&A, and feedback.

You and your members can create discussion posts and comment on them. Podia also supports adding videos to community posts natively.

You have the option to make your community either free or paid. In Thinkific, access is managed at the community level, whereas in Podia, you can control access for individual topics (spaces).

However, Thinkific’s community feature has a couple of advantages over Podia:

• It lets you create scheduled events, though neither has native livestreaming.
• The communities are accessible via mobile apps, making it easier to drive engagement.

Otherwise, both community builders are basic compared to dedicated online community platforms. They don’t support essential features like native livestreaming, direct messaging, detailed member profiles, and notification management.

Live Classes

Another important distinction between the two is Thinkific’s support for live classes, which makes it a good option for cohort courses.

The platform has a Zoom integration that allows you to add live lessons to your course curriculum. You can schedule a class from within Thinkific, and it will automatically create a Zoom meeting.

The students will see an option to join the Zoom meeting inside the course player, making it easy to join the class.

Podia doesn’t support live classes. It offers a separate product type called Webinars, which supports Zoom meetings. Unfortunately, it isn’t integrated with the course curriculum.

Content Delivery

Podia and Thinkific offer clean, well-designed course players with the navigation bar on the left and the content area on the right.

The students can see their progress and leave comments for each lesson. There’s also an option to hide the sidebar and go full screen.

The only feature difference is that Thinkific’s course player includes search functionality, while Podia’s doesn’t.

A walkthrough of Thinkific’s course player

A walkthrough of Podia’s course player

Regarding customization, both platforms let you adjust colors and add your logo, but that’s about it. Neither platform has course player themes or the ability to change the course player layout.

Additionally, both course players are mobile responsive. However, Thinkific goes beyond and offers free mobile apps for iOS and Android, making it easier for students to access your courses.

It also has a white-label mobile app option for an extra fee, allowing you to get a fully branded app for your courses.

Site Design and Customization

Thinkific and Podia both have tools for designing and customizing your course website. To start with, they offer essential features, such as:

• Unlimited hosting and a free SSL certificate for your website
• Automatic platform security, updates, and maintenance
• Free subdomain and the option for using a custom domain
• Option to remove the platform branding and white label your course platform
• The ability to change the site language in a single click

Regarding the actual design and customization, Thinkific offers three site themes with three styles each.

For advanced customizations, you can modify the theme code or import custom themes from third-party designers.

Podia doesn’t have any site themes. However, at the site level, you can set colors, fonts, button styles, etc..

For the page builder, both are user-friendly and have many prebuilt page sections, such as product banners, testimonials, pricing, lead capture, etc.

However, unlike Podia’s, Thinkific’s page builder offers a drag-and-drop feature. With Thinkific, you can easily view and manage all your page sections in the left sidebar. Podia doesn’t display the sections in a sidebar, so you must scroll down the page to access them.

On the flip side, Podia’s page builder gives you more options for customizing the layout and design of the page sections.

Otherwise, in both cases, your layout options are limited to the settings provided by the platform. You can’t just freely add elements to a page section, as you might in a specialized page builder.

Apart from website creation, Podia lets you create and publish blog posts directly on your course site.

You can easily add content using the text editor and do some basic SEO settings. You can also design your blog page and posts using page builder, though there is no way to categorize and organize your blog posts.

Thinkific doesn’t have built-in blogging tools, but you can use its DropInBlog integration to add a blog to your site.

Overall, both platforms offer decent website customization options. While Thinkific does better with site themes, Podia has an edge with its blogging tools.

Sales and Marketing

Thinkific and Podia offer only the essential features for selling your online courses. They have introduced some additional tools for marketing, but these are limited. Let’s explore what each platform has to offer.

Product Pricing Options

Both platforms offer diverse pricing options, including free access, one-time payments, subscriptions, and payment plans, with the ability to charge in any currency.

For subscriptions, both let you charge monthly and annual fees and offer free trials.

However, Thinkific allows you to set monthly increments for billing, enabling you to charge quarterly or semi-annually. You can also set a custom first payment for the subscription.

Another difference between the two platforms lies in the products, which allow you to establish a recurring price.

Thinkific supports subscription pricing for all product types, including courses, bundles, communities, and memberships.

In Podia’s case, subscriptions are available only for community-based plans. You can include products like courses in these, but you can’t offer subscriptions for standalone course bundles.

Finally, both platforms allow you to create coupons to offer product discounts. You can set the expiration date and limit the number of uses.

Payments and Checkouts

Payment processing in Podia is straightforward. You connect your Stripe/PayPal account and receive payments directly from your customers.

On the other hand, Thinkific’s default gateway is Thinkific Payments. It’s a managed gateway powered by Stripe in the backend and offers several benefits:

• You can accept payments via digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay.
• You can offer a buy now pay later option from Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm.
• Thinkific calculates, collects, and remits sales taxes on your behalf. Podia charges taxes, but you must remit them yourself.

Thinkific also supports direct Stripe and PayPal integrations if you prefer using your own gateway. However, depending on your plan, you’ll need to pay an extra fee of 0.5% to 5%.

Regarding the checkout experience, both platforms have a streamlined, one-step checkout page where users can enter their details and complete the purchase. They only need to create an account after purchasing.

The checkout pages also look good, even though you only get a few customization options.

Thinkific lets you show customer testimonials and collect additional student information during account creation. Podia doesn’t offer any customization options.

Both platforms support 1-click upsells on the thank you page, though Thinkific also supports adding order bumps on the checkout page.

Additionally, Thinkific has some useful checkout features that are unavailable in Podia.

First, it supports course gifting, where students can purchase a course for someone else.

Second, Thinkific enables users to purchase multiple quantities of the same product, which is handy for selling multiple seats for courses or workshops.

Affiliate Marketing

Both Podia and Thinkific let you create and run your affiliate marketing program.

You can add affiliates and offer them a percentage or a flat fee commission to promote your courses. The affiliates get private dashboards where they can access their affiliate links and track referrals and sales.

Both platforms have similar capabilities, but there are some minor differences.

For instance, Podia lets you set separate commission rates for your products and not for affiliates. Meanwhile, Thinkific lets you set separate rates for affiliates but only on a site-wide basis.

Other Marketing Tools

Podia has an email marketing tool built in, which means you can send newsletters and autoresponders directly from the platform.

You can create email sequences with emails sent out at specified intervals. Podia provides premade templates and an easy-to-use editor for designing your emails.

You can also set entry and exit conditions for your campaign. So, you can subscribe someone to a campaign when they submit a form on your website and remove them when they purchase a product.

However, Podia’s email marketing has some serious limitations:

• You can only set Delays between emails in multiple of days and not in hours or minutes.
• There’s no automation feature, and even basic tasks like tagging people based on their behavior aren’t possible.
• The platform offers few tools for lead generation. To bring your audience from an external tool, you must use Zapier.

At the same time, Podia’s email add-on has pricing comparable to specialized email platforms. So, it’s not practical to pay for this service.

Thinkific doesn’t have any email marketing tools. It lets you send broadcast emails, but that’s more for student communication.

Meanwhile, Thinkific offers a Funnels feature to quickly assemble a series of landing pages to guide users toward purchasing a course.

Currently, it supports Free Lesson, Free Download, and Sales Page funnels. Upon selecting a funnel type, Thinkific automatically generates the necessary landing pages, which you can then personalize with your branding and content.

However, the feature isn’t very useful in its current form. The page editor for customizing funnel pages is rudimentary, and with no template choices, you’re restricted in design.

Moreover, the funnel builder doesn’t let you add, delete, or rearrange pages, which means you’re limited to the preset funnel types.

Besides funnels and email marketing, each platform has a unique feature:

• Podia supports a live chat feature to communicate with website users in real time.
• Thinkific lets you create sales widgets to embed on external websites.

Reporting and Administration

This section will review the reporting and administrative capabilities of these two online course platforms. Let’s start with their reporting tools.

Reporting and Analytics

Podia and Thinkific provide reporting and analytics tools to help you track the performance of your courses, though their offerings differ significantly.

Podia offers very basic course reporting tools. Inside each course, you can see a list of students and their progress in the course. You can click on the progress bar to see their lesson-wise progress.

Similarly, there’s a basic sales report where you can see all your transactions and click on individual orders to view more details.

On the other hand, Thinkific gives you detailed reports for tracking student progress. You can see the progress of individual students and their lesson-wise progress, as well as completion rates for courses and lessons.

Similarly, Thinkific offers a dedicated revenue dashboard to track your sales and revenue. Apart from showing a list of your transactions, it includes valuable data like revenue by product, revenue over time, and average revenue per user.

You can filter these reports on several criteria, such as date range, products, and groups. The reports also have graphs and visual tools to help you quickly analyze your data.

Moreover, Thinkific has separate reports for video engagement, community activity, and subscriptions.

Podia doesn’t have any of these advanced reporting capabilities, which gives Thinkific an edge in analytics and insights.

People Management

Thinkific and Podia have similar people management tools with some differences.

In both cases, you can see students’ lists, filter them based on different criteria, and do specific bulk actions. You can also add students one by one or import them in bulk.

Moreover, you can click on a student to get more information about them, such as their enrollments and course progress. You can also edit their profile, manage their product access, and view any notes or tags associated with them.

What’s good about Podia is the ability to tag users, which gives you more flexibility in organizing and segmenting your students.

One Thinkific-specific feature is the ability to create groups and assign students to them. You can also add group analysts to track and report group-specific data, which can be helpful for selling courses in bulk to organizations.

User Roles

In Thinkific, you can assign one of the several predefined user roles:

• Site Admin
• Course Admin
• Group Analyst
• Revenue Partner

Podia works differently. It has no predefined user roles, and you can select specific permissions for each team member individually.

However, Podia doesn’t have an equivalent of the revenue partner role, which may be a downside for some businesses.

Third-Party Integrations

Podia has a good selection of third-party integrations for email marketing. It integrates with ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, MailChimp, Drip, Aweber, etc.

Additionally, it has a Zapier integration, which opens up even more possibilities for connecting with other tools of your choice.

Lastly, you can integrate with analytics and tracking solutions, including Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, and more.

However, the platform doesn’t have advanced integration features like public API or single sign-on (SSO).

Now, Thinkific has a similar selection of email marketing and analytics integrations. It also has the option to use Zapier for further integrations.

But, it stands out in the integration department with its app store. There are 90+ apps you can connect to your Thinkific account, including tools for marketing, automation, engagement, and more.

For instance, there’s an app called Flix that lets you turn student dashboards into a Netflix-style streaming experience. Similarly, the Shopify app enables you to sell courses on Shopify while hosting them on Thinkific.

Additionally, Thinkific provides public API access and single sign-on (SSO) for more advanced integration options.

Customer Support

Both platforms offer various customer support options, and their teams are known for being responsive and helpful.

Both platforms offer live chat support during US business hours. Podia’s live chat is available every day of the week, while Thinkific’s is only available Monday to Friday.

You can also reach out via email. Thinkific also offers phone support for customers on the Grow plan and above.

Both platforms provide comprehensive knowledge bases and resources, including video tutorials, guides, and FAQs. They have also integrated these resources within their help widgets for quick and easy access.

Moreover, Thinkific has an active user community on Facebook, where users can connect, share tips and tricks, and ask for help. Podia also has a user community built using the platform’s community feature, but it’s not very active.

Finally, Thinkific gives you access to an expert marketplace to hire specialized experts for specialized tasks.

Pricing Plans

Both platforms have flexible pricing plans. They also offer a free plan, though their utility varies.

Podia’s free plan lets you create only draft courses. It also charges a 10% transaction fee on all sales.

Thinkific’s free plan charges no transaction fees and lets you create one course, making it more suitable as a free course builder.

Apart from the free plan, Podia’s paid plans are:

• Starter ($9/mo + 8% fees) supports using a custom domain, but you can’t create published courses.
• Mover ($39/mo + 5% fees) supports unlimited courses and students and most platform features.
• Shaker ($89/mo + 0% fee) supports additional features like affiliate marketing and white labeling.

Moreover, Podia has an email marketing add-on priced based on the number of subscribers. It’s free for under 100 subscribers, $9/month for up to 500, and $25/month for up to 2,500 subscribers.

An additional add-on allows you to add team members, costing $20 per month for one member or $100 per month for 20 members.

Regarding Thinkific pricing, there are four paid plans, each supporting unlimited courses and students:

• Basic ($49/mo) covers essential course creation tools and supports a custom domain.
• Start ($99/mo) has all the important course creation tools like certificates, assignments, and live lessons.
• Grow ($199/month) supports advanced features like API access and white labeling.
• Expand ($499/month) has more admin users and is suitable for bigger businesses.

There’s also a separate add-on for branded mobile apps that costs an extra $199/month.

So, Thinkific has an edge in pricing as well. Its free plan is more valuable, and no plan has any transaction fees.

Podia is also reasonably priced and can be less expensive in specific scenarios. For example, Podia’s $39/month plan supports subscriptions versus Thinkific’s $99/month plan.

Podia vs Thinkific: Final Thoughts

In this Thinkific vs Podia guide, we covered each platform’s key features and capabilities, along with their pricing plans.

Thinkific offers a robust suite of course creation tools featuring a flexible course builder, advanced learning tools, a community feature, and free and branded mobile apps. It also includes a decent website builder, along with essential tools for selling your courses.

Thinkific’s powerful reporting tools, along with its app store, make it a more scalable platform. The pricing is also flexible and affordable.

So, Thinkific will work for all types of users. Whether you’re an individual creator or an eLearning business, the platform can cater to your needs.

On the other hand, Podia helps you deliver simpler video-based courses and memberships. It has little to offer in terms of learning tools, reporting capabilities, or third-party integrations.

The platform is user-friendly and includes all the essential features to create and sell your courses. It’s a good option for beginner creators who want a simpler option at an affordable price.

We hope you found this Podia vs Thinkific comparison guide helpful. Still have more questions? Feel free to leave them down below.

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