Podia vs Teachable (2024): A Detailed 11 Key Feature Comparison

Today’s guide is an in-depth Podia vs Teachable comparison. You’ll get an insight into which one of these online course platforms is better for you, depending on your objectives as a course creator.

The online course business is getting bigger every day, with the global online learning market projected to be worth around 325 billion dollars by 2025.

As a course creator, you’ve probably come across several course platforms such as Udemy, Coursera, Thinkific, Teachable, and Podia, among others. Read our individual reviews on them when you can!

Our focus is on Podia and Teachable because they’ve recently been a lot of debate on which is best to use for creating membership sites and for creating a new course.

To get started, let’s analyze the most suitable platform for hosting and selling online courses, digital downloads, and selling memberships. The table below will get us started by identifying the key differences.

Podia vs Teachable: A Thorough Comparison

---

A High-Level Overview of Both Online Course Platforms

Teachable has been a powerhouse for online course creators for a long time, with over 100,000 course creators and over 23 million students on board.

With over 250,000 courses and over $500 million sold so far, Teachable is a market leader in the online course niche. It has specialized tools that are designed to help creators achieve success in the online education industry. These tools include graded quizzes, certificates of completion, content locking, course compliance features, and a lot more.

It also provides a coaching platform for professionals who’d like to offer coaching services — a recent feature.

Podia is a newer competitor which has begun to gain popularity in the market space. So far, it has over 20,000 creators.

Podia is not a typical online course platform. It was designed to be a versatile platform that allows creators to make courses, host membership sites, set up webinars, and host digital downloads behind a paywall.

Podia has recently been updated with quizzes, which allow you to test your students’ knowledge after each module.

Podia is best known as a good all-in-one platform, competing with course platforms and sales funnel builders (such as Kartra, Clickfunnels, etc), and email marketing platforms.

Distinguishing Features of Both Platforms

Teachable’s Competitive Advantages

• Teachable has a course compliance feature to compel your students to complete their courses.
• It can build excellent sales pages and a seamless checkout process
• It offers a course completion certificate.
• It has a system for collaboration between multiple instructors.
• Its gateways help you to stay free from tax troubles through their EU VAT filling and remitting system.
• Its course building system is more flexible and allows cloud imports.
• It has an IOS app to help students consume content from mobile devices.
• Teachable now has a free plan!

Podia Competitive Advantages

• Podia is more versatile and comes with memberships, webinars, and downloadable digital product features.
• It has an in-built email marketing tool.
• It allows you to bundle your memberships, products, and courses.
• It offers free, secure migration of your content from another hosting company.
• It offers simple pricing and charges no transaction fees on all plans.
• It has a smooth course player design, which allows students to play videos in full-screen mode.
• It has an active and friendly customer support team.

A quick note about the advantages above.

Teachable does allow you to sell digital products and offer memberships, like Podia.

However, the process is not as straightforward as it is on Podia. This is simply because there are no tools specifically designed to help you sell downloadable products and create & sell memberships.

With that said, these are the major competitive advantages Podia and Teachable have over each other. But it doesn’t end here.

If you’d like to go in-depth, there are several more important differences you may need to know. Let’s discuss them below.

User Interface

Both platforms boast highly intuitive interfaces.

With Podia, its main features are found neatly arranged on the dashboard once you log in.

From your dashboard, you get the option to do the following:

• Set up a membership.
• Set up an online course.
• Set up a digital download.

Podia’s User Interface uses a top menu navigation bar that looks minimalistic and efficient.

Within your home screen, other tools you can find include editor, products, memberships, emails, customers, sales, settings, etc.

In general, these tools are easily discoverable. This way, you can do everything from editing your storefront to accessing your affiliate portal, all with just a few clicks.

Let’s take a look at Teachable.

Teachable’s interface looks a bit more detailed. Its side navigation bar enables it to fill up more screen spaces with menus. Each menu is shown in simple language so that users won’t get intimidated.

The sidebar includes menus that allow you to manage users, sales, emails, etc.

Each menu on the sidebar has more menus nested into it. For example, the dashboard menu shows you options that allow you to create a course, customize its look and feel, set up your custom domain name, etc.

In general, it is pretty straightforward to navigate.

Winner: Podia wins this one by a narrow margin. This was a hard choice because both platforms have superb, unintimidating interfaces. However, Podia’s UI appears to have a slight edge for beginners, but we haven’t taken an official poll.

Course Creation

Creating courses on these platforms is achieved by using a tool generally referred to as a course builder or website builder.

Course builders allow you to upload your course material and create a structure for them.

Podia and Teachable have powerful course builders that are easy to use and accelerate setting up online courses. Both support bulk upload and allow you to reorder your course content through a drag and drop feature.

Another similarity they both share is the drip course content feature, which regulates how your students access your course sections. Both course builders offer email notifications to alert students of newly unlocked sections.

In general, all the features in Podia’s course builder are present in Teachable’s course builder. However, Teachable takes it a step higher in the following ways:

• Availability of a course compliance mechanism that enforces lecture and quiz completion.
• Course Completion Certifications: Ownership of a certification system that rewards students with custom-coded certificates upon completion of their courses.
• Provision of lecture and quiz completion report, leaderboards, video watch time, etc
• Ability to show the progress of course completion by individual students.
• Support for cloud importing.
• Ability to select multiple files for deletion, status updates, etc.
• Support for multiple content types within each lesson.

Winner: Teachable wins this by far. Podia may come up with updates to close this gap.

Membership

Podia comes with a dedicated membership functionality that allows you to create membership sites with fewer clicks.

However, the membership feature is only available with the Shaker subscription.

As for Teachable, you cannot access this feature with one click because there is no dedicated tool for it.

However, if you want to use Teachable to run a Membership site, you can set up a subscription pricing plan that gives your students access to your content as long as they pay their subscription fee.

The process is explained further in this guide.

On Podia, however, the steps are more straightforward. Once you click on Membership, you’ll be taken to a new window. Here you can create different payment plans with different pricing. You can also activate a free plan if you want to.

 Winner: Podia wins this one decisively. It has a dedicated, well-organized tool for memberships. Teachable can host a membership site with slight improvisations, but it won’t be as easy as it is with Podia.

Digital Products

When it comes to creating and marketing digital downloads, both Teachable and Podia can be used for that.

However, we make our judgment based on how easy it is to do this on either of these platforms.

As already established, Podia is an all-in-one platform that offers other tools apart from the course builder. With Podia, you can also sell digital courses.

This is made possible by a single feature, as shown in this screenshot.

Podia allows you to create separate landing pages for each of your products. Also, it has an upsell feature that enables you to sell even more products to your subscribers. All these can be accessed on both Mover and Shaker subscriptions.

Teachable, on the other hand, does allow you to sell digital products. However, it does not have a dedicated tool for that either.

This is simply because it’s chiefly meant for selling courses, so most technical efforts were directed at making the platform perfect for that specific purpose.

From the screenshot, you can’t see a Digital Products tool anywhere on its home screen.

However, to sell digital downloads on Teachable, there are ‘hacks’ content creators utilize to achieve that. One such hack is to use the course builder feature, upload your products (e-books, audio files, etc.,) and make them downloadable.

That way, anyone who pays can have access to the e-products in downloadable forms. Here’s a detailed breakdown of how it’s done.

Another way to get around selling online products on Teachable is to use online shopping cart integrations like Samcart or Thrivecart.

Winner: Podia wins this Podia vs Teachable round again.  This is just because it’s far easier and less time-consuming to sell digital products on the platform. With Teachable, you’d need to improvise or even get third-party app integrations.

Customization

In general, I think both platforms are only average in with customization features. They offer you a level of customizability, which allows you to build web pages for your courses.

Neither of these platforms gives you extra theme customization options. Every web page built on these platforms comes with default templates that you’re allowed to customize.

With that said, which one offers a better level of customizability?

With Teachable, you can customize your text fonts, logos, and colors of various elements. It comes with pre-built sections that you can add to your pages with a single click.

Besides customizing your font, Teachable also allows you to add images between texts, set text alignments, etc., while creating your sales page, checkout page, thank you page, and custom page.

Teachable also comes with extra tools such as Liquid, Custom CSS, and Power Editor. These tools give you additional flexibility while designing your pages. However, you’d have to be knowledgeable in coding to be able to use these tools.

Podia is very similar to Teachable in terms of flexibility. It allows you to customize crucial elements of your storefront, sales page, thank you page, etc.

Unlike Teachable, Podia adopts the WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) concept. This allows you to know what your page will resemble even while building it.

Podia’s page builder has more pre-built sections for an author bio, testimonials, FAQs, and more. However, your ability to customize these is quite limited.

Winner: Teachable wins this bout narrowly as it offers more flexibility than Podia. However, in general, they’re both average.

Payment Processor Integrations

Payment processors are your means of getting paid for your hard work.

Both Podia and Teachable have various options for payment processing.

Teachable processes payments for users based in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom using Teachable Payment. This gateway processes payment using Stripe Express. This way, eligible users can receive payouts daily, weekly, monthly, or even based on custom schedules.

Those living outside of the US, Canada, or the UK can process payments through the Monthly Payment Gateway. Transactions made on this gateway are processed using Teachable’s Stripe account. Consequently, creators using this gateway can only access their payment every 30 days through PayPal.

Students from across the world can pay in over 130 currencies for the same product on Teachable. Also, Teachable’s BackOffice is quite useful for creators as it handles your taxes as well as affiliates and author payouts. This comes at a 2% fee per transaction.

Podia, on the other hand, offers a more straightforward approach. Payments are processed using Stripe and Paypal.

Since Podia doesn’t hold or directly collect your payments, you’d typically receive your money directly to your bank account within two business days. Students on Podia can also pay in multiple currencies, but this is only on-site level. Regardless, it doesn’t necessarily affect conversions.

Podia doesn’t support PayPal for membership plans due to some API complications with PayPal. But you can run this perfectly with Stripe.

Winner: I will say that this bout is open-ended. For users based in the US, Canada, or the UK, Teachable wins. For users in other countries, Podia wins.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is an important feature because you need to stay in touch with your students and customers.

Podia and Teachable offer these features but in different ways.

Teachable’s email marketing features are pretty basic but do the job when it comes to keeping in touch with your students.

You can also send emails to specific groups within your list under the Users> Students segment of your account.

Teachable offers you insights into how your emails have been performing through its History module.

One missing Teachable feature is the “drip email,” which allows you to send a series of emails to your students or leads over time.

Podia, on the flip side, comes with two email marketing functionalities, namely:

• Drip Campaigns
• One-off Newsletter

As already stated, drip campaigns are used to send (or drip) a series of emails to your students and prospects over time.

You can choose to offer a free mini-course to your prospects as part of your drip campaign. That way, you can run them through a marketing sequence to eventually get them to pay for your main course.

Winner: Podia wins this category simply because it has a drip campaign feature, which gives its users options on how they want to communicate with their students and how they’ll consume course material.

Third-Party Integrations

From email service providers to analytics, both platforms allow you to integrate with several third-party apps to help make things easier.

Teachable comes with the following native integrations:

• Mailchimp
• Segment
• ConvertKit
• Zapier
• SumoMe
• Google Analytics

Apart from its very robust Zapier integration, Teachable also has powerful webhooks functionality that can help you to integrate other third-party apps.

Podia, on the other hand, comes with a lot more native integrations. These include:

• MailChimp
• ConvertKit
• GetResponse
• ActiveCampaign
• Zapier, and more.

Thankfully for Podia, there’s Zapier. It allows you to integrate with almost any third-party app of your choice.

With that said, Teachable’s Zapier is more robust and flexible. For instance, you can set up triggers for events like Course completion, subscription canceled, new enrollment, etc.

 These options are not available with Podia’s Zapier integration.

Winner: Teachable wins this because it has superior Zapier and webhook functionalities.

Affiliate Management

Both Teachable and Podia allow you to run affiliate programs for your online course business. You can also have an affiliate program for your separate products and memberships.

They’re pretty similar in functionality. For example, both allow you to set up course-specific affiliate programs. You can also convert your students to affiliates with a few clicks on both platforms, set up payment schedules, and more.

The affiliate tool is available on Teachable’s Pro plan (which costs $99 per month) and its Business Plan (which costs $249 per month). On Podia, it is only available on its Shaker plan, which costs $79 per month.

Teachable’s affiliate cookies are designed to last as long as you want. However, with Podia affiliate links, cookies only last for 15 days.

Winner: Teachable wins this bout because of its customizable cookie duration. This allows you to track prospects for a longer time — which is huge in affiliate marketing.

Customer Support

Both Podia and Teachable offer customer support at different levels.

Teachable offers email support on their Basic plan while offering live chat support features on Teachable’s Professional plan and other paid plans.

Podia offers live chat support and email support on all their plans.

As some Podia reviews have pointed out, Podia’s support team has proven to be considerably faster and friendlier. Also, Podia’s live chat team is available seven days a week, while Teachable’s live chat team is available five days a week.

Both platforms have rich knowledge bases where you can find answers to almost any questions and learn how to use the platforms at your own pace.

Podia’s support team offers free migration for new creators. For example, if you use another course platform and want to move to Podia, they’ll migrate your course content to their platform for free.

Teachable boasts of a very active Facebook community where creators can get help from both the support team and other Teachable users.

Winner: Podia wins this category because of its very responsive and friendly customer support team.

Podia vs Teachable Pricing Comparison

Let’s take a look at Podia’s pricing vs. Teachable.

Podia’s Mover plan gives you access to several features except for memberships, Zoom integration, blog, affiliate marketing, and third-party code snippet. To use all its features without these limitations, you’d need to upgrade to its Shaker plan.

Podia comes with a 14-day free trial and does not charge any transaction fees. Also, you get instant payouts on both payment plans. Read our Podia pricing plan breakdown here.

Teachable pricing plans are a bit different.

First, Teachable used to have a free plan. But it recently released an update on a now-deleted page, stating that its free plan was no longer available.

Instead, it now has a 14-day free trial for its Pro plan. Once you register a new account, you’d be automatically placed on Teachable’s Pro plan’s 14-day free trial.

They do not require your credit card details during the trial. However, it’s weird that you won’t be able to publish your school or sell your products until you pay for one of the Teachable pricing plans.

Editor Update: In 2021, Teachable has brought back their Free Plan!

Teachable’s Basic plan gives you access to many features, but a 5% transaction fee will be attached. Also, you’ll only get two admin-level users and basic customer support.

Along with several more advanced features, Teachable’s Pro and Business plans offer 5 and 20 admin-level users, respectively, and charge no transaction fees.

Winner: Podia wins this because its starting price is lower than Teachable’s, and its free trial gives you a lot of wiggle room to try all its features. Also, Podia charges zero transaction fee for sales made and offers responsive support on all plans.

Podia vs Teachable – Which One Should You Choose?

As online creation platforms, both Teachable and Podia offer plenty of useful features, and they offer reasonable pricing plans too.

However, having seen their strengths and weaknesses, which one of these online platforms should you choose?

We’ll keep it simple.

Choose Teachable if…

You’re a full-time creator who wants to focus on creating online courses.

Teachable is more reputable in the online school arena. They have more advanced tools to create better experiences for course creators and students. And Teachable has advanced marketing tools that help you sell online courses.

Choose Podia if…

You want to create more than just online courses. A lot of Podia users invested in the platform because they were interested in making money by selling from a digital storefront website and/or from membership content.

Podia is great if you’re looking for paid membership features. Being able to create membership sites on this platform easily is one of its highlight features.

Podia is a flexible, all-in-one platform with an integrated email marketing tool that lets you sell more than just courses.

Keep in mind that as far as course creation goes, Podia has some limitations compared to Teachable. However, if you’re in need of the basics for online courses, Podia does a fine job.

Podia Vs Teachable Frequently Asked Questions

Do both platforms offer migration services?

No. Podia offers free migration for both of its pricing plans when you choose to pay annually. Teachable doesn’t provide such services.

Do these platforms integrate well with popular autoresponders?

Podia integrates natively with several popular autoresponders, including MailChimp, ConvertKit, Drip, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, and MailerLite.

Teachable, on the other hand, integrates natively only with MailChimp and ConvertKit. But their Zapier and webhooks functionalities are very powerful and allow you to integrate third-party auto-responder tools effectively.

Can I sell my digital products on both platforms?

Yes. You can sell digital-type products on both platforms. More details about this have been discussed above.

Are there any transaction fees involved with these platforms?

Teachable charges 5% transaction fees on its Basic plan. Other plans have no transaction fees. Podia charges zero transaction fees on all plans.

What makes Teachable unique?

Teachable has features such as course compliance, course completion certificates, lecture and quiz completion reports, leaderboards, video watch time, etc. These features make it a more robust platform for course creators.

What makes Podia unique?

Podia offers free migration for users joining from other platforms. Also, it offers a better experience for users who run membership and digital product platforms.

Does Podia Have an App?

Podia doesn’t have an app yet. Teachable, however, has an IOS app.

Conclusion

With their strengths and weaknesses analyzed, which one would you go for?

What type of creator are you? Are you solely focused on course creation, or do you like to dabble in other areas like digital products and memberships?

Depending on your answers, we hope that with our Podia vs Teachable comparison, you can easily determine which platform works best for you.

Let us know what you think. Is there anything we missed? We’d be happy to know that as well.

Cheers!

More In-Depth Comparisons:

• Podia Vs Kajabi
• Podia Vs Thinkific
• Teachable Vs Udemy
• Teachable Vs Kajabi
• Teachable Vs Thinkific
• Teachable Vs SamCart Courses App