Best Podia Alternatives, Competitors & Similar Software in 2023
Podia describes itself as an "all-in-one platform" that lets you design courses, build communities, and host events according to your preferences. Furthermore, Podia allows you to sell online courses and digital goods. However, when building your online community Podia doesn't provide much.
When Podia first launched, it did not have a community feature. A few years ago, they introduced a community feature. Since they recently added this feature, there are few options for establishing a vibrant community and selling courses in the same place. Podia's community works exactly like Slack or a forum, allowing you to create general posts and upload videos.
Podia is known for its course-selling features, so if you want to sell courses and have a forum-like community, Podia is your solution. However, there are many great alternatives to Podia if you'd like to create your brand and sell your courses, digital goods, and memberships within your community.
Reasons to look for Podia Alternatives
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With Podia, you cannot build a branded mobile app. Mobile apps give your members easy access to your community which they can open repetitively. Moreover, you can send members notifications under an app, so they don't miss out on updates you post about webinars or live streams. On both iOS and Android, Podia doesn't offer mobile apps.
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Design and customization options are limited in Podia. Podia does not have CSS customization capabilities, and you can't create a custom course design and move it around. The simple layout might not be enough for those looking to create an online store that looks more professional.
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If you're just starting your online business, the Podia pricing plan may not be suitable for you. Access to embedded checkouts, course certificates, affiliate marketing, and dedicated customer service will cost you much more.
Top Podia Alternatives in 2023
Graphy Community Platform
Thinkific
Memberful
Teachable
LearnDash
LearnWorlds
Graphy Community Platform
Graphy Community Platform is an ultimate community platform that helps you build a robust community where you can sell your courses and host live events, webinars, and live streams. It offers the best community features through which you can moderate, manage, and monetize your community all in one place - with your brand appearance, under your custom domain. Graphy Community Platform can also generate a whitelabelled mobile app and list it on the Play Store/App Store.
Features
Pros
- Available across in multiple formats & avatars; be it a web app under your domain, a native whitelabeled app on Android and iOS, integrations within your existing app or API-based integrations.
- Auto Scaling across platforms - Scenes uses powerful auto-scaling technology to keep your community blazing fast no matter how many visitors you have across all devices. They scale as you scale.
- The only platform that enables custom CSS for top to bottom granular-level user interface customization. You can make your community look close to your app/website's UI.
- A built-in coin system lets you incentivize your community members to engage more.
- Live audio-video features for your events, webinars and live classes where all your members can get notified and RSVP.
Cons
- You will lose some members during the platform migration process.
Thinkific
Thinkific is a digital course creation platform where educators can curate online courses for their students. In addition, they offer competitive LMS features that let their customers run online courses effectively.
Thinkific Features
- Assessments & Certificates - Offers comprehensive quizzes, engagement surveys, assignments, exams and certificates.
- Progress Tracking - In-depth reporting to track student progress.
- Live Lessons - Deliver lessons via live audio/video and let your students engage with you in realtime (via Zoom integration).
Thinkific Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month to $399/month.
- The free plan includes access to all the core features of the platform.
Pros
- Easy-to-use UI that makes running courses on Thinkific all the more seamless.
- A very prompt support system responds to customer queries and problems and comes with an active Facebook group filled with Thinkific customers.
- You can design the access portal, the courses, and the payment methods all in one interface without needing third-party integrations.
Cons
- Not built for community engagement - in 2023, an LMS is not enough to successfully run courses. Thinkific lacks critical community features like gamification and incentive systems.
- Cannot manage multiple cohorts under the same roof - this may constrain you as your courses start scaling and diversifying.
- The pricing is slightly more expensive than alternatives and confusing for some.
Memberful
Memberful is a membership site platform that enables you to sell and deliver digital and physical goods, community subscriptions, and online courses. Members can easily pay and stay subscribed with its tools.
Memberful Features
- WordPress Plugin - It allows you to make private posts on your WordPress website. This is ideal for creating members-only content.
- Discord Plugin - You can create a chat forum for members-only. Memberful invites paid members to your Discord server and removes their access when their subscription expires.
- Track your performance - You can track your performance and earn new members using conversion analytics and activity metrics, Gift purchases, Group subscriptions, Coupons, Discounts, Referral programmes, Free trials, etc.
Memberful Pricing
- Starts at $25/mo.
- Free trial available.
Pros
- Memberful offers reasonable prices compared to its other competitors. It is budget friendly and a good investment in building
- With the free plan, you have access to a variety of advanced features.
- Tens of thousands of third-party applications are compatible with memberful integration.
Cons
- Besides hosting costs for your WordPress site, Memberful charges fees between 4.9%-10% on each transaction.
- Memberful works with WordPress, but you have to add extra plugins to handle SEO, which can take a great deal of work.
- In comparison to other solutions, they have fewer features to offer.
Teachable
Teachable is a popular online course platform that allows anyone to create, host and sell their pre-recorded online courses. So if you have your videos recorded & ready, you can create an online course within half an hour without being tech-savvy.
Teachable Features
- Drag and drop builder - Building courses on Teachable can get slightly confusing if you try to do it all yourself. But thankfully, if you follow their tutorials, it becomes easy.
- Quizzes - You can add multiple choice questions alongside (or after) your lectures - this helps your students assess their learning progress.
- Promotional offers - You can create coupon codes. This is a good way to run discounts and increase sales on your courses.
Teachable Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month.
- Teachable has free trial.
Pros
- Teachable is affordable even on the paid plans, making it accessible to everyone.
- Teachable is easy to start with - it best suits beginners to advanced-level users.
- You can sell a variety of add-ons alongside courses like ebooks and services and even set up workshops and conferences.
Cons
- Pay-out options are a problem for customers from outside of the USA.
- Teachable doesn't include email marketing, community management, or landing page software.
- Teachable does not offer gamification or live learning which can make your courses boring and not up to the mark, as per 2023 standards (where cohort-based courses are the norm).
LearnDash
LearnDash is a platform for creating course websites using WordPress. In addition, LearnDash offers great LMS features for course instructors, educators, and knowledge creators.
LearnDash Features
- The drag & drop course builder helps course creators create courses easily and quickly.
- It offers gamification tools like badges and certificates - Award certificates based on quiz results and course completions.
- It has a built-in notification feature that prevents your students from missing any necessary updates.
LearnDash Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $199/year.
- No free trials available.
Pros
- The video preview feature gives students a sneak peek into video lessons and makes the course more engaging.
- It offers a flexible quiz builder that makes creating QnAs easy.
- Provides gamification tools that help in engaging your members in your courses.
Cons
- Its URL structure is highly complicated, making SEO difficult. There is no way to shorten it.
- It takes some time to get used to all the new features. The learning curve is steep.
- It runs only on WordPress, which means you'll need to know all WordPress functionalities.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is a learning management system that lets course creators create online courses. Using LearnWorlds, you can create student communities and sell online courses.
LearnWorlds Features
- Offers gamification tools such as badges so that you can acknowledge efforts & promote good behaviour.
- In-built shop for highlighting the details of your courses and selling them all in one place.
- A broad range of assessment tools to help the educator & the students measure the learning progress.
LearnWorlds Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $24/month (billed annually).
- LearnWorlds offers a free 30-day trial.
Pros
- You can create student communities in LearnWorlds so that your members can share their experiences, ideas, and learnings.
- Students can interact with your course content through LearnWorlds' course builder and enjoy a blissful learning experience.
- LearnWorld's live online classes encourage your students to have interactive sessions and discussions among each other.
Cons
- LearnWorld's interface is difficult to understand, and there are no tutorials that can help you get started.
- Regarding email management and funnel-building tools, LearnWorlds does not offer as many options.
- In LearnWorld, users complain that many features do not work when courses are published, making the learning experience less seamless.
- With LearnWorlds, you need too many integrations and more management, distracting you from your business activities.
Disclaimer: To curate the pros, cons and reviews - we mine the internet for customer references regarding the said software. Some of our sources include Reddit, Product Hunt, Twitter & Quora (and sites like G2 & Capterra).
What you should do now
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If you’d like to turn your business into a community-led business, book a call with us. One of our community experts will understand your current situation, and suggest how a community can work for you.
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