If you’re wondering which online course platform will come on top in a Podia vs Teachable comparison, this article has all the answers for you.
Podia and Teachable have many similarities, so course creators often find it challenging to choose one over the other.
They’re both world-class products.
But they’re not identical, and they’re not perfect for everyone.
In this detailed article, we’ll compare the key strengths and weaknesses of Podia and Teachable and help you choose the right course platform for your business.
Let’s dive in.
Quick Verdict | The Best Online Course Platform Is….
Can’t read the complete comparison right now? Here’s my quick verdict for you.
If you’re a complete beginner, have budget limitations, or want a course platform that offers all the core e-learning and marketing features without being too extravagant, Podia is the perfect choice for you.
If budget is not your primary concern, and you’re looking for a scalable and customizable online course platform that offers a classic learning experience to your students along with basic marketing and sales features, there’s no better choice than Teachable.
Podia vs Teachable – The Main Differences
Podia and Teachable have many similarities that we will discuss later in this article. But first, let’s analyze their fundamental differences.
| Podia | Teachable |
| Podia is a popular online course platform with limited course creation features but several advanced marketing capabilities. | Charges a 5% transaction fee in the basic plan |
| Allows unlimited email subscribers, up to 5K emails per day in its basic plan, and 15K emails per day in the advanced plan. | Offers basic email marketing notifications but requires integration with other email platforms for advanced marketing and automation. |
| Charges for additional users | Provides 2 users in the basic plan and 5 users in its Pro plan |
| 5% transaction fees on the basic plan | Charges 5% transaction fee in the basic plan |
| Its page builder comes with limited customization and design options. | Offers more flexibility and customization. |
| No quizzes or student certificates | Different quizzes and certificates for students. |
| Doesn’t have a marketplace | Offers a course marketplace to publicly buy and sell courses. |
| Supports Stripe and PayPal for payments (with several limitations) | Offers many different payment services |
Podia vs Teachable – An Overview
Podia and Teachable are among the best online course platforms for beginners and mid-level course creators.
Let’s get an overview of what they offer.
What Is Podia?
Podia is a specialized online course platform designed to help knowledge entrepreneurs sell online courses, digital products, and memberships without any coding knowledge.
It is among the most popular e-learning platforms for beginners and has helped 50K+ users earn millions of dollars since its inception in 2014.
Podia comes with a host of features for building, marketing, and selling online courses. Unlike most other course platforms in this category, Podia offers some pretty impressive email marketing, automation, and webinar hosting capabilities.
Here are the core features you get with Podia.
- Online courses, membership sites, digital downloads.
- Recurring, installments, and one-time payments
- Product bundles and upsells
- Drag & drop website and landing page builder.
- Support for video, audio, PDF, and text content
- Video and webinar hosting
- Quizzes and additional downloadable files in lessons
- Embeddable course widget with a Buy Now button
- Email marketing, sales funnels, and automation
- 24/7 customer support
Podia’s strengths are simplicity and ease of use. Despite offering an impressive feature range, its course creation features are not as sophisticated as some of the other course platforms.
On the other hand, it comes with marketing features that many of its competitors don’t offer.
What Is Teachable?
Teachable is a world-class online course platform that has helped 100K+ entrepreneurs make more than $500 million since 2015.
It is regarded as one of the best online course platforms for beginners, mid-level, and even advanced course sellers.
Its biggest strengths are its course creation, website building, and student management features. It has an intuitive design interface that enables completely non-technical users with no coding skills to create professional-grade online courses.
Here are some of the core features you get with Teachable.
- Unlimited courses, students, and content storage.
- Responsive and fully customizable course website
- Drag & drop sales page editor
- Wide range of third-party app integrations
- Webinar integration
- Quizzes and course completion certificates
- Accept payments in 130+ currencies
- Affiliate management system
- Coupons
- Multiple payment options (recurring, bundles, one-time, installments)
- Marketplace for publicly listing and selling online courses.
Teachable gives you everything a course creator needs. However, it lacks some of the marketing features that Podia offers.
Podia vs Teachable – Comparing Two Of The Best Online Course Platforms
Let’s now compare Podia and Teachable in more detail and try to find a winner.
Here are the aspects of these products we’ll compare.
- Pricing And Features
- Course Creation
- Student Experience
- Course Website Builder
- Course Marketing
- Teacher Features
- Payment Management
1. Pricing, Free Trial, And Features
Your course platform’s subscription fee and payment charges have a significant impact on your overall profitability.
Let’s see how much Podia and Teachable charge you for selling courses.
Teachable Pricing and Free Trial
Teachable offers three premium plans for course creators at different stages of their careers. Each plan comes with a 14-day trial (no credit card needed).
Also, Teachable doesn’t offer a free plan.
Let’s start by evaluating the standard features included in all plans.
As you can see, you get unlimited video and content hosting, unlimited students, and unlimited courses with every Teachable plan.
Plus, every plan comes with basic quizzes, payment processing features, and an embedded VAT calculator for EU customers.
This is an impressive start.
Let’s see what the individual plans offer.
For complete beginners, the Basic plan starts at $39/month (billed annually) and offers 5 published products of courses, coaching and downloads, and custom domains.
But there’s a 5% transaction fee on top of the payment processing fee on every sale.
The Pro plan is designed for the more professional course creators looking to grow their business. It costs $119/month (billed annually) and there are no transaction fees in this plan.
You also get graded quizzes, advanced analytics, course certificates, and an unbranded site for up to 5 admin-level users.
The Pro+ plan is for fast-growing businesses and offers more products, and custom user roles.
Teachable’s Business plan offers the best of its features and gives you everything to scale your e-learning business to greater heights.
It costs $499/month (billed annually) and offers advanced theme customization, bulk enrollments, priority support, and various other advanced features.
In my opinion, Teachable’s premium plans are quite affordable, especially when you consider the features on offer if you’re a complete beginner or even a Pro plan user looking for faster growth.
Podia Pricing and Free Trial
Podia offers two different paid plans that each come with a 30-day trial (no credit card needed). There is no free plan.
Here’s what you get with each Podia plan.
Like Teachable, Podia charges 5% transaction fees on its basic (Mover) plan.
Priced at $39/month ($33/month if you do an annual plan), the Mover plan offers unlimited students, courses, and digital downloads. But there’s no membership site feature in this plan.
You also get much more advanced email marketing features than Teachable, free site migrations, a site builder, and custom domain support.
The Shaker plan, designed for mid-level sellers, costs $89/month ($75/month paid annually). It offers everything in the Mover plan plus membership site support, an affiliate management system, embeddable buy-now widgets, and up to 15K emails per month.
It offers dedicated support, coaching calls, and community support, along with an unbranded site and up to 50K emails per month.
Podia clearly offers much more value for money than Teachable, mainly because of its marketing features, at a significantly lower price.
Winner: Podia
2. Course Creation
Course creation features are the backbone of an online course platform. Let’s see what kind of courses you can create with Podia and Teachable.
Teachable
Course creation is among Teachable’s main strengths. It offers a robust online course creator with an intuitive user interface that’s easy to use even for complete beginners and non-technical users.
All the main options are listed in the course editor, where you can define the structure of your courses, configure their settings, and upload the content to individual lessons.
You can start creating your first
course from your account dashboard.
Give your course a title, add a description for your students, choose an author from your approved author list, and create the course.
Every course is made up of modules, and every module has individual lessons.
You get various content blocks like text, quiz, custom code, or upsells that you can drag and drop in your lesson. If you choose “files,” you can add videos, PDFs, slideshows, and other file types to your lessons.
Apart from videos, PDFs, and other file types that Teachable supports, you can add files as downloadable attachments to every lesson.
Your course’s admin page gives you branding options and settings for course delivery. For example, you can enable drip courses and enforce lecture order to ensure that students view your content in the correct sequence.
Similarly, you can force students to watch a lesson till the end before unlocking the next lesson or enable mandatory quizzes after a lesson.
You also have the option to preview different course pages from your admin area or delete a course if you want.
Overall, Teachable’s course creation options give you everything you need to create engaging course content and organize it in any way you want.
Podia
Podia’s course creator comes with a range of options to create online courses, digital downloads, product bundles, and membership sites.
To kick off the course creation process, sign in to your account and click “Create product” in your main dashboard.
Podia’s online course creator is simple but gives you all the necessary options to upload your content and manage the visibility and accessibility of your course.
Each course consists of sections (modules) and lessons.
In every lesson, you have the option to upload video, audio, PDF, or text content.
You can also add quizzes and additional links for students to explore.
You can configure drip courses in the availability section, presell your content, add upsells, or sell it as a bundle. You can also get instant previews of your course page as a customer or visitor.
However, I couldn’t find the option to enforce video watching or course sequences like Teachable.
While the course creators in both Podia vs Teachable are quite similar, Teachable gets my vote because of more admin options and better user interface.
Winner: Teachable
4. Video & Webinar Hosting
Webinars play a critical role in building your subscriber base, gathering leads, and generating more sales. Let’s see what webinar features Podia and Teachable offer.
Teachable
Teachable offers unlimited video hosting with Wistia in MP4, MOV, and AVI formats. However, there’s a 2GB file size limit which means you can’t upload HD videos longer than a few minutes.
But you can use YouTube and several other video players to host longer videos in HD and embed them to your course lessons using the custom code block in the course creator.
The same goes for webinars.
You can host webinars on YouTube Live or Zoom HD and embed them in your course lessons using the code widget.
Not ideal, but it still works.
Podia
Podia also offers unlimited video hosting via Wistia and doesn’t have a file size limit. However, it encourages users to limit video size to under 1GB for best results.
You can also host videos on YouTube or any other popular video streaming site and embed them on your course lesson.
Podia’s webinar features are far superior to Teachable.
It supports YouTube Live in the Mover plan and Zoom HD for the higher-tier plans. You can host your webinars on these sites and then control how your audience accesses them from Podia.
You can presell webinars, schedule them, or offer them as lead magnets for free. You can also provide webinar replays as separate products, making Podia an excellent platform for hosting virtual summits.
Winner: Podia
5. Course Website Builder
Your website is the central branding and selling platform for your online course.
Let’s see what website-building features Podia and Teachable offer.
Teachable
Teachable comes with an intuitive drag & drop website building to help you create beautiful responsive websites without any design or coding skills.
It gives you complete control over your site’s appearance and allows you to customize everything according to your brand preferences.
Here’s an example of a responsive Teachable site that neatly lists all the courses by a creator.
If you’re looking for more examples, head over to Teachable’s marketplace to find hundreds of different courses.
You can use the website builder to create your site’s homepage, course pages, landing pages, and other standard pages such as check out and thank you pages.
Teachable allows you to configure the structure of your site from the admin section and create as many pages as you want.
Teachable comes with a standard design template that is fully customizable in any way you want. Its site builder gives you various page blocks that you can drop in your template and edit as you wish.
Within each page block, you get detailed settings to ensure that your site appears precisely the way you want.
Your changes are saved in real-time, so you don’t have to worry about losing your design in case of a system failure.
Overall, Teachable’s site builder gives you all the options you need to create an impactful website for your online course.
Podia
Podia also comes with a drag & drop page builder to create a fully responsive website for your online course.
You can use it for setting up your site’s homepage, internal pages, landing pages, and other standard course pages.
Here’s an example of a site created with Podia.
However, Podia’s site builder offers limited customization options.
You can use different page blocks to create new sections, add images, testimonials, or text sections. But you can’t edit every element of the page the way you want.
You preview your site on various devices to ensure it appears exactly the way you want.
But if you had to make a choice, I’d go for Techable’s site builder over Podia because of its greater customization and better user experience.
Winner: Teachable
6. Course Marketing
The success or failure of your online course heavily depends on your marketing strategy.
Let’s see what marketing features Podi and Teachable offer.
Teachable
Marketing and sales features are not Teachable’s main strengths. Still, it offers marketing features such as landing pages, A/B testing capabilities, and basic email marketing notifications to engage students.
To drive more sales, you can add different upsells to your courses and create coupons to encourage conversions. You can also use it to set up opt-in forms on your site and landing pages to collect leads.
You can also host your courses on a custom domain for better branding and start a blog with your course website to leverage content marketing.
However, it doesn’t offer any advanced email marketing, automation, or sales funnels in any plans.
Podia
Podia offers surprisingly helpful marketing and sales features to accelerate your course sales and help you grow faster.
It comes with a complete email marketing solution to create email broadcasts and automated campaigns.
It offers unlimited email subscribers in all plans and up to 5K emails per month in the Mover plan. You can send up to 50K emails per month in the advanced plans, which is very impressive when you compare it with other online course platforms.
You can trigger automated email campaigns on different entry and exit conditions.
Podia’s email interface is immaculate and intuitive, using which you can easily add new emails to your campaigns.
After developing email campaigns, you can use Podia’s landing pages to collect leads via opt-in forms.
One of my favorite marketing features in Podia is the embeddable product widget with a Buy-Now button.
You can embed these widgets on your site or create selling links for your content marketing campaigns. This feature allows your buyers to purchase courses without visiting your course website.
You can also create product coupons and add upsells to your offers to encourage more sales.
Live messaging is another brilliant marketing feature in Podia. It allows you to interact with your audience through live chat, understand their needs, answer their queries, resolve their concerns and convert them into customers on the spot.
Overall, Podia offers much superior marketing capabilities than Teachable.
Winner: Podia
7. Student Experience
The student experience of your courses has a considerable impact on their completion and engagement rates.
Let’s see how Podia and Teachable stack up.
Teachable
Teachable student experience is among the best in the industry. Its clean interface gives a modern and minimalistic look but still provides a traditional classroom environment to your students, which keeps them engaged all the way.
Students can view the course curriculum and the individual lessons in them. You also have the option to enable lesson previews for prospects who want to get a feel of what your course offers.
The individual lesson page uses a distraction-free design that keeps the students focused on the course content.
Every lessons page comes with introductory text at the top, the main content in the middle, and any supporting files at the bottom. Plus, you can also enable comments and discussions on every lesson.
Your students can view their overall progress on the top left of their screen in the progress bar.
Podia
Podia’s student experience is quite similar to Teachable.
It lists your course curriculum the same way on your course pages, where the students can get an overview of your course.
The individual lessons pages are also cleanly designed and give the center stage to your content (video, audio, or text).
However, there’s no progress bar like Teachable, which would’ve been nice to have.
Winner: Teachable
9. Teacher Features
What features do you get to engage, motivate, grade, and evaluate your students in Podia and Teachable? Let’s find out.
Teachable
Teachable allows you to hold quizzes and graded multiple-choice questions with every lesson.
You can also create course completion certificates using one of Teachable’s customizable templates.
You can also analyze student performance with in-depth analytics that show your students are interacting with your course.
However, Teachable doesn’t offer native survey features, but you can integrate it with Google Forms to collect responses.
Podia
To my surprise, Podia doesn’t offer surveys, course certificates, or graded assignments.
You also can’t create open-ended quizzes.
So what exactly can you do? Multiple choice questions, that’s it.
For any additional features, you’d need to use third-party apps.
Winner: Teachable
10. Payment Management
How will your students pay for your courses, and how will you get paid for your hard work?
Let’s see what payment options Podia and Teachable offer
Teachable
Students can purchase your Teachable courses using credit/debit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and PayPal. You can use various payment methods like full payments, installments, and recurring payments.
To get paid yourself, you can enable Teachable payment if you’re in an eligible country to get paid daily, weekly, or monthly.
For creators outside the eligible countries, PayPal is the default option for payment collection.
Podia
For recurring payments and installments, Podia only supports Stripe payments via credit card. But you can use PayPal for full payment.
To get paid for your courses, you can use Stripe or PayPal.
Winner: Teachable
Podia vs Teachable – Pros and Cons
Before reaching a final verdict, let’s quickly analyze the main strengths and weaknesses of both Podia and Teachable.
Podia Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Intuitive platform designed for beginners | Limited website and landing page creation features |
| Beginner-friendly pricing plans | The site builder offers little customization |
| Impressive course creation features | No surveys or certificates |
| Excellent marketing features like email marketing and embeddable widgets | No free plan |
| Robust webinar hosting capabilities |
Teachable Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons | |||
| Excellent user experience and design | Minimal marketing features | |||
| World-class course creation features | No free plan | |||
| Drag & drop website builder with advanced customization | No email marketing or automation | |||
| Excellent student experience | No surveys | |||
| Graded quizzes and course completion certificates | Only one website theme | |||
| Integrates with all popular email marketing tools and CRMs | ||||
| Affordable pricing plans |
Podia vs Teachable Verdict – Which Online Course Platform Is Right For You?
As you’ve seen in this detailed comparison, both Podia and Teachable are very impressive online course platforms.
You won’t regret choosing any one of them.
However, based on their unique strengths, here’s my recommendation.
If you’re a complete beginner looking for a decent online course platform with excellent marketing features, go for Podia.
But if you’re already using an email marketing tool and require an online course platform that offers an excellent student experience, advanced teacher features, and a world-class site builder with more payment options, choose Teachable.
Since both these products offer free trials, I’d recommend signing up and playing with their features for a few days before making the final call. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments section.
See also:
- Podia Review – A Top All-in-One Online Course Platform
- Teachable Review – One of the Best Platforms for New Course Creators
Jeff Cobb, Founder of Learning Revolution
Jeff Cobb is an expert in online education and the business of adult lifelong learning. Over the past 20+ years he has built a thriving career based on that expertise – as an entrepreneur, a consultant, an author, and a speaker. Learning Revolution is a place where Jeff curates tips, insights, and resources to help you build a thriving expertise-based business. Learn more about Jeff Cobb here.
Table of Contents
