Let’s compare Podia vs Kajabi based on their features, pros and cons, and key differences.
By Joanna Taylor • Updated 31 May 2024
Podia vs Kajabi will continuously pop up as two popular options if you're on the lookout for reliable course creation tools that are easy to use.
They’re both solid options for listing your digital products, but they do have their differences (some more extreme than others), which you’ll want to know about before making your pick.
We've put both Podia vs Kajabi to the test and created a guide detailing their strengths, weaknesses, and where they stand apart.
Feature | Podia | Kajabi |
---|---|---|
Pricing Model | Comes with free and inexpensive paid plans, but includes added transaction fees | Kajabi provides fairly expensive, tiered pricing plans. It doesn't have any added transaction fees. |
Community Feature | Creators can set up forums to interact with their audience. | Kajabi also provides a community feature similiar to Podia’s. |
Email Marketing | Podia's email marketing tools are basic, allowing creators to send one-off broadcast emails or set up campaigns. | Comes with a more sophisticated email marketing tool. Creators can send one-time broadcasts or set up automated sequences based on triggers. |
Course Engagement Tools | Podia allows creators to organize their courses into sections and lessons, offer quizzes (multiple-choice only), and drip content gradually. It lacks advanced assessment options. | Kajabi divides up courses in categories, sub-categories, and parts. Comes with different assessment options (multiple-choice and essay-based), and drip content functionality. |
Mobile App | Does not offer a native mobile app | Provides mobile apps for both iOS and Android platforms |
Physical Products Facility | Supports the sale of physical products in small quantities | Does not offer native support for selling physical products. |
Funnel Builder | Does not include a dedicated funnel builder tool. | Provides a funnel builder feature with pre-made templates optimized for various goals |
This section will offer a comprehensive overview of the primary features of both Podia and Kajabi. We'll explore what each platform offers straight out of the box and what you can expect going in.
Podia is an online platform designed to facilitate creators in easily listing and selling their courses and other digital downloads.
The idea is to let the platform take care of the technicalities (website hosting, payment processing, content delivery, etc). So at the end of the day, creators can focus on actually creating their content and selling it.
Plus, you also save quite a bit on fees by not having to hire a web developer to set up a site for you from the ground up.
But a good learning management software (LMS) does more than just provide a content delivery platform, let's look at what Podia offers.
Being primarily an online course creation platform, the learning management interface on Podia is understandably one of the tool's main highlights.
You have the option to organize your course structure into Sections and Lessons.
Sections are essentially segments of your course dedicated to specific broad topics. Within each Section, you'll have multiple lessons that go more in detail on the topic.
Lessons can come in different formats: videos, text, or documents. Plus, you can offer 1-1 coaching sessions alongside your courses. Learners just need to book a slot through a calendar of your choice.
You also have the option to add multiple chouice styled quizzes to your course sections to keep learners engaged.
Another clever tactic to keep your audience interested is to drip your course content.
This basically means releasing your different course sections gradually over a set period, which helps learners stay focused and prevents them from feeling overwhelmed.
For example, if you set a three-day delay, the section will become available to learners three days after they make the purchase. You can do this directly from the course builder while uploading your lessons.
As with any other online business, you will need a proper website, or at the very least a landing page, before you can actually start selling online courses.
Podia takes care of many of the basic tasks, and the website builder itself is pretty user-friendly. There is some getting used to, but you don't have to be an expert to get started.
It's not exactly a drag-and-drop builder, but it works similarly.
All the design elements are labeled and easy to spot, and you can keep track of your site structure, pages, products, and other aspects of your site through the menu to the left of your screen.
They offer a range of pre-built blocks like testimonials, bios, email forms, text blocks, image blocks, and FAQs. Just click on the plus icon on a page to add your desired section.
Moving around sections on a page is as easy as clicking the up-down arrows that appear when you hover your mouse over a block, so you don't have to worry about redoing everything from scratch if you want to change the layout.
To tweak the color scheme and other visuals to match your style, head over to the "Design" tab on the top banner. Here you can tinker with the primary colors, fonts, buttons, and more for your site.
It's convenient, easy to get used to, and offers just the right amount of customization options so that the average novice user can design great landing pages without feeling out of depth.
Your online courses aren't living up to their potential if you can't use them to attract your leads to subscribe to a newsletter, keep them posted on your other projects, or shoot out broadcast emails to inform them about any important updates.
Podia’s native email marketing tool allows you to take care of all of these.
When getting started, you can either send out one-off broadcast emails or create detailed trigger-based campaigns.
When sending broadcasts, you've got a ton of flexibility in how you segment your audience. You can tag them with specific labels, filter based on their purchases, their spending habits, and plenty more.
Or if you’re working with campaigns, you also have a variety of entrance conditions to choose from, based on user actions like product sign-up or joining a community.
Similarly, there's a whole range of exit conditions too, depending on your goal for the campaign.
You have quite a few customization options when you actually get to designing your emails. You get complete control over the colors, fonts, images, and buttons you add to your email.
Or if you’d rather save yourself the hassle, you can go with one of their pre-built templates instead.
The community feature on Podia allows you to have a native forum to interact with your audience.
You can add various messaging groups to your community, each based on a specific topic – a lot like Discord or Slack.
Create as many topics as you want and either keep it open to all members or create specific segments of your audience who get access to a specific topic.
You've got options with community features on Podia: go for a free plan, a paid one, or even both.
Since Podia allows you to add products to communities, you could theoretically offer better incentives to paid members while still having a free space for others to mingle.
And if you have several different plans for your course, you could also add access to your community as a bonus to boost sales.
It boils down to how clever you can be with your incentives to make paid communities something worth considering for your audience.
Like Podia, Kajabi is also primarily an online course platform, but with a bigger emphasis on marketing features - so you can have help actually selling courses after creating them.
Its suite of features includes customizable website building, email marketing, membership sites, course hosting, and more. Pretty much everything Podia has to offer, but with an extra few added features on top.
You get a few different options when starting with your course on Kajbai. You can begin with a mini course, which is essentially a condensed version of the regular course, or opt for a regular online course.
Like in Podia, you can divide the content into various hierarchical sections (namely modules, sub-modules, and lessons) in the course builder to keep them organized.
You can also offer assessments to your learners as they go through your course. These can range from simple multiple-choice to essay-based.
You can choose to set a passing grade and restrict access to further content until the viewer successfully passes the test. This helps keep learners interested and offers room for a more personalized interaction with them.
And lastly, you have the option to drip your content gradually over a defined period. Set how many days you want a particular category in your course to be delayed and Kajabi will take care of the rest.
Starting to build your site on Kajabi is very simple. They provide a variety of pre-built themes that you can simply apply to your website and customize to match your brand
But if you want a blank canvas and create your own site as you go, you can do that as well.
You can incorporate pre-built sections, tweak the color scheme, and rearrange existing elements and sections by simply dragging and dropping them to your desired location through the left panel.
Funnels are customer journeys designed to yield the best conversion rates. But it's not always straightforward to determine the best way to design your site without having a bird's-eye view that clearly shows what comes first.
The Kajabi sales funnel builder allows you to do just that. When getting started, you can choose one of their pre-made blueprints, each already optimized for a specific goal.
For example, the “Freebies” template is designed to help you generate leads by offering free incentives, such as an ebook, checklist, or other.
You can also alter and add more steps to a funnel if you feel it necessary. If you’re confused about what a particular step aims to achieve, you can just hover your mouse over it and an explanation will pop up.
You've also got the option to set up automations for specific steps based on user actions. For instance, if someone signs up for a Zoom webinar, you can automatically tag them to segment them into a particular audience.
These tags can be a big help later when you set up your email marketing campaigns.
Kajabi offers a fairly sophisticated email marketing features set.
Like with Podia, you can send out one-time broadcasts or create email sequences designed to release gradually over a set amount of days or weeks.
Sequences are sent out based on various Triggers, which is essentially how a customer behaves on your site. For example, filling in an opt-in form, downloading a lead magnet, or joining a course can all be set as triggers.
This means that the emails aren’t sent to all subscribers in real-time, but based on when they activate a trigger.
Making your emails look visually pleasing is also fairly straightforward with Kajabi. You get tons of pre-built templates that you can customize for your particular needs.
Or you can use their email builder to design one yourself—it's easy to get used to and requires no prior experience to get started.
Podia offers four different subscription plans. The Free plan is what makes the platform unique. There's no up-front charge - but Podia will take a chunky 10% fee for every sale you make, which can get expensive fast.
The other plans come with a monthly subscription fee as well as a slightly reduced transaction fee, except for their most expensive plan which has no transaction fees:
Kajabi is significantly more expensive, but doesn't come with added transaction fees. Here are the three plans they offer:
Here are the primary differences between Podia and Kajabi:
Both Kajabi and Podia have their benefits, but there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. The better choice boils down to what your individual needs are and what you’re looking for in a platform.
If you need something cheap, easy to get into, and with solid course delivery features, Podia can be the right choice.
On the other hand, if you need an all in one platform with a focus on the sales and marketing side of things as well, Kajabi takes the lead there with its better email marketing functionality, automations, and funnel builder.
But then the hefty price tag isn't ideal for most small business owners. We recommend looking elsewhere for a solution that is better suited for the budget constraints of small businesses but doesn't lag in features either.
Kourses is an up-and-coming learning management software that takes the best out of Podia and Kajabi.
With easy to set up membership portals, a course delivery platform that is beautiful right out of the box, and a community feature for your audience to interact with you and each other, it has everything you need to deliver value to your audience.
Above all, Kourses is backed by a dedicated team that genuinely cares and listens to your feedback.
You can join the waitlist today and get exclusive early access pricing on launch.
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