Torn between Podia vs Teachable for your online course platform? Dive into our in-depth analysis to discover which one truly reigns supreme!

Planning on creating and selling courses online? Podia and Teachable are two popular online course platforms that make the process easier and faster.

However, deciding between one over the other can put you in a bind, as on the surface, both platforms offer a strikingly similar package.

In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at both Podia and Teachable to determine how they differ and which stands out as the better option.

Here is a quick, side-by-side comparison of Podia and Teachable that highlights their differences.

Both Podia and Teachable offer different plans with varying features and pricing to cater to a range of needs and budgets. Both can be fairly economical if you decide to go with any of the cheaper options.

Podia comes with three different subscription models:

• Free Plan
• Mover Plan - $39/month
• Shaker Plan - $89/month

While you won't be charged a monthly fee with the free plan, Podia does take 8% of your revenue with each purchase. 

This model can be excellent if you're on a tight budget and prefer not spending unnecessarily. Plus, you can always upgrade to one of the paid plans once you’ve established yourself.

Teachable comes with a few different options as well, although their plans aren't as cheap.

Teachable has a free plan and three other paid pricing models:

• Free Plan
• Basic Plan - $59/month
• Pro Plan - $159/month
• Pro+ Plan - $249/month

For the free plan, Teachable charges a transaction fee of 10% plus an additional $1. The basic plan reduces this to just 5%.

Compared to Podia, Teachable is noticeably more expensive. Not only are the monthly subscriptions more burdensome on the wallet, but their fees are also greater.

While Podia only charges the added transaction fee on their free plan, Teachable does so on their Basic Plan as well.

Creating your course on both Podia and Teachable is a breeze. They walk you through the process and make it as beginner-friendly as it can be.

Teachable's course builder is like a guided walk-through – you won't need extensive website-building experience to set up your course.

You can start off by creating a school. Think of each school as a separate website and courses within the school as different pages on the website. For instance, if you're a language tutor, your "French 101" course and "Spanish 202" course would be like distinct pages on your language school's website.

The dashboard includes a list of all your courses in a school and important metrics relating to them.

You can start off your course by creating an outline or generating one using Teachable’s AI tool. Once you have your curriculum, the rest of the process is more streamlined and you can start uploading your course bit by bit.

Both Podia and Teachable have the drip feature to release lectures gradually over time, with the timing based on the number of days that have passed since your students enrolled in the course. However, this feature is only available with the paid plans on Teachable while Podia offers it even with their free option.

Podia may present a bit of a learning curve at the outset, but it becomes more straightforward once you get the hang of it.

Initially, navigating between pages and identifying their specific functions can be a bit challenging, but once you’ve used the tool for some time, this gets easier. You can create a new course by going under the “Products” tab and adding your course details.

Like Teachable, you can divide the course into sections and add further lessons in each section. Once done, you can click “Publish” to save your progress.

What we did find lacking in Podia is versatility. While you can add multiple content types to the same lesson in Teachable, this isn't possible with Podia. Your lesson can only contain one content type (text, video, quiz, etc.).

In terms of course building, there aren't many major differences between Podia and Teachable. Your choice of preference will boil down to which of the two you find easier to use.

Both Podia and Teachable provide you space to host your website without having to worry about dealing with plugins, security, or any of the other baggage that comes with owning your own website. But that doesn't mean you won't have control over site design at all.

While you don’t get the flexibility you would with WordPress, Shopify, or any other platform, Podia and Teachable do allow slight changes to how you want your content structured.

With Podia you can add text, image, or video sections or change the signature colors and fonts of your website.

To start off, you will only have a homepage to go with. This will also act as the sales page in most cases, but you can have a separate one as well.

From the left bar, you can add your logo and categories. From the top bar, you can choose to change the default font and colors of the website. That’s about as much leeway as you have in how your site looks with Podia.

Teachable is also pretty similar in that regard, with a few minor differences that make it stand out.

You can change the logo, font, and color palette according to your preferences on the same page. The left sidebar will allow you to add your own domain, additional pages, and offer coupons to customers.

Teachable also provides course themes, marking the primary distinction between the two platforms. This allows you more freedom with what your sales pages look like.

You can choose between the Simple and Colossal themes. Although there are only two options, that's two more than what Podia offers. So if flexibility in site design appeals to you, Teachable is the better choice – by a slight margin.

Podia and Teachable both provide various tools to keep your students engaged, with a few noteworthy differences.

Quizzes are available on both tools. However, Teachable comes out as the better option as they have an AI feature that automatically creates questions based on lesson content.

Both tools allow you to see analytics of individual students and how much of the course they’ve completed and re-engage them if necessary.

The same goes for certificates, you can choose to issue certificates to students upon course completion on Podia and Teachable alike.

The key distinction lies in Teachable's course compliance feature. This feature enables you to make passing a quiz a requirement or force your students to watch the course in order but isn’t available on Podia.

Podia and Teachable provide various marketing options to boost the popularity of your course and allow you to make more sales. Let's have a look at these.

Both tools allow you to set up an affiliate program for your existing customers. You have the flexibility to choose the commission percentage that affiliates earn with each referral, and that's all there is to it.

One notable advantage that gives Podia an edge is its automatic activation of all your customers as potential affiliates. Your job is to only let them know that doing so is now possible, and they can easily visit the website dashboard to become affiliates themselves.

In contrast, you will individually have to add your customers as affiliates in Teachable, which is not very convenient.

Both tools allow third-party integrations with various email marketing platforms. However, Podia has a number of features that make it stand out over Teachable as a better email marketing tool.

While you can send standard emails to students enrolled in your course with Teachable, Podia goes a step further. It allows you to choose from various templates to design your email or make a custom template.

You can filter email lists based on products purchased, revenue, tags, and more. Moreover, you can set up campaigns and automate your email workflow, essentially encompassing all major email marketing functionalities.

Both tools offer a community feature that allows you to interact with students enrolled in your course in one singular platform.

Podia has the feature built-in with the rest of their platform and you can easily launch your community with a few clicks, no matter which plan you're on.

You can create different topics from the left bar for different subjects. It's not too different from Slack or Discord and you should have no problem getting the hang of it.

Teachable operates in a similar manner, although instead of hosting its own community platform, it seamlessly integrates with the third-party app Circle.so.

You will need to create a separate Circle.so account to set it up with your Teachable school. However, once you've completed this step, your students can conveniently access it directly through their Teachable accounts.

This feature is only available with the paid Teachable subscriptions.

Podia offers email and chat support, the latter only for paying customers. Besides these, they also have a detailed FAQ section to answer many of the commonly asked questions.

Teachable is similar and also has both types of customer support available. However, like Podia, live chat support is only available to customers on the Pro plan.

Podia has a unique advantage where they offer free migrations to anyone. So if your course is currently hosted on another platform, you can contact support to have it manually moved to Podia.

While both Podia vs Teachable platforms are pretty similar in their functionalities, they do have a few key differences you have to keep in mind when going with either.

Both platforms excel in course creation and marketing tools, with Podia standing out for its email marketing capabilities and Teachable for its better site customization options and course compliance features.

Keeping your necessities in mind, you can choose either without sacrificing anything significant; the differences are minor.

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