Thinkific vs Podia (2023 Update). #1 Podia Alternative

Choosing an online course platform can be overwhelming. To help you in your research, we’ve broken down the key differences between the most important features and functionality for you.

While Podia may look pretty at first, Thinkific has all the functionality you can trust to grow your business. A drag-and-drop Site Builder, best-in-class customer support, tools to engage your customers, and much more.

Check out the Podia vs Thinkific comparison, including a side-by-side feature table below, and Learn more about how Thinkific is the platform for creating extraordinary learning experiences.

Thinkific vs Podia: High-level Overview

Feature	Thinkific	Podia
Price	Get started for free	Get started for free
Create courses with any content type	✅	✅
Community Spaces	✅	✅
Support	Email and chat support	Email and Live chat only
Live events in communities	✅	❌
Student course reviews	✅	❌
Automated tax collection	✅	✅
App integrations	90+ in the Thinkific App Store	✅
Publish Courses Free	✅	Need to upgrade to paid plan to publish

Thinkific vs Podia Features

Features	Thinkific	PODIA
Sell memberships to a learning community	✅	❌
Easy course navigation	✅	✅
Multiple Instructors	✅	$20/mo per user
Student progress tracking	✅	At the individual student level, but don’t offer aggregate reporting.
Student course reviews	✅	❌
Student engagement survey	✅	❌
Quizzes	✅	Limited
Create free, paid, and time-limited courses	✅	✅
Currencies	135+	29
Coupons and Promotions	✅	✅
Subscriptions	✅	✅
Advanced Marketing Integrations	✅	❌
Affiliate Programs	✅	✅
Free	✅	✅
Basic Plan (Thinkific Basic / Podia Mover)	$49/mo	$39/mo
Start Plan (Thinkific Start / Podia Shaker)	$99/mo	$89/mo
Grow Plan (Thinkific Grow / Podia Earthquaker)	$199/mo	$166/mo
Scale Plan (Thinkific Expand)	$499/mo	❌
Expansion / Enterprise (Thinkific Plus)	✅	❌

Thinkific is the course platform that grows with you

Make it easy: Running your business is hard enough; your software shouldn’t be. We design and build experiences that are approachable for everyone.
Build your business: Thinkific helps you build a livelihood with modern features for selling and converting your audience, or building one from scratch.
Stay in control: You have control of your brand, your content, your customers, and your revenue. This means we succeed when you succeed.
Focus on trust: Deciding on a course platform isn’t a transaction – it’s a long term partnership. We invest to develop fast, reliable, and scalable technology supported by caring humans.

Launch your online learning product for free

Use Thinkific to create, market, and sell online courses, communities, and memberships — all from a single platform.

Online Courses

Thinkific was born from an online course. Our founders were teaching online in 2011 and online course creators were reaching out asking to find out how we built it. Since then we’ve been learning from the 60,000+ course creators and 9 million+ students through our platform.

You can learn a wide variety of topics with Thinkific customers: Excel, English ESL, Social Media, Flying Drones, Accounting, Cooking, Yoga, Hula hoop, Video Marketing, 3D Animation, Spanish, Knitting, and the list goes on and on. Elizabeth Rider, HootSuite, Dana Malstaff (BossMom), Intuit, York University, and more run their online classes with Thinkific.

An easy-to-use course builder is the most important part of any course platform. It should allow you to create an engaging and memorable learning experience for your students.

Podia offers the features necessary to build a standard course. Creators have all the basic functionality such as adding videos and creating quizzes. Creators looking for deeper learning tools may quickly run into a ceiling on what’s capable.

Thinkific offers a course builder designed for creators who have the students’ learning experience in mind. Tools to enhance the experience such as Live Lessons with Zoom, assignments, and a built-in presentation creator make it easy to take your course to the next level.

Course Creation	Thinkific	PODIA
No design or technical experience required	✅	✅
Create courses with any content type	✅	✅
Downloadable content	✅	✅
Embed 3rd party tools and sites	✅	✅
Student surveys	✅	❌
Embed many types of multimedia content including Storyline, Captivate & More	✅	❌

Learning Experience

A great learning experience is vital to your success as a course creator. It will help your students learn more effectively and make them want to share it with their friends — helping you grow your business.

Podia offers a no-frills learning experience. Students are brought into an experience that is expected out of any online course platform.

Thinkific offers an unmatched suite of functionality that extends beyond what’s capable in most course platforms. These features help turn a student’s experience from exciting to extraordinary. Afterwards, your students have the option to leave reviews that you can share publicly; helping more students find your course.

Teaching and Student Experience	Thinkific	PODIA
Sell memberships to a learning community	✅	❌
Easy course navigation	✅	✅
Multiple Instructors	✅	$20/mo per user
Student progress tracking	✅	At the individual student level, but don’t offer aggregate reporting.
Student course reviews	✅	❌
Student engagement survey	✅	❌
Quizzes	✅	Limited

Sales & Marketing Functionality

After publishing your course, you need to get it in front of the right audience. Sales and marketing tools enable creators to gain visibility and earn revenue.

Podia provides a number of sales tools needed and a few basic marketing features to help you earn revenue from your course.

Thinkific offers sales and marketing features to enable any course creator to get started. With 90+ integrations in the Thinkific App Store; use the best tools in the business for marketing and email automation, increasing sales, and enhancing the learning experience through gamification. Gain the extensibility and flexibility of apps like ActiveCampaign, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Shopify, Salesforce, and many more. These apps are created by developers for Thinkific and can be downloaded, installed, and implemented without any coding required for all Thinkific users.

Sales & Marketing	Thinkific	PODIA
Create free, paid, and time-limited courses	✅	✅
Currencies	135+	29
Coupons and Promotions	✅	✅
Subscriptions	✅	✅
Advanced Marketing Integrations	✅	❌
Affiliate Programs	✅	✅

Pricing

A course platform is a big investment. Not only do you want a tool that fits your budget, but it should also satisfy your needs now and into the future.

Podia offers four pricing tiers that work well for solopreneurs. The low entry point gives you access to tools that fit those just starting out.

Thinkific offers tiers for early-stage businesses all the way to enterprise. With add-on features like a Branded Mobile app ($199/mo) and more, no matter what stage you’re in, you have access to the functionality you need. Thinkific provides the tools that are trusted by many growing learning business.

Pricing Plans	Thinkific	PODIA
Free	✅	✅
Basic Plan (Thinkific Basic / Podia Mover)	$49/mo	$39/mo
Start Plan (Thinkific Start / Podia Shaker)	$99/mo	$89/mo
Grow Plan (Thinkific Grow / Podia Earthquaker)	$199/mo	$166/mo
Scale Plan (Thinkific Expand)	$499/mo	❌
Expansion / Enterprise (Thinkific Plus)	✅	❌

Thinkific Features

Memberships

Thinkific makes it stupidly simple to create and grow an engaged community. While Podia has the basics in place, Thinkific is flexible and configurable to meet your needs. There’s a reason why the biggest names in the industry such as Lewis Howes, Grant Cardone, and Justin Brooke (AdSkills) run their membership programs on Thinkific.

Digital Downloads

With the flick of a switch, let your students download any of your course content. Or don’t. Your call. No special setup, nothing different to do.

Drag and Drop Site Builder

Make your site look exactly how you want it, without hiring a designer or a developer. With our Site Builder,
you get real control and customizations, not just uploading your logo and adding brand colours. Drag and drop sections, add smart sections, choose from multiple themes, styles, and templates. It’s incredibly easy, and powerful. Ps. It’s included!

Student Experience and Engagement

We’ve learned that what makes a difference in successful online courses is Student Experience and Engagement. We have lots of tools to help you do this with quizzes, exams, surveys, and discussions. Our competitors just aren’t there yet.

Bulk import

Upload all your content all at once. Videos, PDF’s, Audio, Text, Files, everything. Then easily organize it with drag and drop.

Integrations you can rely on

While Podia and Thinkific both have Zapier integrations, Podia has only six options, where Thinkific has ten triggers, searches, and actions to truly empower you.

We also have MailChimp, ConvertKit, Facebook, Google Analytics, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, Accredible, Discus, Sumo, InfusionSoft, Stunning, Mixpanel, Segment, and more coming soon.

Webhooks & API

While you may not need our Webhooks and API if you’re just getting started, you’ll quickly learn how powerful and helpful they are as soon as you need them. If you’re not familiar with the terms, Zapier is basically a bunch of Webhooks working together. They provide a way for developers to easily build apps that receive information in near real time from your Thinkific site.

Our API enables developers to interact with every part of your Thinkific site (with the right authentication of course) without waiting on events or going through the user interface. This allows for almost unlimited possibilities and customizations.

Support

We strive for inbox zero every day, and support is our #1 selling point. Don’t believe me? Read our reviews. Think we’re too big and don’t have a personal touch? Ask our private Facebook group of 20,000+ about Aaron, Rob, Ratha, Evelyn, Greg, Paddy, Mark, and more.