Less is more, as we will see in this Podia review. While most learning management systems (LMS) like LifterLMS offer numerous fancy and complicated features that can get overwhelming, especially for beginners, Podia thrives on simplicity.
Are you just about to create your first course? Or are you looking to shift your e-learning platform to a more user-friendly and streamlined LMS? Podia is an excellent choice. And it is also reasonably priced.
It is a one-stop-shop where you can manage and sell your online course with ease. You can build your brand by increasing your conversion rate using the inbuilt marketing tools.
It is designed to ensure that your courses sell to the right people. It achieves this using the numerous videos and tutorials available on the website that will guide you into creating text, videos, and audio that keeps your students engaged.
In this article, we will show you how you can make money from selling courses or digital downloads such as PDFs and eBooks by adding Podia to your site. And we will show you why it’s worth it.
Quick Navigation
- In a Nutshell
- Features and Benefits
- Things You Might Not Like
- Podia Pricing
- How to Create Online Courses With Podia Plugin
- Conclusion
Let’s dive into details.
Podia Review: in a Nutshell
Here is what you can expect from Podia.
Pros:
- Beginner-friendly
- Flexible payment plan
- A convenient membership option
- Seamless integration with plugins and third-party apps
- Email and affiliate marketing option
- Attractive and navigable user interface
- Great customer service
- An excellent resource center to ensure that your courses sell
Cons
- Limited customization
- Insufficient inbuilt learning tools
Podia Features and Benefits
Here are the best features that Podia has to offer
It Makes It Easy to Create Your Courses
When it comes to providing an easy LMS to build an online course, Podia takes the lead. It comes with pre-built elements.
The course structure is split into two – sections and lessons. The lessons are where your content lives. Every file you upload becomes a lesson, and you can quickly move it to any section by dragging.
Variation in Content Creation
A great feature you will love about Podia is the option for video and audio hosting. It provides unlimited hosting for your videos, allowing you to switch your course content between video, audio, and text. You have the option to upload your content one-by-one or multiple files at once.
Easy Payment Plans
Podia allows you to give your students an easy payment plan. You can set it as a one-time fee or provide the option for creating a recurring subscription. The LMS supports both Stripe and PayPal to receive payments easily.
A Friendly User-interface
A great LMS will give your students an easy time navigating the site and accessing the lessons. Podia is designed to have the coursework on the right and a navigation section on the right where students can go through the course.
There is a comment area on the bottom section of the page. The student can also have the lesson content on full-screen mode for better learning.
Drip Feed Content
You can choose to drip feed your course content so that students can meet prerequisites before proceeding to new courses.
You also get to set automatic emails that are sent to your students when they qualify for new content. You can choose which students receive their content through drip-feed.
Ability to Create a Membership Site
A feature you are sure to love with Podia is the flexibility to create one-off content for your users. This content is known as posts.
It is excellent for providing learning material that is not large enough to be formed into a course. These posts appear in the membership area.
Affiliate Marketing
Besides the flexibility to use email marketing to reach prospective buyers through their campaign builder, Podia makes it possible to use affiliate marketing to get to more people.
Your affiliates will get a dashboard where they can track their sales. You can use a flat rate or percentage to pay commissions and set different rates for different products.
Seamless Integration with Essential Third-Party Tools
You can add email marketing plugins such as MailerLite, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Drip, and GetResponse.
It integrates easily with Zapier, allowing you to add apps such as Accredible to issue certificates to your students. You can also add tools such as Google Analytics and ConvertBox.
Excellent Customer Support
The Podia team takes customer satisfaction seriously. Their customer support is very responsive. You can use email or use the chat widget. You can also use their knowledge library to find quick answers to your issues.
Free Migration
If you already have an e-learning site built on a different platform, you don’t have to worry about the migration process. Podia does it for free. Being experts in the industry, they will help you have an easier and more efficient move, without losing your content.
You can Pre-launch and Pre-sell Your Courses
Selling any product online comes with the risk that it may not get the reaction you expected from the market. Podia ensures that you do not operate blindly.
You can collect email addresses before the launch of your course and asses the market’s interest before investing your time in building it. You can also set a future start date and sell your course before launching.
Things You Might Not Like About Podia
The Podia LMS does not provide enough inbuilt tools for more student engagement and better learning. The types of quizzes you can give our students, for instance, are limited.
And you can’t use the quizzes to qualify your students for the next lesson or section. You also cannot create assignments, and they lack an inbuilt certificate.
Podia prioritizes simplicity in most of its functionalities. Although this is a good quality, you may feel that the LMS does not provide adequate customization functions to make your site unique.
You can only change the colors and font of the text on your site, and there is only one design you can have for your site. It lacks any site themes.
It is not possible to have a video and add a quiz to a single lesson. Neither can you add a video and a PDF in the same lesson?
Podia Pricing
In addition to using this Podia review, you can confirm if the Podia LMS will meet your needs by watching their live demo. And taking their 14-day trial. Both are available on the official website.
Podia provides two payment plans – The Mover for $39 per month or $390 when you pay annually. The Shaker package goes for $79 per month or $790 when paid annually.
Besides the basic functionalities of course creation, both plans come with
- A Podia subdomain
- Digital downloads
- A built-in live chat tool
- Email marketing
- No transaction fees
- Daily customer support
- Free migration
The shaker package comes with additional features that include
- Membership subscription feature
- A blog
- Affiliate marketing
- Embedded checkout
- The flexibility to install third-party code
You can upgrade or downgrade your package at any time. You can also freely switch between monthly and annual billing.
Who’s Actually Using Podia?
Podia is an excellent choice for business people that are interested in sharing their skills while making money from it. You get a digital storefront where you can sell your courses and other learning resources.
Let’s look at five entrepreneurs who have had success with their e-learning platforms, built using Podia.
1. No-Code MVP
2 Magical Presentations: Using Podia
3. The Tech Editor Hub
4. Spark Hub: Using Podia
5. Paul Knight Coaching
How to Create Online Courses With Podia Plugin
Purchase your Podia LMS from the official website. Download it and store it in a file within your computer.
Go to Plugins in your WordPress dashboard, and select Add New.
Find the Upload Plugin button on the top left corner of the page. Hit Browse and find the .zip file containing Podia on your computer. Select it and select Install Now. Activate it to start creating your first course.
You will find a few settings on the Podia dashboard
Products
This is where you add your digital downloads, courses, and other products to start earning passive income.
Memberships
You can use this setting to create a membership portal. Those in the membership will need to subscribe to it.
Emails
This is where you activate your email marketing campaign and use it to keep your users informed about new products and reach prospective clients.
Customers
The Customers section allows you to view all your users. You can see those who have subscribed to your newsletter.
Affiliates
This is where you set your affiliate program. You can set a commission rate, which can be in percentage or a flat rate.
Sales
The sales section allows you to set up your payment methods. It contains your users’ payment methods and invoices.
The first step to creating your course is to go to the Products tab. Select New Product. A popup window will appear with a choice of products you can create – Online Course, Digital Download, and Product Bundle. Select Online Course. Give it a name and select Create & Continue.
It will direct you to the content page for your course. Under the content tab, you can type in your course title. Your courses will be divided into structure and lessons. Each lesson will be under a structure and will contain your teaching content.
Create your sections and add a section description for each. You can create a new section by clicking on Add Content and select Add Section in the drop-down menu that appears.
Add in your files, links, text, or quiz you would want for this course by clicking the Add Content button on each section.
A popup window will appear. Drag and drop your material and click Upload. Select the Edit button next to the file you have uploaded to add a title, description, or thumbnail.
Under the settings tab, you can give a product name to the course, add it to a category, set a start date, close or reopen enrollment, or add the necessary integrations.
You can change the product appearance, such as adding a logo and changing the fonts and colors by clicking on the editor link provided, as indicated below.
Under the pricing tab, you can set the price for the course in the currency of your choice and create a payment plan. You can also add upsells and coupons.
The best thing about Podia is that you can get a live preview to see how your courses will appear to the students before publishing. You will find the publishing or pre-launching option under the drafts button.
Podia Review: in Conclusion
This Podia Review reveals a trait that is rare in other LMS – simplicity and minimalist design. It makes it an excellent course builder for beginners and people with little to no experience in website creation and design.
A simple design also gives your visitors an easier time when navigating your site, signing up, making payments, and reading the course content.
The following features also make us love it more
- A responsive support team
- Ability to create digital downloads
- Drip feed functionality
- Unlimited hosting, products, and customers
- Easy course builder
- Affiliate marketing option
- Free and easy migration that comes with every package
- Flexible payment plan for your students
- Easy integration with plugins and third-party apps
- Ability to use videos and audio files in your content
- Availability of a membership program
- User-friendly interface
You might notice that simplicity comes at the cost of customization. Still, a look at some of the websites built on Podia will reveal that less is better.
You don’t have to be in a specific field to make a decent income from selling courses in your field.
Fitness gurus, life coaches, online marketers, and business people across all fields are making monetizing their websites by adding courses and digital downloads. You can do the same.
Podia is always upgrading the LMS with new features and is quickly developing into one of the best LMS in the market. The best time to make your purchase is now when the prices are still quite friendly.
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