If you’re looking for ways to make money online, selling your knowledge and expertise
through an online course is an excellent route.
In this video, we’re going to compare two platforms that allow you to market and sell
online courses, Podia and Thinkific, and help you decide whether one of them is right for
you.
Let’s get into it.
Hello creators, I’m Ben Toalson from Podia where we empower creators like you to make
a living doing what you love.
When it comes to choosing the online course platform that’s right for you, there are
many things to consider.
Things like price, features, and fees are important, but you may also have questions
like how do I interact with customers?
How is their customer support?
Are any of their employees amphibians?
I’m going to answer all of these questions and more as we dive into this comparison between
Podia and Thinkific.
I’ll start by sharing the basic pricing and features of each, then compare the two
at similar price points.
First, let’s talk about Thinkific.
Thinkific has 4 plans, Free, Basic at $49 per month or $39 per month billed annually,
Pro at $99 per month or $79 per month billed annually, and Premier at $499 per month or
$399 per month billed annually.
Each plan includes core features like Instant access to your funds, Student notifications,
Upsell offers, Drag and drop Course Builder, Discussion forums, Multiple instructor profiles,
Built-in SSL certificates, Zero transaction fees, and unlimited student enrollments
The free plan allows you to build up to 3 courses and includes Quizzes & surveys, Content
hosting for Video, audio, and PDFs, and instant access to your funds.
The Basic plan includes core features, everything in the free plan, as well as Unlimited courses
& students, Coupons, the ability to Email students, Drip content, Affiliate reporting,
Custom domain, and Email integrations like convertkit or mailchimp.
The pro plan includes everything in the previous plans, plus 2 Site admin accounts, 5 Course
admins/authors, Private & hidden courses, advanced course pricing options, Memberships
and bundles, Course certificates, Priority Support, and a student discussion community.
Before I share the Premier plan, there is an add on for the Pro plan called the Growth
package.
It gives you extra features like additional integrations, groups for managing students,
bulk email capabilities, advanced segmentation, and the ability to remove Thinkific branding.
This add on is free for your first 100 customers, and an additional $10 per month per 100 customers,
maxing out at $400 extra bringing the total to $499 per month.
The Premier plan includes everything in the previous plans, including the growth add on
features, plus 5 Site admin accounts, up to 50 Course admins/authors, unlimited student
discussion communities, and an Onboarding package that Includes an onboarding call,
training, and a launch preparedness review.
Thinkific also has a custom priced plan for enterprise users called the Plus plan, where
you can have up to 3 instances of Thinkific for the same account, course specific branding,
and additional security support features.
Now let’s talk about Podia.
We offer two paid plans, Mover & Shaker, that both include your own storefront with the
ability to sell and unlimited number of online courses, digital downloads, and webinars.
Both plans also offer email marketing automation, a messaging system that allows you to communicate
with your students and customers, zero transaction fees, unlimited everything, 7 days a week
live chat, email, and video support, free migrations with annual plans, custom domain,
integrated payment processing, and instant payouts.
Our Mover plan is $39/month or $390/year when billed annually, and includes everything previously
listed.
Online courses include quizzes, drip course content, and the ability to pre-sell your
course or bundle it with other digital products.
Our Shaker plan is $79/month or $790/year when billed annually, and includes everything
in the mover plan plus the ability to sell memberships, blog functionality, the ability
to embed purchase buttons on your own site, affiliate marketing, zoom integration for
webinars, and support for third party code snippets like Facebook pixel.
On either plan you can add and customize permissions for teammates on your account at an additional
$20 per member.
Important differences
Now before we get into the plan comparisons at similar price points, it’s important
to talk about a few key differences.
Free plan - Thinkific offers a free plan, and while Podia does not, you can try all
of Podia’s features free for 14 days.
Products - Thinkific allows you to sell online courses, memberships and bundles, but with
Podia, you can also sell all of these plus digital downloads and webinars.
Features - Podia, unlike Thinkific, offers more advanced email automations, and a messaging
feature that allows you to chat in real time with your customers, but Thinkific does offer
student discussion communities, additional site and course admins, and in their premier
and plus plans, advanced student management and an onboarding package.
For the rest of this comparison, we’re going to focus on Thinkific’s Basic and Pro plans
and our Mover and Shaker plans which are comparable in price.
First, we’ll compare Thinkific’s Basic plan with our Mover plan.
Thinkific’s Basic plan comes in at $49 per month or $468 per month billed annually, compared
to Podia’s Mover plan, which comes in at $39 per month or $390 per year.
Both include unlimited courses & students, coupons, the ability to email students, drip
course content, custom domain, and third party email integrations like convert kit or mail
chimp.
The only thing Thinkific offers at this price point that Podia doesn’t is Affiliate reporting.
So what does Podia offer that Thinkific doesn’t?
Our mover plan includes the ability to sell access to webinars, sell digital downloads,
advanced email marketing tools, messaging where you can chat directly with your customers,
7 days a week chat support, and free migrations for annual accounts.
Now let’s compare Thinkific’s Pro plan with our Shaker plan.
Thinkific’s Pro plan comes in at $99 per month or $948 per year, compared to Podia’s
Shaker plan which comes in at $79 per month or $790 per year.
Both include Unlimited courses & students, the ability to create private & hidden courses
and advanced course pricing options, both of which you can also do in Podia’s Mover
plan, and the ability to sell Memberships.
What does Thinkific offer in their Pro plan that our Shaker plan does not?
They include 2 Site admins, up to 5 Course admins, Advanced html customization, and a
discussion community for students.
With our Shaker plan, you get the webinars, digital downloads, advanced email marketing
tools, and messaging we mentioned in the Mover plan, plus Zoom integration with webinars,
a blog, and the ability to embed purchase buttons in your own website.
Our membership plan also allows you to create multiple plans so you can offer varying levels
of access to members.
Now a quick word about site and course admins.
While Podia doesn’t include extra admins with either plan, you can add additional users
and manage their access through your dashboard, meaning you can give full access to every
feature, or limit access to just a few features, for an additional $20 per month per member.
And that does it for our comparison of Thinkific and Podia.
We know your choice of an online course platform is not one you take lightly, so we hope we’ve
been able to give you the information you need to feel like you’re making a choice
you’re excited about!
So which platform seems like the best fit for you?
Let us know in the comments.
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Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.