Facebook Groups
Spend less time worrying about data breaches & algorithms and more time growing your online community
88% of creators using Facebook want to switch community platforms. Podia gives you the tools you need to host your community, sell digital products, and build your business – no questionable ethics, privacy concerns, or unpredictable algorithms in sight.
Build your community your way.
Podia gives you complete control over your online community, from the content you share to how you interact with members. Create unlimited discussion topics, including private areas for specific membership tiers or course cohorts.
Run your entire online business from one platform.
Host your community in the same place you sell courses, downloads, webinars, and coaching – no more separate logins or bouncing between platforms.
Create a paid community.
Facebook is a terrible option if you want to charge for community access. With Podia, you can offer free and paid memberships. You can also create multiple tiers with exclusive products, content, and discussion topics.
Comparing Podia vs. Facebook Groups
Podia
Facebook Groups
Free plan
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is yes
Price
Podia isFree, or $4/month to $89/month
Facebook Groups isFree
Unlimited products
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Unlimited customers
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Online courses
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Coaching
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Communities
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is yes
Digital downloads
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Webinars
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is yes
Email marketing
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Full website
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Blogging
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Teammates
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is yes
Embeddable buy buttons
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Customer messaging
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is yes
Affiliate marketing tools
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Chat support
Podia is yes
Facebook Groups is no
Creator friendliness score
Podia is87.1
Facebook Groups is44.44
What attracted me to Podia as a content creator was the ability to build and foster a community while developing all my content in one place. I don’t know any other platform that does these two things so well.
— Tayo Rockson,
author, consultant, professor, & speaker
Video demo
Podia in action
Wondering if Podia is the right platform for you? Go behind the scenes in this video walkthrough, where Ben will introduce you to Podia’s community feature and how it can help your business.
Why creators are making the switch from Facebook Groups to Podia
74% of creators use Facebook for their communities – but 88% of them want to switch platforms. Here’s why creators choose Podia instead.
Complete control over your community.
Unlike Facebook groups, Podia lets you choose how you design your online community and engage with your members. You can offer free and paid memberships, create unlimited discussion topics, and set up notifications so that your members never miss a new post.
More than just a community platform.
Facebook lets you make a group for your community… and that’s about it. With Podia, you can do so much more without spending a dime. In addition to creating an engaging online community, you can build a beautiful website, grow your email list, and sell your first digital download, all on Podia’s free plan.
One platform for your entire online business.
Podia’s all-in-one platform helps creators replace several disconnected tools and simplify their lives. With Podia, all of your products are in one place, making life easier for you and your audience.
A support team that puts creators first.
The number one reason people cite for loving Podia? Our customer support. We’re always here to help with real people offering chat support seven days a week. Our customer satisfaction scores (NPS) are in the top 0.01% of all companies on the internet.
Podia vs. Facebook Groups: What's right for me?
Great question! We obviously think we’re pretty great, but here’s an honest answer:
Both Podia and Facebook Groups let you build membership communities for free. Beyond that, there aren’t many similarities between the two platforms.
If you and your members already have Facebook accounts, creating a Facebook group makes it easy to start and access your community. But once you log in, the user experience is far from ideal for members and admins alike.
Podia lets you build an online community for free, with more opportunities to connect with your audience, customize the member experience, and make money doing it. Beyond that, you can use Podia to create your website, sell digital products, and market your business.
To help decide what’s best for you, let’s dive into the details.
All prices and features are accurate at the time of writing, but they may change over time.
An online community with more options – and fewer privacy concerns
Both Podia and Facebook let you create a membership community for your audience.
Creators tend to build digital communities on social media platforms for lack of a better solution. Facebook may be the default starting point, but Podia’s all-in-one platform empowers you to do so much more than build a basic online community.
Here’s how Podia’s community feature compares.
Free and paid community membership plans
One of the main differences between Facebook and Podia is that Podia allows you to offer free and paid membership community tiers.
If you want to create a paid community, it’s nearly impossible to charge new members for access directly on Facebook. Instead, you’ll need to create a private group, take payments on a separate platform, then manually admit those who paid to the group.
With Podia, monetization is easy. You can offer paid tiers with perks like exclusive content, private community areas, digital downloads, and online courses. Unlike alternatives like Patreon, Podia also lets you accept one-time payments from your audience.
For example, Podia creators Jonathan and Ashley Longnecker of Tiny Shiny Home offer five different membership tiers, each of which comes with different perks. They also accept one-time donations.
Offering both free and paid membership plans can help you connect with more members while monetizing your community.
Don’t rely on the algorithm
In addition to the limited functionality, the unpredictable algorithm is one of the top reasons creators cite for wanting to leave Facebook.
In recent years, updates to the social network’s algorithm have led to a decrease in organic reach, meaning fewer users see content from creators and fellow group members in their newsfeeds.
“I think Facebook is too distracting, and members either won’t find my content or won’t stick around,” one creator told us.
Facebook has also been mired in controversy over the past few years, with story after story about radicalization, misinformation, privacy issues, and failing to protect user data.
Unlike Facebook groups, Podia gives you complete control over your online community, from the content you share to how you interact with members.
You can create unlimited discussion topics and set up notifications so that your members never miss a new post – no distractions, privacy concerns, or algorithms to worry about.
One creator summed up their struggles with Facebook’s limited community features this way: “I have to pay a full-time virtual assistant to admit members, welcome them, moderate, etc. We have Google Sheets and separate Facebook Messenger software that costs $30/month, plus Facebook’s algorithm and distractions. It’s such a mess.”
Sell digital products, courses, and coaching
Monetizing your community is just one way to earn revenue for your online business.
In our recent study of 900+ creators, we learned that creators sell an average of 10.95 digital products. Another survey of 600+ creators revealed that the most important community platform feature is the ability to connect their work with their community in one place.
If you use Facebook groups and want to sell online courses or other digital products, you’ll need to use an additional platform, like Kajabi, Teachable, or Thinkific. That means more tools to learn and manage, plus additional monthly costs that can add up quickly.
With Podia, you can create and sell different digital products, including online courses, digital downloads, webinars and live streams, and coaching. Podia’s online course creation tools make it easy to add drip course content, quizzes, and course completion certificates to motivate your students.
Entrepreneur and course creator Casey Richardson started her community, the Blaze Women’s Network, about a year ago. Initially, she ran the group on Facebook, but she didn’t like how customers had to log in to different places to access their courses and products.
When Podia launched the community feature, she moved her community over. Now, it’s easier for Casey to promote her online courses and memberships all in one place.
“I use the community as a lead magnet into all of my courses,” Casey told us. “People can join the Blaze Women’s Network absolutely free…. We do virtual coworking sessions, I host webinars, and then that funnels people into the paid courses which are live cohorts for about six weeks, as well as self-paced cohorts.”
All in all, one of the biggest benefits of Podia is that community members can buy your products, access your content, and post and join discussions with each other – all from the same place.
Because they’re already logged in to purchase your products or consume your content, there’s no need to access a separate platform or rely on Facebook. That’s a better experience for you and your members.
Create your own website
If you use Facebook to host your community and want to build a website, you’ll need to use an additional website builder, plus pay for a domain name and web hosting.
Tools like WordPress can have a steep learning curve if you’re not code-savvy, while platforms like Squarespace can cost more than $50/month for the simplest features.
With Podia, you can build a complete website with unlimited pages for your online business. Our user-friendly website builder makes it easy to set up a beautiful homepage, about page, landing pages, sales pages, and beyond.
Here’s how creator Emily Mills uses her Podia website, Sketchnote Academy, to share her online courses, community, and resources with her audience of aspiring sketchnote artists:
Building your website on the same platform where you run your community and sell products means that all of your essential tools are connected by default. No need to deal with outside plugins, themes, or checkout tools for your membership site.
Marketing features
Beyond paid ads, Facebook doesn’t have many options for marketing your online business and lacks helpful features like email marketing and affiliate programs.
To connect marketing tools with Facebook, you’d need to use Zapier automations – there are no native integrations.
Podia comes with email marketing, affiliate marketing, upsells, and customer messaging features to help you grow your business.
With Podia’s email marketing tools, you can connect with subscribers via newsletters and email campaigns, so you don’t have to pay for a separate email service provider. You can also add a newsletter capture form and host lead magnets on your Podia site.
Podia’s live chat features let you easily communicate with prospective and current customers to answer questions and encourage them to join your community or buy your products.
If you’re looking for a platform with integrated marketing features, Podia is the way to go.
Pricing plans and transaction fees
Facebook is free to use, and you won’t pay a flat monthly rate.
However, if you want to do more than just run a free community, you’ll need to factor in the cost of additional tools and services, including email marketing tools, online course platforms, website builders, and hosting.
For many creators, Podia can replace three to six separate tools, saving you money and time. Podia has a free plan and three paid plans.
Podia pricing:
- Free (10% transaction fee)
- Starter plan: $9/month or $4/month when paid annually (8% transaction fee)
- Mover plan: $39/month or $33/month when paid annually (5% transaction fee)
- Shaker plan: $89/month or $75/month when paid annually (no transaction fee)
The free plan comes with a website, an online community with unlimited membership tiers, email marketing, one digital download, and one coaching product. That’s a whole lot more than Facebook offers.
Bottom line:
Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced entrepreneur, Podia has the features you need to build a thriving community that you and your members will love. If you’re looking for a user-friendly, all-in-one platform to run a successful community and online business, we built Podia for you.
Get your free Podia account today, or take a video tour to see all these features in action.
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Absolutely! You can check out our Podia demo site, which we’ve built to show you what the Podia experience will look like for both you and your customers.
There are also dozens of creator example sites on our Examples page, so you can see what other creators just like you have built using Podia.
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Yes! We offer free (and hassle-free) migrations on all annual Mover and Shaker plans. Get started here.
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Yes! Podia has a free forever plan that includes your full website, blogging, one digital download, one coaching product, customer chat messaging, and your online community. Sign up for free today to see for yourself!
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Absolutely! You can see how Podia stacks up to many of our competitors right here.
We also have some head-to-head comparisons of other leading platforms in case you’re choosing between those, including:
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We’d love to. Podia’s customer support is here for you, seven days a week. Just reach out to us on chat and a real, friendly person will be delighted to help you out.