Both Podia and Medium are solid options for blogging and sharing your writing, but the type of business you build with each platform is very different.

Podia is an all-in-one platform for running your entire business and you can sell digital products, create a full website, run your email marketing, and share blog posts.

Medium is primarily a writing platform where you can earn money when visitors read your work, but it isn’t set up for selling products or doing advanced email automations.

Let’s compare the two platforms in detail so you can decide which one is right for you.

Pricing plans for Podia and Medium

Podia and Medium have different structures when it comes to pricing and plans, as well as how you can make money on those plans.

Medium has two plans, free and membership. The free plan lets you read stories without ads and share your own written work. The membership plan gives you access to exclusive members-only stories and the option to join the Partner Program so you can make money when people read your contributions. A Medium membership costs $5 per month.

On Podia, you create your own products, set your own prices, and earn money when people buy those products. You can start earning money on the free trial, and upgrade to a paid plan with more features as your business grows.

Podia Pricing:

• Mover plan: $39/month and 5% transaction fee ($33/month when paid annually): Mover includes your website, blog, landing pages, and customer messaging, plus unlimited digital products, courses, custom domains, and third-party code.

• Shaker plan: $89/month and 0% transaction fee ($75/month when paid annually): Shaker includes all the Mover features plus the option to make your own affiliate program.

You can also add on Podia Email to any Podia base plan. Podia Email is free for your first 100 subscribers, and after that the price goes up as your list grows. All plans have all email features, so you can send beautiful newsletters, run advanced automations, build campaigns, and segment/filter your audience no matter your list size.

You can make a blog with Podia and Medium, but Podia has more customizations

Both Podia and Medium make it easy to share your writing. Both platforms have a blogging feature where you can publish unlimited articles and use text formatting like bullets, numbering, block quotes, and images.

A key difference is that Medium comes with a standard template, so everyone’s writing looks similar across the platform. With Podia, you can customize your fonts, colors, and blog page layouts so that they match your style.

Podia lets you choose how your title and featured image are configured, change the background colors, add an author bio or links to featured products, and make other adjustments to the layout of your blog posts.

Podia’s point and click website builder is simple for beginners, and you can set up a full website with unlimited sales pages in the same place as your blog and everything else.

Both tools are easy to use right out of the box and your blog posts will look good from day one, but with Podia you have more control over the details.

Send Newsletters with either platform — advanced automations are available on all Podia email plans

Medium lets you send newsletters if you have a publication with the platform. You can send and schedule emails, but Medium lacks the advanced segmentation and automation functionality you get with a full-fledged email platform like Podia.

You also can’t import an existing list of subscribers to your Medium newsletter — you have to grow your list from scratch on the platform. That said, you can export your subscribers if you like. Medium also shows newsletter stats, so you can see your subscribers, sent rate, opens, open rate, clicks, and click rate.

With Podia Email, you can send newsletter broadcasts and automated campaigns. You can segment and filter your list based on subscribers’ activity and interests and set up lead magnets, waitlists for products, and other automated sequences to connect with your followers.

Plus, Podia Email comes with a library of beautiful email templates and other great design features so you can make your emails match your brand. You can even use past emails as a starting point to save time and keep your emails consistent.

Sell digital products like courses, digital downloads, webinars, and coaching with Podia

Medium could be a good option if you only wanted to share written content with your audience, but it’s too limiting if you want to branch out to digital products or course creation in the future.

Medium doesn’t have a course builder or a way to sell digital products, nor does it let you charge a specific price for your members-only content. Instead, you’ll get paid by how many minutes members spend reading your work, which gives you less control over your income.

Podia lets you build your blog, email list, and website in the same place you sell digital products.

You can create courses, downloads, webinars, coaching sessions, memberships, and other products for your followers, and all of your sales and customer data is automatically connected in one place. For payment processing, you can choose between PayPal or Stripe — no need to worry about extra checkout tools or integrations.

Plus, Podia also comes with marketing tools like upsells, waitlists, coupons, and affiliate marketing so you have all the resources you need to grow your business.

Bottom line: Medium works if you’re looking for a platform solely for sharing written content and you want to earn money based on how often people read your posts.

Podia is a good fit if you want to build your own online business with a blog, products, website, email list, and online course platform you have full control over.

If you’d like to give it a try for yourself, sign up today. All Podia features are free for 30 days!