Podia and Shopify are both platforms for building your small business, but the types of businesses you can build with each are different.

Podia is an all-in-one platform for online business owners who sell digital products, coaching, and courses, while Shopify has features for selling physical products and managing in-person storefronts.

Both tools let you build a website and blog, both have ecommerce and checkout functionality, and both have email features. Let’s take a look at each option so you can determine which is right for you.

Podia vs. Shopify plans and pricing

One of the biggest differences between Podia and Shopify is pricing.

Podia has straightforward pricing with two plans — Mover and Shaker. There’s also a 30-day free trial so you can see how Podia works before signing up. Here’s what’s included on each plan:

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.

Shopify has seven different plans for different kinds of businesses. If you’d like to try Shopify before you buy, you can get a 3-day free trial, followed by a $1 one-month trial.

Shopify pricing:

• Starter: $5/month

• Basic: $39/month ($29/month billed annually)

• Retail: $89/month

• Shopify: $105/month ($79/month billed annually)

• Advanced: $399/month ($299/month billed annually)

• Plus: Starting at $2,300/month on a 3-year term

• Enterprise commerce: Custom pricing

All plans come with in-person selling, analytics, and the ability to connect other apps to your store. Shopify Email includes 10,000 emails per month on all plans, but if you go over this amount, you’ll pay overage fees.

You can build a website and blog with Podia and Shopify

Both Shopify and Podia make it easy to set up a website and blog for your business.

Shopify has a website and blog tool with a large library of themed templates and over 8,000 apps you can connect to your site. You can build your website with the drag-and-drop builder or create something custom with their code-based editor.

That said, having so many apps and add-ons to manage can make things complicated. If you prefer ease of use and simplicity, we built Podia’s website builder just for you.

Podia comes with a user-friendly point-and-click website builder with dozens of pre-made sections that all look great out of the box. In just a few seconds, you can add beautiful text, image, and video sections, set up email opt-in forms (that are automatically connected to Podia Email), create FAQs and testimonial sections, and add a custom header and footer for your site.

On the blogging side, adding new blog posts is as easy as typing (or copy and pasting), and you can add images, text decorations, and embedded content from +1,900 sources. You can also adjust the SEO settings for your blog posts and fully customize the way your posts look.

You can add as many sales pages, landing pages, and blog posts as you like, and everything is connected in one tool so it’s easy to make sure your pages all go to the right place. No extra integrations or apps needed.

What kinds of products can I sell?

Another big difference between Podia and Shopify is the kinds of products you can sell. Shopify is built for offering physical products and selling in-person. Shopify’s point of sale system is included on all plans, and you can sync inventory across many locations — as well as online.

Shopify has its own payment gateway called Shopify Payments, but if you prefer to use a 3rd-party payment processor, you’ll pay an extra transaction fee.

Podia has features for selling digital products online. You can offer unlimited digital downloads, online courses, coaching sessions, membership plans, and webinars. All products can be free or paid, you can offer payment plans, and you can add seat limits, access durations, coupons, drip content, and upsells in seconds.

For collecting payments, you can connect with PayPal or Stripe.

Bottom line: Shopify has powerful features for in-person business owners and people selling physical products. Podia is a better fit for online entrepreneurs who want an easy way to sell digital products — without Shopify’s higher price tags.

Email marketing with Podia and Shopify

Podia and Shopify both have email features built in, so you don’t need to use a third-party tool.

With Podia Email, you send broadcasts, newsletters, and automated campaigns. You can automatically trigger a welcome email when someone subscribes, send helpful information when a new customer buys your course, and follow up with someone who hasn’t opened your emails in a while.

Start from a pre-made template, start from scratch, or start from a previous email — no coding needed.

Best of all, Podia keeps track of all your data for you, so you don’t have to manually build tons of segments and tags yourself (unless you want to!). That’s the beauty of an all-in-one tool — your customers, products, affiliates, email, and user data is all connected.

Shopify email comes with unlimited contacts, but there’s a cap of 10,000 email sends per month. You can also build marketing automations and create segments to stay in touch with your audience.

While Shopify has handy tools for running your in-person business, it may be overly complicated (and pricey) for small business owners with online businesses.

Podia was built for online creators from day one, and it has everything you need to set up a beautiful online store, make a website, create courses, build automated workflows and campaigns, and connect with your audience.

Try Podia’s features for yourself with a 30-day free trial. We can’t wait to see what you make.