Podia and Skillshare both make it easy to share your work with online courses, but the type of business you can build with each platform is very different.

Skillshare is an online course platform where teachers can upload their video courses into a marketplace. Students sign up for a Skillshare membership to access all courses on the platform, and teachers earn royalties based on how many minutes of watch time their courses receive.

Podia is an all-in-one platform where small business owners and entrepreneurs can sell courses, digital downloads, coaching, and webinars. Podia includes a custom website and blog, and you can run your email marketing and affiliate program all under one roof.

Here’s more information about each option so you can pick the best online course platform for your business.

Course builder features on Podia and Skillshare

Podia and Skillshare are both course-creation platforms, but Skillshare courses follow a set template while Podia courses have more customization options.

Skillshare recommends creating video courses that are 20–60 minutes long and are broken up into shorter video segments. All courses must include an intro and outro video lesson. All courses should contain a project that students can complete and upload after they’ve finished their course content.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Skillshare has content restrictions that might make it difficult to sell your work if you fall outside of their approved topics. (For instance, you can’t sell courses related to fitness, pet care, beauty regimes, spirituality, and mathematics, to name a few.)

• You can only teach Skillshare courses in English, French, German, Portuguese, or Spanish.

• Skillshare asks that you limit self-promotion in your videos, which means you shouldn’t ask people to visit your social media profiles or discuss other products that aren’t on Skillshare.

With Podia, there are fewer limitations on your online courses.

Your courses can have videos, images, text, downloads, embeds, quizzes, or any combination of those elements. You can also add live sessions and 1:1 coaching within your course for a varied learning experience.

You can bundle your courses with other products and add upsells at checkout if you have related products your customers might like. It’s also easy to set up drip courses, waitlists, seat limits, coupons, access durations, and payment plans, and even connect an online community through Podia’s Discord integration.

As your business grows, you can use Podia to add affiliate marketing for your courses. This means that happy customers can promote your products and courses in exchange for a commission.

Another benefit of using Podia is that you can email the students in your courses any time you like. Let’s take a look at Podia’s email features.

Email marketing in the same place as everything else

Email marketing tools are a powerful way to grow your audience and add value for your customers. All Podia accounts come with a beginner-friendly email designer, email templates, automations, segments, campaigns, newsletters, sales funnels, and lead magnet functionality — and all these features are free for your first 100 subscribers.

If your email list grows, you can upgrade your Podia Email plan for more subscribers (or connect with a third-party email marketing platform if you prefer).

This means you can send course learners a welcome email after they sign up, create a free lead magnet that drives course sales, and share blog posts and business updates with your followers any time you like.

You can also keep an eye on your analytics to see how much money you earned from a particular campaign and how many people opened your emails, all in one user-friendly dashboard.

Skillshare doesn’t include an email marketing feature, and you’re discouraged from sending students off the platform, so you’ll need to grow your email list another way.

Your own website, blog, and landing pages

In addition to housing your courses and email, Podia also comes with a customizable website and unlimited landing pages. You can build a blog, set up sales pages, and create standalone pages for your link in bio or email newsletter sign-up in just a few clicks. Want to connect a custom domain? You can do that too.

When you’re ready to set up your site using Podia’s easier-than-drag-and-drop website builder, you can choose from dozens of predesigned section templates. Image grids, FAQs, testimonials, featured products, bio sections, CTAs, and email opt-in forms all look great out of the box, and you can customize them to match your branding and style.

You can also embed interactive elements from +1900 sources around the web (like YouTube videos, podcasts, presentations, spreadsheets, etc.), and customize your fonts, colors, and website spacing.

There are SEO settings so you can help your pages and posts show up in the search results, and Podia websites also come with customer chat messaging so students and prospective buyers can contact you.

Skillshare, on the other hand, is a course marketplace so everyone gets a uniform course page to promote their content. Skillshare doesn’t include your website or blog, and there aren’t many customizations you can make to your course page aside from your text and featured image.

Podia vs. Skillshare plans and pricing

Skillshare is free to use, but your earning potential is out of your control since you can’t set your own prices. All teachers on the platform share 20% of the revenue generated by Skillshare each month, and the amount you earn is based on how many minutes people spent watching your videos compared to other teachers.

So while Skillshare does have a free plan, it also has a more complicated earnings structure.

Podia is an all-in-one solution where you pay a set monthly fee for all the tools you need to run your business. To start, Podia has a 30-day free trial with all features so you can test everything out before you pay anything. After the trial, you can choose from two pricing plans:

• Mover: $39/month and 5% transaction fee ($33/month when paid annually): Mover includes your website, blog, and sales pages as well as unlimited digital products, online course creation, and third-party code. You also get access to Podia’s friendly customer support.

• Shaker: $89/month and 0% transaction fee ($75/month when paid annually): Shaker includes all the Mover features plus affiliates.

All Podia plans include all email marketing features (like automations, newsletters, email templates, segmentation, tagging, and campaigns) for up to 100 subscribers. If you like, you can upgrade your Podia Email plan to add more subscribers as your list grows.

If you sign up for a monthly or annual Mover or Shaker plan, Podia includes a free migration service. This means our team will move your products and customers over from another platform (like Teachable, Thinkific, Kajabi, etc.) for free so you can get started fast.

Bottom line: Skillshare is a good option if you want a revenue-sharing model and don’t mind being limited to just video courses. But you won’t be able to set prices for those courses, create a custom website, or contact your audience with email marketing.

Podia is a better option if you want more control over the types of courses and products you offer. You can set your own prices, sell digital products, create a beautiful, customized website with landing pages and blog posts, grow your email list, and start an affiliate program — all from a platform that you control.

We want you to have everything you need to grow a course business you love, which is why you can try Podia for free for 30 days. Sign up for your free trial today. We can’t wait to see what you make.