Great question! We obviously think we’re pretty great, but here’s an honest answer:

Thinkific and Podia both allow you to sell online courses. Both give you a customizable website, product landing pages and sales pages, affiliate marketing, and helpful selling features like coupons, payment plans, and upsells.

The key difference is that Thinkific is primarily an online course platform, and Podia is an all-in-one tool for running your entire online business.

To help you decide which option is right for you, let’s dive into the details.

Thinkific vs. Podia pricing

Both Podia and Thinkific have several plans depending on what your business needs.

Podia pricing

Podia has two paid plans to choose from and a free 30-day trial. All plans have checkout features and payment options like payment plans, waitlists, preselling, and monthly subscriptions.

• Mover plan: $39/month or $33/month paid annually (5% transaction fee): Includes your website, blog, unlimited landing pages, and custom domains, plus unlimited digital downloads, online courses, webinars, product bundles, and coaching sessions. You can remove Podia branding and there are also more selling features like coupons, upsells, and access limits.

• Shaker plan: $89/month or $75/month paid annually (no transaction fees): Includes everything in Mover plus affiliate marketing.

All Podia plans come with full email marketing features, like automations, campaigns, segments, lead magnets, sales funnels, tagging, and newsletters. Email is free for your first 100 subscribers, and you can upgrade to add more subscribers as your list grows.

Thinkific pricing plans:

• Free: $0/month: 1 course, 1 online community, 1 digital download, 1 live event

• Basic plan: $49/month: Unlimited courses, 1 community, 5 digital downloads, 5 live events, coupons, affiliate program, and the option to connect a custom domain

• Start plan: $99/month: Includes unlimited courses, 1 community, unlimited digital downloads, unlimited live events, memberships, payment plans, and product bundles

• Growth plan: $199/month: Includes unlimited courses, 3 communities, unlimited digital downloads, unlimited live events, and the ability to remove Thinkific branding

• Expand plan: $499/month: Unlimited products plus 10 communities and priority access to customer support

Selling online courses and other digital products

Both platforms have plans with unlimited courses, unlimited products, and unlimited students. Here's how they differ on features and price.

Courses:

Course creators with Podia and Thinkific can add as much lesson content as they want, set up live cohorts, enable drip content, build quizzes, and issue course completion certificates.

With Podia’s user-friendly course builder, you can design a visually appealing learning experience for your students in minutes.

As baker and course creator Beesham Soogrim puts it, “Podia is very easy and the students can navigate through the courses easily. Plus, support is very quick to answer.”

You can even embed content from 1,900+ third-party platforms like SoundCloud, Typeform, Spotify, Google Forms, and Github directly into your course content for a better user experience.

Marie Drouvin from The French Accelerator uses Podia to offer courses with videos, text, images, and embedded content. She says, “What gets me with Podia, every time, is how easy it all is. Drag the files, and voilà, I have a course to launch. It just makes sense.”

Digital products:

Courses aren’t the only thing you can sell. Both platforms also let you offer digital downloads like ebooks, printables, and other file formats, as well as live events like coaching and webinars. You can also create product bundles and upsells.

Payments:

Both platforms have integrations with PayPal and Stripe so payment processing is a breeze. You can also add multiple payment options like one-time payments, subscriptions, and memberships.

Thinkific has its own built-in payment processor called TPayments that entrepreneurs can access if they want.

The difference with Podia vs Thinkific is that you get unlimited courses, downloads, webinars, coaching sessions, and products on Podia’s Mover plan for $39/month, but to get unlimited everything with Thinkific, you’ll need the Start plan for $99/month.

Integrated email marketing and newsletters

You can create the greatest digital product in the world, but no one will know about it without good marketing. Email marketing is one of the best ways to share your work and engage your audience, and both Podia and Thinkific have email features.

Thinkific has some email features on all paid plans, but email isn’t included in the free plan.

On the Basic and Start plans, you can set up automated email sequences that promote different products to your leads. If you want to send a mass email to all your students and customers, you’ll need a Grow, Expand, or Plus plan to unlock mass student emailing.

If you’d like to use a third-party email service provider, Thinkific integrates with Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Constant Contact, AWeber, Active Campaign, and Engage Bay. There are also other marketing tools in the Thinkific app store, but keep in mind that outside email marketing tools may come with extra costs.

Podia takes a different approach to email.

You don’t need to use a third-party email platform (unless you want to!) because Podia Email has all the key features and functionality you need to run your newsletter, email list, and automated campaigns.

With Podia Email, you can

• Grow your subscriber list with email opt-in forms, lead magnets, and landing pages

• Segment, filter, and tag your audience based on actions they take in your account

• Make beautiful email newsletters with pre-designed email templates or set up a custom template for your brand

• Run automations and campaigns with entrance and exit conditions

• Track stats and data like how much money you earned from each email sent

• Send unlimited emails on all plans, regardless of your subscriber count

Best of all, all Podia Email features are free on all plans for up to 100 subscribers. That means you can add an email opt-in form to a landing page, share it to grow your list, and start communicating with your new followers right away without spending anything extra.

You can upgrade as your list grows, and you’ll always be paying some of the lowest prices in the industry for email.

And if you prefer to use a secondary email service provider, Podia also integrates with Mailchimp, ConvertKit, AWeber, Active Campaign, Drip, MailerLite, and GetResponse.

All in all, Podia is a great option if you want maximum marketing power without having to use – and pay for – a bunch of different platforms.

Build your website, blog, and landing pages

Both Thinkific and Podia include a website with landing pages for your products, but Podia’s website tool also includes a customizable blog. You can use Podia’s easier-than-drag-and-drop website builder to set up your site exactly the way you want, and you can decide how your blog articles should look.

Everything works and looks nice out of the box, but you’re also free to customize your fonts, colors, layouts, and other design details. You can even create email marketing templates that match your website since your site colors are universal across your account.

Because Podia is an all-in-one option, everything is connected to everything else – and each feature is designed to help you grow your business.

For example, your blog posts can direct people to your free lead magnet, which gets people on your email list. You can use email broadcasts and campaigns to promote your products and earn sales, and set up waitlists and presales to learn what products your audience wants.

Then you can build those products, and use Podia’s built-in email filtering features to send a message to any customers who have expressed interest. Everything works together so you can focus on what you do best.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform where you can

• Sell a wide array of products and services

• Set up a beautiful (and beginner-friendly) blog, website, and storefront for your brand

• Build your email list

• Create a virtual home for your business, all for one affordable monthly fee

Podia is the way to go.

Start your 30 day free trial of Podia today.