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

Thinkific has three main plans and Thinkific Plus, which is a custom service for larger corporations. Thinkific also offers a 30-day free trial.

• Basic plan: $49/month or $36/month paid annually: 10,000 students, unlimited courses, 1 community, 5 spaces, 5 digital downloads, 5 coaching and webinar events, coupons, affiliate program, and the option to connect a custom domain

• Start plan: $99/month or $74/month paid annually: Includes 10,000 students, unlimited courses, 1 community, 10 spaces, unlimited digital downloads, unlimited coaching and webinars, paid memberships, and product bundles

• Growth plan: $199/month or $149/month paid annually: Includes 10,000 students, unlimited courses, 3 communities, 20 spaces, unlimited digital downloads, unlimited live events, and the ability to remove Thinkific branding.

Creating an online community for your business

Both Podia and Thinkific have community features built in so you don't have to connect a third-party tool. Both let you organize your content into spaces, create posts with reactions and threads, and get to know your members with detailed member profiles. But while Podia includes all community features on all plans, Thinkific gates a lot of important features to the Start plan and above.

With Thinkific, you can't offer paid memberships on the Basic plan, so that means you can't charge for your community as a standalone product until you upgrade. You also can't bundle community access with a course on the Basic plan which could limit the way you structure your offers. But the biggest factor to consider is space limits. Thinkific gives you 5 spaces on Basic, 10 spaces on Start, and 20 spaces on Grow.

Podia gives you unlimited spaces on all plans, so you have plenty of room to experiment with different layouts and access levels. You can charge monthly and annual pricing for your community and offer free trials for your customers, and you can bundle products with community access on all plans. This gives you a lot more flexibility in how your community supports your business, and it can even be a standalone product if you want it to be.

Selling online courses and other digital products

Both platforms have plans with unlimited courses and unlimited products, but Thinkific has student limits on all plans except the highest-tier Plus plan. You can only have 10,000 students regardless of what plan you're on, which could be a tough limit to overcome as you grow. Podia gives you unlimited students on all plans so you never have to turn people away.

Courses:

Course creators with Podia and Thinkific can add as much lesson content as they want and create free, paid, and time-limited courses. You can also have discussion areas and quizzes built right into your course.

But while Podia gives you access to all course features on all plans, Thinkific gates some advanced course features to higher tier plans. For example, you'll need the "Start" plan to make private or hidden courses, issue course completion certificates, or embed multimedia content from outside sources.

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 also 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.

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.

Payments:

Both platforms have integrations with PayPal and Stripe so payment processing is a breeze. Thinkific also has its own built-in payment processor called TCommerce that entrepreneurs can access if they want. You can add multiple payment options like one-time payments, subscriptions, and memberships.

With Podia, you can sell paid memberships, offer payment plans, create product bundles, and offer free trials for your subscription products on all plans. With Teachable, these features are only available on "Start" and above.

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 automations built in, but you'll likely need to connect another tool for building your email list and sending newsletters. All plans let you set up automated email sequences to promote your products and send abandoned cart emails, but the feature is mainly for automated emails to your existing audience, not for growing your list or sending one-off newsletters and updates.

Podia takes a different approach to email.

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 without student limits

• Build a great community for your business that can be bundled with products or sold as a standalone product

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

• Grow 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.