Both Podia and ThriveCart have tools to make it easy for customers to buy your products. You get checkout cart functionality, affiliates, and courses, and you can add on additional selling features like upsells and coupons.

But ThriveCart is, first and foremost, checkout software, so you’ll need to use other tools for your website, blog, landing pages, and email marketing.

Podia is an all-in-one platform for building your online business that includes your website, blog, landing pages, email marketing, email automations, customer data, and all kinds of digital products. You can connect integrations if you want to, but you don’t have to since everything is in one place.

Let’s take a look at what you can do with each platform to help you make the right choice for you.

What can I build with Podia and ThriveCart?

Both Podia and ThriveCart have affiliate management, checkout cart functionality, sales funnels, coupons, upsells, and customer stats. Both also come with an online course builder so you can sell products.

ThriveCart also supports A/B testing, 2-step checkout carts, and physical product sales. All accounts come with ThriveCart Learn where you can create online courses and dripped content. You can also purchase Learn Plus for an additional fee to unlock bundles and team members.

ThriveCart does not have website, blogging, or email marketing features.

With Podia, all the tools you need to build your online business are connected in one place. You get an online course platform, website builder, landing page builder, blogging platform, email marketing platform, and customer management system all under one roof.

While ThriveCart limits you to courses, Podia makes it easy to sell virtually any type of digital product.

Here are just some of the things you can build with Podia:

• Self-paced, drip, live, and cohort online courses (with multimedia lessons, modules, course content, and quizzes)

• Courses and products integrated with your Discord community

• Digital downloads like ebooks, audio files, videos, and printables

• Memberships and subscriptions to products

• 1:1 coaching sessions

• Live webinars and replays

• Product bundles

Everything you make on Podia can be free or paid, and you can set up payment plans, add upsells at checkout, choose a custom start date, limit seats, and create product waitlists before your products are ready. You can also sell online courses and products that are integrated with Discord for online community functionality.

For your payment processor, you can connect Stripe, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, iDeal, SEPA Debit, and Stripe Link. Podia also has your affiliate program built-in so you can allow happy customers to promote your products in exchange for a commission. All Podia plans come with built-in tax management powered by Quaderno.

Podia has your full website builder with tons of customization options so you can make an online home that looks like you. Choose from dozens of pre-designed section templates that you can customize however you like, add unlimited blog posts, and even customize your SEO and social media sharing data to make it easier for new audiences to find your work.

And because your products are already connected to your website, Podia automatically generates a beautiful sales page for each offer that you can fully customize. No need for integrations with or extra landing page tools.

In addition to your products and website, Podia has your email marketing tools ready to go.

Choose from a library of email templates to create beautiful newsletters, build sales funnels and automated campaigns, segment and tag your audience to contact specific members, and send as many emails as you like.

All email features are free for your first 100 subscribers so you can get started whether you’re an email beginner or seasoned entrepreneur.

Podia vs. ThriveCart plans and pricing

A key difference between Podia and ThriveCart is that ThriveCart charges a high upfront cost to get started. It’s a one-time payment, but it might be cost-prohibitive for many creators.

• ThriveCart: One-time fee of $495: Includes checkout pages, upsells, cart features, online courses, subscription management, and a sales funnel builder.

• ThriveCart with Pro upgrade: One-time payment of $690: Includes everything above plus affiliate management, sales tax features, and predicted revenue.

In addition to this fee, you would need to pay extra for your website, blog, and email marketing — and make sure all your technology is compatible. That’s a lot of moving parts to manage when you’re setting up your business, with significant upfront costs.

Podia takes a different approach by putting all the tools you need to start, grow, and scale your work in one spot, for one fair monthly price. You won’t have a huge upfront fee — in fact, you won’t pay anything at all for the first month.

Podia has a 30-day free trial with all features so you can test everything out before you pay. 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, coaching, webinars, 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 your own affiliate program.

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 an 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.

You can see if Podia is the right fit for you with our 30-day free trial. Take it for a spin today. We can’t wait to see what you make.