Podia vs Teachable vs Thinkific: Choosing The Best Online Course Platform

When it comes time to launch an online course, its each to get overwhelmed with the options out there, in this article I’ve dive into the 3 most popular ones in 2024 and compare them against each other.

Obviously I’m talking about Podia, Teachable & Thinkific.

Podia vs Teachable vs Thinkific; TLDR if you are in the hurry here’s the jist

• If you are a solo creator launching courses use Teachable
• If you are a company or startup go with Thinkific it’s the easiest to work on as a team.
• If you want an all in one platform use Podia (but most users kind it restrictive) 

Podia vs Teachable vs Thinkific

In this in-depth review, I’ve compared the 3 platforms in terms of the features they offer, the design and customization tools they come with, their pricing, and more. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about Podia Teachable and Thinkific and to figure out which one would be the best fit for your needs!

About Teachable

Teachable is a solid no-nonsense platform for creating and selling online courses. The interface is really clean and the platform is super easy to understand and navigate through. In my opinion, Teachable is best for video-driven learning content but it also shines in other areas and comes with tools that help in marketing, selling, and building your courses such as the drag-and-drop website builder and customizable sales pages.

Being one of the biggest players in the online courses platform, Teachable comes with all the standard features that you would expect from an online course platform such as Quizzes, Certificates, Student feedback, etc. Teachable plans start from $29 per month for the basic plan and go up to $249 per month for the business plan.

Click Here To Get Teachable

About Thinkific

Thinkific is also a pretty well-established platform for creating and selling online courses. It comes with tools and features that help you build your online courses such as a drag-and-drop builder, free hosting, custom HTML and CSS, and more. It also comes with all the standard marketing and selling tools you might need including integrations with payment gateways, email marketing tools, affiliate marketing features, etc.

Overall, even though Thinkific has a huge userbase with 40,000+ course creators using the platform, it is still considered to be best used for a niche audience of entrepreneurs and small businesses instead of big companies looking to create complex online courses (but more on this later). Thinkific offers a free plan that allows you to host up to 3 courses with some limited features and its paid plans start from $49 per month and go up to $499 per month.

Click Here To Try Thinkific For Free

About Podia

Podia was launched in 2014 with the intention of helping creative entrepreneurs manage online businesses. While it can be used to do a lot of things, the primary use cases for Podia are selling online courses, managing digital downloads, and creating membership-based sites.

What makes Podia stand apart are primarily two things – first, it is a user-friendly integrated solution which means you don’t have to use five different tools for your business and handle everything with just one easy-to-use tool and secondly, its policies are very friendly for creators. An example of such a policy is the fact that Podia offers instant payouts for any sale you make without charging any transaction fee.

Podia is being increasingly used by creators around the world as it simplifies the process of running an online business and allows you to integrate all the different aspects into one single platform. It also comes with very powerful features that I’ve covered below.

Click Here To Try Podia For Free

Based on this, it’s clear the differences between Teachable, Podia and Thinkific.

1. Podia is designed to be an all in one marketing suite for a digital marketer & online creator. From running a blog, digital downloads, courses & membership sites, you can do it all in a simple easy to use platform and not have to waste time making different tools like Clickfunnels & Teachable work together.
2. Thinkific on the other hand is the most team friendly service, their business plan allows 100 admins on the platform. Podia doesn’t scale for a big company, hence Thinkific is a better choice for startups.
3. Teachable is the world’s best course platform, best suited for someone who just wants to host a courses and doesn’t mind paying extra to have to easily integrate with their existing business.

Click Here To Try Podia Free For 14-days

Podia vs Teachable

Podia vs Teachable Pricing

Teachable is available in 4 different plans:

1. Free – Test-drive Teachable’s core feature set for free.
2. BASIC $39/Month – Great to Create your first online course
3. Professional $99/Month – Teachable’s most popular plan
4. Business $499/Month – Most comprehensive plan of Teachable

However, Teachable has platform fees on your courses if you are on the base or free plan.

• Free: 10% + $1
• Basic: 5%

Podia on the other hand has much simpler pricing!

• Mover ($39/month) – Your own storefront, Online courses, Digital downloads, Email marketing, Messaging, Zero transaction fees, Unlimited everything, and 24/7 support.
• Shaker ($79/month) – Everything in Mover + Memberships, Blog, Embedded Checkout, Affiliate marketing, Third-Party Code and FREE migrations.

In terms of Pricing Podia is easily a winner, transaction fees are a massive deal breaker, and the Teachable platform is big on selling you up sells to just make you buy more things.

Winner: Podia

Podia vs Teachable Features

In terms of running a course, Podia and Teachable are pretty much on par. However both platforms has a few downsides here.

But in terms of overall features Podia is the clear winner, you can get the power of over 5 tools for the price of 1.

Teachable it literally just a course platform, you have to combine many other services like Clickfunnels for your landing pages, Mailerlite for your drip campaigns, to make your campaign successful.

You can’t use Teachable to run membership sites which is a feature Podia easily lets you do.

Podia is an all in one marketing platform.

Now, lets see how much that would cost to have all of that without Podia.

Now you may not use all the features, if in reality if you’re doing even more than one of the things, it’s already cheaper to use Podia vs signing up for each of the tools individually.

In fact it costs more just to get Teachable (without the transaction fees) than it is to get the top plan of Podia.

Teachable also has some pretty crappy support. Podia on the other hand has 24/7  live support and help you in the entire process of selling your courses.

Winner: Podia

Click Here To Try Podia Free For 14-days

Podia vs Thinkific

Podia vs Thinkific Pricing

Thinkific is available in 4 different plans:

1. Free – Test-drive Thinkific’s core feature set for free.
2. BASIC – Start your course creation experience with the basic features and tools you need to launch your first course.
3. Pro – For course creators ready to build a successful online course business, a complete suite of tools to create an amazing student experience
4. PREMIER – For advanced customers ready to build an education empire, get all the Thinkific features + the Growth package. Designed for delivering online education at scale. No limitations – one flat fee.

The Pro Plan @ $99/ Month is best for startups just getting things going, while existing large organizations are better off going with the Premier Plan.

One place where Thinkific is a standout is the fact that their base plan has No Transaction fee just like Podia.

In these terms Thinkific is actually better in terms of pricing as a course platform, but Podia wins as the all in one marketing suite.

Winner: Thinkific

Click Here To Try Thinkfic For Free

Podia vs Thinkific Features

Thinkific is best suited for a much different audience than Podia. Podia is best suited for a non technical solopreneur or team who just want to focus on creating.

Thinkific has much more advanced features that make it better than Podia for large organizations, it’s hard to work with Podia when more than 3 people are involved, in Thinkific more than 10 people can collaborate and get things done efficiently.

If you’re just looking for a powerful course platform that will integrate with your existing business, then Thinkific is definitely the best one out there.

But as an all in one platform, Podia has a ton more features making it the winner.

Winner: Podia

Click Here To Try Podia Free For 14-days

Teachable vs Thinkific

Teachable vs Thinkific Pricing

Teachable and Thinkific are both evenly priced however at the same price, Thinkific offers no transaction fees while Teachable has fees in their free as well as base plan.

Winner: Thinkific

Teachable vs Thinkific Features

Teachable is very similar to Thinkific in terms of price, however it doesn’t have the features many large organizations will need.

Teachable also has its own payment setup called “Teachable payment” and you can only receive your payments instantly if you use their payment methods, else you have to wait 30 days to receive payments over Paypal.

Winner: Thinkific

Click Here To Try Thinkfic For Free

Podia vs Teachable vs Thinkific Reddit

What Reddit has to say about Podia:

u/StrictElephante: Podia seems restrictive. There are some things I can’t do with their website builder

What Reddit has to say about Teachable:

u/drewches: I have a client who hosts all of their courses on Teachable. I think that Teachable is a great platform since it handles a lot of the back end of things for you so you can focus on creating content.

u/connectsnk – “A good membership option is to opt for a fully managed online platform like Teachable”.

u/bigoldfeet – “Teachable is a platform for creating an online platform, but you can add in features to give your teachable site a community aspect, effectively making it a membership website.”.

What Reddit has to say about Thinkific:

u/rajshankara: I use Thinkific, works great. Makes money from my lectures

u/c01: If you are just starting out, I highly recommend Thinkific and Teachable both. I suggest you do a trial with both and decide for yourself. Both have freemium versions as well.

u/mickmeaney: I liked it apart from not being able to do full customer management on it.

Verdict: Podia vs Teachable vs Thinkific

So, based on everything it’s clear why I made my suggestion at the start of this article.

• If you are a solo creator launching courses use Teachable
• If you are a company or startup go with Thinkific it’s the easiest to work on as a team.
• If you want an all in one platform use Podia (but most users kind it restrictive) 

There’s no real winner between Podia, Teachable and Thinkific. Teachable is great for solo creators who want an all in one platform, while Thinkific is the better overall course platform.

Click Here To Get Teachable