While Podia may look pretty at first, Thinkific has all the functionality you can trust to grow your business. A drag and drop Site Builder, best in class customer support, tools to engage your customers, and much more. Check out the Podia vs Thinkific comparison, including a side by side feature table below.
Online Courses
Thinkific was born from an online course. Our founders were teaching online in 2011 and online course creators were reaching out asking to find out how we built it. Since then we’ve been learning from the 60,000+ course creators and 9 million+ students through our platform.
You can learn a wide variety of topics with Thinkific customers: Excel, English ESL, Social Media, Flying Drones, Accounting, Cooking, Yoga, Hula hoop, Video Marketing, 3D Animation, Spanish, Knitting, and the list goes on and on. Elizabeth Rider, HootSuite, Dana Malstaff (BossMom), Intuit, York University, and more run their online classes with Thinkific.
Memberships
Thinkific makes it stupid simple to create and grow an engaged community. While Podia has the basics in place, Thinkific is flexible and configurable to meet your needs. There’s a reason why the biggest names in the industry such as Lewis Howes, Grant Cardone, and Justin Brooke (AdSkills) run their membership programs on Thinkific.
Digital Downloads
With the flick of a switch, let your students download any of your course content. Or don’t. Your call. No special setup, nothing different to do.
Drag and Drop Site Builder
Make your site look exactly how you want it, without hiring a designer or a developer. With our Site Builder,
you get real control and customizations, not just uploading your logo and adding brand colours. Drag and drop sections, add smart sections, choose from multiple themes, styles, and templates. It’s incredibly easy, and powerful. Ps. It’s included!
Student Experience and Engagement
We’ve learned that what makes a difference in successful online courses is Student Experience and Engagement. We have lots of tools to help you do this with quizzes, exams, surveys, and discussions. Our competitors just aren’t there yet.
Bulk import
Upload all your content all at once. Videos, PDF’s, Audio, Text, Files, everything. Then easily organize it with drag and drop.
Integrations you can rely on
While Podia and Thinkific both have Zapier integrations, Podia has only six options, where Thinkific has ten triggers, searches, and actions to truly empower you.
We also have MailChimp, ConvertKit, Facebook, Google Analytics, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, Accredible, Discus, Sumo, InfusionSoft, Stunning, Mixpanel, Segment, and more coming soon.
Webhooks & API
While you may not need our Webhooks and API if you’re just getting started, you’ll quickly learn how powerful and helpful they are as soon as you need them. If you’re not familiar with the terms, Zapier is basically a bunch of Webhooks working together. They provide a way for developers to easily build apps that receive information in near real time from your Thinkific site.
Our API enables developers to interact with every part of your Thinkific site (with the right authentication of course) without waiting on events or going through the user interface. This allows for almost unlimited possibilities and customizations.
Support
We strive for inbox zero every day, and support is our #1 selling point. Don’t believe me? Read our reviews. Think we’re too big and don’t have a personal touch? Ask our private Facebook group of 20,000+ about Aaron, Rob, Ratha, Evelyn, Greg, Paddy, Mark, and more.
Podia vs. Thinkific Comparison Table
| Thinkific | Podia | |
| Pricing | $99 | $39 |
| Free Trial | Yes | No |
| Customer Support | ||
| Phone | Yes | No |
| Yes | Yes | |
| Advanced features for scale | ||
| Course reviews (social proof) | yes | no |
| Landing Page, Sales Page Custom HTML/CSS | yes | no |
| Student Experience | ||
| Send Personalized automated emails to your students | Yes | Yes |
| Student progress reporting | Yes | No |
| Quizzes | Yes | Limited |
| Student engagement survey | Yes | No |
| Advanced exams | Yes (Brillium) | No |
| Multiple Instructors | Yes | No |
| Storyline, Captivate and more | Yes | No |
| Voice over presentations | Yes | No |
| Completion certificates | Yes | No |
| Marketing & Sales | ||
| Free, Paid and Subscription | Yes | Yes |
| Stripe | Yes | Yes |
| PayPal | Yes | Limited |
| Currencies | 135+ | 26 |
| Coupons & Promotions | Yes | Yes |
| Upsells & Bundles | Yes | Yes |
| Groups Bulk sell courses, manage students and track progress of the students in the group | Yes | No |
| Advanced Marketing Integrations (ie: Mixpanel, InfusionSoft, Segment.io etc.) | Yes | No |
| Affiliate program | Yes | Yes |
| Memberships | Yes | Yes |
| White Labeling | Yes | Yes |
| Features | ||
| Unlimited Courses, students | Yes | Yes |
| Drip Content | Yes | Yes |
| Time-Limited Courses | Yes | No |
| Prerequisite lessons and courses | Yes | No |
| Bulk import course content | Yes | No |
| Bulk Student Import / Enrollment | Yes | No |
| Site Builder – Drag and Drop Page designer | Yes | No |
| Themes and Color pickers | Yes | Yes |
| Easily add externally hosted content & apps | Yes | Limited |
| Custom Domains | Yes | Yes |
| Private / hidden courses | Yes | Yes |
| MailChimp Integration | Yes | Yes |
| ConvertKit Integration | Yes | Yes |
| Zapier Integration | Advanced | Basic |
| Multiple Course/Site Admins | Yes | No |
| SSL Certificate | Yes | Yes |
| SSO | Yes | No |
| App Store | Yes | No |
| API Access | Yes | No |
| Webhooks | Yes | No |
See what our customers say
 |  |
 |  |  |  |
We hope you’ve found this comparison of Thinkific vs Podia useful. Features and support are constantly changing! This analysis was accurate to the best of our knowledge as of August 2021
