Podia vs ThinkiFic: Best Online Course Platform (Time to Switch?)

1. Course Creation

Course creation is about the ease of creating a new course. As a course creator, instructor, coach, or edupreneur, this process includes all the features you’ll need to create, market and sell courses. Here is my own experience after trying out both of the platforms.

ThinkiFic

ThinkiFic provide an intuitive interface for course creation, with some of the most well thought of UI, it offer clarity in what you need to click to get to the next step of course creation, offering some of the best UX amount all online course platforms.

Build for both beginner and experienced course creators, you can intuitively add in all the various features and information you’ll need for your online course.

• Course curriculum: Creating your course contents
• Bulk Importer: Quickly import your media for the course
• Course Settings: Course descriptions, URL, instructors, completion certificate, access etc.
• DRIP: Course delivery automation and personalization
• Course pricing: Free, subscription, one-time payment, monthly payment
• After purchase experience: Upsell, thankyou page, launching your buyers right to your product.

ThinkiFic make it feels like the UI just guides you along your course creation process, prompting you to fill in all the information required to create a professional course. While it have a limited amount of course templates, each of the course is fully customizable, offering full flexibility for you to create any types of courses for your online business.

To create a new course, here are the steps for ThinkiFic:

1. Login to your ThinkiFic dashboard.
2. At left menu, click “Manage Learning Products” then “Course” then “+ New Course“.
3. Course creation will appear and enter your Curriculum details
4. Choose your setting and give your course a friendly URL. ie. “Learn How To Sell For Non-Marketers” or “Learn to Play Piano in 60-Days”.
5. Choose if you want to offer your content as DRIP.
6. Price your course accordingly.
7. Set your “After Purchase Flow“.
8. Once done, just click “Publish”.

In additional ThinkiFic offers a wide range of advance features for course creators to create their online course making it an amazing platform for course creators to get started.

Podia

Podia allows you to easily choose which types of product you want to create to sell on your platform. Like ThinkiFic Podia’s UI/UX is top notch, and it offers some of the simplest flow to create your first digital product or online course.

Designed for online business owners of all levels, you can easily add in various features and information into your course.

• Course Sections: Creating your course lessons and group them into sessions
• Course Details: Course name, descriptions, image, completion certificate, access etc.
• Course pricing: Free, subscription, one-time payment, monthly payment
• Availability (DRIP): Course delivery automation and personalization

Podia provides various options to create different types of online products easily. The interface is clean and offers all the basic features to create an online course.

The course creation process for Podia involves 4 main steps.

1. Click on “Products“
2. Click on “+ New Products“
3. Choose the “Type of Product” you want to create.
4. Create your “Lessons“
5. Add information for your “Details“
6. Add your “Pricing” information
7. Change your “Availability” information
8. Hit “Publish” and your new course is “Live“

However, the features Podia offers for the course creation is quite basic when compared to ThinkiFic.

And unlike ThinkiFic it does not offer the option to add in “App” functionality for your online course.

My Choice: ThinkiFic

Both Podia and ThinkiFic allow you to add a new online course easily, and both offers great course creation experience, allows you to easily customize your course. However, Podia features are relatively basic, and ThinkiFic offers a whole list of advance features and each of the features are categorized to allow easy course creation for the creator.

• Podia offers simple and easy way to create digital products within a few simple clicks. (Online Course, Digital Downloads, Webinar, Bundle and Coaching)
• Thinkific offers a high focused course creation experience designed particularly for course creators to create, market and sell online course and build an online community.

ThinkiFic may have an edge in course creation, and I personally prefer how the course creation using ThinkiFic more compared to Podia, thus ThinkiFic win this one.

2. Student eLearning Engagement Experience

Student’s experience and course delivery that create a positive and engaging online learning experience is the key to building a successful online course business. 

Ask yourself questions like,

• “Does the platform provide the tools to keep your students engage?”
• “Does the platform offers features to create a positive learning environment?” 

Let’s take a look at how Podia and Thinkific features compares.

ThinkiFic

ThinkiFic is designed to be the best online course platform that offers all the features a course creator need to create online course that sells.

Unlike many other platforms that is aiming to become a jack of all trades, ThinkiFic aims to become the go-to platform for creating online course with the best learning experience. Here are some notable features offered by ThinkiFic.

• Community building: Create a community on your online course platform.
• Memberships: Creating a membership site that offers online course and online education resources.
• Learning Content Delivery: Video, audio, text, pdf, downloads, multimedia, presentation and live.
• Assess Your Students: Quiz, survey, assignments and exams
• Offer
• Drip content offering that automates and personalized the course content delivery.
• Certifications: Engage by offering certification for students.
• Products and Service: Live events, live streams, direct 1-click zoom meeting option, 1-on-1 Coaching sessions, digital downloads, online course.
• Unlimited Video and Digital Downloads: Building a library of online courses and resources.
• Mobile App: Branded and non-branded mobile App (ThinkiFic Mobile) option to engage your students 
• Offers bundles and coupons for marketing and conversion.

Podia

Podia is amazing when we are talking about creating and selling online digital products, and even for online course, it offers various features to help engage your audience. While they are basic, the features are pretty good for most course creators.

• Community building and membership: Create a highly engaging community for your platform.
• Learning Content Delivery: Text, downloadable files (pdf, video, audio etc.), coaching and embed.
• Assess Your Students: Quiz
• Drip content: Personalized course content delivery.
• Certifications: Engage by offering certification for students.
• Products and Service: Digital downloads, Live events and webinars, 1-on-1 Coaching sessions, online course and bundles.
• Unlimited Video and Digital Downloads: Building a library of digital downloadable products and resources.
• Bundles and coupons: Increase conversion and make marketing more effective.

My Choice: ThinkiFic

Podia and ThinkiFic both offers useful features to help you engage your students and help them reach their learning goals.

• Podia if you are looking build online business that is designed for selling digital products that includes online course, membership, coaching, webinar, “an everything platform” that is pretty good in doing everything that you may want for your online business.
• ThinkiFic if you are looking to build an absolutely amazing online course business that let you do everything plus a platform that makes students sticks to your platform while engaging them anytime anywhere.

When we are talking about features that engage your students on a deep level, ThinkiFic excel in this area.

Not only ThinkiFic offer many more advance features to engage your students, Thinkific also offers you the option to create your own personalized branded App for your online business. 

3. Pricing Plan, Discount And Free Trials

As a business owner, knowing the price of the platform is definitely an important consideration.

However, choosing a platform that is more expensive with great performance is often a better choice than a cheaper alternative with an average performance.

With that said, let’s take a look at Podia vs ThinkiFic site free and paid pricing plans.

ThinkiFic

Thinkific has a free plan where it let you gives you a test drive creating your site on ThinkiFic for free at $0 per month.

• Free Plan ($0 per month): Enjoying all the basic features and some advance features offered by Thinkific. You can try out ThinkiFic features such as, course builder, create community for courses and “spaces” for your students to interact with each other, designing your site, check out the marketing options as well as analytics and reporting.

ThinkiFic paid plans offer four different tiers designed for individuals, business and enterprise.

• Basic Plan ($36 per month): Perfect for new course creators looking to build their online business. With features such as; unlimited courses and students, custom domain, affiliate selling, learning community, 0% transaction fee, and optional Branded Mobile (add-on), this plan have everything you’ll need to successfully market and launch your course online and start making money.
• Start Plan ($74 per month): Recommended for growing business who are serious about scaling their business. Offering everything in Start Plan plus: 10 spaces per community, assignments, bundles, membership plans, live lesson, certifications, advance course and website customization options, and ThinkiFic Mobile, you can connect with your students anywhere, anytime.
• Grow Plan ($149 per month): Recommended for fast growing business, looking for automation features that help them scale and growth their platform. Offering everything in “Start Plan” plus; API access, bulk enrollment, bulk student emailer, and white-labeling of your platform, you gain the option for unlimited growth.
• Plus Plan to Contact Sales: Recommended for established business, enterprise looking for a Learning Management System (LMS) solution. Offering unlimited everything, you can create a business with unlimited growth offering training to your company, or building an eLearning marketplace just like Coursera or SkillShare.

Podia

Podia also offers free and paid pricing plans.

Starting with their free plan, Podia let anyone create a “forever free” account on the Podia platform to try and test out the various features offered by Podia.

• Free Plan ($0 per month): Enjoying various basic features offered by Podia to create a large variety of digital products (Digital downloads and coaching) and draft products (course and webinar) with the option of creating a community and full website with a 8% transaction fee.

Podia offers two simple paid pricing plans:

• Mover Plan ($33 per month): Perfect for new online business owners who are looking to build their small business. Offering everything in the “Free Plan” plus; Unlimited products (Downloads, Coaching and Courses), membership payment option, optional email and team add-ons, basic integration, custom domain and 0% transaction fee.
• Shaker Plan ($75 per month): Recommended plan for fast growing online business owners. Offering everything in “Mover Plan” plus; Unlimited products (Downloads, Coaching, Courses and Webinars), affiliate marketing, certificates, 3rd party integration and 0% transaction fee.