Online education is a big thing right now. More than ever, people are searching for effective ways to improve their skills and expand their talents online. As the digital world grows more popular, there are tons of opportunities for educators to take advantage.
If you’ve got skills and knowledge to share, there are plenty of SaaS platforms out there to supply you with the tools you need to create, market, and sell your online course. Two of the most popular options right now are Kajabi and Podia.
Both Kajabi and Podia are well-known platforms, but each has its own pros and cons to consider when you’re shopping for the ideal solution.
Podia vs Kajabi: An Overview
Before we can accurately compare Podia and Kajabi, let’s take a closer look at both solutions.
Both Podia and Kajabi allow educators to turn all kinds of content, from video and audio to digital workbooks, into an online learning experience. You can create mini courses with a downloadable workbook or design a membership environment where your customers can access ever-evolving content.
Podia started life in 2014, offering a host of creator-friendly tools for the beginner getting started online. Podia wants to ensure that every creator has a way to bring their educational experiences to the masses. The Podia platform is friendly and fun to use, with a host of marketing features included too, so you can boost your chances of attracting students.
Podia Pros 👍
- Plenty of great course creation features
- Easy to use and intuitive environment
- Support for unlimited courses
- No transaction fees required
- Affiliate and email marketing tools
- On-site live chat and messaging
Podia Cons 👎
- Some support limitations
- No free plan
- Missing some customization options
Kajabi, on the other hand, is an engaging all-in-one platform that intends to improve your ability to create a course and market it online. Whether you’re a first-time creator or an expert, Kajabi has you covered. The course creation tools allow you to customize modules with a range of different content types, and you can also personalize landing pages too.
Kajabi offers a huge selection of product blueprints, so you can start with an initial skeleton for your course and build it however you like. There’s also a ton of customization options.
Kajabi Pros👍
- Email marketing and advertising options
- Search engine optimization facilities
- Webinars and unique course types
- Landing pages and sales funnels
- Drip options for your content
- Integrations with leading tools
- Analytics and reporting
- Online community
- Affiliate marketing
Kajabi Cons 👎
- Complex site interface for some beginners
- Affiliate marketing program is only for some plans
- Can be expensive
Podia vs Kajabi: Pricing
The price of your course solution might not be the most important thing you need to consider – but it is something you can’t overlook. We all have budgets to think about, after all.
Podia comes with two options for pricing. There’s the “Mover” package, which starts at $39 per month, and the “Shaker” option, at $79 per month.
Podia’s mover and shaker plans both come with access to:
- Your own website
- Course building
- Digital downloads
- Webinar creation
- Email marketing
- Messaging
- Access to extra team accounts
- Zero transaction fees
- 24/7 support
- Daily live Q&A sessions
- Free migrations
If you’re willing to upgrade to the Shaker plan, then you can get some extra functionality in the form of a blog, Zoom integration, memberships, and off=site buy buttons. Affiliate marketing and third-party coding is also available. Podia has a 14-day free trial to get you started.
Kajabi pricing is much more expensive. You get a 20% discount if you pay annually, but you’ll still need to pay around $119 per month just to access the Basic service. There’s also the $159 per month Kajabi Growth plan, which includes more products, pipelines, and admin users, as well as 24/7 chat support, advanced automation and an affiliate program.
All plans come with access to products, pipelines, landing pages, contacts, active members, marketing emails, at least 1 admin user, and 1 website. The more you pay, the more your product and pipeline options increase. The Kajabi Pro package for $319 per month comes with support for up to 25 admin users, 3 websites, 100 products and pipelines, 100,000 contacts, and 20,000 active members.
You’ll need at least the Growth package from Kajabi to remove the branding, and there is a free trial available, along with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
While Kajabi is a much more expensive option than Podia overall, it’s also quite a bit more comprehensive. If you bear in mind that Podia’s automation options are quite limited, and that there are various places where you might need to invest in additional software, you could argue that Kajabi gives better value for money.
Podia vs Kajabi: Course Creation
As mentioned above, both Podia and Kajabi allow course creators to pull various resources together into a full learning experience. Both tools are designed to be as flexible as possible, though the interfaces may be slightly more or less appealing based on your experience.
Podia offers a very straight-forward course creation tool, which allows you to upload any kind of file, and deliver your course content however you choose. You can pre-launch courses, and drip it out over time, depending on your needs. You start your course creation journey by selecting the product you want, then working with a blank slate to build what you need.
Podia doesn’t specify exactly what video hosting solution it has on the website, but you can upload content with no limits on file size. Kajabi allows you to upload videos up to the file size of around 4GB, so you may need to do
Kajabi helps users to build courses using “product blueprints”. These blueprints are fully customizable, and they help to give you an initial starting point when you’re creating your courses. You will have the option of starting from scratch with Kajabi, which is ideal if you have an existing course in mind.
Having the blueprint option is handy if you're an absolute beginner, because you’ll have a good idea of where to start building. You can add video files, PDFs, audio files, and more to your site, and there’s even options to host interactive videos and webinars.
Kajabi allows you to upload files directly from your computer, or you can use Google Drive or Dropbox. Both Podia and Kajabi will assist you with migrating your content onto their platform if you’ve already started building somewhere else.
Podia vs Kajabi: Quizzes and Surveys
All course creators want to make sure that their students are soaking up knowledge as well as possible. Creating an interactive experience for your customers makes a significant difference. It’ll set your course apart from the other options on the market, and help students digest material.
Quizzes and surveys are essential to ensuring that your students get the most out of your learning experience. On Podia, you can add multiple-choice quizzes to any lesson you choose and show your students their score before they move to the next section.
Unfortunately, Podia doesn’t support open-ended questions, so you may struggle to provide your customers with a full assessment experience.
Alternatively, Kajabi assessments give you plenty of freedom for how you can test your student’s knowledge. There’s support for multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions, images as a question, and fill-in-the-blank sections.
You can also have students upload their homework or assignments as word documents, PDFs, videos, and audio straight into the lesson. There’s a grading option with each plan so you can measure your student’s performance.
Kajabi supports educators in delivering all kinds of assessment experiences. If you like the idea of being able to deliver a wide range learning tools to your students, Kajabi is likely the better choice.
Podia vs Kajabi: Memberships and Student Engagement
While quizzes and assessments are a great way to determine your students’ progress, they’re only one way to engage with your audience. As an educator, you’ll probably want to unlock a variety of progress reports about your students and members, so you can see how well they’re digesting the material, and how happy they are with the experience.
In Kajabi, you get a full analytics system that shows you all the information you need to know about your customer, including whether they’re digesting the material, when they tend to drop off from a lesson, and so on. Kajabi’s overview reports also tell you how students are progressing with your course overall, showing the number of students who complete a lesson, and average progress.
Kajabi’s reporting system is pretty comprehensive. You can segment students however you choose and check on specific community members. You can also slice data according to lesson, so you can see how each lesson performs.
Podia is a little simpler, it tracks when students have watched a video on an individual basis. You can see every lesson your customer has or hasn’t viewed in your system, but Podia doesn’t offer the same degree of depth that you get with Kajabi.
Podia vs Kajabi: Design and Themes
If you’ve ever used a product that you’ve just loved the design of before, you’ll know how much aesthetics can make a difference to the way an experience feels. When you’re teaching a course, you want a theme that’s going to keep your customers engaged, while showcasing your brand.
The right design options will allow you to strengthen your image online, and make a stronger connection with customers.
Podia allows you to adjust a few elements of a single default theme, such as the heading, and body font, the background colors, and the text colors. You can also add your logo to some content, but that’s about it. Although Podia is an all-in-one platform with a website builder included, it only includes blogging on certain plans.
Podia does allow you to build things like FAQs, testimonial pages, and use various other blocks to add to your site. However, there are prebuilt themes that stop you from doing much with customization.
Kajabi, on the other hand, allows you to build an entire website with a range of customizable themes. You can build everything from a community environment to a membership site in the same space. Every theme comes with the same flexibility to adjust how you want things to look and feel.
Kajabi allows you to build a wide range of pages for your website, using a variety of themes. You can add your own branding and copy to each element and most of the experience is very straight forward. Kajabi also offers pop-ups for your website so you can capture attention and potentially earn leads when people visit your site.
Podia vs Kajabi: Email Marketing
For many business leaders and educators, email marketing is one of the most valuable tools available. That’s because email makes it easy to build a relationship with your target audience. Email converts customers more effectively than almost any other marketing medium.
To take advantage of the benefits, however, you’ll need an email marketing service. The good news is that you don’t have to find an email marketing provider separately if you’re using Podia or Kajabi. Both options allow for email marketing, and you can design clean and professional looking campaigns with both.
Podia offers stunning templates, but the customization options available are somewhat limited. You only have a handful of things that you can change, such as the bold and italic of fonts. However, Podia goes way above and beyond this.
Podia offers access to more than 15 templates themed to suit your needs. You’ll also get a host of pre-set sections which allow you to add all kinds of content, countdown timers, video previews, and images to your campaigns. Kajabi email also comes with a subject line validation service, which improves deliverability when you’re typing your subject line. The tool checks automatically for spam triggers and suggests what you need to fix.
If you want to make sure that you’re driving personalized conversions with your campaigns, you can also use Podia or Kajabi for email segmentation. You can use Podia to segment customers based on the items they’ve purchased, their pre-launch signup experience, lead capture forms, and membership requirements.
Kajabi email also comes with a variety of default segments to explore, including inactive subscribers, subscribers, and people who you don’t reach due to bounced emails. You can create custom segments too, so it’s easier to split your customers based on the factors that matter most to your conversions.
Once you’re done segmenting, you’ll be able to create automated campaigns and broadcasts based on specific triggers, and track your success based on each campaign.
While both products in this review offer automation, Podia’s email capabilities are often very basic. It’s not necessarily a full email marketing platform. Kajabi, on the other hand, is a more significant email marketing service. You can integrate your emails natively with the rest of your lessons, product offerings, and website. You’ll also be able to create landing pages about upcoming products, and design full sequences based on customer activity.
Podia vs Kajabi: Sales Funnels
Email isn’t the only thing you can automate with Podia and Kajabi. Sales funnels are one of the most valuable tools that business owners can use to improve conversions and generate revenue. Essentially, they’re strategies designed to help you automate the process of taking your visitor from a random person to a dedicated customer.
Your sales funnels can include everything from landing pages and sign-up forms, to email marketing campaigns. With Podia, you do have some sales funnel options, but there aren’t as many as you can get from Kajabi. Podia allows you to create email drip campaigns that gradually nurture your clients, but that’s about it.
Kajabi has a full dedicated sales funnel builder as part of the service. The “Pipelines”, system comes with blueprints for pre-designed sales funnels, just in case you haven’t built one before.
You can design sales funnels for free gifts, product launches, free books, webinars, coaching campaigns, and more. Everything is very well-crafted, and you don’t need to worry too much about figuring out how to code campaigns and automations yourself.
Of course, if you do like the idea of being able to design and implement your own custom pipelines, you can do that too. There’s the option to start an entire campaign from scratch. The pipeline feature in Kajabi is totally automated, but you can add your own code to shift things around a bit.
Podia vs Kajabi: Customer Support
No matter how fantastic your course creator or website builder is, you’re going to need some support from time to time. The last thing you want is to end up being stuck with no assistance when you’re trying to make a profit. There are always help articles out there that might give you some initial support, but it’s best to check which customer support options are available too.
Both Podia and Kajabi have a knowledge base where you can find your own answers to questions. There are also video tutorials, and live training sessions through Q&As, though Kajabi offers far more training in this regard.
Live chat functionality is available throughout the week, though the ability to speak to someone on Podia through live chat can be a little complex, as the opening hours seem to constantly change. Both companies will also offer email ticket support.
Both Kajabi and Podia are pretty reliable when it comes to customer service. Kajabi just goes slightly above and beyond with more live chat availability, and live training.
Podia vs Kajabi: Customer Support
Kajabi allows creators to connect external applications to their sales page, or checkout, among other environments. You can sync your account to various tools, even on the basic plan, such as Mailchimp, ClickFunnels and Google Analytics.
Google Analytics is one of the main tools that companies use on Kajabi. Notably, you will need an integration to print course completion certificates for your customers.
Like Kajabi, Podia has various integration options to consider, including links to MailChimp, Aweber, Drip, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, and others. You can also link in your preferred analytics tools and payment processors.
Podia vs Kajabi: The Major Similarities and Differences
Both Podia and Kajabi are tools for educating customers. The user-friendly interface is fantastic from both solutions, and you don’t have to worry about a complex learning curve as you add functionality. Both tools also come with marketing features, options for bulk emails, and affiliate marketing.
A great bonus for most companies is the fact that both Kajabi and Podia will allow you to drip content out to patrons at a pace that suits you. Plus, you can enable email responses and live chat to connect with students. As an online business solution, Podia and Kajabi rank among leaders like Teachable with no problem.
You can sell digital products easily, build and manage an email list, access Google analytics, and use some of the major tools that marketers rely on.
Kajabi is a little more advanced than Podia, with access to SEO optimization tools, sales funnels, and comprehensive landing pages to enhance your storefront. While both solutions allow you to use solutions like PayPal and Stripe to accept payments, Kajabi makes sales easier.
Podia does have more functionality for digital product creation if you’re looking for a user-friendly experience. Like major learning platforms such as Thinkific, Podia is all about building a connection with your customers to improve your bottom line. Podia is also less expensive than Kajabi.
Just like any website builder, such as WordPress or Shopify, Podia and Kajabi both come with distinct strengths and weaknesses to consider.
Choose Podia When
Since both products allow you to do crucial things like take credit card payments and launch email campaigns, the path to success is often deciding which tool is best suited to your specific needs. In our opinion, when it comes to choosing between Kajabi vs Podia, you should choose Podia if:
- You have a limited budget: Podia is cheaper than Kajabi, and there are no transaction fees to worry about. You can start off small and work your way up.
- You need to migrate to something new: Podia ensures you can quickly and easily move to another platform with minimal issues.
- You want to develop a community: Podia is great at ensuring you end up with a platform full of dedicated customers.
- You want to create memberships: If you want to go beyond digital products and sell full memberships for long-term interactions, Podia is the best choice.
- You’re a single instructor: Podia isn’t great for teams of educators or multiple instructors. If you’re a single educator, you’re better off here.
Choose Kajabi When
If you can get past the slightly higher pricing plans, Kajabi is great for accessing features like email sequences and real-time analytics. Kajabi is a better option if:
- You need a wide range of features: If you’re keen to accelerate and scale your online learning experience, Kajabi has a lot of functionality for upsells and cross-platform selling.
- You’re interested in automation: Kajabi does provide a lot of tools to make your solution more streamlined, particularly if you choose the pro plan.
- You want plenty of resources: Kajabi has lots of blueprints to help you with sales funnels, as well as templates and extra tools to get you started if you’re a beginner.
- Marketing and sales are crucial: Kajabi will ensure that you’re going to stand out on everything from the search engines to social media, with marketing tools, Facebook and Google Pixel analytics and more.
- You want an entire sales funnel: Kajabi allows you to build a complete funnel ready to turn leads into paying long-term customers. You don’t get this with every course builder.
Finishing Thoughts on these online course platforms
With plenty of in-built features, and a host of integrations both on the platforms, and through Zapier, both Podia and Kajabi have a lot to offer.
Finding the right solution for your course isn’t always easy. Particularly when you’re looking for advanced features like payment plans, combined with opt-in forms and the simplicity of an easy-to-use backend.
If you’re looking for ease of use and flexibility above all else, Podia is likely to be the go-to choice for you. It’s streamlined for beginners, but has enough features to help you scale. Alternatively, if you want something more advanced from day one, with comprehensive sales funnels and excellent templates or blueprints to access, consider Kajabi.
Either way, you’re sure to find the tools you need within these two immersive platforms to ensure that you deliver amazing outcomes to your audience. Good luck building your online course or membership platform.
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