# Podia

> Podia is an all in one creator platform that bundles a community, online courses, digital downloads, coaching, events, a website with a blog and landing pages, email marketing, and a checkout into a single subscription running from $42 to $150 per month billed annually; every plan includes a custom domain and every feature, with the tiers differing mainly on team seats, email subscriber allowance, and whether Podia takes a 5 percent transaction fee on your sales.

- Category: Community Platforms (https://saastracker.org/categories/community-platforms)
- Website: https://www.podia.com
- Starting price: $42 per month billed annually (Mover), or $49 billed monthly
- Free plan: No
- Free trial: 30 days, full feature access, no credit card required
- Founded: 2014, HQ: New York, New York, United States, Ownership: Venture-backed but profitable and independent
- Profile last reviewed: 2026-08-22
- Canonical profile: https://saastracker.org/products/podia

## Overview

Podia has been the quiet, sensible option in creator software since Spencer Fry founded it in New York in 2014. It raised only about $4.75M, has been profitable since 2019, and has never chased the scale of Kajabi or the venture narrative of Circle. The product reflects that. It is small, coherent, and unusually honest about what it includes, which is nearly everything, on nearly every plan.

In 2026 Podia relaunched around community rather than around courses, which is the change that puts it in this category properly. The community is now a first class product with topic based and tier based spaces, group chats, creator to member and member to member direct messaging, member profiles with photos, bios, social links, and privacy settings, badges, pinned posts, a welcome message for new joiners, ten built in themes, and search across posts, members, and topics. Notification frequency is member controlled from instant down to weekly or off, which is a small detail that keeps people subscribed rather than muting everything.

The commercial model is refreshingly flat. Mover at $42 a month billed annually, Shaker at $84, and Earthquaker at $150 all include community, courses, downloads, coaching, events, a website, a blog, landing pages, a custom domain, built in checkout, sales tax support in 230 countries, and more than 1,900 integrations. What changes as you climb is the transaction fee, which is 5 percent on Mover and zero above it, the number of team seats, and the email subscriber allowance.

The email subscriber allowance is the caveat to read carefully. Mover includes 100 subscribers, Shaker 500, and Earthquaker 1,000. Those are small numbers for a platform that markets email as an included feature, and a creator with a list of ten thousand people will be paying for extra subscribers on top of the plan. Treat Podia's headline price as the price of the community and course platform, and budget separately for the audience you email.

## How it works

1. You start a 30 day free trial with no credit card, pick a site theme, and connect a custom domain, which is included on every plan. Your website, blog, landing pages, checkout, courses, and community all serve from the same domain under one brand.

2. You create products. A product is a course, a digital download, a coaching offer, a webinar or event, or community access. Podia does not cap the number of products, which is a real contrast with Kajabi's five and Teachable's ten on their entry tiers.

3. You set up the community. Spaces are organized by topic or by membership tier, so a free space and a paid space coexist. Members post to an activity feed, comment, join group chats, message each other and you directly, and carry a profile with a photo, bio, and social links.

4. You gate access. Community membership can be free, sold as a paid recurring plan, or bundled with a course, download, event, or coaching purchase, so buying a product enrolls the buyer into the right space automatically. An upgrade button converts free members to paid inside the community itself.

5. You sell through the built in checkout on Stripe or PayPal. Podia handles subscriptions, one time purchases, payment plans, coupons, upsells, and sales tax in 230 countries and more than 20 currencies. On Mover, Podia takes 5 percent on top of processing; on Shaker and Earthquaker it takes nothing.

6. You market from the same account. Email broadcasts and automations run against the same member records, so a course purchase, a community join, or a free lead magnet can trigger a sequence without an external tool, within your plan's subscriber allowance.

## Best for

Solo creators, coaches, and very small businesses who want a community, a course, a website, and a checkout on one bill under one brand for well under $100 a month, and who value simplicity and a complete feature set on every plan over depth in any single area.

## Not the right fit for

- Anyone with a large email list. The subscriber allowances of 100, 500, and 1,000 are tiny, and a creator emailing ten thousand people will pay well above the headline price or keep an external email platform anyway.
- Businesses that would sit on the Mover plan while selling seriously. The 5 percent fee costs $250 a month on $5,000 of sales, which is three times the $42 difference to Shaker.
- Communities that need deep permission models. Podia's spaces are simpler than Circle's, with less granular role control, and large communities with many moderator tiers will feel the ceiling.
- Teams that want a branded mobile app. Podia has no branded app program, so members reach the community through the web, where Teachable and Kajabi both put your brand in the app stores.
- Anyone who needs public, search indexed discussion. Podia's community sits behind login and the blog is the only surface built to rank, so discussion contributes nothing to acquisition.

## Features

### Community

A proper community product since the 2026 relaunch, simple but complete.

- **Topic and tier based spaces**: Organize conversation by subject or by what someone paid for, so a free space and a members only space coexist and access follows the purchase rather than a manual invite.
- **Activity feed**: A single feed of the latest posts and highlights, which keeps a small community feeling active rather than scattering it across a dozen empty rooms.
- **Group chats**: Real time chat rooms alongside the slower feed, so a cohort or an accountability group has somewhere immediate to talk.
- **Creator to member and member to member direct messages**: Private one to one messaging in both directions, which handles the questions people will not ask in public.
- **Member profiles with privacy settings**: Photos, bios, and social links, with member controlled visibility, so a professional community and a hobby community can each set the right norm.
- **Custom member badges**: Recognition markers you define, used to mark moderators, founding members, or graduates of a program.
- **Search across posts, members, and topics**: One search covering discussion, people, and subjects, which is the feature that decides whether a community becomes a knowledge base or a stream that scrolls away.
- **Pinned posts and welcome message**: Pin announcements to the top of a space and greet every new member automatically, which are the two mechanics that most reliably reduce day one drop off.
- **Notification frequency control**: Members choose instant, hourly, daily, weekly, or off. Giving people a dial instead of a switch is why fewer of them mute you entirely.
- **Ten built in themes with full color customization**: The community looks like your brand rather than like Podia, on your own domain, without any custom code.
- **Free to paid upgrade button**: An in community upgrade path from a free tier to a paid plan, which is the conversion mechanic most community platforms leave to an email.

### Products you can sell

Unlimited products of every type on every plan, which is unusual at this price.

- **Online courses**: Sections and lessons with video, audio, text, files, and quizzes, with drip scheduling. Competent for consumer education, lighter than Thinkific on assessment.
- **Digital downloads**: Sell files directly with no product count limit, which suits template, preset, and ebook sellers who would hit Teachable's five product cap immediately.
- **Coaching**: One to one and group coaching sold as a native product type with scheduling, rather than a Calendly link taped to a payment page.
- **Events and webinars**: Scheduled live sessions sold as products, with access tied to the same entitlement system as everything else.
- **Bundles and memberships**: Combine products into one offer, or sell recurring access to a community plus a course library as a single subscription.

### Website, email, and marketing

The reason Podia can replace three subscriptions for a solo creator.

- **Website builder with blog**: A full site with a blog on your custom domain, which is Podia's only genuinely search visible surface and the one worth investing in.
- **Landing pages**: Sales and opt in pages built from templates, included on every plan rather than reserved for a higher tier.
- **Email broadcasts and automations**: Newsletters and triggered sequences against the same member records. The allowance is 100 subscribers on Mover, 500 on Shaker, and 1,000 on Earthquaker, which is the single most important limit on the price list.
- **Affiliate marketing**: Native affiliate tracking, included from the Shaker plan upward.
- **Upsells**: Post purchase and checkout upsells from Shaker upward, adding real commerce mechanics to a small platform.
- **More than 1,900 integrations**: Native connectors plus Zapier coverage, so the parts Podia does thinly can be handed to specialists.

### Checkout, fees, and administration

Flat, transparent, and cheap above the entry plan.

- **Built in checkout**: Stripe and PayPal with one time purchases, subscriptions, payment plans, and coupons, on your own domain.
- **Transaction fee by plan**: Podia takes 5 percent on Mover and 0 percent on Shaker and Earthquaker, on top of the roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents your processor charges.
- **Sales tax in 230 countries**: Automatic tax handling across jurisdictions and more than 20 currencies, which is materially more than most small platforms attempt.
- **Team seats**: Mover is a solo plan, Shaker adds one assistant, and Earthquaker allows unlimited assistants, which is a more generous seat model than Teachable's single admin on two tiers.
- **Custom domain on every plan**: Included from the entry tier with no vendor subdomain in front of members.

## Use cases

- **Solo creator replacing four subscriptions**: A Squarespace site, a Kit account, a Gumroad shop, and a Facebook group, adding up to more than $100 a month with member data in four places. Outcome: Shaker at $84 puts the website, blog, community, courses, downloads, and checkout on one domain with one member record and no platform fee on sales.
- **Coach selling a paid group program**: Clients need a private space to talk between calls, plus somewhere to buy the program, plus a way to book sessions. Outcome: Coaching is a native product type, community access is bundled with the purchase, tier based spaces separate current clients from alumni, and group chat carries the between session conversation.
- **Template and digital download seller adding a community**: Dozens of small products would blow past Teachable's five and Kajabi's five product caps on their entry tiers, and buyers keep asking where to ask questions. Outcome: Podia allows unlimited products on every plan, and a community space bundled with purchases turns one off buyers into a returning audience.
- **Creator testing whether a paid community will work at all**: Committing $179 a month to Kajabi or $89 to Circle before a single member has paid is an uncomfortable bet. Outcome: A 30 day trial with no credit card, then $42 a month on Mover with a 5 percent fee, keeps fixed cost low while the community is small; the moment sales pass about $900 a month, moving to Shaker is the cheaper option.

## Pricing

Flat monthly subscription across three tiers, all of which include every feature, differing on transaction fee, team seats, and email subscriber allowance.

- **Mover**: $42 per month billed annually, or $49 monthly. Community, courses, downloads, coaching, and events; Website, blog, landing pages, and custom domain; Unlimited products; 100 email subscribers; Solo plan with no assistant seats. Carries a 5 percent Podia transaction fee on top of processing. Above roughly $900 a month in sales, Shaker is cheaper.
- **Shaker**: $84 per month billed annually, or $99 monthly. 0 percent Podia transaction fee; 1 assistant seat; 500 email subscribers; Affiliate marketing and upsells; PayPal and Zapier. The plan most people should actually buy; the fee saving alone justifies it at modest revenue.
- **Earthquaker**: $150 per month billed annually, or $179 monthly. 0 percent Podia transaction fee; Unlimited assistant seats; 1,000 email subscribers; Affiliate marketing and upsells; Priority support. Worth it for the unlimited team seats rather than for the email allowance, which is still small.

Add-ons:

- Additional email subscribers (Charged above the plan allowance): The plan allowances of 100, 500, and 1,000 are small, so anyone with a real list should model this as a recurring add on rather than an edge case.

Billing notes:

- Prices reviewed in August 2026. Monthly billing is $49, $99, and $179; annual billing brings that to $42, $84, and $150.
- The free plan is gone. The 30 day trial with no credit card is now the only free path, and it is the most generous trial among the platforms in this category.
- The Mover fee is the decision point. At $5,000 a month in member revenue, 5 percent costs $250 plus $42 subscription, about $292 to Podia, against $84 on Shaker. Anyone selling more than roughly $900 a month should upgrade immediately.
- Model it including processing. At $5,000 a month on Shaker with 100 transactions you pay $84 plus roughly $175 in Stripe fees, about $259 all in, or 5.2 percent of revenue. At $50,000 a month on Earthquaker with 1,000 transactions you pay $150 plus roughly $1,750, about $1,900, or 3.8 percent. Because Podia takes nothing above Mover, it is one of the cheapest platforms here at high revenue.
- Every feature is on every plan. There is no gating of community, courses, coaching, events, custom domain, or website by tier, which is genuinely rare and makes the price list easy to reason about.
- There is no branded mobile app at any price, and no route to one. If an app in the stores matters, Teachable includes one at $39 and Podia cannot match it at any tier.

Value assessment: Shaker at $84 a month with a 0 percent platform fee is the most complete package under $100 in this category. You get a website with a blog, unlimited courses and downloads, coaching, events, a genuine community with spaces, chat, DMs, profiles, badges, and search, a checkout with tax handling in 230 countries, and a custom domain, on one bill. Circle at $89 gives you a better community and takes 2 percent of your sales; Kajabi at $179 gives you far more marketing machinery. The honest limits are three: the email subscriber allowances are so small that email is effectively a trial feature rather than an included one, there is no branded mobile app at any price, and the community, while complete, is simpler than Circle's on permissions and moderation. For a solo operator who wants one subscription and no fee on sales, this is the best value on the page. For a team of five running a large paid community, it will feel thin.

## Strengths

- Every feature on every plan. Community, courses, coaching, events, downloads, website, blog, landing pages, and custom domain are not tiered, which removes the usual pricing page archaeology.
- Zero platform transaction fee on Shaker and Earthquaker, so at high revenue Podia is cheaper than Circle, Patreon, Memberful, or Podia's own Mover plan by a wide margin.
- Unlimited products on every plan, which suits download and template sellers who would immediately breach Teachable's and Kajabi's entry tier caps.
- The 2026 community relaunch produced a genuinely complete product: spaces, group chat, direct messaging in both directions, profiles with privacy controls, badges, search, pinned posts, welcome messages, and member controlled notification frequency.
- Sales tax handling across 230 countries and more than 20 currencies, which is more than most platforms of this size attempt and saves real accounting pain.
- A 30 day no credit card trial, the most generous evaluation window among comparable products.
- Profitable since 2019 on under $5M raised, so the vendor is not dependent on a funding cycle and has no incentive to reprice aggressively.

## Limitations

- Email subscriber allowances of 100, 500, and 1,000 are very small, so email marketing is included in name more than in substance and most creators will keep or pay for something else.
- No branded mobile app at any tier and no path to one, which puts Podia behind Teachable at $39 and Kajabi at $179.
- The 5 percent fee on Mover makes the headline price misleading for anyone selling more than about $900 a month.
- Community permissions and moderation are simpler than Circle's, with less granular roles and no automated spam classification, which will bind on communities beyond a few thousand members.
- Course tooling has no real assessments, prerequisites, or certificates, so professional training buyers should look at Thinkific instead.
- No public, search indexed discussion, so the community never contributes to acquisition; only the blog does.
- A small company with a small team means a slower roadmap and a thinner third party ecosystem than Kajabi or Circle enjoy.

## Comparisons

- **Podia vs Circle**: The closest fight at this price. Circle at $89 has the better community: deeper space permissions, a stronger member directory, native live streaming, and a much larger moderation toolkit, plus branded apps on a custom quote. Podia at $84 has a website, a blog, unlimited products, coaching, and email in the same subscription, and takes 0 percent of your sales where Circle takes 2 percent. At $50,000 a month in member revenue that fee difference is $1,000 a month. Circle if the community is the product; Podia if the community is one part of a small business.
- **Podia vs Kajabi**: Kajabi at $179 is Podia with a real marketing department attached: email to 25,000 contacts, funnels, affiliates, a branded mobile app, and a better community with challenges and leaderboards. Podia at $84 costs less than half and takes no cut of your sales. If your business runs on email marketing at scale, Podia's 500 subscriber allowance ends the conversation and Kajabi wins. If it does not, Podia is the better deal.
- **Podia vs Teachable**: Teachable at $89 Builder includes branded iOS and Android apps and takes 0 percent, but caps you at ten products, one admin, and 1,000 active students, and its community is the weakest here. Podia at $84 allows unlimited products, has a much better community, and adds a website and blog, but has no branded app. Choose on the app: if you need one, Teachable; if you need a real community and a website, Podia.
- **Podia vs Thinkific**: Thinkific at $54 is the better teaching platform, with graded assignments, prerequisites, certificates, and cohorts, and allows 10,000 students. Podia has no assessment depth at all but includes a website, a blog, coaching, and a stronger community, and takes no fee where Thinkific penalizes you up to 5 percent for using your own gateway. Thinkific if education is the product; Podia if the course is one item on a small storefront.
- **Podia vs Skool**: Skool at $9 a month runs a tighter, more habit forming community than Podia does, and costs a fraction of it. Podia gives you a website, a blog, unlimited product types, coaching, events, a checkout with global tax handling, and email. Skool is a community; Podia is a small business. If all you need is a place where people talk daily, Skool is better and much cheaper.
- **Podia vs Patreon**: Patreon costs nothing until you earn and then takes 10 percent forever, with an effective rate of 13 to 20 percent once processing is counted. Podia costs $84 a month flat and takes nothing. Crossover is around $1,000 a month in revenue, and at $50,000 a month Podia costs roughly $1,900 against Patreon's $6,750 or more. Patreon's counterweight is discovery and an installed app base; Podia gives you a website, a blog, courses, and your own domain instead.

## Implementation

- Setup time: An afternoon. Podia is deliberately the simplest platform in this category, and a site, a product, a checkout, and a community with several spaces can all be live the same day.
- Learning curve: Very low. There are only products, spaces, and plans to understand, with no funnel builder, automation graph, or entitlement matrix to model. This is the main reason people choose it.
- Onboarding: Fully self serve with a 30 day no credit card trial across all tiers. There is no sales call at any price point, and no enterprise tier that would introduce one.
- Migration: Podia publishes migration guides and offers help importing products, content, and member lists from other platforms, and its unlimited product allowance makes bringing a large catalogue in straightforward. Moving out is the usual partial story: members, orders, and email contacts export as CSV and files can be downloaded, but community post history has no clean export path and active Stripe subscriptions require a Stripe data migration rather than a Podia feature.

## Platform, API & security

- Platforms: Web, mobile responsive, No native or branded mobile apps
- API: No deep public API; integration is handled through more than 1,900 connectors and Zapier, which is adequate for a small business and inadequate for anything custom.
- Compliance: GDPR, PCI DSS via Stripe and PayPal, Sales tax and VAT handling across 230 countries
- Data residency: US hosted, with no published regional residency options.
- SSO: No SSO. Members authenticate with Podia accounts.
- Security notes: Card data is handled entirely by Stripe and PayPal and never touches your Podia account. Member profile privacy is member controlled, and team access is limited by the assistant seat count on your plan.

## Support

- Channels: Email support on all plans, Live chat on all plans, Priority support on Earthquaker
- Documentation: A clear, well organized help center covering community setup, spaces, products, payments, and migration.
- Community: Podia runs its own community on Podia, which is a reasonable way to evaluate the product before buying. The third party consultant ecosystem is smaller than Kajabi's or Teachable's.

## Company

- Founded: 2014
- Founders: Spencer Fry, Jessie Kemp
- Headquarters: New York, New York, United States
- Ownership: Venture-backed but profitable and independent
- Employees: Small team, not publicly disclosed
- Funding: Approximately $4.75M raised across four rounds from investors including Zelkova Ventures, Designer Fund, and Notation. Profitable since 2019.

Funding history:

- Seed (2016 to 2019): Part of approximately $4.75M total. Backed by Zelkova Ventures, Designer Fund, and Notation; the company has not raised significantly since reaching profitability.

Timeline:

- 2014: Founded in New York by Spencer Fry, originally as Coach, a platform for selling online courses.
- 2017: Rebrands to Podia and broadens from courses to digital downloads and memberships.
- 2019: Reaches profitability on under $5M raised, and stops pursuing further venture funding.
- 2021: Adds a website and blog builder, turning Podia from a product platform into an all in one storefront.
- 2023: Adds email marketing with broadcasts and automations against the same member records.
- 2026: Relaunches around community, adding spaces, group chats, direct messages, member profiles, badges, search, and themes, and repositions from a course platform to a community first creator platform.

## Integrations

Stripe and PayPal, Zapier and more than 1,900 connected apps, Mailchimp, Kit, and ActiveCampaign, Google Analytics, Meta Pixel, and Google Tag Manager, Zoom for events and coaching, Calendly, Circle and Discord via Zapier for hybrid setups, Sales tax handling across 230 countries

## FAQ

### What is Podia and what job does it do here?

Podia is an all in one platform for creators: a community, courses, digital downloads, coaching, events, a website with a blog, landing pages, email marketing, and a checkout in one subscription. In this category it does both jobs at once, but since the 2026 relaunch community is genuinely first class rather than a bolt on, sitting alongside a course and membership business rather than underneath one.

### How much does Podia cost?

Mover is $49 per month or $42 billed annually, Shaker is $99 or $84, and Earthquaker is $179 or $150. There is a 30 day free trial with no credit card required and no free plan; the old free tier was retired. Every feature is included on every plan.

### What transaction fee does Podia charge?

Mover takes 5 percent of every sale. Shaker and Earthquaker take 0 percent. Stripe or PayPal processing of roughly 2.9 percent plus 30 cents applies on all plans. At $5,000 a month in member revenue, Mover costs about $292 a month to Podia against $84 on Shaker, so upgrading pays for itself above roughly $900 a month in sales. At $50,000 a month on Earthquaker you pay about $1,900 all in including processing, or 3.8 percent of revenue, which is cheaper than Circle, Patreon, or Memberful at the same volume.

### Are there member or admin seat limits?

Members are not capped. Team seats are: Mover is a solo plan, Shaker adds one assistant, and Earthquaker allows unlimited assistants. The real limit on the price list is email subscribers, at 100 on Mover, 500 on Shaker, and 1,000 on Earthquaker, with additional subscribers charged above that.

### Do I get a custom domain and how white label is it?

A custom domain is included on every plan including Mover. The community, website, blog, courses, and checkout all serve from it, with ten built in themes and full color customization, so members do not see Podia's branding in normal use. The one gap in white labelling is mobile: there is no branded app option at any price.

### Are courses and events first class or bolt ons?

Both are native product types on every plan, with no product count limit. Courses have sections, lessons, drip scheduling, and quizzes, but no graded assignments, prerequisites, or certificates, so they are lighter than Thinkific's. Events and webinars are sellable products with access tied to the same entitlement system, though live streaming itself is handled through Zoom rather than natively.

### Is Podia community content indexed by search engines?

No. Community spaces sit behind login. Podia's search visible surfaces are the website, the blog, and product sales pages, and the blog is the only one worth investing in for acquisition. If you want discussion itself to bring you traffic, you need a public forum such as Discourse or a self hosted Flarum alongside Podia.

### What moderation and spam tooling is there?

Pinned posts, member badges, post and comment removal, tier gated spaces, and member controlled profile privacy. Because community access is normally tied to a purchase or an email signup rather than an anonymous account, spam is a much smaller problem than on an open forum. There is no automated spam classifier and no post approval queue, which is a genuine gap against Discourse and Thinkific.

### Can I get my data out if I leave?

Members, orders, and email contacts export as CSV, and your product files can be downloaded. Community post history has no clean export path, so treat the archive as non portable. Recurring subscriptions are held in your own Stripe or PayPal account rather than Podia's, which is an advantage: a Stripe data migration is possible without asking every member to re-enter card details, which is not true of platforms that run their own payment layer.

### Should I just run a free Slack or Discord instead?

For a free community with no product to sell, absolutely. Discord costs nothing and people talk more there. Podia earns its $84 when you need to take money: access that follows a purchase automatically, recurring billing with dunning, global sales tax handling, a permanent searchable archive rather than Slack's 90 day free plan cutoff, and all of it on your own domain rather than someone else's app. A pragmatic setup is a free public Discord as the front door with paying members inside Podia, and Podia does not pretend otherwise.

## Editorial verdict

Podia is the best value all in one in this category for a solo operator, and the 2026 community relaunch finally makes it a real community platform rather than a course tool with a comments section. Shaker at $84 a month billed annually gives you a website, a blog, unlimited courses and downloads, coaching, events, spaces with group chat and direct messages, member profiles and badges, search, a checkout with tax handling in 230 countries, and a custom domain, with zero platform fee on your sales. At $50,000 a month in member revenue that fee structure makes it cheaper than Circle by around $1,000 a month. The three things to check before buying are all real: the email subscriber allowance is so small that email is effectively a demo feature, there is no branded mobile app at any price and never will be, and the community is simpler than Circle's on permissions and moderation in ways a large community will feel. Buy Podia if you are one or two people who want one subscription, one domain, and no cut taken. Buy Circle if the community itself is the business, and Kajabi if email marketing at scale is how you sell.

## SaaSTracker awards

- Best Value (Community Platforms, Summer 2026): "A website, a community, courses, and a checkout in one small subscription makes Podia the cheapest complete creator stack."

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Source: SaaSTracker (https://saastracker.org), an independent editorial project. This profile is compiled from public information, carries no peer reviews or paid placement, and was last reviewed 2026-08-22. Awards are judged on published criteria: https://saastracker.org/methodology