The internet is starting to feel less human.
More content. More automation. More things that feel polished, optimized, and generated.
At the same time, the creators who kept succeeding all had one thing in common: people kept coming back to them. Not just for information. For conversation. For community. For a feeling of connection with the creator and the other people around them.
Historically, Podia helped creators sell things online: courses, downloads, webinars, coaching, memberships. Over the last year, we found ourselves asking a different question: what if creator businesses were built less around isolated products, and more around bringing people together?
Today, the new Podia is live.
What’s new
The biggest shift is that everything now works together much more naturally.
Courses, downloads, coaching, events, email, memberships, discussions, chats, and updates now live in one connected place instead of scattered across separate experiences.
That means:
- Your members get a shared home feed: one place where conversations, updates, new products, and events all show up.
- Members can talk to each other directly, in 1-on-1 messages or group chats.
- Courses live inside the community now, so questions and conversations stay where everyone is.
- Events show up in the home feed so members can always see what’s coming up.
- Creators and members are in the same place now, not stuck in separate "admin" and "customer" worlds.
We've also added a long list of new features and improvements over the last few weeks, including:
- Community spaces and permissions
- Move posts between spaces in a couple of clicks
- Local time zones on events and posts
- Better messaging and richer member profiles
- Privacy controls for member profiles
- In-person events
- A faster, redesigned home feed
But honestly, the biggest change is less about any individual feature and more about how everything now feels connected.
A lot of creators who upgraded early helped us shape this version with thoughtful feedback, bug reports, and ideas. A few early reactions also told us we were heading in the right direction:
"I'm having more two-way interaction with my group since the upgrade than I have in 9 months. Some folks who'd been ignoring me completely have appeared too."
"I find it a big improvement. It was perfect timing for me as I was about to launch a new course."
"The new Podia experience is fantastic. There are so many things, big and small, that were thought of."
That's exactly what we were hoping for.
We don't think AI is going away. Quite the opposite.
But we do think the internet is changing in a way that makes human relationships more valuable, not less.
People can get information anywhere now. What they still come back for are the people they trust, the communities they feel part of, and the conversations that feel real.
We think creator businesses are going to become much more relationship-driven over the next few years. The ones built that way last longer, earn more over time, and are more rewarding to run.
We want Podia to help you build one of those.
The goal with all of this is simple:
We want Podia to feel more alive.
More connected.
More human.
Thousands of creators have already upgraded early and helped shape this version of Podia with feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and thoughtful ideas along the way.
A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to share thoughts with us while we were building this.
And we're just getting started. 💛
