Podia vs. Stan Store: What’s right for me?
Great question! We obviously think we're pretty great, but here's an honest comparison.
Stan Store is primarily a link-in-bio tool that lets you sell digital products like courses, downloads, and webinars directly through your social media profile. You can accept payments, build a simple community, and collect email addresses, too.
Podia is an all-in-one creator platform that gives you a full website with unlimited landing pages that connect to everything else you've built. You can set up a social links page, sell products, host courses, run a community, send advanced email campaigns, and manage your affiliate program, all in one place that reaches far beyond your social channels.
To help you figure out which is the better fit, let's look at how the two platforms stack up.
Stan Store focuses on social media selling. Podia is a one-stop shop for your whole business.
The key difference between Podia and Stan Store is that Stan Store was built for selling products on social media, while Podia is an all-in-one option for building your website, products, and community.
With Stan Store, you can set up a single page to add to your bio on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. You can add products, buttons, and callouts to that page, but there's no option to build an "about me" page, a services page, in-depth sales pages, or a blog unless you connect extra tools (which may cost more).
Because Stan Store pages are designed to be viewed on mobile, the only way you can arrange your content is in a list of buttons and callouts. You don't have control over how your Stan Store looks on desktop, so if someone finds your storefront on their computer, it might not look the way you want.
Podia, on the other hand, makes it easy to design pages that look great on both mobile and desktop. You get as many pages as you like, and your sales or landing pages can be fully customized with Podia's user-friendly website builder (more on that later).
You can sell online courses, digital downloads, memberships, coaching, and in-person or virtual events. You can also give your followers a community space that you control, where members can chat with each other and every person sees their products, updates, and content without having to fight the social media algorithms.
And if a link-in-bio page is all you need, Podia can do that too. You just won't be limited to only that as your business grows, giving you more flexibility long-term.
Strict templates vs. unlimited website customizations
A big difference between Stan Store and Podia is how much you can customize. With Stan Store, you start by choosing from a library of about a dozen templates. From there, you can customize with two colors and one font.
Beyond that, you can't change much about the way the template looks, and you must use a template as your starting point. There's no "build from scratch" option. That means you can't adjust image sizes and shapes, text layouts, or other details that make your pages feel like you. You also can't add extra videos or images to your shop page unless they're already part of the template.
With Podia, you can customize every detail of your website, product pages, and social links page, and everything looks great out of the box. No need to worry if web design isn't your strong suit.
Podia has 14 (and counting) layout blocks like testimonials, FAQ sections, product grids, CTAs, featured sections, and email forms, and you can customize the details however you want. You can preview how your page looks on desktop, tablet, or mobile, and you have hundreds of color and font combinations to choose from.
Here are some of the different link-in-bio designs you can make in Podia:
And here’s how your full website could look:
More options for organizing and selling your digital products
Along the same lines, Stan Store doesn't have many features to help you organize your products. They recommend listing only 3-5 products on your page since it's mobile-first and can get unwieldy beyond that. There are no categories or other ways to break up your content.
With Podia, you can categorize products and create separate pages for each topic you cover. If you sell printables for music teachers and music students, for example, you could make a separate page for each group with as many items listed as you like.
When you have a full website to work with, you have a lot more flexibility in how you organize your work. It's also easier to create evergreen options that your audience can find and enjoy even when you aren't actively promoting them on social.
In addition to your site layout, Podia also has lots of options for packaging up your offers. You can bundle products together, create subscription resource libraries, and include community access with courses (or the other way around). For pricing, you have one-time payments, subscriptions, free trials, payment plans, upsells, access duration limits, seat limits, and future start dates.
That flexibility means you can build offers that fit your audience instead of bending your ideas to fit your tools.
You don’t need to use extra integrations for your email marketing
Email is a great way to stay in touch with your audience and move your relationships with them off of finicky social channels.
With Stan Store, you can set up an email sign-up box to collect addresses and give away free lead magnets to attract subscribers. But to send email broadcasts or automations, you'll need to upgrade to their higher-tier Creator Pro plan.
Stan Store's automation trigger options are limited to just three: after a product purchase, on a specific date, or after cart abandonment. If you need automations that fire for any other reason, you'll need a separate email tool.
Podia, on the other hand, comes with advanced email marketing built in. Podia Email includes automations, segmentation, tagging, entry and exit conditions, link-click triggers, and templates. All Podia Email features are included on all plans, and you get:
- 100 subscribers on Mover
- 500 subscribers on Shaker
- 1,000 subscribers on Earthquaker
You can add on more subscribers any time as your list grows, so you're never paying for more than you need.
Because Podia has your products, website, community, and audience data all connected, Podia Email knows a lot about your customers. You can send a message when someone has bought one product but not another, run a reactivation series for cold subscribers, or share your latest blog post as a newsletter in just a click.
Podia has SEO features to help new people find your work
SEO, or search engine optimization, is another thing to consider when choosing between Stan Store and Podia. While Stan Store is geared toward social media, Podia has built-in SEO features that make it easy for potential customers to find your work in search engines.
For each page, you can add a custom SEO title, meta description, and URL, all of which help tell search engines what your page is about. You can also create distinct pages for each part of your business and a full blog, which gives you even more visibility on the web.
Stan Store doesn't prioritize SEO, and the platform leans heavily toward discoverability on social media rather than in search. That's fine if you're a social-only business, but most businesses benefit from having multiple ways for potential customers to find them.
Podia and Stan Store Pricing
Finally, let’s talk numbers.
Podia pricing
Podia has three plans: Mover, Shaker, and Earthquaker. All Podia plans come with your website, digital products, community, and unlimited members and sales.
Podia has a 30-day free trial that lets you test everything, too, so you can make sure it’s the right fit before buying.
- Mover: $49/month and 5% transaction fee ($42/month when paid annually): Includes your community, website builder, blog, landing pages, digital products, and courses, with 50 products and 25 community spaces.
- Shaker: $99/month and 0% transaction fee ($84/month when paid annually): Includes everything in Mover, plus affiliate marketing, upsells, 1 assistant seat, and integrations with PayPal, Zoom, and Zapier, plus 150 products and 100 community spaces.
- Earthquaker: $179/month and 0% transaction fee ($150/month when paid annually): Includes everything in Shaker, with unlimited products, unlimited assistant seats, unlimited video storage, and unlimited community spaces.
All Podia plans include email marketing features like automations, newsletters, email templates, segmentation, tagging, and campaigns. Mover includes up to 100 subscribers, Shaker includes up to 500 subscribers, and Earthquaker includes up to 1,000 subscribers. You can also pay for more subscribers on any plan as your list grows.
Podia also includes a free migration service on paid plans. The team will move your products and customers over from another platform so you can get set up faster without extra work.
Learn more about how migrations work here.
Stan Store offers new users a 14-day free trial, and there are two paid plans to choose from.
- Creator: $29/month (or $300/year paid annually) and includes a social bio page, digital products, community, and email address collection
- Creator Pro: $99/month (or $948/year paid annually) and includes everything in Creator plus email broadcasts, email automations, payment plans, upsells, discount codes, and affiliates
If you want a full website and blog while using Stan Store, you'll need to connect a separate tool, which may come with additional costs.
What’s the best platform for me?
Podia is the best fit if you're a digital creator or small business owner who wants one platform for your website, community, digital products, email marketing, blog, and affiliates.
You can create a social links page to reach your audience, with plenty of customization options to make it look exactly the way you want. And beyond social, you have everything you need to build a strong online presence, including a full website and a community space where your audience can connect with you and each other.