Podia vs. Thinkific: Which is right for me?
Great question! We obviously think we’re pretty great, but here’s an honest answer:
Thinkific and Podia both let you sell online courses, build a community, and run a digital product business. But they're built with different customers in mind.
Thinkific has been leaning heavily into AI features (think AI teaching assistants and AI content creation tools), and they offer enterprise options like branded mobile apps and corporate learning tools for larger organizations that need that kind of infrastructure.
Podia is built for creators, solopreneurs, and small business owners who want to build something meaningful around their work and their audience. We focus on making it easy to sell products, grow a community, and connect with your people — without needing a developer, an enterprise budget, or a stack of separate tools to make it all work.
To help you decide which option is right for you, let’s dive into the details.
Podia vs. Thinkific pricing
Both Podia and Thinkific have several plans depending on what your business needs.
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, 500 videos, 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, 1000 videos, 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, email list, and customers over from another platform so you can get set up faster without extra work.
Thinkific pricing
Thinkific has three main plans, plus an enterprise option called “Thinkific Plus.” Thinkific Plus doesn’t have pricing listed on the website, so you’ll need to reach out to their sales team if that’s something you’re considering.
Thinkific pricing plans:
- Start plan: $99/month ($74/month billed annually): Includes 10,000 students, unlimited courses, live events and coaching sessions, 1 community, memberships and subscriptions, and 200GB of course video bandwidth per month
- Grow plan: $199/month ($149/month billed annually): Includes 10,000 students, unlimited courses, live events and coaching sessions, 3 communities, ability to remove Thinkific branding, ability to connect third-party integrations, and 400GB of course bandwidth per month
- Expand plan: $499/month ($374/month billed annually): Includes 10,000 students, unlimited courses, live events and coaching sessions, plus 10 communities, more admin accounts, and revenue sharing options.
Creating an online community
Both Podia and Thinkific have community features built in, so you won't need a separate tool, but how community fits into each platform is quite different. Thinkific treats your community like a product. You can set it up, name a price, and let people buy it, but it more or less stands on its own.
With Podia, your community is interconnected with your products, live events, and audience. Your members get a dynamic homefeed where they can see all courses, products, community plans, and updates they have access to, and they can create a member profile and chat with others in your business to build connections.
You can charge for community access, offer free trials, and bundle community with any of your products on all plans. You can also create live, in-person, and virtual events.
With Thinkific, the number of communities and spaces you can create depends on your plan. All plans are capped at 10,000 customers.
- Start gives you 1 community, 10 spaces, and 5 live events
- Grow bumps that to 3 communities and 20 spaces
- Expand has 10 communities and 200 spaces
Podia keeps everyone together under one roof, and there are no limits on how many customers and members you can enroll.
- Mover comes with 25 community spaces
- Shaker has 100 community spaces
- Earthquaker has unlimited community spaces
Selling online courses
Both platforms let you create courses with video lessons, quizzes, and student discussions. Your courses can be free, paid, or subscription-based, and you can offer payment plans and enforce time limits on either platform.
The most important limit to know about on Thinkific is the student cap. All three standard plans max out at 10,000 current students. If your audience grows beyond that, you'd need to remove people or upgrade to Thinkific Plus, which is custom-price enterprise territory.
Podia has no student limits on any plans, so you can sell your course as many times as you like.
Email marketing
Podia and Thinkific both have email features included, but they are organized a bit differently.
Thinkific has an email automations tool that you can use to send automated sequences like onboarding emails, course completion follow-ups, that kind of thing. If you want to send a one-time email to everyone in your audience, you’ll have to use their mass email feature.
Podia Email is a full email marketing platform built into your account. You can grow your subscriber list with opt-in forms and lead magnets, send newsletters, create email templates, build automated campaigns with entrance and exit conditions, and segment your audience based on what they've bought, clicked, or engaged with.
All Podia plans come with all email features and a set number of subscribers included
- Mover: 100 email subscribers
- Shaker: 500 email subscribers
- Earthquaker: 1000 email subscribers
You can add on more as your list grows, but you’ll only ever pay for what you need.
Website and blog
Both Podia and Thinkific include a website builder with product landing pages and a custom domain. You can also connect Thinkific or Podia to an existing website if you prefer to keep your main site elsewhere and just use the platform for your products.
The difference is that Podia includes a blog and Thinkific doesn't. If content marketing, writing articles, sharing tutorials, and showing up in search results are part of how you grow your audience, Podia gives you that out of the box without needing to connect a separate tool.
Which one is right for you?
If your business needs enterprise-level features or you’re interested in a platform with built-in AI assistants and AI content tools, Thinkific could be a good option.
If you're selling courses alongside a community, growing an email list, writing a blog, and offering digital downloads or coaching — and you want all of that connected without stitching tools together — we’d love to have you at Podia.
You can move to Podia for free
If you’re thinking about making the move to Podia, the team is happy to help you out! We’ll help you move your products and email list over when you sign up for any paid plan, so you can hit the ground running without a whole lot of legwork.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform where you can
- Sell a wide array of products, courses, and services
- Build a great community that can be bundled with products or sold as a standalone product
- Set up a beautiful (and beginner-friendly) blog, website, and storefront for your brand
- Grow your email list and send newsletters
- Create a virtual home for your business
Podia is the way to go.