Podia vs. WordPress: Which one is right for me?
Podia and WordPress are both popular options for building an online home base around your work. But while WordPress is mainly a website builder, Podia is an all-in-one tool for running your entire online business.
Podia includes everything you need to make a website and blog, create courses and digital downloads, set up a community, run your email marketing, and manage affiliates all in one place. Everything is built in and connected behind the scenes, so you don’t have to do any manual setup to make things work the way you want.
WordPress can do a lot of those things too, but every piece is separate. You start with a website and add plugins and integrations to build out the rest. That means managing the connections yourself and paying separately for each tool you add.
Before we get into the comparison, though, there's an important distinction to call out.
When people say "WordPress," they're usually picturing one of two different things.
WordPress.org is free, open-source software you download and self-host. It's powerful and highly customizable, but it's really built for developers. To run a WordPress.org site, you'll need to find your own website hosting, manage security and updates, upload themes or code your own design elements, and install plugins to handle things like selling products, email, and community. The software itself is free, but the total cost adds up quickly once you factor everything in.
WordPress.com is similar, but WordPress manages more of the behind-the-scenes stuff for you. You pay a monthly fee that includes your website hosting and a set amount of storage, which removes some of the technical stuff. It’s more accessible for non-developers, but still requires plugins and integrations to make it your own.
As you read through, it’s worth asking yourself if you’d rather have everything connected and ready to go, or if you’d prefer to source and build out each piece yourself.
Podia and WordPress plans and pricing
The biggest difference between Podia and WordPress is that Podia is an all-in-one platform for running your business, while WordPress is primarily a website builder with optional add-ons that give you more functionality, like email, courses, and products.
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, 1,000 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.
Learn more about how migrations work here.
WordPress pricing:
The WordPress.org version of WordPress is free to use since it’s open-source software, but you’ll need to find and pay for website hosting and any themes, plugins, or apps you need to make it work the way you want.
For WordPress.com (the version that comes with hosting), all plans come with your website, landing pages, and blog. Here’s how the pricing shakes out:
- Personal: $9/month ($4/month paid annually): 6GB of storage with the option to install plugins for more features (may have an additional cost)
- Premium: $18/month ($8/month paid annually): 13GB of storage, with the ability to upload videos, install plugins, and connect to Google Analytics
- Business: $40/month ($25/month paid annually): 50GB of storage, priority support, and more developer tools
- Commerce: $70/month ($45/month paid annually): 50GB of storage with included ecommerce tools for selling products on your website
On any plan, you can add plugins to do things like sell online courses, build memberships, and manage affiliates, but these can get pricey, so it’s important to keep that in mind when deciding where to build.
Building your website and blog with Podia vs. WordPress
Simplicity is the biggest difference between Podia and WordPress when it comes to building your website and blog.
With WordPress, you can customize your website at the code level, and there are virtually endless design possibilities and themes to make your WordPress website look how you want. That said, so many options can be overwhelming, so it’s helpful to have some design experience since all WordPress installs start with a blank slate.
You can also purchase third-party paid themes, but you’ll need to install and activate them yourself, and these often require some finagling to get them set up exactly the way you envision.
And of course, you can choose from thousands of WordPress plugins to give your website more options. For example, you can download plugins that manage your SEO, create FAQ sections, or set up an author bio card.
With Podia, simplicity is the name of the game. Your website, blog, and landing pages are all connected with one simple website builder, and you can point and click to make changes.
Podia has dozens of pre-designed website sections (like image layouts, text layouts, FAQs, author bio sections, CTAs, testimonials, and featured products) that all look great out of the box. You can customize your fonts, colors, website width and spacing, and other details across your sales pages and blog posts, all with a few clicks. That means you don’t need to install anything extra or do custom code work to get your site live.
Podia has a full blogging feature. You can type (or copy and paste) your content right into the blog editor, add a feature image, adjust your SEO settings, and customize the layout of your blog posts and blog pages.
Podia ranks high on ease of use for beginners and experienced entrepreneurs alike because you can build exactly what you need without the complicated bells and whistles.
For example, when you set your global color palette, those colors automatically populate in your products, courses, and email builder, so everything matches your branding. Same with your logo. Upload it once and use it anywhere with just a click. This may seem like a small detail, but it’s little touches like this that save you time and give your online business a more professional look.
As Podia creator Joseph D’Amico puts it,
“Podia is the Apple of website builders. It just works — and it leaves WordPress in the dust.”
Sell courses, community, and digital products
It’s possible to sell digital products, build a community, and create courses with Podia and WordPress, but once again, Podia has that built in, while WordPress requires extra add-ons and plugins.
With WordPress, you can use plugins and apps to add ecommerce features, checkout, courses, and other types of content to your website. But like everything with WordPress, you'll need to set everything up yourself, and plugins usually have their own costs on top of your WordPress plan. (Noticing a trend here?)
If you go with the $70/month WordPress.com Commerce plan, there are some selling features built in, but these are really ideal for selling physical products.
With Podia, you can build a beautiful community for your audience and sell courses, digital downloads, events, and coaching products on all plans.
For course creators, Podia’s course builder lets you add videos, text, audio files, images, and any other files you like, as well as quizzes and embeds. You can also enable comments so students can connect, and package your course with community access or other products.
Plus, Podia automatically generates a sales page and checkout page for each new product you create, so you can start selling as soon as you press publish. Podia includes your checkout and you can add product waitlists, coupons, upsells, access limits, seat limits, and even your own affiliate program – all in a single platform.
Built-in email marketing keeps things simple
Email marketing is an important part of running an online business because it gives you a way to stay in touch with your customers and followers long-term. WordPress plays nicely with third-party email platforms, but these can be expensive, and you’ll need to embed sign-up forms in your site using code snippets.
With Podia, your email marketing is included just like everything else. You can send broadcasts, newsletters, and automated email campaigns, and there’s already an email sign-up form section in the website builder, so you don’t have to add any code.
Your email is also connected to your products and courses, so you can message everyone who has bought a particular product, or only people who haven’t. You can also send messages to people on a waitlist and add custom tags.
When it comes to actually writing your emails, there are over a dozen professionally designed templates you can use to get started, or you can create a template of your own. Because your blog and email are connected, you can pull in full blog posts or snippets in just a click, and add images, text, decorations, and featured columns in seconds. Then you can send it right away or schedule it for later, whatever works best for you.
All in one vs piece by piece
Sometimes it’s tempting to go for a piece-by-piece option for more control, but what often happens is you end up spending more time setting up your business than actually doing business.
Podia customer Robert Williams explained that he saved $420 per month when he switched his business to Podia. Before, he paid $104/month for website hosting, $74/month for course builder tools, and $99/month for his community membership site, and that’s in addition to several other paid add-ons he needed to keep things running smoothly.
When he switched, he got some huge monthly savings, but Robert said that the best part was the “cognitive load relief of managing everything in one tool.” As Robert puts it: “I've been in business about 11 years... had I used Podia all of that time, I'd have saved over $55,000.”
So if you’d rather save time and mental energy with a simple system that’s easy to use and has everything in one spot, we’d love for you to give Podia a try!