How does Podia compare to Kartra vs Kajabi?
Now that we’ve covered the pros and cons of Kajabi, Kartra, and Podia, let’s compare them to each other so you can get a clear sense of which platform is the right choice for you.
Kajabi vs Podia
How does Podia compare to Kajabi and vice versa? Below we cover the main pros and cons of each platform.
Podia has a free plan, Kajabi has a free trial.
Kajabi offers a 14-day free trial so you can try out their features. Podia, on the other hand, offers an entire free plan that includes your website, online community, and the ability to sell one coaching product and one digital download.
You can stay on Podia’s free plan for as long as you like and you can always upgrade as your business grows. Free plan participants pay an 8% transaction fee on sales, but there are no upfront monthly costs.
Podia is simpler and easier to learn/use
Simplicity, intuitiveness, and ease of use can be a difficult metric to assess, but when looking at Capterra reviews, Podia is rated 4.8/5 stars for intuitiveness while Kajabi is rated 4.3. While that’s not a huge difference, Podia is clearly in the lead, likely due to our simple interface, easy-to-navigate product, clear dashboards, helpful in-app copy, and more.
In public reviews, Kajabi is often applauded for being easy to use, with reviewers saying things like “this platform for online learning is very logical and easy to use" and “it’s easy to learn, setup and manage,” but we also see a few recent reviews saying the opposite: “it can be more user friendly or demo should be there on software itself, so that person may now how to use features” and “clunky, cumbersome to use.”
Podia offers similar features as Kajabi, but for far less money
When you compare the features between Podia and Kajabi (which you can do in the “big comparison chart” below), you’ll find that Podia offers over 90% of the same features as Kajabi, but for a fraction of the price.
Of course, there are things you can get through Kajabi that you won’t find on Podia (like templates, advanced customization options, and pre-made funnels/pipelines/templates), but you have to ask yourself if those features alone are worth the massive price hike.
Kajabi offers more advanced customization options
With both Kajabi and Podia, you can create beautiful, custom sales websites, landing pages, and emails. But with Kajabi, you’ll get more templates for the aforementioned and also access to the code editor if you want more advanced customization options (keep in mind, you’ll still need to know how to code and/or hire someone who can make those changes for you vs Podia which offers beautiful, simple templates without any tech or design skills needed).
Kajabi offers pre-set pipelines/funnels — Podia does not
While you can use Podia to build sales funnels from scratch, Podia does not include any “pre-set” pipelines/funnels to help you get started (compare to Kajabi which does include pre-set pipeline templates you can use to create complex email sequences and automations). This may be an important differentiator for those looking to create more sophisticated marketing funnels while saving time in the process.
Kajabi offers more templates
Like Kartra, Kajabi also offers a library of pre-set templates for websites, landing pages, and emails, which can be helpful if you want a beautiful online business without hiring a tech team or designer to build it for you.
While Podia doesn’t offer a robust library of pre-designed templates, the Podia Editor has plenty of customization options available to help you build a clean, modern, and professional-looking online business without getting bogged down in design details (or hiring a team to build it for you).
On top of that, Podia also offers a variety of unique, free tools that can help you instantly build core components for your online or e-commerce business, including:
Kajabi has slightly more advanced analytics
Kajabi and Podia offer almost exactly the same analytics, but Kajabi has two additional analytic options that Podia does not: Tracking pageviews and being able to segment the data by a specific timeframe (but you can get those metrics by integrating your Podia account with Google Analytics).
Kajabi’s analytics Dashboard is also a little clearer and easier to follow, but these are all things Podia is working to actively improve in 2021 and beyond.
Podia offers live chat on websites and sales pages — Kajabi does not
As a business owner, you know how important live chat can be when it comes to learning about your leads, answering questions, overcoming objections, and most important, closing the sale.
For this reason, Podia comes with a live chat feature that allows you to converse instantly with leads who visit your website or sales pages, as well as customers who are logged in to their Podia accounts. In contrast, Kajabi does not have a live chat feature of any kind; this means if you want live chat functionality, you’d need to pay for customer support software which can be expensive.
Podia offers course completion certificates — Kajabi does not
One way to reward your students after completing a course is to send them a course completion certificate, and with Podia, you can do this automatically. Kajabi, on the other hand, does not offer native course completion certificates, which means you’d need to use a workaround that can be time-consuming and add more complexity to your student management processes.
Podia offers nearly unlimited everything — Kajabi has limits on every plan
If you go with one of Podia’s paid plans, you can create unlimited products, sell to unlimited students, create as many website pages and sales pages as you like, and host all the content your heart desires.
Like Kartra and Kajabi, Podia also has limits on things like admin seats, but the core components of your business (what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, and how much you can sell) is unrestricted on paid plans.
Podia offers free migrations — Kajabi does not
If you’re moving from another platform (like Kajabi or Kartra) the Podia team will help you migrate to Podia absolutely free (with any paid annual plan). Compare to Kajabi which does not offer a migration service of any kind.
Kartra vs Podia
Now that you know how Podia and Kajabi compare, let’s compare Kartra vs Podia so you can get a sense of how the two platforms stack up against each other.
Podia’s free plan vs. Kartra’s $1 trial
Like Kajabi, Kartra offers a 14-day trial so you can test their product. The Kartra trial costs $1. Podia offers an entire free plan that you can use to launch your online business, create your website, and even sell your first product. You’ll only pay an 8% transaction fee when you make a sale.
Podia is designed for course creators who are selling digital products — Kartra is not
Like Kajabi, Podia is designed specifically for those selling things like online courses, digital downloads, community, webinars and more. For this reason, Podia has everything a digital content creator needs, including student management and engagement tools, assessments, course completion certificates, and more.
In contrast, Kartra is designed for any type of business selling any type of product, making it more of a “generalist” vs audience-specific solution. For this reason, Kartra may be missing key features you need for your business today and possibly the features/functionalities you need tomorrow as the industry grows and evolves.
Podia offers native online course and webinar features — Kartra does not
While Kartra does have a calendar feature for selling time, it doesn’t have a native online course or webinar feature, both of which are essential for most digital creators.
Podia, on the other hand, was built for digital creators and therefore has a robust online course feature to help you build, market, sell, and deliver your content seamlessly to your audience. It also has a built-in webinar feature for conducting training sessions, conferences, and summits which is not currently available through Kartra.
Podia is simple, intuitive and easy to learn/use — Kartra is very complex and has a steep learning curve
As we’ve covered throughout this article, Podia is known for being simple, intuitive, and easy to learn and use — both for creators and students.
In contrast, Kartra is known for being much more complex and more difficult to learn/use, which is what you’ll see reflected in public reviews and ratings. Kartra even has a marketplace where you can hire Kartra consultants to help you get set up because it can be so time consuming and difficult to learn.
Podia is affordable for creators at every level — Kartra is more expensive
While Kartra has a few features that Podia does not (you can see which in the big comparison chart below), Kartra more expensive than Podia, making it inaccessible to some creators.
Podia, on the other hand, offers a free plan three affordable paid plans that are less expensive than both Kajabi and Kartra, despite offering many of the same features and even some that Kajabi and Kartra do not have.
Podia includes unlimited email marketing with every plan — Kartra does not
There are no limits on how many email subscribers you can have on Podia’s paid plans.
In comparison, Kartra’s Starter plan only allows you to send up to 15,000 emails per month to up to 2,500 leads, which is not ideal for businesses with larger email lists or those which rely deeply on email marketing (and what online or e-commerce business doesn’t?).
As you upgrade through Kartra, you’ll be able to send unlimited emails, but you’ll always have a limit on the number of leads you can have with each plan (Podia, on the other hand, allows you to have an unlimited number of subscribers no matter which paid plan you’re on).
Kartra offers pre-built funnels & automations — Podia does not (but you can build them from scratch)
One of the advantages of Kartra over Podia is the pre-built funnel feature, which allows you to quickly build complex sequences and automations without having to build them completely from scratch. Kartra also offers more robust and advanced segmentation, tagging, and automation options that make complex funnels possible.
While Podia isn’t quite there yet, we do offer much of the same functionality required to build complex sequences and funnels, but they won’t be pre-built templates (you’ll have to build them from scratch, but we believe Podia is so easy to use, building anything from scratch will be a breeze) and you won’t have the exact “automation options” as you’ll find with Kartra or Kajabi.
Kartra has a more robust CRM with advanced tagging/segmentation capabilities
Similar to the above, Kartra has a more robust CRM feature which goes deep on each customer/lead/subscriber with robust tagging/segmentation/automation features that make building complex sequences and funnels (and utilizing their Behavioral Adaptive Marketing features) possible.
In comparison, Podia’s CRM is a bit more basic in that it will provide you similar information about your contacts, but you won’t be able to segment, tag, score, etc in the same ways you can with Kartra or Kajabi (at least not yet).
Kartra offers native A/B split testing — Podia does not
If you’re all about testing and optimization, Kartra may be for you as they offer native A/B split testing capabilities that will allow you to test different page variations, different page elements, email subject lines, and email content — all while tracking performance. Like Kajabi, Podia does not currently offer native A/B split testing capabilities, but that will likely change over time.
Kartra can be used to sell physical products — Podia cannot
With Kartra, you can sell a variety of products including digital or physical products as well as services (like training sessions). In contrast, Podia only supports digital products (like online courses, digital downloads, memberships, webinars, etc) and services (like training or coaching sessions).
Kartra offers advanced customization options — Podia does not
Along with 500+ templates for landing pages, emails, checkout forms, and pop-ups, Kartra also offers advanced customization options, allowing you to customize the code to your exact specifications.
Podia, on the other hand, does not have advanced customization options, but we believe that Podia’s simple design and easy-to-use editor more than makes up for this fact as you can get beautiful, professional-looking websites, landing pages, and emails without getting lost in design details or code.
Podia offers unlimited video hosting with every paid plan — Kartra has strict video and bandwidth limitations
Because so many online businesses use video in their content and marketing, we offer unlimited video hosting for all paid plans, ensuring you never run out of space or get penalized with bandwidth overages. In contrast, Kartra only offers unlimited video and bandwidth on their Silver plan ($199/month) and up, which could become incredibly expensive if your business relies heavily on video.
Podia looks and feels clean/modern — Kartra can feel clunky and not user-friendly
While Kartra may have more features and functionalities, Podia is still rated higher in terms of intuitiveness and reviewers seem to drawn to the aesthetic saying things like “the beautiful and modern layout is what attracted me to Podia!” and “Podia is easy to use and it is BEAUTIFUL.”
In contrast, Kartra tends to get the opposite feedback on public review sites with reviewers saying things like “some things in general with the interface are not that straightforward” and “lacks in the user-friendly department …” and “not quite so user friendly as advertised.”
Podia offers world-class customer support 7 days a week — according to public reviews, Kartra’s customer service can be unhelpful and unresponsive
On Capterra, Podia is rated 4.8/5 stars for customer service while Kartra is rated 4.1/5. In reviews, Podia is lauded for customer support with reviewers saying things like “the support is so personal and caring” and “the best support I’ve ever come across in an online platform.”
In contrast, Kartra’s public reviews are littered with negative comments about their support with reviewers saying things like “support was useless,” “customer support was absolutely awful and incompetent” and “THEIR CUSTOMER SUPPORT IS THE WORST.”
If having access to helpful, reliable customer support 7 days a week is important to you, Podia is going to be the platform for you.
Podia offers free migrations with any annual plan — Kartra does not
If you’re moving from another platform (like Kartra or Kajabi), Podia offers a free migration service with any paid annual plan so you can stay focused on creating/selling (vs getting set up).
In comparison, Kartra does not offer a migration service of any kind, which means the burden of moving all of your content and contacts will fall on your shoulders (this may be even more difficult given the complexity of Kartra and steep learning curve).
Let’s compare all 3 online course platforms (Kartra vs Kajabi vs Podia) across every feature and offering
Now that we’ve showcased each platform in depth and compared them to each other, check out the chart below which will help you quickly and easily compare the 3 options across every feature and offering.