Both Podia and Patreon are platforms for connecting with your audience. Both help you get paid for sharing your work and knowledge, and both give you a place to build relationships with your supporters outside of social media.

But the type of business you can build with each is different. Patreon lets you accept recurring donations in exchange for exclusive content. Podia helps you build a full-fledged business with your website, email list, landing pages, blog, and products.

If Patreon is your online tip jar, then Podia is the platform that empowers you to be an entrepreneur. But the right choice for you depends on what you want your business to do, so here are some things to know as you decide.

Podia vs. Patreon pricing and transaction fees

Good news – Podia and Patreon both let you get started for free so you can test the platform before committing.

Patreon is free to use, and you won’t pay a flat monthly fee. Instead, you’ll pay transaction fees on every sale you make, which could become prohibitively expensive as your business grows.

Patreon pricing:

• Pro: 8% transaction fee

• Premium: 12% transaction fee

• Commerce: 5% of your earnings on product sales

Podia has two plans to choose from, and a 30 day free trial. All plans have payment options like payment plans, waitlists, preselling, monthly subscriptions.

• Mover: $39/month or $33/month paid annually (5% transaction fee): Includes your website, blog, landing pages, and custom domains, plus unlimited downloads, courses, webinars, bundles, and coaching. There are also more selling features like coupons, upsells, and access limits.

• Shaker: $89/month or $75/month paid annually (no transaction fees): Includes everything in Mover plus affiliate marketing

Here’s an example of how each of these pricing systems could work in your business.

Let’s say you’re earning $2,000 per month on your platform of choice.

On Patreon’s Pro plan, you’ll pay $160 per month in transaction fees ($2,000 x 8% transaction fee = $160).

On Podia’s Shaker plan, you’ll only pay $89 per month with no transaction fees. You’ll also get email tools, a website, blogging, and the ability to sell unlimited courses, downloads, and coaching.

Now let’s say your brand blossoms, and you’re consistently earning $4,000 per month for an entire year.

Here’s what you’d pay each month on Patreon:

• Patreon Pro plan: $320/month

• Patreon Premium plan: $480/month

And on Podia’s Shaker plan:

• Shaker: $89/month

If you were on Patreon’s Pro plan earning $4000 per month for an entire year, you’d pay a total of $3840 in transaction fees.

But if you used Podia’s Shaker plan, you’d only pay $1068 per year (or a cool $900 per year when you pay annually).

When you choose Patreon over Podia, you pay over three times more each year in platform fees to use a “free” tool with fewer features.

The big takeaway: as your business grows, Podia quickly becomes the more affordable option and gives you a bigger toolbelt.

Podia has your website, blog, and landing pages. Patreon has a basic storefront and product pages

And one of the tools in that toolbelt is your website.

Podia includes a full website builder with unlimited pages and customization options on all plans. You can add images, text sections, grids, featured products, bio sections, FAQ sections, email sign up forms, testimonials, and pretty much anything else you can think of, all in just a few clicks.

Podia also lets you set your own color palette and choose your fonts, and you can customize the spacing and padding of the content on your website. You can make custom sales pages and landing pages to promote your products and newsletter, and you can start a blog to connect with your fan base.

Plus, you have the option to turn off Podia's branding in the footer of your website if you like.

Patreon gives you a creator page where you can share your profile image, a cover photo, and a description of your Patreon program. You can also display a preview of the content inside.

There isn’t a way to turn off Patreon’s branding, and you don’t have many customizations with the layout. You can pick one brand color to use on your buttons, but otherwise there’s not a ton you can do to make your Patreon look like you.

In short, Patreon’s creator page works fine as a place for patrons to see membership tiers and sign up, but it probably won’t cut it as a website. You would also need to use (and potentially pay for) other tools to get blogging and landing pages.

With Podia, you can run your own website on the same platform where you sell products so all your essential tools are connected by default. No need to deal with outside web hosting, plugins, themes, checkout tools, and other hassles that distract you from your best creative work.

Sell digital products, courses, webinars, and coaching

Recurring donations and memberships are great, but they’re just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making money in your business.

Podia allows you to create and sell different product types, including online courses, digital downloads, webinars, product bundles, and coaching. You can accept payments through Stripe (including Google Pay, Apple Pay, iDeal, Stripe Link) and PayPal, and you can also integrate any of your products with your Discord online community for free.

Patreon has a storefront feature where you can sell digital files and accept one-time payments. There’s also a Discord integration so you can connect your members in a community platform. Members can pay by credit card, PayPal, Apple Pay, or Venmo.

In our study of 900+ creators, we learned that most small business owners sell an average of 10.95 digital products, ranging from ebooks to drip courses to group mentorship programs.

If you’re certain you’ll only ever need a crowdfunding / membership platform with basic digital product types, Patreon works just fine. But for most content creators, influencers, and entrepreneurs, there’s no telling what you’ll want to make in the future.

Tacking on extra ecommerce or online course platforms is frustrating, costly, and time-consuming. By going with an all-in-one option now, you can confidently create whatever products you want down the road – without spending weeks learning new software.

Podia has built-in email marketing that’s free for your first 100 subscribers

Email can be a goldmine for keeping in touch with your followers. On Patreon, the platform will automatically email patrons when you share a new post, but you don’t have many email features beyond that.

Podia includes a full-featured email marketing tool on all plans. You get all email features (including automations, segmentation, filtering, campaigns, newsletters, and email templates) free for your first 100 subscribers. After that, you have the option to upgrade your email plan as your list grows.

Because everything is connected, it’s easy to make your emails match your branding and website. (For example, when you set your global colors in the Podia website builder, they’ll automatically show up in the Podia email builder too so everything looks cohesive.)

There are beautiful pre-made email templates that you can customize, or you can create your own template to use again and again.

You can also pull in blog posts and featured products right into your emails to share your work. And if you prefer to run things on autopilot, Podia lets you automatically send email campaigns based on custom entrance and exit conditions.

Podia also has features for growing your list, like lead magnets and email sign up forms. This way, you can message people who are already interested in your brand to build connections, tell them about products they might like, and share special perks.

If you prefer to use another email marketing tool, Podia also has integrations with Mailchimp, ConvertKit (now known as Kit), and several other email tools, as well as an integration with Zapier.

Grow with affiliates, coupons, upsells, and customer chat messaging

On the marketing front, both Podia and Patreon allow you to offer coupons or special offers to attract new customers.

Podia also has tools for setting up an affiliate program, which means that happy customers can help you spread the word about your business in exchange for a commission.

You can enable live chat customer messaging on your website and online store and show product upsells at checkout to improve your bottom line. You can also offer payment plans and bundle products together to give your customers a deal (and boost your monthly income with higher order values.)

Since everything is built-in, you can manage your marketing efforts without having to find, vet, and pay for additional software.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that makes running your online business simple and affordable, whether you’re just starting or growing fast, we built Podia just for you.

Start your 30-day free trial of Podia today to see all these features in action.