Podia and Kajabi have been some of the most popular choices among people for their versatility, performance, and reliability. But if you got to choose one, then which one should you choose? Here in this Podia vs Kajabi blog, we’ll be discussing just that.
Overview | Podia | Kajabi |
Free Plan | ||
Course Structure Template | ||
All In One Platfrom | ||
Live support | ||
Online Coaching | ||
Mobile App | ||
Affiliate Program | ||
Free Trial | ||
Unlimited Courses | ||
Integrations | ||
Pricing | Starts at $149/mo | Starts at $39/mo |
When you are trying to build an online course platform, there are a lot of things that need to be taken care of. That’s when the best LMS software platforms, come in handy. While you mostly focus on building awesome courses with your intellectual properties, the best learning management platforms do the other heavy lifting, like providing you a platform to systematically set up your course, market your product, and sell them to the right audience.
Here I have tried to compare these two best LMS platforms side by side to help you decide which one to choose. Like all the other products, both the LMS tools have their Pros and Cons. Let’s see in this Podia vs Kajabi face-off, who comes out on the top.
Table of Contents
Podia vs Kajabi: Overview
Both Podia and Kajabi are extremely popular LMS systems among educators and coaches for their powerful features and reliability. Both the tools come with tools that empower course creators by providing the freedom to create courses, and memberships, market them and sell them without being tech-savvy.
Kajabi has been in the market since 2009, and it has proved itself by being on the top for more than a decade. Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, that allows you to build courses and sell them without a lot of effort with the help of its built-in tools. It is very unlikely that you may need the help of any major third-party app to build or sell your course, as Kajabi comes with everything that you may need.
You can see its superiority on Kajabi vs Teachable page.
On the other hand, Podia started its journey in 2014, but due to its awesome performance, it has joined the list of best LMS platforms. Podia offers an array of user-friendly tools for users who are just getting started. Along with other features, Podia provides advanced marketing features that allow you to reach the masses in a more efficient way.
Advantages of Podia Over Kajabi
Advantages of Kajabi Over Podia
Now that you have seen the advantages of both the LMS software, you can see that even though they are similar tools and serve the same purpose there are some sections where one of them excels better. For you to better understand their key differences, I have made use of the free trial of both Kajabi and Podia and tried to present all the details in this Podia vs Kajabi article. If you want to check more alternatives, you can read our Teachable Alternatives blog for more information.
We’re going to compare these two software, side by side, and see who comes out on top in this Kajabi vs Podia battle.
Podia vs Kajabi Comparison
User Interface
Both Kajabi and Podia are extremely popular with the masses for their ease of use. Here is a brief view of the user interface of both of the software.
Podia is built to be user-friendly for beginners, and you can see that clearly in the first look. You can easily get into its features from the top menu. All the features are just one click away.
Even though Kajabi comes with more advanced features, that are deeply embedded into this tool, its search assistant makes it easy to navigate them too. Although both the interfaces are easy to work with. I’ve found the Kajabi interface providing a slightly smoother user experience than Podia. You do not have to keep going back to get a certain feature with Kajabi. So in this round, Kajabi is the inner in this Podia vs Kajabi face off.
Pricing Plans
Pricing is the most important for us when we invest in a product right? It matters a lot, especially for the beginners that are trying to get their grip on the industry.
Both the LMS software doesn’t have any free version, but you can take a free trial for both of them. For Podia, you can easily take a 14-day free trial without any card details. On the other hand, Kajabi will ask you for card credentials, but you can easily end the free trial at any point in time from its billing section.
Apart from that Podia comes with 3 paid plans, all of its plans provide you with a custom domain, email marketing tools, community-building options, and allows you to create unlimited courses. The prices are quite affordable too, you can get Podia as low as $33/month with a whole lot of features.
Kajabi on the other hand is a premium product with premium pricing. It also comes with 3 paid plans and all the plans are considerably higher than Podia. Despite the number of features and options available in Kajabi, the price is really high for beginners. So in this case, Podia wins this round of Kajabi vs Podia face-off by a bog margin.
If you want to check an affordable, yet powerful LMS platform, you can check our Graphy review.
Online Course Builder
Online course building is the major task for Kajabi and Podia, so we need to take a deeper look into this two software.
Creating an online course is very easy with Podia, just after landing on the dashboard you can find the option of Create a Product, from there you can choose the product you want to create. Podia allows you to create online courses, digital downloads, Webinars, bundles, and coaching sessions. After choosing one, you will land on the course creation page, from there you can add different texts, embed videos, add quizzes, and many more, all from a single page.
From a single platform, Kajabi allows you to create online courses, podcasts, coaching services, mini-courses, Drip courses, and much more. Kajabi gives you a well-structured skeleton for the course that you can update at your leisure once you’ve decided on the type of product you want to develop. Just like Podia, you can also add different media, like text, videos, SCORM content, audio, assessment from the same page easily.
While creating a course, I’ve found both the software equally efficient and easy to operate. If you want to get the course structure readily available for you, then Kajabi is the right for you, but if you want to structure your course according to your preference, then with Podia you can easily do that.
While both LMS software are equally efficient in creating courses, I’ve decided to call it a draw.
Design and Customization
Designing your courses and teaching website is a job that you should take good care of if you want to build a successful business. Podia offers an array of customization options that allows you to design your course the way you want it to be.
From the edit site option, you can add different pages, design them with texts, videos, images. and add different styles and layouts.
It also has an integration of Unsplash, so you can choose from thousands of high-quality stock images to design your pages.
On the other hand, Kajabi LMS comes with ready-made themes for different niches to design sales, landing, and home pages. You can easily add new blocks, change the layout, add different elements to your pages to give them a professional look. The ready-to-use themes are a great help for beginners that don’t have the expertise of designing web pages.
So in this case, I have to give it to Kajabi. I found the designing part is easier with Kajabi than Podia. Given the price Podia offers, you can still do a lot with this affordable LMS system, but the winner of this Kajabi vs Podia round is Kajabi.
Marketing Features
Marketing your product is extremely important if you want to make money out of it. Without powerful marketing tools, it’s impossible for you to stand out from the crowd, as thousands of edupreneurs are trying to sell their courses online.
Email Marketing
Podia includes an in-built email marketing tool, that you can use to send newsletters to keep your leads updated with a small number of emails. You can also create a drip campaign with the Podia LMS system. If a trial is purchased, for example, a trigger mechanism will be enabled, directing the customer toward paying purchases through a funnel system.
Kajabi also comes with an advanced native email marketing tool that allows you to send broadcasts to your desired audience, you can also send it to your whole contact list in one click. You can customize the email template by adding attention-grabbing logos, icons, and emojis. You can also increase sales by adding call-to-action buttons in your email templates.
The major feature that Podia lacks, is automation. Kajabi comes with an automation feature that gives it an edge over its LMS alternatives. When a person its credentials on the sign-up page, it triggers a chain of actions that you can set prior.
So it is pretty clear, who comes put on top in this Podia vs Kajabi dual.
Affiliate Marketing
An affiliate marketing network is largely beneficial if you want to scale your business in a short time span. both Podia and Kajabi come with dedicated affiliate marketing feature that gives their users scope to grow their business by adding affiliate partners.
You can easily check for the stats, to track how much benefit you are actually getting from your affiliate partners with both Kajabi and Podia.
Reports and Analytics
You can quickly see play rates, total plays, average engagements, and other metrics on Kajabi. It also delivers a one-of-a-kind visual graph of drop-off over the course of a video. It also allows you to see how much your members love your films. You can see if they’re watching it on repeat or if they’re about to leave. Kajabi also enables you to perform A/B testing to check which product is more appealing to the customers. This can’t be done with Podia.
Though Podia doesn’t provide A/B testing, you can track your sales performance easily. You can also check the performance of your email marketing campaign with its detailed report chart. You can track open rates, bounce rates, the number of unsubscribed users, and many more.
Here again, Kajabi takes the lead in this Kajabi vs Podia face-off.
Community Option
Building a community can be profitable for your business, you can give exclusive membership against a paid subscription to get access to exclusive content. You can build a loyal customer base, increase the number of sales, and also gain new customers with the help of the community. Both Kajabi and Podia provides membership community platform with their dedicated pages.
Kajabi’s membership page looks and works similar to its course building page. You can create membership content and sell it for a price to build a community.
On the other hand, Podia provides you with more options to build a community effectively. you can set the price of your digital product, set its accessibility or visibility on your terms.
Podia, in my opinion, has the better functionality to build a membership than Kajabi. So Podia gets the upper hand here while our Podia vs Kajabi dual goes on.
Third-Party Integartion
If you want to combine your LMS tool with other third-party apps, your LMS system must be able to integrate with third-party apps effortlessly. Both Kajabi and Podia come with Zapier integrations with hundreds of third-party apps.
Even though Kajabi is an all-in-one platform, it still allows you to integrate with over 500 third-party apps to provide you with more flexibility. On the other hand, Podia easily integrates with more than 1000 apps, and that too in an easier process.
As the Podia LMS software provides a larger number of integrations, and it allows you to integrate easily, this round of Podia vs Kajabi goes to the Podia LMS.
Wrap Up Statement on Podia vs Kajabi
In the post covid environment, people are more leaning towards online teaching. Thus, the demand for LMS tools is also getting high. Being in the market for so many years, Podia and Kajabi are already going to options for educators and coaches to start online coaching businesses. If you were to choose between the two, I can understand the dilemma.
Kajabi is truly an all-in-one platform that you can choose if you don’t want to shuffle around multiple tools repeatedly. It offers a greater number of powerful features that can help you build your online teaching business easily, but the major issue is its price. Most of the educators and coaches are only stepping into the market, so obviously $119/month price may not be comfortable for them.
Podia, that’s why becomes a go-to option for beginners as it comes with almost similar features like Kajabi and that too at a very affordable price. So if you are looking for an affordable option then Podia is probably best for you, but if you want to save yourself from getting additional tools and build your course in an easy manner, then Kajabi will definitely satisfy your needs.
If you liked my Podia vs Kajabi blog or if I missed any points regarding Kajabi vs Podia, do let me know in the comment box. I’ll be glad to hear from you.
