Podia vs. LearnDash: a comparison

Are you looking for LMS software? Our detailed comparison of LearnDash vs. Podia will provide an in-depth review of software features, integration options, course design, assessments, pricing models, and options for customer support.

Podia and LearnDash have different software philosophies. LearnDash’s focus is purely on online course creation, whereas Podia has the admirable goal of handling your entire digital business.

Simply put, Podia tries to do too much, especially for the more advanced user or veteran business owner.

Podia is a SaaS solution that will host your main website, take payments, deliver courses, manage memberships, handle marketing automation pipelines, send marketing emails, and design landing pages.

They do it well on a more simplified build and are a good choice to keep costs down if you’re just getting started online.

However, as you grow, we recommend looking into alternatives that include more advanced features and functionality designed to take your memberships and online courses to the next level.

LearnDash is a WordPress plugin and focuses on the Learning Management System (LMS) functionality. This could be advantageous or disadvantageous for you depending on your course goals.

To expand on LearnDash’s core LMS functionality you’ll likely need to install additional WordPress plugins and add-ons to deliver a positive user experience from end to end. Fortunately, LearnDash has a robust marketplace of integrations and add-ons to make this possible.

Unfortunately, that means you may need to purchase and integrate additional plugins to handle:

• • Payments and payment administration
  • Membership levels to run cohesive membership sites
  • Integration with your CRM for marketing automation

With Podia, you sign up for one tool that seamlessly handles everything from payments, course creation, LMS functionality, deep integrations, and member management.

Pricing is an important factor in the decision-making process when it comes to choosing the platform or software that will power your membership or online courses.

Here’s a summary of LearnDash’s tier options and site license limits:

• • Basic: $199 / year – 1 site license
  • Plus package: $399 / year – 10 site licenses
  • Pro package: $799 / year – unlimited site licenses

In comparison, Podia offers four tiers:

• • Free $0 / month
  • Starter $9 / month
  • Mover $39 / month
  • Shaker $89 / month ($75 / month after the first year)

The Free and Starter levels have some pretty serious restrictions, including transaction fees (10 and 8% respectively), only one download, one coaching space, and only draft courses and webinars, which their website suggests are for building and developing before you sell. 

The Mover tier has 5% transaction fees, but offers unlimited courses, downloads, coaching spaces and webinars, but no affiliate functionality. The Shaker level includes that affiliate function and no transaction fees. 

In summary, unless you’re just getting started or run a bare-bones course or membership, you’re mostly likely going to need the Shaker ($89) plan with Podia. If you only need one install, you can budget for the lowest level tier on LearnDash — but you may need additional plugins, which have additional fees.

It’s imperative for SaaS and tech companies to have a strong customer support team and system in place to ensure their user’s success, but most companies do customer support differently.

Podia’s customer support is available 24/7 via email and they have live chat hours scheduled 7 days a week. They offer free migrations for annual plan customers and everyone on their “Shaker” tier. They also have an extensive knowledge base to help you with your setup, step-by-step.

In comparison, LearnDash doesn’t have 24/7 support and their email only support hours are Monday-Friday from 7am-4pm EST.

Don’t let this deter you though.  We have found that email support is very effective, especially when you have a more complex question to troubleshoot.

It allows the support team time to sort through the issue and confidently provide you with a resolution.

And keep in mind that there tend to be online user groups for most SaaS and LMS companies to get real-time support from existing users.

This is where LearnDash really stands out in comparison to Podia.

LearnDash allows you to add a quiz or assessment at any level throughout a course, whether it’s at the end of a course, a specific lesson, or topic.

With 8 question types to choose from, timed assessments, and the ability to submit any type of media as an input field, your assessment options are endless.

You can also require homework submissions after lessons or topics, and issue report cards and track homework and assessments with gradebooks.

LearnDash has even taken their progress-tracking to a new level in their most recent release, tracking course progress across all levels of the course, baked right into the layout.

A great way to motivate students to complete their courses and material is to use LearnDash’s built-in certificates to reward them as soon as they complete a course.

While Podia does allow you to create assessments to reinforce the material and test student retention, your options for quiz and question types aren’t as robust compared to LearnDash. With Podia you are limited to creating multiple choice questions only.

If your online course plans include tracking your students’ progress to make it more engaging and motivating for them to complete, unfortunately you’re out of luck when you use Podia.  On a more positive note, Podia does include a live chat component to make it easy for potential and existing customers to reach out directly for live, 1:1 support to increase engagement and retention.

Podia has built-in Stripe and PayPal integration with coupons using a two-step order form. You can even increase your sales conversions by offering coupons for users and 1-click upsells to increase revenue. If you offer recurring payments or payment plans for your offers on Podia, you will need to process these payments with Stripe, as it’s not available through PayPal on this platform.

Podia also offers affiliate tracking functionality in their Shaker level plans. However, the affiliate feature isn’t as robust as most affiliate management plugins tend to be. If you’re looking for a more advanced affiliate center I recommend looking into alternative solutions.

LearnDash has limited built-in e-commerce functionality, however, if you have a simple setup and only offer one-time payments for courses, no additional plugins are needed and it natively integrates with PayPal, Stripe, and 2checkout.

If you’re selling recurring subscriptions, offering payment plans, and want an easy way to offer upsells and cross-sell your other products, an add-on or additional plugin is needed to achieve this functionality. The same holds true for affiliate features.

This is where the costs and complexity start to add up for LearnDash.

• • You need a bare-bones course website, with no plans for added functionality down the line
  • You want to have your site up and running quickly, so you can test your ideas without worrying about design
  • You don’t use a CRM like Infusionsoft/Keap, Ontraport, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, or Drip to do your email marketing automation
  • You don’t mind building on rented land and giving up full control to have a website, email marketing, and course platform that handles everything for your membership and online course business in one place

• • You are open to a larger tech stack, and using a lot of different plugins to achieve your goals
  • You absolutely need SCORM or Tin-Can LMS integration
  • You’re not picky about the look-and-feel of your course
  • You don’t need deep CRM integration to create more personalized customer experiences, but you do need a lot of quizzing options