In this blog post, I’ll be comparing Podia and Kajabi.

Having used both of these platforms, I can tell they have significant differences in terms of features, customization capabilities, automation features, and pricing.

Without you trying these out, you might not understand the key differences between them and which one is best for your use case.

As an instructional designer with 4-5 years of experience of selling courses, I have used the platforms first-hand and conducted a comprehensive analysis comparing them in this blog post.

Let’s get started!

FeaturesKajabiPodia
Pricing 💰Starts at $149/moFree and starts at $39/mo
Transaction fees 💸0%5% even at $39/mo
Trial available?Yes (also 30 day free trial)Has free plan
Course builderAdvancedDecent
Does it has a community? 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧Yes, slightly better than PodiaYes, but pretty basic.
Page builder 🎨Has a visual page builder with 25+ blocksJust has a basic builder with 13 blocks
Mobile app 📱Has both Android and iOS appsNot available
Live examplesView 7 sites built with KajabiView 12+ sites built with Podia

Overview – Kajabi and Podia

Kajabi was founded in 2010. Initially, the founders planned to sell a physical product, but the challenges of manufacturing and inventory led them to pivot towards selling knowledge online. This shift led to the creation of Kajabi. Since its launch, Kajabi has generated over $4 billion in revenue for students and has raised over $550 million in funding.

Podia, founded in 2014 by Spencer Fry, also began as an online course platform. Over time, it has transformed into an all-in-one digital platform.

However, there’s a slight difference.

Here’s how these companies describe themselves:

“We’re creating a world where technology is no longer a barrier to building a successful business online” and their vision is – “Empower knowledge entrepreneurs who areserious about their business to achieve success online.”

– Kajabi

“We empower creative entrepreneurs to make a living doing what they love. Since 2014, we’ve been committed to building the mostcreator-friendly tools to help you sell online courses, digital downloads, membership subscriptions, and more to your audience.”

– Podia

Both Kajabi and Podia target individual creators who wish to monetize their expertise without needing advanced technical skills.

Kajabi emphasizes advanced marketing automation, while Podia offers a low-entry barrier to beginners and embraces minimalism.

Quick decision

👍 What do I like about Kajabi vs. Podia?

  • Dedicated mobile app: Kajabi offers a mobile app for both iOS and Android (that’s surprisingly good). However, Podia doesn’t offer mobile app support. Come on, it’s 2024!
  • Better course features: Kajabi provides enhanced course features, including superior assessments, and offers detailed student insights which I love. These include video retention graphs, which enhance accountability, particularly in transformational coaching scenarios.
  • Advanced automation features: Kajabi provides trigger/action automation rules to glue all their features together. In contrast, Podia lacks these and may require the use of their Zapier integration, which can incur additional costs.
  • Powerful page builder: Kajabi has a dedicated page (website) builder for designing your landing pages, opt-ins, website, and blog posts with plenty of modules. But with Podia, it feels like you’re just designing a storefront (you still need WordPress!).
  • Better marketing features: Kajabi comes with excellent marketing features like upsells, downsells, order bumps, coupons, etc. Podia only has coupons and order bumps (which they call upsells!).
  • Powerful email marketing: Kajabi offers more powerful email marketing features than Podia, with pre-made templates and automation features.
  • Built-in hosting for events: Kajabi has a feature called “Kajabi Events” that allows you to host webinars and coaching sessions. On the other hand, with Podia, you need to integrate it with Zoom webinars or YouTube Live.

👍 What do I like about Podia vs. Kajabi?

  • Affordable pricing: Podia’s basic plan starts at $39/month, making it a cheaper option than Kajabi’s $119/month plan.
  • User-friendly UI/UX: Podia’s simple and straightforward interface is easy to use, while Kajabi has a lot of features making it a bit difficult to understand platform first.

Upfront bottom line ✨

Both Kajabi and Podia are all-in-one platforms, but Kajabi stands out for me due to its extensive features including a robust website builder, gamified community, and mobile apps for both iOS and Android, which Podia lacks.

Furthermore, Kajabi provides an automation engine that seamlessly glues all its features, leading to fascinating use cases.

Kajabi is ideal for users who prefer to avoid the complexities associated with multiple app integrations (so that they can focus on business), which is a potential issue with Podia.

Interface

Both Kajabi and Podia have easy-to-use and user-friendly interfaces. They are the best in the game.

I like their interfaces, really refined.

kajabi interface 2
Kajabi interface
Podia interface
Podia interface

In comparison to Podia, Kajabi can sometimes feel quite complex to use and has a learning curve.

Nevertheless, Kajabi feels fast because it includes a search assistant to quickly locate the features and tools you need.

Winner: Tie.

Course creation 📚

Course structuring and content formats

Kajabi courses

Kajabi’s course curriculum is divided into module, sub-modules, and posts/lessons.

By using sub-modules, you can neatly organize lessons within each module helping you a lot in updating your course in the future especially if the course is long.

kajabi content types 1

When it comes to lesson content types, both support text, audio, video, and assessments.

Podia courses

In addition to these, Podia allows you to embed content links from over 1900+ platforms including YouTube, Vimeo, Paperform, etc.

But fortunately, Kajabi also helps you embed custom code inside their post content section!

☁️ Kajabi supports cloud uploading as well, which means you can upload files from Dropbox, Google Drive, and web links which can be convenient if you already have your course backed up in any of these platforms.

Winner: Tie.

Drip content

drip scheduling in kajabi
Kajabi drip feature

Kajabi provides the ability to drip deliver a specific section (based on enrolment date) or completely lock it, requiring students to complete the previous section before proceeding.

drip scheduling the content in podia 1
Podia

When it comes to Podia, it allows for content delivery based on a student’s enrollment date.

And that’s it.

It lacks the feature to lock access to a specific module until the previous one is completed.

Winner: Kajabi.

Pricing and enrollments

setting up the course pricing in kajabi 1
Creating product offers in Kajabi.

In Kajabi, you should create offers, set their prices, and link these offers to your products. This enables customers to purchase your products.

setting up the course pricing in podia 1

With Podia, under the pricing tab of your product you can set the price.

You can also set the order bumps (they call it Upsells) associated with a specific product right within this section.

👎 When I was setting up my checkout page, I was really confused. When I set up sales under the pricing section, they appeared as order bumps on the checkout page, which was not what I intended.

Now about currency support:

selling in multiple currencies with kajabi
Kajabi’s multi currency support.

Note: Kajabi enables you to sell products in different currencies, giving you the flexibility to sell your offers in the currencies you require.

The ability to sell products in local currency is very beneficial in countries where local transactions in dollars are not allowed (example in my case, India). This is such a life-saver!

However, with Podia, you cannot change the currency on a per-product basis. Instead, you must set the currency globally.

Winner: Kajabi outperforms Podia due to its support for multiple payments, and the option to sell products in various currencies

Student experience (frontend interface)

But what experience these tools offer to the students when consuming the training course?

First about Kajabi:

front end experience in kajabi
Main student dashboard in Kajabi

In Kajabi, the course interface depends upon the course theme that you are using.

kajabi course player options
Course player interface in Kajabi

Kajabi offers varied Course Player customization options, like template selection, color changes, and alterations to language, pagination text, and auto-advance.

kajabi course player
Kajabi’s course design abilities

The appearance of the course page on Kajabi varies depending on the theme you choose.

🖌️ For instance, if you prefer a sidebar-centric course curriculum page similar to Podia, as seen in the screenshot below, you can select a different Kajabi theme like Momentum.

With both students can navigation through all the lessons, access comments area, and see their progress.

Course player in Podia
Course player interface in Podia (Credits: Design Hacker )

With Podia, you are provided with a single layout as it doesn’t support themes.

This setup is quite intuitive.

In Podia,you can’t customize the course player. You have no control over how the course player should look, and also there is no way to custom brand it.

Winner: Kajabi. It has better course player customization. Also, in Kajabi, you can restrict the users from participating in the comments by muting them.

Assessments (quizzes/certificates/surveys)

Assessments

Graded assessments in Kajabi
Kajabi’s assessment feature

Kajabi supports assessments, allowing you to create questionnaires and surveys to collect student feedback. You also set the passing grade and automate assessment completion.

Setting a passing grade to unlock subsequent modules can be highly beneficial, especially in a transformational coaching setup for better student results.

Automate assessment in Kajabi

Also with this, you can add automations (like you can see in the screenshot above) for the trigger “When the assessment is completed” you can send an email notification to students with a link to view their results.

Podia quizzes

In contrast, Podia only supports quizzes to assess student progress.

You can add as many questions as you want to the quizzes, but in Podia you can’t grade them or automate quiz completion. You can view quiz scores under course progress.

Analytics and reporting 📈

When it comes to analytics, Kajabi has an edge over Podia.

Kajabi gives you detailed reports on members-level progress and video stats for you to analyze how specific students are engaging with the content.

You can analyze these reports for all your products, courses, memberships, coachings, etc.

kajabi reports
Student-level product progress reports in Kajabi

For each student, you can view the progress, number of logins, start date, and the date when they last logged in. The report displays 1000 students’ data at a time.

kajabi video analytics

There is also a video stats feature where you can view the engagement rate, play rates, total plays, and even the heatmaps of your videos 🔥.

These insights are really great to take students’ engagement to the next level.

  • Analyze where student engagement is dropping to schedule a one-on-one call for assistance, or send an email to inquire about their struggles.
  • Reward those who have completed 100% of the course with free access to your next event or send them a prize.
  • And so forth.
podia course progress

When it comes to Podia, the analytics are not as great as Kajabi.

course progress report in podia
Podia’s Course Progress Report

You can monitor your students’ course progress by checking the lessons and quizzes they have completed.

👉 In Podia, analytics relies solely on the ‘Mark as Completed’ button pressed by the students, as Podia does not come with any automated progress tracking.

That’s it.

There is not much to discuss.

Winner: Kajabi offers detailed analytics and video heatmaps for student engagement, while Podia only provides basic progress reports on completed lessons.

Coaching and webinars

Both Podia and Kajabi offer the ability to schedule coaching sessions.

However, Kajabi includes a built-in livestreaming functionality called Kajabi Events.

Kajabi setup coaching product
Kajabi coaching product setup

You can see, for a coaching product, I have the ability to set Kajabi as a scheduling preference, alongside other calendar apps like Calendly, and set the location to built-in video.

You can make use of its inbuilt live-streaming feature for both coaching programs and live-streaming in the community.

countdowns in kajabi pages

For instance, in the above webinar sign-up page, I have the ability to include a webinar event countdown block.

When you combine Kajabi’s native “Kajabi Events” feature with its automation engine, the possibilities are endless.

kajabi email campaign automations

For example, you can send an email, and when the user clicks on a specific link in that email, you can automatically register them for a specific webinar or coaching session.

In contrast, Podia uses YouTube and Zoom for webinars.

embedding booking calendar in kajabi
Coachings in Podia

For coaching, it integrates with various calendar booking services like Calendly, SavvyCal, and Acuity for coaching sessions.

When a session is booked, it can automatically create a Zoom or YouTube Live video call.

Winner: Kajabi. It comes with native live streaming abilities and also automations feature

Community memberships

Both Kajabi and Podia are great platforms for building communities or online membership sites.

Kajabi’s community component is feature-rich compared to Podia (with its recent acquisition of Vibely).

kajabi community features

For gamification, it has challenges, badges, accomplishments, leaderboards, ambassadors, etc.

Kajabi Challenges

I appreciate the challenges feature in Kajabi. It allows users to participate in various transformational challenges and submit proof of their achievements through photos or videos.

adding points in kajabi

This feature integrates smoothly with Kajabi’s gamification aspect, where you can award points to community members based on their challenge or any task completion.

Now, on to Podia.

podia community 1

As said, you can use the Podia community as a membership feature. You can add posts and topics for students to interact with.

podia community settings 1

Similar to Kajabi, you can create various membership plans (like tiers) and include the products to which you want to provide access. You can create membership (subscription) plans like gold, silver, diamond, etc.

Podia has a “topics” feature to make it easier to organize the content (posts). People can follow the topics based on their interests.

Podia topics

You can restrict access to specific topics (this is like restricting access to channels or spaces) based on the membership tier users are in.

Winner: Kajabi. It has an excellent community component with gamification features. While Podia just has a basic community limiting the engagement.

Digital product selling 🛒

Kajabi and Podia are both excellent platforms for selling digital products.

While Podia uses the name “Digital Products”, Kajabi also allows you to create digital products using their catch-all “Products” functionality.

Let’s discuss Podia first:

podia supported product types

You can create and sell any type of digital products like eBooks, downloads, cheatsheets, templates, etc. Also, you can sell these for free as “lead magnets” to collect the email addresses of customers.

Furthermore, you can sell digital downloads as upsells to other products to increase the cart value of customers.

On the other hand, in Kajabi, you need to create a regular product.

And then create an offer for it, and set automation.. like below

Sell an eBook in Kajabi

That’s it.

Funnels 📶

Let’s discuss funnels.

Kajabi funnel templates

Kajabi comes with funnels. There are some pre-made blueprints (funnel templates) available, such as a freebie, product launch OVO, Zoom webinar OVO, etc. You can even create your pipelines from scratch.

A funnel is made up of landing pages, email campaigns, and offers combined into a funnel.

kajabi pipelines 3

In the above screenshot, you can see the product launch OVO consisting of opt-in, product launch email sequence (value), and offers.

You can customize the funnels as needed; you can add new pages and offers, and add automation.

customizing the kajabi pipelines

To edit the funnel page, just click on it. It will load the builder for you.

In Podia, there is no dedicated sales funnel builder. You need to integrate third-party tools using Zapier.

But if you need just the basic sales funnels, you can create custom pages and add the next step URLs using CTAs.

Winner: Kajabi

Design and customization 🎨

Kajabi provides superior customization options for designing your site, products, and blog.

In contrast, Podia lacks the same level of design features and customization options.

Themes

For example, Kajabi comes with themes for both your website and also courses.

kajabi themes
Website themes in Kajabi
customizing the pages in kajabi 1
Course themes in Kajabi

Kajabi provides over 10 themes to design both your courses and your site, all of which can be found in its theme store. These themes are attractive and modern in appearance.

You can personalize them using Kajabi’s site builder.

Moreover, if you subscribe to Kajabi’s highest tier—the Pro plan, costing $399 per month—you gain access to its code editor.

With the code editor, you are able to view and modify your theme’s layout, templates, snippets, configurations, sections, and asset directories.

Podia doesn’t offer you any themes. You need to develop your site (or storefront) from scratch.

Website builder

Kajabi has a powerful visual builder to design sales pages, landing pages, home pages, thank you pages, blog posts, etc.

kajabi page builder 1
Kajabi’s website builder

Kajabi offers over 25+ block elements to design your pages. You have opt-in forms (for lead generation), testimonials (for conversions), video embeds, assessments, countdown timers (for scarcity marketing), and much more.

On the other side, Podia just has a basic builder to design your pages.

podia page building modules
Podia’s website builder

While with Podia, you have only over 13+ blocks to design your pages.

podia design and customization options 1

Some of the important blocks include testimonials, FAQS, grids, categories, etc. There are no opt-ins or countdown timers available.

Podia also lacks a custom blocks feature. This is a significant downside; for example, if you want to embed code, you’re out of luck.

Email marketing and automation 💌

Both Kajabi and Podia comes with the ability to send one-off broadcasts and sequences.

kajabi email marketing 1
Kajabi’s email options

When choosing to send an email, Kajabi offers a variety of templates.

Kajabi email composer blocks2x

It features an email builder, similar to a page builder, where you can use various blocks to design your emails.

When you integrate your email marketing with Kajabi’s automation rules, it opens up several interesting use cases.

kajabi email campaign automations

For instance, you can set an automation rule that triggers an action, such as registering for an event, when an email sequence is sent, opened or clicked.

This allows you to register students for a webinar simply by having them click a specific link in the email sequence.

Kajabi email campaigns
Podia’s email options

Podia traditionally offered a basic email broadcasting and sequencing feature.

Podia email templates 3
Podia’s Email Templates

However, they recently introduced Emails 2.0, which includes a variety of email templates and advanced audience filtering and segmentation options.

Podia email builder 3
Podia’s Email Builder

In addition to this, Podia have introduced a brand new email builder that is more sophisticated and offers more options than Kajabi’s.

Despite these improvements, it still doesn’t quite measure up to Kajabi, but it appears they are actively working on improvements.

Winner: Kajabi’s email marketing outperforms Podia’s, offering advanced features like templates, cart abandonment, personalization fields, and integration with automation. By contrast, Podia’s email capabilities are basic and lack automation.

Sales and Marketing 💰

Kajabi’s unique selling proposition is its marketing features.

You will get advanced automations, pipelines (funnels), events (for webinars/livestreams), order bumps, coupons, upsells, etc. On the other hand, Podia just offers coupons & upsells. You can’t expect many marketing features in Podia.

Coupons

With Kajabi, you can create bulk or single coupon codes.

kajabi coupons 1

Whereas Podia supports only single-use coupons.

creating coupons in podia

However, both tools allow you to add coupon expiry dates to instill a sense of urgency in your marketing strategy.

In Kajabi, it’s worth noting that you can automate single-use coupons. For example, you can send an email containing a single-use coupon code when a specific action takes place.

These triggers include:

  • The purchase of an offer
  • The addition of a tag
  • The submission of a form
  • The completion of a product post
  • And much more.

Checkout and OTOs (like upsells, bump offer, and downsells)

Both Podia and Kajabi offer checkout pages making it easier for users to purchase the products.

Kajabi checkouts
Kajabi’s Checkout Page Customization

In Kajabi’s checkout page, can add sales videos, testimonials, banner images, etc, to increase conversions. Even you can add custom form fields on the checkout page to collect any additional information from customers.

In the case of Podia, you can’t customize the checkout page much.

Podia checkout
Podia checkout

With Podia, you can embed your checkout form on any external platforms, such as WordPress, by copying the embed code.

Podia course embed options

This is a particularly useful feature if your website is hosted elsewhere.

Now let’s discuss marketing:

Kajabi supports upsells, downsells, and order bumps, while Podia only supports order bumps (which they call upsells).

These OTOs help you increase the average cart value of the customers.

adding upsells to the offer in kajabi
Upsells in Kajabi

In Kajabi, you can add up to 10 upsells and 10 downsells inside offers.

adding the order bumps in kajabi 1
Kajabi’s Order Bumps addition

Also, as you can see, Kajabi comes with the ability to add order bumps to maximize the cart value on the checkout page.

Now, let me discuss about Podia

podia adding upsells 1
Upsells in Podia

👉 As previously mentioned, Podia lacks a true upsell feature where, after a purchase, customers are redirected to a page with an additional offer. Instead, they have what they call upsells, which are essentially order bumps provided as add-on purchases on the checkout page.

Payment processing

Both Kajabi and Podia support Stripe and PayPal gateways.

kajabi integrated payment gateways
podia integrated payment gateways

If Stripe and PayPal are not supported in your region, Kajabi allows you to connect with a third-party payment gateway using Webhooks or Zapier.

Nevertheless, both the tools accept credit card payments on the checkout page. You can also send notifications to customers when the card expires or when a payment fails.

When it comes to actual payments, Kajabi offers instant payouts, while with Podia it will be paid within 2 days.

Affiliate marketing

Both Podia and Kajabi have built-in affiliate programs. Kajabi provides more affiliate features than Podia.

kajabi affiliate program 1

You can set up affiliates in the Product settings or in a dedicated section called “Affiliates”.

kajabi offer settings 1

Now.

In Podia as well, you can offer product-specific affiliate commissions.

podia affiliate program 1

Here are the key differences:

  • Podia has an open, closed, or invite-only affiliate program. Kajabi lacks this feature.
  • Kajabi allows user-specific affiliate commissions. Podia lacks this feature.
  • Kajabi provides pre-made email templates for affiliate activities.
  • Kajabi enables various payout methods for affiliates. Podia only supports PayPal.

Winner: Kajabi

Mobile apps 📲

Kajabi offers a mobile app for both Android and iOS that enables students to learn at their own pace, unlike Podia.

kajabi mobile app

They can access their entire content library, take assessments, access the community, view their course progress, and more, all at their fingertips.

This is not just a basic app; it comes with additional features, such as the ability to send push notifications for increased engagement.

You can send notifications at various times, such as:

  • A new blog post is available.
  • A new module is added.
  • Any updates are made to the course.
  • Etc.

Also, Kajabi has in-app purchases (for all profit maximizers out there)!

On the other hand, Poidia doesn’t come with any mobile apps. This would be a big turn off for many people!

Winner: Kajabi. It has a feature-rich mobile app for both Android and iOS users.

Integrations

Moreover, both Podia and Kajabi offer seamless integration with various external platforms, including email marketing tools, payment processors, and analytics tools.

In addition, Kajabi boasts a webhooks functionality, which allows integration with other apps via webhooks.

For instance, if you use a country-specific payment gateway (like say Instamojo in India) that is not directly supported by Zapier, you can still integrate it with Kajabi using webhooks.

And, both platforms offer Zapier integration, allowing you to connect with thousands of other services and tools.

However, since Kajabi is an all-in-one platform with a built-in automation engine, you won’t need to use many zaps, slashing down your bill.

Winner: Kajabi

Pricing 💲

Kajabi is an expensive solution.

Kajani pricing

Their basic plan starts at $149 per month, which only allows you to create up to 3 products and 3 funnels.

However, most people opt for the Growth plan at $199 per month.

When it comes to Podia, most people opt for their $39 per month plan to access nearly all features, excluding the affiliates functionality.

However, note that their Mover plan includes a 5% transaction fee, which could be a concern for high-volume sellers.

👉 As a platform initially marketed as an affordable Teachable alternative with no transaction fees, I was quite disappointed when Podia introduced a 5% transaction fee, even on their paid plans.

Try Podia for free

Sign up for Kajabi’s 30 day free trial

Winner: Podia’s pricing is significantly more affordable compared to Kajabi. Kajabi caters to advanced marketers for whom cost is not a primary concern. The advanced features such as funnels, automations, events, offered by Kajabi justify its higher price.

Support 👋

Both Podia and Kajabi offer good support.

Both offer demos, YouTube videos, live chat, dedicated community, and in-depth knowledge base articles to help you.

Whereas Kajabi has a free course “Kajabi University” to help you get a head-start and get started in no time.

FAQs on Kajabi vs. Podia ❓

Who is Podia for?

Podia is best for course creators, teachers, marketers, and digital product owners.

Is Podia good for blogging?

No. Podia doesn’t have a blogging feature. So you need to integrate with external blogging platforms.

Who uses Kajabi?

Kajabi is a highly-priced solution best for entrepreneurs, professional marketers, and medium to large businesses.

Is Podia better than Kajabi?

Podia is a cheaper alternative to Kajabi. Their features lack depth.

Kajabi vs. Podia: Conclusion 🏆

Although Podia is simple to use and more affordable than Kajabi, it has several limitations.

Also their features lack depth.

For instance, Podia comes with a very limited community feature (without any mobile app) to complement its courses feature. Its website builder also has limited capabilities. The absence of an automation feature may require additional spending on Zapier.

Ultimately, you must decide if the extra features of Kajabi are worth the price.

Although Podia’s 2.0 feature replaces your email marketing tool, Kajabi goes a step further. It replaces not only your email marketing tool but also separate community tools, funnels, automations, webinars, and more.