The ideal online course builder is easy to use, provides some community features, and has marketing tools to help you promote your digital product and build a successful online business.
AI features are also nice to have, as they accelerate the course-building process by helping with things like structuring the course and even creating the learning materials.
GetResponse and Podia both offer course-building and marketing tools, but they have different capabilities. This article will analyze their features closely to help you decide which platform is ideal for your needs. Let’s jump right in.
GetResponse vs Podia comparison table
| Features | GetResponse | Podia |
| Course creation | AI-powered course creator; supports video, audio, text, quizzes, assignments, certificates, and external resources | User-friendly course builder; supports videos, waitlists, upsells, drip courses, quizzes, and certificates |
| Additional monetization options | Membership sites,Digital downloads, webinars, premium newsletters | Digital downloads, webinars, coaching, workshops, and community |
| Marketing tools | Advanced email marketing, AI tools, sales funnels, automation, web push notifications, SMS campaigns | Basic email marketing, segmentation, affiliate marketing, coupons, blogging |
| Ecommerce features | BigCommerce, Magento & Shopify integration, abandoned cart recovery, integration with payment processors (PayPal, Stripe, Square) | Online store builder, support for 20+ currencies, tax collection, payment plans, integration with PayPal/Stripe |
| Webinars | Unlimited webinars, up to 1000 attendees, monetization hub, 20-hour recording storage | Monetized webinars via Zoom/YouTube Live |
| Community features | Course commenting, interactive webinars | Community builder, course commenting, interactive webinars |
| Pricing and plans | Starts at $48.30/mo. | Starts at $33/mo. |
| Transaction fee | No transaction fee. | 5% |
Overview of GetResponse and Podia
GetResponse and Podia are both well-known platforms that help instructors create and sell online courses.
GetResponse targets solo creators as well as SMBs with features that help them monetize their knowledge through digital products like online courses. Besides the online course builder, GetResponse also allows you to monetize your content through premium newsletters and membership sites.
GetResponse stands out because it’s an all-in-one platform that encompasses advanced marketing tools. It includes a powerful email marketing solution, a website builder, a landing page creator, an autoresponder, and marketing automation tools.
Though it takes some time to get the hang of these features, the platform does help you build a successful online presence to build and scale your online course business from one place.
Podia is also an all-in-one platform, but it primarily targets solo business owners. The platform helps you build an online store where you can create and sell online courses, digital downloads, coaching sessions, tickets, and more.
Additionally, it has a website builder with a good selection of templates as well as an email marketing solution to help you craft beautiful emails.
GetResponse vs Podia: Key features comparison
Here is a closer look at how these two platforms approach course building and marketing.
1. Course creation and management
GetResponse provides an AI-powered course creator to help anyone, including instructors with no coding and designing skills, build online courses quickly. The AI helps you structure your courses and develop some of the content.
Our course builder lets you share your knowledge through video, audio, text, and external resources, making the learning journey super engaging.
The GetResponse platform allows you to include interactive quizzes and assignments. You can add these at the end of each lesson or module to test your students. Our solution also lets you issue certificates to reward your students upon course completion.
Your content monetization options with GetResponse are not limited to online courses. You can also sell your knowledge via a paid membership site or premium newsletters.
What about Podia?
Podia provides just as many capabilities with similar course creation features. Some users also report that Podia’s course-building tool is more user-friendly.
Their online course platform allows you to add different files, including video content. Podia host these files, so you don’t need to integrate or pay for extra tools. It also has helpful features like a waitlist tool, upsells, drip courses, quizzes, bundles, course certificates, course comments, and seat limits.
But in addition to course building, Podia can help you create and sell digital downloads (like templates, ebooks, etc), webinars, coaching, workshops, and community. The platform helps you create an online store where they handle hosting, checkout, and delivery, allowing you to focus on creating the products.
2. Marketing tools
GetResponse gives you access to incredible marketing tools. Our solution is recognized as one of the best email service providers, featuring a drag-and-drop editor for fast and easy email creation.
We’ve also incorporated AI capabilities, such as an AI subject line generator and an AI writing assistant. With the help of these tools, plus our diverse email template library, you should be able to create beautiful emails that engage your students.
The automation features also ensure that you don’t have to run your campaigns manually. You can set up different automation workflows, like a welcome email series, to automatically connect with new students.
These features can also be used to target, nurture, and convert potential students. You can create a sales funnel with GetResponse’s conversion funnel builder. This helps you create unlimited landing pages, automate emails, sell products, and even recover abandoned carts. It also supports web push notifications and SMS campaigns.
GetResponse also allows you to host live webinars, which can be used for audience building and driving sales.
The platform integrates with payment processors like Stripe, PayPal, Square, and BlueSnap to help you sell products right from your GetResponse page.
Like GetResponse, Podia has several marketing features, but they are not as advanced. The platform focuses more on helping you set up an online store but offers basic email marketing features. For example, you don’t get any of the AI features.
Still, Podia’s email marketing tool supports segmentation and email tracking, which should help you run decent email campaigns.
In addition to the email marketing tool, Podia provides other marketing tools, such as course presells, upsells, coupons, affiliate marketing, waitlists, and a website builder. It also supports blogging, which can be an effective way to demonstrate expertise, build an audience, and attract potential customers.
3. Ecommerce and payment processing
Both GetResponse and Podia provide eCommerce features and payment processing. However, GetResponse has more capabilities here than Podia.
For starters, you can build your store from scratch with our platforms or use our one-click integration with eCommerce tools like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, and Prestashop to connect an existing store. GetResponse integrates with these tools to help you run marketing campaigns based on the data from your store.
For example, it can automatically track customer purchases to recommend the right upsells. It also uses the data to segment your customer base and send triggered emails like purchase confirmations and cart abandonment recovery emails.
You can also create paid ads within GetResponse. Not only that, but you can also connect your Facebook pixel with GetResponse and use this integration to run retargeting campaigns.
As for payment processing, GetResponse integrates with PayPal, Stripe, and Square to support seamless checkouts.
Podia offers an easy-to-use online store builder where they handle everything from hosting to checkout and delivery, leaving you to work on your products and inventory. This store builder is mostly tailored towards selling digital products.
They also offer eCommerce-related services like support for over 20 currencies, upsells, and tax collection. You can set up payment plans to help your students pay in installments, where Podia will handle the charges on your behalf.
Podia supports various payment getaways, including PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, Google Pay, iDEAL, SEPA Debit, and Stripe Link. It also connects with Google Pixel, Facebook Pixel, and Pinterest Pixel.
4. Webinars and communities
Community features are essential for a successful online course business. The more your students can feel as a community, the more likely they will complete the course and achieve their objectives. This ultimately improves student satisfaction, which is vital for your success.
Both GetResponse and Podia provide online community features to build engaging learning experiences.
Both platforms support course commenting, which allows students to interact with the instructor and each other. They also have webinar builders, which you can use to interact with your students (and potential customers) outside of class.
GetResponse lets you build unlimited webinars, host up to 1000 live attendees, have two guests, and store up to 20 hours of webinar recordings. You can also monetize your webinars from GetResponse’s content monetization hub.
Similarly, Podia lets you create, host, and monetize your webinars. You can sell access to your webinars through Zoom and YouTube Live.
5. Pricing and plans
GetResponse and Podia offer a similar free trial where you get to test all premium features for 30 days. But that’s the only similarity these two platforms have as far as pricing and plans go.
That’s because GetResponse provides only one paid plan where you get all the advanced features, with the only difference being the number of students you can host. Meanwhile, Podia provides two different plans with slightly different features.
GetResponse pricing starts at $48.30 per month and has no transaction fee. This plan supports up to 1000 contacts and 500 active students. It grants you access to the course-building platform, premium newsletters, and membership sites.
You can create unlimited courses with this plan. You also get unlimited access to our marketing tools, including marketing automation, autoresponder, website & landing page builder, and integrations & API.
Podia offers three plans: Mover, Shaker, and Podia Email. The cheapest Mover plan costs $33 per month and attracts a 5% transaction fee. This plan provides the basic features you need to build your online store and sell digital products. However, it doesn’t provide affiliate marketing features or integrate with PayPal.
The next plan, Shaker, costs $75 per month, which gives you affiliate marketing capabilities, PayPal integration, and removes the 5% transaction fee.
Email marketing is available on both plans but limits you to only 100 email subscribers, which is very little. You’ll need to pay extra if you have an email list of more than 100 contacts.
Customer support and resources
GetResponse gives you free onboarding and migration support when you get on any paid plan. You’ll also have ongoing 24/7 live chat support, which is reported to be one of the most responsive customer services by our users on G2.
You can also contact our team via email. We have support teams for different languages, including English, Polish, German, Russian, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
In addition to live chat, we have plenty of learning resources, especially related to marketing. Our blog and webinar library cover topics such as setting up your website, building conversion funnels, running effective email campaigns, and more.
Podia also offers free migration when you sign up for any of its two plans. You also get chat support, email support, and access to the podia community.
User reviews and testimonials
GetResponse gets a lot of praise for its advanced marketing solutions and automation. This has earned us a 4.3 out of 5 star rating on G2.
Admittedly, our platform has a lot to offer, so it takes a bit of time to learn your way around it.
Also, we only recently launched the content monetization hub, so although you can currently build and launch your course with no problem, we’re still working on a few things, including community-building tools, affiliate programs for users, and the ability to sell different digital products like podcasts, coaching sessions, memberships, and product bundles.
On the other hand, Podia has been praised for its user-friendliness. The platform makes building an online store and selling digital products super accessible to everyone.
But Podia also faces criticism for limited customization options, limited email marketing capabilities, and customer support issues. As you saw in the pricing section, chances are you’ll need to pay for email marketing separately, which can increase your total expenses considerably.
GetResponse vs. Podia: Choosing the best online course platform for your needs
So, which of the two platforms is right for you?
Based on our analysis, GetResponse is ideal for online educators providing personal and professional development training (like fitness and music coaches, online marketing teachers, financial educators & language teachers) who want to build online courses and access advanced marketing tools on one platform.
Our pricing is also favorable because we don’t charge you extra to access the marketing tools.
On the other hand, Podia is ideal for solo business owners who want a simple platform to create and sell digital products such as online courses and digital downloads.