| Tool | Best for | Starts at | The limit that bites |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thinkific | Paying Podia money without the 5% coming off the top | $54/mo | No memberships, subscriptions or certificates until $109/mo |
| Systeme.io | Selling one course without paying anything at all | Free | 1 course, 3 funnels and 1 community on the free plan |
| Teachable | Course sellers whose real target is the $89 tier, not the $39 one | $39/mo | Starter's 7.5% fee is higher than Podia's 5% |
| Kajabi | Treating the move as an upgrade rather than a saving | $179/mo | 5 products and 1 community on Basic |
| Payhip | People whose Podia account is really just a download store | Free | The free plan's 5% fee never goes away on its own |
| LearnWorlds | Higher-priced courses where a flat fee beats a percentage | $29/mo | $5 flat fee on every enrollment, and no memberships on Starter |
| Skool | When the community was the product and the course was the excuse | $9/mo | 10% on Hobby, which is double Podia's rate |
Podia does a genuinely hard thing well. Courses, downloads, coaching, a community, a website with a blog, email marketing and checkout all sit behind one login, and it handles sales tax in 230 countries so you never think about VAT. For a solo creator that's worth real money, and most posts about leaving Podia skip past it.
The problem is what the entry plan costs once you start selling. Mover is $49/mo, or $42/mo billed annually, and takes 5% of every sale on top. It also caps email marketing at 100 subscribers. So the plan you signed up on stops working at roughly the moment the business starts working. At $1,000/mo in sales the fee alone costs $50, the same as the $50/mo jump to Shaker at $99, and every dollar of sales past that makes Mover the dearer plan — and Shaker still carries only 500 subscribers. There's no free plan either, just a 30-day trial.
I pulled the live US pricing page for every tool below on 2 September 2026 and recorded what the entry plan really costs once fees are counted. Where a tool has a review on this site I've linked it. I haven't run a course business on any of these seven myself, so this is a pricing-and-limits read rather than a hands-on one, and nothing here claims testing that didn't happen.
Podia's entry plan is $49/mo ($42/mo billed annually) and charges a 5% platform fee on each sale. That number decides everything: at $1,000/mo in sales the fee costs $50, exactly the $50/mo it takes to move up to Shaker at $99/mo and drop the fee to 0% — past that point Mover costs more than the plan above it. Mover is only the cheap plan while you're barely selling. Thinkific, Systeme.io, Kajabi and Payhip's paid tiers all charge 0%.
Podia sells itself as the tool that replaces your email platform, then caps Mover at 100 email subscribers. Shaker at $99/mo ($84 annually) raises that to 500, and a 1,000-subscriber list needs Earthquaker at $179/mo ($150 annually). Systeme.io's free plan holds 2,000 contacts with unlimited sends and Kajabi Basic holds 2,500 — on email, Podia is the outlier here.
Podia has no free tier; every plan is paid, with a 30-day no-card trial as the only free access. Refunds run on a 72-hour window after a payment, with no partial refunds on annual plans — so an annual Mover commitment is $504 you get three days to reconsider. Systeme.io and Payhip both run permanent free plans that let you sell before you pay anything.
None of that makes Podia a bad tool — the full breakdown is in my Podia review.
Paying Podia money without the 5% coming off the top
The closest thing to a like-for-like swap, and the one that answers the actual complaint: you pay roughly what Mover costs and stop handing over 5% of revenue. The catch is real. If any part of your Podia setup is a recurring membership, Basic can't do it and you're weighing Thinkific Start at $109/mo against Podia Shaker at $99/mo instead.
Full Thinkificreview →Selling one course without paying anything at all
The honest answer to "is there a free Podia alternative", and the pick that saves the most money while getting recommended the least. If you sell one course and email a list under 2,000, Podia charges $49 a month plus 5% for something Systeme.io does for nothing. The trade is a less polished platform and hard caps that arrive fast.
Course sellers whose real target is the $89 tier, not the $39 one
Ignore the $39 headline; it's a worse version of the deal you already dislike. Teachable belongs here for Builder: $89/mo with no platform fee undercuts Podia Shaker by $10 and gives twice the audience allowance — though Teachable counts 1,000 active students where Podia counts 500 email subscribers, which aren't the same unit. If you're paying to escape a transaction fee, that's the cheapest 0% tier from a platform of Podia's size.
Full Teachablereview →
Treating the move as an upgrade rather than a saving
The comparison is unusually clean: Kajabi Basic and Podia Earthquaker are both $179/mo, and Kajabi gives 2,500 contacts against Podia's 1,000 while Podia gives unlimited products against Kajabi's 5. Pick Kajabi if your list is the constraint and you sell a few things. If you sell many small products, Podia's top plan is the better buy.
Full Kajabireview →People whose Podia account is really just a download store
I'd take this over Gumroad for the same job. Gumroad charges 10% + $0.50 per sale on your own traffic and 30% through Discover, so Payhip's free plan is half that before you pay a cent. Sure, Payhip isn't a course platform the way Podia is, but if what you sell is templates, e-books and presets, you were paying $49 a month for a store you could have had free.
Higher-priced courses where a flat fee beats a percentage
Worth the arithmetic rather than a dismissal. Fifteen paid enrollments a month makes Pro Trainer at $99 cheaper than Starter plus its $5-per-enrollment fee (twelve, on annual billing), and its 0% beats Podia Shaker at the same price with 2,000 active learners instead of 500 email subscribers. Starter only wins if your course costs well over $100 and sells a handful of times a month.
Full LearnWorldsreview →
When the community was the product and the course was the excuse
The narrowest pick and the right one for a specific person. If your Podia community spaces are where everything actually happens and the course is a bonus, $9/mo buys unlimited members and you stop paying for a website builder, an email tool and a storefront you never use. If you sell courses to strangers, it's the wrong tool.
Full Skoolreview →Systeme.io at $0, if one course and a 2,000-contact list is enough - it charges no transaction fee either. Among paid plans it's LearnWorlds Starter at $29/mo ($24/mo annually), but that adds $5 per paid enrollment, so it only stays cheap on courses priced above $100. Skool is $9/mo if all you need is the community, though it takes 10% of every payment.
Two real ones. Systeme.io's free plan is permanent, needs no credit card, and covers 1 course with 500 students, 2,000 contacts with unlimited emails, 1 community and 1 custom domain at 0% fees. Payhip's Free Forever plan has no product or revenue caps at all and charges 5% per sale, the same rate Podia's $49 Mover plan takes on top of its subscription.
No. Every Podia plan is paid, starting at $49/mo, or $42/mo billed annually. The only free access is a 30-day trial that doesn't ask for a card. Worth knowing before you commit to annual: the refund window is 72 hours after a payment and there are no partial refunds on annual plans, so $504 for a year of Mover is a three-day decision.
Three plans. Mover is $49/mo ($42/mo annually, $504 for the year) with a 5% transaction fee and 100 email subscribers. Shaker is $99/mo ($84/mo annually, $1,008) at 0% fee with 500 subscribers, 150 products and affiliate marketing. Earthquaker is $179/mo ($150/mo annually, $1,800) with 1,000 subscribers and every other cap removed.
On cost, Thinkific - its Basic plan is $40/mo billed annually against Podia Mover's $42/mo and charges 0% platform fee where Podia takes 5%. On breadth, Podia, because Mover includes email marketing, a blog and a website builder that Thinkific's plans don't list. The deciding question is memberships: Thinkific can't sell subscriptions below its $109/mo Start plan, and Podia can from $49.
The files come with you, the setup doesn't. Every tool here needs the course rebuilt, the pages remade and the checkout reconnected by hand. Podia migrates up to 50 products in on Mover and 150 on Shaker, but nothing here imports a Podia site out. Budget a day per course you still sell, and use the move to delete the products that stopped earning.
