Likelihood to Recommend In my experience, Podia has been well suited in every way! I am a small company with a couple of independent contractors, and I don't know how to build my own website. I am not very techy. I get lots of compliments on how my website looks! I have had some people support me with setting up my group emails for my email list and setting up automations, and these techy people complained that they needed to do more customization in the email formatting and programming, so I switched to
Mailchimp for those needs. Otherwise, I have been very happy with Podia and I am grateful to have a platform that offers so many services/features. It's affordable and user friendly. My clients and students are happy using it, too
Read full review Any business that needs to keep track of orders and payments would benefit from Shopify Plus. Customers information, orders, and payments are all saved and available for reference. You are able to refer to past orders to review trends and offer future purchase suggestions. Shopify Plus is also easy to use so it does not take long to train employees how to use this system.
Read full review Pros Web Builder Storefront Digital course creator Bundling workshops/programs easy to update and add to my website customer service is awesome Read full review Scales incredibly well. Forget about hardware concerns, load balancing, downtime, etc. and focus on eCommerce. We've seen merchants go from a few thousand dollars per month to having million dollar days, all on Shopify without having to worry about performance or scaling systems. Great new features consistently being added, ahead of the curve on almost everything Solid API to build on and work with, a few annoying quirks here and there for super complex use cases but overall very well documented and works well Most Merchant Success Managers are good and genuinely want to be helpful A fantastic user interface, very logical and easy to use Tons and tons and tons of out of the box integrations. Easily the best integration marketplace of the e-commerce platforms. There's an app for that. Read full review Cons I sometimes wish there was more that I could customize on my website and digital programs I wish their email service (for broadcasts/group emails) had more features and customization I would like to use my brand font Read full review The Account Managers/Reps have become more scripted and seem like they are busier and handling more clients than before. It doesn't seem as personal and special anymore like when we first upgraded to Plus. Shopify still has missing features in their software that might not have an app in their app marketplace available that fills this void. The 24/7 support doesn't seem as dedicated as they once were. Read full review Support Rating Always are quick to answer our questions and help us find a solution
Read full review Alternatives Considered Kajabi had lots of features all in one place. I liked their digital course creator program. I liked the ease of their their membership site program/host, too. It had an app for my clients to use. There were some problems with not being able to customize the look of pages, but they allowed coding/programming if you had training, so I sometimes hired someone to do that for me. I couldn't figure out how to use their website builder, so I didn't do much there. When it came down to it, I could use Podia and it was cheaper and easier to use.
GoDaddy was my website host for a few years. I did a lot on there. It was my website builder and host and I liked it. It was easy to use. My website looked great. It had more features than Podia with blogging and connecting to social media. I had a storefront but it wasn't great for selling digital products. Back then, it wanted to show my inventory and shipping options, which don't apply for services and digital products. I did a little with my digital courses on there, but in the end, I liked other sites better for this. It didn't work out.
Weebly was just a starting point for me when I create my first digital course. I liked how it looked and it was easy to build, but there are better options for this sort of thing now.
Read full review Shopify had the quickest go-to-market and most robust API among the products we compared. CommerceCloud required a VERY LONG integration phase that we just didn't have time for.
BigCommerce fell short on the number of features and API coverage that we needed. Overall Shopify gave us the most bang for the buck.
Read full review Return on Investment Increased sales by $8000 from January to June (Added 2 more programs quickly and easily) Saved almost a thousand dollars in the first year in costs by switching to Podia Improved customer satisfaction by using 1 site instead of 4 Read full review Shopify Plus has been a very cost effective solution for us. As our business grows, it's easy to train new hires on how to use Shopify Plus. What we've lost in the missing features of Shopify we've made up for in the other areas. Read full review ScreenShots