Teachable Starter at $29 a month suits sellers who want order bumps and upsells on the cheap plan, while Podia Mover at $42 suits creators who want a course, a community and an email list together. The trade is a lower monthly fee against a bigger cut per sale, 7.5% against 5%. Both prices come from each platform’s own pricing page.
I have been comparing course platforms for long enough to notice something odd about this particular matchup. Every guide on page 1 tells you the same story: Teachable is the sales machine, Podia is the all-in-one with email built in.
That story holds at the top of each price list. It falls apart on the plan a first-time seller actually buys. On the cheapest Teachable plan there is no email marketing at all, and on the cheapest Podia plan there are no upsells.
Each platform is missing the exact thing this comparison gives it credit for, and almost nobody says so. Below you will get the current prices from both pricing pages, the point where the cheaper one flips, and the limits that decide it.
Key Takeaways
- Teachable Starter is $29 a month billed annually with a 7.5% fee, Podia Mover is $42 with a 5% fee. The cheaper one flips at $520 a month in sales.
- Teachable Starter has no built-in email marketing at all. Teachable’s own comparison table marks it with a cross. Email starts on Builder at $69 a month.
- Podia Mover includes email for 100 subscribers, then charges more. A 1,000-contact list adds $14 a month on top of the plan.
- Podia Mover has no upsells, no affiliate program and no PayPal. All 3 start on Shaker at $84 a month.
- Both cheapest plans stop at 100. Teachable counts active students, Podia counts email subscribers.
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Teachable vs Podia pricing, plan by plan
Teachable starts cheaper and takes more per sale, while Podia starts higher and takes less. Teachable Starter is $29 a month billed annually against Podia Mover’s $42, but Teachable keeps 7.5% of every sale where Podia keeps 5%. Both figures come from each company’s own pricing page.
| Entry plan | Teachable Starter | Podia Mover |
|---|---|---|
| Billed annually | $29/mo, $348/yr | $42/mo, $504/yr |
| Billed monthly | $39/mo | $49/mo |
| Fee per sale | 7.5% | 5% |
| Products | 5 | 50 |
| Buyers | 100 active students | Unlimited |
| Email included | None | 100 subscribers |
Podia gives you 10 times the products and no cap on how many people buy from you. Teachable gives you a lower monthly bill and a harder cap: 5 published products and 100 active students.
The full ladders run further in both directions. Teachable goes Builder at $69 a month, then Growth at $139, both billed annually and both at 0% on sales. Podia goes Shaker at $84 a month and Earthquaker at $150, both at 0%. If you want every tier laid out with the conditions attached, the Teachable pricing breakdown and the Podia pricing breakdown go through each one.
2 conditions matter more than the tier names.
Teachable’s 0% is not automatic. Its own pricing FAQ says there are 0% transaction fees on Builder, Growth and Custom “for those using teachable:pay or Monthly Payment Gateway”. Run payments another way and the 0% is not what you get.
Teachable’s student caps lift on their own. The same FAQ says that once you reach $10,000 a year in sales on the platform, the active and imported student limits are removed. The transaction fee is a separate matter and does not lift with it.
Each entry plan is missing the thing it is famous for
Teachable Starter has no built-in email marketing at all, and Podia Mover has no upsells. Those are the 2 features this comparison is usually decided on, and each platform withholds one of them from the plan a beginner buys.
Teachable’s own comparison table is blunt about it. Under Sales and marketing, the row “Built-in email marketing” carries a cross on Starter and a tick on Builder, Growth and Custom. The row below it, “Integrated affiliate program”, is a cross on Starter too.
Read down that Starter column and the picture is specific rather than vague. Coupons, upsells and order bumps are there. Abandoned cart emails and bundles are there too.
Email marketing and affiliates are not.
The guides I read call Teachable’s email basic. On the $29 plan there is no email tool at all.
Podia runs the same play in the other direction. Upsells, affiliate marketing, PayPal and Zapier are all listed on Shaker and Earthquaker on Podia’s pricing page. None of them appears on Mover. So the platform people pick for its all-in-one breadth sells its cheapest plan without the tool that raises the value of a sale.
Both cheapest plans stop at exactly 100
Teachable Starter stops at 100 active students. Podia Mover stops at 100 included email subscribers. Same round number, 2 different meters, and which one bites first depends entirely on how you sell.
Sell a $200 course to 80 people and Teachable Starter is fine on students, while Podia Mover would have stopped metering your list long ago if you built an audience first. Run a free newsletter that converts slowly and Podia Mover starts charging you for the list months before Teachable would notice your student count.
None of the guides on page 1 draws that parallel. Several state one cap or the other. None puts them side by side, which is the comparison a person on either entry plan actually needs.
Email marketing, priced properly
Podia’s included email stops at 100 subscribers on Mover, and the extra is metered from there. Podia’s own pricing FAQ says every plan comes with Podia Email free up to a subscriber count that depends on the plan: 100 on Mover, 500 on Shaker, 1,000 on Earthquaker.
Open the subscriber dropdown on Podia’s pricing page and the rest of the ladder appears. On annual billing it runs 100 contacts free, 500 for $8 a month more, 1,000 for $14, 2,500 for $22, 5,000 for $36 and 10,000 for $56. It keeps climbing to $1,000 a month at 500,000 contacts.
A 1,000-person list costs $14 a month on top of Podia Mover’s $42, which is $56 a month, or $672 a year.
Teachable at that size gets awkward, because there is no small step to take. Email marketing starts on Builder at $69 a month billed annually, which is $828 a year. There is no email add-on for Starter, so the only route is a whole tier.
Podia Mover with a 1,000-contact list is $56 a month against Teachable Builder’s $69, which is $156 a year in Podia’s favour before you sell anything. Podia Mover still takes 5% while Teachable Builder takes 0%, so once you sell more than $260 a month, Teachable Builder becomes the cheaper way to have email.
| Monthly sales | Podia Mover + 1,000 contacts | Teachable Builder | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| $0 | $56.00 | $69.00 | Podia |
| $100 | $61.00 | $69.00 | Podia |
| $260 | $69.00 | $69.00 | Tie |
| $1,000 | $106.00 | $69.00 | Teachable |
$260 a month in sales is a low bar. Most people asking this question will clear it, which makes Teachable Builder the cheaper home for a list of that size, higher sticker price and all.
A caution on Podia’s own numbers. Podia’s comparison page says email plans start “at just $7 per month for up to 500 subscribers”, while its pricing page shows 500 contacts at $8 a month on annual billing, and our own Podia pricing breakdown recorded $10 on monthly billing. The $7 matches neither. Trust the pricing page.
Order bumps, upsells and affiliates
Teachable Starter includes coupons, upsells, order bumps, abandoned cart emails and bundles, while Podia Mover includes none of the upsell tooling. This is the axis where the cheap Teachable plan clearly beats the cheap Podia plan.
An order bump is the small extra offer sitting on the checkout page itself, ticked before payment. An upsell page is the offer shown after payment goes through. Both raise what an existing buyer spends, which is the cheapest revenue there is, because you already paid to get that person to the checkout.
On Podia you need Shaker at $84 a month billed annually before upsells appear. That is double Mover’s price, and it also brings affiliate marketing and PayPal with it.
Affiliates sit 1 tier up on both platforms. Teachable puts the affiliate program on Builder at $69 a month, and Podia puts affiliate marketing on Shaker at $84. Neither entry plan has it.
The PayPal gap is worth a sentence, because it sounds worse than it is. Podia Mover runs on Stripe only, and Stripe charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per successful transaction on domestic US cards. PayPal Checkout charges 3.49% plus $0.49 on domestic commercial transactions, so PayPal is the more expensive rail anyway. Mover costs you buyer choice at the checkout, and switching to PayPal would not have saved you money.
Processing stacks on top of the platform cut in every case. On a $100 sale, Teachable Starter takes $7.50 and Stripe takes $3.20, leaving $89.30. Podia Mover takes $5 and Stripe takes $3.20, leaving $91.80.
Community, website and course structure
Podia includes a community, a website builder and a blog on every plan, while Teachable puts its weight into the course itself. Podia’s pricing page lists community spaces on all 3 tiers, 25 on Mover, 100 on Shaker and unlimited on Earthquaker, and lists a website, landing pages, a blog and custom domain support as included for everyone.
Teachable sells no community product. What it lists instead is course machinery: iOS and Android student apps on every plan, course certificates from Growth upward, and the ability to remove Teachable branding at the same tier.
If your offer is a cohort or a membership where buyers talk to each other, Podia covers it without a second subscription. If your offer is a course people work through alone on a phone, Teachable’s student apps matter more than community spaces you will never open.
Where the cost flips
Teachable Starter and Podia Mover cross over at $520 a month in sales on annual billing. Under that number Teachable Starter costs less all in, and over it Podia Mover does, because Podia’s smaller 5% cut eventually outweighs its higher monthly fee.
| Monthly sales | Teachable Starter | Podia Mover | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| $250 | $47.75 | $54.50 | Teachable |
| $520 | $68.00 | $68.00 | Tie |
| $1,000 | $104.00 | $92.00 | Podia |
| $2,000 | $179.00 | $142.00 | Podia |
At $2,000 a month in sales the gap is $37 a month, which is $444 over a year. That is real money for a solo seller, and it points at Podia.
If you pay monthly rather than annually, the crossover moves down to $400 a month, because the monthly prices sit further apart at $39 and $49.
There is a third crossover most people miss, and it is inside Teachable rather than between the 2 platforms. Teachable Starter beats Teachable Builder only until about $533 a month in sales. Past that, paying $69 for Builder and keeping the 7.5% beats paying $29 and giving it away. Podia has the same internal step at $840 a month, where Shaker overtakes Mover.
So the honest answer to “which is cheaper” carries 3 numbers: $520 between the platforms, $533 inside Teachable and $840 inside Podia. The same multi-crossover pattern shows up in Teachable vs Thinkific and Kajabi vs Teachable.
What the first page of Google gets wrong
Google’s AI Overview for this comparison says Podia has full built-in email marketing “on all plans” and calls Teachable’s email tools basic. Both statements drop the qualifier that decides the choice, and Google’s own cited source carries those qualifiers.
Look at the small chip under the Teachable bullet. Google attributes its criticism of Teachable’s email to Podia, one of the 2 products being compared.
Podia’s page does say it, and Podia’s page also says the thing the summary leaves out: that Mover includes up to 100 subscribers, Shaker 500 and Earthquaker 1,000. It also states that Teachable’s email tool “is available on the Builder plan ($89/month, or $69/month billed annually) and above”. The summary kept the framing and dropped the numbers, so the reader gets a worse answer than the page being summarised.
The prices are a second problem, and they fall into a pattern worth knowing about.
2 of the ranking pages are published by companies that sell a competing course platform, and both quote Podia’s price at the old rate. Ruzuku’s comparison lists Podia Mover at $33 a month and Shaker at $75 on annual billing. FreshLearn’s page lists the same 2 figures. Podia’s real annual prices are $42 and $84, so both understate by exactly $9 a month, which is $108 a year on either plan.
FreshLearn goes further and builds its savings math on the old number, telling readers annual billing saves $72 a year on Mover. From Podia’s current prices the saving is $84.
Ruzuku has 2 more errors a reader would act on. It says every Podia plan including the free plan allows unlimited products, when Podia has no free plan at all, only a 30-day trial, and Mover caps at 50 products.
It also says Teachable limits you to “1 product on Starter, 5 on Builder, 25 on Professional, and 100 on Business”. The real limits are 5, 10 and 50, and neither Professional nor Business is a current Teachable tier.
Podia’s own page, at the top of the results, is the most accurate page on the list. The 2 pages that get Podia’s price wrong are its competitors.
Spend 30 seconds on the vendor’s own pricing page before you trust a number from any comparison, and spend it twice when the comparison was written by a competing platform with a reason for one of them to look expensive.
Which one fits which seller
Pick Teachable if you sell a small number of courses and want checkout tools on the cheap plan. Pick Podia if you want a community, a blog and an email list living in the same place as the course, and you can afford Shaker once you grow.
Teachable Starter suits you if you have 1 to 5 products, fewer than 100 active students, an email tool you already pay for, and you want order bumps working from day 1.
Podia Mover suits you if you have more than 5 products, an audience that buys repeatedly, a list under 100, and no immediate need for upsells.
Teachable Builder suits you if you sell more than about $533 a month, because the 0% fee and the built-in email both arrive at the same $69 step.
Podia Shaker suits you if you sell more than about $840 a month and want the community and the upsells together.
A word on picking too big too early. When I was starting out and had a bit of money saved, I signed up for courses promising to take me from 0 to $10,000 a month as a complete beginner. I was naive enough to believe it.
I had no skill anybody would pay for and no audience to sell to, and no amount of spending was going to supply either. Both platforms will happily sell you the bigger plan before you have any proof that people will buy.
The same thought shows up in the r/elearning thread that ranks on this keyword, where a course seller wrote that they were moving off Teachable and back to Udemy “because I didn’t have marketing skills so I was actually losing money because I was paying for the Teachable account each month”. Another reply in the r/elearning thread calls the platform “just a container”.
Worth knowing that the same thread mentions a free Teachable plan, which no longer exists. Teachable now runs a 7-day trial and a 30-day guarantee, with no free tier.
Start on the plan that matches what you sell today. Both platforms let you move up whenever the numbers say so, and neither rewards you for guessing early.
If neither name is the right answer, the Teachable alternatives and Podia alternatives roundups price the rest of the field, and the LMS for online courses comparison covers what 7 platforms take at the entry tier.
What neither one is for
Teachable and Podia are both built to host and deliver a course, so both charge you a monthly fee whether or not you sell anything that month. While the course is the product, that fee earns its place. Once the course is finished and the next thing you sell is a template pack, an ebook or a one-off bonus, you are paying course-platform prices for what amounts to a checkout.
Plenty of sellers end up paying course-platform rent to host 2 PDFs. A plain checkout tool covers that job for a fraction of the price, and a membership site platform comparison is a better starting point if recurring access is what you need.
CartMango is one of the checkout-only options in that category, alongside Gumroad, Payhip and SendOwl. CartMango does not host courses yet, so CartMango is not a replacement for either platform on this page. CartMango’s learning management system and community features are planned for October 2026, with affiliate management planned for September 2026.
FAQ
How much is Podia per month?
Podia Mover is $49 a month billed monthly, or $42 billed annually, which comes to $504 a year. Shaker is $99 monthly or $84 annually, and Earthquaker is $179 monthly or $150 annually.
Mover carries a 5% fee on each sale, while Shaker and Earthquaker carry none. Email beyond your plan’s included subscribers costs extra on all 3.
What is better than Podia?
The answer turns on which part of Podia is failing you. If the 5% fee on Mover is the problem, Teachable Builder at $69 a month removes the fee and adds email. If the 100-subscriber email cap is the problem, a separate email tool plus a cheaper host usually costs less. If you want more platforms priced side by side, the Podia alternatives comparison covers 9 of them.
Can you really make money on Teachable?
Yes, and the platform is rarely what decides it. Teachable handles hosting, payments and global tax, which removes real work. It does not bring you an audience, and on the Starter plan it takes 7.5% of every sale plus card processing, so a $100 course nets about $89.30. Sellers who do well on it arrive with a list already.
Is there a free alternative to Teachable?
Teachable itself has no free plan, only a 7-day trial and a 30-day money-back guarantee. Free tiers do exist elsewhere in the category, usually paid for with a higher cut of each sale. Payhip’s free plan is the common example, taking 5% per transaction rather than a monthly fee.
Does Teachable have built-in email marketing?
Not on the Starter plan. Teachable’s own plan comparison marks built-in email marketing as unavailable on Starter and available on Builder, Growth and Custom. Builder is $69 a month billed annually, so email is the feature that pushes a Teachable seller off the cheapest plan more often than the product limit does.
Selling the next thing after the course
Teachable vs Podia is a question about which monthly bill you want to carry, and both bills keep arriving whether the course sells that month or not. Once the course is built and the audience knows where to find it, the next thing you sell is usually smaller: a template pack, a bonus workbook, an upgrade for people who already bought.
For that job you mostly need a checkout that takes the money, hands over the file and offers an order bump on the way through, with no monthly subscription sitting underneath it. CartMango does that job, and CartMango is free until October 2026, then $10 a year.
About the Author
👋 I’m Welly, founder of CartMango (the site you’re on), a checkout platform for digital product sellers. We’ve previously processed $179M+. I also run BirdSend (email marketing tool, 3.1B+ emails sent). On the side I show other non-techie digital sellers how I use AI workflows to automate 50%+ of my operations. Find me on LinkedIn.
Related Reading
If Teachable vs Podia turns out to be the wrong question for you, these go deeper on each platform and on the rest of the field.
- Teachable pricing: every tier with the teachable:pay condition attached to each 0%
- Podia pricing: the 3 plans and the metered email ladder behind the dropdown
- Teachable vs Thinkific: the same head-to-head against a different rival
- Kajabi vs Teachable: for readers weighing the more expensive end
- LMS for online courses: what 7 platforms take at the entry tier