Which community and membership stack is best for you? I break them all down and show you what their sales pages won't say out loud!
Courses, downloads, community spaces, and real email marketing in one plan, from $42/mo billed annually. 5% fee on Mover, 0% from Shaker. Daily or weekly digests, eight native email integrations, no mobile app, no gamification.
Podia is the all-in-one for people who don't want to think about it. Website, courses, downloads, community spaces, and a proper email tool with sequences, all on one bill, all on every plan.
It's not a Skool clone. No leaderboard, no levels, no mobile app. But if your real question is "can I run a small paid community and email the members without stitching three tools together," Podia's answer is yes, and it's the cheapest honest yes on this site.
Three plans. No free plan. 14-day trial, no card needed.
Podia's pricing page only shows annual billing. The help centre says annual saves 15%, so month-to-month runs higher. We've listed what the page shows.
Two things hide in those tiers.
First, the email subscriber caps. 100 on Mover is tiny. Hit it and you're upgrading to Shaker, so the real price of "Podia with email" for most people is $84.
Second, PayPal and Zapier are Shaker and up. On Mover it's Stripe or nothing.
Refunds: request within 72 hours of your last payment. No partial refunds on annual plans. Read that twice before you pay for a year.
5% on Mover, on top of Stripe's 2.9% + 30¢. 0% on Shaker and Earthquaker.
Same shape as Teachable's Starter, a smaller cut. At $500/mo in sales the 5% is $25, so Shaker pays for itself around $840/mo in revenue on annual billing.
Your own Stripe on every plan. PayPal from Shaker up. Podia handles sales tax in 230 countries and 20+ currencies, which is rarer than it sounds at this price.
Community is on every plan, trial included. It's built on spaces: a default General space, plus private spaces, admin-only announcement spaces, and spaces gated by product, plan or event. Access is set per space, not per post. Direct and group chat. Free and paid community plans can run side by side.
Delete a space and its posts go with it. Permanently. The help centre says so.
Gamification: none. No points, no badges, no leaderboard. If your engagement plan is "people climb a ladder," this isn't your platform.
Courses with section drip, digital downloads, coaching, webinars, bundles. The Podia Agent AI tool is on every plan. Limits are per product count, not per student: unlimited customers on all three tiers.
Does it send members a digest? Yes, and it's the most flexible we've seen. Activity emails can be instant, hourly, daily (8:10 AM local) or weekly (Friday, 8:10 AM local), or off. Members only get notified for spaces they follow. Chat emails batch with a 10-minute delay.
Can you email your members from inside it? Yes, properly. Podia Email does newsletters, welcome sequences and automations. The catch is the subscriber cap per plan: 100, 500, 1,000. Beyond that you're paying for more.
Can you get your list out? Yes, two ways. Native integrations with Kit, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, Drip, AWeber, GetResponse, MailerLite and Flodesk push new signups to a segment you choose. One-way, not retroactive, so switch it on before you launch. And the Audience export is a CSV with name, email, location, product sign-up dates and active status. Tags don't come through. Owners get the file by email.
Members in: CSV import into a product, event or community plan, with access granted on import. People imported into a paid plan get it free, which is exactly what you want when moving an existing group.
Members out: Audience CSV and per-product customer exports. No posts or comments export that we could find.
Courses in: No self-serve importer, but Podia will migrate for you on every plan: up to 50 products on Mover, 150 on Shaker and Earthquaker. Course content, downloads, customer emails and free community members all move. That's a better deal than most platforms give at twice the price.
None. The help centre says it plainly: "we do not currently offer a mobile app." Members use the web. On a phone that's a browser tab, not an icon.
No mobile app, no gamification, and email subscriber caps of 100 / 500 / 1,000 push most creators to Shaker at $84. Pricing page shows annual billing only.
Checked 16 Oct 2026 against the Podia pricing page and these help centre articles: Community Feature FAQs, Managing notifications, Understanding Podia transaction fees, Changing your Podia plan, Exporting your contacts, Importing customers into products/plans/events, Getting started with email integrations, and Understanding the member experience.
The course platform with everything in one bill: courses with quizzes, unlimited email and automations, funnels, payments, and a community tab. $179/mo to start, $143 on annual. No free plan, a 2,500-contact cap on Basic, and the community is the weakest part of the package.
The cheapest real course builder with a community attached. $54/mo, or $40 on annual, 30-day trial, 0% fees if you use Thinkific Payments. The community is one feed with 5 Spaces on Basic, the email tool is a few canned sequences, and bringing your own Stripe on Basic costs 5%.
A course and coaching platform, not a community platform. Teachable has paused its Community feature. From $39/mo with a 7.5% fee on Starter, 0% from Builder ($89). Shared student app, broadcast email, native Mailchimp sync.
