Funny thing happened the other week:
Out of the blue I get an email from this guy named Spencer Fry.
Spencer said that a mutual friend, Justin Jackson, recommended that we should connect.
Would I be interested in a 15-minute “get to know you, maybe we can work together” chat?
Usually I turn these down—I always enjoy connecting with new people, but I get a lot of these requests, and meetings are a big distraction.
Since I know Justin and trust his recommendations, though, I decided to bend my rule and agreed to meet with Spencer.
When Spencer and I jumped onto our call, I didn't really even know what his business was.
He explained that he runs a software platform called Podia for creating and selling digital product and online courses.
Oh, that's interesting.
To date I've been using two platforms to sell my products, Teachable (for online courses) and DPD (for digital downloads).
I've also spent a TON of time evaluating online shopping carts for Simple Programmer, and I've never been happy with any of them.
I started grilling Spencer based on all that research, and the more he showed me about Podia, the more intrigued I got.
The first thing that jumped out to me is that you can use Podia for both full-blown, multi-week courses like the Email Copywriting Workshop I ran last fall, and simpler “digital download” products like my Six-Figure Email Courses product.
That would allow me to ditch both Teachable and DPD and just have all of my products under one roof, so to speak.
My customers could access the latest version of their with one login.
And there are no transaction fees or file size limits…
Now I was starting to get excited.
I started rattling off my wish list of features to Spencer, like special “discount code” URLs and one-click upsells.
He opened up the team's “road map” of planned features and showed me what they're planning to roll out.
In almost every case, the features I wanted most were either already supported or planned for near-future development.
So 45 minutes into our 15-minute “get to know you” call, I find myself punching in my credit card and creating a Podia account, and Spencer and I started setting up my store right then and there.
There are a lot of excellent technical features in Podia. For example, their checkout workflow is super low-friction for customers. Spencer said their A/B tests showed a double-digit conversion bump with the approach they're using, and I believe it.
Far and away the best part though has been the *awesome* support I've received from Spencer and his crew.
Spencer personally helped me migrate my existing products and customers—they even converted a bunch of my videos to a better format.
And the development team has already added several small features that I've requested, like improved support for Google Analytics, and added several more to the roadmap.
I've officially switched all my products over to Podia at this point, and cancelled my Teachable and DPD accounts.
Podia supports everything I was doing in Teachable and DPD, only better.
I was on the $99 per month plan with Teachable, and paying $16 per month for DPD.
With Podia, I'm paying just $29 a month, and there are no transaction fees or restrictions on the number of courses or products.
During our initial call, Spencer mentioned that they were planning to raise their prices on June 1.
When I heard that, I decided on the spot to let you know about Podia before the prices jumped.
If you sign up and pick a monthly plan before the price increase goes into effect, you'll be “grandfathered in” at the current lower price.
You can check out the plans here:
Josh Earl
P.S. YES, that is an affiliate link.
Which is yet another sign of how happy I am with Podia as a platform.
I've never endorsed any online shopping cart or course creation software, because frankly I was never that happy with any of them.
It's worth your time to check Podia out.
Here's that link again:
