Kajabi, Podia, or WordPress?
Uncover the best platform to sell your courses effectively and boost your income with our expert comparison.
When selling your courses, are you torn between Kajabi, Podia, and WordPress? Look no further! In this informative video, we break down the strengths and weaknesses of each platform so you can choose the one that aligns with your goals. From ease of use to marketing capabilities and cost considerations, we’ve got it all covered. Join us as we simplify your decision-making process.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Convesio: Convesio
Omnisend: Omnisend
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:02.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the membership machine show. This is episode 91. In this episode, we will compare some of the leading Sass membership course creative platforms with one of the leading WordPress solutions. So basically, we will look at Kajabi Podia and compare them to lifter LMS. You’ve got the knowledge to make the best decision for your membership platforms that will allow you to build the course you want. I’ve got my regular co-host with me. I’ve got Kurt.
Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself?
[00:01:27.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I work directly with WP tonic and the great folks at LifterLMS and run my agency, Manana no Mas.
[00:01:36.720] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. Before we go into this show’s meat and potatoes section, I got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out that we’ve got some great free resources for you. We have a created list of the best WordPress plugins and services. Plus, we’ve got a special offer on a course that will show you how to build your membership course from beginning to end on WordPress and a great special deal on that. I want to point out that Kirk himself developed that course. You can get all these goodies by going over to wphentonic.com deals wptonic.com deals, and you will find all the free goodies and special offers on that page. So Kirk. So let’s do an introduction because I was listening. Kirk works with Lifter LMS as one of their individuals, who likes the public face of Lifter with one of the founders. So you were doing an online discussion and I thought you did a fabulous job, you and Emily, about explaining some of the strengths that you need to understand of using lifter NMS compared to some of the sasses and maybe some reasons why you would look at the sass rather than something like lifter lmsheende.
[00:03:38.900] – Jonathan Denwood
So would you like to do a quick introduction? Like similar what you did yesterday?
[00:03:45.750] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, yeah. And I appreciated your kind remarks during that live because you were like, Kurt’s on fire today. And the truth be known, I almost felt like I was being a little bit too much of a WordPress evangelist or salesman. I was waiting to break up my Shamwell and say, wait, that’s not all, but my honest opinion. And you know, I run the WordPress meetup in my area. You know, I’ve been to word camp, all those things. So I am unapologetically very much on the WordPress side of things. That said, I still take the time to look at these other platforms or to help my clients that are possibly embroiled in these other platforms. Jonathan, I’m just going to be blunt. I, when it comes to WordPress, I value the flexibility to be able to build whatever I want around it, to know that I can grow and I can scale and build whatever I want around my project. And I like, I really like the sense of, of ownership in that I’m not stuck in their, in their offer or their platform. Meaning like God forbid I were to actually be truly successful with a learning project.
[00:04:58.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
You know, you have the cost of scale of hosting of all those things, and when you’re in someone else’s SaaS platform, you’re trapped in what they offer and what they want to charge you. Whereas when you’re in the WordPress space, you have more freedom to host and build and go where you want to go to suit your use case needs as you grow and scale. So I’m really big in the WordPress space.
[00:05:22.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I thought that’s a fabulous way to put it. So the truth is, folks, there is no perfect platform for your membership website. It doesn’t exist. It’s like trying to find a unicorn, folks. It’s legendary out there, but it doesn’t actually exist. What you got to do is you’ve got to find the right platform for you at the present moment and also for your future plans. But obviously you don’t want to go too far in the future because you don’t know what your future plans might be, but you definitely want something that can cover you, um, as you grow for the first couple years. That I think that’s the sweet point. So what something might be perfect for you at the start of your journey in building a great membership based business might not be the most appropriate solution. 18 months to two years down the line. I think if you look any further out, it really is too far out and probably you’re going to be changing how you run things anyway. But I think that’s the sweet point myself. Would you agree with that, Kurt?
[00:06:48.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
I agree and disagree to a certain extent. I think in the SaaS arena you would find yourself saying 18 to 24 months in, if you experience success with your platform, you would start to look at your spreadsheet and go, this doesn’t make sense anymore. Like this platform may have gotten me launched, this may have gotten me going, but my costs have tripled, my costs have quadrupled. They’re charging me a per license fee in some cases. In some cases they’re taking eight to 10% of your sales. There’s just, there’s a lot of baggage in the fine print there. Whereas if you were in the WordPress space, you know, your biggest problem with success is, oh my gosh, I got to go from $25 a month hosting to dollar 55 a month hosting. And then you might add some plugins in, but you wouldn’t be completely changing your platform. So to me, when I look at growth from up from like a lifter LMS learndash tutor LMS perspective in WordPress, I look at it from the perspective of I wouldn’t be making wholesale changes to my presentation to my students or asking them to go to another website.
[00:07:59.580] – Kurt von Ahnen
Instead I would be announcing new features and new elements of the thing that would add to the experience. So again, I go back to, I think if growth and scale is in the back of my mind, I’m probably going to go the WordPress route.
[00:08:14.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So let’s look at one of the leading SAS competitors out there, folks, podia. When I was introduced to podio, I really liked it because it offered a certain degree of power and their pricing of their different levels seemed quite fair and straightforward. It’s still, I feel, a good platform for the right individual, but I think some of its attractiveness has reduced because of some of their decisions around pricing, Kurt. And they’ve adopted some pricing mythologies which I personally are not very attracted to. What I mean by that, folks, is they never, I think I’m correct, until about a year ago, they didn’t offer a free product. Now they’re offering a free product. And that sounds fantastic, but it isn’t in my opinion, because yes, you can start using it. Their free product is quite stripped down. It has some very stringent limitations like that. All these SAS systems utilize different languages. So they say. One coaching product, I presume that’s one course. Like you get a full website, they’re the website builder is adequate, but compared to some of the other SaaS platforms and especially Kajabi, I think it’s very stripped down. But the main problem with the free product is that every cell that you do on it, you’re gonna have to use a payment gateway provider like stripe, which are similar, and most of them charge around 2.9 per transaction.
[00:10:44.010] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, podio wants 10% on top, so you’d be looking at something slightly under 13% between what podio wants and what your gateway provider wants. That’s a chunk of change, obviously. You could say you’re just trying to get your first few sales. So what’s the big deal? Well, the, the big deal is the next price level, which is mover. And that’s where my criticism actually increases, because they have reduced the fee that they want on each transaction. They’ve halved it, but they still want 5%. So 5% plus the 2.9% is almost 8%, folks, and they’re charging $40 a month for it. And that’s my main problem. The other factors is it’s a more simplistic interface than kajabi by a considerable degree, and in pure usability. In UX design, I think it’s easier to grasp if you have no experience of building something like this, but on the same breadth, it is some of the key power elements that you’re probably going to want to utilize as you move forward on your journey, aren’t there? So I think I want to bring Kirk in because I’m going off now.
[00:12:33.630] – Kurt von Ahnen
All right.
[00:12:34.460] – Jonathan Denwood
What, what are your thoughts about Podia?
[00:12:39.790] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s interesting that we’re discussing Kajabi and Podia when it comes to the SaaS platforms. Podia is actually my favorite, and for all the reasons that people will. I don’t want to say bother, but give me opportunities to think. With lifter LMS support, everybody wants to change everything. Like in the WordPress space, everybody thinks they got to customize everything. I got a different color for this button. I want to change this text to that text. I want this to be bigger, I want that to be smaller. And then you get into Podia and it’s like, what you see is what you get, buddy. That’s it. Very simple. And I like that stripped down simplicity. I am all about a minimal viable product to do a proof of concept and get something launched and see if it is financially feasible. So to me, I think Podi is a great way to launch. I understand that percentage that they’re asking for on purchases for some folks, they go, man, that’s a lot. But if you just started and you don’t have any students yet and you’re trying to do a proof of concept, forking over ten or 15% to try something to get your 1st, 15 or 25 paying students, that’s completely acceptable.
[00:13:52.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
And then once you have cash flow and revenue, maybe you jump up to the mover and you’re.
[00:13:57.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’re totally spot on. It’s actually my criticism really is on the mover.
[00:14:02.590] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, the movers like, because so if you look at reviews from like a year or a year and a half ago, I can’t remember how long it was that I started looking at Podia. The pricing was completely different. It was, I think, 8% on the free plan and then on the, on the mover plan, you. I think you paid more, but there was no fee.
[00:14:24.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. What’s happened? Am I right about this? I think it was teachable. I think teachable had this model and they’ve gone, they’ve swapped. Teachable has abandoned this model of charging a fee for each transaction. They, they, they had this model and it was my, one of my main criticisms. Or I was either. Or is it thinkific? It could have been thinkific, actually.
[00:14:54.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think thinkific. I think thinkific would. Did this, this routine.
[00:14:57.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, thinkific was the one. And they’ve dropped it. Their prices are a bit rich. I don’t think what they offer is as good as podio.
[00:15:10.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I would agree there.
[00:15:11.690] – Jonathan Denwood
But they’ve dropped this model. And I was disappointed in Podia adopting this particular model because I don’t. But on the beginner, the free plan, it’s totally acceptable for the reasons you so clearly pointed out. My main criticism of it is in the paid plan, the mover plan, because. And then when you go to shaker, which is $89 a month, they abandon that transaction fee.
[00:15:43.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Where, where I really like Podia and, you know, I want to give people credit where credits do. Like, I don’t want to just say WordPress. WordPress. WordPress. Right. If, if Podia, or if one of these SaaS platforms seems like the direction you want to go in and there’s reasons to say it, like maybe you don’t want to shop for a host, maybe you don’t want to worry about the things that sometimes WordPress comes with. Podia is cheaper than kajabi. You get the thing launched and the course builder for Podia is very straightforward. It was almost like being in the back of a lifter LMS window. I mean, it was at a section, at a court, at a lesson. You just add your elements and you go, where I got lost is in this. There’s something that these SaaS platforms do with their content that I have a hard time tracking. If I am in WordPress building a lesson, I am typically in the block builder and I’m building that lesson. And it’s not a what you see is what you get window, but it’s pretty dang close. When you are in podia or in Kajabi and you’re trying to build out a lesson, you’re adding a field to a video.
[00:16:57.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
In one field you’re adding text in a different text builder kind of thing. And then you’re adding, you know, a picture in this kind of little box. And then when you hit publish, that’s when you get to see what it might look like on the front end. And that to me is very disconnected. That part’s disconnected. But the podia page builder I thought was of if you could take just the key elements of like Elementor and just drip it down to I just want to put in a, a heading text and a picture. That to me is kind of that experience. And I thought it was very straightforward. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles and all the customizations that a lot of people we work with ask for. But from a simplistic basic, launching a course and becoming a course creator, I think it’s one of my favorites to get launched if you’re not willing to go down the WordPress lane.
[00:17:46.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, it’s strengthen is it’s reasonably, if you’re new to all this, it’s reasonably straightforward and simplistic to build the website and the course out. And they do provide a lot of support and educational resources that are of a good standard and they’re a reputable player in this area. So you just got to choose your poison, really. But I was disappointed in them going down this transactional, transactional charging because I just don’t believe in it. Folks, let’s go on to the next one. Which. Or shall we go for our break? Because I can’t believe almost. Let’s go for a break because we halfway through this. So we’re going to be talking about Kajabi and then lift at LMS in the second half. So we’re going to go for our break now, folks. We’ll be back in a few moments. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. We’ve had a feast about podio. We’ve had the introduction about what’s the main things you’ve got to consider. If you’re looking at some of the leading SaaS solutions out there and comparing them to WordPress, I think we’re one of the few shows, few podcasts that look not only at WordPress, but also the SaaS competitors.
[00:19:28.130] – Jonathan Denwood
We were one of a few shows that do this. I think it’s really important to look at the different strengths and weaknesses of all platforms, even though we’re WordPress providers and we provide a solution. So before we go into the meat and potatoes of the second half, I want to point out also that we provide a great free resource to you and that’s the membership machine show Facebook group. If you’re looking for a community to give you some additional vice, I’m on there always posting new stuff on it. It’s a small but growing community. It’s totally free. So go over to Facebook, find the membership machine, Facebook group and join. And we love you to be part of the discussion. So let’s go on to really the totally, in some ways very similar, but also very different to podio, which is kajabi. Now, kajabi similarities, but in philosophy, a very different approach. I’m gonna let you take the lead because I took the lead with podio. So how would you explain, if you were to, if you’re talking to a client and you were in a consultancy scenario, how would you explain Kajabi to that client?
[00:21:07.370] – Jonathan Denwood
Its strengths and weaknesses?
[00:21:10.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, this is a hard one because it’s not a bad product. So I always say this like, you’re gonna be hard pressed to find to say that something is horrible, but it’s not easy. It’s almost like, it’s almost like sensory overload. You get into kajabi, it’s more expensive. So you got to make that decision and that commitment that you’re going to spend more money. And it’s an all in one platform, similar to podia. So it does your CRM and your courses and your lessons and all that stuff, but it is chock full of funnel tools and templates and templates for sales pages. And to me, and this is just me saying my piece, I’ll say it out loud now, I think for most people, from a getting started perspective, that becomes sensory overload. They don’t know what to do with the materials. It becomes overwhelming. And in a lot of cases, I see a lot of folks, you know, fail to launch. They get in and the platform’s intimidating, it’s confusing. And months and months of paying these fees, these subscription fees to have nothing published is, I think the real downside of this. If you look at the, if you look at kind of the ecosystem that’s out there in the SaaS world, there’s a whole industry of professionals that help people get into Kajabi to launch their kajabi sites.
[00:22:37.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
And that to me is a testament to how complicated that platform can be to a newcomer.
[00:22:42.890] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you put it. Well, the way I put it put this folks, is that if you are experience, you got experience in building funnels, building lead magnets, if you’re following what I mean by funnels and lead magnets and email sequences, email, if you’re following everything I’m saying and you’ve got experience on building websites on Squarespace, wix or WordPress, you’re going to be able, you’re still probably going to struggle a bit because it offers a lot of things and the UX and usability of it is not terrible, but it isn’t as good as they promote. It is they do provide like podio, a lot of educational material. But if you haven’t got that experience, let’s say you, but you know your industry and you know your subject that you want to build your membership business on, but you haven’t got this experience and you set up kick their Kickstarter plan, which they never used to have. They obviously they felt some price pressure because their basic plan used to be their basic plan in it and it’s a $149. Obviously they were, they felt they were losing a lot of people to platforms like podia.
[00:24:29.800] – Jonathan Denwood
And so they have started a new plan called Kickstarter. And the problem is it only allows you 250 contacts. It is very stripped down compared to their basic plan and it’s still $69. But the problem is if you haven’t got this previous experience experience you are going to be totally lost when you log in and you’re going to have to do a deep dive to utilize. You can build a website and the course reasonably quickly. They do also offer free video hosting, but that isn’t as attractive as a bonus as it used to be. You’re going to get lost quite rapidly. You’re going to have to hire somebody to help you construct it all, in my opinion. That’s right. That’s why, like what Kirk has pointed out, that’s why there is an army of consultancies and freelancers to help you get it all set up because if you. But a lot of, but on the other hand, a lot of people get to before they get their first stooge at first small group of students in through the actual membership and get feedback, they’re building out elaborate funnels and automizations and this and that. And I think it’s a total waste of time unless you get your first student and find that the whole, if there’s a demand for it, if.
[00:26:22.880] – Jonathan Denwood
And get feedback from those students. But what do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:26:29.230] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think we’re going to say the same thing in different ways. I’m really big on letting course creators be subject matter experts. Let course creators focus on building their community and their business. If we have to force them into becoming a, you know, webmasters and tech geniuses, that just postpones their potential success. And so, you know, and at the risk of sounding like a commercial for WP tonic, I mean, Jonathan, let’s just face it. In the WordPress space, you supply the hosting, the tools and the white glove experience to get them online and going. All they got to do is put their course content in, publish it, and then do what they do, run their business and promote it. When you have to learn a whole platform to make something happen and adjust your pre existing notions of a CRM to some other limited CRM, it can be a real obstacle. And I think it’s that learning curve that gets people frustrated.
[00:27:32.950] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you can get very defocused with Kajabi. You. You can. And you get this in WordPress as well. Or you could get it in, in podio. Not so podio is great at the beginning, but you quickly, I feel if you get traction and there’s a. You’ve done all the things that we’ve discussed in previous episodes of this show, which you want to go and listen to folks about a minimum viable course. All the things that we talk about from the bootstrap startup world that you can apply to building out a course which you really need to understand, it will enable you to avoid some of the major pitfalls that we regular see in our own clients or people that host with Wptonic. But podio, because of its simplicity, helps you avoid that. But as your course grows, I think you’re going to get frustrated. Now with Kajabi, it’s the totally opposite. It provides a lot, but you can soon get lost. That’s why a lot of people hire consultants with Kajabi. My main criticism of it is, is their claim that it’s really easy and it isn’t because I was looking at, I’ve spent over a couple weeks recently in Kajabi, and I’m pretty experienced in all this.
[00:29:23.260] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m not. I wouldn’t say I was a top notch, but I’ve been building out and working with people in this kind of environment for over ten years. And Kajabi isn’t easy, that’s my opinion. So let’s move on to WordPress. Now, WordPress, its benefits is that you will never get restricted. You will always be able to find and customize WordPress to fit your particular business model. And you always have a much, much higher degree of ownership of your online business than whatever you will ever find in a SaaS product. And you will have a much higher control of your costs than you will have with these SaaS platforms. The problem, and that problem is what WP tonic is about, is that it’s a bit of a wild west of a solution. You have a tremendous amount of choices, but you can also spend an enormous amount of wasted time finding the right choices for you. And also, there’s an enormous amount of contradictory, and to some level misleading advice out there that will take you down a very, I won’t say expensive. It will always be to some degree cheaper, but it is expensive in some ways because it’s going to waste a lot of your time.
[00:31:20.050] – Jonathan Denwood
But if you choose the right setup and the right partner, it can offer all the benefits of the SaaS solution and you can avoid some of the majority pitfalls of WordPress. What’s your own thoughts about this?
[00:31:39.850] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kurt, I completely agree with you that there are tremendous amount of choices in the WordPress space. You know, from my agency perspective, I have been with, you know, at least eight different hosts over my time in space, in this space. And, you know, sometimes you think you find an amazing deal and then you realize some of the tools you want to use just don’t run very well on some of those amazing deals. And so you end up having to be, I hate to say, make an educated decision, but you need to make an educated decision. You know, is the platform I’m using going to be kind of heavy? Do I plan on having a lot of users? Well, then I probably need this level of hosting. The good thing about some of the more premium hosts, though, is you can always upgrade and update your hosting as required so you can build your site out on the cheaper plan. And then as your requirements grow, you can always increase your hosting capacity, which to me is, that’s a benefit of WordPress. It’s not an obligation of WordPress, it’s a benefit of WordPress. I’m in control of my performance, my page speed.
[00:32:48.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m in control of the whole thing. I’m not dependent upon some SaaS support to try and give me something and then argue with me about what I paid for and what’s included.
[00:32:56.930] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, thing there is, which I think we deal with quite well at wptonic, is that there’s, you tend to find with the better hosting providers, they tend to be filled with jargon and they provide a number of environments which the WordPress power user junkie or the professional love. But the normal mortal who just wants to build a viable membership based business really doesn’t care about or want. They just want the end result of good hosting. Yeah, so we deal with both types though. We can provide the environment that gives you the kind of technical access to your hosting that you want. But the bulk of people that we help aren’t interested, they just want something that works. So yeah, I, we provide both. The other thing is that we provide a suite of Lego brick plugins. I call them Lego bricks. So with WordPress you can bolt on different modules when required. So if you’re starting out we can set up a website. We can build a website for you with the key Lego bricks in seven days or less. And then with our VIP white glove setup we will show you how to utilize the system so you can be up and running and building your course and launching it in really a small amount of time.
[00:34:45.070] – Jonathan Denwood
And we provide that in one package, folks. But we provide these Lego bricks and we can advise you. You need these type of Lego bricks to start off with. But then as your requirements develop we can add other key Lego bricks. So you are not restricted by something like podio. And then when your experience grows and you’re here in and you’re frustrated with what podio can offer, then you have to move your whole website to kajabi or something else, which is, which is not an easy task. None of these SaaS platforms provide a way of exporting out of them. You have to manually move everything and that’s very time consuming or very expensive. Now with WordPress you have a platform that can grow with you from the beginning to the middle to the kind of success that you’re looking for and not ever feel that you’re restricted. We provide these Lego bricks, but if you want some other Lego brick, we won’t stop you from using that. So, and to move on, that’s my kind of sales spiel there, folks. But I really believe this and I’m passionate about it. But let’s move on to the key Lego brick which is lifter LMS.
[00:36:34.610] – Jonathan Denwood
We provide a couple of learning management, but I do love lifter lms for all of what it offers, and especially the free package, because what it offers with the pert is quite amazing. So how do you explain lifter lmsheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh to somebody you’re initially consulting?
[00:37:02.010] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kurt well, at the risk of sounding like a commercial, lifter Lms, to me, is the most complete learning management system in WordPress, meaning it. It does the member management, it facilitates the course management, you know, the learning stuff. It has full reporting available on the back end user management, all of that stuff. The other thing that the membership tools provide right out of the chute is a thing that comes up a lot when I’m working in other platforms with other clients. And that’s when you get into like, content restriction. Content restriction is the idea that you have a membership, and let’s say that you have a series of posts, blog posts, posts, whatever you want to call them, and you have some posts that you want everybody to see, and you have some posts that you only want certain members to see, and you have some posts that you only want certain graduates of students to see. You have the ability with liftrs built in tools to be able to restrict certain elements, even down to the block of what is seen by certain people based on membership and stuff. And so when someone says, oh, what’s your advice for getting started?
[00:38:11.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
A lifter LMS is, I think, very easy to get started. They provide a ton of tutorials. They have their own academy on their website that leads people through all the basic setups and tools. But as you grow, because kind of the theme of today’s call, I think Jonathan, is, we’ve said multiple times, as you grow, as you scale, lifter LMS has no restrictions on users. Number of administrators, number of instructors, number of students, number of courses, the thing can just keep going as long as your hosting will support it, you can keep expanding it. And so that all in one nature that liftr provides and the level of community support for that with their, you know, they do lives every Thursday. They, they’ve got an active Facebook page, they’ve got support through them. And then, of course, if they go through WP tonic, they have support through WP Tonic. It’s to me, it’s the cat’s meow, the one that is a real close second. And I know that it’s not part of the title, but I think Learndash is also a very good product. I just find myself when I’m working with Learndash, when someone comes up with a content restriction question or comes up with some type of membership nuance.
[00:39:24.960] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think to myself, what tool do we have that’ll provide that? And I got to problem solve that need, whereas it comes out of the box with LFTR, but I can still attain the same result. Right. So that’s just a real testament, I think, to the ability to go into WordPress and build in WordPress and be that flexible.
[00:39:44.600] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, the problem with Learndash is the content restriction and also to provide a mechanism to actually sell the course. They do provide their own membership plugin that increases the cost to $498. If you want to get started with both, we deal with. The other thing is that with that membership, if you want to sell physical products or digital single downloads, I don’t. It’s going to start getting a little bit tricky. The way we deal with it with Learndash is that we provide shore member, which is another membership plugin that has quite sophisticated restrictive content abilities, but it also works hand in hand with a, another solution called Shore Cart. And they offer a really fantastic paid, but also a really fantastic free offering that works hand in hand with Shure member. And that’s how we deal with these problems. With Learndash, you’re not going to have any of this. You’re not going to have to listen to us waffling about this with lifter LMS. All you’re going to have to do is if you get almost everything you’re looking for in the free product and then you have to go and buy one add on to from lifter, which is their stripe add on, which is this particular add on, is $149 a year, and then you can build a whole membership experience for $149 a year plus, obviously you’re going to need a quality hosting provider, but you can build the whole thing for 149.
[00:41:57.540] – Jonathan Denwood
The only thing with Lyft at LMS is all their add ons have a different price. This one is 149. If you host with WP Tonic, you get the Infinity bundle, which is normally, if it’s not being discounted by lifter, is a $1400 plus. But you get that as part of your hosting with, with WP Tonic. And that comes with everything. Everything.
[00:42:29.110] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, and that, that whole discussion opens up a whole can of worms too. Jonathan it’s, you know, lifter LMS in their advanced add ons again, which comes as part of the Infinity bundle. If you want social tools, there are social tools in there. If you want to make, you know, enterprise group sales, like let’s say you have a company with 150 employees and they want to buy 150 seats for training. You can basically give them their own group with an email invitation access that they can invite their users directly to that group. And then the person that made the purchase actually gets access to the reporting of all 150 students right through the front of the site. There’s just some really cool things that you can do with lifter. So like when we looked at Podia, we were like, hey, this is a great getting started. This is a great, you know, stripped down, bare bones version.
[00:43:24.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Just one thing, if you’re just going to build one course and you’re bolting, you’ve already got a marketing website and you just want to, you’re just looking to just do one course and you’re going to know you’re not going to have multiple courses. It’s just going to be one course, blah, blah, blah. I think podio is fantastic. If you’re looking, if you’re looking to build a real business, a real, that you know, that you can really maybe, you know, stop your normal day job and it can be your full time job at some stage. I don’t think it’s the best solution.
[00:44:04.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sorry. Well, and to clarify, because you said if you already had your own site and you wanted to do a single course, if your own site was WordPress based, I would just load up lifter LMS in that site and activate it and use it because you can add lifter to any existing WordPress instance. But if I had some HTML site.
[00:44:24.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Or some, I was talking about those poor people that are with wix.
[00:44:29.090] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, yeah. I mean, if I was on Wix or squarespace or something and I wanted to do a single course, I think Podia would be the option and I would link out to it. But I always fall, I fall prey to this and I don’t know if it’s still really a thing or not. Jonathan, in the purchasing mindset, in the way that people make the decision, I still look at URL’s up in the URL bar, in the search bar, however you want to phrase that, the address bar. If I am on a wix site and then it says click here for our course and it opens up some other URL or some other thing, I tend to lose a little bit of faith or a little bit of inspiration to make a purchase. When something’s included in the platform I’m on, I feel more confident, more inspired to make a purchase. So if this is really a revenue model, I really see the advantage in my marketing material, my, you know, my posts, my everything in my site, which is a WordPress website. Then I add the LMS. It’s all in one platform and it feels consistent and connected.
[00:45:35.210] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, lifter LMS is very mature powerful with many facets. It doesn’t attempt this one area where it doesn’t try to be like Podio or kajabi it doesn’t offer a landing page mechanism. It doesn’t provide the ability to send out marketing optimization emails. It does it if somebody finishes or buys a particular lesson or course. It will send out those types of emails, called transactional emails, that are all built-in. Still, it won’t do all the marketing landing page marketing automation that now how to what we offer at WP-Tonic folks is we offer; we’re going to be offering two solutions. We will offer a solution that we’ve developed that bolts on the lifter, and Learndash provides a straightforward landing page builder. It also offers text, SMS messaging, and email messaging marketing. Easy to use marketing automation interface that anybody can use with also a traditional CRM, either customer management system where you can put in your membership details and notes, and we’re going to provide that as a bolt-on to your website and lift at LMS. Or if you need, and you need, even more power, we can bolt on some of the most potent WordPress Lego brick solutions like Fluent CRM.
[00:47:44.150] – Jonathan Denwood
And by offering this combination, you’re never going to be stuck. You’re going to have choices. You’re not going to have to choose either. Initially, it was easier to set up a new system like Podio. And then, when you need to move to something more sophisticated like kajabi, you’ve got to move whole platforms, which is a harrowing experience. You won’t have to do that with our solution at all. But I want to make clear that lifter specialization isn’t around marketing optimization. It works with leading solutions like Fluent CRM and Fluent Forms. And because fluent offers a coherent mixture of these essential Lego bricks, they provide fluent forms, they provide fluent CRM, and they provide fluent booking, which allows, if you’re a coach, enable people to book coaching sessions and pay for them online because they’re providing these key elements and it all works with lifting LMS. Great. This is a great solution. What do you reckon, Kurt?
[00:49:14.180] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I try to meet clients where they’re at, right? And so we have thrown out ideas like Kajabi has a CRM, Bodhi has a CRM. We’ve talked about Fluent WP Tonic’s going to have a bolt-on system. But it’s also important to recognize that some people are coming to us with a pre-existing Zoho account, a HubSpot account, or a, you know, you name it, it’s out there. Go high level. I mean, all kinds of stuff. And what is, mainly if we focus on lifter lms. Lifter LMS has an active rest API, and it’s also super popular with other tools for integration like WP Fusion automator, WP bits app, and all these other tools where you can create recipes that tie these tools together. So if you’re wondering, as you’re listening to this, like, oh my God, I got to transfer all my contacts and all my stuff from one CRM to another. If you are sold out to the CRM that you’re currently in, chances are there’s a way to connect it to lifter LMS and your WordPress website.
[00:50:19.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think it’s time to end. I want to point out that if you’re looking to build your membership website, this is the month to start it, folks. Don’t just do it, folks. And at wPtonic, we can help you get that website up and running in seven days or less and show you how to use it. So you just put your content in and can run your membership website super fast. And we are one of the few providers that will get you up and running in seven days or less. So, Kirk, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you must do?
[00:51:03.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
Kirk well, my agency is Manjana no mas, and so anything online, Manyana no mas, typically leads to me. However, on a personal note, LinkedIn is the jam if you want to connect. I’m on LinkedIn almost daily, and I’m easy to find because I’m the only Kurt Vonannen on it.
[00:51:21.450] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. We will be back next week with either a fantastic subject that will hopefully educate you or with a special guest. We always try to provide great content. Please give us some feedback. Please tell us what you want us to cover, and we will do it. We’ll be back next week, folks. See you soon. Bye.
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