Podia vs Stan Store (2026): Which Fits a Coaching Business?

In the podia vs stan store decision, the short version is this: Stan Store is the faster, cheaper way to sell from an Instagram or TikTok bio link, and Podia is the better pick if you want a real website with courses, a community and email under one roof. Neither one manages coaching clients after they pay. There are no client records, no contracts, no habits and no check-ins in either product, so coaches who deliver multi-week programs usually end up adding other tools on top.

This guide compares both platforms on what they document as of October 2026: plans, fees, email limits, booking, courses, community and the experience your client gets. Then it covers a third option for coaches whose work happens between sessions. We make Coachful, so we say plainly where it wins and where Podia or Stan Store is still the better fit.

What is the short answer by use case?

Pick based on how you sell and what happens after someone buys. Here is the quick version before the detail.

• You sell mainly through social media to a phone audience: Stan Store. Its storefront is built for the link in your bio, the entry plan is $29 a month and Stan takes no cut of sales.
• You want a proper website, a course library and a members' community: Podia. It gives you a site, courses, downloads, webinars, coaching products and community spaces on every plan.
• You need email marketing from day one: it depends on list size. Stan Store keeps broadcasts and flows on its $99 Creator Pro plan; Podia includes email on every plan but only 100 subscribers on Mover.
• You run coaching programs with weekly goals, habits, check-ins and contracts: neither, on its own. That is the gap Coachful is built for, covered in the third-option section below.

If you have already decided against both, our Stan Store alternatives and Podia alternatives rankings go wider.

How do Podia and Stan Store compare side by side?

The table below puts the three options next to each other. Criteria that matter most for coaches: one login for the whole client journey, delivery between sessions, total stack cost, and how much setup you have to do yourself.

Prices and ratings are as listed in October 2026. Trustpilot figures were checked on October 25, 2026.

What does each platform actually do?

Podia is a storefront and website builder for digital products; Stan Store is a mobile-first link-in-bio shop. Both sell courses and calls, but they start from different places.

Podia in one paragraph

Podia is a simple storefront for selling courses, downloads, webinars, coaching sessions and community access from your own website. Every plan includes those product types plus email, and every plan allows unlimited customers. The plans differ by how many products, videos, community spaces and email subscribers you get, and whether Podia takes a 5% transaction fee. Our full Podia review covers it in more depth.

Stan Store in one paragraph

Stan Store is built around a storefront that sits behind the link in your social bio. From that page a follower can buy a digital download, join a course or membership, grab a lead magnet or book a paid call. The Creator plan covers that core, plus a community and AutoDM for Instagram. The Creator Pro plan adds the marketing layer: discount codes, upsells and order bumps, funnels, affiliates, email broadcasts and flows, and ad pixels. See our Stan Store review for the longer take.

How much do Podia and Stan Store cost?

Stan Store starts lower at $29 a month and charges no platform fee on either plan. Podia starts at $49 a month, but its Mover plan takes 5% of each sale, so its real entry price depends on what you sell.

All figures are in US dollars as listed in October 2026. Payment processing (Stripe or PayPal) is charged on top for every option in the table. Podia lists the standard rate as 2.9% plus 30 cents.

Free trials

Podia offers a 14-day trial with full access, and it says no credit card or plan choice is needed to start. Stan Store also offers 14 days on either plan, and its help center says the first month is charged when the trial ends. Neither has a permanent free plan.

A worked example of what the fee costs

Here is an illustrative example, not a real coach's numbers. Say you sell $3,000 a month of coaching packages and courses.

• Podia Mover: $49 plan plus 5% of $3,000 ($150) comes to $199 a month before processing.
• Podia Shaker: $99 a month, no Podia fee. Above roughly $1,000 a month in sales, Shaker is cheaper than Mover because the 5% fee on Mover passes the $50 price gap.
• Stan Store Creator: $29 a month, no Stan fee, but no email broadcasts, discount codes or upsells.
• Stan Store Creator Pro: $99 a month with the full marketing layer.

So once you sell steadily, the real comparison is Podia Shaker against Stan Store Creator Pro, both $99 a month billed monthly. Stan Store is $5 a month cheaper when billed yearly and has no email subscriber cap listed; Podia gives you a full website and PayPal. The detailed breakdowns are in Podia pricing and Stan Store pricing.

The email limit catches people out

Podia includes 100 email subscribers on Mover, 500 on Shaker and 1,000 on Earthquaker. Extra subscribers are an add-on whose price is not shown on the pricing page, though Podia says it never upgrades you automatically. A coach with a 2,000-person list would need that add-on even on the top plan. Stan Store does not list an email subscriber cap, but broadcasts and flows are only on Creator Pro.

How do the features compare, one by one?

On selling features the two are close at the $99 tier. On coaching delivery both stop at the same place: the sale and the content.

Selling and checkout

Stan Store's checkout lives inside the storefront, which keeps a buyer on one mobile page from tap to payment. That is its biggest strength for coaches who sell from short videos. Afterpay and Klarna on Creator Pro help with higher-priced offers. Podia's checkout sits on your Podia website and product pages, which suits buyers arriving from search, a podcast or a newsletter rather than a bio link. PayPal arrives at Shaker.

Booking calls

Both list a coaching or call product. Stan Store's Creator plan includes calendar booking so a follower can pay and pick a time. Podia lists coaching among its product types on every plan. Neither documents the session tools coaches tend to need once a practice grows: session credits, intake questions tied to a client record, SMS reminders or multi-coach assignment. If booking is your main pain, see our scheduling software page.

Courses and content

Both build courses. Podia's limits are counted in products and videos (500 videos on Mover, 1,000 on Shaker), while Stan Store lists an unlimited course builder on the entry plan. For a coach with one signature course and a few downloads, both are enough. For a large library, Stan Store's unlimited listing or Podia's Earthquaker is the safer choice.

Community

Podia counts community in spaces: 25 on Mover, 100 on Shaker, unlimited on Earthquaker. Stan Store includes a community on Creator. Neither creates cohort groups for you when a client joins a program, which matters if you run group coaching in rounds.

Email and funnels

This is where the plans split most. On Stan Store, email broadcasts and flows, funnels (up to 20 products) and pixels for Meta, Google, Pinterest and TikTok are all Creator Pro features. On Creator, you collect emails but cannot mail them from Stan. Podia includes email on every plan but caps subscribers low. Coaches who live on their newsletter often find both limiting.

Data and leaving later

Stan Store exports customers and contacts to CSV; course and community content has to be rebuilt elsewhere, per our September 2026 profile. Podia exports contacts to CSV, per-product customers (active enrollments only) and sales records, per the same profile. If you think you might move later, our guide on migrating from Stan Store lists what to save first.

What does the client experience look like on each?

On both platforms, the client experience is a purchase followed by access to content. Neither gives a client a place to see their goals, today's tasks or their coach's notes.

On Stan Store, a client usually meets you on their phone through your bio link, buys or books on the storefront, and then gets access to the course, download or call. It is quick and familiar, especially for people who found you through a reel. After that, the relationship mostly runs through whatever channel you use: DMs, email or a video call link.

On Podia, the client lands on your website, buys a product and logs in to reach courses, downloads or community spaces. Our September 2026 profile notes that Podia had no mobile app and no native video calls, so live sessions run on an outside video tool.

What is missing from both is what happens between sessions. A program client has no daily tasks, no habit tracker, no morning or evening check-in, and you have no single record showing whether they are on track. Coaches usually patch this with a spreadsheet, a messaging app and a form tool. That patchwork is the real cost of choosing either platform for program-based coaching.

Which should you pick: Podia or Stan Store?

Choose by your sales channel, your list size and how much you deliver after the sale. Here is how it plays out for common coaching setups.

Pick Stan Store if

• Most of your buyers come from Instagram, TikTok or YouTube and buy on their phones.
• You sell low-ticket digital products and occasional paid calls and want the lowest entry price.
• You want Afterpay or Klarna on higher-priced offers (Creator Pro).
• You want Instagram AutoDM without paying for a separate tool.

Pick Podia if

• You want a real website that people find through search, not only a bio link.
• Your business is a course library plus a community, with coaching as a side product.
• You need PayPal and are ready for Shaker.
• Your email list is under 500 people, or you are fine paying for extra subscribers.

Pick neither if

• Your clients pay for a 6, 8 or 12-week program and need weekly goals, tasks and check-ins.
• You send a coaching agreement before every first call.
• You want notes, intake answers, payments and sessions on one client record.
• You are hiring coaches and need per-coach availability.

For other head-to-heads, see Paperbell vs Stan Store, Stan Store vs Kajabi and Kajabi vs Podia.

What is the third option, and when does Coachful beat both?

Coachful beats both when your coaching continues after the sale. It is a coaching platform where one subscription covers booking, payments, contracts, program delivery with habits and check-ins, courses, a community, a website with funnels and email, and an AI assistant. The coach has one login and the client gets one branded app.

Who it is for: coaches who deliver programs, not just sessions; solo coaches growing into a small team; and coaches replacing four to six tools. What it does not do: it is not HIPAA-certified, it does not support PayPal, there is no permanent free plan, and it is not a course marketplace or a general website builder for non-coaching sites. How to start: take a free trial and request the free white-glove build so the Coachful team sets up your first site, funnel or program inside your account.

Programs and between-session delivery

This is the part neither Podia nor Stan Store covers. Coachful runs multi-week programs with weekly goals, daily tasks, habits, morning and evening check-ins, goals with progress bars and streaks. Each client's record pulls together goals, check-ins, habits, notes, intake answers, tags, payments and sessions, and marks the client as thriving, active, quiet or at risk, so you can see who needs a nudge before they drift.

Here is a short walkthrough of how programs are built and delivered:

Coachful also includes more than 40 ready-to-film program templates and 48 course templates with quizzes, which shortens the blank-page stage.

Booking, contracts and payments

Booking pages support availability rules, buffers, minimum notice and time-zone detection, with two-way Google, Apple/iCloud and Outlook calendar sync. Sessions run on built-in video or auto-created Zoom, Meet or Teams links. Email reminders go out, plus SMS 24 hours before and WhatsApp one hour before once messaging is enabled. Intake questions are asked at booking, and paid sessions and session credits are supported. Coaching agreements with e-signature are sent before the first call and stored on the client record. More on that in coaching contracts.

Payments run through your own Stripe Connect or Razorpay account: one-time, subscriptions, payment plans, order bumps, coupons, refunds, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Stripe Tax. There is an invoice per transaction plus manual invoices. Since August 2026 Coachful charges a 0% platform fee, so you only pay Stripe or Razorpay processing.

Website, funnels, email and social

Coachful covers the selling side as well. The section-based website builder has a blog, custom domain, SEO settings and 30 designed homepage templates, plus an Import website option. Booking, application, lead-magnet and checkout funnels support pixels and UTM tracking, and there is a link-in-bio page that sells, which covers much of what draws coaches to Stan Store. Email includes lists, broadcasts and multi-step sequences with triggers, delays, branching and A/B splits.

For social selling, Instagram automations trigger on a DM, a comment (optionally only with chosen keywords), a story reply, a mention or a new follower where Meta supports it. A typical setup: someone comments a keyword and gets your booking link, lead magnet or checkout in a DM, and they land in the same lead and client records you coach from. The social planner helps with post ideas and captions and publishes to Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, Threads and YouTube from one calendar.

The client's side

Clients get one home, inside the Coachful app with your branding, where they see their next session, programs, progress and documents, plus courses, downloads and community. Cohort groups are created automatically when someone enrolls in a program, and you can run group calls and webinars from the same place. See coaching software for the full tour.

Michelle, the AI assistant

Michelle works from your live practice data. She builds programs, drafts emails and content, summarizes recorded sessions, briefs you before each session and, if you opt in, gives private feedback on your coaching against ICF Core Competencies 3 to 8. Questions and planning are included in your Coachful membership; confirmed builds and changes use AI credits. Coachful also tracks ICF credential hours against ACC, PCC and MCC thresholds. More on the AI coaching assistant page.

The white-glove build

Why Coachful stands out: a free white-glove service. From Create, a coach picks "We'll build it for you" and describes what they want: a website, funnel, sales page, program, course outline, email sequence, link in bio, lead quiz, event or automation. You can attach up to 8 reference links and up to 10 files such as logos, photos and brand guides. The Coachful team builds it inside your own account, usually within about 24 hours. Nothing is invented: no fake credentials, testimonials or prices, and gaps are left for you to fill. It does not include recording videos, logo design, ad management or ongoing marketing.

Recent anonymized builds show the range. A somatic coach leaving Kajabi had their homepage and About page rebuilt and the contact form connected. A business mentor for beauty professionals got a 12-week mentorship sales page, a start-up-guide funnel and rewritten follow-up emails. A leadership coach with a Squarespace renewal days away got one clean homepage with a repeated "talk with me" button. Read more about the white-glove build service.

How Coachful pricing compares

Coachful uses flat monthly plans. Lower plans cap the number of clients, Pro is unlimited, and team plans add coach seats. The cheapest plan is Lite: $29/month for up to 5 clients, and the cheapest plan covering 15 clients is Solo: $49/month for up to 20 clients. When you compare, count everything you would otherwise pay for alongside Podia or Stan Store: a scheduler, an e-signature tool, a form tool, a habit or check-in app and sometimes an email tool.

When are Podia or Stan Store a better choice than Coachful?

Coachful is not the right pick for every seller. Choose one of the other two in these cases.

• You need PayPal. Coachful does not support PayPal. Stan Store supports it on both plans and Podia from Shaker.
• You need Afterpay or Klarna. Stan Store Creator Pro lists both; Coachful does not.
• You sell to thousands of buyers and coach none of them one to one. Podia and Stan Store allow unlimited customers on every plan, while Coachful's lower plans cap the number of clients. A digital-product business with no ongoing clients may get better value from a storefront.
• You want a site that is not about coaching. Coachful is not a general website builder and has no third-party plugins.
• You need TikTok or Pinterest publishing. Coachful's social planner does not publish there; Stan Store's Creator Pro includes TikTok and Pinterest pixels for ads tracking.
• You need fully automatic affiliate payouts. Coachful tracks affiliates but payouts are recorded manually.

If your clients do pay for ongoing coaching, though, both storefronts leave the most time-consuming part of the job to other tools.

How do you move from Podia or Stan Store to Coachful?

Export what each platform lets you export, then let the Coachful team import it during onboarding. Clients, programs and content are imported for you.

1. Export contacts and customers. Both Podia and Stan Store export contacts to CSV. Download sales history from Podia while you still have access.
2. Save course files. Course and community content does not export cleanly from Stan Store, so keep your original videos and PDFs together.
3. Start a Coachful free trial and request a white-glove build for your site or first program.
4. Connect Stripe and recreate your offers, payment plans and coupons.
5. Run both in parallel until current course students finish, then redirect your bio link and domain.

Our Stan Store migration guide has a step-by-step checklist. New coaches can start at Coachful for new coaches. If you coach fitness or nutrition, the Fitness & Nutrition pack adds workouts, nutrition targets and check-ins; coaching is not medical care, so refer clients with medical conditions or warning signs to a doctor.

What do public reviewers say about Podia and Stan Store?

We have not tested either platform hands-on for this article; this summary reflects vendor documentation and public ratings. On Trustpilot, Stan Store had 4.7 stars from 2,205 reviews and Podia had 4.1 stars from 153 reviews when checked on October 25, 2026. Coachful had 4.5 stars from 21 reviews. Ratings tell you about general satisfaction, not whether a tool fits coaching programs, so weigh them alongside the feature gaps above.

Frequently asked questions

Is Podia or Stan Store cheaper for coaches?

Stan Store is cheaper to start at $29 a month (or $25 billed yearly) with no platform fee. Podia's Mover plan is $49 a month plus a 5% fee on sales. At the $99 tier both are priced the same monthly, and Stan Store Creator Pro is slightly cheaper billed yearly.

Does Podia charge transaction fees?

Only on the Mover plan, which takes 5% of each sale. Shaker and Earthquaker have no Podia fee. Stripe or PayPal processing applies on every plan.

Does Stan Store take a cut of sales?

No. Stan Store says you keep 100% of every sale on both plans. Standard Stripe or PayPal processing still applies.

Can I send email newsletters on Stan Store's Creator plan?

No. Creator collects emails through lead magnets, but email broadcasts and flows are on Creator Pro. Podia includes email on every plan, with 100 to 1,000 subscribers included depending on the plan.

Do Podia or Stan Store support coaching contracts and client check-ins?

Neither documents contracts with e-signature, habits or daily check-ins. Stan Store has no client records and is not a CRM. Coaches who need those features usually add separate tools or move to a coaching platform such as Coachful.

Which is better for selling on Instagram?

Stan Store is designed for the bio link and includes Instagram AutoDM on Creator. Podia works better when buyers arrive from search or a newsletter. Coachful also has Instagram comment and DM automations and a link-in-bio page that sells.

Do Podia and Stan Store have free trials?

Both offer 14 days. Podia says no credit card is needed; Stan Store's help center says the first month is charged when the trial ends. Neither has a permanent free plan.

What is Coachful's free white-glove service?

It is a done-for-you build included on every Coachful plan. You describe a website, funnel, program, course outline, email sequence or similar, attach references, and the Coachful team builds it inside your account, usually within about 24 hours. It does not include videos, logo design, ads or ongoing marketing.

Can I move my Stan Store or Podia customers to Coachful?

Yes. Export your contacts as CSV from either platform, and Coachful imports clients, programs and content for you during onboarding. Keep your original course files, since Stan Store does not export course content.

Is Coachful HIPAA-compliant?

No. Coachful is not HIPAA-certified and does not sign a BAA, so it is not for clinical records or insurance billing. Health coaches should keep clinical records in a clinical system.