The cost overview

As you might now I'm using Podia to run the Swiss Innovation Academy websites. It's a tool that I really love because it has this perfect balance between simplicity and number of features. It feels like my all-in-one tool that covers newsletter, courses, payements, digital downloads, blog, and even community but all very simply.

But how much does it really cost?

For the features I need it costs me:

• $336.60 per year for the Podia Mover Plan

• $600 per year for sending emails to 10'000 people

Which makes a total of 936.60$ per year.

That doesn't include the domain name, but that just a few dollars per year, or the email account that is hosted on my Apple icloud + subscription.

So basically one grand.

And yes that's a lot of money.

Why I stay with Podia

But for now I'm still comitted to Podia for a few reasons:

• It does it all very simply: where in Worpdress (which I prefer from a philosophical view) it's all a mess of plugins and things that don't feel to work together well. And even then using Wordpress + Sensei LMS and having it hosted and managed costs basically the same than Podia: $399

• It's all integrated: there are free Newsletter tools like Substack, but having two tools to integrate together is a mess, and Substack philosophy is not really one that I'm sure I'm happy with.

• Good newsletter are always expensive: Other newsletter tools, are all similarly expensive or more expensive.

Sure I could self host it all, but then I have to admit that the stress of handling all these systems is not something that I want to nerd about at this stage of my life. I prefer to pay a grand so that someone else takes care of it for me.