Coupon codes let you offer discounts on products, events, and subscription plans across your site.

Once your offers are set up, you can create coupons to reduce their price and share the codes with existing customers or potential buyers.

Creating a new coupon

Here's how to create a new coupon in Podia:

From your Home Feed, click on your site name and select Admin from the dropdown menu.
From the Admin dashboard, click Sales in the sidebar menu.
Click Coupons in the sidebar menu to get started with creating a coupon on Podia.
Click New coupon in the upper right corner.
Add the coupon details, such as name, amount, etc.
Once you're done, click Create coupon to finish creating your coupon code.

Here are all of the available options when creating a new coupon code:

Coupon details

Coupon code

Give your coupon code a name.

If you are using a coupon code for a public event (e.g. Black Friday sales), use a descriptive coupon code like BLACKFRIDAY-2020 or HALLOWEEN-50OFF.

Alternatively, you can also click on Generate unique code to use a unique coupon code that can be shared with your customers to access your site, product and/or subscription plan discounts.

Only alpha-numeric characters are accepted for coupon codes and any special characters will be removed, with spaces converted to dashes (-).

Discounted items

You can choose between different coupon types based on how you want to apply the discounts across your products and subscription plans on your site.

The coupon types you can choose from are listed below:

All products and plans: This coupon type will allow you to discount all available products, events, and plans in your account. All future offers created will also be discounted.
Plans only: This coupon type will apply the specified discount to all available plans on your site.
Specific products: This coupon type lets you choose the specific products, events, and plans the discount applies to. Use the search field to find and add each eligible offer.

Please note: any coupon that is created with the intent to be used for a subscription plan will be applied to the invoice each month (e.g. if your plan is $10/month and you provide a $5 off coupon, the plan will now be $5/month for the lifetime of the subscription)

Discount value

There are two types of value you can assign to coupons:

Percentage (%): This is the most popular coupon value (with over 70% of the coupons) used for products, events and plans.
- This value type will allow you to discount a percentage of your plans or products, thus providing more control over your discounts.
Amount: An amount discount allows you to specify a specific amount to discount from your products, events, or plans.
- If multiple products or subscription plans are selected for a coupon, this amount will apply to all the selected products and plans for that coupon.

📝 When using a coupon with multiple products/events/plans, a percentage (%) value will allow you to have more control over the discounted amount for both products and plans.

Amount discounts, on the other hand, work better with specific products where the price is static, and there aren't multiple variants with regard to monthly or annual subscriptions, as in the case of plans.

Coupon options

Under coupon options, you’ll be able to add limits on the number of times a coupon can be used or redeemed on your site or set up an expiry date for your coupons.

Limit Uses

Coupons in Podia can be set with unlimited usage or with a specific usage limit, depending on how you want to control them.

Limiting uses will allow you to add limits on the total number of times a coupon can be used or redeemed on your site.

The coupon’s use limit applies to its total number of redemptions across all customers. It isn’t a limit for each individual customer.

This means the same customer may be able to use the coupon more than once, depending on the coupon’s other settings.

Depending on the coupon’s settings, the same customer may be able to redeem it across multiple products or plans. This can result in several coupon redemptions being associated with one customer.

Expiry

To set an expiry date on coupons, you can use one of the preset expiry times, or select a date and time from the date and time dropdown.

After a coupon’s expiration date, new customers will no longer be able to redeem it at checkout. However, if the coupon has already been applied—such as to an active subscription—it will remain valid and continue to apply to future billing cycles.

FAQs

Is there any other way to offer discounts in Podia?

At this time, using coupon codes would be the only way to create discounts in Podia.

How do coupons work for subscriptions?

Coupons applied to subscription plans automatically discount every recurring invoice, whether the plan is billed monthly or yearly.

For example, if a plan costs $10 per month and the customer uses a $5-off coupon, they’ll pay $5 per month for the lifetime of that subscription.

Although the discount is applied to every payment, the coupon only counts as one use—the initial redemption at checkout.

Can I offer a discount just for one month of a subscription/community plan?

At this time, coupons created with the intent to be used for a subscription plan will be applied to the invoice each month, for as long as the subscription is active.

Can I use a coupon to offer a free month on my subscription?

No. Coupons created with the intent to be used for a subscription plan will be applied to the invoice each month, for as long as the subscription is active.

To offer a free month, you could instead consider adding free trial days to your community plan!

Are coupon codes case-sensitive?

No. Coupon codes will work regardless of whether they are entered in uppercase or lowercase.

I am receiving an error when trying to save my coupon... Why?

If you receive an error when creating a coupon for a specific product, check that the product is published before creating the coupon. Coupons cannot be tied to products that are still in draft or unpublished.

To publish your product, go to the product in your dashboard and click Publish. Once it's live, return to Sales → Coupons and create your coupon as normal.

How does Podia handle duplicate coupon codes?

Coupon codes must be unique within each coupon type you create.

However, the same coupon code can still be reused across different coupon types, which means there can be overlap between the products or community plans they apply to.

When this happens, Podia uses a coupon hierarchy to decide which discount should apply. Coupons tied to specific products or plans take highest priority, followed by coupons for products/plans only, and then storewide coupons.

Here’s a simple example to show how it works.

Assume a coupon code for BLACKFRIDAY is used for a:

Site-wide with a 10% off discount
Products only with 20% off discount
Selected product with a 50% off discount for a digital download

When a customer visits a site with the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY, the digital download will be at a 50%-off discount because the selected product's coupon will take the highest precedence over the other coupons.

If the selected product's coupon is archived, the digital download will be at 20% off because the products/plan only takes a higher precedence over the storewide coupons.

My customer forgot to use their coupon code at signup. Can it be applied retroactively?

No. Coupon codes can only be applied at the moment of signup. They cannot be added to an existing subscription after the fact.

The only workaround is to cancel the customer's current subscription and have them sign up again using the coupon code at checkout.

I clicked Sales on mobile/iPad but can't see the Coupons option... Why?

On mobile and iPad, clicking Sales in the sidebar takes you to the Invoices page and collapses the sidebar at the same time.

To get to Coupons, tap the sidebar icon to expand it again, then select Coupons.

Alternatively, you can go directly to app.podia.com/coupons without navigating through the sidebar at all.

Creating a coupon code