With Podia, you can choose from different offer types when setting up a product.
These options let you decide how customers can access your product — whether it’s free, paid, or included as part of a membership.
In this article, we’ll show you how to set up an offer for your product.
Changing a product's offer
Here's how to change your product's offer:
From your home feed, click on your site name and select Admin from the dropdown menu.
From the admin dashboard, use the sidebar menu and click:
Products, if you want to set an offer for a product (such as an online course, download, coaching session, or bundle).
Events, if you want to set an offer for an event.
Click the Edit icon next to the product/event you'd like to set to edit.
Navigate to the Pricing tab.
Click Edit next to the Offer option.
Select between a Free, Free email delivery (digital downloads only), Included with membershop, Waitlist, or Paid offer.
Note: If you haven’t connected a Stripe or PayPal account yet, you’ll need to do that before setting up a paid offer.
Click “Manage payment integrations,” follow the instructions, and then return to the “Pricing” tab to continue.
Let's take a look at each one of the different offer options:
Free
Free email delivery (downloads only)
Included with membership
Waitlist
Paid
Free
Allow people to sign up for your product for free.
A free offer requires people to have an account when signing up. Free products will be available for customers on their product dashboard.
You can add upsells for paid products in a free offer.
Free email delivery
For downloads, you can choose the Free Email Delivery option, which sends the file via email without requiring an account creation.
Waitlist
Creating a waitlist is a great way to gather email addresses from users interested in your product before it launches.
This option won’t collect payments or grant access to the product but will allow you to build a list of leads who are interested.
Included with membership
Products with the "Included with membership" offer are automatically given to anyone with an account on your site.
This is a great way to automatically grant all members access to a product, whether you want to include a basic resource for everyone or encourage them to sign up for one of your paid or free offers.
Members must be logged in to access these products. Once they’re logged in, they’ll find them in the Products tab of their Home Feed.
Since this type of offer doesn’t use checkout, upsells won’t be shown.
⚠️ Not for plan-specific access
"Included with membership" grants this product to every account holder on your site — not just members of specific plans. If you want a product to be accessible only to members of certain paid plans, do not use this option.
Instead, set the product offer to Free, then add it as an included item within each plan: Admin → Plans → Edit plan → Details → Included items. Only members of those plans will receive access.
Paid
Paid offers will charge customers a specific amount during checkout before they can get access to your product.
You can set multiple paid offers for your product at the same time.
Available options are:
Single payment: set a one-time payment that customers must pay to gain access to the product .
Payment plan: lets customers split a purchase into smaller, scheduled payments over time instead of paying the full amount upfront.
Subscription: Charge customers on a monthly or yearly basis, giving them access to your product for as long as their subscription remains active.
Customer checkout experience
Customers will view the type of offer you've set for your product when checking out.
Free
Customers will be able to register for free.
Waitlist
Waitlist customers won't go through checkout.
Instead, they'll sign up for emails directly from email forms you've added to your site and product sales page.
Paid
Customers must pay to access the product.
If you’ve set multiple paid offers for your product, they’ll be able to choose their preferred one during checkout.
FAQs
If I change the price of an existing product, will that impact existing customers?
If I change the price of an existing product, will that impact existing customers?
No. Changing the price of a product will only impact new customers.
Current customers - including the ones with an active payment plan - won't be affected.
Help! I can't add a price to my product. Why?
Help! I can't add a price to my product. Why?
Typically the reason that you cannot add a price to your product is that you have not yet connected a payment method to your account.
For subscriptions or payment plans, you will need to be sure that you have a valid Stripe account connected to your account. For one-time payments, users on the Shaker plan can also use PayPal.
What’s the difference between ‘Included with membership’ and adding a product to a plan’s included items?
What’s the difference between ‘Included with membership’ and adding a product to a plan’s included items?
These are two different ways to give members access to a product, and they work very differently:
Included with membership (set on the product) — grants access to every account holder on your site, regardless of which plan they’re on or whether they’re on any plan at all. Use this for content you want all members to have for free.
Included items in a plan (set on the plan) — grants access only to members of that specific plan. To set this up: go to Admin → Plans → Edit plan → Details → Included items and add the product there. The product itself should have a Free offer so it doesn’t appear for standalone purchase.
If you want to restrict a product to paid plan members only, always use the plan’s Included items setting — not ‘Included with membership’ on the product.
Why can’t I share the checkout link for a product with the “Included with membership” offer type?
Why can’t I share the checkout link for a product with the “Included with membership” offer type?
Products that are Included with membership don’t have checkout links. Instead, you can share the link to the product’s sales page.
Since access is automatically given to anyone with an account on your site, members will receive the product whenever they create an account, such as by purchasing a paid product or signing up for a free offer.
When someone clicks Get on the sales page for an included-with-membership product, they’ll be taken to the account creation form. After creating their account, they’ll gain access to your community and the product.