DISCLAIMER: This post is in no way a sponsored post - I made the decision to move to Podia after countless of trial and error with other platforms, and searched for a platform that suits my needs (which I will share more about below).

If you would like to show your appreciation for this article, you can always buy me a ko-fi, or become a patron if you enjoy miniature edutainment videos and other random things! 😀💖

I’ve been a Patreon user for quite some time now - 3 years, since June 2017! 😱

As a platform, Patreon is amazing and has helped so many creators to focus on working on things they love while having a stable monthly income. It basically created (or revived) this concept of patronage and giving people a platform to support their favourite creators.

However, as time pass by, there were actually a few times I’ve thought of migrating from Patreon. With the most recent “issue” that popped up, I’ve decided it was time.

What happened?

The first time I was seriously considering moving out was when Patreon contacted me and told me that one of my tier benefits is not allowed.

Ever since I started Patreon, I stopped taking commissions and was focusing on making progress videos of how I make my miniatures.

That means that if anyone wanted to get anything from me, the once-in-a-blue-moon auctions is the only way to do so. Plus it’s not really a commission per se either, it’s an auction of the things I’ve already made.

That’s when I created PatrART Request for my patrons.

I remember feeling very proud of myself for creating PatrART Request (you can see I incorporated Patron + Art Request in the name haha). it was something that my patrons can look forward to every month, and it was a “fastest-fingers wins” situation where it would also keep patrons on their toes (imo at least haha).

It was also a way I could have refreshing ideas that my patrons want to see me make, instead of coming up with what I should make next myself - sometimes you do need inspirations like this, and knowing my patrons will enjoy them makes me confident to produce them!

This is definitely something that wasn’t necessary and it was just a way for me to give back to my patrons - and I really loved doing it and setting that as some sort of challenge for myself.

I barely had 6-7 PatrART Request before Patreon sent me this email:

They had considered PatrART Request a giveaway/raffle, and we are not allowed to have giveaways because it is considered gambling (as you pay to gain access to the space to “gamble” lol).

I honestly did not see it that way - I saw it as patrons giving me suggestions on what to make next, and me taking their idea seriously and as a “reward” they get to get what they suggested shipped to them. But I guess in a sense it could be considered a “giveaway” every month or something.

I was honestly devastated though, and I remember feeling very powerless as Patreon was basically giving me no choice but to remove it if I was going to stay on their platform. That was when I was actually considering leaving Patreon.

But of course, back then, I didn’t even have enough patrons to really sustain me and I did not know how long I could actually work on having Handxmade. Plus, the fact that Patreon is well known as a platform for you to support creators you know makes it easier to explain what I’m doing to make people and how I’m relying on Patreon for my income.

So in the end, I removed PatrART Request completely and started having Milestone Reward System + Reward Vault instead to replace it. It wasn’t the same, but it still was a way for me to give back to my patrons!

What about now?

On May 2020, I received an email from Patreon saying that they are required to charge sales tax on all pledges.

Initially, I was really confused - why are they doing this when Patreon is supposed to be a platform for people to support creators? Isn’t it donation-based? I found it unfair for my patrons who supported me because they want to, to have to pay for tax as if it’s a sale transaction.

To be fair, Patreon did give us a “tool” to make sure we are charging patrons the “right amount of tax” but it still doesn’t make sense that patrons should be paying tax at all imo.

I did some research about it and as a business owner in Singapore, I only need to charge GST if I earn more than SGD $1 million per year. (That’s SGD $83k thereabouts per month btw lol). I am NOT EVEN CLOSE lmaooo.

This is what I understand about the situation and posted on Patreon about:

This just made me feel like I SHOULD move away from Patreon. Because:

I would actually receive more of what my patrons pledged because Patreon’s platform fees (5%) and transaction fees take a significant amount of cut of my earnings.

*A few examples of my earnings the past few months. Patreon + transaction fees takes > USD $100*

2. I can control my own content and not have restrictions on what I can or cannot do on my own platform. (Like PatrART Request) This also shows how easy for Patreon to suddenly implement things that you cannot control, and you HAVE TO follow their rules because you’re using their platform (for “free”)

3. No tax charge for my patrons! (Unless I become a millionaire lol)

It doesn’t sound like much but for someone who is relying solely on Patreon for my income, these restrictions does affect my patrons and me a lot. (Even though my patrons are the best and they are completely fine with paying a little bit of tax here and there EVEN THOUGH THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE TO 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Where are you moving to?

I’ve actually done a lot of research and went through a lot of free trials to test which platform would be good for me. You can read all the process here, a Patreon post I shared with my patrons that I made public, showing them which platforms I’ve tried and what works or did not work for me.

Since I am migrating, a place without platform transaction fees would be ideal. Paying a fixed platform fee would make sure my cost would be fixed instead of being charged more as I earn more.

It would also be great if I can keep the “memberships” the same, so I would need a platform that allows for that and catered to having different “tiers”.

Since I do have digital downloads and The Secret Series where I show you my tools and how I use them on Squarespace, it would be great if these exclusive contents are behind a paywall so only my patrons can see them. (I had so much problem with this if you read the Patreon post I shared above haha)

We managed to find Podia that fits all of the above, and I’ve already signed up for the Shaker plan (which is USD $790 per year - SGD $1099). It’s a really huge sum to be paid upfront but if you think about it, I am only paying USD $65.83 per month + stripe fees (2.9% + $0.30) instead of more than USD $100 per month (what I’m paying to Patreon now).

To be honest, right now switching to Podia might end up taking about the same fees in total as there are still stripe fees, but it’s more about future-proofing imo.

What’s great is that Podia allows for FREE MIGRATION if you sign up for their Shaker plan/pay annually for either plans, so I’d get all my patrons information + exclusive contents all migrated from the sources I pointed out. This will really save me a lot of time and I’ll be able to have a proper platform just for my patrons.

The migrations are current in the works now and will take 1-2 weeks so I’ll update here and see if that service is as I’d hoped (I really do hope it would be seamless!!). (UPDATE AT THE END OF THIS POST REGARDING MIGRATION)

Podia is by no means a perfect platform - for example, their “website customisation” is very limited and I find myself doing it on my Squarespace platform and just linking it over there. I also made a Discord for my patrons and even though Podia allows Zapier integrations, they do not have a bot on Discord to help me with the auto-role implementation. I am also unable to take in mailing address information or any other information from my patrons (they are working on it now though) and I have to compensate by making patrons go through a google form to get all the information I need 🤦🏻‍♀️

But these are things I can deal with and work around in, not forcing patrons to pay for tax when I don’t even earn enough to justify charging them tax.

I would just like to reiterate that I am in no way sponsored by Podia, and this conclusion to migrate there came with a lot of time spent researching and trying many other potential platforms out.

If you would like to read about the process, you can read more about it in this post!! It goes really in-depth and if that’s what you want to read there you go! 😊

This post is basically to explain why I decided to move away from Patreon, and I am in no way saying that everyone should - it just felt like it was the best way for me moving forward. Hopefully you get some insights from this, and if you want to support me and my work, do understand that I’ve created Handxmadefam/Podia to be basically be the exact same thing as what Patreon is - a platform where you can support me and allows me to earn a monthly income by providing exclusive rewards and perks to you!

Hope this clarifies things for you and let me know if you have any questions!

Oh uh, if you happen to want to check Podia out because of this post, here’s a sign up affiliate link! I do get 30% commission which would be great to have if you found this post helpful for you! 😬

PODIA MIGRATION UPDATE (30 JUNE 2020)

It has been 25 days and the migration is finally completed! ✨I wanted to share the process/timeline for those who are interested to switch to Podia from Patreon, and wanted to know what to expect. Because I for one did not expect a few things…..

On 5th June, I bought the Shaker plan and paid USD 790 (oooof I know 😅) for the annual price. It’s a requirement to do so to get the free migration - which is reasonable as it’s a lot of work to migrate everything!

I then head to this article by Podia which gives you some information about migration, and also a link to a form where they will get your details for the migration to start.

I wanted to make sure the Podia team has enough time to migrate everything as I really do have a lot of products to bring over (The Secret Series and Digital Downloads etc), and I was thinking, y’know, 25 days should be more than enough considering the fact that they mentioned migration would be completed within two weeks in the article above.

I then received this email from typeform (NOT Podia) saying that they’ve received my migration request. Podia however, did NOT reach out to me with a completion window.

It could be a fluke, maybe they’re swamped, and I was just unlucky. But I started to get worried after a full business week passed by with no updates.

On 13th June, I decided to ask them about it - and thankfully, as usual, Podia’s team got back to me relatively quickly. They told me they will look into their schedule and the next day…

…another person from the team took the migration project and it was starting!! 🎉 Except, it was already 15th June and they have less than 15 days to finish up the migration. Which I guess their calculations were spot on since it has been 2 weeks since then 😬

There were also some migration “issues” that popped up.

Migration of posts from Patreon is not included in the migration process.

I write a lot on my Patreon posts, as it’s a mix of work + life update from me to my patrons. So hearing this was really quite disappointing as I was under the assumption that my posts would be migrated over too.

Screenshot 2020-06-30 at 11.59.28 PM.png

I guess migrating 226 posts would be a hell-ish experience though so I really don’t blame them for saying it’s not possible 🤣

I’ll probably search for the ones that had big life updates/milestone and switch them to be available to public! ✨I tried to see it as a positive thing, starting over from a new platform and all and not bringing anything forward (except for the products of course hahaha)

(Also, props to the team for the creative solution of my free content without needing me to ask them! 👍🏻)

2. None of the products that are migrating shows up on your dashboard until they’re done.

After the above message though, I did not hear from them and also did not see any updates on the platform 😱😱😱

I ended up asking them about it again and if it wasn’t for their quick replies, I would have thought Podia was a scam LOL (especially since I paid so much money upfront too LOL) It was a little bit scary ngl 😅

They even sent me a link to the work they’ve been doing - which really helped calm me down LOL. So don’t worry if you don’t see the products on your dashboard when they’re migrating them! I believe they use another server or something so whatever you do on your dashboard wouldn’t clash with their work.

And the next day, it’s done!!! ✨✨✨They also showed me how to publish them, made extra drafts in case I accidentally delete them or something while fiddling with them (I almost did!).

This is how the “products” section looks like for your members/patrons when they log in to Podia and access them!

Because Podia’s still primarily a course-based platform, after you get to a certain article, it will have a strike-through on the title. It also says “View Course” on the button to access the page but like…digital downloads are not courses lmao so it’s a little bit weird for me. I’m not sure if that’s something I can disable (I tried to find but to no avail) as it doesn’t make sense for my articles, but for most I think it’s quite a cool/helpful function.

3. Patron particulars for paid memberships cannot be migrated over.

In the beginning, I asked some questions regarding migration, and was led to believe that I could have all patrons particulars migrated over, and an email about the migration would be sent and my patrons would be able to “sign up” for an account and be migrated through the process.

It wasn’t necessary, but I thought that’s a pretty professional way to go about doing it, so I was actually waiting for it to be done before asking my patrons to migrate over.

Turns out, for paid memberships, that’s not possible.

It is only for PRODUCTS. (It’s a little bit complicated but basically other than memberships, I can sell the “products” separately too - think paying a one time fee of USD $500 for The Secret Series to access it instead of a monthly pledge.)

Essentially, I got mixed up….so if you’re doing the exact same thing as me, you don’t really have to wait for your content to be migrated over before asking your patrons to switch over! 😅

All in all, other than the fact that some things couldn’t be migrated, and the fact that you can’t see anything that’s being migrated over until it’s done, the migration process is pretty smooth sailing!

However, during this period, I started to realise more things that were lacking from Podia that Patreon had, and considering how Podia advertised themselves as Patreon’s competitor, the lack of certain features were a bit too jarring. Below is what I’ve found out that may or may not affect your decision to switch from Patreon to Podia that you wouldn’t have known unless you go through the process like I did.

I’ll also compile some of the things I mentioned previously just so that everything is in one place.

PATREON TOOLS THAT PODIA DOESN’T HAVE:

No Discord bot to auto-assign roles for patrons
I really will miss this function 😔 Zapier works for Podia but without a bot to assign the roles for me (which i’m not sure how it works on that side of things), I can’t really continue and make it work. I’ll probably be manually assigning roles for my patrons from now on.
Can’t track “benefits”
Benefits like my one-time handwritten letter or mail-of-the-month - it was actually helpful to me and ensure that I don’t miss out sending anyone a handwritten letter mail 😭
Can’t collect other information like mailing address
Which is essential if one of your benefit is to send mail-of-the-month. Podia is a very course-based/digital platform, so I think they just didn’t think it was necessary.
The alternative is to send a form link through your welcome email, but you’ll have to have your own way to track it (thankfully I already do it anyway because I track them for the point system), and sometimes people missed it/procrastinate and just completely forgot about it 😵 Podia says they’re working on the ability to get more information from their members it so I really hope it will be available soon!
Unable to show total amount pledged/track goals
I do think that it doesn’t make sense for a course-based business to tell people how much they earned, but this is actually something Patreon provides that I feel is able to give my patrons the transparency they’ve come to appreciate. It’s details like this that gives them more insight about what being a full-time artist is like, and I really like this feature from Patreon.

You could press on the arrows that I’ve circled to look through the goals that I have reached, current goal, and also future goals. It also updates automatically when I get new pledges!

But now, I have to deal with a stagnant photo of the milestones that I have to edit myself whenever there’s a new pledge 😅 I’m not sure if this is really an efficient way to do it but with Podia’s limited design tools (can’t even have a carousel text/pictures block) this is the best I can come up with 😅

I don’t have many sign ups in a go so I guess I still can handle it but I really hope this will be something Podia will consider having!

5. Unable to limit the number of pledges allowed for each membership.

On Patreon, you are allowed to limit the people that can sign up for a tier.

This is important especially for physical products like mail-of-the-month - it’s to ensure you don’t burn out and start to have to mail like, idk, 50 mail per month 😱

It was yet another thing that I assumed Podia would have, and I was wrong 😔

The solution given was this, which would remove the tier from existence completely when one tries to sign up. I guess it’s a valid solution to it but in my (probably shallow) opinion, having the words “Sold Out” would kind of make potential patrons feel like “hey, this is actually legit and I want to be a part of it!”

…Idk, maybe it’s just me hahahaa 😅

6. Podia has no app

Patreon has an app for you to easily access the posts and comment. As a creator, it’s not that great anyway as I can’t access the tools to edit things, but it does make it easier to write short posts if I wanted to.

Some of my patrons does use the app too, so I think it would be a shame to not have it anymore. Although Podia’s website still looks good on devices!

That’s it! If I come across anything, or if Podia does allow any of the aforementioned “Patreon tool” to exist, I’ll definitely update this post!

I hope this article helps you to see if Podia would be a good platform for you if you’re switching over from Patreon, and if your workflow wouldn’t be affected by the lack of tools that you are probably used to.

For me, I personally feel that NOT making my patrons pay for taxes that they are not suppose to, and having the flexibility to still do what I want (PatrART Request revival in the future?!?) is still more important than the tools I’ll be lacking. It would be bothersome, but it would still be worth it.

Let me know if you have anymore questions! Seeing how I've used both platforms :’) I’ll be happy to help! 😊

Once again, I’m NOT IN ANYWAY SPONSORED BY PATREON OR PODIA TO WRITE THIS POST. But if you happen to want to check Podia out because of this post, here’s a sign up affiliate link! I do get 30% commission which would be great to have if you found this post helpful for you! 😬

WHY I'M MOVING AWAY FROM PATREON & PATREON VS PODIA

What happened?

What about now?

Where are you moving to?

PODIA MIGRATION UPDATE (30 JUNE 2020)

Migration of posts from Patreon is not included in the migration process.

2. None of the products that are migrating shows up on your dashboard until they’re done.

3. Patron particulars for paid memberships cannot be migrated over.

PATREON TOOLS THAT PODIA DOESN’T HAVE:

No Discord bot to auto-assign roles for patrons

Can’t track “benefits”

Can’t collect other information like mailing address

Unable to show total amount pledged/track goals

5. Unable to limit the number of pledges allowed for each membership.

6. Podia has no app