Humans are always looking for community. And brands and creators are building some amazing online community spaces, both free and monetized.

But to create an online community, you need a community platform that brings people together. And with so many options available in the market, it can be hard to know which one to choose.

Here, we cover what makes a great community platform, what features to look for, and the best platform options to help you choose the right one.

A community platform is a dedicated virtual space where people who share the same goals, interests, or motivations can connect and build relationships.

The best ones bring together content, community, courses, and commerce in one place – without having to mix and match software. And if you want to run a paid community, the platform needs membership business options like subscriptions, tiered memberships, payment gateways and more.

Community platforms are built for different things.

To help you narrow down your options, we’ve broken down the three types of online community software that people look for: enterprise (software that helps you build a community made up of customers or clients), digital business (to create community, and sell memberships and products you create), and personal (for making connections based on shared interests). Which of these descriptions apply to you?

Pro tip: Give yourself room to grow. You don't want to have to migrate a community if you don't need to.

• Content options (e.g. discussion posts, polls, surveys, and Q&As). A community thrives on content that your members create. The easier it is to create what they want to, the better this will be.

• Organization. Flexible Spaces or subgroups. Not every member wants the same thing. Spaces let you organize people and content (ex. A course Space vs an event Space).

• Accessibility. Accessible on web, iOS, and Android apps. People can’t always run to a PC to log on. (“Mobile friendly web apps” don’t cut it).

• Branded apps (under YOUR brand on iOS and Android). Established brands and businesses should consider branded community apps (that’s your app in the App Store and Google Play Store).

• AI & Automations. Look for an AI community platform—software that puts your growth on auto-pilot by using automations and AI to deliver better results in less time.

• Livestreaming and/or Courses. If you have something to teach, make sure your community platform can host a live and/or pre-recorded course. Or watch for live events tools if that’s a priority.

• Monetization. Multiple ways to monetize through events, paid memberships, subscriptions, and online courses.

• Community analytics & reporting. Get detailed member profiles about engagement and what is—and isn’t—working within your community.

• Integrations and Embeds for connecting to third-party tools (e.g., Zapier, Stripe, Kit). No software does everything, so your community platform should easily integrate with the other relevant software you need.

What are the best community platforms? Here are our top picks.

Best for creators, coaches, and entrepreneurs monetizing with community

Pricing: from $79/mo

Standout features: AI engagement, gamification, customizable Spaces, branded apps

Mighty Networks is G2’s top-rated community management software and it can mix memberships seamlessly with courses and events. And Mighty is designed for engagement, using AI to boost member connections.

With a community business on Mighty, you can:

• Create any kind of content: Short and long-form text, video, livestreams, polls & questions, and discussions.

• Build live and pre-recorded courses & virtual events with RSVPs and auto recordings.

• Boost & automate community engagement with AI: Tools like rich member profiles & profile assist, “things in common”, conversation prompts, and custom fields. Gamification that focuses on collaboration instead of competition.

• Customize Spaces: Add any feature you want to a Space (ie. Chat, Events, Courses, or Discussion Forums together).

• Monetize lots of different ways: Sell memberships, courses, 1:1 or group coaching, masterminds, events, or bundle any of these in 120+ different currencies.

• Connect seamlessly: Built-in Kit integration to mix the best community platform with the best email marketing platform + over 2,000 software embeds like Calendly, Dropbox, Spotify, Loom, Monday, and Notion.

• Branded apps: under your brand in the App Store & Google Play store with branded notifications and splash screens

Mighty is great for entrepreneurs building communities to monetize, mixing in courses and events if needed. Since Mighty is community focused, it’s probably not the right choice for a standalone course or for complex marketing funnels.

Pros

• Versatile content engine for discussion forums, video, text & articles, polls, livestreaming, and more.

• Course communities with LMS, live events, course discussions, and all-member chats

• Branding flexibility to customize–even light or dark mode.

• An AI engagement engine built-in.

• Native apps for every device and branded apps with Mighty Pro.

Cons

• Mighty Networks is feature rich, so there’s a bit of a learning curve.

• Not ideal for standalone courses.

• Branded apps are a premium offering; there are cheaper alternatives for DIY app builders.

Best free communities & gamers

Pricing: Free

Standout Features: Amazing game streaming, great apps, intuitive chatting

Discord is a community platform that’s built for gamers, but hosts all kinds of free communities. It reports 200 million users, 90% of which play video games. For its powerhouse features, plus its cool design and intuitive UX, and great apps, Discord is a good, free community platform.

Discord has a community forum-type engine that supports different kinds of content, stickers, emojis, video, and more. But you can also livestream (+ screen share) and live chat.

And its best feature is the real-time communication features: voice channels, screen shares, video calls, and all really easy to use.

Discord is perfect for free communities.

Discord is perfect for free communities. But it isn’t strong for running paid community businesses.

Discord does allow memberships, but it takes a 10% cut of all platform subscription fees. These can add up quick. And it doesn’t have the membership business tools that dedicated community business platforms do.

Pros

• Free community forum engine with chat options and intuitive discussion forums.

• Awesome streaming features with voice, game sharing, and video.

• Great UX and fun build-ins like stickers and nitro boosts.

Cons

• No courses, events platform, or structured content.

• The member management options are limited.

• Limited built-in monetization options for creators looking to scale a community business.

• No branding options

Best for membership businesses that need branded apps

Pricing: From $399/mo – $999/mo for pro features

Standout features: Affordable mid-range branded apps

Disciple is a mobile-first community platform built with one core promise: every plan has a branded app in the Google Play Store and App Store–and your brand is listed as developer. For established creators who need a branded app without custom development costs, Disciple is an accessible option.

The platform includes community forums, content creation, events, notifications, and subscriptions. The forums include activity feeds, Q&As, and content creation–text, videos, and images. And there’s a good suite of member management tools and analytics built in.

While Disciple’s price-point is affordable for a branded app, it’s important to note that on the $399/mo plan there’s only 1 non-monetizeable course, 2 admin seats, and 5 groups. And the app still says “Powered by Disciple.” The full feature set and total white-label branding is on the higher tier plans.

Disciple’s focus on branded apps also means that its web apps have been underdeveloped with more basic UX—a common complaint in reviews.

Pros

• Online community forum with branded apps on every plan.

• Good community-building features for delivering content and monetizing.

• Push notifications and your brand as developer.

Cons

• Different UX between the online platform and the app.

• The lowest-priced plans have a lot of limits on building.

• Missing advanced community features like AI engagement tools and gamification.

Best for creators launching paid communities

Pricing: From $89

Standout features: All-in-one simplicity

Circle is a community platform with features like discussion forums, livestreaming and events, and different ways to create content. It has a clean, simple design that reviewers point to. With courses, events, livestreaming, a website builder and basic email, Circle is a strong all-in-one for new community builders.

It comes with gamification (leaderboards, rewards, and automations) on some plans. And it also has member profiles that let your members showcase themselves and find like-minded people.

Circle’s AI tools are admin focused, automating content creation and moderation. And its AI agent feature (only on Circle Plus) can chat with members and answer questions from a knowledge base–you can add up to 10 AI agents.

Circle lets you create memberships and bundles. You can create spaces and dedicate them to either discussions, chat, courses, or events. Circle also has a branded app option with Circle Plus.

There are a few downsides to watch for with Circle:

• Circle has some hidden fees and extra costs (things like admins, spaces, etc.) that can add up. Email Hub costs an extra $99/mo for 10k contacts.

• You can’t put multiple things in the same space. You can’t chat in an event space. You can’t have a discussion in a course space.

Pros

• Create discussions, chat, events, and course spaces to monetize different kinds of content or memberships.

• All-in-one functionality with ease of use.

• AI for admin tasks.

Cons

• Only one feature per space. Courses can’t be mixed with events, with chat, etc.

• There are limits on seats for admins, members, spaces, etc. with additional costs to add more.

• There’s no advanced AI member engagement tools.

Best for async course creators and funnel builders

Pricing: From $143/mo

Standout Features: Sales funnels, marketing pages, asynchronous courses

Kajabi is well-known among course creators as a place to host an asynchronous course. It has an excellent course platform and marketing toolkit to sell courses with things like landing pages, email campaigns, and triggers. Kajabi’s marketing funnels are comprehensive, with lots of templates. And the ability to add web pages makes Kajabi a great public-facing option too.

Kajabi has been adding community features in recent years, bringing it more into line with community platforms. The result is “Community 2.0.,” which moves Kajabi beyond a simple forum and adds a livestreaming feature and meet-ups.

The new community feature is an improvement, but it’s still awkward for UX=. And if you wanted to teach a live course on Community 2.0, the LMS isn’t completely integrated–it lives in a different place in-product.

Kajabi needs 2 apps: one for members and one for admin. However, it comes with a DIY branded app on the Growth Plan which is a genuinely great offer for budget-conscious builders. But Kajabi’s overall platform is expensive compared to competitors. And the Basic plan caps contacts at 2,500 — a limit that may force an upgrade sooner than expected for growing email list.

Kajabi’s community AI tools are also limited to creating marketing copy, course outlines, and scripts–essentially AI text creation.

Pros

• Excellent asynchronous course LMS with drip content, evaluation options, and customization features

• Integrated email marketing, landing pages, and other sales tools + unlimited marketing on every plan.

• Branded app on the growth plan.

Cons

• Kajabi is one of the most expensive options on this list.

• Community features were acquired rather than built natively, and the integration still shows in the UX. Communities are Kajabi’s weakest feature.

• AI tools are content-creation focused, not engagement focused.

Best for alumni communities and professional networks

Pricing: Not publicly available

Standout features: AI networking, mentoring tools, and event management

Hivebrite is a community platform built specifically for professional and alumni networks, although it can be used for other things. It includes a content management system to organize and publish content, dedicated subgroups where students and alumni can connect, a branded mobile app, and a job board feature.

Hivebrite’s standout features are its AI networking and multi-tiered mentoring tools, practical for professional and alumni networks. It publicly mentions clients like CERN, Notre Dame, and the UN Foundation.

Hivebrite also comes with a built-in event management system for in-person events, including calendars, invitation emails, ticketing, online payments, and integration with social networks. Finally, it can also run donor campaigns.

The downside to Hivebrite is that it’s missing a livestreaming feature, a drawback for virtual events.

Hivebrite does have an option to add a branded community app, but pricing is not publicly available.

The community forum features are basic compared to creator-focused platforms. But for alumni and professional networks, the specialized tools designed for the use-case are a plus.

Pros

• Alumni networking app with dedicated subgroups

• CMS + Custom feeds

• Live event management, ticketing, schedules

• Job board, data and analytics

Cons

• Community-building features are extremely basic

• No livestreaming, video, or courses

Best new community platform for creators and coaches

Pricing: From $40/mo + 5% fees

Standout Features: Pulse AI co-builder, automated member matching

Heartbeat is a growing all-in-one community platform that brings together courses, events, discussions, payments, and workflows into one place. Its AI features are smart and built for member connecting, things like onboarding flows, discussion prompts, and event setup. And–similar to Mighty Networks–it has an automated member matching feature based on interests.

It works well for running virtual events, with flexible ticketing and a pay-what-you-can option. And it has apps for every device–although they are low rated overall (3.6 stars on both Apple and Android is quite low). App users note streaming problems in-app, very basic admin tools, and limited text formatting. It does also have the option for branded apps.

Pros

• Lots of great community features including AI connections.

• Integrated events with flexible pricing.

• Option for a branded app on higher tiers.

Cons

• Fewer overall community features than comparable platforms (it’s still developing).

• Significant problems noted with the app use.

Best discoverability for beginners

Pricing: from $9/mo + 10% fees

Standout features: Discovery feature

Skool is a simple forum platform created by Sam Ovens. Recently, influencer Alex Hormozi has been heavily involved selling the platform too--he's part owner.

Skool is really a community-style social media platform–and people usually love it or hate it. It features really basic forums that feel something like reddit–conversations you can join and respond to. There are also user profiles and a live event feature.

There are two good things about Skool that users often mention:

1. The “discoverability” - Skool lets people search for and find communities in the way Substack lets people find newsletters, and that may help people get found.

2. The “gamification” - Skool has basic gamification that includes a “leaderboard,” which shows who has engaged the most and gives members a ranking based on their engagement.

However, Skool has a lot of weak points which push it down this list.

• Skool’s community features aren’t in line with a modern community platform. It’s a basic discussion forum, with a running post list a bit like a Facebook Group.

• The features are extremely basic. You can schedule an event, but you need to host on a different platform. You can “Create a course” in the settings tab. But the “course” is only a series of gated posts.

• There’s almost no way to add your brand to anything.

At $9, Skool is a low-cost entry platform. But with 10% fees on that plan, that savings only works for very small communities.

Pros

• Discoverable, simple discussion forums

• Low barrier for testing a community idea

• Leaderboards for gamification

Cons

• Extremely basic UX with limited native features

• Limited monetization options, single currency, and no custom domains or branding

• Skool advertises competing communities to your members

• No branded apps

Best for teams and groups who know each other

Pricing: Free for basic, then $7.25/user

Standout features: Intuitive chat platform, threaded discussions, lots of power

Slack is a platform a lot of people know. Built for the workplace, it helps teams organize work.

It’s got channel and messaging features and basic member profiles–meaning it can host discussions. With mentions, different content features, and “huddles” for quick calls, it does have some of the features that make online communities work. It can work as a lightweight message board for teams or groups who already know each other.

But, while you can build a community on Slack, in the big picture, it isn’t great for online communities. It has limited member roles and limited content types, and it lacks the types of features to build out a full community business (events, courses, content gating, etc.) Slack is also missing monetization, so you can’t start a paid community on it.

It’s basically like Discord. Most Hosts outgrow it OR find that their community fails from lack of engagement options. Let’s not forget that Slack works for the virtual office because people HAVE to be there.

Pros

• Good chat & messaging features (it replaced email for the office)

• Organize conversations, tag relevant people

• Mix 1:1 chat and group conversations.

Cons

• No monetization

• Missing features for a vibrant community (content, courses, events, etc.)

• No personalization

• Per-user pricing gets expensive fast as your community grows

Best for brands building customer communities

Pricing: Not public

Standout features: Federated search, enterprise security, brand communities.

Higher Logic Vanilla is an online community platform for adding membership communities, especially for enterprise clients. It can be customized, and it has community management features. Members can publish content, create groups and subgroups, and add questions and polls.

Vanilla offers companies a chance to build customer support and engagement, access to a knowledge base, and useful integrations. It includes knowledge bases, Q&As, gamification, and useful business automations.

One thing to note, it doesn’t have options to sell memberships, subscriptions, or online courses. So, if you’re looking for a community that you can monetize, this isn’t the right choice for you.

It’s the best fit for companies looking to add a free, branded forum to a website.

Pros

• Enterprise-grade customer community forum with strong moderation tools

• Some customization features, reporting, and gamification

• Federated search across multiple systems

• Moderation tools + integration with business apps like Salesforce and Zendesk

Cons

• No monetization features

• No apps or white-label apps

• Significant enterprise investment required (and a sales call)

• Enterprise-grade customer community forum with strong moderation tools

• Some customization features, reporting, and gamification

• Federated search across multiple systems

• Moderation tools + integration with business apps like Salesforce and Zendesk

• No real features other than a forum (e.g. no courses or payments)

• Limited subscription tools

• No apps or white-label apps

• Significant enterprise investment required (and a sales call)

Best for brands and orgs. adding website forums

Pricing: from $399/mo

Standout features: White-labelled community for a website

Bettermode (formerly Tribe) is another white-label community platform for adding community spaces on brand websites. Its forum tool gives brands a place to create discussions, post content, and reach customers. The content options are flexible, you can add blogs, Q&As, and videos.

On Bettermode, customers can connect by asking questions, participating in polls, and posting images and videos. And these members can create profiles and you can assign member roles.

Note that Bettermode does not have a way to create and host online courses or live events, which limits how you can connect members. Note that key features like API access, advanced integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk), and white-label branding require the Growth plan or higher.

This means Bettermode is best for a certain kind of community: a customer community on a corporate website.

Pros

• Forum-based community with an explore function

• Organize conversations with “spaces”

• Custom domain & website builder

• White-labeled website

Cons

• Limited community functions for advanced engagement

• No courses or live events integrated

• Not suitable for creators or community businesses–it’s just a customer forum

Best community platform for nonprofits

Pricing: From $66/mo (100 contacts)

Standout features: Member database & chapter websites

Wild Apricot is a community management platform created for nonprofit organizations. It has community engagement and discussion tools. And it’s great for managing members in a nonprofit organization or association.

With Wild Apricot, you can create, organize and manage your member databases, use the platform’s website builder to create a professional-looking website, securely accept online payments, and manage virtual events. Plus, you can create subgroups for regional chapters, so that each can have its own website and community.

This software works great as a nonprofit membership platform. It has good event management built in, and therefore can be used to run meetings too, and it has a Wild Apricot app for admin and members. Note that it's not great for paid, robust communities and does not offer branded apps. And while it can organize virtual events, it does not have native livestreaming.

Pros

• Forum platform & website builder with options for regional chapters

• Member databases with self-service portals for fee payments

• Live event functionality for ticketing

• Can be branded

Cons

• Slightly dated look and user experience

• Limited community features (courses, gated content, etc. missing)

• No branded apps

Best for adding a membership to a WordPress site

Pricing: $49/mo +4.9% fees

Standout features: WordPress integrations

Memberful is an all-in-one membership platform and website builder that has a deep WordPress integration. It can be used for either WordPress-building or self-hosted membership sites, and it has a built-in CRM and activity feed. It also has a native newsletter tool.

Memberful is not a standalone community platform, however, but can be used to gate other community platforms like Discord and charge for access. It can also sell digital goods–including online courses–and even physical goods. And there are sales options like coupons, discounts, and promotions to give a WordPress site a lot of power.

Pros

• Membership website builder or connect WordPress

• Strong CRM & subscription management features

• Integrated Discord or Discourse for more community power.

• Sell memberships, courses, physical, and digital products.

Cons

• You would need to mix platforms together to get the functions of a good community platform (and it still won’t work as well).

• No native community features

Best for advanced course building with simple communities

Pricing: $24/mo + $5 per course sale

Standout features: SCORM-compliant LMS

We’ll round out this list with LearnWorlds–a great course platform with a basic community platform attached. LearnWorlds is a SCORM-compliant course platform with a website-builder attached. It also has some useful marketing tools, things like customer sales funnels, email, and affiliate programs.

LearnWorlds has a good mobile app and you can livestream a course too.

The community functions as a generic discussion forum, and you can create Spaces for individual courses. For course businesses with multiple teachers and admins, the instructors can follow the discussions in their course Spaces without seeing the whole community. It's really basic as a community platform compared to its alternatives, but excellent as a course platform. One important note, even on the lowest tier, $5 per course sale is an extra cost worth watching out for.

Pros

• Good SCORM-compliant LMS that can create courses and websites

• Livestreaming built-in for live course delivery

• Integrated marketing tools for emails, funnels, and sales

Cons

• The community features are extremely basic.

• The best features are locked behind higher-priced tiers.

As more people build communities, more people come to realize that they’ve started on the wrong platform. That’s okay. Because moving a community is easier than it’s ever been.

Creators migrate for a lot of reasons, but most common are low engagement, missing key features (like apps or courses), struggles to use a platform, and cost.

If you’re migrating, here’s a sample roadmap:

1. Assessment & planning: Figure out what you’re offering, what your current platform doesn’t do well, and where you’re losing engagement. Choose a new community platform and start the planning for the move.

2. Setup: Start your build on a new platform, preparing for members. This might mean branding, adding existing material (ie. a flagship course), registering a domain, or adding Spaces. If you’re building with a white-label solution, you’ll work with a team to create apps, etc.

3. Start prepping members: Use email and your existing platform to announce the move and communicate the steps you’ll take. You might opt for a “soft launch” with a handful of supermembers to kick the tires on the new community space.

4. Launch: Launch on your new platform, inviting existing members to a kick-off event.

5. Clean-up the old platform: Reach out to any members who haven’t made the jump to a new platform yet. Set a date for deprecating the old platform.

6. Close and re-direct: Close your old community permanently. If possible, set up a redirect to your new platform; this is helpful for visitors, but it also allows search engines to send your members to the right place. If this is not possible, create a landing page directing old members to the new community.

The right platform depends on what you're building: paid community businesses with courses and live events (Mighty Networks, Circle, Kajabi), simple low-cost communities to test an idea (Skool, Discord), branded apps without custom development (Disciple), alumni and professional networks (Hivebrite), enterprise customer communities (Higher Logic Vanilla), or nonprofit member management (Wild Apricot).

If you’re a creator, coach, and/or entrepreneur monetizing with community, Mighty Networks offers a free 14-day trial – no credit card required.

Having a platform with video options gives you a lot to work with for building engagement. Obviously, you don’t need all community content to be video. Text discussions, images, and even audio have a place. But video has some unique engagement power nothing else has:

• Emotional connection: We’re hardwired to read people’s faces as we communicate. So adding a face and voice to content can create powerful connections and trust. This translates into better community engagement.

• Easier to digest: We hate to admit it, but reading can create cognitive load. When our brains are tired, we’re less likely to read something. Video is easier to process–which is why most social platforms are prioritizing video, especially short-form video.

• Authenticity: It’s an extension of the emotions, but video can boost authenticity.

• Higher retention: Social platforms know video works. Video has higher watch-through rates and viewers retain more from video than readers from text. The same principle applies in your community.

• Spontaneity: A livestreaming feature adds spontaneity and surprise to your video engagement. It’s intimate and instant, and a livestream can feel the closest thing to actually being in a room with your favorite creator.

Several of the platforms on this list can be considered an all-in-one. If software gives you everything you need to run your community business without a lot of integrations, it’s an all-in-one.

Here are some of the all-in-one platforms on this list with the relevant features:

• Mighty Networks: Courses, communities, events, livestreaming, monetization, branded apps

• Circle: Courses, communities, events, livestreaming, email marketing, website builder, monetization, branded apps

• Kajabi: Courses, communities, email marketing, landing pages, funnels, monetization, branded app

• Heartbeat: Courses, communities, events, payments, automation workflows

• Disciple: Communities, courses, events, livestreaming, monetization, branded apps

Online communities and social media work on similar concepts. Both use digital features for social networking and content creation. But online communities are basically gated social networks, members need to join. Because of this, online communities can sell membership access as well as other digital products like courses, coaching, or paid events. Or, some online communities remain free to join and offer digital products and experiences as upsells.

Here are a few of the main benefits of online communities when compared to social media:

• Online communities offer more control for hosts. You own your brand, member lists, and have a much higher control over the content members see.

• You can earn more. Social platforms take your content for free and monetize it, sometimes giving you a bit of cash for the advertising space they sell. Online communities make you the owner, and you can choose how you distribute your content.

• You retain copyright. Different social media platforms have different copyright policies, but all of them will take some form of ownership of your content. This could include monetizing it with ads or training AI on it. In an online community, you keep the control.

• You can’t be booted. Social media platforms ban people for a ton of different reasons, many of them lame. An online community that you own means you aren’t at the whims of a social giant.

• There’s no algorithm. On a social media platform, you’re lucky if you get content seen. In a community, you own the distribution and it’s direct to members. If you post it, members see it. (And you can often message them all).

• You can collect member data. On a social media platform, there’s no way to–let’s say–download your followers email addresses. In an online community, this is simple.

Always make sure you understand your platform’s data privacy policies. Most community platforms offer a certain security because members are in an enclosed (password protected) ecosystem. But you should understand how each platform uses members' data before signing up.