Martinus Evans was a creator with more than 32,000 Instagram followers, where he built an audience around being a beginning runner. While lots of creators boasted being the fastest, he used his story to inspire the newbies. As his following took off, he discovered Mighty Networks and launched the Slow AF Run Club.

In his first year, he made $140,000 with his community.

While there are a lot of different reasons to choose to build a community, there are a lot of creators and brands who are experiencing what Martinus experienced as he turned his social following into a six-figure brand, now with over 6,000 members. It’s the power of an online community.

In this article, we'll discuss things to consider when searching for an online community creator and provide four options to consider.

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An online community creator is a piece of software that lets you build an online community. While that might sound like a bit of a boring answer, the reality is actually really exciting! That's because an online community creator lets you harness the potential of human relationships to build a space for members to connect and learn. You can even build a thriving business out of an online community.

If you're at the beginning of your journey towards building an online community, choosing the right place to build and host it will definitely be part of your exploration.

The right online community creator will work for you, easily giving you the capacity to build from 0 to thousands of members.

Ultimately, you should be able to spend your time focusing on growing and serving your community, and not have to spend a lot of time learning tech or looking for support.

That's why we’d advocate for choosing an all-in-one community platform that lets you do everything right out of the box. For many creators who have, in the past, relied on multiple software options cobbled together, having everything in one place makes a huge difference.

Here’s how to choose an online community creator:

Obviously, a place to start is to look for a community platform that offers you the features you need. When running an online community, features like live streaming, adding courses, charging for membership, or creating subgroups are what help you bring it to life. They give you more options as a host and let you better serve your members.

Here are some common features to look for in a community platform:

• Livestreaming

• AI engagement tools

• Gamification options

• Async or cohort courses

• Smart member profiles

• Payment options

• Single Sign-On (SSO)

• Content options (text, video, polls, etc.)

• Live streaming

• An app

• Community analytics

• Email integrations

Often people will start a community on one platform, invest their time into it, and then bump up against limitations. They then have to piece together different types of software to make it work. They’re adding Facebook groups, or else mixing in a different program for an app.

All this is exhausting, annoying, and—honestly—usually leads to the point where the creator has to move the community or where it just fizzles because it’s too complicated.

Pick the platform that grows with you.

Your community members need to be able to ACTUALLY use your community on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean when they finally haul the laptop out from under the bed, dust it off, and search for the lost plug.

THEY NEED AN APP!

Yup, we’re talking here about an app. Even if you’re a regular desktop or laptop user, which many people aren’t, a community app lets you reach people where they’re at, in their pocket.

On the Mighty Networks app, they could join a fitness community and watch workouts on the go, take a course and learn a new skill on the bus, or jump onto a live stream while waiting in line.

One final thing we’ll talk about here is monetization. Would you believe that communities that charge something for admission often do better than those that don’t? People value what they pay for!

We’ve learned from thousands of networks that people value what they pay for. It seems counterintuitive, but communities that charge something for membership often do better.

There are different ways to monetize, so look for a platform that gives you multi-currencies, options to bundle, and different ways to build offers.

Mighty Networks is G2's top-rated community platform and home to more $1 million communities than any other platform. It's home to creators and brands like Tony Robbins, Marie Forleo, The Home Edit, and TED.

Mighty is:

• Community AI that boosts engagement, creating people magic by connecting members, surfacing similarities, helping with profiles, and starting conversations.

• Spaces that can host almost any content: discussions, courses, livestreams, long-form content, chat, and member explorer.

• Native 1080p livestreaming with backstage, multi-speaker view, and high-velocity chat.

• Gamification and recognition built-in, including badges, streaks, points, and new member journeys.

• Courses multiple ways, whether async on the LMS or as a cohort or community course that's livestreamed.

• Powerhouse community business features like landing pages, bundling, multi-currency, and useful analytics.

• Apps under your brand with Mighty Pro, or use the Mighty Networks app on any plan.

Mighty has more features to work with than any other community platform, things like AI community building capability, polls, creating blog-post-style articles, adding video, building different plans and membership bundles, and more.

Mighty is the perfect online community creator for building and growing a thriving membership base.

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Bettermode is a white-label community platform for businesses that gives you a way to integrate a community into your existing website. It’s designed for corporations to add discussion forums to their business pages.

While creating a customer community can take many different forms, Bettermode gives users a forum where they can ask questions, start discussions, and share content on mobile apps. It doesn't have any monetization features; it's built for brands who don't need this.

• Modular community building with 20+ templates for the community widgets that can embed into an existing website.

• AI search and moderation with enterprise tools for contextual search, spam and sentiment detection (Aksimet, OOPSpam), and "Ask AI" knowledge base.

• Developer tools like GraphQL API and webhooks (on enterprise plans).

• Enterprise security compliance SOC2, GDPR, and CCPA compliance and advanced analytics.

It's a great option for enterprise-level discussion forums. It doesn't have the right features for brands and creators building monetized communities.

Circle is an alternative community platform with simple design and some useful tools. It offers courses, communities, and virtual events, similar to Mighty Networks.

Circle has:

• All-in-one functionality, although individual Spaces can only hold one feature at a time (Mighty has multi-feature Spaces).

• AI for admin, with a copilot for platform management and agents for individual support.

• The option to add virtual events with native livestreaming.

Circle is a good community platform, but is missing advanced engagement features for building retention. And its gamification is really basic, simple points, levels, and leaderboards.

One final option for an online community creator is a Kajabi community.

Kajabi is known for its courses, and it also has a complex set of marketing options for selling those courses: things like email campaigns, welcome flows, and landing pages, which can require separate software to run on other platforms. With this, it has a function that can be used to add a course community to a course you’re building, which gives you a discussion forum and some ways to organize conversations.

Kajabi is:

• Websites and landing pages with funnels built-in, lots of tools for running an online business.

• An async course platform with solid async content delivery.

• A (separate) community platform that includes chat, messaging, and discussion forums.

Although Kajabi technically does communities, they are its weakest feature. That's because they live on a separate app, with a separate logon from the main course app. If you want to run your Kajabi business on an app, you'll need a THIRD one!

The UX is clunky, and Kajabi is missing the advanced engagement features of other options on this list. It is and has always been stronger in course funnels.

If you’re on the hunt for an online community creator, there are some great options to work with–that let you blend all the things we talked about above: comprehensive features, room to grow, access options, and monetization to let you turn it into a business.

So, if you’re ready, come try your hand at building an online community! There’s so much you can do with one. And Mighty Networks gives you all the tools you need to make your dream community a reality.

Try it free for 14 days, no credit card required!