9 Best Community Platforms In 2025 (I’ve Tested Them All)

In this guide, I’ll review the best community platforms and show you where each excels, who they’re best suited for, and what you can expect in terms of pricing, user experience, and functionality so you can make an informed decision.

What Are the Best Community Platforms to Choose in 2025?

1. Circle.so: Best all-in-one community platform
2. Mighty Networks: Best for building multi-level communities
3. Kajabi: Best for knowledge entrepreneurs and course creators
4. GroupApp: Best for building learning communities
5. Swarm.to: Best for video-centric online communities
6. Skool: Best for gamification and community discoverability
7. Podia: Best for selling digital products
8. Bettermode: Best for customer-centric communities
9. Slack: Best free community software for starters

What Makes the Best Online Community Platform? How I Made This List…

Any platform that allows group discussions and chats in an online space qualifies as an online community platform. 

But how do you know which one to choose?

In my case, I use online community software to create dedicated online spaces where students can engage in discussions, take courses, and attend live events. This allows me to build a sustainable business model through membership subscriptions.

But even so, my business needs aren’t super unique to what most education businesses, online coaches, and membership programs need.

So what was my approach in making this list to ensure only the best platform made the cut?

First I started by making a list of 30 popular and top-rated online community platforms.

But I didn’t want to include just any platform and claim they’re the best solutions.

I wanted to focus on community software that:

• Are practical solutions for average creators, online coaches, entrepreneurs, startups, and non-profit
• Provides strong monetization features such as membership subscriptions, paid content, and events to help you build sustainable revenue streams.
• Allow you to create a community that feels uniquely yours as well as own your audience.
• Are easy to use: shouldn’t feel like an add-on to a CMS (e.g., WordPress plugins) but a dedicated, user-friendly platform.

That said, I eliminated platforms that are:

• Social media groups (Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit): While these platforms have massive user bases, they lack control over branding, monetization, and member data. Plus do you really want to build your community where your members are one scroll away from cat memes or their boss’s cringe posts?
• Corporate & enterprise solutions (Higher Logic, Hivebrite, Disciple, Khoros): These platforms are built for large organizations and come with hefty price tags. Some, like Disciple, charge $729/month for just 500 members.
• WordPress-based community membership platforms because of the steep learning curve involved using WordPress.

Hands-on testing and what I evaluated

After narrowing down my list, I focused on real-world testing. Instead of relying on marketing claims, I spent weeks experimenting with different platforms to see where each thrives and lacks.

1. Community engagement features

I tested how well each platform facilitates interaction through:

• Discussion forums and group chats for structured and informal conversations.
• Live events and webinars to foster real-time engagement.
• Gamification (badges, points, leaderboards) to encourage participation.
• Member directories and profiles to help users connect.

I eliminated platforms that lacked meaningful engagement tools.

2. Ease of use (for both creators & members)

A platform is only as good as its user experience. To assess usability, I applied the “can I figure this out in 5 minutes?” test. I evaluated:

• Onboarding experience: How easy was it to set up a community?
• Navigation: Was the interface user-friendly and accessible?
• Mobile-friendliness: Could members engage seamlessly across devices?

Complex or clunky platforms didn’t make the cut.

3. Monetization

A strong community platform should help creators and businesses earn from their work. I analyzed:

• Membership options – Could you charge for access via subscriptions or one-time fees?
• Paywall flexibility – Could the content be locked behind different pricing tiers?

4. Customization & branding

Your community should feel like yours, not an extension of someone else’s platform. I tested:

• Customization options – Could you modify colors, fonts, and layout without coding?
• Domain control – Could you host the community on your own website?
• White-labeling – Did the platform allow you to remove its branding

5. Pricing transparency & value for money

I prioritized platforms that were upfront and fair about pricing. I looked at:

• Clear pricing models – No hidden fees or hiding pricing behind a “Book a Demo” button unless it’s one of its enterprise plans.
• Fair feature distribution – Essential tools shouldn’t be locked behind expensive tiers.
• Overall value – Was the cost reasonable compared to similar platforms or external alternatives?

I avoided platforms with restrictive pricing models that charged high fees for basic community features.

By focusing on these factors, I was able to narrow my list to 10 best community software.

Best Community Platforms: A Quick Comparison

#1: Circle.so 

Best all-in-one community platform.

Circle is the best online community platform if you’re looking for a good balance of functionality and ease of use.

It’s like the Apple of community software. Sleek, seamless, and robust community engagement tools including posts, chats, live events, courses and gamification. 

Of all the tools I tested, Circle stood out in many aspects that other online community platforms struggled to balance or deliver.

For example, Mighty Networks offers well-rounded community-building features but has a steeper learning curve for beginners. Meanwhile, Circle offers robust features without compromising usability.

Let’s start with its UI.

Circle’s User Interface Review

Everything about Circle’s interface feels polished and cohesive. Its design looks modern and clutter-free.

That way, you won’t feel overwhelmed or like you’re using a community software built decades ago.

Depending on the community template you choose during onboarding…

… you’ll get a prebuilt version of your community giving you a functional starting point, so you don’t have to set up most things from scratch.

You’ll have your community spaces, the feed, and “Go Live” utility on the left sidebar.

And the top navigation bar which provides quick access to home, courses, events, members, and the leaderboard tabs, keeping everything within reach while maintaining a clean, full-screen browsing experience.

As an admin, what you see is almost identical to what your members experience. The only differences are the admin-only features which are neatly tucked away under a dropdown menu next to your community logo.

The best thing about Circle UI is that it’s super customizable which enables you to build a community experience that feels unique to your brand. 

Using its theme customizer, you can adjust your community color palette and modify the top navigation menu to fit your community’s branding needs.

In short, you can transform your community appearance from the default layout to something like this:

Circle also supports keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation and access to tools.

For example, pressing ALT + C + T instantly opens the theme customizer thereby reducing mouse clicks.

Overall, I found Circle’s navigation smooth and intuitive for both admins and members. I didn’t experience any glitches or bugs. Its learning curve is refreshingly gentle and straightforward compared to many of the community software platforms I’ll be going to review later in this post.

Circle’s Community Building, Engagement, and Management.

Circle uses Spaces to Space Groups to build and organize your community. 

Spaces let you create dedicated areas for discussions, chats, courses, events, members directory and more. 

You can control access to these spaces by setting them as:

• Open – Accessible to all members.
• Private – Restricted to select members.
• Secret – Hidden and invite-only

You can even paywall your spaces, perfect for premium content like exclusive events and courses where only paying members get access.

However, unlike Mighty Networks where you can combine multiple features in a single space, Circle keeps things separate. For example, you can’t have both events and courses in the same space.

On the other hand, Space Groups let you bundle various spaces into common themes and topics for better community organization.

When it comes to keeping your community active, Circle provides variousl engagement tools. You can create community posts, host group discussions, run live chats, organize virtual events, and add gamification elements to encourage participation.

The platform also comes with robust community management features. Moderation tools include profanity filters and a flagging system that automatically flags posts when they receive multiple reports, helping maintain respectful discussions that align with your community guidelines.

You can also automate community tasks via its Workflows. For example you can create a workflow that sends a welcome email when someone joins your community, assigns them a tag based on their role and automatically adds them to the right space group.

Unfortunately this functionality is only available on higher-tier plans – you’ll need to upgrade to at least the Business plan to access it, as it’s not included in the Basic and Professional plans.

Circle.so Features

• Customizable community spaces: Circle lets you design your community spaces to match your brand and engagement goals. You can choose from six space types—like courses, posts, chats, and events—and customize each with icons, cover images, and access settings, allowing specific members only.
• Intuitive course builder: Circle’s course builder is hands-down easier to use than many specialized course platforms. You can quickly structure your course curriculum into modules and lessons, upload media, or easily import it from platforms like YouTube, Wistia, or Vimeo using one-click link import. Having used platforms like Thinkific and Kajabi, where media link import functionality is often buggy, I find Circle’s a big win.
• Native livestreaming: With Circle, you don’t need to pay for an external live-streaming platform like Zoom because it has this tool built-in, which can come in handy when offering live coaching sessions and cohorts. You can choose to host a live room for up to 150 participants, where everyone in the session can participate using live video, audio, and chat. Or you can choose to host a normal livestream or webinar for up to 2,000 people, where only co-hosts or promoted attendees can participate with video and audio.
• Gamification: the platform lets you encourage members participation with rewards, badges, and leaderboards.
• Workflow automation: Circle allows you to automate tasks and deliver a personalized experience. You can set up triggers and actions to handle repetitive tasks, such as welcoming new members or sending notifications about important events.
• Robust integration: Circle natively integrates with over 30 third-party apps. It also supports SSO, API, and Zapier integrations allowing you to create a workflow of your choice.
• Mobile apps: Circle has mobile applications for both Android and iOS devices. Using the app, members can access course content, join live events, and participate in discussions and chats.
• Strong moderation tools: Unlike many community platforms, Circle excels at moderation. It includes profanity filters, lets you flag members after a certain number of reported comments, and gives you the ability to ban toxic members, helping you maintain a safe and healthy community environment.
• Email marketing: Circle recently launched a new email marketing feature called Marketing Hub. Using it you can send email broadcasts or build automated email sequences to nature your leads. However, this tool is available as an addon and is priced seperately from Circle’s main packages

Circle.so pricing

Circle offers four paid packages each with a 14-day free trial. The community platform also has transaction fees of 1-4% of your Paywall billings depending on the plan that you’re using. 

Here’s a breakdown of the Circle’s pricing.

• Basic: costs $39 per month
• Professional: costs  $89 per month
• Business: costs $119 per month
• Enterprise: costs $360 per month

Circle also offers an additional plan called Circle Plus that enables you to create a fully-branded online community and mobile app. This can come large businesess looking to white-label their community.

Circle Pros and Cons

Bottom Line: Why Choose Circle for Community Building

Circle offers well-rounded community-building features while also keeping user experience in mind. It’s the best community platform for building dedicated online spaces to offer exclusive content such as online courses, coaching, and digital downloads. It’s also ideal for building engaging communities using discussions, gamification and live events.

👉 Explore Circle.so free for 14 days.

Also read:

• Circle.so review
• Circle vs. Mighty Networks
• Circle.so tutorial

#2: Mighty Networks

Best for building structured, high-engagement, multi-level communities.

Mighty Networks is the best solution if you want more flexibility in structuring your community, impressive engagement tools and the ability to create multi-level experience in your network.

Unlike most community platforms—such as Circle—that only let you have courses, discussions, and memberships into distinct spaces, Mighty Networks gives you the flexibility to combine them into one.

For example, you can create course space and include engagement capabilities like discussions, chats, and events without creating separate spaces for each. 

This can come in handy especially if you plan to offer cohort-based courses where social and collaborative learning thrives.

You can gate access to individual spaces or bundle multiple spaces into a Collection where you can control access. 

The platform also integrates with Stripe, allowing you to charge for memberships, courses, or one-time purchases directly within the community. If you prefer external payment processing, you can connect tools like ThriveCart through Zapier.

Most platforms offer basic group segmentation, but Mighty Networks takes it further with automated workflows. You can set rules that automatically invite members to new spaces on course completion, engagement levels, or subscription status ensuring that the community scales efficiently without manual admin work.

Speaking of community engagement, Mighty Networks has various interactive tools to keep your community active. You can create community posts, articles and add media content such as images, videos, and GIFs. You can also go live inside a space, start polls, or run quizzes.

Unlike Circle and Skool, Mighty Networks doesn’t have a dedicated leaderboard system that you can use to gamify your community engagement. Although there are workarounds on that it would be better if it had a dedicated tool for that.

However, Mighty Networks makes up for this with more impressive gamification capabilities such as streaks, milestones, challenges, habit tracker, badges and ambassador program.

Mighty Networks Features

• Activity Feed: This feature provides real-time updates, keeping members informed about new posts, events, and discussions. It also features advanced filters to allow members to customize their feed to show only relevant updates. For example, they can use the “Personal Feed” to view activity from specific spaces they belong to.
• Customizable Member Profiles: Members can personalize their profiles to showcase their interests and expertise. Members can also view other members’ information such as the spaces they belong to, badges earned, followers, and connections within the network. This feature fosters deeper relationships by providing insights into each member’s background, encouraging meaningful interactions.
• Resource Library: A centralized hub where you can organize and share valuable content, such as guides, PDFs, videos, or articles. It helps community members easily access key resources, ensuring they find the information they need without searching multiple places.
• Online Courses: Mighty Networks allows you to create and manage online courses directly on the platform. This feature is ideal for community leaders looking to monetize their expertise or engage members through community-driven learning.
• Live Events: You can host and manage virtual events, webinars, or meetings within the platform. This encourages real-time engagement and offers opportunities for networking, learning, and discussing important community topics.
• Ambassador Program: It’s a referral system inside the platform that allows you to reward members for inviting others to join the community.

Mighty Networks Plans and Pricing

Mighty Networks offers one of the most affordable pricing packages in the market. Its pricing package “Community” start as low as $33 per month.

This is way below compared to its competitors like Kajabi or Thinkfic. However, the downside of this plan is that it doesn’t include an online course builder, or quizzes and has limited analytics.

Here’s a breakdown of Mighty Networks’ pricing structure.

• The Community Plan starts at $49/month
• The Courses Plan: starts at $119/month
• The Business Plan: starts at $219/month
• The Path-to-Pro Plan: costs $430/month
• Mighty Pro: contact their sales team to get custom pricing

Mighty Networks Pros and Cons

Bottom Line: Why Choose Mighty Networks for Community Building

Mighty Networks is the best platform for building custom, highly engaging social communities. It seamlessly integrates community features with online courses and memberships, allowing you to create a sustainable business while keeping members engaged. You can build branded communities that align with your theme, engage members through events, chats, posts, polls, leaderboards, and quizzes.

👉 Explore Mighty Networks free for 14 days.

Also read:

• Circle vs Mighty Networks review
• Mighty Networks review

#3: Kajabi

Best all-in-one digital business platform.

Kajabi is the best online community platform if you’re looking for a comprehensive digital business solution that comes with well-intergrated sales and marketing features. 

Unlike community-focused platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks, Kajabi provides everything you need to run your business in one place. You can build websites, create sales funnels, run email marketing campaigns, and set up checkout systems—without relying on third-party tools. For example, you won’t need Kit for email marketing or ClickFunnels for sales funnels because Kajabi has these features built in.

The Kajabi online community builder is well polished. It has an intuitive UI and strong engagement features. You can create Circles to organize your community and manage access with Access Groups. You can then engage members using community posts, polls, challenges, live events and gamification.

Kajabi Features

• Community challenges: The platform allows you to engage community members with challenges to encourage them to work toward common goals or learning objectives.
• Built-in events: You can easily host online events like webinars, workshops, and live Q&As directly in Kajabi, without needing extra tools. It also supports 1-on-1 live coaching sessions. Plus, you can record these events and use them later as part of your course content.
• Native sales and marketing features: Once you sign up for Kajabi, you gain access to built-in marketing tools like sales funnels, a website builder, email marketing, and contact management—eliminating the need for external integrations.
• Student assessments and certification: Kajabi lets you create quizzes with automatic grading, making it easy to assess students. After they complete a course, you can quickly issue certificates of completion.

Kajabi Pricing

Kajabi comes at a higher price tag compared to other specialized online community platforms due to its comprehensive approach

Here’s a brief breakdown of Kajabi Pricing.

• Kickstater: $69/mon for up to 250 contacts
• Basic: $149/mon for up to 10,000 contacts 
• Growth: $199/mon for up to 25,000 contacts
• Pro: $399/mon for up to 100,000 contacts

Kajabi Pros and Cons

Bottom Line: Why Choose Kajabi to Build an Online Community

Kajabi is the ideal choice if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that not only supports online communities but can also handle the marketing aspect of your education or coaching business. Unlike platforms like Mighty Networks, where you need to integrate separate tools like Kit for email marketing and ClickFunnels for sales funnels, Kajabi includes all of these features in its plans. Additionally, Kajabi’s community platform includes engagement tools like challenges, polls, quizzes, and discussion boards—creating an interactive environment for your students.

👉 Explore Kajabi free for 30 days.

Also read: Kajabi alternatives

#4: GroupApp

Best community software for small creators and knowledge entrepreneurs.

GroupApp is an online community platform designed to help creators and online coaches establish an engaging community experience for their education and coaching businesses.

Despite being a relatively new platform, GroupApp exhibits promising features that will compel you to forego well-established competitors such as Circle, Skool and Mighty Networks.

To start with, GroupApp has a robust online course builder that lets you create and host courses directly on the platform. Its drag-and-drop curriculum builder enables you to organize courses into structured sections and lessons. You can add various content formats, including videos (uploads and embeds), audio files, and PDFs. 

Unlike Circle, which has limited options for course assessments, GroupApp includes quizzes, assignments and surveys which lets you discover how well your students have grasped your content and identify learning gaps. Moreover, you can track student’s progress and understand how they’re interacting with your course materials using its built-in progress reports.

GroupApp also lets you create channels (which are similar to spaces in Circle) to organize your community. 

Inside your community channels, you can share community posts taking various formats such as text, images, videos, GIFs audio, file attachments and code snippets. 

But unlike Mighty Networks, GroupApp has limited interactive tools like polls, badges and leaderboards that can boost engagement.

However, you control access to individual channels and set them as:

• Open access: Publicly available to all members.
• Private groups: Invitation-only spaces for exclusive discussions.
• Paid memberships: Premium content for paying subscribers.
• Subscription plans: Different membership tiers with varying access levels.
• Audience segments: Custom segments based on user activity and preferences.

This can be useful if you plan to build a community with various membership plans and tiers.

GroupApp Features

• Online course builder
• Resource library
• Channels and categories
• Events hosting
• Landing page builder
• Completion certificates
• Workflow automation builder.

GroupApp Pricing

GroupApp has a free plan and three paid packages, each offering a 14-day trial period. Let’s take a look at the details of these packages:

• Free: free plan
• Starter: costs $49 per month
• Pro: costs $109 per month
• Business: costs $259 per month
• Enterprise: custom pricing

GroupApp Pros and Cons

Bottom Line: Why Choose GroupApp for Online Community Building

GroupApp is the best solution if you want a comprehensive platform to host courses and foster a membership-driven community. It has an intuitive online course builder that supports student assessments and certification, making it easy to track progress and reward completion. GroupApp takes it further with its customizable access controls and segmentation capabilities which makes it easy to create a community with multiple membership tiers and tailor the experience for different community members.

#5: Swarm

Best for building video-rich online communities and coaching programs.

Swarm works a little differently than many other online community platforms I’ve tested on this list.

Instead of centering on courses, discussions, or gamification, it focuses more on offering a video-based community experience.

This can come in handy if you rely on video to connect with your audience. 

For example if you’re a YouTuber sharing behind the scenes content or online coach offering interactive workshops. 

In Swarm, your community will be structured and organized using Hubs. They’re similar to Circle’s spaces or Channels in slack. A Hub can either be video, or discussion, or chat focused.

Within your community hubs, you can choose to share content by recording a video or audio on the go right within the Swarm platform or you can upload video files from your local storage.

You can also embed your videos from external hosting platforms like YouTube, Wistia and Vimeo. 

Swarm also lets you create text based community posts with rich content such as images,GIFs, audio, polls and file attachments. 

Speaking of events, Swarm lets you natively stream your live sessions or you can choose to use a third party software like Zoom or Webinarjam. However, its native live events features come with serious limitations of 1 hour max for its high end plan and even 2 minutes (yes you’ve read that right) for its cheapest plan.

Swarm Community Features

• Host live video events inside your Swarm community
• Create video community posts
• Video and audio recording
• AI transcriptions
• Threaded messaging

Swarm Pricing

Compared to most platforms I’ve reviewed on this list, Swarm is slightly expensive. It places strict limits on the number of spaces (which function like groups), members, and live stream duration. However, if you need more flexibility and unrestricted access, upgrading to the Elite plan removes these limits and includes a branded community app.

Here’s a breakdown of Swarm’s pricing:

• Novice – $49/month for 1 community space and up to 25 members per space.
• Pro – $99/month for 5 spaces and up to 50 members per space.
• Expert – $199/month for unlimited spaces and up to 150 members per space.
• Elite – $339/month for unlimited spaces and members, plus a branded community app.

Swarm Pros and Cons

Bottom Line: Why Choose Swarm for Online Community Building

Swarm is the best community platform if you’re looking to build an online space where video is the primary form of engagement. It’s useful especially for coaches and educators looking to build tightly focused communities where they can offer value to their clients either in small groups or 1-on-1 sessions. 

👉 Explore Swarm free for 14 days.

#6: Skool

Best for simplicity and community gamification.

Skool offers a simple, minimalistic platform ideal for beginners and digital business owners who need a powerful yet straightforward tool for building online communities and selling online courses. It avoids the complexity of traditional LMS tools, an all-in-one community platforms making it easier to manage and use.

With Skool, you can create online courses and lock content based on members’ levels, encouraging participation and engagement.

There’s no limit to the number of courses you can add, and you can drip-schedule your lessons to improve student engagement and knowledge retention.

You can gamify your community via leaderboards and use polls to boost member interaction.

 You also offer value using community posts, videos, and GIFs to engage members further. 

While Skool allows you to create events within your community, it lacks native video live-streaming features available in platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks — relying instead on third-party integrations.

Skool Features

• Community Forums: Enable structured discussions and Q&A sessions where members can share insights, ask questions, and exchange ideas within your community.
• Event Calendars: Schedule group events, meetups, and webinars. Members can view events in their local time zone and receive automatic email reminders, ensuring they don’t miss out on key activities.
• Classrooms: Create an integrated learning experience by offering courses within the community. Members can access course materials, participate in discussions, and engage with fellow learners, all within the same platform.
• Badges and Gamification: Boost engagement by rewarding members with badges, points, and levels. This can encourage participation and foster a sense of achievement among members.
• Email Broadcasts: Send professional-looking newsletters directly to all members. Group admins can use this feature to share important updates, announcements, or event details, ensuring everyone stays informed.

Skool Pricing

Skool provides cost-effective, transparent pricing. For $99 per month, you gain access to unlimited course creation for an unlimited number of students. This plan includes all features, such as email broadcasts, chat, and community metrics, ensuring a complete solution without unexpected fees.

Skool Pros and Cons

Bottom Line: Why Choose Skool to Build an Online Community

Skool is one of the best online community software for creators who want to offer a community experience for their students. It allows you to gamify course content via leaderboards, and boost community engagement using posts, events, discussions, and chats. Skool is also easy to use making it a no-brainer even for first-timers to build their first community and offer value via courses and coaching.

Also read: Skool Review

#7: Podia

Best community platform for online coaches and eduprenuers.

Podia is an all-in-one online platform for selling digital products, offering features similar to Kajabi. It encompasses a website builder, a native email marketing tool, an online course creator, and an online community platform.

I personally used Podia’s online community builder to assess how it measures up when it comes to online community building.

Let’s begin by examining how Podia manages community organizations.

Right out of the box, Podia allows you to organize community discussions, topics, and posts within what they call “Topics.”

Within each topic, members can share posts in various content formats, including text, videos, images, and PDF files.

Furthermore, using its “embed” feature, you can seamlessly incorporate diverse media and content formats, such as videos, audio, forms, code snippets, and quizzes from over 1900 supported sources.

This is a super helpful feature as it enables you to share content from various platforms. 

Do you have a video hosted on a third-party platform like Wistia? No worries. Want to embed a code snippet or a quiz form from platforms like Typeform? Podia has you covered.

Once content is posted, members can engage with one another through comments, likes, and mentions.

Much like Kajabi, Podia also features a user-friendly drag-and-drop website builder that simplifies the creation of a digital storefront for your products.

The website builder is intuitive and offers various customization options, including fonts and colors. You can easily drag and drop different page elements such as images, videos, text, opt-in forms, FAQs, testimonial boxes, and more.

Overall, I found Podia to be an appealing choice for edupreneurs and digital creators seeking a platform that extends beyond a community builder. It boasts a user-friendly website builder, a robust LMS platform, and effective email marketing tools.

Although its design is clean, I found Podia lacking in aspects like website templates, native live streaming features, and live events which may be a consideration for users with specific needs in these areas.

Podia Pricing

Podia has one of the most affordable paid plans you’ll find in any online community software platform. 

• Free: includes a website builder, community, one coaching product
• Mover – costs $39 per month: includes unlimited courses and coaching
• Shaker – costs $89 per month: includes email addon, affiliates,  and chat support

Podia also includes a 17% discount if you choose to pay annually.

Podia Pros and Cons

Also read: Podia vs. Circle.so

#8: Bettermode

Best standalone online community software—ideal for SaaS businesses looking to create customer communities for education, support, and feedback.

Bettermode (formerly Tribe.so) is an excellent choice for building branded customer communities. It’s designed for businesses looking to engage customers through online communities.

Right of the box, Bettermode offers a user-friendly interface that allows you to manage your community using Spaces, Collections, and Tags. 

Spaces act as customizable containers, providing a platform to host content and connections centered around common themes or purposes. 

Collections, on the other hand, enable you to group relevant Spaces together, streamlining the organization.

For instance, in the example community below, Spaces like “Knowledge Base” and “Product Updates” are conveniently grouped under the Collection “Resources.”

Bettermode offers strong branding and customization options for your online community. You can customize your Spaces icons, profile fields, typography, and colors and even host your community on your custom domain.

To further foster engagement within the community, Bettermode incorporates gamification features such as badges, points, virtual currency, and a leaderboard system.

Additionally, members can actively interact with each other’s posts by adding comments, mentions, emojis, GIFs, and more.

Analytics and reporting are areas Bettermode excels at. The platform provides granular reports about members’ activity, your community traffic, and Spaces performance.

You can also pick a timeframe on when to view the data. Generally, their reporting is easy to use even for new users. 

Bettermode also integrates seamlessly with third-party apps like Zapier, Slack, and Hotjar, though the range of supported integrations is not as extensive as those from Kajabi or Thinkific. 

However, if you’re a developer or have a developer on your team you can use API and webhooks to integrate your community with some applications that you’re ready to use.

Unfortunately, Bettermode doesn’t offer an inbuilt online course builder and a native live streaming capability.

This can be inconvenient for businesses looking to nurture their audience with quality courses rather than just using a community to build relationships and for customer support.

Bettermode Pricing 

If you’re seeking an affordable community builder, Bettermode may not be the ideal choice for you.

Their starting plan the Advanced plan costs $599 per month, which is a higher price point compared to other options in the market.

Bettermode Pros and Cons

👉 Explore Bettermode free for 14 days.

#9: Slack

Best free online community platform

Slack is a solid choice if you’re looking for free online community software. It’s especially useful for small, tight-knit groups and new creators who want to launch a community without upfront costs.

There’s a reason many creators and coaches start with Slack:

Firstly, it’s free. You can build a community on Slack without spending a dime.While that sounds interesting on the surface, there are some serious downsides that come with this. 

Slack limits messages and files history for up to 90 days. This means you can’t access messages older than 90 days and to do so you need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Suppose you decide to pay for its premium plan. Well, it’s prohibitively expensive. 

Most successful communities I know have around 500 members. Slack’s Pro plan costs $8.75 per member per month, which translates to $4,375 per month for a 500-member community. That’s a steep price unless you’re running a paid community—something I don’t recommend doing on Slack.

Secondly, Slack is already widely used. Many of your potential members are likely active on Slack for work or other communities, making it easier for them to engage. Unlike Facebook Groups, Slack feels more professional than a social media platform and it has fewer distractions. 

Thirdly, it has excellent chat functionality. Conversations feel natural, engagement is instant, and members can get answers quickly. This creates a more interactive experience compared to slower, forum-style discussions.
Lastly, unlike social media community platforms like Facebook Group and LinkedIn Group, Slack lets you integrate third-parties tools which can extend functionality. For example you can integrate a tool like LaunchPass to charge for your community access, or Zoom for live sessions.

Slack Features

• Channels: Slack channels help structure conversations by topic, project, or team. Instead of unstructured group chats, you can create dedicated spaces for different discussions, such as announcements, interest-based topics, or support. This makes it easier for members to navigate conversations and engage with relevant content.
• Direct messaging: For personal or confidential conversations, Slack allows direct messaging between members. This is useful for networking, mentorship, and private support. 
• File sharing & collaboration: Slack makes it easy to share files, documents, and links within channels and direct messages. It supports previews for various file types, making collaboration seamless. However, files shared on the free plan are subject to Slack’s 90-day limit, meaning older files become inaccessible over time unless you upgrade to a paid plan.
• Huddles: They facilitate spontaneous audio and video conversations directly within channels or direct messages. This feature is ideal for quick check-ins or brainstorming sessions, allowing multiple participants to join without the need for formal meeting setups. Additionally, Huddles support multi-person screen sharing, enabling collaborative review of documents or presentations in real-time. However, on the free plan, Huddles are limited to two participants, while paid plans accommodate up to 50 participants.
• Integrations: Slack integrates with hundreds of third-party tools to enhance productivity. For example you can connect Zoom for live webinars, or Zapier for enhanced workflow automation.

Slack Pricing

Slack offers a free plan that supports unlimited community members but comes with significant limitations. Message history is limited to 90 days, you can integrate up to 10 apps, and video or audio calls are restricted to one-on-one meetings. Paid plans are costly, with the Pro plan at $8.75 per user per month and the Business+ plan at $15 per user per month.

Slack Pros and Cons 

Bottom Line: Why Choose Slack for Online Community Building

Slack is a compelling choice for new creators looking to build their first online community without any upfront costs. Its familiar interface and solid chat functionality make it easy to set up an engaging space. If you’re on a tight budget, Slack is a practical starting point. As your community grows, you can transition to platforms like Circle, Mighty Networks, or Skool for more advanced functionality and scalability.

👉 Create a free Slack account.

Best Online Community Platforms: FAQs