7 Best community platforms (I ACTUALLY tested them all)

I tested over 15 of the most popular online community platforms to discover where each excel and fall short.

I conducted these tests for two important reasons:

First, I’ve been planning on launching my first paid community as part of my coaching program.

To do that, I needed a setup with tools for:

• hosting live events, group calls, and 1:1 coaching,
• starting focused discussions,
• building structured courses,
• encouraging participation through gamification and challenges.

I’ve used Slack and Facebook Groups. But they have their sheer load of limitations.

Slack feels more like a corporate collaboration tool and wasn’t designed for community-driven learning. Facebook is riddled with distractions. Neither platform offered the control I needed to run a serious business around my community.

So, I’m done with these platforms. SIMPLY DONE.

Secondly, reading about features isn’t enough. I needed to know how these platforms perform when building an actual community. What’s the setup experience like? How effective are their features in practice? What’s the member experience look like?

Consider this the ultimate guide to choosing the best community platforms where I’ll show you where each tool measures up especially when it comes to:

• Ease of use
• Organization and management
• Member experience and engagement
• Monetization capabilities
• Branding and customization
• Analytics and reporting
• Value for money

Let’s get started.

My research process…

Any platform that supports threaded discussions in an online space can count as a community building platform. 

So what did I consider when evaluating the best tools?

To help you understand this better, let me start with why I needed a community platform in the first place.

I run a coaching program called Fractional Lab—where I help freelancers, consultants and service providers build profitable, lean fractional businesses.

I didn’t want to start yet another Slack group collecting dust. I wanted a setup where teaching felt organized, participation felt natural, and the community pulled each other up.

That meant the platform had to do a few things really well:

• Support online course creation.
• Let me gate content or specific spaces/subgroups.
• Host live events and allow members to RSVP
• Have built-in member engagement tools like discussion boards, chats (and maybe some gamification elements like challenges and leaderboards). 

Super straightforward, right?

Now, here’s what my selection process was like.

I started by making a list of 30 popular and top rated online community software.

And right away, I began cutting down my list.

First, I wanted to focus on community software platforms that:

• Are practical solutions for average creators, coaches, educators, knowledge entrepreneurs, and startups.
• Provide strong monetization features such as membership subscriptions, and paid content.
• Are affordable. Ideally, a $100 per month plan should let anyone build a community and monetize it.
• Are easy to use and shouldn’t feel like an add-on to a CMS (e.g., WordPress plugins).
• Let you own your community.

That said, I eliminated platforms that:

1. Are social media groups (e.g, Facebook, Discord and Reddit)

While they’re good starting places, it’s hard to build a professional community on them.

They don’t have native ways to monetize your groups. You also have limited control over branding, ownership and members’ engagement and data.

To put it simply,

I didn’t want to build my community in a place I had nearly no control.

So… Reddit, FB Groups, and Discord were out.

2. Are corporate & enterprise community software solutions.

These came down to two things. 

First, pricing.

I didn’t want to pay nearly 500 bucks for community software.

For example, Disciple’s cheapest plan starts at $729/month (if you choose to pay annual) for upto 500 members.

And it lets you even have a branded community mobile app.

But that’s still expensive.

Others like Disco, Zapnito, and GlueUp hide their pricing behind a “Book demo” button. Which doesn’t give you an idea on what to expect in terms of pricing.

Second, many of these enterprise community management software have a reputation of being clunky and a nightmare to work with. 

Here’s what few users on Reddit had to say about one of them.

In that case, Disciple Media, Disco, Zapnito, Discourse, GlueUp, Higher Logic, SocialPlus, Hivebrite, Khoros, MembersClicks, and WildApricot were also outta my list.

• Check out my detailed review of the best enterprise community platforms.

3. WordPress-based community and membership site plugins.

I have used WordPress to know enough. And honestly, it’s the last place I’d want to host my community.  

It has so many moving parts. 

You need to:

• Buy hosting (good ones like Rocket.net will cost you $60 per month)
• Install a theme and a couple plugins
• Watch for updates, theme and plugin conflicts

These are the things I didn’t want to deal with.

It’s an expensive venture in the long run. Money-wise, and time-wise.

Not to mention if you’re new to WordPress, you’ll quickly realize that it’s not the most user-friendly and secure CMS and website builder.

That said, I eliminated MemberPress, BuddyBoss, AccessAlly, and LearnDash.

4. Slack community

As I had mentioned earlier on, Slack lacks any native way to host a paid community. 

Yes, it’s free for unlimited members. Yes, there are workarounds to paywall your group via a third party like LaunchPass.

But there are some huge risks that made me not consider it.

First, the Slack free plan limits your message history for upto 90 days. Meaning you and your members can’t access conversations older than 90 days. So if you have some good information buried down in your chats that your members might need, I’m sorry but after 90 days you have to kiss it goodbye.

Suppose you decide to go for its paid 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 would never recommend doing on Slack.

So Slack was also off my list.

5. Basic community forum and membership site platforms

During my tests, I came across a few platforms that almost checked everything I was looking for.

(Podia, LearnWorlds, Thinkific and Patreon.) 

And I almost considered them.

Until I tested each one of them.

Podia checks the basics and could work if you just need a simple digital business setup. But it felt unpolished. The interface looks dated, templates are basic, and the entire community feature feels tacked on as an afterthought rather than a core part of the experience. 

LearnWorlds and Thinkific didn’t fare much better. Both are strong if you only want to build courses. But offered a barebones community building experience.

For Patreon — this was the last place I wanted to build an online learning community. Patreon is more of a membership site platform for creators. It screams “help a broke creator out” and I didn’t want to send the same message to my audience. 

Still, I tested it. And right away, I hit limitations. The only way to run an event is by livestreaming through Vimeo, YouTube Live, or Crowdcast. There’s no option to schedule events nativel, host interactive workshops or private calls using Zoom, Google Meet, or any video tool you actually control. 

Branding is another wall. Patreon offers minimal customization. You can’t whitelabel your community or use your own domain. Your membership always sits under the Patreon brand.

Then there are the fees. Patreon takes 8% to 12% of every transaction. The platform is free to join, but as your revenue grows, so does the cut they take. Over time, those transaction fees can add up fast and eat into your profits.

In that case,  LeanWorlds, Podia and Patreon were also out.

Best online community platforms reviewed

Now that I had narrowed down my list to 7:

It was time to actually test them in detail to see where each thrives and lacks.

So, buckle up.

#1: Circle.so

Best all-in-one online community platform overall.

After testing more than a dozen community platforms—including Skool, Bettermode, and Disco—Circle offered the strongest balance between pricing, functionality and user experience.

It has a clean and modern interface yet refreshingly easy to use. Its features are extensive without being overwhelming. Pricing is reasonable given what’s included.

Many platforms I tried struggled to strike this balance.

For example, Bettermode is flexible and highly customizable but has a steeper learning curve for beginners. Skool is simple to set up but feels barebones. And Disco is robust but expensive.

In Circle, you can organize your community using spaces and space groups.Think of spaces as channels in Slack, but with more flexibility. 

Each space can serve as a course hub, event room, discussion forum, chat room, or multimedia library.

You can control access by setting any space as public, private, or secret depending on what you want members to see or join.

Space Groups let you cluster related spaces under a common theme or topic which makes it for easier navigation.

I liked how modular and intentional Circle community organizational structure was. Because given this flexiblity you can design a community structure that fits your needs. From course communities, cohort-based learning programs, mastermind groups, to customer support forums.

Below are the features that stood out to me.

Circle.so Features

• Flexible and private spaces: With Circle you can use spaces to build your community and organize it. You can create rich posts and threaded discussions with media embeds and searchable history. Or you  can choose other formats including chat, events, courses and media library. You can choose to set each of your spaces accessible to everyone, private and secret—which makes it easy to set multiple membership access inside your main community.
• Paywalls: Paywalls let you monetize your community natively. You can gate access to either your entire community or individual spaces which is ideal if you’re building a multi-tier membership. You can charge one-time fees, set up recurring subscriptions, or offer installment payments. Circle supports various payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay, credit/debit cards, and even BNPL options like Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna. Just note that Paywalls is all powered by Stripe, so it’s only available where Stripe is supported.
• Access groups: It’s a pre-configured bundle of spaces and space groups that make it easier to control which spaces members get access to when they join your community. Instead of manually assigning space access for each invite, paywall, or sign-up flow, you can link that entry point to an access group. You can create multiple access groups for different membership tiers, cohorts, or program types. When someone joins using a specific invite or paywall, they’re instantly placed in the right spaces based on the group you’ve connected. You can even combine multiple access groups during onboarding if needed.
• Solid events management: You can schedule events, send reminders, and let members RSVP. Circle also lets you natively host live rooms (up to 150 people) and livestreams (up to 2,000) replacing the need for third party web conferencing tools like Zoom. You can also record sessions for reuse in your courses.
• Online courses: Circle lets you create structured courses with drip scheduling capabilities. You can natively host your course materials but if you have your video recordings hosted elsewhere like on Wistia, Vimeo and YouTube, you can quickly embed them into your course curriculum via a link embed. I’ve tried a  ton of course platforms like Kajabi and Thinkific and they’re a pain when it comes to embedding video lessons hosted on third-party platforms. However, Circle isn’t the best solution if you’re looking to build sophisticated learning programs. It falls flat when it comes to student assessment since it only supports quizzes. It doesn’t support exams, gradebooks and  course completion certificate issuing so if you’re running upskill and certification programs you’d want to go with a more dedidated platform like Thinkific or LearnWorlds.
• Robust community post editor: Circle offers one of the most capable post editors I’ve used on any community platform. You can write long-form posts with rich formatting like subheadings (up to H3), bullet lists, blockquotes, and buttons. It also supports a wide range of media including images, video embeds, PDFs, and interactive elements from third-party tools like Typeform and Airtable. I tested several of Circle’s competitors, and very few came close in terms of editorial flexibility and publishing tools.
• Customization and branding: Circle’s UI is easy to brand. You can customize the color palette, modify the top nav bar, add your logo, connect your own domain and also white-label notification emails. If you want to go even further, Circle’s Plus plan lets you build a fully branded mobile app for your community.
• Workflows: Workflows is Circle’s built-in automation tool. It lets you automate repetitive tasks like sending welcome messages to new members or granting access to specific paywalled spaces. You can also use it to create basic automated email sequences which is useful if you’re not using an external email marketing platform. The only downside is that Workflows are only available on the Business plan and above. They’re not included in the lower-tier Professional plan.
• Marketing hub: This is essentially Circle’s email marketing tool. It’s not included in Circle’s subscriptions and instead it’s available as an add-on. You can use it to send email broadcasts, set up basic automations based on member activity, and create opt-in forms for list building. However, I found its email template designer and form builder fairly basic. 
• AI agents: Only available on Circle’s Enterprise and Custom plans, AI Agents let you automate support and engagement at scale. You can train agents using your community’s content including posts, courses, comments, and custom data. These agents can then answer questions, onboard new members, and handle billing or technical issues. 
• Gamification: Circle includes native gamification features like leaderboards and point-based rewards system. Members can earn points for actions like getting likes or comments, and level up over time. You can customize point thresholds, levels, and use workflows to reward members with badges, exclusive access, personalized thank-you notes, or even discounts on premium offers. 
• Segments: As your community scales, targeting the right members becomes harder. Segments simplify this by letting you create dynamic audience groups based on filters like roles, tags, and other attributes. You can use segments to filter your audience list, trigger workflows, send targeted email broadcasts, or push notifications on branded apps. 
• Affiliates: With Circle, you can create an affiliate program to allow members earn a commission for referring other people to your paid community boosting your digital business growth.

Circle.so Pricing

Circle isn’t the most affordable online community platform. But considering all the feature set that it comes packed with, it’s easy to see why it charges a premium pricing.

All its plans support unlimited members, but the number of spaces, admins, and moderators varies by tier.

Below is a simple price breakdown of Circle’s pricing.

• Professional – $99/month: up to 3 admins, 10 moderators, 20 spaces
• Business – $219/month: up to 5 admins, 15 moderators, 30 spaces
• Enterprise – $499/month: up to 10 admins, 100 moderators, 100 spaces
• Plus – Custom pricing: up to 20 admins, 200 moderators, 500 spaces

Circle.so 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

Pros	Cons
✅ Unlimited members, Hosts, moderators, and Spaces	❌ A basic website and landing page builder
✅ Native live-streaming	❌ Transaction fee on your sales
✅ High level of customization and branding	❌ Limited integrations and analytics on low-tier plans (Community Plan)
✅ Create a white-labeled app for your community
✅ Affordable pricing
✅ Create a curated community feed that’s personalized
✅ User-friendly interface
✅ Strong gamifcation
✅ Robust member’s profiles

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: Bettermode

Best community software for businesses and brands.

Bettermode gives you more branding control and design flexibility. It’s the best platform if you’re building product communities, branded creator spaces or enterprise networks.

Upon signing up, you’ll get access to 30+ community templates covering various use cases like learning communities, developer hubs, customer support forums,  job boards, and more—so you can launch faster without starting from scratch.

None of the community platforms I tested, not even Circle, Mighty Networks, or Kajabi offered extensive design templates as Bettermode.

You can customize your community by adding your logo, choosing custom fonts, setting your own color palette, and hosting it on your custom domain. You can even redesign the layout and fully white-label your community end to end.

I especially liked its Block builder which lets you design custom space layouts. 

Instead of using the predefined space layout you can style the space header, then drag in different block types like accordions, leaderboards, tag filters, HTML scripts, space collections, post feeds, and more.

For example, you can use Blocks to build a structured content library—grouping your posts by tag, embedding a video playlist, or showing only pinned posts in a clean card layout.

However this level of control also comes with some tradeoffs. Bettermode has a steep learning curve. Because of its sheer number of customization options, it can take you more time configuring your ideal setup which can be daunting if you’re not familiar with community tools.

It’s also not built for education-first communities because it lacks a native course builder. While you can still use Spaces to organize learning materials, it’s not as intuitive using well-rounded online course platforms like Kajabi or Thinkific, which offer built-in tools for curriculum structuring, progress tracking, and assessments.

Moreover, Bettermode doesn’t support native payments. And from what I saw in their support forums, they aren’t planning to launch them anytime soon.

If you want to charge for access to your community via membership or sell content, you’ll need to set it up through third-party tools like Stripe using Zapier. Which, as you can guess already, is daunting for non-technical users.

Bettermode features

• Strong community moderation tools: Bettermode includes built-in AI-powered moderation. You can enable Akismet and OOPSpam to automatically detect spam based on IP address, user agent, referrer, and site URL. You can also set keyword-based triggers to flag sensitive content for manual review. As the admin you can place specific members on a watchlist, meaning their posts and comments would require approval before being visible.
• Messaging: Members can message each other directly or participate in private group chats—all within the platform. Messaging is native and doesn’t require external tools.
• Events hosting: You can create, schedule, and manage events directly on Bettermode platform. Members can RSVP, add events to their calendars, and receive reminders.
• Multi-language support: You can localize the interface based on your audience. Members will see translated UI elements like menus, buttons, and prompts according to their language preferences. 
• Detailed Reporting: You can access analytics on posts, comments, membership growth, engagement, moderation actions, and messaging which lets you measure community health and identify trends.
• Blocks: Instead of a fixed layout, Bettermode gives you drag-and-drop control over how each Space looks and functions. You can build a clean video library using post feeds and tag filters, create a multi-section help center with accordions and post blocks, or design a custom homepage using space collections, leaderboards, and HTML embeds. 
• CMS models: Bettermode lets you define exactly what kind of content lives in each Space. You can create structured models for things like knowledge base articles, job listings, documentation, or tutorials. Each model is made up of custom fields like titles, tags, dropdowns, file uploads, embeds, and more. This means you get to decide what content fields appear, how they’re displayed, and who can publish or edit them. Perfect for building searchable, structured hubs inside your community.
• API and webhooks: Bettermode lets you intergrate your community with the rest of your tools using API and webhooks. You can use the API to sync members, pull content, or publish updates from other platforms. Meanwhile webhooks let you trigger workflows like sending a Slack alert when someone posts in a feedback Space, or enrolling new members in your email list when they join a private group.

Bettermode pricing

Unlike most community platforms I tested, Bettermode is surprisingly affordable. It offers a free plan, a flat-rate Pro plan, and a customizable Enterprise option.

• Starter:free for upto 100 members and 20 spaces.
• Pro: $59/month for unlimited members, 20 spaces, and 20 CMS collections
• Enterprise: custom pricing with tailored limits, advanced support, and security features

Bettermode Pros and Cons

Explore Bettermode

#4: Heartbeat

Best for building learning communities.

Heartbeat is a strong choice if you’re building an online learning community and want to integrate course delivery directly into the platform. 

Unlike platforms like Circle, Mighty, or Skool that focus more on community-first experiences, Heartbeat has more compelling online learning features. It offers built-in tools to run both evergreen (self-paced) and cohort-based courses, with progression tracking.

You can natively host course videos or embed them from platforms like Wistia, Loom, Vimeo, or YouTube. You can attach assignments, link community discussions to specific lessons, and sync event channels with your courses which lets you cultivate a social learning experience.

Heartbeat also supports basic automation which simplifies your community management.For example, you can trigger a workflow that sends an email with a certificate download link once a student completes a course.

On the community side, Heartbeat supports threaded posts, group chat, events, and voice rooms. You can share videos, write text posts, run polls, and attach files inside posts. Members can RSVP to events, and you can charge for events or make them public. However, it doesn’t support native livestreaming and you’ll need to use Zoom or external video conferencing software of your choice.

Unlike Circle and Kajabi Communities, Heartbeat doesn’t offer built-in community gamification tools. So if leaderboards, exclusive perks and custom badges are things you’re looking to implement in your community, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

Heartbeat features

• Course creation tools: with Heartbeat you can create self-paced and cohort-based course programs. You can natively host your course materials, assess your learners with assigments and track their progress. However, it lacks diverse assessment tols like exams, multiple choice quizzes, survey forms, peer review and course completion certifcate. But for simple learning and coaching programs, Heartbeat thrives in that.
• Events management: the platform lets you host events inside your community with RSVP, reminders, and calendar integration. You can control who sees and joins your events by setting your events as paid and public. However unlike Circle and Mighty Networks it doesn’t support in-platform livestreaming and requires external tools like Zoom.
• Automation & workflows: you can build simple automations which simplify community management.You get access to 10+ workflow templates covering various useases like events management, members onboarding and payment processing. For example you can create a workflow that’s triggered when new members join your community and are automatically to a specific access group.
• Built-in payment processing: with Heartbeat you can charge access to your courses, community, and events. It features payment processing tools powered by Stripe gateway. You can set up one-time, recurring and even tiered payments options for your community. You can also create coupons and upsell offers to increase conversions.
• Matchups: Heartbeat lets you automatically pair members based on shared interests or attributes which can be useful for peer learning, accountability, or mastermind matching.
• Custom domains and emai whitelabeling: you can brand your community with a custom domain and send emails from your own address to maintain a consistent member experience. However email whitelabelling is only available on its high end Growth plan.
• Affiliate programs: Heartbeat lets you launch a native referral system that lets members promote your community or products and earn commissions.
• Community apps: Heartbeat community apps for both mobile and desktop devices giving members flexibility to engage from any device.

Heartbeat pricing

Heartbeat is reasonably priced, especially compared to platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks. Its plans are clearly structured, outlining what you get and where limits apply. 

The Starter plan costs $49/month and includes core features like courses, events, and workflows. But it limits your community to 1,000 members and doesn’t include advanced options like API access or email white-labeling.

The Growth plan, at $129/month, removes those limits. You get unlimited members, access to the API, email white-labeling, and priority support.

For larger communities, Heartbeat offers a Business plan with custom pricing. It includes everything in Growth, plus a fully white-labeled mobile app and dedicated support from the Heartbeat team.

However, Heartbeat’s trascational fees are slightly higher than its counterparts like Circle and Kajabi.

• 3% on the Starter plan
• 2% on the Growth plan
• 1% on the Business plan

Heartbeat pros and cons

Explore Heartbeat Community for 14-days for free

#5: Kajabi Communities

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.

Like Heartbeat, Kajabi Community is refreshingly easy to use. You can structure and organize your community using Channels and Access Groups which makes it easy to manage content and member interactions.

Channels serve as the main organization tool within your community. They allow you to structure your community around different topics or themes, which can take various forms, such as group chats or threaded discussions.

I found creating posts straightforward, though I felt like its post editor could need more polishing because it looked a bit dated. But it lets you create everything from simple community text posts, to long articles. You can also embed multimedia like images, videos, audio files, and even polls to increase engagement.

Apart from creating posts, Kajabi also lets you engage members via challenges, leaderboards and meetups.

Unlike other platforms such as Circle, Mighty Networks, or Heartbeat, Kajabi provides native tools for hosting challenges directly in your community.

You can set one-time or recurring challenges, set their duration, and even specify rewards for winners.

Speaking of leaderboards, Kajabi lets you award members points when they complete a challenge, RSVP to an event, respond to a poll and more.

You can customize the points system, award badges, and even assign titles to members who reach certain milestones.

Kajabi also supports live events, allowing you to host virtual gatherings for up to 200 attendees within specific channels or access groups. Members can RSVP, and you can use the platform’s built-in livestreaming feature.

I actually did try its livestreaming tool and I liked it. It’s simple with decent web conferencing tools and settings. ( please don’t roast my low res laptop webcam)

During live events, you can share your screen, enable chat, and even create breakout rooms, making it easy to host interactive sessions. You can also record your sessions which can make good learning materials.

In my opinion, Kajabi is the best solutionif you’re looking to build an engaging online learning space for your courses and coaching programs, without the need to pay for separate tools for marketing and sales.

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 communities 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: $89/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

👉 Explore Kajabi free for 30 days.

Also read: Kajabi alternatives

#6: 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

Pros	Cons
✅ Native live streaming	❌ Expensive for low-budget creators
✅ Built-in video and audio recording	❌ No marketing tools
✅ AI transcriptions	❌ No online course creation tools
✅ Generative AI assistant
✅ Ability to build branded mobile apps
✅ Easy to use platform

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.

#7: 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

Pros	Cons
✅ Simple and user-friendly interface	❌ No inbuilt live streaming features
✅ Community gamification	❌ Lacks student assessment tools
✅ Unlimited courses and members	❌ Less customizable
✅ Affordable subscription model
✅ Built-to-scale courses

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

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