The 3 Best Online Community Platforms of 2025 [20+ Reviewed]

Looking for the best platforms to host your online community? You’re in the right place.

These days, creators, entrepreneurs, and community leaders are spoilt for choice when it comes to community platforms. There are tons of apps out there that give you all the tools you need to host, manage, and grow an online community around your brand.

The question is: Which one is the best?

I tried, tested, and reviewed 20+ of the leading online community platforms to find out.

In this post, I’ll reveal my 3 top picks, explain why I think they’re great, and discuss when you might want to use them.

I’ll also share a complete review of each platform I tested, with all the information you need to decide which one is the right fit for you.

What Are Online Community Platforms?

Online community platforms are like online clubs—they provide a virtual space where people with shared interests, goals, and hobbies can interact.

Community hosts/leaders can use these platforms to set up free or paid community spaces. Members then join them to learn, hang out, and share their thoughts and ideas,

No two community platforms are exactly the same—each of them comes with different features and caters to different types of users.

Typically, they all offer the ability for members to create posts, leave comments on each other’s posts, share multimedia files, and direct message each other. That’s the bare minimum. However, most come with lots of other bells and whistles on top of that.

For example, some might offer more advanced features to encourage engagement, like a points system and public leaderboard. Others might come with a built-in course builder to help you create and deliver educational content to your members.

Why Are Online Communities Important in 2025?

Online communities have exploded in popularity over the last couple of years.

Entrepreneurs, businesses, and creators are increasingly seeing the value of building a community around their brand—and for good reason.

Here are some of the reasons why they’re so important in 2025:

There’s been a surge in demand. We’re in the midst of a loneliness pandemic. Consumers all over the world are crying out for community. They’re looking for a place where they feel like they belong, and they’re willing to pay for it. As such, demand for online communities has never been higher.
They provide a passive revenue stream. Selling access to paid communities provides an easy passive revenue stream. You have hardly any overheads, and unlike other types of products, you don’t have to worry about things like inventory and shipping. Plus, once you’ve set it up, it’s almost completely hands-off—successful communities sell themselves.
Selling digital products becomes easy. If you plan to sell courses, events, or other digital products, creating an online community around your business is a great way to go about it. When you do this, you no longer need to rely on sales funnels and aggressive ad campaigns to get customers. Instead, you’ll be focusing on recruiting members, and the sales will take care of themselves.
There’s limitless growth potential. The sky’s the limit when it comes to online communities. The most successful paid communities out there have thousands of paying members and generate six-figure revenues every month.
Your members become brand advocates. When you create a community around your brand, your community members become your brand advocates. They refer new customers and members, create UGC (user-generated content) that you can use in your campaigns, share positive reviews, and elevate your brand through word-of-mouth marketing.

How to Choose the Best Online Community Platform For You

We’ve picked out the best online community platforms on the market and reviewed them below, but you’ll still need to choose between them.

Here are the main factors to consider when weighing your options.

Use case. Different community platforms cater to different types of users (e.g. course creators, entrepreneurs, brands, etc.), and some are better suited to particular use cases than others. It’s important to choose a platform that aligns with your goals.
Features & functionality. The biggest difference between platforms is in the features and functionality they offer. Some features you might want to look out for include the ability to build and sell courses to members, run challenges, host livestreams and virtual events, create and share interactive videos, etc.
Branding & customization. Depending on your needs, you might want to look for a platform that offers white labeling so you can add your branding to your community space and host it on your domain. Bonus points if they let you set up a white-label mobile app for members.
Community spaces. Each platform has a different layout for its community spaces. Look for a platform that offers plenty of control so you, as the community host, can do things like pin posts and set up discussion boards to organize conversations.
Scalability. Think about where you hope your community will be in a few years, and choose a platform that offers room for that growth. For example, some platforms will have restrictive plan limits that put a ceiling on the number of members, spaces, etc. that you can have. Others will offer unlimited members/spaces, allowing you to scale limitlessly, but the cost may be higher.
Discovery. If you want to make it easy for members to find you, it helps to choose a platform with rich discovery features. For example, some platforms, like Skool, have a discovery section where users can find new communities to join.
Engagement. The key to hosting a successful community is to keep members engaged. Look for platforms that offer engagement features like polls, rich member profiles, gamification (e.g. leaderboards and challenges), etc.
Payment & monetization options. Choose a platform that offers the monetization/payment options you need. For example, do you want to make your community free or paid? Would you rather charge a recurring subscription fee or a one-time fee? Do you want to sell add-on products or bundle multiple products with your communities? You get the idea.
Privacy & security. It’s important to keep your member’s information safe, so look for a platform with solid privacy and security features.
Integrations. Think about how you might need your community platform to connect with the rest of your tech stack, like your email marketing software or CRM, and make sure you choose one that integrates well.
Cost. It’s possible to build a community for free on platforms like Facebook Groups, Discord, or Reddit. However, this isn’t ideal as you have limited control. Plus, there’s all sorts of ads and other distractions. I’d suggest using a paid platform, but you’ll need to weigh up the subscription cost against your budget—and don’t forget to look out for hidden costs like transaction fees.

What to Look for In An Online Community Platform

Below, I’ve listed what I think are the top 10 must-haves that you need from a community platform. These are the factors I considered when selecting my top three picks.

Rich engagement features to encourage active participation and community discussions
Course creation, hosting, and delivery
Flexible and customizable discussion boards
Support for live events and live streaming
A clean, simple, ad-free user interface
White-label options and branded spaces
1:1 chat functionality
Multimedia content so members can share videos, images, etc.
Lots of options for monetization (paid subscriptions, digital products, etc.)
Room for growth (no-limit plans)

The 3 Best Online Community Platforms

Now that’s covered, it’s time to dive into our list of the best online community platforms. Here’s a quick overview of my top 3 picks. Scroll down for my in-depth review of each of them.

Skool – Best for course creators, coaches, and influencers
Mighty Networks – Best for serious educators (& best AI features)
Circle – Best for brands & businesses

1. Skool

Best for course creators, coaches, and influencers

Out of all the community platforms I’ve tried, Skool is my favorite. And the main reason for that is that it’s just so much easier to use than every other platform—the UI is fantastic.

As the name suggests, Skool is all about learning. It blends courses and communities together in one platform. So, you can deliver course content and create a space where learners can interact at the same time.

Once they’ve joined a Skool community, members can switch between several tabs: Community, Classroom, Calendar, Members, and Leaderboards.

The Community page is where they create posts, leave comments, engage with other posts, and generally hang out.

The Classroom page is where hosts can build their community-based courses and where community members can go to work through those courses.

The Members tab features a list of everyone in your group, with rich profiles for each user. And the Calendar tab is where you notify members of upcoming virtual events, like livestreams and Q&As.

But by far, my favorite thing about Skool is the way it gamifies the learning experience. Members can earn points by completing tasks & course content and by getting likes on their community posts in order to ‘level up.’

You can set the perks they get when they reach certain levels (e.g. access to exclusive content), and those with the most points will feature on the Leaderboards page.

All of this incentivizes engagement and helps you to keep your community active, which is the most important thing.

Highlight Features

Leaderboards
Points and ‘level’ system
Course builder and player
Event calendar
Members directory
Discovery section (where Skool visitors can find communities to join)

Pricing Plans

Skool doesn’t do any feature gating. There’s only one pricing plan that costs $99/month, and it comes with everything. You’ll also pay a 2.9% transaction fee per sale.

Summary

Skool has the best user interface of any online course platform, and its focus on gamification sets it apart from its competitors. It’s ideal for delivering community-based courses and a good choice for creators, coaches, and influencers who want to keep things simple.

I also appreciate the fact that it lists all communities hosted on Skool on its Discovery page. This means that you don’t necessarily have to invest heavily in marketing to find new members—new members can find you.

That said, Skool isn’t perfect. There are a couple of things I don’t like so much, like the fact that it only supports subscription billing, so you can’t charge members a one-time fee. It’s also missing some important features like assignments/assessments, white labeling, video hosting, marketing tools, and the ability to sell add-on products.

But overall, if you don’t need all the bells and whistles and just want a fun, easy-to-use platform that keeps members engaged, then there’s no better option.

Check Out Skool

2. Mighty Networks

Best for serious educators (& best AI features)

Mighty Networks is an all-in-one platform that offers community, courses, events, and more in one place. Unlike other platforms, Mighty seems to have gone all in on generative AI—and that’s to its credit.

The second I signed up, Mighty’s AI assistant, Co-Host, was there to help me build my community in a fraction of the time it would usually take. I was blown away by how easy the process was.

First, you’re prompted to enter a few keywords about who you’re hoping to bring together in your community. Once you do, Mighty will generate a few well-written descriptions and community names for you to choose from.

A couple of clicks later, it’ll build your community landing page for you, complete with all the marketing copy, relevant images, and everything else. You can customize it if you want, but it’s pretty much ready to go.

Communities on Mighty Networks are built around ‘spaces.’ These spaces can be things like a chat space, event board, course or resource, library, etc., and you’re free to customize them in any way you want.

Aside from helping you to set up your community quickly, Mighty Networks’ AI Co-Host can also help with lots of other things.

For example, it can generate course outlines, suggest icebreakers and conversation starters for your members, write and rewrite content, etc. And the ‘People Magic’ feature is super cool. It uses artificial intelligence to reimagine member profiles, showing interesting people to each other and highlighting what they have in common to get people talking.

I also like the fact that Mighty Networks has features to help you deliver and grade assignments as part of your online courses—this is something you can’t do easily on Skool.

The flip side is that it’s more complicated than Skool to use. Because it’s so feature-rich, the UI is a little messy with tons of distractions.

Highlight Features

Customizable community spaces
Livestreaming
Icebreaker questions
Event hosting
Powerful online course system
Graded assignments
Member resources
People Magic (AI-powered tool to facilitate member connections)
Mighty Co-Host (AI assistant to help you set up communities and create content)
iOS and Android apps
Flexible monetization options (one-time fees, bundles, subscriptions, add-ons, free trials, etc.)

Pricing Plans

Mighty Networks offers several plans that come with different features and benefits. A 14-day free trial is available on all plans, and you can get two months free if you pay annually.

The Community Plan costs $49/month and offers all the core community features like chat and messaging, activity feeds, member profiles, etc.
The Courses Plan costs $119/month. It comes with everything in the Community plan plus online course features including quizzes, assessments, badges, etc.
The Business Plan costs $219/month. It offers everything in the Courses plan, plus additional white labeling and configuration options that make it a better choice for businesses. You also get more advanced features like deeper analytics, automated questions, etc.
The Path-to-Pro Plan costs $360/month, but you can only sign up with annual billing. It comes with everything on the Business plan plus extra support, lower transaction fees, and more.

There’s also a custom Pro plan available on request—you’ll need to contact Mighty for a quote. Pro users can build branded iOS and Android apps and unlock more advanced features and support.

Summary

Mighty Networks has a lot going for it. Its AI-powered feature set is second to none, and it’s a good choice for serious educators thanks to its more powerful course builder and assignments feature.

It’s super flexible when it comes to monetization, and it gets bonus points for letting you deliver your community on your own branded iOS and Android Apps (if you sign up for the Mighty Pro plan).

All that said, Mighty Networks isn’t as easy to use as Skool, and the UI could use some work, in my opinion. It also lacks some of Skool’s gamification features, like leaderboards, which is why it missed out on the top spot.

Check Out Mighty Networks

3. Circle

Best for brands & businesses

Circle is a better choice for brands and businesses as it’s one of the few community platforms that is fully white-labeled.

That means that, unlike Skool, you have the option of removing Circle’s branding and replacing it with your own. Plus, you can connect it to a custom-branded domain and even host it on your existing website if you want.

There are a few other things Circle does better than other platforms aside from that. For example, it has lots of features to help you engage your community members, like live streams, group chat rooms, and gamified rewards.

I like the fact that you can add multiple co-hosts to your live streams, too—this is something you can’t do on a lot of other platforms. And the automated transcriptions feature is super useful if you plan on sharing pre-recorded video content and care about accessibility.

What’s more, Circle’s course creation tools are superb. You can create cohort-based courses, deliver drip lessons, utilize automated check-ins and rewards to keep students engaged, etc.

Highlight Features

Build and host courses
Learner engagement features (check-ins, rewards, etc)
Private and secret community groups
Live streaming (with the option to add co-hosts)
Automated video transcriptions
Gamification features
White labeling (add your branding)
Lots of integrations
AI and automation features

Pricing Plans

Circle offers five different plans: Basic, Professional, Business, Enterprise, and CirclePlus. You can try them out with a free 14-day trial, and discounts are available if you pay annually.

The Basic Plan costs $49/month with 4% transaction fees. It includes all the basic features and up to 10 Spaces, 100 members, 1 admin, 1 moderator, and 10GB storage.
The Professional Plan costs $99/month with 2% transaction fees. It includes up to 20 spaces, unlimited members, 3 admins, 10 moderators, and 100GB storage. You also unlock additional features like events, paid memberships, etc.
The Business Plan costs $219/month with 1% transaction fees. It includes up to 30 spaces, unlimited members, 5 admins,15 moderators, and 250GB storage. Business users get access to even more advanced features, including workflows, API access, email white labeling, and more.
The Enterprise Plan costs $399/month and includes up to 100 spaces, unlimited members, 10 admins, 100 moderators, and 1TB storage. You also get priority support, single sign-on, deeper analytics, and unlimited workflows.
CirclePlus is a custom plan, so you’ll need to contact sales for a quote. It lets you launch your own branded community app.

Summary

I’d recommend Circle for SMBs and brands. It’s more customizable than other platforms, and it’s a fully white-label solution (depending on the plan you sign up for), so you don’t have to worry about third-party branding.

Plus, it’s great for live streaming and sharing video content with members, plays nicely with other tools (with thousands of supported integrations), and it’s super scalable with AI, automation, and branded apps.

Check Out Circle

The Best Platforms That Now Include Community Features

Above, I revealed what I think are the 3 best dedicated community platforms on the market right now.

However, there are lots of other platforms out there that might not be specifically designed for building communities but include community features.

I’m talking about things like online course platforms, all-in-one marketing platforms, social media sites, etc.

And some of them might be a better fit for your business, depending on your needs. Below, I’ll share my in-depth review of each of these platforms to help you decide.

HighLevel (What We Use)

HighLevel is the platform we use at Freedom Bound Business for community and courses.

It’s much more than an online community platform—it’s a complete all-in-one toolkit with pretty much everything you need to run an online business in one place. So, it’s more well-rounded than the other options on this list and a better choice for online entrepreneurs.

You can use HighLevel to set up gated membership areas to host your community. Plus, build free or paid courses (with unlimited video hosting) to share with your members.

To grow your community, you can use HighLevel’s huge selection of marketing and sales tools.

There are tools for things like pipeline management, funnel building, appointment booking, automated multi-channel messaging (email, SMS, social, etc.), form building, websites, and landing pages etc. And the whole platform is fully white-label.

That said, the tradeoff for all those features is that HighLevel is a bit more technical than dedicated community platforms. It can take some time to get used to navigating the platform. And if you just want the basics and don’t need all the bells and whistles, it might be overkill.

Highlight Features

Create flexible community areas & membership sites
Offer free and paid courses
Build websites, landing pages, surveys, forms, and more.
Send and automate emails, SMS, calls, voicemails, etc.
Pipeline management
Analytics & reporting
White-label desktop application
Client dashboards

Pricing Plans

HighLevel offers multiple plans, and both come with a 14-day free trial.

The Starter plan costs $97/month. It comes with all the core features, unlimited contacts and users, and lets you setup up to 3 sub-accounts.
The Unlimited plan costs $297/month. It comes with everything in the Starter plan, plus unlimited sub-accounts, API access (so you can integrate it with your existing systems), and the ability to set up your own branded desktop app.

Summary

I’d recommend HighLevel if you want to combine all the tools and features you need to manage your online business in one place.

It doesn’t just function as a community platform but also offers everything else you need to build, market, and grow your business, like multi-channel marketing tools, pipeline management, and so on.

Considering everything it has to offer, it’s incredible value for money and works out much cheaper than buying all those tools separately.

That said, if you don’t need all the bells and whistles and just want the core community-building features, cheaper options are available.

Check Out HighLevel

Kajabi

Kajabi started out as an online course platform, and that’s still what most people use it for. However, they recently bought out the community platform Vibely and integrated it, so it now offers the complete package.

The new-and-improved Kajabi has everything you need to build vibrant, learning-based communities, including one of the best online course builders on the market, learner engagement and assessment tools, flexible community spaces, a live streaming feature (with live meet-ups), and a complete marketing toolkit.

It also offers video hosting, so you don’t have to embed videos on third-party sites like YouTube or Vimeo, which is a big plus. This is something you don’t get with a lot of other community platforms.

That said, Kajabi’s community UX could use some work. Communities and courses don’t integrate as well as I’d like—they kind of feel like two separate products.

Highlight Features

Build and monetize communities
Create and sell online courses
Assessment & engagement tools
Video hosting
Livestreaming
Coaching tools
Podcasts
Website & page builder
Email marketing
Ready-made funnels

Pricing Plans

You can get started with Kajabi’s 14-day free trial. There are four paid plans to choose from depending on your needs, and all of them have 0% transaction fees.

The Kickstarter plan costs $69/month. It has all the basic features but limits you to 1 website, 1 product, 1 funnel, 50 landing pages, 50 active customers, 250 contacts, and 1,250 marketing emails.
The Basic plan costs $149/month. It has everything on Kickstarter plus unlimited landing pages and marketing emails, 3 products, 3 funnels, 10k contacts, and 1k active customers.
The Growth plan costs $199/month. It has everything on Basic but higher limits: 15 products, 15 funnels, 25k contacts, and 10k customers. It also unlocks extra features, including advanced automation, affiliate programs, custom branding, and 24/7 support.
The Pro plan is the top tier and costs $399/month. It has the highest usage limits: 100 products & funnels, 100k contacts, 20k active customers, and 3 websites. Pro users also have access to the custom code editor.

Enterprises that need higher limits and other features can also contact sales for a custom pricing plan that can be tailored to your needs.

Summary

Kajabi might be a good choice if you’re primarily interested in selling courses and you consider communities more of an add-on to your course product.

It has a lot of great features to help you keep learners engaged, and it’s one of the few platforms I’ve tried that offers video hosting. However, its community feature isn’t the best.

Check Out Kajabi

LearnWorlds

LearnWorlds is another good choice for learning-based communities. It’s a lightweight LMS that allows you to build and host your own online academy, complete with educational courses and a Facebook Groups-like community page.

My favorite thing about LearnWorlds is how interactive it is. When building your courses and adding lessons, you can include interactive learning activities like assignments, quizzes, learning diaries, etc.

You can create and upload interactive videos, too, by adding things like navigational buttons, clickable hot spots, and multiple-choice quizzes that appear inside the video player itself. Then you can change the flow of videos according to the buttons/answers learners click to gamify the experience and keep them engaged.

That said, the community section of your LearnWorlds school is pretty basic. Learners can share posts, images, polls, and other content. Plus, comment on posts from other users and interact through follows and @mentions—but there’s not much more to it than that.

Highlight Features

Learning management system
Interactive course & video player
Learning-based communities
Rich assessment options
Websites & landing pages
Live classes and webinars
White labeling

Pricing Plans

You can try LearnWorlds out with a 30-day trial. There are four different plans to choose from, and you can save money with introductory and yearly discounts.

The Starter plan costs $29/month plus a transaction fee of $5 on each course sale. You only get basic features, including unlimited paid courses, exams and quizzes, and a 3-page website.
The Pro Trainer plan costs $99/month with no additional fees on course sales. It comes with all the Starter features plus unlimited free courses, a customizable course player, live classes & webinars, unlimited website pages, subscriptions and memberships (essential for communities), and more.
The Learning Center plan costs $299/month and has everything you get on Pro, plus even more advanced features. These include interactive videos, advanced assessments, the option to remove LearnWorlds branding, etc.
The Learning Center + Mobile App plan costs $598/month. It’s the highest pricing tier and gives you all features, including native apps for iOS & and Android.

LearnWorlds is like Kajabi in that it’s more of an online course platform than a community platform, with a fantastic course player and tons of neat features to engage learners, but only basic community features.

I’d only recommend it to entrepreneurs who want to build a simple community space around their online course where learners can ask questions and share their knowledge.

Check Out LearnWorlds

Thinkific

Thinkific is another platform targeted at eLearning businesses. You can use it to create and sell knowledge products like courses, coaching, live events, and digital downloads. And to build, host, and monetize online communities.

I like how easy Thinkific is to use. AI-powered tools do the heavy lifting for you, helping you to get your community site and products ready quickly so you can focus on recruiting members and making sales.

It doesn’t offer video hosting, unfortunately, so you’ll have to embed them from third-party sites like YouTube or Vimeo if you plan to use video content in your courses or community posts.

The Free plan lets you build 1 community and 1 course with unlimited students, but you can only have up to two spaces per community. If that’s not enough, paid plans are pretty affordable.

Highlight Features

Integrated courses & communities
Flexible community spaces
Member profiles and mentions
Host live events
In-app push notifications for members
Communities analytics dashboards
Monetization options
Community moderator roles

Pricing Plans

Thinkific offers a free trial plan and five paid plans:

Basic costs $49/month. It includes unlimited courses and 1 community, plus basic features.
Start costs $99/month. It has everything on basic plus up to 10 spaces in your community and 1 administrator. You also get a few more features.
Grow costs $199/month. It has everything on Start plus 3 communities with up to 20 spaces each, 2 administrators, and unlimited students (and more features)
Expand costs $499/month. It comes with everything on Grow plus 10 communities and unlimited spaces per community (plus additional features).
Plus is a custom solution so you’ll need to contact Thinkific for a quote. It’s designed to meet the needs of enterprises.

Summary

Thinkific’s free trial plan is perfect for users who want to build a learning-based community but don’t have the budget to invest in a paid solution yet.

It’s also very easy to use, which makes it a good choice for beginners. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t offer native video hosting. And it’s missing a few other features that could take it to the next level, like community leaderboards.

Check Out Thinkific

Podia

Podia is a popular website builder and ecommerce platform built for creators.

You can use it to build a website for free in a matter of minutes—no code necessary. Then, create and sell courses, communities, and other products through your site.

Podia handles hosting, payments, and all the technical stuff so you can focus on what matters, like growing your community.

While I like the fact that Podia offers a free plan and a super affordable Starter plan, its transaction fees are a little high. You’ll pay between 5% and 10% on every sale you make unless you sign up for their Shaker plan, which is pricey.

Highlight Features

Drag-and-drop website builder & themes
Gated community spaces
Email marketing tools
Online course creation and hosting
Sell digital downloads, coaching, and webinars
Affiliate marketing system

Pricing Plans

Podia offers four plans with different features, fees, and limits. You can save up to 55% if you pay yearly.

The Free plan doesn’t cost anything, but you’ll pay a 10% fee per sale. You’re limited to 1 coaching product, 1 download, and basic features. And your site will be hosted on Podia’s domain.
The Starter plan costs $9/month plus an 8% fee per sale. It offers everything on the Free plan but also lets you connect your site to a custom domain and unlocks chat support.
The Mover plan costs $39/month plus 5% transaction fees. It comes with everything on Starter plus unlimited downloads, coaching, courses, webinars, and product bundles. Mover users can use third-party code.
The Shaker plan costs $89/month (first-year pricing) and has no transaction fees. It has everything on the Mover plan plus a built-in affiliate system.

Summary

Podia is another good choice for beginners on account of how affordable and easy to use it is. And its free plan is great when you’re just starting out.

However, I’m disappointed by its hefty transaction fees. If you made $1,000 worth of sales in a month on the Starter plan, you’d pay $80 in transaction fees—that’s almost 10x the monthly subscription fee. Not good.

Check Out Podia

Uscreen

Uscreen is an all-in-one platform that creators can use to build their own gated, members-only Netflix-style library of video content and then sell memberships that provide access to that content to earn recurring subscription revenues.

The Community feature is more of an add-on to that than a core part of the product. With it, when members subscribe to get access to your video content, they also get access to your white-labeled community space where they can connect and chat. This helps to keep users engaged, improve retention, and drive member-led growth.

What’s cool about Uscreen is it also lets you create your own branded mobile and TV apps, so your community members can log in, watch videos, and chat on all their devices.

My main issue with Uscreen is the price. Its starting price ($199/month) is already higher than most of the other platforms on this list.

And you only get access to the Community feature on the Pro plan and above, which is even more expensive at $599/month. Plus, you also pay $1.49 per paid member on top of that, which seems a little unfair and, dare I say, greedy by Uscreen.

If you don’t want to create your own VOD platform like Netflix and you just want to create an online community, then it’s hard to justify that price tag.

Highlight Features

Create your own subscription-based video-on-demand service (like Netflix)
Add a Community so your customers/members can interact
Build your own branded apps for mobile and TV
Set your own prices with flexible monetization & billing options
Schedule and share posts with your community
Host live streams

Pricing Plans

You can try Uscreen free for 14 days. After that, you’ll need to sign up for one of the paid plans. You can save up to 20% if you pay annually.

The Growth plan costs $199 + $1.99 per paid member per month. It comes with a Netflix-style video catalog, up to 1 hour of live streaming, 1 admin user, and 100 hours of video storage but unfortunately, no Community feature.
The Pro plan costs $599 + $1.49 per paid member per month. It has everything on Growth but higher limits: up to 10 hours of live streaming, 150 hours of video storage, and 3 admin users. It also gives you access to the Community feature and other benefits.
The Plus plan offers custom pricing, so you’ll need to contact Uscreen for a quote. It offers everything in Pro plus full-featured mobile and TV streaming apps, custom branding, API access, and more.

Summary

Uscreen has a pretty niche use case. It’s perfect for YouTubers and video producers who want to create their own Netflix-style video membership site, and its community features are a nice add-on to that.

However, if you just want to create a community space and you’re not interested in building a gated video library, it wouldn’t make much sense to use Uscreen.

Swarm

Swarm has a really interesting USP that makes it stand out from other community platforms.

While most other community platforms only facilitate text-based communications between members (like direct messages, posts/threads, comments, etc.), Swarm lets them chat through bite-sized videos, screen shares, and voice notes.

This provides a more ‘in-person’ feel for members and helps foster deeper connections, which keeps your community active and engaged. After all, if you can see someone’s face and hear their voice, you’re more likely to become closer friends than if you were chatting exclusively over text.

Swarm’s interface is pretty great, too, and I like the fact that you can white-label Swarm and get your own branded apps for Desktop, iOS, and Android.

Highlight Features

Video-based online community spaces
Group and 1:1 chat rooms
Interactive videos
Direct message community members
Multimedia file sharing
Visual community threads
Live streaming
Member Directory
AI features
White labeling

Pricing Plans

Swarm offers 4 pricing plans and a 14-day free trial. Discounts are available when you pay annually.

The Novice plan costs $49/month. It comes with all the core features, 1 space, 25 members, and a 2-minute video limit.
The Pro plan costs $99/month. It comes with 5 spaces, 50 members per space, and up to 45 minutes of live streams.
The Expert plan costs $199/month. It comes with unlimited community spaces, 150 members per space, and up to 1 hour of live streams. It’s also fully white-label, provides API access, and lets you create your own branded mobile app.
The Elite plan costs $399/month. It comes with everything on Expert plus unlimited spaces and members, a dedicated success coach, concierge setup & onboarding, priority support, and more.

Summary

Swarm is one of the most unique community platforms I’ve tried, and I find its video-first approach to communities super interesting. That said, I’m not convinced it’s the right community platform for everyone.

A lot of users still prefer text over video conversations, so it doesn’t have wide appeal. Depending on your intended use case, it might be a little too niche.

Disco

Disco calls itself an ‘AI-powered social learning’ platform, and that’s exactly what it is.

It gives everything you need to build, host, and manage online courses and learning-based communities. And it offers powerful AI tools to save you time and automate all sorts of tasks along the way.

For example, you can use Disco’s AI to generate course outlines, images, messages, lessons, community posts, etc., in a couple of clicks. There’s also a GPT-like chatbot where you can ask questions and prompt the AI to do anything you need.

Highlight Features

Community discussion boards
Self-paced and cohort-based courses
AI assistant & chatbot
Community leaderboards
Mobile apps for iOS and AndAndroidst online events
Direct messages
Deep analytics

Pricing Plans

You can get started with Disco’s 14-day free trial. Then, choose from one of two plans.

The Organization plan costs $449/month (or $359/month if billed annually). It comes with 1 community, up to 1k members, 10 admins, 50 learning products, 100 automations, and 100 hours/month of video storage.
The Enterprise plan is a custom solution that’s priced according to your needs. You can set your limits, and you get access to more features, configuration options, and support.

Summary

Disco is a powerful platform with some great features, like leaderboards, branded mobile apps, well-organized community discussion boards, and a fantastic AI assistant.

However, it’s also very expensive. Its starting price is much higher than most other platforms, and given that it doesn’t come with unlimited members and only 1 community space, I’m not convinced that it offers enough bang for your buck.

Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups is a good choice if you’re looking for a free platform to host your community. And because pretty much everyone already has a Facebook account, a lot of your members will probably feel more comfortable there than on any other platform.

However, that’s where the benefits end. I wouldn’t recommend Facebook Groups to most people because there are just too many major drawbacks.

For one, you have pretty much no control over anything as the community host. You can’t customize the way your group looks or set up organized discussion boards. You can’t charge for memberships. And you don’t own your audience or data—Facebook does.

Facebook Groups is also problematic from an engagement and retention standpoint. It’s riddled with ads, notifications, and other distractions that can disengage members, which is not good.

Still, if you’re strapped for cash and don’t want to pay to build and manage a community, Facebook Groups is probably going to be your best option.

Highlight Features

Free platform to host your community
Members can interact through posts and comments in the group feed
You can set pinned posts
Groups can be discovered through Facebook search

Pricing Plans

It’s free to use Facebook Groups. There are no subscription or transaction fees whatsoever.

Summary

I’d only recommend using Facebook Groups if you can’t afford a paid community platform. It’s full of ads and distractions, and you have very little control or ownership as the group owner.

If you do use it, I’d suggest migrating your community over to an ad-free platform you own as soon as possible.

Slack

Slack is best known as a workplace communication and productivity tool. It’s mostly used by businesses that want to bring their remote team together in one virtual space.

However, it shares a lot of features with regular community platforms, so you could use it to host an online community, too.

Slack boards are organized into channels where your team or community members can send messages, share files, chat, and work. There are built-in live streaming and screen-sharing features. And you can integrate lots of different apps and tools to automate various tasks.

The free plan is a good way to try it out, but it’s limited, and posts are removed after a few months. Paid plans are charged per active user, so it can get expensive for large communities.

Highlight Features

Organized discussion boards and channels
Text, video, and audio posts
File sharing
Live video meetings and screen sharing
Automation features
Apps can extend its functionality

Pricing Plans

Slack offers a few different plans. Remember to keep in mind that you pay per active user.

The Free plan is the easiest way to try it out. It offers basic features, 1 workspace, and 90 days of message history.
The Pro plan costs $8.75/user/month and comes with everything you get on the free plan, plus unlimited message history & app integrations, group audio/video meetings, group messages, and document collaboration.
The Business+ plan costs $15/user/month and offers everything on Pro plus user provisioning & de-provisioning, SSO, data exports, and more.
The Enterprise Grid plan is a custom solution, so you’ll need to contact sales for a quote. It comes with unlimited workspaces and extra features like data backups and a built-in employee directory.

Summary

Slack’s biggest drawback is the way pricing works.

Because you pay per user, it gets more expensive the larger your community grows. If you manage to reach hundreds of members, you could potentially be paying thousands of dollars in subscription fees.

Also, while it does have some useful community features, it’s still a workplace productivity tool, first and foremost.

Hivebrite

Hivebrite is one of the most powerful and flexible community engagement platforms on the market. It’s built for enterprises and educational institutions—the kind of users that need market-leading features, unparalleled flexibility, and more control.

Because Hivebrite is built for big businesses with big budgets, it has an eye-watering price tag. Plans start from $799/month, which puts it out of reach of most entrepreneurs, SMBs, and startups—and that’s why I couldn’t include it in my top 3 picks.

That said, if cost isn’t an issue, and depending on your needs, it could be a good fit. I’d suggest booking a demo with Hivebrite to find out more, as it’s the kind of platform you’ll really need to try out before you sign up.

Highlight Features

Customizable and brandable communities
Direct messaging
Events
Analytics and reporting
User directory and map
Resource libraries
Comprehensive support
Custom landing pages
Member profiles
Engagement features
Community monetization options

Pricing Plans

Hivebrite offers three plans.

The Connect plan starts from $799/month when billed annually and includes all the core community features.
The Scale plan requires you to contact Hivebrite for a quote. It includes extra features that growing organizations need to scale up, like group admins & custom permissions, custom user access, and additional membership options.
The Enterprise plan offers bespoke pricing based on your needs. It comes with a full suite of community management features, advanced onboarding, specialized support, and more.

Summary

Hivebrite is an incredibly powerful and flexible platform, so it’s a good choice for enterprises that need more control and advanced features. However, I couldn’t recommend it to entrepreneurs, startups, or small businesses on account of its eye-watering price tag.

Disciple

These days, mobile is king—it seems like hardly anyone uses the internet on their desktop anymore. So, if you want to build a community that members access on their smartphones, Disciple is a great choice.

Its no-code app builder lets you create your own fully-branded mobile and web app without the need to hire a developer. Your community members can use that app to access your community, courses, and content in one place.

Everything is fully customizable and brandable, and you should be able to launch on the Apple and Google Play stores in just four weeks.

Highlight Features

Create and launch your own community-based mobile app
Build and share course content with members
Live stream to your community
Private and group messaging
Scheduled posts
Integrations with marketing and CRM tools

Pricing Plans

Disciple offers several pricing plans, which you can customize with add-ons.

The Grow plan costs $729/month when paid annually and is good for up to 500 members. It comes with the core features.
The Pro plan costs $1,167/month when paid annually and lets you have up to 5,000 members. It’s fully white-label and offers advanced features, integrations, and analytics.
Enterprise is a fully custom plan that can be tailored to your needs. You’ll need to contact Disciple for a quote.

Summary

Disciple might be the best choice if you want to tap into the mobile market, as it’s one of the only platforms that’s designed specifically for creating community iOS and Android apps.

However, it’s very expensive, and the 500-member limit on the Grow plan puts a ceiling on your growth potential.

Discord

Discord is a free-to-use social platform that offers instant messaging and VoIP. It’s big in the online gaming world—a lot of gamers use it to chill with their friends as they play. So, if that’s your target audience, it could be a great option.

Communities on Discord take the form of ‘servers.’ Anyone can sign up and create their own server, which other users can then request to join. You can organize your server by setting up different voice and text channels, and members can hop in and out of those group voice or text chats as needed.

I can see Discord being fantastic for YouTubers and live streamers who play video games. But outside of that niche, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s certainly not professional enough for brand or B2B communities.

Highlight Features

Free community spaces
Create your own Discord server
Customizable voice and text channels
Emojis, stickers, and soundboard effects
Personalized member avatars and statuses
High-quality, low-latency streaming
Play games and watch videos in group chats
Downloadable PC and mobile apps

Pricing Plans

Discord is free to use.

However, you can upgrade your account with a Nitro subscription to get extra features and perks like higher upload limits, custom emojis, unlimited super reactions, HD streaming, server boosts, and custom profiles.

Summary

A lot of influencers and creators in the gaming space use Discord to host their communities, and I can see why.

It’s already very popular in that niche, and it has some neat features like member statuses that tell you what games each user is currently playing, and notifications that tell members when you start live streaming.

However, it doesn’t look very ‘professional,’ so it’s probably not the best choice for more ‘serious’ communities like learning-based communities and employee networks.

Discourse

Discourse is different from the other platforms we’ve looked at in that it’s the only one that’s fully open-source. That means that any member of the public can access the codebase and use it for free through GitHub.

The upside of this is that there are no subscription fees, and you have complete control over everything (plus, you retain full ownership of your data).

The downside is that it’s a little more hard work to get set up. You’ll need to install/integrate/configure it yourself, which will be difficult if you’re not a developer. And you’ll also need to pay for hosting to get your community online.

The easiest way to solve that problem is to pay for one of Discourse’s paid plans. If you do that, they’ll handle hosting and the technical stuff for you, but it’s not quite as good value as some of the other options on this list in my opinion.

So, in that case, you’re probably still better off going with one of the all-in-one or dedicated community platforms like HighLevel or Skool.

Highlight Features

Free, open-source community software
Hosted plans available
Best-in-class moderation tools
Integrated chat and long-form discussions
Unlimited conversation history
Retail full data ownership
AI tools

Pricing Plans

You can install Discourse’s open-source forum software for free on GitHub, but you’ll need to pay for your hosting separately.

Alternatively, you can sign up for one of Discourse’s managed hosting plans:

Basic costs $50/month and is limited to 100 members, 5 staff, 50k monthly page views, and a discourse. group domain.
Standard costs $100/month and includes everything on Basic, plus unlimited members, up to 100k monthly pageviews, and custom domains & themes.
Business costs $300/month and includes everything on Standard plus up to 15 staff, 50k monthly page views, priority support, and migration services.
Enterprise is a customizable plan. You can have up to 3M+ monthly pageviews, unlimited members and staff, and more, but you’ll need to contact sales for a quote.

Summary

If you want to self-host your community, there’s no better option than Discourse’s open-source software. But if you’re looking for a fully hosted, done-for-you community platform, I think there are better options out there.

Bettermode (Tribe)

Bettermode is a feature-rich engagement platform that you can use to make all types of community sites: social networks, discussion forums, member clubs, media-sharing sites, job boards/directories, etc.

Its standout feature is its template catalog. There are over 100 professionally-designed templates for different types of community ‘spaces.’

For example, want to start a developer community? Use the DevApp template. How about a professional networking space? Try the Collide or CreativeHub templates.

All templates are fully editable, so you can customize your spaces precisely to your needs. You also have full control over things like how engagements work, content moderation, member onboarding, etc.

Highlight Features

Easy-to-use website builder
Catalog of community space templates
Content moderation
Post reactions
App Store to extend your community website’s functionality
Developer Portal

Pricing Plans

Bettermode has four plans, and you can get 20% off with yearly billing.

The Free plan doesn’t cost anything, but you’re stuck with a Bettermode.io domain, and you’re limited to 10 members and 5 spaces.
The Lite plan costs $24/month. You get unlimited members, 10 spaces, 3 collaborators, and 5GB storage, plus the option to connect a custom domain.
The Pro plan costs $59/month. It comes with everything on Lite plus up to 20 spaces, 5 collaborators, and 25GB of storage.
The Business plan costs $119/month. It comes with everything on Pro plus up to 30 spaces, 10 collaborators, and 100 GB storage. Business users also get priority support.

Enterprises with additional requirements can contact Bettermode for a custom quote based on their needs.

Summary

Bettermode is another good choice for beginners thanks to its large selection of done-for-you community templates and intuitive site builder. It offers pretty good value for money, too, with a solid free plan and affordable paid plans that let you have unlimited members.

Patreon

Pa t reon is one of the most popular monetization platforms for creators like YouTubers, streamers, and podcasters.

It allows fans to support their favorite creators by becoming patrons and pledging recurring monthly donations. In return, creators can set up membership tiers that reward patrons with exclusive perks, e.g. early access to new content, exclusive content, monthly postcards, etc.

Patreon also provides a community space where creators and their patrons can interact through posts, comments, and private messages.

The main downside is that Patreon will take a cut of your donations. They keep 8-12% of your pledges, depending on the plan you sign up for.

Highlight Features

Customizable membership tiers
Patron-only community spaces
Share exclusive content with your community members
Real-time group chats, comments, and DMs
Deep analytics and insights
Sell products directly to your community

Pricing Plans

It’s free to start a Patreon—you only pay based on what you earn. The amount you pay depends on the plan you sign up for.

Pro users pay 8% of the income they earn on Patreon and get access to all the core features: membership tiers, engagement tools, analytics/insights, etc.
Premium users pay 12% of the income they earn on Patreon. They get everything on Pro plus a dedicated partner manager, team accounts, and the ability to offer merch for memberships.

Summary

Patreon is a good place to build your community if you’re just starting out and don’t want to pay anything upfront, as there are no subscription fees.

However, be warned: As your community grows, you’ll end up losing a big chunk of your revenues in transaction fees.

Conclusion

That concludes our roundup of the best online community platforms of 2025. Let’s recap.

If you’re looking for a dedicated community platform, you can’t go wrong with Skool—it’s my top pick for most users. Alternatively, Circle and Mighty Networks are the next best thing.

But if you’re looking for an all-in-one platform that comes with community-building features (as well as all the other tools you need to grow your online business), then I’d suggest HighLevel or Kajabi.

Speaking of all-in-one platforms, don’t forget to check out our roundup of the best AIO marketing platforms while you’re here. You might also be interested in our comparison of the best online course platforms of the year.

Good luck!