Skool Review: Is This The Best Community Platform?

Welcome to my Skool review.

Skool is an online course and community platform that has recently been making waves in the eLearning space.

I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so I tried it out. I made my own group and joined some existing groups to evaluate it from both perspectives—as a member and as an admin.

In this honest review, I’ll be sharing everything I learned. I’ll discuss what Skool is, how it works, and who it’s good for, and tell you all about its features, pricing, and more. 

Plus, I’ll also share my take on its biggest pros and cons and how I think it compares to other similar platforms.

Ready? Let’s get started

Skool Review at a Glance

In case you’re short on time, here’s a quick overview of the key takeaways of this review.

What Is Skool?

Skool is an all-in-one online community platform that facilitates interactive learning. You can use it to manage your online courses, events, and communities in one place.

Before Skool, knowledge entrepreneurs had to rely on lots of different tools to manage their online businesses. For example, they might use Teachable or Thinkific for course building, Facebook Groups or Patreon for community building, Zoom for webinars and other events, etc. 

But with Skool, you get all that in one place.

The idea behind the platform was to make learning fun by blending community and courses together. Because people don’t often enjoy sitting on their own reading through a bunch of online lessons, but they do like hanging out with other people who share their interests. 

This is no doubt part of the reason why Skool has been so successful. It was launched in 2019 by entrepreneur Sam Ovens and was recently bought out by Alex Hormozi. Since then, it’s grown rapidly and now hosts hundreds of community spaces with thousands of members.

How It Works

If you plan to build your own community on Skool, you’ll first need to sign up for their paid plan (we’ll discuss pricing later).

Then, you’ll be able to create one group. It’s up to you whether you want to allow users to join your group for free or charge a monthly membership fee. 

Skool pays out your balance every Wednesday. However, transactions can take up to 14 days to settle. So, realistically, you can be waiting a couple of weeks to get paid. You’ll be paid directly to your bank account via Stripe.

Once members join your group, they’ll be able to interact in a forum-style online discussion space. This is set up a lot like Facebook Groups but ad-free.

Within your group, you can also build online courses for members. Again, you can make these available for free or lock modules behind a subscription paywall so only paying members can access them. 

There are a few other things you can set up in your group too. We’ll discuss these in more detail when we get into the features.

Who Should Use Skool?

Anyone who wants to create or join an ad-free community space where people can hang out and learn should use Skool.

But it’s particularly popular for:

• YouTubers
• Streamers
• Social media influencers
• Coaches
• Educators
• Business owners

Skool Review: Key Features

When you join or create a group on Skool, you’ll be brought to the group dashboard. From the navigation bar at the top, you can access all of Skool’s key features. Let’s take a look at each of them.

Communities

The Community tab is where you and your group members interact. It’s set up like most internet forums, with a running list of posts/threads, which you can click to open up the comments.

All members can create posts (threads) to start group discussions about anything. In posts, you can add multimedia content like photos, videos, GIFs, polls, and more.

Other members can then engage with posts by liking them or replying with a comment. Plus, engage with each other through direct messages and @mentions.

To keep your Skool community space organized, you can set up discussion categories. For example, you might have a space for introductions, a space for questions, a space for small talk, etc. You do this through your group settings page.

Classroom

The Classroom tab is where members can access your course content. It’s also where group admins can access the native online course creation tool.

To get started, click Add new course, and give your course a name and a description. Then, choose who can access it. You can either make it free or limit access to specific members (e.g. those that have reached a certain level).

From there, you can build out your course by adding lesson sets and modules. Within each module, you can add all sorts of content like videos, resource links, transcripts, text, images, etc. However, it doesn’t offer native video hosting so you’ll have to embed them from a site like YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia instead.

The course player itself is really nice. It’s distraction-free with a simple, clean interface. And I like how it has a progress bar to show members how close they are to course completion.

Calendar (Events)

The Calendar tab is where you list and view upcoming events. For example, webinars and live Q&As.

As with courses, you can choose who can attend your events when you set them up on the calendar, e.g. all members or only members in a certain course/at a certain level.

If you want, you can also set up recurring events if you plan on running them on the same day/time every month.

Members

All Skool members have their own profile page, which shows basic details like when they joined and their status (online, offline, etc.).

It also shows their current level (we’ll talk more about what levels are next), the groups they’re a member of, and their daily activity chart (a visual display of all their activity over the last year).

Members can click on any other member’s name to visit their profile, follow them, and chat with them.

You can also see a full list of all the people in the group from the Members tab. Plus, invite new members, export your data, and more.

Leaderboards

One of Skool’s biggest strengths is its focus on gamification. 

Members can earn points by completing tasks and course content, and by getting likes on their community posts. And as they collect points, they ‘level up.’

As the course leader, you get to name your levels and choose what perks members get when they reach them. For example, you could unlock exclusive course content at level 5, and again at level 7, and so on.

What’s more, all members can view the Leaderboards tab to see who’s earned the most points that week, month, or overall. This fosters a healthy sense of competition that helps to keep group members engaged and active.

Email

Another cool thing you can do as group admin is send out an email broadcast to all group members when you make a new post. Just click the Send email to all members button at the bottom.

This is useful when you have an important update to share, and you want to make sure as many people see it as possible.

However, you can only send emails on Skool once every 72 hours, so it’s no alternative to a dedicated email marketing tool. But it is useful for one-off broadcasts.

Plugins

On your settings page, you can activate a bunch of plugins to extend the functionality of your group.

For example, there’s a plugin that lets you send out DMs to new group members automatically, and another that asks members questions when they request to join—both are super useful. You can also install Meta pixel tracking if you plan to run retargeted ads in the future.

Analytics

In the Metrics tab on your settings page, you can see a few useful insights about your group.

Charts and graphs show you how your total and active members have changed over time, as well as your group members’ daily activity (useful for identifying peak times).

Skool Pricing

Skool’s pricing is super straightforward.

There’s just one plan, and it includes everything—all the features, unlimited courses, and unlimited members.

It costs $99/month for 1 group, but you’ll also be charged a 2.9% transaction fee per sale.

Unfortunately, there is no free plan, but you can try Skool out with a 14-day free trial.

For a more detailed breakdown, check out our complete guide to Skool’s pricing.

Skool Review: Pros and Cons

Now that we’ve looked at how Skool works and all of its key features, let’s discuss its pros and cons. Here’s what I liked and didn’t like about it.

Skool Pros

• Distraction and ad-free experience. Unlike competitors like Facebook Groups, there are no ads on Skool. This keeps it free of distractions so learners can stay focused on your course content.
• Easy to use (for creators & community members). Regardless of whether you’re a group admin or member, you should find Skool a breeze to use. The interface is fantastic.
• Deliver courses in a more community-based way. Unlike a lot of other online course platforms, Skool takes a community-first approach to learning, which helps foster community engagement and improve educational outcomes.
• Gamifies the learning experience. My favorite thing about Skool is the way it gamifies everything. Leaderboards, points, and levels give members something to work towards and keep them engaged.
• Straightforward pricing. I like that Skool doesn’t do any feature gating. There’s just one plan and it comes with everything.

Skool Cons

• Only supports subscription billing. With Skool, you can’t charge a one-off flat rate for your course like you can on other platforms. You only have two options: Make it free or charge a recurring monthly membership fee.
• Can’t sell add-on products. It would be nice to be able to upsell additional products on Skool, but sadly, it doesn’t have that feature. You’d need to move members off the platform to a third-party site/store to sell them add-on products.
• Can only create one community per subscription. Skool’s plan only includes one group. So, if you wanted to set up two separate communities, you’d need to sign up for two separate plans and pay double.
• No course assessment tools. Unlike Teachable, Thinkific, and other online course platforms, Skool doesn’t give you any way to implement assessments and course grading.
• Few marketing and sales tools. Skool provides shareable links that you can use to promote your course, but not much more than that. There’s no way to set up discounts, build sales funnels, set up lead magnets, etc.

Skool Review: Final Verdict

That concludes my in-depth Skool review.

Overall, I was impressed by Skool. I really like its community-first approach to delivering online courses and its distraction-free interface. And the leaderboards feature is fantastic.

On the flip side, it’s not quite as flexible as other dedicated online course platforms when it comes to setting pricing, and it definitely has some limitations.

I’d suggest checking it out for yourself by signing up for the free 14-day trial. And if you don’t like it, you can cancel before you’re billed.

Still have questions? Check out the FAQs below. And don’t forget to explore some of our other posts while you’re here.

Skool FAQs

Is Skool Worth It?

That depends on how you ask. But personally, I’d say yes, Skool is worth the cost. If you charge a $99 membership for your Skool course, it’d only take one sale to pretty much cover the cost. And there are lots of groups on Skool with thousands of paying members.

Does Skool Take a Percentage? 

Yes, Skool charges 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, so factor that in when considering the costs.

Is Skool Free for Students?

Yes, it’s free for students to sign up for Skool. However, group admins control their own membership prices, so you may need to pay to join any given Skool group.

Skool Alternatives

Skool is by no means the only option in the online course platform market—there are lots of alternatives that might be a better fit, depending on your needs. Here’s how they compare.

Kajabi

Kajabi is our top pick for the best all-in-one online course platform of 2024. Like Skool, you can use it to build and sell online courses and community memberships. 

However, it offers a deeper course feature set, with assessment options like quizzes and rewards like certificates (two things you don’t get on Skool). It also offers better sales and marketing tools, including landing pages, funnels, and marketing emails.

Kajabi also recently added a Community feature, and it’s every bit as good as Skool’s. Members can share posts and comments, and chat with each other in real-time. Plus, take part in challenges and live calls, and see where they stand in the community leaderboards.

Read our full Kajabi review.

GoHighLevel

GoHighLevel is an all-in-one marketing and sales platform that you can use to create your own membership website, host free and paid communities, and sell online courses.

It’s incredibly feature-rich and has literally everything you need to manage your entire online business in one place.

That includes a lot of features you don’t get with Skool, like a landing page builder, surveys and forms, lead nurturing (SMS, email, etc.), appointment booking, pipeline management, etc.

Given how much you get with GoHighLevel, it’s fantastic value for money. It’s also a great choice for agencies as you can white-label the application to add your own branding.

Read more about GoHighLevel.

Patreon

Patreon is a monetization platform built for content creators. You can use it to build online communities, much like Skool, which your audience can join in exchange for a monthly donation.

Unlike Skool, Patreon lets you set up multiple subscription tiers with different perks. However, it takes a larger chunk of your sales revenue in transaction fees.

Discord

Discord is a popular instant messaging platform where creators can build communities around their content. 

It’s free to use, which is great, but it isn’t as feature-rich as Skool. It’s mainly just a place for members to hang out and chat and doesn’t include features like course hosting and events.