Best Community Platforms and Solutions

Mighty Networks is an all-in-one platform for building branded online communities that combine discussions, courses, events, and paid memberships in one place. Hosts can organize members into spaces, run live streaming sessions, sell cohort based courses, and reward participation with built in gamification. The platform is used by creators, coaches, and brands who want to own their audience instead of relying on social media feeds.

Plans range from the Launch tier for new communities to Mighty Pro, which adds fully branded native mobile apps and a dedicated migration team. All paid plans include a 14 day free trial and charge a transaction fee on sales that decreases at higher tiers. Scale and above unlock automations, API access, and deeper analytics for growing businesses.

Circle is a community platform that combines discussions, courses, live streams, events and paid memberships into a single branded space. Community owners organize members into spaces for chat, content and events, and can charge for access through subscriptions, one time fees or installment plans in more than 20 currencies. Built in tools include a website builder, member directory, analytics and gamification, positioning it as an alternative to running a community across several disconnected apps.

Pricing starts with the Professional plan and moves up through Business and Circle Plus, with each tier adding automation, API access, AI features and lower transaction fees. All plans include a 14 day free trial and a 30 day money back guarantee, though there is no permanent free plan and email marketing is a separate paid add-on.

Bettermode, formerly known as Tribe, is an all-in-one customer and community engagement platform built for SaaS companies that want a branded space for support, product feedback and discussion. It combines forums, knowledge hubs, messaging, gamification and analytics, and its Design Studio lets teams compose pages with blocks, layouts, colors and typography without writing code. Communities can be organized into public, private or invite-only spaces with collections and tags to keep content structured as it scales.

Pricing runs from the Starter plan up through Growth and Premium, with higher tiers adding AI search, more integrations, API access, single sign-on and enterprise security certifications like SOC 2 and SAML. All paid plans include a 14 day free trial, though there is no permanent free tier.

Discourse is open source forum software used by tech companies and online communities to run long-form discussions alongside real-time chat. It organizes conversations into categories and tags, uses a trust level system to grant experienced members more moderation ability over time, and includes tools like flagging, mute and automatic content filters to help moderators manage large communities. Because it is open source, it can be self-hosted for free on any server that supports Docker.

For teams that prefer managed hosting, Discourse offers a free hosted plan alongside Pro, Business and Enterprise tiers priced by staff seats, storage and monthly page views. Paid plans add custom themes, API access, advanced analytics, automation and AI powered features, with Enterprise adding unlimited staff seats and a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

Hivebrite is a community engagement platform used mainly by alumni networks, associations and membership organizations to manage a branded directory, events, groups and paid memberships in one place. It includes a searchable member directory, event management with RSVP and ticketing, email marketing tools and a fully white-label native mobile app, all customizable without code to match an organization's branding and terminology.

Pricing starts at $895 per month for the Core plan, billed annually, and rises through Flex, Prime and Custom Fit tiers that add group management, autonomous sub-communities and deep customization for larger, more complex organizations. A 1.5% platform commission applies to paid memberships and event tickets on every plan, and there is no published free plan or free trial.

Skool is a hosted community platform that combines a discussion feed, a course area called the Classroom, a calendar for live events, and native payment processing in one simple interface. It is popular with coaches, creators and course sellers who want to run a paid membership without stitching together separate tools for content, community and billing.

The platform is known for its point and level gamification system, which rewards posting, commenting and course completion with visible ranks on a leaderboard. Skool offers unlimited members, courses and video hosting on both of its plans, with iOS and Android apps, a custom URL, and an analytics dashboard for tracking traffic sources.

Higher Logic is an enterprise engagement platform sold under two main product lines: Thrive, built for associations and membership organizations, and Vanilla, built for B2B and B2C customer communities. Both combine discussions, Q&A, content libraries, event management and gamification, with Vanilla adding AI powered search, moderation and multi brand sub community support.

Pricing is not published publicly. Higher Logic Vanilla is sold in Corporate, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus tiers that scale by number of SSO connections, AI language support, automation rules, knowledge bases and support level, all requiring a custom quote from sales. Thrive pricing is likewise quote based and depends on organization size and modules selected.

inSided was an Amsterdam founded customer success community platform combining peer to peer discussions, a knowledge base and product feedback or ideation tools, used to drive product adoption, reduce support tickets and build customer advocacy. Gainsight acquired inSided in 2021, and the product is now marketed as Gainsight Customer Communities, part of Gainsight's broader Digital Hub offering.

The insided.com domain now redirects to a Gainsight owned page. Neither inSided nor Gainsight publishes pricing publicly for Customer Communities; organizations must request a custom quote through a sales demo. The platform integrates with tools such as Zendesk, Salesforce, Mixpanel and Gainsight's core customer success software for a combined view of support and community activity.

Khoros is an enterprise customer engagement platform combining social media management, social listening, unified customer care, and online community software, historically used by large, complex brands to manage conversations at scale. The company's website now redirects to khoros.ai and its footer identifies it as "Powered by IgniteTech," indicating Khoros operates under new ownership following a change in corporate structure.

Khoros does not publish pricing; its modules for care, communities, and social/marketing are quoted individually based on seats, message volume, and community size, typically requiring a sales conversation rather than a self-serve signup. The platform includes AI-assisted tagging, sentiment analysis, and workflow routing aimed at agencies and enterprise support and marketing teams.

Discord is a group communication platform built around voice, video and text channels, originally for gamers and now used by communities of every kind.

Its defining design choice is the absence of the call. People hop in and out of voice or text chats without having to ring anyone or send an invitation, so a conversation persists before, during and after whatever the group is doing. That is a genuinely different social model from every conferencing tool, where a call is an event someone schedules, everyone joins and everyone leaves, and it is why Discord communities feel continuously inhabited rather than periodically convened.

Presence works the same way. Members see who is around, who is playing games and who is just hanging out, and for supported games can see which modes or characters friends are playing and join them directly. Ambient awareness of who is available is what makes spontaneous conversation possible at all.

Streaming is high quality and low latency, described as feeling like being on the same couch, whether playing a game, watching a show, looking at photos or doing homework. Personalisation runs through custom emoji, stickers, soundboard effects, avatars, custom statuses and written profiles, which is how a server develops its own culture rather than looking like every other one. Shared activities include watching videos, playing built in games and listening to music together. Discord is free to use, with an optional paid subscription.