Best Social Network Software

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.

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.

Vanilla Forums was an independent customer community and forum platform, including an open source version still available on GitHub, before being acquired by Higher Logic. The vanillaforums.com domain now redirects entirely to Higher Logic's Vanilla product pages, and the platform is marketed and sold as Higher Logic Vanilla with the same commercial pricing tiers as the rest of the Higher Logic portfolio.

The product is built around Q&A style discussions for support, knowledge sharing and product feedback communities, with AI powered search, content recommendations and moderation. It supports multiple brands, sub communities and languages from a single instance, plus integrations with tools like Zendesk and Salesforce and deep filtering and reporting for community managers.

phpBB is free and open source forum software released under the GNU General Public License, meaning there is no license fee to download, install or run it. It supports multiple database engines including MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, SQLite and Oracle, offers hierarchical subforums, topic split, merge and lock tools, user groups and permissions, and full text search, and can be extended through a marketplace of community built extensions and styles.

Because phpBB is self hosted, the only real cost is web hosting, which typically ranges from a few dollars to around twenty dollars a month for shared or VPS plans, or more for larger managed or cloud hosting. The software is UTF-8 based for multilingual communities and includes mobile friendly responsive templates out of the box.

Guild was a mobile first messaging and community platform built for professional groups, associations and networks, positioned as a private, ad free alternative to running a community inside Facebook Groups or WhatsApp. It offered professional profiles, threaded private messaging, polls, event listings, video rooms and custom branding for community organizers, and was GDPR compliant with no advertising model.

Guild officially closed on October 1, 2024, according to the company's own announcement, after operating with over 6,000 groups and more than 120,000 users at its peak. The guild.co domain still displays a closure notice and historical information but is no longer selling or supporting the platform, so it should be treated as discontinued rather than currently available.

Heartbeat is a community platform built for creators, coaches and community businesses, combining channels, live audio and video rooms, direct messages and a member directory with evergreen or cohort based courses, events and native payments. It does not charge per member and includes unlimited courses, digital downloads, chats and automated workflows on every plan.

Heartbeat's official pricing page lists three tiers: Build at $49 per month for up to 350 members, Grow at $149 per month for up to 5,000 members with API access, and Scale at $849 per month for unlimited members with a branded mobile app, each with a lower payment processing fee at higher tiers. A 14 day free trial is offered with no credit card required.

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.

Crowdstack Pro is a hosted online community platform built for brands, nonprofits, associations and publishers who want an on site community they fully own rather than a Facebook Group. It combines forums, blogs, status style updates called pips, chat rooms, events, calendars and private messaging, with automation rules for onboarding, moderation and inactive member outreach.

Crowdstack uses flat fee pricing with unlimited members, page views, bandwidth and storage on every plan rather than charging by usage. Its official pricing page lists Midstack at $999 per month and Fullstack at $1,499 per month, both with two months free on annual billing, plus a custom quoted Fullstack Enterprise tier that adds international data center choices and a service level agreement.

Zapnito is a B2B community and knowledge platform designed around customer education, letting brands build branded expert hubs where content, discussions, courses and events live alongside member profiles. It emphasizes a video first, Netflix style content experience with user led Q&A, personalized content recommendations and recognition or gamification features to encourage top contributors.

Zapnito's official pricing page lists Essential and Premium tiers billed annually with prices available only on request, differing mainly in admin seats and registered user limits, plus a fully bespoke Enterprise tier. A free trial is offered without requiring credit card details up front, though exact figures are not publicly disclosed.