Best Online Community Platforms for 2024
Online communities are in trend these days as people are more interested in the digital world. That’s why more and more online platforms and communities are overtaking offline markets and learning centers.
As a creator, building a new community is the best way to reach the maximum targeted audience. It also helps in reaching new audiences, and gather feedback from users to improve the functionality. This can help you to provide better customer support and even strengthen your brand.
Choosing the right online community platform is a challenging task. So, here we are with basic advice about each platform:
- Facebook Groups: Best for growing audience organically for small communities
- Mighty Networks: Affordable and simple community builder for creators
- Circle: A little bit complicated for beginners but best all-around community builder
- BuddyBoss: Best WordPress-based community plugin
- Kajabi: Clean and intuitive all-in-one platform for creators
Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups are amazing for small communities for free. It is a great platform to ask questions and receive feedback. With its integrated Facebook Live functionality you can easily do live streams. Using the Room function of Facebook Group one can host live video chats with up to 50 people.
But when it comes to larger communities, there are the following flaws:
- Facebook Groups give you absolutely no control over your data which means you don’t own your audience. It means you cannot filter your targeted audience, thereby determining the reach.
- There will be a lot of notifications distractions from other pages and no privacy at all.
- The groups will not show on Google search.
Pricing Details:
Facebook is free to use but there will be a lot of distractions and ads.
From our point of view, Facebook is a very popular and great place for small communities to start, but not a necessarily platform.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks allow creators to build an online community on their website. After registration, you can create and customize your landing page with your own domain. There are various flexible organization tools to make it a better platform.
Best Feature of Mighty Networks is that you can add various things to your landing page including:
- An icebreaker question for new members
- Go live on a livestream
- Can be joined by unlimited members
- Hosting events
- Handy monetization tools
- Create and run courses
- Run premium groups
- Premium analytics called Mighty Insights
- Free IOS and Android applications
Pricing Details
Mighty Networks offers a free 14-day trial to users after that you can purchase any one of the listed below:
- The Community Plan for $33 per month where you get native live streaming and video, chat and messaging, membership events, and Zoom integration on your branded website.
- The Business Plan for $99 per month where you have access to all community plan packages plus Online Course, live Cohort Course Creation, featured pages & events, Analytics and member Data, Zapier APIs and workflows
- Mighty Pro Plan, where you can set the rates by talking to the agents. Under this plan, you will get the Business Plan plus your own iOS & Android apps available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, Branded app notifications, White-labeled web and app experience, Strategy and Migration Services, and support.
Circle:
It is the best community platform due to its flexibility which takes care of everything from design and engagement to monetization and management. It gives you the freedom to organize your community.
Best Features of Circle are listed below:
- You can go live on a live stream in Professional Plan
- Add your own branding in the Professional Plan package
- Allow creation of private and secret groups
- Ability to create a clean and modern design
- Can use a custom domain, create and run courses
- Integrates with other services
- With its advanced community management tools such as Profile fields & tags, workflow, Single sign-on, and Public API it stands out differently.
Pricing Details:
- Basic plan of $39/month where you can join 1000 members. It consists of unlimited events, group chats, and private messaging, accept payments with Paywalls and access to Circle’s own private customer community and training.
- Professional plan of $99 per month. It is for 10,000 members, also includes live streams for a maximum of 100 people, and can add its own branding and CSS customization, advanced analytics, and API analytics.
- Enterprise Plan for $399 per month with 100,000 members, live streams that can have over 1000 attendees, email white labeling, priority email support, and a dedicated customer support manager.
BuddyBoss:
To use BuddyBoss you need to be tech-savvy. It covers all the essentials of online community software. It allows you to create events in community or sub-groups and also host live events through Zoom integration.
Best Features of BuddyBoss are listed below:
- Flexible
- Ability to gamify your community
- Integrates with LearnDash to create and share an online course
- White-label mobile app option
- Integrates with AutomatorWP
- Own branded apps for iOS and Android devices.
Pricing Details:
- It costs $228 per year for a 1-site license
- For a 5-site license, it costs $288 per year
- For a 10-site license, it costs $388/year
To include mobile apps in the above plans you have to purchase it externally for which pricing starts from $219/month.
Kajabi:
Community builder of Kajabi is also named as Kajabi Communities. To make it easy for creators an all-in-one community platform Vibely is integrated in it. It has a very clean and intuitive interface where you can create circles and access groups to organize your community.
Kajabi is an all-in-one platform where you can run an entire knowledge business from a single place. Kajabi provides a range of content and engagement tools for creators. You can award members badges based on their activity and display a leaderboard of the top members.
Best Features of Kajabi are listed below:
- Best-in-class features for creating online courses
- It has website themes and a page builder
- Optimized checkout pages, 1-click upsells, and affiliate marketing functionality
- Email management and marketing
- Powerful funnel builder
Pricing Details:
- The basic plan at $149 per month to start and run your business. Under this plan, you get 3 products, 3 funnels, Unlimited landing pages, 10,000 contacts, and 1 website.
- A growth plan at $199 per month is best to grow your business. Under this plan, you get 15 products, 15 funnels, Unlimited landing pages, 25,000 contacts, 1 website, and 10 admin users.
- Pro Plan at $399 per month is helpful to scale your business. Under this plan, you get 100 products, 100 funnels, Unlimited landing pages, 100,000 contacts, 20,000 active customers, 3 websites, and 25 admin users.
