5 tools · 14 verified reviews · pricing fact-checked
Circle is our pick for most paid communities, because it balances a good member experience against tools the owner actually needs. Skool is the value choice and the simplest to run, Mighty Networks suits creators building a branded network with courses attached, Discourse remains the best public forum software and the only self-hostable option here, and Patreon is the right answer when the product is membership rather than community. Platform fees vary from 0% to 12% and matter enormously; all prices re-verified within the last 30 days.
At a glance
| Tool | Best for | Starting price | Our rating |
|---|---|---|---|
 Circle | Best overall balance of member experience and owner tooling | $49/mo | 4.3 |
 Skool | Best value and simplest to run for coaching and creator communities | $99/mo | 4.3 |
 Discourse | Best for public, searchable communities and open-source projects | Free plan | 4.2 |
 Patreon | Best for creators selling recurring access to their work | Free plan | 3.8 |
 Mighty Networks | Best for branded networks with your own mobile app | $41/mo | 4.3 |
5 of 5 tools
Best overall balance of member experience and owner tooling
Circle is the best-balanced community platform: a genuinely pleasant member experience with the owner tooling a paid community needs. Platform fees on lower tiers are the main cost to watch.
$49/mo
14-day free trial
Best value and simplest to run for coaching and creator communities
Skool is deliberately minimal: one flat price, courses included, and a gamification layer that measurably drives participation. Customisation and integrations are correspondingly limited.
$99/mo
14-day free trial
Best for public, searchable communities and open-source projects
Discourse is the best public forum software available and the only self-hostable option here. Ideal when discussion should be searchable and permanent; wrong when the product is a paid private membership.
Free plan
paid from $100/mo
Best for creators selling recurring access to their work
Patreon is a membership business rather than a community platform: tiers, exclusive content, payment handling and a discovery audience. Community features are basic and the platform fee is significant.
Free plan
starting price
Best for branded networks with your own mobile app
Mighty Networks combines community and courses in a branded network, with white-label mobile apps as the standout on higher tiers. Interface complexity and price are the recurring complaints.
$41/mo
14-day free trial
Head to head
Feature-by-feature matchups between leading Membership & Community Platforms tools, with a clear verdict.
The list, in detail
Composed from the same fact-checked data as each tool's full review — pricing, features, and verified ratings.
Circle is the best-balanced community platform: a genuinely pleasant member experience with the owner tooling a paid community needs. Platform fees on lower tiers are the main cost to watch.
4.33 verified reviews
Pricing: Paid plans from $49/mo with a 14-day free trial
Skool is deliberately minimal: one flat price, courses included, and a gamification layer that measurably drives participation. Customisation and integrations are correspondingly limited.
4.33 verified reviews
Pricing: Paid plans from $99/mo with a 14-day free trial
Discourse is the best public forum software available and the only self-hostable option here. Ideal when discussion should be searchable and permanent; wrong when the product is a paid private membership.
4.23 verified reviews
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from $100/mo
Patreon is a membership business rather than a community platform: tiers, exclusive content, payment handling and a discovery audience. Community features are basic and the platform fee is significant.
3.83 verified reviews
Pricing: Free plan available
Mighty Networks combines community and courses in a branded network, with white-label mobile apps as the standout on higher tiers. Interface complexity and price are the recurring complaints.
4.32 verified reviews
Pricing: Paid plans from $41/mo with a 14-day free trial
Methodology
We evaluated 21 community and membership platforms across 25 criteria, weighted: features 30%, value for money 25%, ease of use 25%, support 20%. Our process:
We pay for our own accounts. No vendor can buy a ranking, a rating or a badge.
Membership & Community Platforms by the numbers
$74/mo
Median starting price
80%
Offer a free trial
40%
Have a free plan
14
Verified reviews
Computed live from the 5 Membership & Community Platforms products we track — August 25, 2026
Buyer's guide
Subscription price is the small number. A platform taking 8% of a $4,000 monthly membership costs $320 a month on top of its plan fee — more than any subscription here. Fees range from 0% on higher tiers to 12% on entry plans, and the tier that removes them almost always pays for itself before you expect. Calculate total cost at your realistic revenue, not the plan price.
The single largest predictor of engagement in our pilot was not features but whether members were reliably pulled back. Email digests, mobile push and sensible defaults matter more than any gamification layer. A platform whose notifications are weak produces a community that quietly dies regardless of how good the interface looks.
Discourse is built for public, searchable, SEO-visible discussion — valuable if the community is also a support and acquisition channel. Circle, Skool and Mighty Networks are private-first, which suits paid membership and is invisible to search engines. This is an architectural choice rather than a preference, and switching later means starting the archive again.
Community data — posts, threads, member history, active subscriptions — is the least portable content in this directory. Discourse is the exception because you can self-host and own the database. Everywhere else, moving means asking members to re-register and losing the archive that made the community valuable. Weigh that before committing.
FAQ
Subscriptions run $41–99 per month to start (Mighty Networks $41, Circle $49, Skool $99 flat, Discourse hosted $100), and self-hosted Discourse is free. The number that usually dominates is the platform fee on member payments: Patreon takes 8–12%, Circle 4% below Professional, while Skool, Kajabi-style flat plans and Circle Professional take 0%. At $5,000 monthly membership revenue, an 8% fee is $400 — four times Skool's entire subscription.
Choose Skool if you want one flat price, courses included, no platform fees and almost nothing to configure — it suits coaching and creator communities, and its gamification measurably increased posting in our pilot. Choose Circle if you need spaces, live events, real branding, better analytics or segmentation, and you will actually use them. The most common regret in our data is paying Circle prices for a community that turned out to be one thread and a course.
It depends whether the archive should work for you. Public (Discourse) means threads are indexed, so answered questions deflect support tickets and attract search traffic — excellent for software, developer and open-source communities. Private (Circle, Skool, Mighty Networks) suits paid membership where exclusivity is part of the value, and is invisible to search engines. This is an architectural choice: switching later means starting the archive again.
Barely, and this is the most locked-in category in this directory. Posts, threads, member history and active subscriptions rarely transfer, and in practice migration means asking members to re-register while losing the archive. Discourse self-hosted is the exception — you own the database outright. Everywhere else, expect to lose roughly 10–20% of members in a move, which is what our reviewers who migrated from Patreon reported.
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