Cristy “Code Red” Nickel was running a successful nutrition and fitness business by anyone’s standards. Reaching 70,000 members with coaching, education, and personal training was fantastic. BUT, she was reaching these members across 20 Facebook Groups and relying on a bunch of other software to try to keep it all running. Mixing and matching software was taking its toll on her business: “Every single day was a strain and stress,” says Cristy. “My clients weren’t having good results because they were bombarded by ads, censorship, and the drama.”
Finally, Cristy found a business community platform that let her get all of the mixed-up pieces of her business focused on one platform, all her members in one place. We’ll pick up on Cristy’s story below.
If you’ve compared online community platforms, you’re probably aware of what great community software can do; we’re thinking events, community discussions, courses, memberships, and the ability to monetize all of these.
When you’re considering what you need for a business community platform, there are other factors to look for. For example, if you’re running a membership-based business, member management tools are super important. Branding is also vital – a good business community platform should let you build something that reflects your brand seamlessly. Or how about the ability to have an app for your business that’s available for every single device? These are all things you won’t get with something like Discord or Facebook Groups.
In this article, we’ll talk about three different options for a business community platform. And if you missed it, don’t forget to read our how-to guide for creating a business community.
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What is a business community platform?
A business community platform comes with a lot of the same features other community platforms offer (forums, chat, messaging, member tracking, courses, and events), but will also come with premium business features like advanced custom branding, community analytics, and white-label apps.
Business community platforms are geared towards different audiences, so not all will have the same features. It’s important to be strategic about what your non-negotiables are and to pick a business platform that has the features you need to serve your audience!
Features to look for in a business community platform
There are a lot of different features you could get in a business community platform. Here are some to look for, depending on your needs:
- Discussion forums
- Messaging & chat
- Live streaming & events
- Courses
- Member profiles
- White-labeling & branding
- Sales features, POS, bundles
- White-label app
- Different currencies
- Analytics
- Support & customer service (from the provider)
3 of the best business community platforms
1. Mighty Pro
White-label cultural software platform
So, we talked about Code Red Cristy’s fitness and nutrition business above. The answer to Cristy’s complicated platform management was Mighty Pro. Mighty harnesses the power of cultural software to bring together content, community, courses, and commerce. And you get flexible Spaces that let you toggle in events, live streaming, courses, messaging, discussion forums, chat, and different kinds of content, depending on your needs. If you are monetizing your business community, Mighty lets you sell in 135 different currencies or token gating.
For Cristy, it let her bring her business all together on one platform.
Best of all, with Mighty Pro, we work with you to build a totally-custom, white label app that’s under your brand in the App Store or Google Play Store. With Mighty, you get all the features we talked about above. And it comes built with the community engine that was ranked the #1 community management software by G2.
We’ve built business communities for brands like Mindbody One, the TED Community, and Cambridge University’s research network. And we’ve worked with creators like Adriene Mishler – YouTube’s most popular yoga instructor with 10+ million subscribers – and travel vlogger Drew Binsky to create branded apps and communities around their work.
Schedule a call today and we’ll show you what you could build for your business!
2. Tribe
Add a forum to your corporate website
If you’re looking for something more along the lines of a simple discussion forum, Tribe is a good business community platform to consider. Unlike Mighty Pro, it doesn’t have features like events and courses. But it does give you a clean, simple platform to add to an existing website to create a customer community.
Tribe gives you the option to build a forum that’s separated into different spaces, adding collections and tags. You can add different kinds of content like images and pre-recorded videos. Users can log in a bunch of different ways, including with social or SSO. It also comes with member features, profiles, directories, and different ways to sort and manage your members.
The best features of Tribe as a business community platform are probably the customization and white-label branding, you can definitely get your community to reflect your existing brand and website – especially if you’re creating as a website add-on. And it does have white-label apps too, so your customers can access the community on the go.
The clear difference between Tribe and Mighty Pro is the feature set. Tribe is best for a business that only wants a discussion forum. Mighty is best for a business that wants a discussion forum, but with the option to add features like events, live streaming, and courses.
3. Disciple
Disciple is a UK-based company that works as a business community platform. Disciple comes with a community forum, just like both of the options above. And it has some good features like member management, push notifications, events, and live streaming (app only). Disciple gives you a content-creation dashboard where you can control what you’re creating and sending out to your customers. And like Mighty, Disciple comes with custom domain options, a customized activity feed, and a guided onboarding (premium plans).
Disciple also comes with a white-label app, so that you can get your business community under your own brand. Disciple is missing a few of the features Mighty Pro has. For example, it has different monetization options. Both have membership and subscription sales and the option to sell premium content. But Mighty has courses built-in, while Disciple requires a Thinkific integration to get an LMS. Disciple has the option to monetize with sponsorships and advertising.
Conclusion
All three of these business community platforms cater to a slightly different audience, but we hope this quick overview has helped you figure out which might be right for your business!
If you're ready to get started with Mighty Pro, book a time to chat with us and we'll show you we we could build together!
