If you’re feeling the need for an online community, a way to connect customers or fans, it’s a great time to be building. There are so many different options for community platforms.
Mighty Networks and Hivebrite are both established brands that have built a ton of communities. But there are important differences in the different features and the types of communities you can build with each. In this article, we’ll compare these two software options to help you figure out which one is right for you.
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Hivebrite vs. Mighty Networks: Comparison Chart
Mighty and Hivebrite are both community management platforms. Both give you robust community engines, the option to create groups, security and SSO features, and member analytics. And both include a community discussion platform to help members share their ideas, get informed, and connect.
Feature | Hivebrite | Mighty |
|---|---|---|
Discussion Forums |  | |
Native Video |  | |
Native Live Streaming | | |
Branded Live Streaming | | |
AI Community Builder | | |
LMS (Course Platform) | | |
Cohort Courses (Live Courses) | | |
CRM | | Zapier Integration |
Built-In Email | | ConvertKit Integration |
Virtual Events | | |
Content Management | | |
Gated Content | | |
Native Apps | | |
Hivebrite vs. Mighty Networks: Community features
Hivebrite
Hivebrite gives you a decent community engine for reaching members. With discussion features, members can have conversations and connect. Hivebrite also gives you a good way to manage your members’ data, with profiles, geo-targeting, importing and exporting options, and the option to connect to live events (below).
Hivebrite has multi-language support, which means your community can be translated into different languages. It also has a job board, which is a useful feature for alumni groups and some corporations, as well as some features that are unique to non-profits (e.g. collecting donations and creating fundraising campaign pages).
It has some good content management features, and the option to gate content if you need to.
Hivebrite’s other main use case is to organize live events. Once you have your membership base in place, you can create events on the calendar, and handle email campaigns and payments, as well as tickets for a live event.
Mighty
Like Hivebrite, Mighty has SSO, the option to create groups (Spaces), email notifications, and community management tools. It also gives you detailed member analytics so you can see what’s working and what isn’t in your community.
But Mighty's Spaces are flexible in a way that Hivebrite isn't. They can be built and customized with 8 different features: Activity Feed, Member Profiles, Events, Chat, Table of Contents (for a course), a Page, a Single Event, or Hashtags.
The result is that you have incredible control over the type of community experiences you are offering members. For example, you could build out custom Spaces for regional chapters, adding in the features each one needs. Or, you could offer unique courses, or sell one-time events.
This gives you a content flexibility Hivebrite doesn't have.
Member Engagement
Mighty's software is also designed to connect members to each other in a way that Hivebrite doesn't. Mighty uses AI to surface interesting members, help them see what they have in common, and even start the conversation. Mighty calls this "people magic"
For example, the People Explorer is designed to sort and connect members by categories, "Top Members," or "Members Near You." When you roll over a profile, that person's bio will open. From there, AI can show you what you have in common ("Show Similarities") AND even generate a first message.
While these are the advanced, best in class community features that Mighty has, Hivebrite is even behind on many of the basics.
For example, it doesn't have native video. On the other hand, Mighty offers native video everywhere, which includes uploading natively into posts and courses, but ALSO an awesome live streaming engine so you can live stream to your community via the web or the mobile app.
If you opt for Mighty Pro, you can even live stream under your own brand from your own app.
Users can upload their own videos natively too, which is an important feature to have. For example, imagine a member of a coaching community uploading a video of them public speaking for feedback in an executive leadership course. You can also give members permission to run their own live streams. For a community with individual subgroups with their own leaders, this is vital!
Courses
The second area Mighty covers that Hivebrite doesn’t is courses. Mighty offers an intuitive LMS for traditional asynchronous courses, but you can mix in cohort courses and all sorts of shared learning opportunities. The easy interplay between courses and community, discussions, chat, messaging, and live streaming makes Mighty a much better choice for course creators of any kind.
The option for more content and video options also translates into better virtual event options. Like Hivebrite, Mighty has a one-click Zoom integration for virtual events. But native live streaming gives you more flexibility for planning events. And Mighty gives you WAY more content options, along with video. You get a rich community form with mentions, hashtags, polls and questions, and long-content features.
Basically Mighty gives you the functionality of a modern social media platform and more – Hivebrite feels more like a simple forum.
Hivebrite vs. Mighty Networks: Sales and marketing
Hivebrite
Hivebrite’s strongest features aren’t the community features; they're the marketing and membership management features. Hivebrite has Customer Relationship Management software built into it, which could be great for organizations that need to keep track of membership lists and past member touchpoints. As we said above, the data features are strong too – it works well for tracking member lists and membership status.
Hivebrite also has a built-in email system that lets you create campaigns with html emails. For example, you could create a marketing campaign to reach potential donors. And when it comes to monetization, Hivebrite lets you collect payments through online gateways for events and donations.
Mighty
Mighty has a lot of great member management tools, but it doesn’t have a CRM built into it. You can use Zapier to integrate your CRM and create automatic triggers (ie. adding members to a group or to a certain email list).
Mighty relies on a comprehensive internal notification system with its apps and web platform. But members also automatically get notified by email about activity in the community (and they can toggle these notifications). You can get notified when there’s new content, but also about virtual events, new videos, live streams, and more.
For full email integration (e.g. composing emails to send to your members) you can use the built-in ConvertKit integration to run your mailing list. you can seamlessly integrate Mighty's blocks and content into ConvertKit's email platform.
When it comes to actually creating a revenue-centered business, Mighty is a much better option. Hivebrite does have some limited options for charging people–akin to collecting membership dues for a non-profit. But Mighty has a more robust business engine. A lot of our creators rely on the recurring revenue their communities generate. You can sell community membership, courses, events, access to individual Spaces, and any combination of these. And you can accept payment in 135 different currencies or even monetize with token-gating.
Hivebrite vs. Mighty Networks: Branding & Customization
Hivebrite
Hivebrite does give you the option to customize your community and add your branding to it. But the design and UX are dated and clunky. Hivebrite feels really corporate-driven, and it’s a great fit for companies who want a corporate-looking community.
Hivebrite also has an option for creating your own mobile app under your own brand.
Mighty
Mighty has been inspired by and built for creators, and the platform shows it. You get a ton of control of your branding and customization, including customizable Spaces and light or dark mode.
Mighty Pro also has a track record of building branded apps since 2017, with 400+ apps launched to date. This includes well-known brands and creators like Tony Robbins, TED, Marie Forleo, Jim Kwik, and Matthew Hussey.
The Mighty Pro team can take care of app branding, splash screens, proactive app submissions, and strategy to help you get the most out of your app. Mighty Pro also includes external shopping cart fees and ConvertKit's professional plan (for up to 10,000 subscribers).
Ready to start?
In the end, Hivebrite is probably a good choice for organizations looking for a corporate forum with more marketing features and fewer community features. Mighty is a better option for brands wanting to build a thriving community.
Mighty brings community, content, courses,events, and commerce together. And with flexible Spaces, you can add in live streaming, live events, discussion forums, member profiles, messaging, chat, content options, and more! And every community comes with a great app for iOS or Android.
One of the final things Mighty offers is a free trial! So come try G2's top-rated community platform for yourself. No credit card is required.
