When it comes to finding a website builder that lets you create memberships, online courses, content, and a thriving community all in one place, all under your brand, and instantly available on every platform, there haven’t been a lot of options available.
Until Mighty Networks.
A Mighty Network is a powerful cultural software platform that gives you a website builder, online course platform, and flexible membership site software rolled into one solution. It’s offered under your own brand, and is instantly available on every device with the option of even offering your Mighty Network on your own mobile apps.
Creating your own Mighty Network means bringing your community, content, courses, and commerce together in vibrant, customizable Spaces. Since Mighty is used and loved by thousands of creators -- and ranked the #1 community platform on G2 -- it’s somewhat of a challenge to identify and evaluate compelling Mighty Networks alternatives.
What other platforms are out there? Does anyone else offer the same combination of features? What else should someone consider when evaluating alternatives to Mighty Networks?
Here are some of the best Mighty Networks alternatives that offer some combination of membership, online courses, and community.
If you want more support in building your online community, come join OUR Mighty Community for free and meet other new and established community owners! We’d love to meet you. Join for free!
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What makes a Mighty Network special?
Mighty Networks is a membership platform for businesses, brands, and creators. We started as a community platform whose customers saw the opportunity for them to add online courses and membership features, including paid subscriptions, to their offering.
A community platform
It all starts with intuitive engagement features that drive awesome community engagement. This includes:
- Discussion forums, activity feeds, and chat & messaging
- Livestreaming, live events, and courses
- Member profiles, "members near you," and other member management features
- Customizable spaces to turn the features you want on or off easily
With courses built in
Mighty also gives you the power to supercharge your course.
- Teach a live, prerecorded, or mixed course
- Integrate questions and polls, assignments, and more
- Build quickly and easily with the intuitive LMS
When Mighty mixed community and courses together, it created something like never before.
When creators & entrepreneurs built their businesses on Mighty Networks, they recognized early on that their students:
- Finished their courses at a higher rate (since the majority of people who buy courses on other platforms don’t finish)
- Bought more courses overall
- Got more value from their membership subscriptions–sending loyalty through the roof.
The difference was community. Someone who buys a stand-alone course on another site struggles to finish. Someone who buys a course on Mighty Networks and instantly meets others like them on the same journey will finish it. As Hosts often tell us, people come for the course and stay for the community.
Unparalleled results
Better retention equals more revenue, plain and simple. And a community on a Mighty Network leads to better retention, lower membership churn, and less work for the creator because of the network effect.
And only Mighty has people magic, software designed to turn strangers into friends. For example, we've reimagined member profiles to help members meet people with things in common.
As a result, Mighty Networks evolved from a community platform to something much more. Throw away your tech stack. Stop stitching platforms together.
With Mighty Networks, you can do everything in the same place, building a community that gets more valuable to every member with each new person who joins.
And it also means:
- Building your brand with customization, light & dark mode, custom urls, and more. Or even launching a branded community app.
- Growing a community and/or course business by selling plans and bundles in 135 different currencies or even with token-gating.
- Making community management RADICALLY EASIER with Mighty Co-Host™, the AI community engine that boosts human creativity without replacing it. Automate landing pages, course outlines, and marketing tools and instantly generate member profiles, improve your writing, and start conversations with people who share your interests
- Amazing email power with the ConvertKit integration
The combination of things a Mighty Network offers means that, when we’re looking for an alternative, it needs to hold up in a lot of categories. We’re not just comparing a course platform or community software, we need something that does it all.
And very few do.
But we’ll show you some of the top contenders.
And if you want to try the original free for 14 days to get a sense of how it works, check it out! No credit card required.
Judgment Criteria
So here’s the criteria we’re looking for in Mighty Networks Alternatives:
Affordability
A Mighty Network alternative should be affordable.
- A Mighty Network starts from just $33/mo, and you don't need a bunch of different software to run your community. You can see more details on pricing here.
- You won't need to pay for a bunch of integrations to make it work. Paying separately for community platforms, course platforms, event platforms, etc. to run your digital business creates massive overhead you don't need.
Community Features
- A Mighty Network creates multiple ways to foster connections, from direct & group messaging and a relevant, personalized activity feed, to multiple kinds of polls and Q&As and live streaming.
- Members are encouraged to create content, and have a ton of intuitive tools at their disposal. This is what makes a community thrive.
- Build community together with value like online courses, workshops, and events–this keeps people coming back and renewing their subscription, month after month.
They’re building friendships they’ll keep for years to come!
Amazing online courses
Teach it live, pre-record and add community, or mix and match, Mighty's online courses are different. Imagine going through a course with peers, learning not only from the instructor but from each other. Imagine forging relationships in an online course you’ll keep for years to come. Imagine an online course that’s interactive and engaging, instead of one that you have to struggle to stay awake for.
That’s what Mighty Networks helps you build.
Customization options
With Mighty Spaces, you can pretty much create EXACTLY what you need. Spaces gives you serious customization power -- letting you build your brand in the way you want to. Want a course with an events feed? Do it! Want a simple discussion forum for certain members, that you can also sell access to? Do it!
The power is yours.
Oh, and in case we didn't mention it. Your community also comes with apps for every device, and if you want TOTAL CUSTOMIZING POWER we'll build you a white-label app too.
If that's your jam, you can find more details here.
Awesome live events
Last but DEFINITELY not least, let’s talk about live events. Ask anyone who’s ever been in a Mighty Network and they’ll tell you how much they loved coming to live events. The platform makes it ridiculously easy to set up, collect RSVPs, and host live events–whether you’re running a virtual summit or a community happy hour.
These are the touchpoints that remind members they aren’t alone on their journey, and they love them!
9 Alternatives to Mighty Networks
1. Kajabi
The first Mighty Networks alternative we’re going to look at is Kajabi. Kajabi is a membership and course platform designed to run paid memberships and market, sell, and deliver online courses. It’s well-known in the course-creation space, and has a lot of options for selling and marketing an online course.
Kajabi's best features
Course content flexibility. When it comes to online courses, Kajabi offers a variety of course content structures. You can set up courses with text, files, photos and videos (hosted on the platform Wistia); engage students with quizzes and polls; and deliver online courses by dropping them all at once, dripping them out by date, or requiring a student to finish a prior lesson first.
Powerful and complex marketing features. Where Kajabi really shines is in how it lets instructors market and sell their courses with robust marketing tools to deliver email campaigns, welcome flows, weekly updates, and more; marketing landing pages to create email waitlists or sell exclusive “windows” for purchase; and checkout and payments that support multiple currencies around the world.
How Mighty and Kajabi are different
Kajabi is much more expensive. As far as alternatives to Mighty Networks go, Kajabi is the most expensive. Its most basic plan starts at $119 a month. This is exacerbated by the fact that you'll be paying for many integrations for business in addition to Kajabi's monthly cost.
Kajabi is missing an integrated community. Kajabi recently bought the community chat app Vibely to add community features it was missing. The result is what they call Kajabi Community 2.0. It has some good features, like livestreaming, chat, and discussions. BUT it still exists in a separate space with a separate log-on. Kajabi runs their own "Kajabi Heros" community on a Facebook Group.
Kajabi needs 2 apps to do what Mighty does with one. Because Kajabi grew its community through acquisition, its community features require a separate app--which members would need to download. Mighty does both courses and community with one app.
Kajabi isn't strong for live courses: Kajabi was designed for prerecorded courses. For live teaching, they suggest using YouTube and streaming. You could stream a course in the Kajabi community too. But Kajabi was built in the era of pre-recorded courses, and that's what it does best.
2. Teachable
Teachable is the dominant platform for online course instructors that want to offer their courses on their own website under their own brand. As far as a Mighty Networks alternative, if you’re looking for a different place to run your online courses, Teachable is a strong contender after Kajabi.
Teachable lets creators customize a lot about their course, including landing and sales pages. One of its best features is that creators can make an affiliate program; when others refer customers to them, a creator can reward them with a percentage of the course sale.
But the place where Teachable doesn't match Mighty, is with community. Teachable is a course platform only, with no options for community, events, or the many other features of Mighty Networks.
Teachable's best features
Easy to set up. Building an online course on Teachable is a straightforward process. The online course platform allows you to add multiple content types to your courses, including videos and quizzes. You can drag and drop course pages until you get the style you want.
Enables certification. Unlike a Mighty Network, Teachable gives course creators the option to create certificates for course completion.
Affiliate program. Teachable also lets you recruit affiliates to help sell your course.
How Teachable and Mighty are different
- Teachable doesn't have any community features. Like the other Mighty Networks alternatives, Teachable doesn’t offer a community option, period. Not every course creator wants community, but missing this option can drive down student completion rates, mastery of the material, and relationship to their brand or course content.
We already covered how Mighty can build thriving communities with live events that celebrate and grow through human connection, Teachable doesn’t compare.
Teachable isn't built for live courses. Teachable was an early course platform, and that's great. But it was built in a time when live courses weren't really possible (thanks to bandwidth speeds) and they've never really caught up. Other than sharing a YouTube link, you've got no live options.
Teachable is missing membership features. Teachable is not designed to be a membership site. It exclusively powers online courses, limiting the upsell and cross-sell opportunities of course creators who want to offer ongoing membership subscriptions to alumni or creatively deliver new courses to long-time members.
Teachable doesn't have an Android app. Only iOS Again, while they claim native mobile app access, it’s just not there. The mobile web is only available on iOS, not Android. Mighty has an app for every device.
3. Podia
Podia is a digital storefront that lets you create and sell online courses, memberships, and content downloads. It has some webinar functionality too, and teachers can create themed discussions around their course.
Podia markets itself as a replacement for those who are selling courses on WordPress, which takes a bunch of plugins and integrations, so it also has a no-code website builder and email campaigns.
Podia's best features
Beautiful, flexible content that’s easy to set up. Podia is a content creator’s alternative to Mighty Networks. In terms of being an all-in-one platform, they recently launched a community feature on their platform, bringing it more in line with the features of Mighty Networks.
How Podia and Mighty are different
Podia doesn't have apps. The biggest thing missing from Podia is the apps. While Mighty Networks has beautiful, responsive apps for every device, and even the option to customize your apps, Podia has none.
Podia doesn't give you much customization. With Podia, you won’t be able to build a dynamic website with your own branding.
Podia is a one-dimensional course builder. Podia’s course builder is limited. Yes, you’ll be able to build out custom courses, but you won’t be able to add graded quizzes, assignments, or course certification.
Podia is missing livestreaming and live teaching options. While Mighty Networks includes both.
4. Bettermode
Bettermode (formerly Tribe) is a platform that caters to big companies that want to add a community to their existing website. It is a Mighty Networks alternative for the Mighty Networks enterprise solution, Mighty Pro. This means that it’s not really made for smaller creators; it’s made for enterprise users.
Bettermode lets big-name corporations add a white-label community platform under their brand where customers can have discussions, share content, and ask questions.
Bettermode's best features
White-label customer community. Like Mighty Networks, Bettermode reflects how powerful a community can be, especially for big companies that are typically pretty removed from their customers. Members can use Bettermode to ask questions, start discussions, share content, participate in polls and more on both a company’s website and their own native mobile apps.
White-label mobile apps for enterprise. Bettermode started by offering brands their own native mobile apps and has recently pivoted into integrating a community application into an existing website as well. And the data on native mobile apps is striking: increased engagement, longer retention, and closer connections between your members.
How Bettermode and Mighty are different
Bettermode is basically a corporate discussion forum. Bettermode is quite limited in the community department, focusing mainly on a forum-like interaction with upvoted and content organization.
Bettermode is missing online courses or monetization. Bettermode is not an all-in-one platform, so it doesn’t have courses or live features, and you can't monetize. This might be okay--since it was conceived as a corporate community builder. But it's nice to have the option to sell and engage in different ways if you choose to.
5. Higher Logic Vanilla
Vanilla Forums is another solution to help corporations build customer communities. It has forum-based content options for creating and sharing ideas, adding polls and questions, and dividing members into subgroups.
For a customer community, Vanilla can build out a knowledge base and comes with some useful integrations. It also has a white-labeling, with the option to deploy under any brand without coding. And it has useful integrations with some common corporate tools like Salesforce and Zendesk.
Vanilla's best features
The ability to create a customer support forum. Organize discussions into relevant buckets and add reaction tools.
Customization to fit any brand. Without coding, Vanilla can match your brand.
How Mighty and Vanilla are different
Vanilla isn't built for memberships or subscriptions. It's primarily a corporate forum solution.
Vanilla doesn't have apps. Vanilla Forums doesn't yet have apps or white-label apps. It would be best for a web-only customer community.
6. Disciple
Disciple is a mixture of online community platform and app builder. It comes with the option to brand the app and community, and community features like content creation tools (text, video, and images), discussion forums, and Q&As.
Disciple's member-management tools are good, with analytics and built-in email features. And unlike Bettermode or Vanilla, it can be used to sell memberships or create gated content.
Disciple's app has more features than the web app.
Disciple's best features
Online forum with good content options. Disciple gives you and your members different ways to create and share.
Branded apps with livestreaming and community features. These are well-functioning and generally well-rated.
How Disciple and Mighty are different
Disciple has different UX between the app and the webapps. For example, livestreaming happens in the apps, not the web apps. This creates two different experiences for different users based on platforms. Mighty gives you all the same features, no matter what platform you're on.
Disciple has limited feature sets. It's good at community, but missing key events and course functions. By contrast, Mighty has the tools for any kind of course or a dynamic virtual event.
7. Hivebrite
Hivebrite was built for alumni networks and it's a community platform with some useful features. These include dedicated subgroups to divide students and alumni by interests or region, a cool job board feature for posting opportunities, and a good content management system.
Hivebrite gives you data and analytics and can be deployed on a branded app. Hivebrite's features are strongest for in-person alumni and networking events (including an event app), and you can send invite emails, handle calendars and ticketing, and even payments for a live event. And it can handle collecting donations from alumni.
Hivebrite's best features
A community with a clear alumni focus. The features are oriented toward bringing alumni and students together to share ideas, post and find jobs, and attend live events.
A community platform with live events in mind. Community and live events can go together so well, with an online community keeping the spirit of an event alive through the year. Hivebrite does this, connecting the two with event planning apps.
How Hivebrite and Mighty are different
Hivebrite focuses on live events and is missing key components to make it functional for virtual events. Missing things like livestreaming or native video means that there's only so much you can do with it. Mighty has all the features for robust virtual events but isn't built for things like live-event ticketing.
Hivebrite is functional, but dated.
8. AccessAlly
As the last alternative to Mighty Networks we evaluated, AccessAlly is a small learning management system (LMS) that lets you sell courses, online memberships, and digital products.
AccessAlly's best features
- Designed for formal online learning. AccessAlly is designed, first and foremost, with formal, conventional online courses in mind. Meant to mirror how instruction has been delivered for hundreds of years, only now online, there are strong features built for progress tracking and quizzes to video bookmarks.
How AccessAlly and Mighty are different
AccessAlly is complicated to customize. AccessAlly is a WordPress plug-in that requires you to have your own hosted WordPress website. Not only will you be on the hook for your WordPress customization and operations, you’ll also have to download, integrate, and pay for additional apps, including a CRM like ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit in order for AccessAlly to work.
AccessAlly is missing community and memberships. Given its focus on its learning management system, AccessAlly is not meant for creating and running memberships or a community. In fact, it believes that an active community in an online course distracts from course content, a contrarian perspective that’s out of step with the direction online courses have rapidly taken over the past few years.
9. Mighty Pro
Finally, if you're looking for a Mighty Networks alternative, you should know about Mighty Pro! Pro takes Mighty Networks' top-rated course and community platform and deploys it on your own branded app.
With all the community, course, and event features, you'll also work closely with the Mighty Pro Team on strategy. And we take care of the technical stuff.
Mighty Pro is:
- G2’s top-rated community platform on your own apps.
- Empower your Hosts with Mighty Co-Host™ AI features including moderation tools, the Infinite Question Generator, and auto course outlines and profiles.
- Branded apps, splash screens, and push notifications
- Proactive updates and App Store & Google Play Store submissions
- VIP support from the Mighty Pro Team
- Access to the Mighty Pro community
We've built apps for TED, Cambridge University, Drew Binsky, and Martinus Evans. Let us show you what we could build together!
Mighty Pro's best features
- An awesome app under your brand. It comes with everything a Mighty Network has, but you get the unique power of doing it all in your own app. Branded livestreaming. Branded notifications. Courses, community, and events on your app. It's powerful.
How Mighty Pro and Mighty are different
Mighty Networks comes with awesome native apps, but not under your brand. Every Mighty Network comes with access to the Mighty Networks app for every device. Mighty Pro is under your app.
Mighty Pro is preferred by established brands, creators, and enterprise users. Because it's a premium solution, most Mighty Pro customers already have an established community or business. Many Mighty Pro customers start on Mighty Networks and grow into their own branded apps.
Conclusion
With the exception of Mighty Pro, each of these alternatives is missing one or more of the key features of a Mighty Network, whether it’s memberships, online courses, content, and community all in one place, all under your brand, and instantly available on every device.
It means that when you choose a Mighty Network, you’re investing in cultural software, you're building your OWN culture. Not someone else's.
What’s more, with your own Mighty Network, you can celebrate the inherent power in connecting people together who have similar motivations and passions. Your people will be able to build relationships around their shared interests, enabling them to master something interesting, together.
So before you go, why not give Mighty Networks a try? Start playing around to see what you could create! It’s free to try for 14 days, and you don’t need a credit card to register.