Creating online communities or online homes for real-life communities is incredible. It boosts growth and can maximize revenue–if paid communities are part of your business. And with so much great community engagement software out there, there’s no need to get hung up on the tech side of community building.

In this article, we’ll introduce and compare 14 of the best community engagement platforms on the market.

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14 Best community engagement platforms

What is community engagement software?

Community engagement software enables creators, brands, and organizations to build and manage online communities. Sometimes these communities exist in parallel to a “real life” community, and sometimes they exist entirely online.

Good community engagement software needs three things:

• Engagement tools: these help members and Hosts connect and talk to each other. Features like discussion forums, live events, chat, and member profiles all help with this.


• Community management tools: Back-end features for managing member lists and data, actionable analytics, member contacts, plan info, and payments.


• Community business tools: Features for collecting revenue (if applicable) and running and growing a community business; for example, branding, customization, white-label apps, multi-currency support, payment gateways, etc.

Best Community Engagement Software

1. Mighty Networks

Cost: From $41/mo

Best for: The best community engagement software with an engine that drives engagement, revenue and member growth.

Overview: Mighty Networks is ranked #1 community management software by G2 and it’s the ultimate community engagement platform. It’s also home to more $1 million communities than any other platform.

Here’s what it offers:

Unrivalled engagement

Mighty is designed for engagement in a way that no other platform is. Here’s what this means:

• Build community discussion forums with any kind of content you want + Gen3 native livestreaming for up to 50k attendees, high-velocity chats, and backstage area.


• Software designed to create people magic, helping new members build profiles, find interesting people (with AI-driven “show similarities” tool), and start conversations with 1-click.


• Instantly re-engaged lapsed members with 1-click.


• Gamified new member journeys and checklists, leaderboards, habit trackers, and automations for unlocking rewards.


• Create instant conversation with the Infinite Question Generator which generates and automates posting of approved discussion questions.


• Create content with the “make it better” AI text editor. Or instantly generate a course outline or a video transcript.

Community revenue engine

Turn your engaged community into a recurring revenue machine with any combination of communities, spaces, courses, or events–sold individually or bundled. Mighty also has smart analytics to help you measure community engagement and maximize revenue.

The average community membership on Mighty is $48/mo. At these numbers, it only takes a few hundred members to turn your community into a life-changing business.

Customization power

• Build any kind of Space for any kind of content you want. Turn on or off Space features like LMS, discussions, content, and events.


• Create or instantly generate a brand identity, community Spaces, custom landing pages, and adapt it to fit your brand + add custom urls and light/dark mode.


• Integrate your community with built-in Zoom or Kit (formerly ConvertKit) integrations, or choose from over 2,000 software embeds like Dropbox, Calendly, Drive, GitHub, Figma, and Monday.

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Pros

• Software built for connection, built from 93% success prediction data.


• Flexible Spaces that can combine any feature you want: Events, Livestreams, Courses, Discussion Forums, Chat, Messaging, 1-time or Recurring Events, etc.


• Monetization in 135 different currencies


• Advanced engagement tools for auto-re-engaging members, creating discussions questions, building profiles, & finding and making friends.


• Total brand control for landing pages, customization, and even start with or upgrade to white-label apps (See Mighty Pro).


• Integrations for ConvertKit and Zoom + 2,000+ embeds.

Cons:

• It’s a paid software. Some communities might prefer a basic, free alternative like Facebook or Discord.


• Initial setup takes more time than social media platforms, although AI can instantly do a lot of it.

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2. Mighty Pro

Cost: Learn More Here

Best for: Branded community apps for established brands and creators

Overview: Mighty Pro is G2’s top-rated community platform on your own white-label app. And it’s used by brands and figures like Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuck, Marie Forleo, Jim Kwik, Matthew Hussey, and Mel Robbins.

Mighty Pro has the features of a Mighty Network: Things like:

• Customizable community Spaces to mix Discussion Forums, Courses, Livestreaming, Pre-Recorded Courses, 1-Time or Recurring Events, Chats, Pages, and more.


• People magic features like instant landing pages, course outlines, profiles, “show similarities” tool, 1-click conversations & re-engagement, and the Infinite Question Generator.


• Monetization in 135 different currencies, sell products and bundles, and connect to your tech stack.

But it also means:

• Your apps in the App Store & Google Play Store plus proactive updates, and submissions


• Working with a team that’s launched over 400 apps, not only for software, but for strategy support


• Actionable analytics to map contributions, member engagement, and business growth.


• Design help for splash screens, notification branding, latest mobile brand strategy & best practices.


• Membership in the Mighty Pro community

Pros

• G2’s top-rated community management software on your own apps.


• Proven builders with 400+ launches including some of the top-names in the world.


• Support from the Mighty Pro team of Account Executives and Community Strategists who have launched 7- and 8- figure communities.

Cons

• It’s a premium solution. If you’re just getting started, start on Mighty Networks first. You can always upgrade to Mighty Pro when you’re ready! (Without switching anything 🙂)

Learn More Here

3. Bettermode

Cost: From $599/mo for basic features, with custom enterprise pricing available.

Best for: Companies wanting to add a white-label forum to their website.

Overview: Bettermode (formerly Tribe) does corporate forums. If you have an existing website and you want to add, say, a customer support forum, Bettermode can deploy one under your brand. It’s a customizable community solution that offers:

• Searchable forums that can organize content into different spaces and topics.


• Multi-language support with moderation and analytics tools.


• Can be integrated with an existing tech stack under your brand

Pros:

Clean, simple, and professional forums
Custom websites & communities for a brand.
Good integration with business software and built-in analytics

Cons:

• No monetization features for charging–best for free customer communities


• Can’t handle virtual events or courses


• Relatively slim feature set compared to competitors


• No mobile apps

4. Disciple

Cost: $729/month for mobile app (up to 500 members), $1,167/month (up to 5,000 members) + white-label app

Best for: Mobile-first white-label community apps with attached online communities

Overview: Disciple is an enterprise community platform with a strong focus on white-label apps. Here are some of the features Disciple offers for community engagement:

• Discussion forums with activity feeds for text, images, and video-based content.


• Member management tools. Build multiple tiers, groups & subgroups, and add badges.


• Livestreaming with 500-1,500 gigs of storage (depending on plan) plus push notifications


• Community analytics

Pros:

• Mobile-app-first forum software with lots of content options & livestreaming


• Get an app under your own brand


• Subscriptions and gated content for monetization, and courses (on the more expensive plan)


• Webhooks and APIs on more expensive plans

Cons:

• Different UX between online platform and app


• Limited features in the base plans


• It’s a premium price, but not a premium product–the community platform is still quite basic, missing advanced member engagement tools.

5. Geneva Chat

Cost: Free

Best for: Local organizations, clubs, and small communities that want to host free, video-first discussions

Overview: Geneva Chat is a neat concept and offers a lot for community engagement, especially for local IRL communities. Billing itself as “the online place to meet your offline people,” Geneva was recently acquired by Bumble. It’s not totally clear what the future holds, but it looks like this will continue the goal of connecting IRL communities online.

Geneva is free and has a really strong feature base, making it great for free community engagement uses. It’s not monetizeable in any way, so if you’re collecting any type of revenue it’s not the right choice. It also isn’t strong on features to introduce members to each other; it’s best for pre-existing communities.

• Here are the features you need to know about:


• Rooms for hosting text, video, or audio chats, or content rooms for those wanting to create written posts


• Discovery for finding new groups of people in your city and getting plugged in


• Event calendar with RSVPs for virtual events


• Application forms with good admin tools for moderating

Pros:

• A free platform with great community engagement tools


• Lots of content options from video chat to text to virtual events


• Clean design with intuitive interface for users


• Admin roles


• Great apps for every device

Cons:

• No native monetization of any kind


• Not suitable for large communities or communities that don’t know each other. Geneva has doubled down on IRL networks.


• Member management tools are quite limited


• Can’t be customized under your own brand


• Uncertain future after Bumble acquisition

6. Circle

Cost: From $89/month for community features; $199/month with workflows/customization; $360/month for enterprise

Best for: Digital creators needing a clean community engagement software–especially for Teachable integrations.

Overview: Circle was built by former Teachable employees to add forums–so it blends well with this. As a community platform, it offers a clean, simple platform that’s intuitive to use. Circle recently added its own course features as well as an Android app, making it a decent choice.

It offers:

• Four types of Spaces for dividing up your community activity: chat, discussions, courses, & events. It also includes livestreaming


• Community AI to help write content and transcribe videos


• Workflows and some gamification, plus native integrations for software like Memberful, Wistia, and Vimeo


• Payment gating for any of the above spaces or bundle with different Spaces


• Apps for all devices + branded apps

Pros:

• Integrations with Teachable and some other software


• Clean, simple design with an intuitive community platform


• Software to run a course + community + events business

Cons:

• You can’t have multiple features within a space–members have to move to different sections of a community for all the features


• Plan limits end up hiding extra payments (penalized for extra moderators, extra spaces, livestream attendees, spaces, etc.)


• Member list is hidden by default, and the directory is basic. This makes it hard to meet people


• Many of the features (e.g. AI) are only available on more expensive plans

7. Discord

Cost: Free

Best for: Simple, free discussion forums. It’s especially strong for gamers needing voice/video/screen share technology.

Overview: Discord is a well-known free community platform that has 150 million users. As far as free platforms go, it’s got some good fundamentals–especially for a community of gamers. This makes it a good option for some community engagement applications–as long as you don’t need to collect money.

Discord offers:

• Channel-based discussion forums for video, text, and voice chats + stickers & emojis


• Event scheduling, with livestreaming options with screensharing


• Optional Nitro subscriptions with a few simple monetization features (U.S. creators only)

Pros:

• Free for most users and widely available


• Add public or private channels


• Powerful apps for every device with end-to-end encryption for videos and voice calls


• XBox integration and screen-sharing functions

Cons:

• Almost no customization options for building your own brand or branding your community


• No real way to make money–Nitro subscriptions are extremely limited & even if you do qualify, Discord takes a 10% fee


• Not designed for professional communities


• Discord owns all of your member data and content

8. Hivebrite

Cost: From $8,000 per year + extra costs for full features and scaling fees

Best for: Alumni networks and non-profits, or organizations that need to mix event management with discussion boards and job posting.

Overview: Hivebrite is a community engagement platform that was built for alumni networks and can function for different types of organizational community needs: corporations, nonprofits, or higher ed. It has a discussion-forum style interface for hosting networks, but integrates well with its event tools.

Here’s what you should know:

• A community engagement platform built around discussion forums with subgroups and built-in job board functions


• Comprehensive event management tools for live events run from a community


• CRM tools with built-in fundraising to track members and grow revenue


• Integrated member-management database as well as emails

Pros:

• Integrated event management works well and has useful features like ticketing, calendars, and invites.


• Strong alumni and networking focus with dedicated fundraising tools


• Options for geotargeting and adding local chapters and sub-communities under the main platform


• The CRM gives you a lot of functionality on the back end.


• Branded apps

Cons:

• Community platform is dated, basic, and feels really corporate. It has a fraction of the functionality competitors have.


• The admin tools are stronger than the member-facing tools and experience


• No native video or livestreaming tools. This means that it works for live events, but not virtual.


• No courses

9. Wild Apricot

Cost: From $60-$900/mo depending on features and size

Best for: Nonprofits and associations for member management and events

Overview: Wild Apricot and Hivebrite are quite similar in both feel and features. Wild Apricot offers a community engagement platform that’s specifically designed for nonprofit management. They have similar strengths and weaknesses, including a dated look and feel to website designs.

Here’s what Wild Apricot includes:

• Build member websites with drag-and-drop tools and add forums for member networking


• Database management with membership data plus email integrations and automations. Can add member sign-up forms and automated renewals.


• Built-in event managing including scheduling, ticketing, and payment processing


• Member emailing and automations

Pros:

• Good tools for managing member databases, info, and membership status


• Build websites easily and add in regional chapters (including regional sub-websites)


• Ecommerce integration for online stores


• Organize and sell tickets for live events

Cons:

• Outdated designs and UX for both the websites and member-facing components


• The community forums are extremely basic compared to robust community management software


• Can’t run live events or courses

10. Thinkific

Cost: Basic version from $24/month, but most features require more expensive plans.

Best for: Course creators that want flexible websites with a community added on.

Overview: Thinkific is an e-learning platform with some community features built-in. This includes:

• A discussion board feature with profiles and mentions, notifications, reactions, and threads.


• Moderation and community management tools.


• Community analytics with data on member engagement and ambassadors.


• Integration between courses and communities.


• Course websites from templates.

Pros:

• Good course-building features for asynchronous courses with curriculum organization, quizzes, surveys and feedback


• Integrated community that hosts simple, threaded discussions with member profiles


• Integrated digital products like downloads and webinars and some pre-set marketing funnels

Cons:

• Community engagement platform is still quite basic lined up against comparables


• Platform feels like an afterthought tacked on to the main offerings: courses


• Mobile apps have poor reviews

11. Slack

Cost: From $8.75/ per user per month, with extra costs for additional enterprise needs

Best for: Slack is built for the workplace. It works best for professional teams that need to share work and communicate.

Overview: Slack is very well known; a lot of people have used it for work. As a result, it’s become a popular option for some simple community engagement uses. It’s not difficult to get people onboarded if they’ve used it already. You can pop up a channel and get started.

However, Slack is limited for sophisticated community management features, and when you outgrow the simple “Free” options, the paid tiers are ridiculously costly. This is because Slack is built for workplaces, and charges by the seat.

Here’s what you get with Slack:

• Channel-based conversations and discussion forums with threads, tagging, notifications, and flexible content options


• Direct messaging and group chats w/ searchable history


• “Huddles” for quick audio and video calls


• Desktop + mobile apps and lots of integrations

Pros:

• It’s familiar. Most people have used it before, making for a very quick onboarding.


• Intuitive platform with everything you need to organize conversations. It works especially well for sharing work.


• Reduces emails


• Lots of good integrations since its popularity leads to lots of third-party solutions


• Works really well for groups that already know each other or groups

Cons:

• No native monetization features for collecting revenue, and the paid plans are expensive for communities (pay-per-member)


• It works for workplaces because they are required to be there. It’s not designed for voluntary member-driven engagement.


• Can’t build under your own brand–it always looks like Slack.


• Missing features for courses or robust live events

12. Kajabi

Cost: Normally starts at $149/month (3 products), $199/month (15 products), or $399/month (100 products). However, Kajabi has a simple introductory plan for new users only that starts from $69/mo.

Best for: Course creators needing marketing functionality with pre-built funnels.

Overview: Kajabi’s course platform is a good solution for pre-built courses. As a company, they’ve focused on marketing and selling these online courses with funnels and automated emails–which can be great if you’re building a pre-recorded course business.

However, Kajabi isn’t as strong for communities. They recently acquired a company called “Vibely,” which has given Kajabi some community engagement tools. However, Kajabi 2.0 lives on a separate app and platform from Kajabi’s main course platform, adding a lot of friction for members going between courses and community.

Here’s what you get with Kajabi:

• An excellent LMS for building pre-recorded courses with custom landing pages, course templates, and material


• A separate platform called Community 2.0 that can be used for hosting community discussions, livestreaming, meetings, and chats


• Some AI writing tools (like an embedded Chat GPT) for outlining courses and writing course content and landing pages.


• Pre-built marketing funnels for different kinds of courses and sales, with integrated emails and automations.

Pros:

• Simple and intuitive AI-boosted course building for pre-recorded courses


• Powerful marketing engine with campaigns, funnels, up- and down-sells


• Community 2.0 adds livestreaming and community engagement to Kajabi’s course platform.

Cons:

• Community 2.0 is on a separate platform with separate apps and logins–even Kajabi runs its Kajabi Heroes group on Facebook.


• Kajabi is fairly expensive, especially for its community engagement tools alone–comparable platforms are cheaper.


• Adding courses to communities feels like 2 separate products.

13. Facebook Groups

Cost: Free

Best for: Simple community engagement for free groups (especially if local)

Overview: It’s hard to write an overview for Facebook. You’ve obviously used it. But if you’re thinking of using it as a community engagement solution, there are a few things you should think about–both for and against Facebook. For community engagement practitioners, Facebook Groups almost always works well for small, local groups and struggles as groups get bigger with more content.

But to start, here are some of the main things you get with Facebook Groups:

• A running conversation thread with posts and responses embedded


• Some simple member management tools for admin, requests & approvals, and blocking and moderation


• Fantastic online platforms and apps that are really reliable


• Some content and event tools like posting text and videos, polls, and running livestreams


• Analytics and insights from Meta

Pros:

• A widely-known, free social media platform that almost everyone knows or has used before


• Many people already have accounts and a daily habit of use


• Notifications work well


• You can schedule and run simple virtual events from a Facebook Group.

Cons:

• You’re constantly fighting with Facebook for visibility, competing with other groups and content


• It’s almost impossible to monetize a Facebook Group natively–there’s one exception for huge pages, which you can learn about here.


• You don’t control member data or your database–these are Facebook’s customers.


• No ability to add your own brand


• Content gets chaotic. If you want to find old posts or info, it’s really hard to browse and search content.


• People boycott Facebook sometimes for security and privacy concerns, and/or you can get banned and lose it all.

14. BuddyBoss

Cost: Web theme from $299/year, w/ apps from $179/mo.

Best for: WordPress site owners looking for a community plugin

Overview: If you’re still on WordPress, we’ll include a few options for community plugins here. The first we’ll look at is BuddyBoss. It’s a premium wordpress plugin that gives you the functionality to add community engagement to a WordPres site.

Here’s what it includes:

• Community dashboards with profiles


• Community content creation with posts, comments, and messaging


• Event management tools and optional job boards


• Ability to customize under a WordPress theme


• White-label apps

Pros:

• Multiple templates to choose from with branding options


• Decent community features considering its a WordPress plugin with member dashboards and profiles


• Can gate premium content and charge access, integrating with 1000s of other WordPress themes and plugins like LearnDash or ecommerce tools


• Add a white-label app native to iOS or Android

Cons:

• WordPress plugins often glitchy and may require more development


• Requires multiple plugins for full functionality of a community engagement platform


• The apps are very basic

Conclusion

We hope these 14 options have helped you identify the best community engagement platform for your needs!

And if you want to try G2’s top-rated community management software–the platform with more $1 million communities than any other–come try Mighty! It’s free for 14 days, no credit card required.