As a creator—whether you’re an entrepreneur or a small business owner—you have a lot on your plate. But there’s an easy way to keep your followers excited and engaged.
How? By finding a robust community platform. Using a community platform that caters to creators gives you the tools to manage, nurture, and engage your community, all in one place.
In this article, we'll show you what's unique about having a community platform that's BUILT for creators, and give you some options.
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 is a Community Platform for Creators?
A community platform for creators is a piece of software that makes it easy to take your most passionate followers and turn them into engaged, paying community members.
Here's what it means to have a community platform that's built FOR creators.
- Make more money from your following. 46% of full-time creators earn less than $1,000 from their work. That's a pathetic number for a world that thinks posting on social media is the way to "build passive income." A community platform for creators means you can actually earn a living from your work. (More on this in a minute).
- Own your audience. That is, a community platform means you own your interactions with them. No fighting algorithms. No sudden lock-outs or hacks. It's your space.
- Build the experience that reflects who you are. We've learned that creators almost always have a vision. And that vision is often limited by the platform they build on. If it doesn't look like your brand and doesn't have the features you want, why build there?
- Room to grow. The best community platforms for creators have lots of features to work with for flexible engagement.
- Build a modern business. Finally, a community platform isn't just a replacement for social media monetization. They should let you build and manage a powerful creator business--collecting payments, managing members, building sales and bundles, etc.
Building REAL monetization
The statistics are chilling.
- 35% of creators say that the time they're putting into their work has paid off in money.
- 77% worry about how relying on a social media platform could kill their income.
The New Yorker has even called the creator economy "the new gig economy."
It's not fair. It's really not.
Creators have been sold the dream of earning a living online. Replacing their day jobs. Getting this dream might mean a roof over your head, food on the table, and the money to care for the people you love.
That's not a small thing.
So being taken advantage of by a platform that really doesn't care about you or your pain hurts.
The answer is NOT to work harder, slogging it out on TikTok, YouTube, or Instagram until you finally "hit it big."
The answer is to change the business model.
Why community is the best 6-figure+ creator business
You need a different approach. Look at this chart of all the ways people earn money from their content.
You probably recognize some of these. Maybe you've tried some.
But not all content creator platforms are created equal.
How much does advertising pay? On YouTube, an income of anywhere from $1.61 to $29.30 is the average per 1,000 views.
In an online community, the average membership price is $48/mo. That's recurring revenue.
With a YouTube Channel, you need anywhere from 170,000 to 3 million views to make $5,000/mo.
With an online community, you'd need 104 members to make the same amount.
Not to be pessimistic, here, but which sounds more realistic?
- Starting a YouTube Channel and getting 200k - 3 million views?
- Or getting 100 paying members into a community?
Community is a way better business model, and that's even if you don't also sell extras like courses, group coaching, or live events (which many communities do).
Unleashing your creator brand
When you build on a community platform, it can also mean delivering a premium experience.
Building your community under your own branded white label community software means you can create a product and experience that fits your style.
This can mean:
- Your branded space
- Options to customize landing pages, features, and more.
- A premium experience under your own brand
Especially if you're selling a premium experience, the product should reflect it.
A community platform for creators brings together content and business in a way that lets you go beyond building a following and build a brand.
Building your creator business
Here are some of the features the community platforms for creators can give you:
- Sell online courses, either teaching live or selling a recorded course.
These are some of the options that can come together and make a thriving creator business. And any modern community platform should give you everything in one place.
10 best community platforms for creators
1. Mighty Networks
Ranked the #1 community platform by G2
Includes:
- Powerful community engine with discussion forums, articles & posts, livestreaming, polls, and more built in.
- Sell community memberships and bundles in 135 currencies or monetize with token-gating.
- Branding power to make your community look and feel your own. Light & dark mode, customized features, and more.
- Beautiful native apps to find your community on any device.
- Mighty Co-Host™ integrated AI features to create people magic: discussion questions, instant landing pages and course outlines, "make it better" text editor, profile assist, automatic matching, and more.
- Built-in ConvertKit integration for email marketing.
Best for: Building a versatile community under your own brand.
Cost: From $33/mo
2. Mighty Pro
Best for branded community apps
Includes:
- All of Mighty's award-winning community features under your own branded app.
- A team that builds the app for you from start to finish and beyond.
- Premium Mighty Co-Host™ AI features like advanced moderation and the Infinite Question Generator.
- VIP support from the Mighty Pro Team of Account Executives and Community Strategists who have scaled 7-figure creator brands and 8+-figure subscription businesses
- Help from a team that's built apps for Mel Robbins, Jim Kwik, Drew Binsky, TED, and more
- Splash screens, branded notifications, proactive updates, and App Store & Google Play Store submissions
Best for: Established creators looking for a branded community app.
Cost: Schedule a call for a quote.
3. Discord
Best free community builder
Includes
- Good (and free) community forum engine with dedicated channels and some fun content options (e.g. stickers)
- Chat & messaging features
- Built-in streaming for sharing movies and gameplay.
- Other video-game features like X-Box voice chat (for simultaneous gameplay).
- Solid apps for every device.
Best for: Discord is best for simple, free discussion communities (especially for gamers). It doesn't have options to build a community business and the branding is limited.
Cost: Free
Try our free Discord Server name generator.
4. Kajabi
Best marketing system for pre-recorded courses
Includes:
- A comprehensive LMS with lots of content features for building pre-recorded courses.
- A marketing platform with landing pages, email campaigns, triggers, and funnels built-in.
- AI features for course outlines, landing pages, and scripts
- New community features with Community 2.0
Best for: A dedicated asynchronous course with a complex marketing system and a community tacked on. Community 2.0 is a great platform, but exists totally separately from Kajabi's main product with different logins and different apps.
Price: From $149/mo
5. Bettermode
Best for a customer community tab on a brand's website
Includes:
- Forum-based interaction
- Organize conversations into spaces
- White-label app options
Best for: More corporate-feeling brand communities attached to an existing website. Since it doesn't have live events, courses, or even comprehensive community features, it's not the right choice for a standalone community.
Price: From $599/mo
6. Geneva
Includes:
- Good live event features: calendar, RSVPs, moderation features, and application forms.
Best for: Linking together small, free communities. Although it has a great feature set for interaction, it has no monetization features.
Price: Free
7. Circle
Includes:
- Discussion forums, different content options, and member profiles.
- Livestreaming and live events.
Best for: It's good for creators wanting paid community businesses, similar to Mighty Networks (although it's missing some of the features -- full comparison here).
Price: From $89/mo
8. Slack
Includes
- Discussion forum with a familiar interface (from the office), with lots of options for tagging, mentions, organizing chats, building new channels, etc.
- Some live features like "huddles" and voice calls.
- Can mix together 1:1 messaging or bigger conversations.
Best for: There are communities built on Slack, which is a bit more serious version of Discord. Slack is good for free communities (with an extremely limited "free" plan), but has no monetization or business features.
Price: A limited free plan or else $8.75/mo per user
9. Memberium
WordPress community plugin
Includes
- Options to add a forum and courses, including different membership levels
- Integrated payment system
Best for: Diehard WordPress users who want a basic community feature on their site. But do remember that most paid community platforms can be integrated as a subdomain.
Price: From $37/mo
10. Facebook Groups
Includes
- A free and widely-used social media platform + existing members
- A simple "Wall" for groups with Facebook-style content creation (text, videos, and rich images)
- Messaging options (both 1:1 and all-member)
Best for: Facebook Groups are widely recognized and easy to use, but because of challenges with the algorithm, privacy, and limited monetization, most creators find that a Facebook Group either flops, or they outgrow it too fast. It can be a good place to test a community concept and get started.
Price: Free
Ready to start?
With a Mighty Network, creators get all the tools they need to create or build a thriving community. Creators can monetize their following, using custom Spaces that let you add things like courses, live events, live streaming, discussions, messaging, or long-form content.
You can build a powerful creator business around your content. It's got everything you need.
And that’s what makes it one of the best community platforms for creators on the market today.
Plus, Mighty Co-Host™ AI can automatically build your community for you in the next 2 minutes. Try Mighty and watch it in action!
It's free to try for 14 days--no credit card required! Give it a shot.
