Online communities are a staple of the creator economy, as people look for ways to monetize their work and audiences.

And, as the community Host, you can create an awesome business with a recurring revenue stream that offers more value per member than any other monetization strategy.

Disciple Media is an online community software that promises to give you the space to build this type of community for your members. And while it has some great features, it comes with higher costs as you need more advanced features like additional courses, groups, admins, and livestream capacity. And it has serious limitations on its lower tiers.

Whether you're about to launch your first community or you're working with Disciple and ready for a change, this post will walk you through 6 awesome Disciple alternatives.

Try G2's top-rated community platform - free for 14 days!

Mighty Networks brings you G2's #1-rated community platform. It has features like live streaming, live events, group messaging, articles, polls, and more, plus AI that's built to boost engagement.

Mighty is:

• Flexible Spaces: Choose features like feeds, courses, events, livestreaming, member profiles, and chat in one place.

• Courses: AI-powered course outlines, video hosting, quizzes, drip content, and cohorts.

• People magic: AI tools built to connect, like instant member profiles, introductions, discussion question generator, and 1-click re-engagement.

• Gamification: Streaks, points, badges, and community values designed by a top gamification expert!

• Automations: New member welcome sequences, celebrations, streaks, unlocks, and triggers.

• Native Mobile Apps: – iOS and Android apps included on all plans

You can build Mighty with a ton of customization options like light/dark mode, custom fields, URLs, and branding. And charge for plans and bundles in 135 different currencies.

Try it free for 14 days!

Mighty Pro is the totally custom, white-label version of Mighty Networks. It comes with all of the features mentioned above, but also includes your own mobile app, delivered under your own branding, across every device.

Mighty Pro has built apps for some of the world's top brands and creators, like Tony Robbins, Marie Forleo, Matthew Hussey, Jim Kwik, and The Home Edit.

Instead of spending $50K-200K+ for a custom app, Mighty Pro’s white-label approach will give you more for less. Our team will work closely with you; you bring the vision and we'll take care of designing your community app.

Mighty Pro is:

• Your branded apps in the App Store and Google Play Store.

• Branding help, splash screens, notifications, and full-service migration.

• Strategic Community Design™ from the team that's launched 500+ apps.

• Dedicated support + proactive app updates and submissions.

Plus, we are in it for the long haul, supporting you throughout your community journey and delivering up valuable growth insights.

Book a call with us and we'll show you what you could do with Mighty Pro!

Bettermode(formerly Tribe) is another white-label community platform that is a good alternative to Disciple. Its main use is to help businesses add a customer community or forum function to their existing website. Bettermode gives you a place to create the discussions, post content, and serve up value to your customers. While Bettermode offers embeddable widgets that can be integrated into existing websites and mobile apps, it does NOT provide its own mobile apps for customers to use.

It doesn't come with course features either, so if teaching or mobile-first community experiences are important to your business, you'll want to look elsewhere. But it's a web-based forum solution for businesses prioritizing customization and embedding, particularly SaaS companies and enterprises needing SOC 2 compliance. It also has AI-powered moderation tools.

Hivebrite is a community builder that was created for alumni networking. However, it has expanded to be an enterprise-grade, white-label community engagement platform that works in a lot of verticals.

Hivebrite offers a community for your alumni to keep in touch and to build relationships with current faculty and students. It offers features like branded apps and push notifications, not to mention a job board – a great thing to have for connecting students to work.

It also has event and conference management, with ticketing, registration, payment processing, and QR codes built-in.

Hivebrite is missing an online course function. Not every alumni network chooses to include courses, but adding in training options for things like career searching or professional development can be a really great way to add value to your alumni. However, it does have "journeys"--guided paths for onboarding that can be partially used for learning experiences.

The platform includes AI features for matching member connections and a mentoring module, plus branded mobile apps included.

You can learn more about what to look for in alumni management software in this post.

Higher Logic - Vanilla is another enterprise-grade platform that was built to give businesses the ability to create a customer community. It gives you the tools to customize your own brand and a set of community management features. Your members can publish content, create groups and subgroups, and add questions and polls.

As a Disciple alternative, it has the option for memberships, event ticketing, donations & giving features, and integrated payment processing. However, it is extremely expensive. Pricing is not public, but is thousands of dollars per month--targeting large enterprise users. It's built for corporate scale and not for smaller creators.

The final Disciple Media alternative we'll talk about here is Wild Apricot. Wild Apricot is a membership management software created specifically for nonprofit organizations. As such, it has some basic features for community engagement and discussions. But it's primarily a member management software, to keep track of membership in your organization or association.

It has a website builder so that you can create an online home for your nonprofit. Plus, it has subgroup options that are built for organizations with regional chapters, so that each can have its own website and community. Finally, it has functionality for live events and can be used for ticketing and membership sales.

If you are running a non-profit and need member management, it's a good alternative to Disciple. But for creators and coaches, it's not the right option. The limitations around courses, livestreaming, and community are prohibitive. They do offer a separate community platform as an add-on (CommUnity).

We've talked about a bunch of different Disciple alternatives in this post. And while there are a ton of different options for building an online community, you won’t find many of them that do everything you need.

Mighty Networks is G2's #1-rated community platform for a reason. It combines the power of a community that runs itself with a comprehensive business platform and the option for branded apps.

So why not try it? It's free for 14-days.

Try G2's top-rated community platform - free for 14 days!