Online Courses

9 Skool Alternatives for 2025

Here are the best Skool alternatives

Author

Mighty Team

Last Updated

September 30, 2025

9 Skool Alternatives for 2025

If you’re planning to build a business around courses and/or community, you might have come across the platform Skool. Maybe you were invited by a friend wanting to earn from Skool’s affiliate program, or maybe you saw a social media ad. Or maybe you’ve already tried Skool and learned the hard way that it’s missing a lot of the features of a proper community platform.

In this article, we’ll talk about what Skool is and the issues many users report with it. Then we’ll share 9 Skool alternatives.

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9 Alternatives to Skool (Quick Reference)

Best Features

Use For

Starting From

AI-Boosted Memberships, Live & Async Course Platform, Livestreams, Apps

Paid Memberships (+Courses, Coaching, Events, & Livestreams)

$49/mo

Free Community Forums & Livestreams

Topical Forums & Streamed Gameplay

Free

Pre-Made Courses, Built-In Email & Marketing Funnels

Async Courses

$149/mo

White-Label Forums, Integrates to a Website

Corporate- Branded Forum

$599/mo

Discussion Rooms, Lots of Video Options

Free Communities (Esp. for a Local Group)

Free

Open-Source Software (GitHub), Similar Feel to Skool

Basic Discussion Forums

$50/mo

Forum- Style Convos, Threads, Tags & Meetings

Work Teams

From $8.75/mo/user

White-label Apps, Gated Discussions

Corporate Forums & Apps

$549/mo

Up + Downvotes, Discussion Threads, Subreddits, Simple Memberships

Public Forums

Free

What is Skool?

Skool is a basic community forum that was started by the internet figure Sam Ovens. They’ve recently launched ads with influencer Alex Hormozi–who partially owns the platform.

Skool - Discussion board

Skool’s features center on a search base with discoverable communities, forum conversations, live events, and a basic course platform. For content options, Skool lets you post, add videos, links, polls, or GIFs. It’s got “likes” or “watch” features to upvote or follow interesting posts.

Skool - event planning

Skool has some community gamification features to encourage members to engage–by climbing them up levels as they do. It also has an affiliate program, so users earn from signing up new potential community hosts.

Skool Pricing

Skool’s pricing model is pretty simple, it’s generally $99/mo for all plans. But they introduced a $9 “Hobby Plan” in 2025 that charges a 10% transaction fee as well. These plans offer unlimited members and courses, although the Hobby Plan is limited to 1 admin and no custom urls.

Why look for a Skool alternative?

  • The Skool platform is extremely basic. Virtually every community platform on the market contains a ton of features Skool doesn’t have.

  • There’s no way to subdivide conversations or grow larger communities. Even the biggest groups on Skool just show a running post list. There’s no content discovery or organization.

  • The course UX is unintuitive and the builder is unhelpful.

  • Users earn from inviting new Hosts onto the platform (and getting them to pay). By joining, you might be giving a kick-back to the person who invited you, but that doesn’t mean you’ll have what you need to launch a successful community business.

  • The app is glitchy, with users reporting problems accessing courses and content.

The bottom line, Skool just doesn’t measure up to a modern community platform. It’s clunky, missing features, and awkward to use. Most communities would be better served with one of the options below.

What to look for in a Skool alternative
  • Essential community features like advanced discussion tools, better member profiles, more content options (e.g. livestreaming, audio), search and discovery.

  • A better course engine with support for live and async courses (as needed), plus progress tracking, assignments, quizzes, content drops, and live teaching tools.

  • More monetization options with bundles, flexible pricing, better offer-building (events, livestreams, coaching), and more ways to profit from affiliates and referrals.

  • Built in AI engagement tools like AI matching, conversation starters, new member journeys, improved gamification, automations, and unlocks.

  • More branding options to own your community and build with a look and feel you love (and maybe a branded app).

Best Skool alternatives

1. Mighty Networks

Best community and course business platform

Mighty Networks is G2’s top-ranked community platform, bringing together communities, courses, and live events in a way that lets you earn.

Here’s how this works in practice.

Communities:

  • A community feature set with a customized activity feed, every kind of short and long-form content you could want, member profiles, chat, forums, messaging, polls, and more.

  • AI community platform with Mighty Co-Host™– it automates without killing your creativity: think auto profiles, connecting you to similar members, helping you know what to say, and generating questions.

  • Sell memberships, packages, coaching, masterminds, and courses and build bundles, choosing from 135 different currencies, or even monetizing with token-gating.

MN Graphics 2025 - Feed

Courses:

  • An intuitive and powerful LMS with awesome UX that makes building a course simple–add in all kinds of content, discussions on each module, and customize the feel.

  • Teach live with native livestreaming, including discussion and multi-speaker view.

  • Flexible course spaces that can hold discussions, member profiles, live events w/ RSVP, assignments, and more

Mighty Graphics 2025 Product Showcase - Course

Mighty makes it possible to build and scale a community or course business in a way that you can’t on Skool.

MN Graphics 2025 - Product Showcase - App

Add in awesome native apps for every device or even branded apps with Mighty Pro AND a built-in ConvertKit integration and you’ve got a community platform like no other.

2. Discord

Best free community builder

Discord - Server

If you’re looking for a free alternative to Skool for building a free community, Discord is a great option. It has a forum engine that’s way more powerful and better-developed than Skool’s, with a simpler UI.

Discord is good for organizing large discussions with a feature set that includes hashtags and channels (including voice channels), GIFs, stickers, and a bunch of other short and long-form content options.

Discord also has video streaming and events in a way that Skool doesn’t. It was built for gamers, so it comes with a solid integration set for screen-sharing for shared watching or gaming.

Discord app

If you’re monetizing a community, Discord gets a bit tricky–it’s not really built for memberships–and definitely doesn’t do courses. You can apply for a partner program and–if accepted–you can sell memberships (from which Discord takes a 10% cut). But Discord isn’t the right choice for a paid community.

However, if you’re running a free community and want a free-but-powerful alternative to Skool, Discord is a good choice.

3. Kajabi

Best course marketing platform

We mentioned Skool’s weaknesses with courses above, and Kajabi is another good alternative for course-specific needs.

Graphics - Kajabi homepage

Course platform: Kajabi has a really good course platform (LMS) for pre-recorded courses. It comes with lots of tools for building an engaging course, including content options and templates, assignments and quizzes, and dripping content.

Marketing funnels: This is where Kajabi really excels. Users can create and customize landing pages, choose from different funnels and opt-in templates and presets.

Kajabi main app

Community: Kajabi isn’t as strong on community. For a long time Kajabi simply had a basic discussion forum. They recently acquired a platform called Vibely and launched Community 2.0, which gives chat rooms, video calling, and some other community features. But it exists on a separate platform, requiring a separate log-on and separate app. This can be a bit annoying for UX.

4. Bettermode

Forums for businesses

Tribe- screenshot

Bettermode is a white-label community platform built for businesses that want to add customer or brand communities to their websites. It creates a discussion space that can be organized into relevant spaces and members can post content. There’s also a useful “explore” option to help find interesting content.

Like Mighty, Bettermode can be white-labeled (including the community app), with a custom domain and website builder. And it has useful membership management features that help you connect users by common interests, locations, etc.

The downside to Bettermode as a Skool alternative is that it doesn’t have course functions or live events–it’s focused on being a community forum builder.

5. Geneva

Free chat software

Geneva chat

For creating a community with a small group of friends, Geneva is a good, free chat app. It has features like forums, chat rooms, video and audio-only rooms–creating options for all different kinds of conversations. If you’re someone who likes writing long-form articles and blog posts, it can do that too.

Geneva can handle virtual events well, too, with RSVP and notifications when a virtual event is starting. And with video calling, it can do 1:1 or group video events.

Geneva would be a good Skool alternative for a small, free community–with no courses. It doesn’t have monetization features, so it’s not the right place to build a community business.

6. Discourse

Closest 1:1 Skool community alternative

Discourse- Snip

If you’re looking for a platform that looks a lot like Skool, Discourse is an option. It has a really basic interface that looks like Skool crossed with reddit, with a scrolling list of posts to organize the action. Like Skool, Discourse shows you a scrolling list of the most recent posts with info on who has posted and how popular the posts are. It also has a simple search function so you can find posts.

Discourse is based on open-source software that’s hosted on GitHub–if you have some programming chops you could technically build it yourself. Most people need to choose a hosted option though–paying Discourse for hosting–which can get pricey.

The downside is that Discourse has some of the same problems that Skool has. It’s extremely dated and basic, missing the engagement features and tools of a modern community platform.

7. Slack
Slack channel 1

Slack is technically a workplace platform, but some people are choosing to retool it as a community platform–and it has some of the features that make it work. Like Skool, it can host conversations and community activities, but it’s way more powerful–with built-in threads, DMs, mentions, etc. plus integrated file sharing and uploads.

While it doesn’t really have events, Slack does have huddles which work for small groups and 1:1 video and audio conversations.

slack huddle

Slack is familiar, since a lot of people already use it for work. It’s missing some of the complexity of a community platform: for example:

  • It has super basic member profiles–work colleagues don’t need to get to know each other the same way community members do.

  • It doesn’t have monetization features at all since it’s built for the office.

  • Slack doesn’t really do native video or long-form content.

  • It gets very expensive if you grow beyond the free plan. It starts from $8.75/mo per user as you grow.

8. Disciple
Disciple Community

Disciple is a Skool alternative that comes with community-building features that let you share content. It has activity feeds, Q&As, discussion forums, and the capacity for video, text, and image-based content. And the member-management features are good too, much better than Skool’s–manage subscriptions, host and plan events, and deal with member communications. You can gate content behind a paywall and bundle different benefits too, allowing you to scale a community business.

Like Mighty, it also comes with branded mobile apps so that your community can be deployed on your own brand.

9. Reddit
Reddit snip

Finally, reddit is an option for a Skool alternative. Reddit’s features are closer to Skool’s than any community platform, a running conversation. Reddit has the benefit of being much more widely used–communities on reddit can access millions of users. And it has a way to discover communities much like Skool. And if you’re running a free community, it’s probably easier to get people there than on Skool.

The content options are better, with up- and down- voting, and it has more structure for reading text-based content.

reddit

The downsides of reddit are that, as a social media platform, monetization is trickier than a dedicated community platform.

Migration roadmap

If you need to get your course and/or community off Skool, here are the steps to take.

Step 1: Audit your existing community and/or courses. What’s working? Is your Ideal Member still right? Identify what you want to take forward to a better platform.

Step 2: Check out the Skool alternatives. What do they give you that Skool doesn’t? How can you level up your offers?

Step 3: Export your members’ emails from a list or CSV. Skool lets you do this. If you’re also active on social media, work to move your members onto your email list (instead of into your Skool community).

Step 4: Set up your new plans and populate your Skool alternative with your own branding and any content, courses, etc. that you want to bring over.

Step 5: Announce the move in your Skool community, by email, and on social media (if applicable). Point members toward your new community with a clear offer or invite link.

Step 6: Plan a welcome event on your new platform. It could be a mini conference, livestream, live chat, or something else. Give people a reason to make the jump! You could even offer bonuses or freebies to the early adopters.

Step 7: Adjust all your existing socials and your Skool community to point to the new platform. Create your content there, and keep emailing members to remind them to join.

Step 8: Stop posting and creating on Skool. Focus entirely on your new space. Cross posting will hurt the engagement on your new platform and reduce the chances of members moving.

Ready to start?

MN Graphics 2025 - Phantom Frequency Livestream Desktop

The best Skool alternative is one that actually lets you build a course and community business, without the glitches and issues.

If you’re looking for an awesome platform, come build with Mighty! Here are some of the incredible results we’ve seen:

  • An entrepreneur community that made over $30,000 in a 2-week launch.

  • An author & speaker’s 4-week promotion led to an extra $30,000 in revenue.

  • A high-ticket launch added $40,000 in ARR.

  • A podcaster and author sold 5,000 seats to a $997 course in 10 days to existing members.

  • A community added $100k in revenue with a 13-week add-on course.

Mighty gives you the tools to build a powerful community business. Try it free for 14 days!

FAQs
1. Which alternative replicates Skool's points leaderboard or offer deeper gamification tools?

Mighty Networks offers a full suite of gamification features that are more comprehensive than Skool’s. With things like new member journeys, challenges and unlocks, points and recognitions, streaks and habit trackers, you can gamify more of your members’ experience. This leads to better engagement and less churn.

MN - Graphics - 2025 - Powder Church Recognition Gamification -
2. How do I migrate my Skool courses, community posts, and member progress to a new platform?

We gave a guide above, but here are a few nuts and bolts for what to export:

  • Manually download any content and posts you want to carry over into a new community.

  • Export your member email list (that’s really all you can do).

  • Rebuild any content or courses you want to carry over. Since Skool doesn’t have native video hosting, you can probably reuse links to Wistia or Vimeo if you choose.

3. How steep is the learning curve for members moving from Skool's interface to Mighty Networks?
  • Both have a similar basic principle of organizing communities around forum discussions, but Mighty has a lot more power under the hood. Mighty runs on Spaces, customizable content containers that can hold 9 types of content (including forums and courses). You can start from templates or customize a Space.

  • Mighty admin is made easier by the AI cohost that will prompt you through key community setup. You can also use AI for your Big Purpose, community branding, profiles, conversation starters, and course outlines.

  • Members typically adapt well to better content organization (Spaces), and more control over what they see and notifications.

  • There are lots of onboarding resources, as well as the option to set up a new member welcome checklist (which you absolutely should do!). This gets members up to speed.

MN - Graphics - 2025 - Phantom Frequency People Explorer
4. Which options include a native mobile app?

Of the options above, several have native mobile apps. For example:

  • Mighty Networks has a beautiful, responsive app for every device. It can be customized and deployed under your own brand, with in-app purchasing of plans.

  • Discord has a native app for every device, but it’s not customizable and has very limited monetization.

  • Kajabi has a mobile app, but it requires separate apps for courses and communities.

5. What’s the best option for a white-label community app?

Mighty Networks offers a premium, white-label app under your own brand. Mighty Pro has built apps for some of the world’s top creators, people like Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Marie Forleo, Matthew Hussey, and Mel Robbins. More info here!

MN - Graphics - 2025 - Feed the flock apps

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