Community Platforms
17 profiles, last reviewed 7 September 2026. This category is queued for its next full check; see the schedule.
Community platforms host a branded space for customers or an audience to talk to each other and to the company, usually combining discussion, events, courses, and paid membership.
Community became a go-to-market channel once founders realized a Slack group has no memory and no search. The platforms here trade the immediacy of chat for threaded discussion, gated content, and a member directory that compounds in value. The commercial question is whether the platform is a home for a free customer community, where support deflection is the payoff, or the product itself, where courses and paid membership carry the revenue.
Typical stack. Teams running community usually pair it with Email Service Providers, Customer Support Platforms, Product Onboarding & PLG, Webinars & Virtual Events, Subscription Billing, Retention & Churn Prevention and Social Media Management.
Bettermode
A modular customer community for B2B teams who care about retention, not memberships
Circle
Category LeaderThe all-in-one home for a paid community, courses, and events under your own brand
Discourse
The open-source forum that still wins on public discussion, search, and Google
Heartbeat
Discord's structure with a paywall, a course builder, and your own domain on top
Mighty Networks
Cohort courses, memberships, and a branded app for creators who teach
Skool
MomentumOne opinionated layout, ruthless gamification, and a $9 entry price
Whop
InnovationNo monthly fee, a marketplace that sends you buyers, and a percentage of everything you sell
Raklet
Membership admin first, discussion second, with a free plan and a branded app you can actually buy
Kajabi
The all-in-one creator business, with the community bundled into the funnel
Memberful
The membership billing layer for a community you host somewhere else
Podia
Best ValueOne small subscription for a website, a community, courses, and a checkout
Teachable
The cheapest way into a branded course business, with a quiet community attached
Thinkific
A serious course platform that grew a real community product on the side
Discord
Free, unlimited, and where your community already is, with everything that costs you
Flarum
A free, fast, self-hosted forum you own outright, if you can run a server
Patreon
Ease of UseFree to start, 10 percent forever, and your members live on someone else's domain
Slack
The work chat tool a thousand communities run on, priced for a company instead
Profiles are listed in editorial order. Placement cannot be purchased; see our methodology.