8 Best Online Community Platforms 2023 (Updated List)

Choosing the right community platforms is crucial for your business. From social networks and forums to online marketplaces, the best community platforms can help you meet your goals. In this guide, we ranked and comprehensively reviewed the 8 best community platforms of 2023 including our top choices, so that you can pick the best one for you.

Disclosure: Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links and when you buy through them, we may earn an affiliate commission at no extra cost to you. Our affiliate disclosure can be found in our privacy policy.

In a hurry? Our top choices are Thinkific, Mighty Networks and Tribe Platform.

Online communities have become essential to building sustainable online businesses.

Community software allows you to create communities to connect and engage global audiences under your brand.

Branded communities are versatile, so use them to expand your content marketing (via user-generated content), gather user feedback, provide peer-to-peer support, host an online course or knowledge base, You can enable members to forge individuals with valuable content.

We all know that online communities can be powerful business tools, but choosing the right community platform can be difficult.

These are some questions you need to ask:

• How many customizations can I make in the community forums?
• Is it based on modern social media design?
• How much is it?
• How many members can a community accommodate?
• Does the platform have SEO features to improve your online presence and authority?
• Integrate part of the community into your website or app?
• Does the platform provide access to detailed analytics?
• Does the platform handle all the languages ​​you use?
• Is the platform easy for you and your customers to use?

These are some of the critical factors to consider.

What are the Best Community Platforms?

The best community platform must be customizable, uses modern design practices, is very easy to use, and comes with powerful gamification and moderation capabilities.

It should also be able to easily scale with member growth and to also offer a seamless experience by taking care of hosting, maintenance, and security.

These benefits are available in a cloud-based (SaaS) solution.

In our opinion, the best community platforms are Thinkific, Mighty Networks and Tribe, followed by Vanilla Forums, Discourse Spectrum.chat, Slack and Facebook Groups.

These community management tools empower you to create your social network (also known as a social community).

You can easily connect your audiences, customers, partners, employees under your brand to build authentic relationships.

This will act as a safe social platform to share ideas and learn from each other with collaborative approaches.

Here are our top picks for the best online community software to try this year.

1. Thinkific.

Best Overall Community Platform Builder (Start For Free)

Thinkific is an all-in-one platform that allows you to create, market, and sell online courses and memberships. It also has a built-in community feature that allows you to build a community around your courses and memberships.

One of the key features of Thinkific’s community feature is the ability to create discussion forums for each course or membership. These forums allow students and members to connect with each other, ask questions, and share information. The platform also allows you to moderate the forums and control access to them.

Thinkific also allows you to create private groups for students and members. These groups can be used for things like coaching, masterminds, or other types of small group interactions. The platform also allows you to create group challenges and quizzes.

Another feature of Thinkific is that it allows you to create a community homepage where all the community activities can be displayed and accessed. This allows you to create a central hub for all the community activities, making it easy for students and members to find and participate in them.

Thinkific also provides analytics and reporting tools that allow you to track engagement and participation in the community. This can help you understand how well your community is doing, and make improvements as needed.

Overall, Thinkific is a powerful community platform builder. It is a good option for educators, trainers, coaches, and other professionals who want to build a community around their online content.

Thinkific Major features:

• A drag-and-drop website builder helps you create professional websites quickly.
• Ecommerce included so you can start selling your products and services right away
• Product flexibility allows us to offer a wide range of products and services
• Market & Sell gives you the power to reach more customers through marketing tools and social media integration.
• Website themes let you customize the look and feel of your website
• Advanced customization gives you complete control over your website design

Thinkific Pricing:

Their pricing plans are as follows:

• Basic: $39 per month
• Pro: $79 per month
• Premier: $399 per month

The annual plan gives you a 20% discount when compared to paying monthly.

Try Thinkific for free today. Cancel anytime.

2. Mighty Networks.

The best online community platform for simplicity ($33– $99/month)

Mighty Networks serves creators and entrepreneurs through the web and native iOS and Android apps, with communities, online courses, retail sites and more all under one brand.

Mighty Networks is popular because it offers personalization and dynamic interfaces.

In addition to creating and managing a variety of content, Mighty Networks also allows you to create landing pages and process payments when you’re ready to start monetizing your creations.

Connect community members with activity feeds, subgroups, member categories, chat messages, and more.

Use their rich CMS to create articles, embed images, videos and audio, post questions and polls. They all have supporting comments and like buttons. This is certainly an easy-to-use platform for improving community engagement.

Mighty Networks Key Features:

• Personalized activity feed for members
• Topics and articles
• Create public, private, or paid communities
• Zapier integration for workflow automation
• An analytics dashboard tracks membership and trends.
• Unlimited members, regardless of plan size.
• Host live events, conferences, and group chats.
• Custom domain
• Charge membership fees
• A variety of communication channels, including direct private messages.

Mighty Networks Pricing:

Mighty Networks offers a free trial without providing credit card info.

If you like the platform then you can upgrade later.

There are 4 pricing options:

• Community: Costs $33/month and allows you to point your community to your preferred custom domain.
• Business: Costs $99/month and allows you to host online courses. You also get access to Zapier integration and premium analytics.
• Pro: Get access to native mobile apps, mobile push notifications, and app store marketing all under your brand. Details of pricing can be collected by contacting the Mighty Networks team directly.

Choose Mighty Networks if charging membership fees and offering courses is crucial for your customer community project.

Start your 14-day free trial with Mighty Networks.

3. Tribe Platform.

Most customizable community platform (Free – $199/month)

Tribe is an excellent platform suitable for creators and brand-led communities.

The communities powered by Tribe work very beautifully on both web and mobile browsers.

You can even convert them into apps (PWA).

With Tribe Platform you can fully customize your community to reflect your particular brand.

You can also convert components like activity feed, groups, posts, etc. into widgets and very easily embed them inside your site as well as the product.

The design is inspired by popular social media sites.

That means you can create your own version of Facebook, Quora, and LinkedIn.

This community tool is also very secure and allows you to build a 100% GDPR compliant community.

Members can also easily join the community via a social login system that supports Facebook, Slack, LinkedIn, Google, and Twitter.

Tribe Major features:

• Activity feeds like popular social media sites that provide personalized content.
• Support for different types of posts and rich media (such as direct video uploads).
• Allow members to rate, comment, and reply to posts.
• Create groups and topics to form subcommunities and categorize content.
• Change colors, add brand value, and change the design with CSS.
• An embeddable widget for adding social components to your website.
• Localize your community in over 25 international languages.
• Keep your members busy with powerful notification tools.
• Extensive gamification system including reputation points, badges and leaderboards
• A moderation system that combines user-controlled tagging, standard moderator tools (edit, delete, merge, etc.) and automation (keyword blacklisting, etc.).
• Powerful SEO optimizes your community to be indexed by search engines.
• This software platform gives you full control over your community, allowing you to export all member and content data.
• Tribe has direct integrations with over 20 popular third-party tools. One of them is Zapier, which can connect to over 2000 popular apps.
• SSO allows existing users of your website and products to log in to your community.
• Extensive reporting capabilities let you measure the metrics that matter to your community

Tribe Pricing Plans:

Tribe has four plans, but up to 100 members are free.

Users get discounts for annual payments instead of monthly payments.

• Membership is free to start up to 100 people.
• With 100 members, plans start at $59/month and include 3 admin seats.
• Premium membership starts at 2,500 members and costs $299/month and includes 5 admin seats.
• With 25,01 members, upgrade to Advanced membership status and pay $599 per month. The new plan includes 5 additional admin seats and many advanced features.
• If the number of corporate members has exceeded 100,000, a new fee structure is introduced. Pricing is done by their sales team and you get multiple upgrades.

Anyone can start for free, no credit card required.

Tribe also allows users to purchase additional admin seats as needed.

Overall, Tribe is an established platform and currently boasts clients such as IBM, ASUS, Pipedrive, Decathlon and Convertkit.

You can get started with Tribe for free and upgrade to a paid plan for more features.

4. Vanilla Forums.

One of the most mature community platforms (starts from $689/month)

 Vanilla Forums  has both an open-source version, and managed services (paid plans).

Paid plans unlock features not available in the open-source version.

Vanilla Forums Key Features:

• You can match your brand guidelines to your theme
• Use Google Analytics to improve standard growth analysis.
• Gamification system
• Moderation system ( merge, edit, delete, demerit, ban)
• Q&A system
• Events (scheduling, sharing, discovery, and RSVP functions)
• Groups or subcommunities
• Social login and SSO
• WordPress integration
• APIs and webhooks
• Integrations with Salesforce, Zendesk, and more

Vanilla Forums Pricing Plans:

Vanilla Forums offers 4 pricing plans and it starts from $689/month.

Essential: This plan offers 250,000 monthly page views, 5 staff members, jsConnect SSO, private or public community access, gamification, and much more.

Corporate: This plan offers 1 million monthly page views, 10 staff members, CRM integration, ideation, API access, advanced SSO, and much more.

Enterprise: This plan offers a custom page view plan, custom staff users, enhanced security, uptime SLA, and more.

Enterprise Plus: For those that require or need the most resources for their business

5. Discourse.

One of the most popular, older online community platforms ($100/month – $300/month)

Discourse is one of the oldest community platforms. It is also one of the simplest to install, learn, and to use.

Discourse is an open-source forum software mainly for discussions. It also comes with a cloud-hosted version.

Discourse Key Features:

• Scroll infinitely to cover a single page of conversation
• Link expansion
• Mobile compatible
• One-time signup
• Additional Member Rights Based on Trust
• Ability to reply via email
• Plugins that add functionality to discussion forums
• Powerful API
• Translation into 45 languages
• Management system with ability to flag content
• Personal message
• Report dashboard

Discourse Pricing:

Although the open-source version is free, you have to still pay for hosting and for maintenance.

The managed hosting option has 3 main subscription plans.

Standard: This $100 per month gives you 100,000 monthly page views, unlimited members, 5 staff members, and 20 GB of storage.

Business: This plan costs $300 per month. It gives you 500,000 monthly page views, 100 GB storage, unlimited members, and 15 staff users.

Enterprise: This is a custom plan offered to large enterprises. Comes with over 3,000,000 monthly page views, unlimited members, unlimited staff, and 200 of GB storage.

Some of the popular brands using Discourse are Twitter, Samsung, Docker, and Patreon.

6. Spectrum.chat.

The community platform that combines chat and discussion threads (free)

Spectrum enables you to launch a free and public community with a real-time chat-like conversation.

At the same time, unlike messaging apps, Spectrum conversations are found and indexed by search engines.

So you get the best of both worlds: threaded discussions and real-time chat.

However, communities built with Spectrum aren’t fully customizable to match your branding.

For example, you can’t host your community on a custom domain.

Other limitations include lack of SSO, moderation tools, integrations, reporting and analytics.

Spectrum Key Features:

• Unlimited chat
• Unlimited members
• Brandable signup pages
• Secure, private channels
• Email member invitations
• Single DM inbox

Spectrum Pricing:

At this point, Spectrum is a free platform, you can get started with this solution in case you have budget constraints

7. Slack.

The easiest community platform to build Community of Professionals (free – $12.5/member)

Slack is a popular business messaging and collaboration software.

However, many are also using it for creating communities for professionals.

The main reasons for this are the free plan, top-notch user experience, and popularity of the Slack app.

You can start for free, but you can easily hit the limit with the free plan.

For example, on the free plan, only the first 10,000 messages are searchable.

Also, you cannot build a public community on Slack. This prevents other users from finding your community via search engines. Apart from that, there are no customization options, moderation and analytics features.

Slack Key Features:

• Ability to build Channels for discussions and categorize the Channels using Sections.
• Real-time communication
• Powerful direction integration with other third-party tools
• Member directories
• File browser
• Video calling
• Supports different pre-designed templates

Slack Pricing Plans:

Slack offers 4 pricing plans:

Free: Unlimited private & public channels, 10,000 searchable messages, 10 apps/integrations, one on one video or voice calls, and file sharing.

Pro ($7.25 per member): Unlimited messages archive, unlimited apps, and group video calling.

Business+ ($12.50 per member): SAML-based SSO, data export, 99.99% uptime SLA

Enterprise Grid: This is a custom plan for enterprise companies. Comes with unlimited workspaces, advanced security features, and compliance systems.

It is highly recommended for real-time discussions. Not suitable for asynchronous communications required for discussion forums.

8. Facebook Groups.

The best community platform to acquire members easily (free)

Facebook Groups are used to build dedicated groups for people with a common passion so they can discuss various topics related to their areas of interests.

For a business, these Facebook Groups are used to discuss your offerings and to also boost awareness about your company.

Facebook Groups Key Features:

• Posts, likes, and comments
• Questionnaire setups for member approval
• Displaying rules for moderations
• Ability to assign mentor privilege to your most loyal group members
• Build learning modules (similar to courses) to educate your members
• Connect the Facebook Group with Facebook Pages
• Reporting and analytics
• Real-time chat with Messenger (if members are not friends, messages go to “Message Requests” section)

Facebook Groups Pricing:

Facebook Groups are free and currently, Facebook is heavily focused on improving Groups functionalities.

Overall, if you are just starting out, Facebook Groups can be a very good option.

However, It doesn’t allow you to customize based on your brand, you don’t own the data, privacy can be an issue, and the platform is inherently full of distractions (owing to notifications and ads).

How to Choose the Right Community Platform for your needs.

When choosing a community platform, there are several key factors to consider:

Purpose

The purpose of your community platform should be clear and well defined. This will help you choose a platform that is well-suited to your needs. For example, if your purpose is to build a customer support community, a forum platform would be a good choice. If your purpose is to build a social network, a platform like Facebook or LinkedIn would be more appropriate.

Audience

Knowing your target audience will help you choose a platform that is popular among your target demographic. For example, if your target audience is young adults, a platform like TikTok or Instagram would be a good choice. If your target audience is professionals, a platform like LinkedIn would be more appropriate.

Features

Different community platforms offer different features. Some common features include user registration, moderation tools, analytics, and integration with other tools. Consider the features you need and choose a platform that offers them.

Scalability

Your community is likely to grow over time, so it’s important to choose a platform that can accommodate a growing number of users and content. Consider a platform that can handle a large number of users, high traffic, and a large amount of content.

Integration

It is important to consider how well the platform integrates with other tools you are already using. For example, if you use an email marketing tool, you’ll want to choose a platform that can integrate with it. If you use a CRM, you’ll want to choose a platform that can integrate with it.

Cost

The cost of a community platform can vary widely. Some platforms are free, while others require a monthly or annual subscription. Consider the cost of the platform and any additional features or integrations you may need.

Support

Different community platforms offer different levels of support. Consider the customer service, tutorials, and community resources offered by the platform. Choose a platform that offers the level of support you need.

Security

It is important to choose a platform that has robust security measures in place to protect your community’s data and user’s personal information. Consider the platform’s data encryption, user authentication, and backup procedures.

Types of Online Communities

A community is a group of people who come together for a common good or goal. While no two online communities are alike, many of them share common features and overlap or fall into one of the following categories:

Social Communities.

People come together to socialize, connect or connect around common interests or goals.

Learning Community.

People come together in pursuit of higher knowledge, whether related to work, school or products.

Mission-based community.

Members pursue a common goal.

Let’s now move on to the key characteristics of different online communities.

SUPPORT COMMUNITY

The first type of community that we will cover is the support community. A support community is unique because it helps customers and is well indexed on Google and other search engines. Users join these types of communities for advice on purchasing or using a product. For example, think of an online Apple or Windows support community where customers ask questions about products they’ve purchased. It is usually run by moderators and is a very structured type of community.

These support groups index well because they provide publicly searchable information. As a result, users asking the question become a popular search on Google and other similar search engines. While Quora hosts many of these communities, your brand should consider hosting a supportive community on its website. A support community can be the starting point for more customer education and interaction.

CUSTOMER COMMUNITY

An online brand community, also known as a customer community, is a group of people who dedicate their time and energy to a well-loved brand or product. These types of online communities can be initiated by the brand’s super fans and most dedicated customers, or by the brand itself. At times, brands can take a more gradual or restrained approach. But overall, brands should use this growth strategy to foster an emotional connection with their customers. You will increase your brand awareness and create brand loyalty.

For example knowledge management software company Notion’s online communities are born on social media platforms like Facebook groups, LinkedIn and Reddit. Their community has been built by passionate customers who want to share their views and ideas about Notion products. Notion has launched a community engagement strategy in which they use influencers and other community tools to grow their online community. Notion takes a hands-on, community-led approach, empowering its clients to moderate and take on community leadership roles. Notion offers advice and guidance, but they do not own these social networking communities.

If you are considering building an online brand community, be open to encouraging and to receiving criticism. Also, don’t curate your super fans, but welcome their leadership ideas and initiatives.

MASTERMIND GROUP

A mastermind group consists of like-minded individuals interested in achieving success. This group draws on the experience of its members and provides valuable advice during the exchange of ideas.

Usually, this community consists of a group of entrepreneurs or people interested in acquiring higher knowledge. Many members of the Mastermind team aspire to study personal development or advance their careers. Members help each other grow and give their ideas about each other.

The name for this type of community comes from Napoleon Hill, who studied entrepreneurs like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford. Hill realized that these entrepreneurs were more than self-sufficient and could attribute their success to their social circles and networks of like-minded individuals.

There is often a lot of trust in a brain community and the free exchange of information and advice. However, these communities sometimes lack direction, clear judgment, and cause misunderstandings among other members. Mastermind groups need a strong leader who can facilitate these expert conversations without disrupting the natural flow of information and connections.

GROUP COACHING COMMUNITY

Do you want to create a group coaching community? If you want to assist with customer education, teach a business webinar course, or provide some kind of teaching experience to a group, you should consider a group coaching community. In this type of community, an appointed leader usually guides a group of people on a learning journey. However, this type of community encourages members to support and uplift each other. For this type of community to be successful, the coach will facilitate conversations and encourage his or her members to be proactive and practice community leadership.

Finally, accountability is paramount in this type of community. Accountability for success is often the reason users join a group coaching community. They enjoy the journey of a shared experience and group responsibility. However, everyone learns differently, so some members may have difficulty in group learning or feel overlooked if they do not receive individual attention. It is important for coaches to provide a valuable educational experience while encouraging networking and team bonding.

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

A community of practice is a group of people in a niche or specialized field that exchange information, solve problems, and build relationships with each other. They are also known as the professional community. It is a common community among healthcare professionals, graphic designers or other industries with very specialized skills. These community members share best practices and other valuable knowledge to help their peers develop and solve problems in their common domain.

These communities promote mutual respect but tend to be generic, leading to unnecessary and unproductive side conversations. Communities of practice need community leaders and moderators who apply community principles or common community rules of professionalism and fairness.

EVENT COMMUNITY.

In today’s digital age, events can now take place virtual, providing opportunities for virtual networking and conversations between attendees. Think of the amount of networking that takes place at coffee stations during event conferences. Online event communities are designed to replace the networking and side conversations of in-person events. Attendees can freely interact with other attendees, event organizers, and speakers in an online event community.

These virtual environments strategically leverage conversational dynamics, so participants can naturally connect with each other. These communities depend on organized leaders to facilitate breakout rooms and networking opportunities. Event organizers should create follow-up discussions and other networking opportunities so that attendees find this community interesting.

MICRO-COMMUNITY

A micro community is a small online community of members who want to learn a skill or take a course. It typically has no more than 30 members who make a significant investment to participate in the micro-community.

Similar to a group coaching expert community or a micro-community led by a professional creator, providing in-depth instruction on a topic. Members experience this shared learning experience together and quickly become a close-knit group.

Usually these microcommunities will be more exclusive because they will be relatively small. The micro community is more at stake, so financial accountability keeps its members engaged and active.

There are more opportunities in a micro community for members to meet creators face-to-face or build strong relationships within the group. The members are very dedicated and enjoy a deep learning experience. However, group tension or a lack of clear direction can threaten this close-knit community.

COMMUNITY OF CIRCUMSTANCE.

Members join a contextual community if they have a deeply shared experience. Members often seek advice and kinship in a known safe place. Situational communities may arise around health circumstances, such as cancer support groups, postpartum mothers, or potential disabilities.

These members are looking for affiliate experience due to their circumstances and may need expert advice and guidance. These communities can host events, provide valuable information, or simply provide a place of comfort and support.

COMMUNITY OF ACTION.

A community of action is a group of people working together to accomplish a charitable goal or something important. Community of Action is common in local neighborhoods and schools. These communities can exist for any length of time, even if the goal has been achieved.

These communities are dedicated and passionate members who share a common vision. However, there may be lack of organization or lack of members. Action communities need clear leadership and organization to help them achieve their goals.

Other community types also extend beyond the ten mentioned above. We’ve rounded up some honorable mentions if you want to further learn about online communities.

• Local communities: These communities are centered around a shared geographic location.
• Membership Communities: These communities are similar to micro communities or group coaching communities. In member communities, members have access to exclusive information and support. You usually have to pay a fee and be invited to join.
• Fan Communities: Fan communities form around a common interest, often a popular media topic, such as an actor, book series, or television show.
•  Insight Communities or Advisory Council Boards: Community is like a focus group of your most important stakeholders, your customers.

Remember, when deciding which online community is right for your brand, you need to design a community strategy. There are a number of tactics you can use to ensure your community succeeds. Every creator should consider the following: community management and moderation, the needs of your target member base, and community success metrics. As you build your community, it can grow over time, but you still need a strategy to guide it successfully.

Summary

We have explored some of the best community solutions or platforms based on ease of use, growth potential, and features.

However, the question remains which community platform is best suited for your company?

It would vary depending on your company’s specific needs.

That said, the first step is to list down all the features you need and your estimated budget. Then you need to match the community platform based on this list.

Also, it is very important to consider the business goal you are trying to hit and the way your community platform can help you measure the success?

With proving ROI, you won’t be able

The best part is that majority of these tools have a free version or a free trial for you to try them out before you make a decision.

That way you can test the community platform exactly based on your use case.

If you’re looking for our top picks, we recommend you get started with Mighty Networks or Tribe.

Last updated on May 3rd, 2023 at 04:31 am