Most comparisons of community platforms are written by people selling one of them.
This one isn’t. I don’t run a community platform, I’m not sponsored by any of them, and I have no stake in which one you choose. What I do is read the pricing pages carefully, do the arithmetic nobody else does, and publish what I find — including the parts that are inconvenient.
What you’ll find here
Comparisons of the tools people use to run paid communities and memberships: Skool, Circle, Mighty Networks, Heartbeat, Podia, Kajabi, and others as the category grows.
The focus is on the things that are hard to see from the outside and expensive to get wrong:
- What each platform actually costs once transaction fees and payment processing are included, not just the number on the pricing page
- Where the ceilings are — member caps, admin seats, plan limits
- What the pricing structure tells you about who a platform is really built for
How I work
I check every number against the company’s own pricing page. If a figure isn’t published, I leave it blank rather than fill it in from a third-party site. You’ll see empty cells in my comparison tables. That’s deliberate.
I show my math. When I say one plan becomes cheaper than another at a certain revenue level, the formula is in the article. You can check it.
I write about platforms I earn nothing from. Several of the tools covered here have no affiliate program, or one I’m not part of. They appear in the comparisons anyway, and sometimes they win. A comparison that quietly omits the cheapest option isn’t a comparison.
How this site makes money
Some links on this site may be affiliate links. If you sign up for a platform through one, the company pays me a commission. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and it doesn’t change the price you pay.
It also doesn’t change what I write. The clearest evidence of that is in the articles themselves: is one I have no affiliate relationship with rather than leaving it out.
Every page with affiliate links says so at the top, before you read anything else.
Who writes this
Toyoki Fuchu. I’ve spent my working life in web production and digital projects, which mostly means I’ve watched a lot of people pick a platform for the wrong reason and pay for it later. That’s the mistake this site exists to prevent.
I’m not a community manager and I won’t pretend to be one. What I bring is the willingness to sit down with six pricing pages and a calculator, which turns out to be rarer than it should be.
Corrections
Pricing changes. Plans get renamed. If you find something on this site that’s out of date or wrong, I’d genuinely like to know — get in touch and I’ll fix it and note the change.