I may earn a commission from some of the platforms mentioned on this page. It never costs you extra, and it doesn’t change what I write.
There’s a moment that catches almost everyone who starts a paid community. You’ve picked a platform, you’ve moved a few hundred people over, you’ve got conversations going — and then you look at your payout for the month and realize the platform quietly took a bigger cut than you expected.
That’s not a rare story. It’s close to the default one.
I spent a long stretch pulling up pricing pages side by side, reading the fine print under each plan, and trying to figure out why these tools are priced so differently for what looks like the same thing. What I found is that the sticker price is almost never the number that matters. The number that matters is buried a line or two below it.
So this isn’t a feature checklist. It’s an attempt to lay out the handful of things that actually decide whether you’re happy with this choice a year from now.
The problem with how most people choose
Most people pick a community platform the same way: they watch a few walkthrough videos, they like the look of one, and they sign up.
That works fine for the first month. The trouble shows up later, and it usually shows up in one of three ways.
The fee you forgot about. Nearly every one of these platforms takes a percentage of what you charge your members, on top of the monthly subscription, and on top of what Stripe takes. On a small community it’s noise. On a community doing a few thousand dollars a month, it’s the difference between one plan and another being the cheaper choice — and often the cheap-looking plan is the expensive one.
The ceiling you didn’t see. Some plans cap your member count. Some cap how many admins or moderators you can have. If you’re planning to bring on help, that second one bites sooner than you’d think.
The move you can’t face. Communities are sticky in a way that courses aren’t. A course is a folder of videos; you can move it. A community is people, threads, history, and habits. Once it’s alive somewhere, moving it feels like asking everyone to change their phone number. Which means the platform you pick is, practically speaking, the one you’re keeping.
That last point is why this decision deserves more than an afternoon.
Five things that actually decide this
Here’s what I’d look at, roughly in the order I’d look at it.
1. What the transaction fee costs you at your real revenue
This is the one people underweight, so let’s put actual numbers on it.
Say your community brings in $3,000 a month. A platform charging a 10% transaction fee takes $300. A platform charging 2% takes $60. That’s a $240 monthly gap — which is more than most of these platforms cost in the first place.
Flip it around and the cheap plan stops looking cheap. A $9/month plan with a 10% fee costs you $309 a month at $3,000 in revenue. A $99/month plan with a 2.9% fee costs you $186. The expensive-looking plan is $123 cheaper, every month.
None of this shows up on the pricing page as a total. You have to do the arithmetic yourself, using your own revenue number.
And note: these platform fees sit on top of payment processing. Stripe’s standard rate is typically 2.9% plus 30 cents per transaction, and that applies regardless of which platform you’re on.
2. Whether your members will actually show up
A community nobody opens is just a database with feelings.
What drives return visits is mostly notifications and habit — does the platform have a mobile app, does it push, does it surface what’s new in a way that pulls people back. Some of these tools were built around that question. Others treat the community as one tab inside a larger business suite, and it shows.
There’s a trade-off here worth naming. Platforms that are very good at pulling attention tend to feel more like social networks, which some audiences love and others find noisy. A quiet, forum-shaped space is the right call for some groups. Neither is better in the abstract — but you should know which one you’re buying.
3. How much you want the platform to do besides community
Roughly, these tools fall into two camps.
Focused community tools do community and not much else. They’re usually cleaner, faster to set up, and easier for members to understand.
All-in-one business platforms bundle community with courses, email, landing pages, checkout, and sometimes a website. If you’re already going to pay for those things separately, bundling can genuinely save money and hassle. If you only want community, you’re paying for a lot of unused surface area.
The honest version of this decision: count what you’re already paying for elsewhere. If the bundle replaces three subscriptions, it’s probably worth it. If it replaces none, it isn’t.
4. Where the ceilings are on your plan
Look specifically for three limits: how many members, how many admins, and how many moderators.
Member caps are the obvious one, but admin and moderator seats catch people off guard. If you’re a solo creator today but expect to bring on a community manager and a couple of volunteer moderators, a plan with three admin seats and ten moderator seats is a very different proposition from an unlimited one.
5. What leaving looks like
Ask before you sign up, not after: can you export member emails, can you export post content, and in what format.
You may never use it. But the answer tells you something about how the company thinks about you, and it’s a five-minute question that can save you a very bad month.
The comparison
All prices below are monthly-billing rates in USD, taken from each company’s own pricing page. Where something wasn’t stated on the page, I’ve left it blank rather than guess.
| Platform | Entry plan | Next tier up | Platform transaction fee | Member limit | Free trial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skool | $9 (Hobby) | $99 (Pro) | 10% → 2.9% | Unlimited on both | Yes (length not stated) |
| Circle | $89 (Professional) | $199 (Business) | 2% → 1% | Unlimited; 3 admins / 10 moderators on entry | 14 days |
| Mighty Networks | $79 (Launch) | $179 (Scale) | 2% → 1% | Unlimited on both | 14 days |
| Heartbeat | $49 (Build) | $149 (Grow) | 5% → 2.5% | 350 → 5,000 | 14 days |
| Podia | $42 (Mover) | $84 (Shaker) | 5% → none | — | 30 days |
| Kajabi | $179 (Basic) | $249 (Growth) | 2% → 1% (third-party processing) | 1 community → 1 community | 30 days |
A few notes that don’t fit in a table.
Heartbeat has a third tier at $849/month with unlimited members and a 1.25% fee, and its native video hosting is a separate $19/month add-on unless you’re on a higher plan. Kajabi’s fee structure differs depending on whether you use its own payment processing or a third-party provider, and its community feature is capped at one community until the $499 tier. Circle offers a 30-day money-back guarantee alongside the trial. Mighty Networks and Skool both discount to roughly two months free on annual billing.
Short takes on each
Skool
Skool’s pricing is the most unusual thing about it, and the most misread. Two plans, $9 and $99, which looks like a generous entry point until you notice the Hobby plan carries a 10% transaction fee against Pro’s 2.9%.
Do the math at your own revenue and the crossover comes fast. Somewhere around $1,270 a month in community revenue, the $99 plan becomes cheaper than the $9 one. Below that, Hobby wins. Above it, staying on Hobby costs you money every month.
The platform itself is deliberately plain — a feed, a classroom section, a calendar, and a leaderboard. People either find that refreshing or find it limiting. There isn’t much middle ground.
The catch: that plainness is a real constraint if you want your space to look like yours. Customization is limited by design.
Circle
Circle is the one that tends to appeal to people who care how things look. It’s polished, it handles courses and events alongside discussion, and the transaction fee on the entry plan is 2% — among the lower ones here.
The thing to check before you commit is the seat limits. Professional gives you three admins and ten moderators. For a solo creator that’s plenty. For a team, it’s a number you should look at twice.
The catch: $89 is a real monthly cost to carry before you’ve validated that anyone will pay to be in your community. It’s not a platform to sign up for on a maybe.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks sits somewhere between a community tool and a full business platform. It handles courses, events, and memberships, and the entry plan at $79 with a 2% fee is priced close to Circle’s.
Where it distinguishes itself is in how much it leans into the “network” idea — surfacing members to each other, encouraging connections between people rather than just between you and your audience. If your community’s value is people meeting each other, that matters. If your community is really an audience gathered around you, it matters less.
The catch: all that structure means more decisions to make during setup. It’s not the fastest thing here to get live.
Heartbeat
Heartbeat is the one that feels closest to a chat app — threads, channels, live events — which makes it land well with groups that want conversation rather than a forum.
Its pricing is the most member-count-sensitive on this list. Build covers 350 members at $49 with a 5% fee; Grow covers 5,000 at $149 with 2.5%. If you’re small, that entry price is attractive. If you grow fast, you’ll move tiers on member count before you’d move on anything else.
The catch: the 5% fee on the entry plan is high enough that a small but revenue-heavy community pays a real premium there.
Podia
Podia is the least community-first tool on this list, and I mean that neutrally. It’s a creator business platform — courses, digital products, email, a website — with community included on every plan.
Its pricing is unusual in a good way: the $84 Shaker plan carries no platform transaction fee at all, and neither does the $150 tier. Only the $42 entry plan has one, at 5%. If you’re selling meaningful volume, “no platform fee” is a genuinely strong position.
The catch: if community is the main event rather than a supporting feature, you’ll likely find it thinner than the tools built specifically for it.
Kajabi
Kajabi is the heavyweight, priced accordingly — $179 to start, $249 for the middle tier. It’s a full business operating system: courses, funnels, email, checkout, website, and community.
It earns that price if you’re consolidating. If Kajabi replaces your course platform, your email tool, and your landing page builder, the total can come out ahead. If you just want a place for people to talk, it very clearly doesn’t.
The catch: community is one feature among many here, and the entry tiers cap you at a single community.
So which one should you actually pick?
Three situations cover most people.
If you’re starting and haven’t proven anyone will pay yet
Start on the cheapest plan that doesn’t punish you, and don’t over-commit. Skool’s $9 Hobby plan is the lowest-risk entry here — as long as you genuinely watch the 10% fee and move to Pro once your monthly revenue clears roughly $1,270. Podia’s $42 Mover plan is worth a look too if you’re also selling a course or a digital product, since you’d be paying for that separately otherwise.
What I’d avoid at this stage is signing up for something at $179/month because it has every feature you might eventually want. You don’t know yet what you’ll want.
If you have a paying community and it’s growing
This is where fees start mattering more than anything else, and where Circle and Mighty Networks make the most sense — both at 2% on entry, dropping to 1% higher up. Between them, it’s mostly a question of shape: Circle if you want something polished and course-friendly, Mighty Networks if the point is members connecting with each other.
Heartbeat belongs in this conversation too if your community is conversational rather than content-driven, though check its member caps against where you expect to be in a year.
If you’re already running a full creator business
If you’re paying separately for courses, email, and a website, Kajabi is the one where the bundle math can work. Add up what you’re currently spending across those tools before you decide — that comparison, not the sticker price, is the real question.
If the sum comes in under $249, Kajabi’s a downgrade in value. If it comes in over, it’s a consolidation.
One thing I’d tell you before you sign up
Take the trial, but don’t spend it clicking around the settings.
Spend it doing the one thing you’ll actually do every week: post something, and see how it feels. Invite three people who’ll be honest with you and watch whether they come back without being asked. That tells you more in a week than a feature comparison tells you in a month — including this one.
Most of these platforms give you 14 to 30 days free without a card, which is enough to find out.
Start with the one that matches your situation above. Skool and Circle both let you try before paying, and either is a reasonable place to begin.