Community platforms
Own the group. Weak on one-to-one work, payments and structured programmes.
A community platform inverts the assumption every other category in this directory makes. Elsewhere the software is built around one client and what you are doing with them. Here it is built around a room full of people and what they are doing with each other, and the coach is a host rather than a counterpart.
That inversion is the whole product decision. It works extremely well for coaches whose offer is genuinely a group — a membership, a cohort, a paid community with content attached — and it works badly for one-to-one practices, because the features a one-to-one practice needs are the ones these products deliberately leave out.
This page explains what a community platform is, how the two products here differ, what they cost once the percentage fees are included, the measure that decides whether a community is worth running at all, and when the job is better done by a coaching platform with a community attached.
The short answer
A community platform is software built around a group rather than an individual: a feed, spaces, events and membership billing, with courses usually attached. Two are filed here — Skool and Circle at $49 to $99 a month, and Mighty Networks at $95 to $215 a month plus 1 to 2 per cent of sales. Neither ships one-to-one booking, contracts or per-person habit tracking.
The products in this category
CP 06-02Mighty NetworksCommunity platform$95–215/mo + 1–2% of sales
CP 06-01Skool & CircleCommunity platform$49–99/moSide by side
- Mighty NetworksMighty Networks is one of the best-rated community platforms, 4.6 on both G2 and Capterra,…What it isCommunity platformPrice$95–215/mo + 1–2% of sales
- Skool & CircleSkool and Circle are both strong community platforms — feeds, courses, and group engagemen…What it isCommunity platformPrice$49–99/mo
Pricing verified May 2026
What is a community platform?
A community platform is software whose central object is a group space. Members join, post, reply, attend events and consume content, and the platform's job is to make them come back. Membership billing is attached so the group can be a paid product, and courses are usually included because a paid community almost always ships content alongside the conversation.
The metric the category optimises for is return visits. Not completion, not conversion, not sessions delivered: whether a member opens the app unprompted on a Tuesday. Everything in the design serves that — notifications, feeds, gamification, events — and the two products here are among the best-executed examples of it anywhere.
What follows from that focus is what the category does not have. The registry records one-to-one and group session scheduling, calendar sync and in-app video as absent for Skool and Circle, and Mighty Networks as having no one-to-one booking, no intake beyond join questions, no contracts, no invoicing and no per-person habit tracking.
None of those are oversights; they are the consequence of building for a room rather than a person.
Skool, Circle or Mighty Networks: how do they differ?
Skool and Circle are recorded as a single entry in the comparison registry because they occupy the same position against a coaching platform. Prices verified May 2026.
| Product | Published price | Platform fee | Genuinely strong at | What it does not cover |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skool and Circle | $49–99/mo | None published | Feeds, courses and group engagement, all well executed, with a client mobile app included. The strongest standalone community experience in the directory | No coaching programmes with habits, no accountability tracking, no one-to-one or group session scheduling, no calendar sync or in-app video. Website, payments and custom branding are partial |
| Mighty Networks | $95–215/mo | 2% on Launch, 1% on Scale | Native live streaming, events, cohort courses and Challenges, with unlimited members on every plan; 4.6 on both G2 and Capterra | No one-to-one booking, no intake beyond join questions, no contracts, no invoicing, no per-person habit tracking. A branded app only comes with the custom-priced Mighty Pro tier |
Comparison registry, pricing verified May 2026. The percentage fee on Mighty Networks applies to sales made through the platform.
What does a community platform cost?
Between $49 and $215 a month in subscription, and for Mighty Networks that is not the whole figure. It charges 2 per cent of sales on the Launch tier and 1 per cent on Scale, which is a small number attached to a potentially large one.
The arithmetic is worth doing before you choose a tier. On $5,000 of monthly sales through the platform, 2 per cent is $100 on top of the $95 subscription, so the effective cost is $195. On $20,000 a month, 2 per cent is $400 on top, and moving to the higher-priced Scale tier to halve the percentage becomes the cheaper option well before that point.
This is the same shape as the transaction fee on Teachable's entry tier in the course platform category, and it deserves the same arithmetic.
Skool and Circle publish no platform fee at $49 to $99, which makes them the cheaper option for a community that sells well. Mighty Networks includes unlimited members on every plan and native live streaming, which is the trade you are making.
What does the platform fee cost on Mighty Networks?
Arithmetic on the published figures rather than a measured outcome. The subscription and the percentage together are the real monthly cost.
| Monthly sales through the platform | Launch $95 + 2% | Scale $215 + 1% | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|
| $2,000 | $135 | $235 | Launch |
| $5,000 | $195 | $265 | Launch |
| $12,000 | $335 | $335 | Either |
| $20,000 | $495 | $415 | Scale |
| $40,000 | $895 | $615 | Scale |
Published Mighty Networks pricing, verified May 2026. The crossover sits at roughly $12,000 of monthly platform sales; tiers include other differences, so treat this as one input rather than the decision.
The figures on this page
How do you know whether a community is worth running?
One measure, and it is unforgiving: do members return unprompted. Not whether they joined, not whether the launch post got replies, but whether somebody opens the space on a Tuesday because they want to rather than because you emailed them.
A community that fails that test is a cost with a subscription attached and a weekly obligation to post into silence. It is also the commonest outcome, because a community needs a critical mass of people with a shared, current problem, and a coaching practice with twenty clients spread across five different situations rarely has one.
The practical version of the test is to run the group for eight weeks somewhere free before buying anything. If the conversation only moves when you move it, the platform will not change that. If it moves without you, you have something worth paying $49 to $215 a month to house properly.
When does a coach actually need a community platform?
Buy one when
- The group is the product: a paid membership, a cohort programme or a community with content attached.
- Members already talk to each other without being prompted.
- You sell to many people with the same current problem, which is what makes a feed work.
- Live events, streaming and challenges are part of the offer. Mighty Networks is strong here.
- You want members on a mobile app; both products cover that, Mighty Networks fully only on its custom Pro tier.
Buy something else when
- Your practice is one-to-one. Neither product ships one-to-one booking.
- You need contracts or invoicing. Both record them as absent or partial.
- You need per-person habit tracking or accountability. That is a coaching platform job.
- The community would exist alongside a programme rather than instead of one, in which case one system holding both is usually cheaper.
- You have fewer than about thirty members with a shared problem, where a group chat costs nothing and works as well.
How does this category relate to the other six?
Seven categories are used across this directory, and they are separated by one question: what is the central object the software is built around? A coaching platform is built around an engagement, a course platform around a catalogue item, a scheduling tool around a calendar slot, a CRM around a project, a community platform around a group, a marketing platform around a funnel, and a coaching admin tool around the transaction that surrounds a session.
That is the whole taxonomy, and it is the reason cross-category comparisons go wrong. Asking whether a scheduling tool is better than a course platform is asking whether a hinge is better than a door. Both questions have answers and neither answer helps.
The category index sets out all seven with the products filed under each, and the method page explains how a product gets filed and what happens when it straddles two.
Common questions
What is a community platform?
Software built around a group space: a feed, member profiles, events and membership billing, usually with courses attached. The metric it optimises for is whether members return unprompted, which is a different goal from completion, conversion or sessions delivered.
What is the best community platform for coaches?
Skool or Circle at $49 to $99 a month if community is the product and you want the strongest standalone experience with no platform fee. Mighty Networks at $95 to $215 plus 1 to 2 per cent of sales if live streaming, events, Challenges and cohort courses matter, and it holds 4.6 on both G2 and Capterra.
What does Mighty Networks charge in platform fees?
2 per cent of sales on the Launch tier and 1 per cent on Scale, on top of the $95 to $215 subscription. On $5,000 of monthly sales that is $100 a month on top; the crossover where the higher-priced Scale tier becomes cheaper sits at roughly $12,000 of monthly platform sales.
Can a community platform replace a coaching platform?
Not for one-to-one work. Neither product here ships one-to-one session scheduling, and Mighty Networks additionally has no contracts, no invoicing and no per-person habit tracking. They replace a coaching platform only for a practice whose entire delivery is the group.
Do I need a separate community platform if my coaching platform has one?
Usually not, and the decision is about how central the group is. A community attached to programmes you already run benefits from living beside them, because a member and a client are the same person. A community that is the product, with its own paid membership and its own culture, is better served by a specialist.
How many members does a community need to work?
There is no published figure, and any specific number would be invented. The practitioner rule of thumb is that a feed needs enough people with the same current problem that a post gets a reply without the host writing it, which for most coaching groups means dozens rather than hundreds. Test it in a free space for eight weeks before buying a platform.
The verdict
If the group is your product, buy from this category and buy the specialist. Skool and Circle at $49 to $99 give you the strongest standalone community experience in the directory with no platform fee. Mighty Networks at $95 to $215 plus 1 to 2 per cent gives you live streaming, events, Challenges and unlimited members, and is the better fit for a coach running cohorts with a live component.
If the group sits alongside one-to-one work, the arithmetic usually goes the other way, because the features this category leaves out are precisely the ones a one-to-one practice runs on. Coachful, which publishes this directory, attaches the community to the programmes and clients it belongs to from $29 a month, and that is a narrower community product than either of these.
Which of those two sentences matters more depends entirely on whether your revenue comes from the room or from the person.