What are the best software solutions for online communities and membership sites?

What are the best software solutions for online communities and membership sites? 馃

As a former moderator and administrator of massive forums in the early 2000s, communities are the core of building strategic relationships.

I’m a member of over 35 communities – and I’m reviewing all apps today.

Here are 16 platforms I currently use that you should test, broken into 4 core categories:

馃摋 Multipurpose Engagement 猬囷笍

1. Clarityflow: Ran by Brian Casel, one of the first people who taught me to productize services. I used the early version, ZipMessage, for async message sending to my community and gathering testimonails. Taking payments, collecting different groups, and multi-channel content formats.

2. Kleq: A complete solution for memberships, courses, funnels, automation – and 1:1 conversations. James Schramko is a core supporter and runs his advisory group there. I’m sending voices and texts ad-hoc to pick his brain and gather ideas.

3. GoHighLevel: One of the best funnel builders + outreach systems out there (similar to ClickFunnels and Systeme). Their community module is turning into a monster!

馃摋 Content-Focused 猬囷笍

4. Substack: A newsletter-first community for video, podcasts, bloggers, finance writers, authors, comic creators, local news, and more. Aggresive push for monthly payments (which is great to upsell to a paid branch of a newsletter). Peter Yang, Graham Stephan, Andrei Zinkevich scale there.

5. beehiiv: Starting as a newsletter with built-in sites, the platform evolves with site builders, freebies, lead funnels, email responses, and other membership plans (plus paid newsletters, too). I run my newsletters there.

6. Circle: Widely used in my investor communities like SeedBlink and MarketBriefs, but I rarely see people there. Notification system can be better and more engaging.

7. Kajabi: One of the leading courseware systems also accommodates students and runs into a membership integrated with classes. Not my favorite platform out there, but plays well with their great course platform.

8. Skool: Eric Siu, Clifton Sellers, Joe Davies manage their communities on Skool and they are pretty good. Classes are supported too + downloadables.

馃摋 WordPress-Driven 猬囷笍

9. Paid Memberships Pro: A WordPress plugin for granular content management, subscriptions, bundles, and a lot more within WordPress. If you run a blog on WordPress and want to incorporate commerce and members, take a look. My community is there + Slack.

10. BuddyBoss: The leading social community plugin for WP where you can build a clone of Facebook groups or reddit. Super powerful and can supplement everything you can build in WordPress!

馃摋 Messaging & Social 猬囷笍

11. Facebook Groups: I see coaches, local businesses, dropshippers and niche communities on Facebook. Not my favorite platform and tons of notification spam, but 3 billion members so who am I to judge?

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馃憠 Repost to get more reviews for the best platforms on Earth.

The best and most versatile online community applications for building membership sites and paid communities


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My name is Mario Peshev, a global SME Business Advisor running digital businesses for 20 the past years.

Born in Bulgaria, Europe, I gained diverse management experience through my training work across Europe, North America, and the Arab world. With 10,000+ hours in consulting and training for organizations like SAP, VMware, CERN, I’ve dedicated a huge amount of my time to helping hundreds of SMEs growing in different stages of the business lifecycle.

My martech agency DevriX grew past 50 people and ranks as a top 10 WordPress global agency and Growth Blueprint, my advisory firm, has served 400+ SME founders and executives with monthly ongoing strategy sessions.


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