Bettermode is built for customer communities: the kind that sits next to a product people already pay for. It runs on your own domain, sends member activity into Salesforce and HubSpot, and answers questions before they turn into support tickets. For that job, it's the strongest option on this list.
Plenty of communities are a different job, though. Selling courses, running an association and hosting a Discord for fans each call for other tools, and the ten below are the ones worth a look. We make Bettermode, so each entry says plainly where it beats us. Every price was checked on the vendor's own site on September 23, 2026.
A few things set it apart from everything else here.
It's wired into the systems your company runs on. On Growth, member activity lands in Salesforce as native objects within seconds, and HubSpot connects natively too, as do Zendesk, Intercom and Jira. A rep can see what an account has been asking about before a renewal call, and support can turn a post into a case.
Members get answers without filing tickets. Ask AI answers from your community, help center and docs in one reply, and every community page is built to be found in search, which no chat tool offers.
It looks like your product and passes procurement. Every plan runs on your own domain without our branding. Growth adds JWT single sign-on, and Premium adds Advanced Design Studio, a custom CMS, SAML, a 90-day audit log and a 99.9% uptime SLA.
Lenovo Legion, Logitech, Yoto, FlutterFlow and Xano all run their communities on it. Plans start at $149 a month billed yearly, with a 14-day trial and no credit card.
What it doesn't do: courses, payments, email broadcasts and native mobile apps. If you need any of those, the alternatives below are built for them.
Bettermode now includes Toggy: three AI agents that set up the community, keep conversations moving and review every post. Toggy plans start at $750 a month. See Toggy on your own community →
Circle is the strongest creator platform on this list. Courses, events, live streams, paid memberships, a website builder and iOS and Android apps all come in one product, and it keeps adding AI agents and workflow automation on its upper tiers.
Billed yearly, Professional is $89 a month, Business $199 and Scale $419, with Circle Plus priced on request. Circle also takes a cut of member payments: 2% on Professional, 1% on Business and Scale, 0.5% on Plus. Its Email Hub is an add-on at $99 a month for 10,000 contacts.
It's the pick when members pay you for access and courses are part of the offer. Watch the tier jumps: removing Circle's branding starts on Business, custom single sign-on starts on Scale, and a branded app in the app stores is Circle Plus only. Its published integrations reach CRMs through Zapier and Integrately. We go line by line in Bettermode vs Circle.
Mighty Networks puts courses, events and community in one app and leans hard into helping creators earn. Its pricing page leads with revenue potential, which tells you who it's for.
Billed yearly, Launch is $79 a month ($950 a year), Scale $179 and Growth $354. Month to month they're $95, $215 and $425. Branded apps sit in Mighty Pro, priced on request.
Coaches and course creators who want the platform to push them toward selling tend to like it. If you need an API, note that APIs and MCP access start on Scale, not Launch.
Skool is the simplest of the three. Every group gets a feed, a classroom, a calendar and a leaderboard, and there's very little to configure, which is exactly why people pick it.
Hobby is $9 a month with a 10% transaction fee. Pro is $99 a month with a 2.9% fee. Both include unlimited members, courses and live calls.
Choose it if you want to launch this week and never think about design. On a paid community of any real size, Pro pays for itself quickly because of that 10% fee on Hobby.
Discourse is the reference forum. It's open source, free to run on your own servers, and has a deep plugin ecosystem built over more than a decade. Long-form technical discussion is where it's hardest to beat.
There's a free hosted plan to start, and self-hosting costs nothing in license fees. Paid hosting is Pro at $100 a month and Business at $500, with Enterprise priced on request.
It suits teams with engineers who want full control of the software, and communities that are technical and text-heavy. The cost of self-hosting shows up in engineering time rather than invoices. Webflow and Nubank both moved their communities from Discourse to Bettermode once design, scale and security reviews started to matter more than owning the servers. If Discourse is the one you're replacing, see our Discourse alternatives.
Hivebrite is built for alumni networks, associations and member organizations. Directory, events, memberships, email campaigns and monetization are all in the base plan, and the upper tiers add chapters and sub-communities under one umbrella.
Core starts at $895 a month and Flex at $1,995, both billed yearly. Prime and Custom Fit are priced after a discovery call.
If your members pay dues, belong to chapters and need to find each other, start here. A software company running a community for its customers usually needs something different, because Hivebrite's model is the member organization. We compare it with its closest rivals in Hivebrite alternatives.
Higher Logic sells two products, Thrive for associations and Vanilla for customer communities, so it's one of the few vendors with deep roots in both. Pricing is by quote.
It's a natural fit for an association with an established membership system to connect. Setup runs through a sales-led onboarding rather than a self-serve signup.
Gainsight's community product, formerly inSided, is now sold on its own as well as alongside Gainsight's customer success platform. Pricing is by quote.
Its best case is a CS team that already lives in Gainsight and wants community data next to health scores from one vendor. Several teams have moved to Bettermode from it after hitting performance and cost ceilings: Mitti, formerly SafetyCulture, cut its community bill from over $60,000 a year to $18,000 when it moved.
Khoros is the long-running enterprise option. IgniteTech acquired it in May 2025, it now lives at khoros.ai, and it relaunched its community product as Aurora AI in April 2026. Pricing is by quote.
It makes most sense for a very large enterprise already running Khoros for social or care. Given the ownership change, ask about the roadmap and support model before you sign a multi-year renewal.
Discord is free, fast and already home to a lot of gaming, crypto and developer communities. Voice channels and bots are its strengths. Nitro ($2.99 or $9.99 a month) is a personal subscription for members, not something you buy for the server.
Use it when your community is real-time and your members already have Discord open. The catch is search: conversations scroll away, none of it shows up in Google, and the same questions get asked every week. Our Discord alternatives guide sorts the options by what you use Discord for.
Slack is where a lot of B2B communities start, because everyone already has it. The free plan keeps 90 days of message history. Pro is $7.25 per user a month billed yearly, or $8.75 billed monthly.
It works for a small, private peer group of practitioners. Per-user pricing and history limits bite once the group grows, and like Discord, nothing in it helps you get found. Slack alternatives covers where those groups usually move.
For selling courses and memberships, Circle, Mighty Networks and Skool. For an open-source forum, Discourse. For associations, Hivebrite and Higher Logic. For community inside a customer success suite, Gainsight Customer Communities or Khoros. For free real-time chat, Discord or Slack.
Discourse has a free hosted plan and is free to self-host, and Discord and Slack are free to start. Bettermode doesn't have a free plan. Starter and Growth come with a 14-day trial, no credit card needed.
For creators selling courses and memberships, yes. Circle has checkout, courses and native apps, and Bettermode has none of the three. For a customer community connected to Salesforce or HubSpot, Bettermode is the better fit. Our Bettermode vs Circle comparison goes line by line.
No. It was retired in January 2026. Starter is $149 a month billed yearly, or $199 month to month, and it removes Bettermode branding and includes limited API access.
Tribe is Bettermode's old name. It's the same company and the same product, under a new name.
Circle, Mighty Networks and Skool all have iOS and Android apps. Circle Plus and Mighty Pro offer apps under your own brand. Bettermode is a responsive web app with no native app.
Discourse has a free hosted plan, and self-hosting it costs nothing in license fees. Among paid platforms, Skool Hobby is $9 a month, or $7.50 a month billed yearly, and it takes 10% of member payments.