7 Best Mighty Networks Alternatives for Creators in 2024

Mighty Networks is one of the most popular platforms for hosting online communities. But it’s not the best fit for everyone, so it’s totally fine if you’re looking for an alternative.

Whether you need a platform that’s easier to use, want better course creation tools, or need a more affordable solution, we’ve got you covered.

This guide will highlight the best Mighty Networks alternatives, discuss their standout features, and the scenarios where they’d better fit. We’ve tested each platform extensively, so you can be sure you’ll find the best one for your needs.

Let’s start by first understanding the reasons why creators look for an alternative to Mighty Networks.

Why Do Creators Look for a Mighty Networks Alternative?

Despite ranking among the most popular online community platforms, Mighty Networks isn’t the best choice for everyone. Below, we’ve listed a few scenarios in which you’d want to consider Mighty Networks alternatives:

• You Need an Easier-to-Use Solution: Even after the redesign, Mighty Networks isn’t the most intuitive platform. So, if you want to minimize the time you and your members spend exploring the platform, you might want to look for an alternate solution.
• You Need Better Course Creation Tools: Mighty Networks offers a basic course builder, and the course player experience isn’t optimal. If this is your priority, looking for a more powerful course builder makes sense.
• You need an SSO integration: The platform doesn’t support SSO integrations. So, if you want to provide a seamless user experience across multiple platforms with single login credentials, you should consider other solutions.
• You Need a Truly All-In-One Platform: The platform doesn’t include a proper website builder or marketing tools like email marketing and sales funnels. If you want everything in one place, Mighty Networks won’t work.
• You Need a More Affordable Solution: While Mighty Networks is reasonably priced, it lacks a free plan, and the transaction fees on all plans increase the total cost. So, it might be worth looking for an alternative with lower prices.

These are some of the most common reasons why creators look for substitutes. Now, let’s discuss the top Mighty Networks alternatives and what each of them has to offer.

1. Circle

Circle is a standalone online community platform that is super easy to use, but it’s also packed with powerful features and offers a great user experience. Like Mighty Networks, it also allows you to create courses and monetize your community.

Pros of Circle

• More user-friendly: Circle’s user interface is more intuitive, and the platform is easier to use. The design of the community and courses is also optimized for a better end-user experience.
• Automation Workflows: Circle Workflows lets you define automation rules with triggers and corresponding actions, such as sending emails or updating tags. You can also perform bulk actions to avoid repetitive tasks.
• SSO support: Circle offers SSO integrations with various platforms, including WordPress, Teachable, and Thinkific, allowing you to create a seamless integration with your existing membership platform.
• Public API: Circle offers a public API, so you can easily extend its functionality, create custom apps, and integrate it with other third-party tools.
• Embed Widgets: Thanks to Circle’s widgets, you can embed your entire community or a part of it on another website. You can even display comments from a specific post.

Cons of Circle

• Limits on spaces: Circle doesn’t allow you to have as many spaces as you’d like. Instead, the number of spaces you can create goes from ten to 100.
• Limited entry-level plan: Circle’s Basic plan costs $49/month + 4% fee compared to $39/month + 3% fee on Mighty Networks and supports only 100 members.

Overall, Circle is an excellent alternative to Mighty Networks. Whether you want a platform that’s easier to use or one that offers more features, Circle will be a great choice.

2. Kajabi

Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that supports various product types, including online courses, coaching, and podcasts. The platform also includes a powerful community builder, which you can use to create a standalone community or package with other products to sell a membership.

Pros of Kajabi

• All-in-one platform: Kajabi is a truly all-in-one platform that doesn’t just let you deliver your products but also handles entire marketing, including your website, blog, funnels, email marketing, affiliate marketing, etc.
• Multiple product types: Kajabi is versatile and supports various product types, including courses, coaching, podcasts, and communities.
• Powerful course builder: Kajabi’s course builder isn’t just easier to use, but it also supports more learning tools, such as quizzes, assignments, and certificates. It also has multiple course player themes, giving you more design options.
• Community engagement tools: Kajabi Communities supports all the essential engagement tools, such as rich posts, events, livestreams, and group chats. Additionally, it offers a couple of unique features—Challenges and Leaderboards.
• No transaction fees: Kajabi’s pricing includes just a monthly cost, and the platform charges no transaction fee.

Cons of Kajabi

• Not a dedicated community platform: While Kajabi ticks boxes for the major engagement features, you don’t get the same level of customization and control over your community as Mighty Networks. For instance, it doesn’t have any space-level settings apart from the ability to make it public or private.
• Super basic analytics: Kajabi’s analytics tool for communities is very basic. It only lets you see the number of new members, messages sent, etc., at the community level.
• Steep pricing: Kajabi’s entry-tier plan costs $149/month, which is expensive if you only want to launch a community.

In a nutshell, Kajabi is a perfect choice if you want to run your entire knowledge business from a single place.

3. BuddyBoss

BuddyBoss is a WordPress-based community plugin focused on helping build online learning and membership communities. Since BuddyBoss is built on top of WordPress, it offers great flexibility in terms of customization and extendibility.

Pros of BuddyBoss

• Powerful community builder: With BuddyBoss, you can create a community with everything you need, including rich discussion posts, member profiles, 1-on-1 and group chats, personalized activity feeds, etc.
• Design Customization: You can customize nearly everything in your BuddyBoss theme, from the logo, colors, fonts, theme layouts, header, and footer.
• Extendibility: BuddyBoss integrates with popular LMS, membership, gamification, and form plugins, among other solutions. Add to that the entire WordPress ecosystem, and the options to add features to your community are endless.
• Reasonably priced branded apps: The platform allows you to get branded apps for your community at a fraction of what you’d pay with Mighty Networks.

Cons of BuddyBoss

• Requires WordPress: BuddyBoss is a WordPress plugin, so you must have a WordPress site to use it. This may not be ideal if you’re starting from scratch or if you’re not familiar with WordPress.
• Requires various integrations: Unlike Mighty Networks, BuddyBoss doesn’t have native features for online courses, livestreaming, etc. So, you’ll need to integrate with other plugins, making the whole setup more complicated and expensive.
• More technical: Setting up BuddyBoss and WordPress requires much more technical knowledge than other platforms. You also need to handle things like updates and maintenance on an ongoing basis.

So, BuddyBoss will be a great option if you’re familiar with WordPress and want to add a community area to your existing website.

4. Podia

Unlike Mighty Networks, Podia is a course builder first and offers better course creation and learning engagement features. It also includes a community builder, which is more suitable for building a support community for your course or membership than a standalone community.

Pros of Podia

• Better course creation tools: Podia’s course builder supports quizzes, certificates, coaching sessions, etc.
• Website builder: Podia’s website builder includes a drag-and-drop page builder that you can use to create a proper website and sales page.
• Better marketing tools: Podia includes various marketing tools, such as affiliate marketing, basic email automation, 1-click upsells, etc.
• Free plan: Podia has a free plan that lets you create an online community for free.

Cons of Podia

• Lacks important community features: The platform covers only basic community tools and misses out on important features, such as events, livestreaming, direct messaging, etc.
• No mobile app: Podia doesn’t have a mobile app, which means users will have to access your community and courses from a browser.

Podia isn’t your typical community builder, and it will be an ideal choice if you want to build a course/membership business and create a community as an add-on to support your members.

6. Disciple

Disciple is a premium community-building platform designed for creators and brands with a strong focus on mobile functionality.

Pros of Disciple

• Branded mobile apps: Disciple allows you to have branded mobile apps for your community at one-fourth the price of Mighty Networks.
• Unlimited storage and live streams: Disciple puts no limits to your content storage, and you can create an unlimited number of live streams.
• Fully white-label: You can have a fully white-labeled community, and you even have the option to let the Disciple team offer white-label support to your members on your behalf.
• API and SSO: The community builder supports API and SSO functionality so that you can create a seamless integration with your existing tech stack.

Cons of Disciple

• More expensive: Disciple will be more costly than Mighty Networks unless you need white-label mobile apps.
• No support for online courses: Disciple has yet to add native support for online courses, so if you need that feature, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Disciple will be ideal for brands and established creators looking to build a white-label community experience with white-label mobile apps.

6. Facebook Groups

Another popular Mighty Networks alternative is Facebook Groups. While Facebook Groups isn’t a specialized community software but a feature the social media platform offers, it’s still an excellent tool for creating and growing a community organically.

Pros of Facebook Groups

• Free to Use: Facebook Groups is free to use. There are no monthly costs or hidden fees.
• Ease of use: Since most people already use Facebook and are familiar with how it works, building a community on the platform is as straightforward as it gets.
• Facebook’s audience: The social media network has a huge audience, and by creating a community there, you have the opportunity to tap into it.

Cons of Facebook Groups

• Ownership issues: You don’t own the content in your Facebook Group; more importantly, your members’ data doesn’t belong to you but to Facebook.
• Noise on Facebook: Facebook is noisy; an average member will see hundreds of posts and ads in their timeline, making it easy for them to get distracted.
• No control over content visibility: Posting content to your group doesn’t mean members will see it as it’s in the hands of Facebook’s algorithm. Also, there is no notification system for members to choose which updates they receive from the group.
• Lacks customization options: The Groups’ structure is set in stone, and you can’t make any changes that aren’t part of Facebook’s settings.
• Missing features: Facebook Groups misses out on some important features, including subcommunities, online courses, and monetization tools.

Overall, we recommend using Facebook Groups only if you want to grow a free community organically by tapping into Facebook’s massive user base.

7. Bettermode

Bettermode (formerly Tribe.so) is an online community platform mainly focused on helping larger businesses from products and services industries run their customer communities.

Pros of Bettermode

• White-labeling: Bettermode allows you to create a completely white-label community to ensure a fully branded experience for members.
• SSO support: The platform supports Single Sign-On, which means your members can use a single set of credentials for multiple platforms. Available SSO mechanisms range from Okta and JWT to custom SSOs.
• App Store: Bettermode allows you to extend your platform’s functionalities through its App Store. Here you can find apps for popular software like Slack and Salesforce. You can also create custom apps for your community.
• Pre-built templates: There are ready-made templates for Q&A forums, discussions, job listings, events, etc., which gives you great flexibility in designing your community.

Cons of Bettermode

• Missing community engagement tools: You can’t create online courses or start a live stream from Bettermode.
• Missing a member-facing mobile app: There’s only an Android app for Admin users, but no app that your members can use to access and engage with your community.
• Super expensive: Bettermode’s pricing starts from $599/month, making it too expensive for online creators and smaller businesses.

Bettermode is an ideal fit for enterprises that want to build a customer/product-focused community while having the flexibility to extend their functionalities through custom apps.

Best Mighty Networks Alternative – The Final Verdict

There’s no shortage of alternatives for Mighty Networks, and we hope you could find a substitute that delivers similar or better results with less hassle.

But if you are still struggling with the decision, we’ll summarize our recommendations.

Do you still have questions about any of the Mighty Networks alternatives? Leave them down below, and we’ll get back to you!