It can also sell digital goods–including online courses–and even physical goods. And there are sales options like coupons, discounts, and promotions to give a WordPress site a lot of power. Hivebrite is a community platform built specifically for professional and alumni networks, although it can be used for other things. It includes a content management system to organize and publish content, dedicated subgroups where students and alumni can connect, a branded mobile app, and a job board feature. Wisdo’s tagline is “learn from people who have been there,” which is honestly such a valuable part of participating in a support group. Within the app, you can join specific themed communities to discuss anything from coronavirus anxiety and loneliness to racism and LGBTQ+ issues.
Kajabi’s marketing funnels are comprehensive, with lots of templates. And the ability to add web pages makes Kajabi a great public-facing option too. Discord has a community forum-type engine that supports different kinds of content, stickers, emojis, video, and more.
How To Find Your Community: A Guide For People Who Feel Like They Don’t Belong
Circle is a community platform with features like discussion forums, livestreaming and events, and different ways to create content. With courses, events, livestreaming, a website builder and basic email, Circle is a strong all-in-one for new community builders. Discord is a community platform that’s built for gamers, but hosts all kinds of free communities. For its powerhouse features, plus its cool design and intuitive UX, and great apps, Discord is a good, free community platform. A community platform is a dedicated virtual space where people who share the same goals, interests, or motivations can connect and build relationships. The important thing to understand about support groups is that they can vary greatly in practice.
- The downside to Hivebrite is that it’s missing a livestreaming feature, a drawback for virtual events.
- Most Hosts outgrow it OR find that their community fails from lack of engagement options.
- Platforms that don’t give you enough options are essentially locking off different revenue streams, and you want as many avenues as possible open to you.
FriendMatch is a diverse community of friendly people from around the world. Members include adults and older teens who want to make real, meaningful friendships based on shared interests. How do you meet new people when life is busy, when you need a change, or when you move to a new city? It’s easy to think you need to be in a relationship to stop feeling lonely. In The Rooms offers over 150+ weekly live online meetings, a variety 12-Step and Non 12- Step Fellowships, and Specialty meetings. Some of our most popular meetings are AA, NA, ACA, Al-Anon, and Nar-Anon meetings, and much more.
There are a couple of online community platforms that allow creators to build communities around online courses, like Whop, Kajabi, and Thinkific. But, while you can build a community on Slack, in the big picture, it isn’t great for online communities. Platforms like Kajabi make it easy to build and manage online communities. With Kajabi, you get the tools to connect with people who share your passions, grow together, and create a space where everyone can learn and share. An online community is a virtual space where people with shared interests, goals, or experiences connect, interact, and build relationships. These communities can revolve around various topics, such as hobbies, professions, or personal development.
If you’re searching for the ultimate online community platform, you need more than just a place to chat. You need a home base with the right mix of features, flexibility, and support to actually grow. Personal community platforms are created just for fun, so they’re usually pretty simple and without any advanced features. For some communities, simple group messaging is all that’s needed, so even WhatsApp could count as a CupidFeel community platform when used to organize meetings, events, or simply chats. Memberful is not a standalone community platform, however, but can be used to gate other community platforms like Discord and charge for access.
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Crucially, community is not strictly a collection of people who have a similar affiliation, interest, or shared experience with each other, Vellos says. Whether it’s subscription plans, tiers, one-off digital product sales, coupons, digital downloads, or anything else, you want an online community platform that facilitates as much as possible. When picking an online community platform, especially as a creator or digital entrepreneur, monetization is key.
Add a profile picture if you’d like, and your recovery date, your location, and other details to help friends connect with you. Pre-pandemic, tables were hand-matched to meet in person at a host’s house for support-group-esque dinner parties, but COVID-era tables are all virtual. Now, as he plans a move across the country from Philadelphia to San Clemente, California, he’s relying on his ability to find community once more. He’s reaching out to other members of his groups who’ve moved to California and also mining his interests, like yoga and meditation, to figure out which classes he should take in his new city. Community, he says, is proof he’s an essential gear in a larger social machine. “You’re part of a bigger picture that really wants to see everyone succeed,” Zeff says.
If they can’t serve certain regions or have a track record of failures in payments, that just adds to lost revenue for you. Gainsight (formerly InSided) powers b2b communities focused on customer feedback, product education, and support automation. Mighty Networks centers everything around an activity feed, with chat, events, and a lightweight course library to keep members moving without overwhelm. Discord organizes conversations into channels with DMs, voice, video, roles, and bots. It’s fantastic for engagement, but native monetization is limited outside the us.
Similarly, if you’re just choosing one of your interests to pursue, you may be missing out on connecting with people who share some of your other hobbies and such. Your local place of worship or community center might have a board with all kinds of events and meetup groups listed. Alternatively, your weekly local newspaper (or online newsletter) might list a number of different groups that you can take part in. If you’re female and strictly looking to make friends with other women, then Hey!
Whether you’re looking to make professional contacts, find a trivia team, or join a film club, Meetup makes it easy to meet people. But by far the easiest one is Whop, since all you need to do to build a community attached to your course on Whop is adding the Chat app to your whop. That changed in the 90s and early 00s with the first widespread online communities, chatrooms and forums. Video platforms like TikTok and YouTube dominate the internet—and it’s easy to see why. Video is the most engaging, versatile form of content out there, and with tech advancing so fast, things like storage and bandwidth aren’t really a problem anymore.
Note that key features like API access, advanced integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zendesk), and white-label branding require the Growth plan or higher. You may be familiar with Meetup as a way to connect socially with others with similar interests and hobbies, but many users have also long used it to organize support groups. Similar to using large platforms like Facebook or Psychology Today, you might have to invest some time in searching for the right group for you, but they’re out there. Categories like Health & Wellness or Parents & Family often have virtual support group listings. Unfortunately, finding a solid Facebook group can rely on a lot of searching, trial and error, or word of mouth.
And if you want to run a paid community, the platform needs membership business options like subscriptions, tiered memberships, payment gateways and more. Knowing what your values are is crucial to finding a community where you truly fit, Poswolsky says, and that can take work and soul-searching. That means the community platform you choose has to support video if you want to keep people truly engaged. At the very least, you’ll want to be able to embed videos in your courses. Nas.io is a community platform that lets you set up a membership, sell digital products, and host events in one place. Swarm reimagines community with asynchronous video messages and hubs that feel more personal than chat-based spaces.
If you’re facing a personal challenge, such as managing a chronic illness or navigating a career transition, you may be seeking support and guidance from others who have been in similar situations. They can also be a valuable source of customer support and a way for brands to build loyalty and engagement with their audience. It can initially seem overwhelming, but breaking it down into manageable steps can make the process much easier.
It’s been compared to Tinder but for platonic girl friends, with the slogan “yes, you can sit with us.” If you’ve been having difficulty meeting other like-minded ladies, then it might be worth a try. You can try out several different groups that pique your interest, or even create events of your own if you’re looking for new friends in a super-specific niche. When you’re in the process of writing down all the values and interests you’d like to weave into your social web, be sure to make another list about everything you bring to the table. For some, their social community consists of those they chat with politely now and then, such as after religious services, or while doing some local grocery shopping.