Where to Build Course Communities? 7 Best Platforms Reviewed

You have launched your course. The content is solid. But something is missing. It is that space where your learners can ask questions, celebrate wins, and connect with others on the same path. Most creators turn to Facebook or Slack. 

But you do not want your most important course updates left unseen because of the Facebook algorithms, do you? If you are looking for community options where your students are focused on learning, rather than just entertainment, we will discuss seven solutions you can consider. 

Some are tightly connected with course creation tools, while others are more focused on giving you rich engagement features like events, chat, member spaces, and more. 

I included platforms with different focuses so you can see which one fits your course, audience, and goals best. I also looked through user reviews to bring in real experiences. This is not just about what the community platforms offer, but how they actually feel to use.

How I choose the best community engagement platforms 

When it comes to building a community around your online course, there is no one-size-fits-all platform. 

Some of us want a place where learners can casually interact. Others look for structured discussion spaces, progress tracking, or integrations with their course content. And while there are many platforms that let you create some form of a “community,” not all of them provide the same experience and monetization options. 

To narrow down my initial list of the “best community platforms” for your online courses and learning, I looked at these judgment criteria:

• What kind of community experiences can you actually build with this tool?
• Is the platform user-friendly both for creators and learners?
• Are there engagement tools beyond just a discussion board?
• How much control do you have over the customization and management of the community?
• Is the platform scalable for small groups and larger communities? 

That is the reason I did not include options such as Facebook groups, Slack, or other team communication platforms. Because if you are looking to start and grow a course community, it would be great if you also owned that community as well. 

7 Best online course community platforms 

Do you want your online course community to be chat-style, or do you want to build larger professional networks around your courses? Here is a quick overview of the best tools you can use depending on your business goals and community needs. 

Uteach 

Best for: Creators looking for an all-in-one solution to manage their courses, coaching, and communities.  

If you love simplicity and easy community management, then Uteach offers you just that. You can build your course communities around a specific product, like your courses, memberships, live courses, etc. Or you can simply build a community for your chosen group of students. 

Then you can decide who can post in your community, and if they get free or paid access to that. To organize the content within your community, you will need to add Topics. 

Within each Topic, your students can share posts, announcements, start discussions in threads, etc. What is the greatest part is that Uteach also offers a branded mobile app, so the students can access the community from their mobiles as well. 

You can watch the video below to learn more about how to create course communities on Uteach. 

What users think

On one of the most credible platforms, Capterra, Uteach has a rating of 4.7 stars. 

Many users appreciate the platform's intuitive interface. The reviewers are happy with the admin and student experience. They frequently highlight Uteach’s affordability and value for money. 

Pricing 

Uteach’s first plan starts at $39. The pricing is flexible, as all the features are included in all the plans. So, you do not have limitations based on the plan you are using.

Mighty Networks 

Best for: creators who want an all-in-one platform to host courses, events, and a thriving community under their own brand

Mighty Networks is a platform that lets you build a community space with more structure than just a group chat. Besides managing discussions, you can also host live events, offer paid memberships, create courses, and even build your own branded app. 

What is great about Mighty is that you can create any type of community, depending on what you need. What I mean is, it can be just a free group for people with shared interests, or paid communities for more focused coaching, learning, or professional networking.

What I like about Mighty Networks is the way you organize all your content and resources. Because, as I was saying, you can have memberships, masterminds, events, and 1:1 meetings, etc. And to manage all that, you need to create Spaces. 

Those can be for your cohort course, a space where your students just post questions and answer polls, etc. 

As you might guess, there are many opportunities to keep the community engaged. As the students can share photos, videos, polls, and join you for livestreams. 

Pros 

• Advanced and native live-streaming capabilities
• Offers a white-label app
• Opportunities to sell memberships, bundles, and other products alongside the communities

Cons

• The only payment method supported is Stripe
• Native language localization for only English
• Livestreaming and white labeling are only available for higher tiers

What users think 

Now, what is more important than just features and functionality is what people truly experience when building their communities on Mighty. 

Based on 500+ reviews users left on G2 and Capterra, Mighty Networks is considered to be a great choice for hosting communities. For most of the users, it was easy to set up, especially due to the pre-made templates. They also like what Mighty offers when it comes to the activity feed. 

With that being said, others think it is hard to keep track of the conversation nd collaborate when your student base and spaces grow. 

Here is an example review on Mighty Networks. 

Also see: Mighty Network Review

Pricing 

As I was going through the reviews, most people also agreed that Mighty offers great opportunities for its price. So the pricing was justified. As of now, Mighty Networks offers the following pricing plans:

• The community plan: $49/month
• The course plan: $119/month
• The business plan: $219/month
• The Path-to-pro plan: $430/month

Kajabi 

Best for: Creators who want to offer a simple, built-in space for student interaction.

Kajabi offers a way to build and sell online courses, digital products, and memberships, all while managing your website, emails, and payments in one place.

The UI with Kajabi is much simpler than the one you have for Mighty Networks. Here, the community content is organized into

• Feed - where people see the recent posts and join the discussions
• Chelleges, if you want to engage your community members and encourage them to join a challenge
• Meetups to go live 

What I personally find useful with managing communities on Kajabi is the access groups within the community. Because you can choose whether only paid members or everyone can see that exact post in the same community. So, you do not have to create only paid or only free communities. 

And just like with Slack, where you have different channels for different purposes, you can create those in Kajabi. Here they are called Circles. 

Pros

• Wide options for pricing the community (like multi-pay, subscription, one-time, etc) and how frequently you want to bill
• Marketing tools are built-in
• Supports native videoconferencing 

Cons

• Does not offer a white-label app
• Highly priced for those who mainly want to focus on the communities

What users think 

On one of the most credible review platforms, like Capterra, Kajabi has an average review of 4.4 stars. What people appreciate is that communities on Kajabi are simple but functional at the same time. Most of the reviewers prefer Kajabi for the pipelines that are already set up. 

Yet, one of the reviewers mentioned that the community feature within Kajabi is not exactly for someone who just starts building communities. 

Pricing 

When it comes to pricing, opinions differ. Because some people would tell you it is fairly priced for its functionality, others find it expensive. 

You pay $89/month and are only allowed to sell one course and one community. And then you have $149 for just three products.

Heartbeat 

Best for: Creators and organizations who want an all-in-one space for real-time chat, events, and community in a more interactive environment.

Heartbeat offers a flexible platform where you can build a community with real-time chat, threaded discussions, events, voice rooms, and even courses, all in one place. I would say the layout is similar to Slack. 

You can create different topics, host live events or office hours, manage member roles, and track engagement through built-in analytics. It also supports paid memberships and integrates with tools like Zoom and Google Calendar. 

With heartbeat, access levels are very flexible, too. You can create groups and manage the permissions for the group.

If you use Heartbeat for your organization, you can also automate onboarding flows to introduce new members, set up custom badges or tags to recognize participation, and use group DMs or announcements to keep everyone informed.

Pros

• Automation tools (workflows) to reduce repetitive admin tasks
• Community threads and chat are similar to Facebook and Slack
• Includes marketing tools such as affiliates, memberships, upsells, etc. 

Cons

• Cluttered features are not easy to navigate
• The only payment gateway is Stripe

What users think 

Compared to the other community platforms included in this list, Heartbeat is a relatively new software. It has a 4.9-star rating out of 5 on G2. 

Reviewers like that the platform combines community, courses, events, audio & video capabilities, and documentation. However, they also agree that the UI is not clean, and it takes some getting used to to get acquainted with all the features. 

Pricing 

Compared to the rest of the solutions with discussed in this list, Heartbeat is also affordable. The first plan puts a limit on the number of members you can have in the community. The key difference between the plans is that the white labeling functionalities are only available for the higher tiers. 

Circle

Best for: Creators and businesses who want to build a clean, structured, and content-rich community space with organized discussions, events, and memberships. 

You can build private or public communities with structured spaces for discussions, resources, events, and courses. 

You can create different areas for topics, host live sessions, share content like videos or articles, and run paid memberships or subscriptions. It also supports threaded conversations, so it works well for discussions and real-time chats.

What I find great about Circle is that it actually supports gamification. So there is an opportunity to reward active members with badges, which you can automate. Meaning that you will be able to encourage students to be more active in your communities. 

As for the access levels, you can set them as open, private, and secret. In terms of managing the communities, you can create workflows to automate some of the tasks. For example, when a member joins your community, they receive an automated welcome email. 

Pros

• Opportunities to customize the look and feel of your communities
• Offers a branded mobile app
• Flexible tier-building and billing opportunities

Cons

• It is not very focused on learning, considering how few opportunities you have to create and manage courses and learning content
• Setting up takes too many clicks

What users think 

Based on reviews from Capterra, users generally appreciate Circle for its user-friendly interface and intuitive design, making it easy to build and manage online communities. They value features like customizable spaces, course hosting, live events, and monetization tools, which help in creating engaging and branded community experiences.

With that being said, some reviewers mention there is a need for more advanced automation features. Others experience challenges with customizing the design. 

Here is an example review. 

Pricing 

If you want lower transaction fees, you will need to choose the higher pricing plans. One of the greatest things about Circle is that they put no limitations on the number of members you can have or products you can create. Plus, the first plan already has all the necessary tools to start growing your communities. 

Bettermode 

Best for: creators and organizations who need to build customizable, all-in-one community hubs 

Bettermode gives you the opportunity to build a structured, branded community space where you can organize content into different areas like discussions, resources, and events. It supports embedding community elements into your course site, integrates with tools like Zapier and Slack for automation, and offers detailed member roles and analytics to track engagement.

If you are looking for a community platform where you can customize almost everything, including the layout in your spaces, then you will like Bettermode. Depending on the type of content you want to share in the community, you can choose the templates for events, articles, questions, etc. 

If you already have an online school based on another platform, you can use the widgets and embed your community into your website. 

Pros

• Wide variety of apps and integrations, including other integrations with API
• Lots of customization opportunities
• ‍Automated community content moderation tools

Cons

• Does not offer mobile app opportunities
• The pricing includes limits on the number of members, and not only

What users think 

Most users think ​Bettermode offers a user-friendly and customizable platform for building online communities. Especially the reviewers like features such as gamification, and a clean interface that is similar to that of social media platforms. 

But also, some mention a learning curve when first organizing the platform to their liking and mention that certain add-ons can be costly. 

Pricing 

With Bettermode’s free plan you can have 100 members and create up to 20 communities. The main difference with the paid options is that they have unlimited members, include analytics and add-ons. Here is a breakdown of the main plans. 

Hivebrite 

Best for: Organizations, educational institutions looking for an all-in-one platform for branded communities

​Hivebrite is an all-in-one community management platform designed to help organizations build, engage, and sustain private, branded online communities.

The platform supports content sharing through forums, news feeds, and event management tools. Plus, there is direct messaging, a searchable member directory, and customizable user profiles, which are great for expanding networking opportunities.

You can monetize the communities as you offer membership tiers, event ticketing, and sponsorship opportunities. 

But if you want to create those courses in the traditional sense of the word, you will find a different approach with Hivebrite. Because what the platform offers is Journeys. These are where you organize your content. 

If you are looking for a community platform that has advanced analytics for each member with their reports and progress, then you will certainly like Hivebrite. 

Pros 

• Opportunities to organize campaigns via emails and push notifications
• Advanced analytics and reporting
• A wide range of integrations with the API

Cons 

• Expensive if you are just looking for a place for course community management
• Users report facing integration issues

What users think 

Hivebrite is appreciated for its customizable and user-friendly platform․ 

Users highlight the variety of engagement tools, such as event management and membership directories, which foster a vibrant community atmosphere for them.  

However, some users mention a learning curve during the initial setup and navigation, because the platform offers lots of different features. Also, some mention that there is a need for more customizable reporting options. Here is an example review:

Pricing 

Hivebrite offers three main pricing plans, including Connect, Scale, and Enterprise. With the lowest plan, you can have custom landing pages, admin roles, memberships, and resource libraries. 

Haven't decided where to build your course community yet? 

If you are building an online course and want your students to engage beyond just watching videos, having a proper community platform is key. You want a space that is distraction-free, focused on learning, and helps you manage interactions, updates, and student support in one place. 

After reviewing several options, some designed specifically for course creators and others with broader community tools, it is clear that your choice should depend on your goals, audience, and how deeply you want to integrate learning with community.

That said, Uteach stands out as a solid all-in-one solution if you want to both teach and build community in the same space. It is especially useful for creators who want everything, from courses to community chats under one roof, without juggling multiple tools. 

Uteach is simple to use, flexible enough for growth, and gives you full control over how you engage your learners.

Curious to learn more? Book your free demo with our specialist, who will help you start your online course business at the right place.