You can move a Skool community to your own website, but there is no importer that does it for you. The honest path is five steps: export what Skool allows, build the new site on staging, invite your members by CSV, rebuild the spaces and plans you want, and run both side by side until your regulars have moved.
This guide walks through that path with BuddyNext, a WordPress community plugin. We build it, so read the “should you move at all” section with that in mind. We have tried to be fair to Skool there.
Is there a way to move from Skool without losing data?
Partly, and it pays to be clear about which part. Here is what survives and what doesn’t.
| What | Does it move? |
|---|---|
| Member emails | Only if Skool’s export gives them to you |
| Member accounts | No. People get invitations and create accounts |
| Posts and comments | No importer. You rebuild the ones that matter |
| Classroom lessons | You re-upload your own source files |
| Points and levels | You rebuild the rules; nothing copies across |
| Paid subscriptions | No. Each payer subscribes again |
The word “lose” needs care here. Nothing you do on the new site deletes your Skool group. Your old data stays where it is until you decide to close it. What you can lose is people, if you move badly. So most of this guide is about keeping the people.
BuddyNext does have a free importer. It reads BuddyPress and BuddyBoss communities straight from the database and moves profile fields, groups, activity, friendships, forums, media and private messages. It has nothing for Skool. Our migration hub covers those two paths. Skool is a different job, and we’d rather say so than imply a button exists.
Should you move at all?
Check this first, because a move costs real effort. Skool wins on several things.
- Simplicity. One feed, one classroom, one members tab, almost no settings. For a creator who wants to launch and never think about configuration, that is a feature.
- Built-in gamification. Points, levels and leaderboards are the centre of the product and tuned as the main engagement loop.
- Zero maintenance. No servers, no plugins, no updates.
- A native app for members. BuddyNext has an installable web app today; native apps are in development, with no date.
- A tight community and course loop on one screen with native video.
What moving buys you is ownership and room to grow. Your members and posts sit in your own database. BuddyNext takes no cut of what you charge, so the only fee on a sale is your payment processor’s. Skool’s pricing page, checked 26 Oct 2026, lists a 10% transaction fee on its Hobby plan and 2.9% on Pro, so read your own plan on skool.com. You get public pages on your own domain, deeper moderation, multiple space types and the whole WordPress ecosystem.
If your community is happy inside one feed and one classroom, it may be better off staying. If you keep bumping into the walls, read on. Our BuddyNext vs Skool comparison goes through the trade in detail.
Step 1: Export what Skool allows
Do this before you touch the new site, and do it while your group is fully active.
Skool’s help centre is thin on exports. Check Skool’s own export options on your group, because they depend on your plan and they change. As of our last check there is a Members tab with an Export button, and what it contains is the thing to verify. Open the file. Count the rows. Look for an email column.
Your checklist:
- The members list. Export it now and check the columns. If emails are missing, you can’t invite those people by email, so find out today, not on launch day.
- Membership question answers. If your group asks new members questions, keep the answers. They tell you who each person is, and you’ll want that when you rebuild profiles.
- Your lesson files. Download the original videos, documents and images you uploaded. Keep your own source files, not links to them on Skool.
- The posts you can’t lose. Copy pinned posts, rules, announcements people still link to and the best answers into a document.
- Your gamification settings. Write down what earns points, the level names and the rewards you attach to them.
- Promises you’ve made. Note any leaderboard prizes or perks so the new site honours them.
Do not assume Skool exports your posts, comments or classroom. Treat them as not exported until you prove otherwise on your own group.
What if the export has no emails?
An email you hold yourself is the only contact route that survives the move. If your export doesn’t include them, collect them inside Skool before anything else.
- Pin a post that says you’re building a new home and asks for an email address in the replies or through a simple form on your own site.
- Add an email question to the membership questions for new requests.
- Message your most active members directly and ask.
Some people will never reply. That’s normal. You are looking for your regulars first.
Step 2: Build the new site on staging
Don’t build on your live site. Use a staging copy, or a fresh WordPress install.
You’ll need WordPress 6.9 or newer, PHP 8.1 or newer, MySQL 5.7 or MariaDB 10.3, and pretty permalinks turned on. A PHP memory limit of 512 MB is recommended once the full family of plugins is active. Install the free BuddyNext plugin and activate it. It creates the community pages and prepares its storage by itself, and there’s no licence key for the free version.
If you charge for access, install BuddyNext Pro on top. The Pro licence key gates updates only. It never locks features.
Then set three things before you invite anyone:
- Registration mode. If your Skool group is paid or private, choose Invite Only, so the invitations you send are the only way in. Otherwise Open is fine.
- Email. Send a test invitation to yourself and make sure it lands in the inbox, not spam. Use a proper mail-sending service.
- Branding. The sign-up form picks up your site’s colours and fonts, and you can set the panel heading and tagline to say what the community is.
Step 3: Rebuild your structure as spaces
This is where moving pays off. On Skool, one group has one community feed with categories, one classroom and one members tab. On BuddyNext you get rooms. They’re called spaces, and each has its own feed, members, rules and moderators.
Map the pieces like this.
- Categories become spaces. A category that has turned into its own conversation deserves its own space. If a category is only a label, keep it as a hashtag.
- Visibility is a choice per space. Open, Private or Secret. A secret space stays out of search and out of the directory.
- Access levels become plans. In BuddyNext Pro, a plan can open one space or several, and several plans can open the same space.
- Sub-spaces go two levels deep. A region can hold its own towns, for example.
- Discussions. Jetonomy, a separate forum plugin from the same team, can give a space a Discussions tab for answers that stay findable. The bridge is free. The feed stays for quick posts.
- Members. Member types label cohorts, and the directory sorts by newest, alphabetical, most active or online.
More structure means more decisions. Start small. A welcome space, one or two topic spaces and a paid room is enough for launch. You can always add more.
Rebuild only the posts that matter. You will not republish thousands of posts, and you shouldn’t try. Choose the evergreen ones: onboarding, the answers people keep asking for, and the rules. Post them as announcements or discussion threads and link to them from your welcome message.
Step 4: Set up paid plans with BuddyNext Pro
If your Skool group charges, this is the step that needs the most care. Plans are a BuddyNext Pro feature.
A plan has a price, a billing schedule and an optional trial. It can be one-time, monthly or yearly. You define it once, and that single definition drives the pricing page, the access checks and your reports. Then attach each plan to the spaces it opens.
For payment, connect Stripe or PayPal. BuddyNext charges the same final amount whichever gateway a member uses. Coupons are available, which is useful for a founding-member discount for people who move early. The pricing page is an ordinary WordPress page, so you can edit it in the block editor.
You can create plans and grant access by hand before any gateway is connected. That’s a safe way to run a handful of founding members through the system while you decide what to charge.
Test the whole flow as a stranger, not as the admin. Sign up, subscribe with a test coupon or sandbox payment, confirm the gated space opens, then cancel and confirm access closes cleanly.
For the current licence options, see our pricing page. For one site it’s $149 a year or $399 once.
Step 5: Rebuild the classroom and the points loop
These are the two Skool features people miss most, so plan them early.
The classroom. Learnomy is a separate course plugin from the same team. Install it, create your courses and re-upload your own lesson files. The bridge between Learnomy and BuddyNext is in BuddyNext Pro. It posts course completions and certificates to the feed, can link a course to a space so learners are added when they enrol, and can enrol a member in a course when they buy a plan. You need Learnomy and BuddyNext Pro both active.
Points and levels. BuddyNext awards no points itself. WB Gamification is a separate plugin that owns the rules, points, levels, badges and streaks. When it’s active, BuddyNext shows a profile Achievements tab, a leaderboard page and level and badge notifications. So you can rebuild a Skool-style loop, but you configure it in WB Gamification and decide the rules again. Don’t expect an automatic copy of your levels.
If you only had a light points system, you may find you don’t need it on day one. Launch without it and add it once members are settled.
Step 6: Invite your members by CSV
Now the part that matters most. Invitations are in the free plugin and live under BuddyNext, Members, Directory, Invites.
For a list, prepare a CSV where each line is either email or email,first_name. Choose Send bulk invitations, pick the file and send.
A few rules keep a bulk send sensible:
- Up to 500 rows are processed per upload. Split a bigger list into batches.
- An address that already has a pending invite is skipped, so re-uploading a longer list never double-invites anyone.
- The link is tied to the email address and can’t be reused for another one.
- Invitations expire after 7 days by default. You can resend to issue a fresh one, or revoke one.
- The Invites tab shows each invitation’s status: Pending, Accepted, Expired or Bounced, with a filter for each.
When people click, the sign-up form already has their email filled in. They choose a password and they’re in. You can edit the invitation email under Notifications, Email Templates, so it sounds like you.
Send in waves. First a small group of your most active members, then ask them to try it on a phone: sign up, post, react, open a gated space. Fix what they find. Then invite the rest in batches, so the first week is calm and your email service doesn’t throttle the mail.
Two more ways in
A CSV needs emails. For people you can’t email, there are other routes.
- Space invite links. Each space can have one shareable link. You choose when it expires (1 day, 7 days, 30 days or never) and how many people it admits. It suits a pinned post inside your Skool group.
- Auto-join. New members can land in your welcome space and in any space you choose at sign-up, and you can limit auto-join to chosen member types.
A link doesn’t skip your rules. New people still complete sign-up and any verification, and paid spaces still need the plan.
Members also get a short onboarding wizard after they register. They fill in a profile, pick interests, join spaces, follow people and choose notifications. It runs by itself.
Step 7: Announce the move and run both side by side
The announcement decides how many people come along. Keep it simple.
- Pick a date when Skool stops being the place for conversation.
- Post it on Skool, pinned, with the new link, the date and a plain reason to join. Repeat it in your emails.
- Overlap for a few weeks. Answer questions only in the new place after launch. Redirect people politely rather than answering twice.
- Keep Skool open until the move is done. Check what a plan change would do to your group and your exports before you make one.
- Wind it down to read-only, or archive it, only once your regulars are posting on the new site.
Paying members move last. Each payer subscribes again, so agree the end date of the old billing with each person. If someone has already paid for a stretch on Skool, the Add order form on the Pro Billing screen records a payment that arrived elsewhere. That way nobody pays twice.
One more thing worth checking on your own account: Skool’s help centre says its Growth Boost discovery feature takes a cut of what members it brings you pay, and that you can switch it off under Settings, Discovery. Read the current wording yourself on Skool’s help pages, and settle it before you move paying members.
A realistic timeline
Every community is different, so treat this as a shape, not a promise.
| Week | What happens |
|---|---|
| 1 | Export, collect missing emails, sketch the new structure |
| 2 | Build on staging: spaces, plans, courses |
| 3 | Test as a stranger; invite a small first group |
| 4 | Fix what they found; announce the date |
| 5 to 7 | Invite in batches; run both side by side |
| 8 | Wind Skool down once the regulars have moved |
If you rebuild a large classroom, add time. Video-heavy courses take longest, because you re-upload the files.
A launch checklist
- Members exported, and the file opened and checked for emails.
- Lesson files saved from your own source, not from Skool.
- The new site runs on staging, then live, with a tested backup.
- Registration mode, email delivery and terms page are set.
- Spaces exist, with the right privacy type on each.
- Plans exist and a test purchase works end to end.
- A first CSV batch has gone out and been tested on a phone.
- The announcement is written, dated and pinned.
- Someone owns moderation on the new site.
What you’ll miss, and how to cope
Be honest about the losses so they don’t surprise you. You’ll give up Skool’s discovery, its all-in-one simplicity and its native app. A self-hosted site earns its traffic through your own channels, search and word of mouth. Your members will need a reason to come: a better home, not just a different one.
You’ll also take on the upkeep. Updates, backups and email delivery are yours or your host’s. If that sounds heavy, our self-hosted community platform guide lays out what the work really is.
Where to go from here
Click through the real screens first. The live demo runs a seeded BuddyNext community with owner access for four hours and asks for an email. The Skool alternative page has the feature comparison, and the free vs Pro page shows which tier each step above needs.
