Use cases
23 kinds of community, one platform underneath.
People ask what you can build with this, which is the wrong question: the software does not care what you call your community. The useful question is what your community has to be good at, because that is where platforms differ. So these 23 examples are grouped by what the community is for, and each group names the thing the software has to get right for it.
Every one of them runs on the same free core. Pick the closest and read the playbook, or go straight to what is in the platform.
Teach something
You have knowledge people pay for, and the community is what gets them to the end of it.
What it has to be good at Courses and cohorts next to the feed, so discussion happens where the lesson is rather than in a separate tab nobody opens.
Sell access
The community is the product. People pay to be in the room, so the room has to be worth opening daily.
What it has to be good at Paid tiers and gated spaces, plus the retention surfaces - notifications, digests, streaks - that decide whether month two renews.
Support a product
The community exists to make a product stickier, cheaper to support, or better informed.
What it has to be good at Search that surfaces the answer already given, and moderation that scales past the point where you can read every post yourself.
Introduce people to each other
The value is member-to-member. Nobody is there for your content; they are there for the other members.
What it has to be good at Real profiles, a directory people can actually filter, and private messaging - the parts a content-first platform treats as an afterthought.
Let members trade
Money or work moves between members, and you take a cut or simply make the introduction.
What it has to be good at Listings, payments and a vendor side, on infrastructure where you set the fee rather than paying someone else a percentage of it.
Bring a group together
There is no product to sell. The group is the point, and it usually runs on somebody’s spare evening.
What it has to be good at Something that works on a phone, moderates itself as much as possible, and costs near nothing to keep running.
None of these is quite you?
That is the normal case, and it matters less than it looks. Every community above is the same feed, spaces, profiles, messaging, directory and moderation, with different parts turned up. A book club and a SaaS support forum are the same software configured twice.
So rather than hunting for a label that fits, it is usually faster to look at the parts and decide which ones you need.
- Everything in the platform the full list of what ships free
- Free vs Pro which of those parts costs money
- Online community platform the category, and what owning it changes
- Community website builder building the whole site, not just the feed
- Every comparison how this sits against 21 other platforms
Where you are now
Pick the sentence that sounds like you.
The right next step is different depending on what you are running today, so here are four, rather than one button for everybody.
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I have not started yet
Then the fastest way to judge this is to use it. The sandbox spins up a real community you can post in, and you can throw it away afterwards.
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I pay for Circle, Mighty Networks or Skool
The bill grows with your membership and the members sit on their servers. Moving is the part people assume is impossible, so it is worth reading what it actually involves before you renew.
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I already run BuddyPress or BuddyBoss
Your members keep their WordPress logins, so nobody re-registers. The free BuddyNext Importer brings the rest across: members, profile fields, groups, activity, forums, media and private messages.
Migrating from BuddyPress Migrating from BuddyBoss What the importer moves
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I am building this for someone else
A full REST API ships in the free core, so a custom front end or an integration is a first-class path rather than a retrofit. The plugin source is public, so you can read it before you commit a client to it.