Participation in the local community is fundamental to membership which in turn fosters a sense of community and contributes to a greater good. With the help of community-building resources, you may include the opinions of current and prospective members in your reports. Membership programme data can be gathered via audience surveys conducted with the aid of community-building software.
In the list of the top tools, we have mentioned the Top 20 Community Building Tools along with their features and pricing for you to choose from.
1. Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks is a comprehensive social media platform that enables all the aforementioned activities. You may simply establish your community and make it successful with Mighty Networks alone, while you may wish to consider some of the software alternatives below as add-ons.
Key Features:
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Popular educational programmes and a full schedule of events are what make this so successful at bringing together entrepreneurs.
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With Mighty Networks, you can host everything from live broadcasts to online classes to your own events, complete with your very own website, complete with features like article creation, polls, and private messaging.
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It's ideal for creating a thriving community-based business, holding events, launching courses, hosting live events, and streaming live content.
Cost:
The Community Plan costs $33/month and The Business Plan costs $99/month
2. Circle
Circle is a cutting-edge, all-in-one platform for community management that provides countless add-ons and widgets in addition to in-depth analytics. With the help of content, discussion, live streams, and memberships, brands can use it to create intimate community experiences. It has a few features that can aid in getting to know one another.
Key Features:
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Members of the community can get to know one another through the community's searchable member directory
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It features detailed profiles, and the community's analytic and insight features, which can be used to, among other things, determine who the most active members of the community are.
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It's easy to use.
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If you get stuck, they provide weekly live workshops where you can ask questions and get answers to help you, onboard people, create your community and maintain participation.
Cost:
Monthly plans include: Basic costs $99, Professional costs $49, and Enterprise costs $399
Annual plans include: Basic costs $39, Professional costs $89, and Enterprise costs $360
3. Discourse
Forums for open discussion can be essential in drawing in active participants to a group. You may learn more about this method and its application in detail by visiting Discourse. It's a free and open-source forum, chat room, and mailing list trusted by thousands of members from all walks of life, including artists, programmers, and banks.
Key Features:
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You can trust the most active users to help police the forum and keep it free of spammers and trolls.
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It discourages undesirable actions by providing kudos and hearts to those who contribute constructively.
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To get people talking to one another, you can say their names or spice things up with links or graphics.
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You can utilise the summary feature to include only the most popular and engaging entries, preventing the conversation from dying due to lengthy conversations.
Cost:
Basic costs $25, Standard costs $100, Business costs $300, Enterprise is custom pricing
4. Discord
While the gaming community may have been Discord's first adopters, the software has since gained popularity among a wide variety of artists. As of June 2021, Discord reported that it had about 350 million monthly users. Three per cent of American teenagers say it is their preferred social media site.
Key Features:
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It's one of the most widely used methods, whether your goal is to generate revenue through paid memberships
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It provides a more intimate means of communication with your audience.
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Creators that use Discord should consider getting verified and perhaps applying to become a Discord Partner.
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Gaining verification will increase your chance of being followed, and joining the Discord Partner Program will grant you access to a tailored service complete with a unique URL and other benefits.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
5. Hivebrite
Hivebrite is an advanced, all-inclusive platform for community management and engagement that enables businesses to cultivate influential and productive communities. Their platform has a wealth of features, whether you're just looking to set up a place for people to meet and talk, or you want to turn it into a hub for the distribution of information and possibilities.
Key Features:
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It simplifies the process of administering community content and members.
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You can use the profile update tracker and refined search and targeting options to keep tabs on your members' most recent activities.
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It gives you complete control over what your members post, so you can make sure it's all appropriate for the office.
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If you want your community to flourish, you need to provide more than just great content.
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The event-planning feature allows you to create and promote events across multiple social media platforms and sell tickets to those events at varying prices.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
6. Tribe
Tribe, one of the newest community platforms available, was launched in 2018 with the goal of assisting businesses in launching brand-led online communities that can be embedded into an existing website or product or operated independently. Despite their young age, established businesses like ConvertKit, Asus, and IBM have already come to rely on them.
Key Features:
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Without knowing any code, you can make complete aesthetic changes to the blocks and colour schemes to make your community stand out from the rest.
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You may add more features by connecting it to other popular programmes like Slack or by downloading third-party apps from the Tribe App Store.
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It provides resources and automation guidelines to ensure the safety of your neighbourhood.
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Parts of the online neighbourhood can be locked down for personal usage with the help of access controls.
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It provides gamification components like badges and a scoreboard to boost participation.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
7. Disciple
Disciple, which began as a community management platform in 2013, was created that year. Its headquarters are in London, and it aids companies and creators in forming online communities where individuals feel a sense of shared identity and benefit from opportunities to engage in meaningful activities.
Key Features:
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Your new community can be organised in a number of different ways, such as through the use of groups, lists, and folders
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You'll have the option of charging members a subscription fee or allowing them to make in-app purchases, to name just a couple of the ways you can make money off of them.
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You can make use of their open API to synchronise with other third-party applications like MailChimp, Google Suite, and YouTube to further enhance your community.
Cost:
Pro costs $999, Grow costs $633, Start costs $308, Web costs $46
8. MemberSpace
MemberSpace is a great place to start if you want to start a membership site for anything from video lectures and courses to directories and more. Users can restrict access to a single website, making it available to paying subscribers only. The tool can be utilised by those with no prior knowledge of programming.
Key Features:
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It's compatible with popular platforms like Podcast Alley, Zapier, Stripe, the Forum, and AffiliateJungle.
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The tool is mobile-friendly, and it even provides premium support for its most dedicated users.
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Additionally, users can embed it anywhere, take advantage of its fully customizable appearance, and access its data properties via an API.
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As it has no negative effects on the functionality of the CMS and does not lock the user out, it is often used with platforms like Squarespace and WordPress.
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To ease the transition from your current software to MemberSpace, we provide a free migration service.
Cost:
Starting costs $29, Growing costs $49, and Advanced costs $199
9. Thinkific
When it comes to creating a user base for your company, Thinkific is the best way to go. A drag-and-drop editor, class administration, and monetary transactions are just some of the features it provides. This platform may be the ideal option if you want to control the user experience and the data collected about your community.
Key Features:
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You can publish any content you choose, be it a video, an article, or a course.
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When it comes to integrations, you may rely on this tool you're already familiar with to aid in the development and expansion of your group.
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Analytics allow you to observe how well each piece of content is doing and where you may make adjustments.
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You can expand your customer base with the help of marketing strategies and the incorporation of social media when you use to market and sell.
Cost:
Free, Basic costs $36, Start costs $74, Grow costs $149
10. Slack
Slack is widely used as a means of communication and collaboration within businesses. However, many people are also employing it to create professional networks. The widespread availability, excellent design, and cost-free base all contribute to Slack's popularity.
Key Features:
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Although you can get started without spending a dime, the free plan's storage and bandwidth are quickly exhausted.
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A limited group of people can be asked to try out the platform before inviting the whole public.
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Establish a common forum where everyone may communicate with minimal effort. This should revolve around a wide issue in which most, if not all, of the team members are interested.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
11. Vanilla Forums
To build a community online, Vanilla Forums is a great choice to opt for. The intuitive design of the platform facilitates increased client retention, increased revenue, and enhanced user satisfaction. Vanilla stands out from other community platforms by providing robust features like a deep connection with your existing tools, adaptable customisation, a scalable knowledge base, gamification, Q&A, and more.
Key Features:
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It lets you build a community to your exact specifications, complete with positive member reinforcement and language support.
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This cloud-based platform for community software allows you to set up lively discussion boards that can aid businesses in attracting and retaining customers, hence increasing revenue.
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Vanilla's many useful features make it possible to save money on support, keep members interested, host productive discussions, and reach out to potential customers without breaking the bank.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
12. BuddyBoss
BuddyBoss is the most robust and flexible WordPress-based open-source community platform. Your online community, complete with activity feeds, private social groups, robust admin and moderating tools, private messaging, and more, can be up and running in minutes with BuddyBoss.
Key Features:
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With features like student dashboards, discussion forums, document management, and integrations with all the most popular platforms for selling and delivering your lessons, it is the ideal basis upon which to build an online course.
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Using its robust and modifiable member profiles and types, private groups, notifications, and integrations with all the leading tools for selling and restricting access to content, this software can help you provide a first-rate membership experience.
Cost:
1 Site costs $228, 5 Sites cost $288, and 10 Site costs $388
13. Facebook Groups
Many content creators get their start by joining preexisting communities where they may meet other like-minded individuals and showcase their work to a ready audience. You can encourage growth and deeper connections among your content's fans by starting your own group on Facebook Groups.
Key Features:
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Creating a group and linking it to your Page is a great way to foster a sense of community among your followers.
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You have complete control over who may join and view your group by adjusting the privacy settings.
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If your group starts to pick up steam, you may want to examine its analytics to find out how its members interact with one another, who its most active contributors are, and which of its postings are read the most frequently.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
14. Referral Factory
To aid you in acquiring more consumers via referrals, Referral Factory has developed an extremely user-friendly referral marketing system. Their tool lets you "create your own referral programme in under 5 minutes" by providing you with access to more than a thousand customizable referral programme examples. Either model your own referral programme after one of theirs or use one of theirs as a starting point.
Key Features:
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No tracking scripts need to be installed on the website, meaning that marketers may execute their basic solution without the assistance of developers.
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Their referral software includes a "page builder" that lets you create custom referral sites that look and feel consistent with your brand's aesthetic.
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You may onboard referrers by uploading a database, or you can promote your referral programme to your clients directly.
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Client dashboards allow you to keep tabs on all of the people participating in your referral programme, with the added convenience of being able to export data, and sync it with Google Sheets
Cost:
Starter costs $95, Basic costs $200, Pro costs $300
15.Crowdstack Pro
The newest version of Social Strata's platform for interacting with online communities is called Crowdstack Pro. Millions of people and companies have used the online community interaction tools they developed. When using Crowdstack Pro, you should consider it an adjunct to your primary domain.
Key Features:
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You get to determine the parameters of participation, and you get to keep the members' personal information.
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You can utilise it to attract a dedicated following and boost your site's search engine rankings in tandem with the main portal.
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It's simple to tailor the look and feel to complement your current brand identity.
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It comes with a premium membership system that may be used to charge for access to specific features or content.
Cost:
Midstack costs $999, Fullstack costs $1499
16. Patreon
Patreon is one of the most well-known creator tools out there. It may seem contradictory, but offering people a method to financially express their gratitude may be a powerful means of community building.
Key Features:
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Patrons on Patreon can get early access to new projects and other perks.
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If you want to do more than just provide content rewards and communicate with your patrons through Patreon, you may connect it with another platform like Discourse or Discord to set up a patron-only forum for Q&A sessions and in-depth conversations.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
17. Habitate
Habitate is a "no-code community tool,". Brand new to the industry in 2019, this Indian business focuses on the software as a service (SaaS), financial technology (FinTech), and educational technology (EdTech) industries.
Key Features:
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Using it, you may organise meetups and online forums for your target audience under your own brand name.
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It provides a variety of performance indicators that may be used to track the expansion of your community over time, such as monthly growth, visitor numbers, and member counts.
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Further, they provide tools for content moderation to assist you to organise and governing the content that is posted so that your "new members" don't wreck all your hard work with spam.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
18. InfluPush
InfluPush is worth checking out if your intended audience spends most of its time on Instagram or if they are looking for an alternative to Instagram link-in-bio tools. In a nutshell, it's a channel for creators and influencers to connect with their audiences directly and share their work.
Key Features:
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You can increase the likelihood that your followers will see your posts by inviting them to follow you on its app.
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It is considerably simpler to contact your followers directly when you use the push notifications option to distribute links and embedded media.
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Creating a profile is as simple as linking your Instagram account.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
19. Socio
Marketers and event organisers may create communities for ongoing attendee involvement with the help of Webex Events (previously Socio), an online event community platform. You won't find any platform that allows for as much interaction with your community as Socio does, thanks to its ability to facilitate virtual roundtables, topic-based discussions, virtual events, games, and much more.
Key Features:
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Socio's content is highly flexible and can be tailored to different tiers of participation.
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Organising and distributing information, connecting with others, and publishing announcements, it is the ideal platform for online or hybrid events.
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Webex Events is an online event community solution that may help you connect your people and fuel their continuous learning and networking.
Cost:
Contact the sales team for a quote.
20. Buffer
Buffer is a tool that helps you to pre-schedule social media content that you want to post at crucial and effective times throughout the week. This makes it a wonderful method to communicate with and expand your audience. Another great approach to do both of these things is to use Buffer.
Key Features:
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By utilising Buffer, you can sit down and arrange an entire week's worth of material to be posted to a variety of social media platforms, so saving you a significant amount of time.
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After then, Buffer takes care of the rest for you, facilitating your interaction with the community of your choice.
Cost:
Free, Essentials costs $5, Team costs $10
Things to keep in mind while choosing Community Building Tools
Information-Rich Learning Environment
The quality and quantity of feedback you receive can be greatly improved by providing users with easy access to relevant information. Video and image galleries, as well as a project library, should all be included in the community-building tool. Having a project news feed and the capacity to send out electronic newsletters is crucial if you want to keep your community informed and involved as the project progresses.
Extensive Research and Detailed Reports
You'll need more than Google Analytics if you want to collect responses to your consultation. The software provides real-time integrated reporting, with the ability to record all comments and actions related to a single consultation, multiple consultations, or all consultations across a range of time periods.
Scale to Any Type of Consultation
You can keep your community interested and involved in your consultation project by letting them choose the feedback tool they feel most comfortable with, as well as by using a variety of feedback tools at different stages of the process.
Conclusion
In this article, we discussed the different Community Building Tools. Hope this has given you a clear idea and how you can choose your desired Community Building Tools.
FAQs
1. What is online community building?
With customers or clients, you already have a community built around your company. You need just amass them for use in some settings. Most ideally, someplace in cyberspace. The goal of an online community is to provide a forum where like-minded consumers may share information, ask questions, and engage in healthy debate about your product or service. In online community building, members of the community congregate online to pursue shared goals, just as they might in a real-world setting. These groups are great for personal interaction as well as networking with influential people in your field.
2. Why are Community Building Tools essential in a business?
Your brand's image will improve as a result of the business community efforts, and you'll also gain valuable intelligence about your competition. In addition to these Community Building Tools, will help you assist your customers to feel more connected to your company by providing them with a place to interact digitally. Conducting a quick consumer poll on your community before launching a new service/feature/product is an excellent way to test drive your ideas before investing significant time and resources into bringing the product to market.
3. What are Community building platforms/tools your business can use?
Your web platform will serve as the hub of your community, serving as the primary location for all community-related activities.
Social media platforms: If your company does not have a website, you can still connect with consumers using social media. You can also use this information when you first launch your company.
Online Message Boards: Quora is an interactive Q&A website that fosters communities online. You can locate more people with whom you share common interests on Quora, from whom you can then form smaller, more intimate groups. Diversity exists within Reddit's user base. Subreddits are communities on Reddit devoted to discussing a particular niche interest or set of topics.
Email: This serves as more than just a tool; it's a great way to direct customers to your discussion boards. Consider starting a monthly newsletter if you have a list of clients and their email addresses.
4.What steps need to be taken to build a community platform?
The steps to build a community platform are:
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Determine who the most important members of the online community are.
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Spell out your objectives.
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Make a decision on a social media site.
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Create a profile for a member.
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Make some guidelines and standards.
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Create a neighbourhood.
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Find the people who really matter in the virtual neighbourhood.
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Create awareness about your neighbourhood.
5.Who makes use of the Community Platform?
Community Platforms are illustrative of the types of software that have emerged to fulfil the demands of online customer management, and hence provide insight into the types of businesses and individuals that are meeting those needs. The usual users of such equipment are:
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Community managers
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Customer support
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Marketers
