How to choose an online community platform
As an awesome community builder, you’ve invested a lot of time, resources, and energy into your community. For many, much of that time is spent building and maintaining the various online learning, payment solutions, social media accounts, and virtual event platforms that power your community.
It’s a lot to manage that can lead to problems for your most valuable asset—your community members.
Have you ever thought, “There’s got to be a better way”? We’ve got good
news.
Online community management platforms (like Circle, but we’re not playing favorites) offer a one-stop platform for your community. They bring all your courses, content, messaging, onboarding, and more into one place.
🤯 There are a lot of options out there, and knowing where to start can be frustrating. But don’t worry. I’ve talked to hundreds of awesome community builders like yourself to understand what tools they use, why they choose them, and—most importantly—what red flags to look out for.
7 things to consider before choosing on an online community platform
At Circle’s Community Builder Summit, I shared the top things that every community builder should consider when choosing an online community management platform.
👩🏼🎓 Like any investment, the more research you do, the better the outcome.
That’s why we put together this list of the seven things you should consider before you decide to move your community from one platform to another or build one from the ground up.
1. Ease of use: A user-friendly experience
An online community platform must be easy for you and your members. This is one of the biggest challenges I’ve heard from community builders, especially those who have to move platforms because of usability issues.
Many of these platforms advertise having every feature you could ever need, but that can mean they’re difficult to navigate. Your platform needs to feel familiar to existing and new members. You want them to spend less time figuring out where things are and more time with your content and in discussions.
Overly complex platforms introduce another problem—poor onboarding experiences. If you're spending more time answering support questions than creating content, it might be a sign you need an easier-to-use platform.
Keep these rules in mind when you’re asking yourself, “Is this platform easy to use?”
- Who is your Ideal Member Persona (IMP)? The platform should be easy for your members and you to use from day one.
- Your community is an extension of your brand. The platform should let you customize the look and feel to ensure that your members have a seamless brand experience.
- Ease of use isn’t just about design! It’s important to have a platform that’s accessible on their desktops and smartphones.
2. Member engagement: Build a thriving community
It’s never a good sign when a community has tumbleweeds blowing through it.
There’s nothing worse than previewing or joining an online community whose last post was made three months ago. Engagement is the soul of every community, and the platform you choose needs the right tools and features to make it easy for your members to connect and engage.
Here are three features you should look for:
- Events. The platform should make creating and hosting virtual events for your members easy. In our 2024 Community Benchmark Report, more than 40% of community builders told us that hosting events was a significant driver of member acquisition for their communities. And, 100% of the best creators host events. That also means that it's a core part of any top creator's strategy.
- Courses. Communities are built on learning, and interactive courses are a powerful way to drive engagement and reduce churn.
- Polls. Everyone has an opinion, so turn those opinions into engagement. Polls are an incredible tool for sparking conversation and creating connections.
Another thing to look out for is distractions on community platforms. Social networks might seem like a great place to host your community, but the constant onslaught of notifications and ads can hurt your community’s perceived value. A strong, consistent branded experience strengthens member loyalty and keeps them engaged.
Consider using a 'green flag' vs 'red flag' framework. When it comes to social network based communities, some examples are:
- Green flags = The ability to host events, share polls, and meet people on a platform they use frequently.
- Red flags = Many distractions, always competing for attention, and beholden to the algorithms.
3. Monetization: Unlocking revenue streams
Monetizing doesn’t have to be a dirty word. You're building something of value that drives meaningful engagement for your members. Of course that value should be recognized!
Look for platforms that offer free and tiered paid membership options—and make it easy for members to move from free to paid. Paid memberships aren’t a one-choice-only option either. Look for a platform that offers different pricing models so you can choose the one that works best for you:
- One-time fee. Some communities decide to use a one-time fee to gain access to the community space. That doesn’t mean everything is automatically free, though. There can also be options to capture additional revenue through add-ons like courses, coaching, and more.
- Monthly. Offering a monthly subscription can be a great way to onboard paid members, but the risk is that they won’t renew and experience the full value of your community.
- Quarterly. Depending on the transformation members are intended to go through in your community, quarterly (3 month intervals) will make the most sense.
- Annual. We love annual memberships because they give your paid members ample time to explore, connect, and build relationships with other community members that will keep them renewing for years.
4. Retention: Keep members coming back
It’s not just content that keeps members coming back to your community. You need consistent and creative ways to drive members back into the community. But that gets really tedious and time consuming—thankfully, you can automate some of it. The right platform lets you automate as many of these workflows as possible, leaving you with all the time you need to create great content.
Take a look at Circle’s workflow capabilities!
You want to deliver a high-quality, personalized member experience when you have 20 members AND when you grow to 200? Workflows are key. Workflows can also be used for weekly digests emailed to members, updates on new members or content, event reminders and recaps, and notifications.
5. Member safety and privacy: Creating a secure space
Creating a community where members feel they are safe is one of the most important requirements of being a community builder. Unfortunately, the internet is not anywhere near as safe as we’d all like it to be.
When choosing an online community management platform, ask what tools it provides to help you protect your members privacy while still fostering meaningful conversations. If safety features are poorly implemented, you could risk losing your entire community. I’ve seen it with one community builder who was locked out of their Facebook account and was unable to regain access. They spent years building a community, only to see that work undone and have no recourse path.
Look for platforms that offer:
- Moderation. You should be able to approve posts before they go live in your community.
- Privacy. If your community serves a sensitive population, you want to make sure they feel free to speak their minds without worrying about who might be reading along. Not all members want to share their profiles with other members, so many platforms allow members to choose how much personal information they share.
- Filters. You want open and honest conversations, but being able to filter for swear words or particularly sensitive triggers is essential to many communities with vulnerable members.
6. Integration capabilities: Streamlining your tools
Do you need more than one platform? The answer will be unique to what you need for your community. But for the most part, consolidating the multiple platforms powering your community can benefit you, your members, and your bottom line.
You might have downloadable content on Google Drive, courses on another platform, webinars on Zoom—the list can go on and on.
🤔 Dividing your customer journey across disjointed platforms leads to lower-engagement, higher drop-off, and ultimately fewer conversions.
Your tech suite is supposed to streamline your business and simplify your life, but the amount of time and energy required to manage, maintain, and connect numerous tools has the opposite effect.
Another thing to consider: You don’t have to choose one platform vs. multiple platforms. Online community platforms like Circle let you deliver as much content and engagement opportunities through one place as you like and then extend that with integrations to other tools through APIs. Fun fact—there isn’t a single community or social networking app in the world which supports as many in-inline block types as Circle in a single post (images, videos, polls, PDFs, voice notes, file attachments, and over 700+ embed providers).
7. Analytics and measuring success: Data-driven improvement
If you can’t measure your community, you can’t improve it. Understanding what content connects with your members, where and how often they engage with each other, and where you need to make improvements can only happen when you have access to your community data.
Understanding how your members are using your platform can open up new engagement opportunities and help you catch a potentially churn-ready member before they leave. The right data and analytics can help you:
- Understand member behavior. When are members signing in, what do they do first, and what content do they spend the most time with?
- Provide engagement opportunities. Many platforms (including Circle) allow you to give engagement scores to members. These scores can help you know when to reach out to disengaged members or write a thank you note to a member who’s going out of their way to add value.
- Improve content. Seeing what videos, courses, or other content is working and what’s not working is critical to keeping your community engaged. You’ll have the data to create the right content, saving you time and energy.
We know the impact of a data-driven community strategy, which is why we continuously invest in improving our analytics hub in Circle. Get all of your community data in one place.
The 6 main types of online community platforms:
1. The all-in-one solution
2. Custom membership services
Best for: Communities that have a custom website and want to secure their content.
Customer membership services like SureMembers let community builders lock down portions of their websites. It’s a good tool for communities that have all their content in one place. The downside is that they often only secure website content, so videos and courses must be hosted on other platforms.
3. Forums
Best for: Discussion-driven communities.
Forum platforms Vanilla provide rich discussion-based features, including knowledge bases and wikis, for your members. Many offer integrations with other platforms to add content types and messaging features, which can incur additional costs.
4. Social media groups
Best for: Free communities.
Hosting your community on a social media platform like Facebook or LinkedIn can be easy, and lots of communities start this way. But there are many downsides to building your community on a social platform like Facebook Groups, one of the biggest being your data is always at risk if the platform decides to shut down your group or change its services.
5. Chat tools
Best for: Businesses and smaller communities.
The best examples of these tools are Slack and Discord. They offer free and paid plans and are popular across businesses and community groups. Both offer integrations to content tools like Google Drive and YouTube and member management tools. They don’t offer branding options beyond colors and logos, which can be limiting for many community builders looking to build a strong brand. Slack can also get quite expensive once you grow your community with their pay per member pricing.
6. Education and learning tools
Best for: Learning-based communities.
Tools like Teachable and Coursera are used to create and sell educational content. They’re feature-rich in terms of content creation, with support for discussion groups, video content, and polls. While they’re great options, they lack the tools to create engagement opportunities between members. They’re more of a delivery tool than a community tool.
Ready to research?
Choosing the right online community platform requires careful consideration of various factors. By creating a checklist of usability, member engagement features, monetization options, safety and privacy measures, integration capabilities, and analytics, you can make an informed decision for your community's growth and success.
Community pros choose Circle
👉🏼 When you’re ready to monetize your community, Circle is here to help. Start your free 14-day trial today to see why community masterminds like Mandy Ellis, Kelsey Rowell, and more choose Circle.
