9 Best Community Platforms of 2026

Circle packs the tools a brand community usually needs into one product: discussion spaces, a member directory with rich profiles, courses, live streams and live rooms, a website builder, payments and apps for iOS, Android and desktop. Professional costs $89 per month on annual billing and includes unlimited members, 3 admins, 10 moderators, 20 spaces, 200 GB of storage and 2,500 Circle AI credits a month. Business, at $199, is the plan most companies running a customer community will want, because it adds workflows, custom profile fields, the Circle API and MCP server, activity scores, branded email notifications and removal of Circle branding. Scale, at $419, adds AI agents, unlimited workflows, webhooks and custom SSO. Circle Plus adds custom branded mobile apps and a dedicated partner at custom pricing. The limits on admins and spaces are the thing to watch for larger teams, and SSO arrives late in the ladder. Payment features carry a 2% transaction fee on Professional and 1% on Business and Scale.

Discourse is the open source forum behind many product and developer communities, and its hosted plans start with a free tier. The free plan includes unlimited members, 2 staff seats, 10 categories, 500k monthly page views, 20k monthly emails and 5 GB of storage. Pro, at $100 per month, adds unlimited categories and tags, custom groups, custom themes, a custom domain, API and webhook access, more than 15 plugins such as DiscourseConnect and Solved, 5 staff seats and email support. Business, at $500 per month, adds advanced reporting, workflows, events, gamification, SSO through OpenID and OAuth2, 15 staff seats, priority support and standard migrations from tools like Vanilla, phpBB and Slack. Enterprise adds custom design work, a 99.9% uptime guarantee and migrations from Khoros and Salesforce. The trade-off is design flexibility: the interface looks like a forum first, and brands that want event pages or gamification pay for Business.

Bettermode targets SaaS and B2B companies that want a branded community instead of a Slack or Discord group. Starter costs $149 per month on yearly billing, or $199 monthly, and includes the core Q&A, discussion, events and polls apps, a custom domain, removal of the Powered by Bettermode badge, private messaging and chat, social login, basic analytics, chat and email support, and US or EU data residency for up to 10,000 members and 5 collaborators. Growth, at $1,500 per month billed yearly, adds Ask AI, federated search, full API and webhooks, a sandbox, OAuth2 and JWT login, onboarding help and integrations with HubSpot, Zendesk, Intercom and Salesforce for up to 25,000 members. Premium adds an advanced design studio, a custom CMS, SAML, an audit log and a 99.9% uptime SLA. The large gap between Starter and Growth is the main drawback for companies that need support desk integrations early.

Gainsight Customer Communities, sold as Gainsight CC, is built for software companies that treat community as part of customer retention. It gives customers one place to ask and answer questions, join groups around shared goals, follow product updates and suggest ideas for the roadmap, with no-code tools to shape the experience by product, role or region. Gainsight adds a moderation AI agent, AI answers and AI translation, a Developer Studio for building custom widgets, and an MCP server for working with community data from AI tools. The main reason to choose it is the connection to Gainsight CS, Skilljar and Gainsight PX, so customer success managers can see what customers ask and learn. Plans are Professional with 3 admin seats and self-service support, Business with 5 admin seats, all community products and CSM support, and Enterprise with 10 admin seats and custom integrations. Gainsight does not publish prices.

Mighty Networks is built around community businesses, which makes it a good fit for brands that charge for memberships or programs, and a looser fit for free support communities. Launch costs $79 per month, or $950 per year on annual billing, and includes unlimited members and spaces, the AI Cohost, activity feeds, chat, events, courses and payments, with 3 hosts, 10 moderators, 20 streaming hours a month and 200 GB of storage. Scale, at $179, adds more automations, 5,000 admin API requests a month, MCP access, Zapier and Google Analytics. Growth, at $354, adds advanced automations, priority support and migration services. Mighty Pro adds custom branded apps and full community management services. Courses are a strength, with quizzes, SCORM content, dripped lessons and automatic certificates. There is no Q&A or knowledge base focus, so support-led SaaS communities will find Discourse or Bettermode closer to what they need.

Higher Logic Vanilla began as Vanilla Forums, founded in Montreal in 2009, and has been part of Higher Logic since 2021. It is aimed at B2B and B2C companies that use a community for support, customer success, marketing and product feedback. Members get Q&A and discussions, networking and virtual events, polls, and a product feedback process for testing ideas, while federated search pulls content from other platforms into one search. Admins build pages with a drag-and-drop layout editor and widget library, set automation rules triggered by behavior or time, and use AI insights on sentiment and community health. An MCP connection lets teams work with the community from ChatGPT, Claude and Cursor, and an AI bot shield blocks bots. Reporting covers pre-built and custom reports with data exports. Integrations run directly or through Zapier and Salesforce. Higher Logic does not publish Vanilla prices, so budget comparison needs a sales call.

Khoros Aurora is the newest version of Khoros's enterprise community platform, which the company says has powered more than 4,000 communities since 2001. It combines forums, a knowledge base, ideas, events and groups, so a large brand can run support, education and feedback in one place. Khoros describes three layers: a human engine of badges, reputation, leaderboards and automated member paths; an intelligence layer with a community language model trained on your own data, Answer Assist for cited answers and AI moderation; and a rules-based Orchestrator that handles routing, escalation and lifecycle steps without an LLM. Analytics surface trends, unanswered questions and community health signals. Some features on the page, such as challenges and contests, member growth agents and an AI data analyst, are scheduled for later quarters, so check availability. Existing Khoros customers can migrate from Community Classic to Aurora free through the end of 2026. Prices are quoted by sales.

Hivebrite sells community platforms with a strong services layer, and it says more than 2,000 organizations use it. The Focus plan starts at $8,000 per year billed annually and includes public pages with a no-code page builder, your own domain and branding, unlimited members, a directory with rich profiles, messaging, events with tickets, RSVPs and waitlists, news, forums, a live feed and automated member paths. AI features include global search, people and content recommendations, a conversation nudger agent and an MCP. Admins get analytics, engagement scoring, Stripe payments, promo codes, member surveys, moderation and hands-on onboarding, with 1 admin seat. A branded mobile app, email campaigns and WhatsApp are each $2,300 per year. The Custom plan adds sub-communities, custom roles, a full membership suite, mentoring, SSO, API access, CRM integrations and a sandbox. Hivebrite fits alumni, association and partner networks better than a SaaS support forum, since its strengths are events, memberships and directories.

Disciple builds each customer a white-labeled community app, so members download an app listed under your brand rather than a shared platform app. The Branded App plan costs $599 per month billed yearly and includes iOS, Android and web versions, a custom domain, unlimited members under fair usage, 5 admin seats, 10 groups, 1 monetisable course, 10k video minutes, member support, data exports, scheduled posts, custom badges, standard analytics and a success manager. Pro, at $999 per month, removes the admin, group and course limits and adds 20k video minutes, multi-tier member pricing, multi-host livestreams, advanced analytics and Zapier. Organisation starts at $3,400 per month with strategic support, custom integrations, API access, SSO through SAML or OIDC, CRM sync and migration support. Monetization options include subscriptions, in-app purchases, sponsorship and affiliates. Disciple is a good match when the app itself is the goal, but it costs far more than web-first platforms with generic apps.