# The Community Software Landscape

> The market for owned community software has split into distinct camps that rarely admit they compete. Creator-economy stacks like Circle, Kajabi and Patreon sell monetization and 'own your audience'; white-label players like Disciple sell branded mobile apps; enterprise and vertical tools like Higher Logic and ToucanTech serve associations and alumni offices; and open-source forums Discourse and NodeBB keep the old bulletin board alive with a modern engine. The through-line is a retreat from social media algorithms toward spaces the host actually controls.

## Achievements

- Kajabi creators have collectively earned over $10 billion, with the platform taking no commission on creator earnings.
- Patreon has paid out more than $10 billion in lifetime creator payouts and supports over 25 million paid memberships.
- Discourse revived open-source forum software as a modern, widely adopted standard for civil online discussion.
- Higher Logic serves more than 3,000 association and member-organization customers, the most in that space.
- Circle is used by more than 17,000 creators, educators and brands and reached a reported valuation near $250M.

## Latest updates

- **2025-08** — Kajabi announced its creators had surpassed $10B in cumulative earnings, months after crossing $9B.
- **2025-01** — Patreon reported crossing $10B in lifetime payouts, with more than $2B a year flowing to creators.

## Links

- GitHub: https://github.com/NodeBB/NodeBB

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Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-09