online-community
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Everyone Is Quietly Building A Members-Only Internet
The creators and brands who spent a decade renting attention on other people's feeds are now buying software to build private homes instead. Skool, Patreon, Podia and a stack of quieter forum companies are all fighting to be the front door.
Why every course app suddenly wants to be a community
Disciple, Podia, Thinkific, LearnWorlds, Kajabi and Open Social are all chasing the same tired-of-renting creator. Here is how the fight over who owns your audience actually breaks down.
Your Best Customers Live On Land You Don't Own
Six software companies - LearnWorlds, Open Social, Social Strata, Bevy, Forumbee and Bettermode - are selling the same quiet promise: stop renting your audience from Facebook and Discord, and build a community you actually keep.
Your Community Platform Is Either A Home Or A Listening Post
Open Social and CMNTY are both Dutch, both say they build community, and both are right - one hands you a network you own, the other turns a crowd's opinions into research data. Here is why the same word points at two very different businesses.
Everyone wants a community. Almost nobody owns theirs
Six platforms - from open-source Discourse to enterprise Khoros and Salesforce - are quietly fighting over the same thing: the conversations your customers have about you. Building that crowd turns out to be the easy part. Owning it is where it gets expensive.
The Land Grab for Communities the Algorithm Can't Touch
Zapnito, Almabase, Disciple, XenForo, Gainsight and CMNTY are quietly selling brands a way to own their audience instead of renting it from a feed. Here is how one market splits into six very different bets.
NodeBB Bet on the Open Web While Its Rivals Got Bought
While AnswerHub was swallowed by a holding company and the alumni-community market consolidated, this Toronto-built open-source forum wired itself straight into the fediverse. NodeBB's wager is that the open web outlasts the walled garden.
Bettermode vs Disciple, and Who Really Owns Your Community
Two white-label platforms promise creators and brands a home away from Facebook. One bets on branded mobile apps, the other on customizable web hubs - here is how Bettermode and Disciple actually differ.
CMNTY Built Online Communities to Listen, Not to Sell
Long before Discourse threads and Patreon tiers, a Dutch company was turning online communities into listening posts for brands. CMNTY has spent nearly two decades using customer conversations as research nobody else could run.
Forumbee Turns Repeat Support Tickets Into a Public Answer
The San Francisco community software company has spent more than a decade on a quiet bet: the best help desk is a crowd of customers answering each other in the open.