Editor Sebastiaan Smits ·
Published November 5, 2026 · Updated November 5, 2026
Buyers leave Mighty Networks when payment fees, capped host seats or the quote needed for a branded app start to outweigh a $79 entry price. Creators and membership businesses usually compare Circle and Disciple first, while support and customer-community teams look at Bettermode, Discourse or the quoted enterprise platforms.
Short answer: The closest replacements for Mighty Networks in our community platform software ranking are Circle, Disciple and Bettermode. Choose Circle if you want the same community, course and payment mix with printed prices up to $419. These 11 options are lifted from the Best Community Platform Software in 2026 list. The write-ups look at one question, how each one differs from Mighty Networks, and admit where Mighty Networks is still ahead.
Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. The first three alternatives go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow in their ranked order. How it works: placement disclosure · editorial process.
The comparison table on Mighty's pricing page lists transaction fees of 2% on Launch, 1% on Scale and 0.5% on Growth and Mighty Pro. A paid membership therefore pays the platform twice, once as the monthly plan and again as a share of each member payment.
Launch lists 3 hosts, 10 moderators and 200 GB of storage. Scale lists 5 and 15 with 500 GB, Growth 10 and 100 with 1 TB. A community with a large volunteer team or a video library meets a ceiling and is pushed up a plan.
Branded apps with your own name in the app stores appear only on Mighty Pro, which the page prices as custom with a Get a Quote button. Launch, Scale and Growth members use the Mighty app. Teams that want their own icon cannot buy it from the printed ladder.
Rows follow how closely each product can stand in for Mighty Networks; the closing column is its rank inside our 13-product ranking.
| # | Alternative | Headquarters | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Circle | United States | you want the same community, course and payment mix with printed prices up to $419 | #5 |
| 2 |  Disciple | United Kingdom | you want your own app on every plan and accept a higher monthly price | #2 |
| 3 |  Bettermode | Canada | your members are customers asking questions, not people paying for courses | #4 |
| 4 |  Discourse | United States | you mainly need threaded discussion at a flat monthly price or a free start | #7 |
| 5 |  WoltLab | Germany | you want forum software with no commission and the option to host it yourself | #1 |
| 6 |  Zapnito | United Kingdom | you run a customer knowledge hub with articles and courses, sized by user count | #8 |
| 7 |  Higher Logic Vanilla (formerly Vanilla Forums) | United States | you want a support-focused customer forum and will accept a quoted contract | #9 |
| 8 |  Gainsight Customer Communities | United States | you already run customer success on Gainsight and want community data in the same place | #10 |
| 9 |  Bevy | United States | you run in-person chapters and events as well as an online forum | #11 |
| 10 |  Khoros Aurora AI | United States | you need an enterprise community with AI moderation and have a budget for a quote | #12 |
| 11 |  Influitive | Canada | your goal is customer references, reviews and referrals, not selling memberships | #13 |
Circle prints four tiers: Professional $89, Business $199 and Scale $419 a month on annual billing, plus quoted Circle Plus. Transaction fees run 2% down to 0.5%, and custom branded mobile apps are a Circle Plus item. Courses, events and payments are included from the first plan.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you want the same community, course and payment mix with printed prices up to $419.
Sells a white-labelled app in the stores under your name. Branded App costs $599 a month billed yearly with 5 admin seats, Branded App Pro $999, and Organisation starts at $3,400 with SSO and migration support. The page promises full data export and no exit fee.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you want your own app on every plan and accept a higher monthly price.
Aimed at customer and product communities rather than paid memberships: Q&A, discussion, events and polls. Starter is $149 a month ($1,788 a year) for up to 10,000 members, and Growth is $1,500 a month. Premium is quoted. Data residency can be set to US or EU.
Switch from Mighty Networks if your members are customers asking questions, not people paying for courses.
Open-source forum software with hosting. A free hosted plan allows 2 staff seats and 500k monthly page views, Pro is $100 a month, and Business is $500 with events and gamification. Courses and member payments are not what the pricing page offers, so it suits discussion first.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you mainly need threaded discussion at a flat monthly price or a free start.
German forum and community suite sold as managed cloud hosting or a one-time licence. Cloud Starter is €35.95 a month on annual billing, Professional €71.95, Business €224.95, and Enterprise is quoted. The vendor lists no per-member fee and no commission on content, with hosting in Germany.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you want forum software with no commission and the option to host it yourself.
A B2B knowledge and community platform priced by registered users, not by feature tier. Essential covers 500 to 2,000 users with 2 admin seats, Premium 2,001 to 10,000 with 5, and Enterprise 10,001 and above. Every plan is quoted, billed annually in advance, and SSO is an add-on on two of them.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you run a customer knowledge hub with articles and courses, sized by user count.
Higher Logic Vanilla, a customer-community product founded in Montreal in 2009 and acquired by Higher Logic in 2021. Corporate, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus packages list unlimited users and page views, but no amounts. Pricing sits behind a demo, and the product leans to support deflection.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you want a support-focused customer forum and will accept a quoted contract.
Read the full Higher Logic Vanilla (formerly Vanilla Forums) review · Open vendor site →
The community product of Gainsight, a San Francisco customer success company. It links with Gainsight CS, Skilljar and PX and offers a moderation AI agent and an MCP server. The pricing page offers a request form and no figure, so assume a quoted enterprise contract.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you already run customer success on Gainsight and want community data in the same place.
Read the full Gainsight Customer Communities review · Open vendor site →
Palo Alto platform that combines forums, events and groups, with unlimited members and admins in the base hub. Custom domain, CRM links, SSO and support level are added in a pricing calculator. The page prints no amount, and a migration service is part of the final step.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you run in-person chapters and events as well as an online forum.
Khoros has renamed its community product Aurora AI and is now powered by IgniteTech, with an Austin address. Its pages describe AI moderation, knowledge synthesis and analytics, with 300+ enterprise communities. No price appears on the pages we fetched, so treat it as an enterprise quote.
Switch from Mighty Networks if you need an enterprise community with AI moderation and have a budget for a quote.
Toronto vendor built around customer advocacy, with a Digital Community plan that adds discussions, moderation, a knowledge base, ideation and Q&A. Both plans, Customer Advocacy and Digital Community, are reached through Talk with Sales and show no price. It rewards advocate activity more than paid access.
Switch from Mighty Networks if your goal is customer references, reviews and referrals, not selling memberships.
Mighty Networks stays the right choice for a coach, creator or small membership business that wants community, courses, events and payments in one product, and does not need its own app. Launch lists courses, events, AI Cohost and subscription payments at $79 a month, with a trial that runs on the Growth plan.
Mighty's FAQ says that after a trial you lose features your plan does not include, though content created with them returns if you upgrade again. Treat a downgrade as a test run of an exit, and note which spaces, courses and events depend on a higher plan.
The pricing page names subscriptions, one-time payments, installments, free trials, promo codes and hidden free access. Write down which of these your members use, then check whether the new platform can reproduce each one before announcing a date. Our fetched pages do not describe moving payments.
We found no description of exporting members, posts or courses on the pricing page, and the page says migration help starts at Growth. Request the export format and a sample file, and compare with Disciple, which states full export and no exit fee, or WoltLab, which lists built-in importers.
Yes. The pricing comparison lists 2% on Launch, 1% on Scale and 0.5% on Growth and Mighty Pro, on top of the monthly plan. Circle lists 2% on Professional and 1% on Business and Scale, so the fee alone will not separate them.
Launch is $79 a month and $950 a year, Scale is $179 and Growth is $354. Mighty Pro is custom priced. The page says annual billing gives 2 months free, so compare the yearly figure when you budget.
No, not on the printed plans. The feature table marks Your Own Branded Apps for Mighty Pro only, which is custom priced. Disciple includes a branded app on every plan from $599 a month billed yearly.
Discourse has a free hosted plan with 2 staff seats and 500k monthly page views. WoltLab Cloud Starter is €35.95 a month on annual billing, and a self-hosted licence is a one-time purchase from €129.99. Both are forum-first, with no course product.
Yes. Zapnito, Higher Logic Vanilla, Gainsight Customer Communities, Bevy, Khoros and Influitive all print no amount on the pages we fetched. Plan for a sales call and a contract term before you can compare them with the printed ladders.
Not always. Mighty lists unlimited members on every plan, and Circle and Bevy list unlimited members too. Bettermode caps Starter at 10,000 members and Growth at 25,000, so check that cap if your community is large.
We opened the vendors' own pages on November 5, 2026 to confirm each price and limit quoted for Mighty Networks and its rivals. Those pages move without warning, so the numbers describe that day only.
Sebastiaan Smits, Founder, wrote, edited and fact-checked this page.
Founder of The Interregnum and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page here; research and drafting are AI-assisted. Last reviewed November 5, 2026.
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