Top Tribe Alternatives, Competitors & Similar Software (2023)
Today is the best time to build an online community, as this is what the world wants.
Many want to meet like-minded people to share their experiences and ideas. At the same time, some might be looking to make friends with people who share the same interests.
Whatever the case, many platforms are known for their focus on building online communities.
If you're looking to build a place for your followers to interact with each other, Tribe could be a decent option for you. However, many robust community platforms can help you grow your revenue stream and give your members the space to interact.
In this article, we'll be going over some of the best alternatives to Tribe in 2023. But, first, let's look at where the Tribe falls short as a community platform.
What is Tribe?
Tribe is an online community platform that you can add to your existing website so your customers can chat and interact. Therefore, you can make your community more valuable to your customers.
Why look for Tribe alternatives?
-
You'll need an existing website to implement most of the community features. It is like an old-school forum-based tool rather than a full-fledged community platform with real time-communication features like live audio/video.
-
Tribe does not allow you to sell online courses, nor does it have a dedicated store where you can sell your digital products. You don't get any built-in shop/paywall system that lets your users buy products from you, such as premium memberships, courses, and the like.
-
Tribe does not have a mobile app, so your members cannot view your content from different devices. Your website should be accessible from any device at any time! With Tribe, you won't have access to a mobile app.
Top Tribe alternatives to try
Graphy Community Platform
Mighty Networks
Podia
Slack
Passion
Discourse
Circle
Gumroad
Kajabi
Thinkific
Memberful
MemberMouse
LearnDash
LearnWorlds
Graphy Community Platform
Graphy Community Platform is an ultimate community platform that helps you build a robust community where you can sell your courses and host live events, webinars, and live streams. It offers the best community features through which you can moderate, manage, and monetize your community all in one place - with your brand appearance, under your custom domain. Graphy Community Platform can also generate a whitelabelled mobile app and list it on the Play Store/App Store.
Features
Pros
- Available across in multiple formats & avatars; be it a web app under your domain, a native whitelabeled app on Android and iOS, integrations within your existing app or API-based integrations.
- Auto Scaling across platforms - Scenes uses powerful auto-scaling technology to keep your community blazing fast no matter how many visitors you have across all devices. They scale as you scale.
- The only platform that enables custom CSS for top to bottom granular-level user interface customization. You can make your community look close to your app/website's UI.
- A built-in coin system lets you incentivize your community members to engage more.
- Live audio-video features for your events, webinars and live classes where all your members can get notified and RSVP.
Cons
- You will lose some members during the platform migration process.
Mighty Networks
Mighty Networks allows businesses of any size to create online courses, mobile apps, and communities. In addition, one can create membership sites to offer paid courses, paid groups, or bundles of courses and groups.
Mighty Networks Features
- It offers platform capabilities that scale as your community scales, allowing a seamless experience for you and your community members.
- White-label and customize your community under your domain and replicate your brand aesthetics.
- It has many LMS features that let educators and course-creators manage and run their online courses in one place.
Mighty Networks Pricing
- Starts at $39/mo.
- A 14-day free trial is available.
Pros
- It offers good social engagement features like live audio/video and chat that lets your members engage with each other.
- It comes with a native mobile app that is fully Whitelabeled (available when you buy the Mighty Pro plan)
- It has a very user-friendly UI on the web that replicates Facebook groups on some level.
Cons
- Not very customizable when it comes to their user-interface. Community owners have to work within a relatively rigid set of constraints.
- At $30,000, the native mobile app is the most expensive compared to other alternatives.
- The course creation experience has been said to be 'cumbersome' by many of their paid customers.
Podia
Podia is a platform that lets you build a free, no-code website and sell your online courses. With Podia, you can create a business from anywhere in the world with zero fees or start-up costs.
Podia Features
- Connect your audience and your content – You can host an online community in the same place that your audience uses your digital products.
- Community – In Podia, you can create a community that works like a forum or Slack. The design is clean, and the workflow is simple.
- Course Features – Using Podia, you can quickly create lessons and quizzes.
Podia Pricing
- Paid Plans start at $39/month.
- It has a free version.
Pros
- You can offer your audience webinars using YouTube Live and Zoom with Podia.
- If you want your website to look professional and run smoothly, you do not need to be tech-savvy or have coding knowledge.
- You can connect your payments, scheduling, and sales pages all in one place in minutes with Podia.
Cons
- Podia does not have a mobile app if you want to build courses that will be accessible on mobile for your members.
- Podia doesn't offer in-depth lesson reports if you're interested in knowing how impressive your course is. Only some basic information about student progress is provided.
- To assess your students more effectively, Podia lacks open-ended questions. The use of multiple choice questions is not suitable for all courses.
Slack
Slack is where workplace communication happens. As a tool designed for collaborative workflow, Slack allows team members to put forward their ideas or concerns and get them heard whenever they want. It's a one-stop shop for work-chat that integrates with typical web applications like Google Drive and Dropbox.
Slack Features
- The thread features allow effective communication between team members by tracking every new conversation.
- Create public and private channels to allow for team-based collaboration and communication.
- Supports all kinds of rich-text formats and media, including images, GIFS, file uploads, bulletin and numbering and more.
Slack Pricing
- Paid Plans start at $8.75 per user/mo.
- The free Plan includes access to 10,000 recent messages, ten integrations with other apps, and 1:1 voice and video calls.
Pros
- Works best for improving workplace communication and efficiency between teams.
- Extremely intuitive interface, rich with features with plenty of integrations with other products.
- Works seamlessly for remote teams all around the world.
Cons
- Slack is a great workplace tool but nothing close to a community-building platform. The entire tool is optimized to improve collaboration over email.
- The paid Plan is expensive for community builders, starting at $8.75 per user monthly. That is ~$1000 if you have a community of 100 members.
- No gamification tools to incentivize your community and no ability to white-label your community in terms of domain, branding and appearance.
Passion
Passion.io is an easy way to create a mobile learning platform for your online courses. You don't need any coding experience to create a fully-customizable learning ecosystem. Passion.io features pre-built tools like video, gamification and social sharing that are guaranteed to grow your community of users very quickly!
Passion.io Features
- Offers seamless orders & subscription plans.
- Provides easy payments and payout.
- Provides a hassle-free drag and drop option.
Pros
- Build interactive courses with pre-built templates or design your own from scratch.
- Simple to use interface.
- No coding or technical worries.
Cons
- Not affordable for everyone.
- Due to lots of features, it may take some time to be familiar with Passion.io
- The drip content feature is not available in the Pro plan.
Discourse
Discourse is an online discussion platform. With it, you get the power and flexibility of social networking with the best of the traditional forum software. This software is easy to use, comes with many features and can be scaled without paying for any add-ons.
Discourse Features
- Conversations, not pages - Why break conversations into awkward and arbitrary pages, where you have to constantly find the Next Page button? We’ve replaced all that with the power of just-in-time loading. Want to read more? Keep scrolling down.
- Simple, but with context - Discourse is a simple, flat forum, where replies flow down the page in a line. Expand context at the bottom and top of each post, and also in quotes, to reveal the full conversation without losing your place.
- Social login - Easily add common social logins like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Discord, and GitHub.
Discourse Pricing
- Starts at $100/mo.
- Free version available.
Pros
- Anything you see on screen, you can also do via an API call.
- Automatic notification of new versions in the dashboard, with a one-click web upgrade process.
- Very easy to administer and moderate discussions.
Cons
- Some configuration UIs are difficult to follow.
- Not well-suited for managing workflows (grant management as an example).
- Bulk operations across multiple threads either impossible or difficult to figure out.
Circle
Features
- Scale a community without chaos or complexity
- Gather your community under your own brand
- Build a business, without the burnout
Pros
- Only Mighty has data from hundreds of thousands of thriving communities cultivated over the past five years.
- That’s how we know things like the optimal price to charge for a monthly membership, or how much content you really need to build your first online course.
- We share these learnings with you and more through Mighty Community and Mighty Insights™, the deep analytics and benchmarking you get with Mighty.
Cons
- Slower to reach ROI
- More Expensive
- Dangerous for public communities
- Adding live streams to your community can make it more alive. You get access to audio rooms where you can keep track of your community member’s interests and involve them in discussions.
Gumroad
Gumroad is a digital marketplace for independent artists and creators selling digital services like books, memberships, and courses.
Gumroad Features
- Gumroad offers a robust analytics dashboard that provides you with an array of data about your sales, including - How much you've sold over the last week, month, or year.
- Your customers can enjoy full content access as long as they are subscribed. You can also create discount codes for your products.
- Gumroad offers email marketing tools that will help you send automated messages. Workflows help save time and energy, automating email campaigns and sequences after your customers purchase a product.
Gumroad Pricing
- Starts at $10/mo.
- Free version available.
Pros
- It's possible to accept any payment format, including different foreign currencies, create software licences, and sell similar products in various forms.
- It has a user-friendly interface that is simple to set up and can quickly go live with a product.
- With Gumroad, you can set up a simple storefront with a profile image of your brand - and upload some text to describe the products you'd like to sell.
Cons
- There are limited options for customization when it comes to email design, and all you can do is format the text and add a call-to-action button; that's it.
- There are no trial capabilities, A/B split testing, or other forms of payment processing.
- When you sell products on Gumroad, you'll be charged a fee for every transaction on the platform.
Kajabi
Kajabi is a platform that enables educators to run their online courses and manage their students in one place. Moreover, Kajabi also offers a mobile app to allow your users to access courses on the go (however, it is not a native white-label app)
Kajabi Features
- No bandwidth or storage restrictions - Upload all of your videos, photos, and other files without worrying about space or bandwidth limitations.
- Fully-fledged LMS capabilities let you run your courses and manage your students seamlessly.
- Integrated checkout - Accept payments from anywhere in the world using Stripe or PayPal and give instant access to your content behind a paywall.
Kajabi Pricing
- Starting Price is $119/month.
- Kajabi offers a 14-Day free trial.
Pros
- Kajabi has rich-text and media features that let you upload all kinds of content into your online content library.
- You can track lesson progress, view grades, and get detailed analytics on how well students digest your content.
- Kajabi offers your prospective students free trials to taste your content before rolling them over to become paid customers.
Cons
- Kajabi is one of the most expensive solutions out there when it comes to LMS + community platforms.
- It lacks good customer support and offers minimal options to customize your course community.
- You have no native branded mobile app; your students will have to download the Kajabi app to access your content.
Thinkific
Thinkific is a digital course creation platform where educators can curate online courses for their students. In addition, they offer competitive LMS features that let their customers run online courses effectively.
Thinkific Features
- Assessments & Certificates - Offers comprehensive quizzes, engagement surveys, assignments, exams and certificates.
- Progress Tracking - In-depth reporting to track student progress.
- Live Lessons - Deliver lessons via live audio/video and let your students engage with you in realtime (via Zoom integration).
Thinkific Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $39/month to $399/month.
- The free plan includes access to all the core features of the platform.
Pros
- Easy-to-use UI that makes running courses on Thinkific all the more seamless.
- A very prompt support system responds to customer queries and problems and comes with an active Facebook group filled with Thinkific customers.
- You can design the access portal, the courses, and the payment methods all in one interface without needing third-party integrations.
Cons
- Not built for community engagement - in 2023, an LMS is not enough to successfully run courses. Thinkific lacks critical community features like gamification and incentive systems.
- Cannot manage multiple cohorts under the same roof - this may constrain you as your courses start scaling and diversifying.
- The pricing is slightly more expensive than alternatives and confusing for some.
Memberful
Memberful is a membership site platform that enables you to sell and deliver digital and physical goods, community subscriptions, and online courses. Members can easily pay and stay subscribed with its tools.
Memberful Features
- WordPress Plugin - It allows you to make private posts on your WordPress website. This is ideal for creating members-only content.
- Discord Plugin - You can create a chat forum for members-only. Memberful invites paid members to your Discord server and removes their access when their subscription expires.
- Track your performance - You can track your performance and earn new members using conversion analytics and activity metrics, Gift purchases, Group subscriptions, Coupons, Discounts, Referral programmes, Free trials, etc.
Memberful Pricing
- Starts at $25/mo.
- Free trial available.
Pros
- Memberful offers reasonable prices compared to its other competitors. It is budget friendly and a good investment in building
- With the free plan, you have access to a variety of advanced features.
- Tens of thousands of third-party applications are compatible with memberful integration.
Cons
- Besides hosting costs for your WordPress site, Memberful charges fees between 4.9%-10% on each transaction.
- Memberful works with WordPress, but you have to add extra plugins to handle SEO, which can take a great deal of work.
- In comparison to other solutions, they have fewer features to offer.
MemberMouse
MemberMouse is a popular WordPress membership plugin that turns your WordPress site into a membership site. It allows you to easily sell any type of digital or physical products, you can setup a membership area and offer 1-click upsells or downsells.
MemberMouse Features
- MemberMouse offers robust reporting tools that help you calculate sales, customer lifetime value, churn/retention, and more. Embrace a data-drive approach with the right metrics at your fingertips.
- Automate your member engagement, support and marketing with our tools and integrations. It's time to put things on autopilot.
- Member management is built into the core of MemberMouse. We also give you CRM tools to track member info, activity, transaction history and more.
Pros
- It seamlessly connected with my billing software (Stripe and PayPal).
- The support team is incredibly quick and thorough when issues do arise (usually stemming from my customizations, not the MemberMouse product).
- MemberMouse is easy to jump in and configure and manage members on a day to day. It has reporting to see where sales are at and help with churn.
Cons
- It requires WordPress knowledge to implement MemberMouse. It can get technical at times which leads to a learning curve for some administrative users.
- It is not user-friendly.
- The starter plan has limited features.
LearnDash
LearnDash is a platform for creating course websites using WordPress. In addition, LearnDash offers great LMS features for course instructors, educators, and knowledge creators.
LearnDash Features
- The drag & drop course builder helps course creators create courses easily and quickly.
- It offers gamification tools like badges and certificates - Award certificates based on quiz results and course completions.
- It has a built-in notification feature that prevents your students from missing any necessary updates.
LearnDash Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $199/year.
- No free trials available.
Pros
- The video preview feature gives students a sneak peek into video lessons and makes the course more engaging.
- It offers a flexible quiz builder that makes creating QnAs easy.
- Provides gamification tools that help in engaging your members in your courses.
Cons
- Its URL structure is highly complicated, making SEO difficult. There is no way to shorten it.
- It takes some time to get used to all the new features. The learning curve is steep.
- It runs only on WordPress, which means you'll need to know all WordPress functionalities.
LearnWorlds
LearnWorlds is a learning management system that lets course creators create online courses. Using LearnWorlds, you can create student communities and sell online courses.
LearnWorlds Features
- Offers gamification tools such as badges so that you can acknowledge efforts & promote good behaviour.
- In-built shop for highlighting the details of your courses and selling them all in one place.
- A broad range of assessment tools to help the educator & the students measure the learning progress.
LearnWorlds Pricing
- Paid plan starts at $24/month (billed annually).
- LearnWorlds offers a free 30-day trial.
Pros
- You can create student communities in LearnWorlds so that your members can share their experiences, ideas, and learnings.
- Students can interact with your course content through LearnWorlds' course builder and enjoy a blissful learning experience.
- LearnWorld's live online classes encourage your students to have interactive sessions and discussions among each other.
Cons
- LearnWorld's interface is difficult to understand, and there are no tutorials that can help you get started.
- Regarding email management and funnel-building tools, LearnWorlds does not offer as many options.
- In LearnWorld, users complain that many features do not work when courses are published, making the learning experience less seamless.
- With LearnWorlds, you need too many integrations and more management, distracting you from your business activities.
Disclaimer: To curate the pros, cons and reviews - we mine the internet for customer references regarding the said software. Some of our sources include Reddit, Product Hunt, Twitter & Quora (and sites like G2 & Capterra).
What you should do now
Whenever you’re ready…here are 3 ways we can help:
If you’d like to turn your business into a community-led business, book a call with us. One of our community experts will understand your current situation, and suggest how a community can work for you.
If you’d like to learn the exact community-building formula we’ve used to help build 2000+ communities, watch this masterclass or read this guide.
If you know another colleague or friend who’d enjoy reading this page, share it with them via email, Linkedin, Twitter, or Facebook.
.webp)
