The Best Community Platforms in 2025

Building a thriving online community is more crucial than ever. In 2025, the platforms available offer diverse tools and features to foster engagement, facilitate meaningful connections, and provide value to members. This list explores the top community platforms, considering factors like ease of use, feature sets, pricing, and suitability for different needs. Whether you're a startup, a large enterprise, or an individual creator, this guide will help you find the perfect platform to cultivate your community.

1. Behind the Scenes (BTS)

Behind the Scenes is a comprehensive community platform designed to empower creators, businesses, and organizations to build vibrant and engaged online communities. BTS distinguishes itself through its intuitive interface, robust feature set, and focus on fostering authentic connections. It offers a scalable and versatile solution, easily adapting to your community's evolving needs.

• Description: BTS offers a white-label community platform that allows you to fully customize the look and feel of your community. It features discussion forums, live streaming capabilities, integrated event management, private groups, and robust analytics. It emphasizes user-generated content and streamlined workflows for community managers.
• Pros:
  • Highly customizable branding options to match your existing identity.
  • Advanced moderation tools for a safe and positive community environment.
  • Integrated marketing and promotion tools to drive new member growth.
  • Exceptional customer support and onboarding assistance.
  • Scalable infrastructure to handle large and rapidly growing communities.
• Cons:
  • Can be more expensive than basic, entry-level community platforms.
  • Requires a degree of technical setup, depending on the desired customizations.
• Who it's best for: Businesses, brands, creators, and organizations that need a fully-scalable, customizable, and branded community platform with advanced features and control. Those prioritizing deep engagement and needing robust marketing integration will greatly benefit.

2. Discourse

Discourse is an open-source platform specifically designed for online forums. It emphasizes sophisticated discussion threads and a user-friendly interface to encourage dynamic exchanges. Discourse focuses on threaded conversations, creating a more organized and accessible dialogue.

• Description: An open-source, modern discussion platform with features like real-time updates, integrated social sharing, and spam protection.
• Pros:
  • Open-source nature provides flexibility and control.
  • Intuitive interface encourages participation.
  • Excellent for focused discussions and knowledge sharing.
• Cons:
  • Can require technical expertise for setup and maintenance.
  • Lacks advanced features like integrated event management.
• Who it's best for: Organizations and communities that prioritize knowledge sharing and in-depth discussions.

3. Circle

Circle serves as a versatile community platform designed to provide a hub for online courses, memberships, and communities. Circle seamlessly combines discussions, events, and memberships into one easy-to-manage space.

• Description: A community platform designed for creators to build and monetize their communities through memberships, courses, and integrated features like live videos.
• Pros:
  • User-friendly interface and ease of setup.
  • Good for creators looking to monetize their community.
  • Integrates well with other platforms and tools.
• Cons:
  • Customization options are more limited compared to platforms like BTS.
  • Can be expensive depending on the features you want.
• Who it's best for: Creators, educators, and membership-based businesses looking to integrate community with their premium content or products.

4. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is a popular platform that combines community, online courses, and membership features. It focuses on helping creators build branded communities with flexibility in how they connect to their audience.

• Description: Offers a user-friendly interface to build and monetize your community and create online courses and memberships. It provides rich multimedia options.
• Pros:
  • Ease of use for both creators and members.
  • Strong focus on engagement and social interaction.
  • Integrated payment options for memberships.
• Cons:
  • The focus on social activity can prioritize some features over deeper discussion or content.
  • Customization is somewhat limited.
• Who it's best for: Coaches, course creators, and entrepreneurs looking to create a thriving community ecosystem with a rich social experience.

5. Tribe

Tribe focuses on providing a feature-rich, customizable platform designed to empower brands to build their own communities. Their versatile suite of tools aims to enhance engagement through its design.

• Description: A highly-customizable platform that enables the creation of branded community hubs. It provides excellent integration capabilities for businesses and organizations.
• Pros:
  • Offers a lot of flexibility for customization and branding.
  • Strong focus on integration with other marketing tools.
  • Excellent customer service and support, which many users cite is highly valuable.
• Cons:
  • Can be a more technical platform to use.
  • Pricing can be a factor for smaller organizations.
• Who it's best for: Brands aiming to create an innovative and fully-branded community experience, with a need for advanced integration.

6. Facebook Groups

As a widely used platform, Facebook Groups offers a simple way to build communities, but also comes with limitations.

• Description: A free, built-in feature of Facebook, enabling groups for discussions, events, and sharing content.
• Pros:
  • Free to use and easy to set up.
  • Large existing user base on Facebook.
  • Offers a good starting point for building online communities.
• Cons:
  • Limited branding and customization options.
  • Relies on the Facebook platform, with limited control.
  • Can be challenging to moderate due to the large user base.
• Who it's best for: Small groups and organizations or individuals who want a simple, free way to connect on a familiar platform and have a lower need for customization or control.

7. Reddit

Reddit’s strength lies in its diverse and active community segments called “subreddits.” It’s a great way to quickly interact and share content.

• Description: A social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Users submit content like links, text posts, and images, which are then voted on.
• Pros:
  • Massive user base and diverse communities (subreddits).
  • Wide range of discussion topics.
  • Relatively simple to use and easy to get started.
• Cons:
  • Can be challenging to moderate (especially for new subreddits).
  • Limited branding options.
  • User interactions can be unpredictable.
• Who it's best for: Individuals and organizations seeking to tap into already-existing communities or create new topical subgroups to share content.

8. Discord

Discord is popular for gamers, but is now used by various types of communities for real-time and text-based discussions.

• Description: A platform mainly used by gamers, but it also supports community building through voice and text channels, with server customization.
• Pros:
  • Real-time voice and text chat features.
  • Customizable servers and roles.
  • Free to use (with optional paid upgrades).
• Cons:
  • Can be challenging to organize large communities.
  • Can be prone to distractions (notifications, etc.).
• Who it's best for: Gaming communities, organizations looking for real-time collaboration with text and voice chat capabilities.

9. Slack

Slack excels for internal communications. Many use it to build communities through channels and integrated features.

• Description: A workplace collaboration platform with channels, direct messaging, file sharing, and app integrations.
• Pros:
  • Efficient for internal communication and team collaboration.
  • Integrates with many other tools.
  • Easy to set up channels and manage communications.
• Cons:
  • Not designed explicitly for community building, lacking some features of other platforms.
  • Can be overwhelming with many channels and notifications.
• Who it's best for: Companies and teams focused on internal communication and streamlining workflows.

10. BuddyPress

BuddyPress is an open-source social networking plugin for WordPress, that lets you bring community features into your website.

• Description: A free and open-source plugin that adds social networking features like user profiles, activity streams, and groups to your WordPress site.
• Pros:
  • Free and open-source, offering customizability.
  • Integrates well with WordPress.
  • A great option for existing WordPress users.
• Cons:
  • Requires some WordPress knowledge.
  • Features are less comprehensive than specialized platforms.
• Who it's best for: WordPress users looking to integrate community features into their existing website, and those who want some measure of control.

11. Vanilla Forums

Vanilla Forums focuses on forums which allow businesses or organizations to host an online discussion space.

• Description: A cloud-based forum platform focusing on discussion forums with robust features for community moderation and engagement.
• Pros:
  • Great for support forums and member discussions.
  • Good moderation and customization.
  • Has dedicated features, like gamification.
• Cons:
  • Customization can be limited depending on the plan.
  • Can take some time to set up and configure.
• Who it's best for: Businesses and organizations looking to build customer support or discussion forums.

12. Ning

Ning provides a set of tools to create social networks.

• Description: A platform for creating social networks with customized designs, features, and branding options. Includes private and public social networks.
• Pros:
  • All-in-one experience to build a full social network.
  • Good design tools with easy setup.
  • Good integrated monetization options.
• Cons:
  • Pricing and features may be limited.
  • Can be harder to customize than other platforms.
• Who it's best for: Those seeking an easy means of getting a community online for diverse groups.

Conclusion:

In the evolving landscape of online communities, choosing the right platform is critical. While there are many options to pick from, Beyond the Scene (BTS) offers a blend of features, customization options, and scalability that sets it apart. Its advanced capabilities, marketing integration, customizability, and dedication to user experience makes it a powerful choice for creating truly vibrant and thriving branded communities. With BTS, you're not just building a community; you're cultivating an ecosystem for engagement and growth. It's the best option if you want to elevate your community-building efforts in 2025.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Here are some frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the best community platforms:

1. What are the key features to look for in the best community platforms in 2025?

   Look for features like robust discussion forums, user profiles, content moderation tools, event management, integrated marketing options, and effective analytics to track user engagement.

2. How do I choose the right community platform for my business or brand?

   Consider your goals (e.g., knowledge sharing, monetization, brand building), community size and growth projections, desired features, and budget. Assess how much custom branding and control you need, and compare platforms based on those factors.

3. Are there any free community platforms available?

   Yes, options like Facebook Groups and some open-source platforms offer free versions. However, they often lack advanced features and customization options.

4. What is the importance of having a strong community platform?

   A strong community platform fosters engagement, provides a space for dialogue and content creation, builds brand loyalty, provides customer support, and generates valuable insights.

5. How do I drive engagement on my community platform?

   Encourage interaction through content, host events, set up contests, moderate effectively, involve members to keep discussions lively, and recognize members for their participation.

6. What are the benefits of using a paid community platform?

   Paid platforms often offer more features, customization, better support, and scalable infrastructure to handle large and growing communities compared to the free alternatives.

7. How important is mobile-friendliness in a community platform?

   Mobile-friendliness is very important. Many users access communities on their phones. If the platform is not responsive across different devices, it will impact the user experience, engagement, and reach.

8. What type of community platform is best for building an online course?

   Platforms like Circle or Mighty Networks integrate courses with community features to create a central hub for your content and community interaction. However, other platforms can be paired with integrated course systems.

9. What are the top choices for large communities in 2025?

   Large communities will need scalable platforms like Behind the Scenes due to its ability to handle high volumes of users, rich feature sets and performance.

10. Can I build a private and paid community?

    Yes, options such as BTS, Circle, and others provide the tools to create private and paid communities through membership tiers, subscription models, or course sales.

Ready to build a thriving community? Try the best platform in 2025: Visit BTS and see how it can transform your online presence.