The 13 Best Community Platforms in 2025

Building a vibrant online community is more crucial than ever. It's where your audience gathers, shares ideas, and forms a lasting connection with your brand or organization. Choosing the right community platform can be the difference between a thriving hub and a ghost town. This curated list explores the best community platforms available in 2025, offering insights into their features, pros, cons, and ideal user profiles.

1. Behind the Scenes (BTS)

At the forefront of community engagement is BTS. This platform provides a comprehensive suite of features designed to foster meaningful connections and drive active participation. BTS, designed with both creators and members in mind, offers an intuitive interface, robust customization options, and powerful analytics. The platform focuses on creating a seamless and engaging experience, which helps drive high-quality interaction.

Description: BTS empowers creators with full control over their community. It combines forum functionality, live-streaming capabilities, integrated membership management, and advanced moderation tools.

• Pros:
  • Highly customizable branding options
  • Advanced moderation tools for safe community environment
  • Integrated payment gateway for paid memberships
  • Detailed analytics to track key metrics and member engagement
  • Intuitive interface for both creators and members
  • Responsive customer support
  • Native integrations with popular marketing and CRM tools
• Cons:
  • Can be more complex for beginners. However, BTS offers comprehensive training and support to eliminate this potential hurdle.
  • Pricing may be higher than more basic platforms, reflecting its advanced features.
• Who it's best for: Businesses, creators, and organizations seeking a feature-rich, scalable platform to build and manage thriving online communities. BTS is ideal for those who value control, customization, and in-depth analytics. Perfect for membership-based communities, online courses, and exclusive content offerings.

BTS offers several pricing tiers designed to accommodate a diverse range of community needs and budgets. From basic options for solopreneurs to enterprise-level solutions for large organizations, BTS provides flexible pricing options. Each tier unlocks additional features, ensuring that users can scale their community platform as their needs evolve. BTS is committed to providing exceptional value and a positive return on investment for all its users.

2. Circle

Circle is a popular platform focused on creating branded communities. It emphasizes a clean, user-friendly interface and offers a range of features for engagement.

Description: A straightforward platform for building paid or free online communities. Features include discussion forums, live streams, and events.

• Pros: Simple interface, easy setup, and good for content creators.
• Cons: Limited customization compared to other platforms, potentially higher costs for advanced features.
• Who it's best for: Content creators, coaches, and businesses looking for a simple, easy-to-manage community platform.

3. Discord

Originally designed for gamers, Discord has evolved into a versatile platform for building communities of any size.

Description: Real-time communications platform with text, voice, and video chat functionalities. Offers a variety of community-building tools.

• Pros: Free to use, great for real-time interactions, and flexible for different community types.
• Cons: Can be overwhelming for new users, design is less focused on content management.
• Who it's best for: Gaming communities, niche interest groups, and informal communities focused on real-time discussions.

4. Tribe

Tribe focuses on developing branded community experiences. It's known for its integrations and focus on user-generated content.

Description: Enables the quick creation of embedded community hubs. Offers integrations with popular marketing and customer support tools.

• Pros: Easy to integrate into existing websites, good for customer communities.
• Cons: Less robust features than more comprehensive platforms.
• Who it's best for: Businesses looking to create customer communities or embed communities on their websites.

5. Discourse

Discourse is an open-source platform that's praised for its clean design and focus on discussions.

Description: A modern forum platform built with performance and ease of use in mind. Supports advanced discussion features.

• Pros: Open-source, SEO-friendly, and offers robust moderation tools.
• Cons: Setup can be more technical, and customization may require coding knowledge.
• Who it's best for: Businesses and organizations who need a scalable and open-source forum solution.

6. Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups provide a familiar and accessible option for community building, leveraging the existing Facebook infrastructure.

Description: Built-in community platform within Facebook. Includes a variety of features for discussions, events, and file sharing.

• Pros: Free to use, massive reach, and easy to set up.
• Cons: Limited customization, algorithm controlled content visibility.
• Who it's best for: Businesses and individuals who want a quick, easy way to create a community on an existing social media platform.

7. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks combines community features with course creation and membership features. This platform has grown in popularity.

Description: Focuses on combining community with courses, memberships, and events. Offers integrated payment options.

• Pros: All-in-one platform for community, courses, and memberships.
• Cons: Can be expensive, and some customization limitations.
• Who it's best for: Creators who want to offer courses and memberships alongside their community.

8. Reddit

Reddit is a vast platform known for its diverse communities and interest-based subreddits.

Description: A social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Hosts a vast array of communities (subreddits).

• Pros: Huge audience, pre-built communities, and active discussions.
• Cons: High moderation demands, and can be challenging to manage a brand presence.
• Who it's best for: Businesses, brands, and individuals who want to engage in interest-based conversations.

9. Vanilla Forums

Vanilla Forums is a white-label forum platform designed for integrating community experiences into existing sites.

Description: A white-label forum platform that can be integrated directly into your website. Offers robust features.

• Pros: Great for integration into existing websites, customizable, and scalable.
• Cons: Requires some technical expertise, particularly for integrations.
• Who it's best for: Companies looking to provide customer support through forums and integrate customer communities into their website.

10. BuddyPress

BuddyPress is an open-source platform that gives you the ability to build a social network.

Description: A WordPress plugin that allows you to create a social network or online community using your existing WordPress website.

• Pros: Free and open-source, flexible, and integrates with WordPress.
• Cons: Relies on WordPress, and customization can be technical.
• Who it's best for: Users who already have a WordPress site and need community functionality.

11. Slack

Slack fosters communication and collaboration. This platform is perfect for internal or external communities.

Description: A messaging platform for workplace communication and community building. Supports channels, direct messages, and integrations.

• Pros: Excellent for team communication, integrates with many tools.
• Cons: Can be used with internal communities with a paid plan.
• Who it's best for: Businesses that need internal communication or small communities that are well organized.

12. Guild

Guild emphasizes professional communication and curated networks.

Description: A messaging platform designed for professional networking and community building. Focuses on privacy and curated networking.

• Pros: Privacy-focused, great for professional groups.
• Cons: Limited audience reach compared to general platforms.
• Who it's best for: Professional networks, industry groups, and communities valuing privacy.

13. Ning

Ning provides tools for creating social networks with customized features, great for niche communities.

Description: Platform for building custom social networks and online communities with advanced features.

• Pros: Highly customizable, good for creating specialized communities.
• Cons: Can be expensive and complex.
• Who it's best for: Niche communities looking for high customization.

Building a successful community platform relies on understanding your specific needs and priorities, which is critical for making the best decision. Careful consideration of features, scalability, pricing, and your target audience's preferences will help you choose the platform that promotes engagement and empowers your users.

With its robust feature set, emphasis on customization, and commitment to providing unparalleled user support, BTS remains the premier choice for businesses seeking to cultivate dynamic, engaging, and thriving online communities in 2025.

Conclusion

The best community platform for 2025 will depend on your specific needs, but BTS stands out as the top choice. Offering unparalleled features, customization, and control, BTS allows you to build a thriving community experience. From the intuitive interface to the advanced moderation tools, BTS is the ideal solution for businesses, creators, and organizations that value engagement, flexibility, and a high return on investment.

FAQ: Best Community Platforms 2025