Best Online Community Management Software to Elevate Your Community

6+ Best Online Community Management Software to Elevate Your Community

Is your community scattered across platforms?

You’re juggling discussions on Slack, events on another app, and content somewhere else. This makes building a cohesive member experience feel impossible.

This fragmentation leads to missed conversations and disengaged members. It’s impossible to measure your community’s health when your data is everywhere.

This constant manual effort drains your resources and pulls focus from what truly matters: building meaningful connections and fostering genuine engagement with your members.

But the right platform can solve this by bringing everything together. It helps you unify your community activities and finally regain control.

In this guide, I’ll review the best online community management software. These are tools specifically designed to streamline operations and foster deeper member engagement.

You’ll discover options that fit your specific use case and budget, helping you move beyond basic chat apps to a truly scalable platform.

Let’s dive in.

Quick Summary:

# Software Rating Best For
1 Hivebrite → ★★★★★ Growth-stage companies
2 Mighty Networks → ★★★★☆ Growth-stage companies
3 Bettermode → ★★★★☆ Growth-stage companies
4 Khoros → ★★★★☆ Growth-stage companies
5 Discourse → ★★★★☆ Growth-stage companies

1. Hivebrite

Hivebrite Homepage

Struggling to unify your community activities and brand?

Hivebrite offers an all-in-one platform to organize, engage, and empower your users, acting as a comprehensive hub for your community.

This means you can drive organic connections and create positive impact without juggling multiple disconnected tools or fearing community disruption.

Here’s your comprehensive solution.

Hivebrite serves as your branded, all-in-one hub, allowing you to create a digital space with its own URL, visual identity, and mobile app. You can transform simple connections into vibrant learning communities, fostering enduring relationships and spurring engagement.

The platform helps you structure your user base effectively and automate processes, providing unparalleled depth and flexibility to evolve with your community’s needs. Additionally, it offers powerful features to monetize your community and demonstrate clear ROI, which is crucial for budget approval.

Plus, you can enable independent networking and sharing among members, facilitate revenue generation, and ensure data security and privacy. The result? A platform that not only supports your organizational goals but also fosters meaningful relationships among your members, whether for commercial, non-profit, or educational use cases.

Hivebrite simplifies community management significantly.

Key features:

  • Branded All-in-One Hub: Create a digital space with your own URL, visual identity, and mobile app to uplift engagement strategies effectively.
  • Organize & Empower: Structure your user base, automate processes, and enable independent networking and sharing for collective growth and social impact.
  • Engage & Monetize: Inspire and motivate users to drive engagement while facilitating revenue generation and demonstrating a clear return on investment.

Hivebrite features, pricing, & alternatives →

Verdict: Hivebrite stands out as a best online community management software solution for growth-stage companies seeking a highly customizable, all-in-one platform. Its ability to unify brand identity, engagement, and monetization features, alongside robust security and mobile app capabilities, makes it ideal for fostering vibrant communities across diverse industries.

2. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks Homepage

Struggling to unify your community activities and content?

Mighty Networks offers robust features like courses, challenges, events, and livestreaming, all designed to centralize your community. This means you can manage discussions, deliver educational content, and host engaging virtual gatherings without juggling multiple tools.

Imagine a single platform where your members can connect, learn, and grow. You can even integrate various tools, including Zoom, to streamline your operations.

This is how you scale your community.

Mighty Networks provides a unified solution for community leaders. Here’s how it solves common pain points.

The platform includes AI Cohost, your strategic sidekick trained on community building, alongside powerful automations for tasks like custom badges and secret rewards. Additionally, you can effortlessly accept payments directly within the network for courses, memberships, and events.

Plus, with over 2,000 embeds, you can seamlessly integrate podcasts, member maps, and other digital content directly into your network. The result is a vibrant, branded space that truly reflects your vision and keeps members engaged.

You’ll create a community people love.

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Key features:

  • Courses & Challenges: Host structured learning programs and interactive challenges directly within your community, enabling members to learn and grow together.
  • Gamification & Automations: Drive engagement with features like points, recognitions, streaks, and custom badges, alongside powerful automations to save you time.
  • Integrated Payments & Events: Easily manage memberships, collect payments, and host events and livestreams directly on the platform, streamlining your operations.

Mighty Networks features, pricing, & alternatives →

Verdict: Mighty Networks stands out as a strong contender for the best online community management software, especially if you’re aiming to create a highly interactive, branded experience with integrated learning and monetization. Its robust features for courses, events, and gamification make it ideal for growth-stage companies seeking to unify their offerings and foster deep member engagement.

3. Bettermode

Bettermode Homepage

Tired of disjointed customer experiences from fragmented tools?

Bettermode unifies your community tools, centralizing [customer engagement and support]. This means you can transform scattered interactions into actionable insights.

Their platform is designed to be scalable, flexible, and feels like a seamless extension of your brand, giving you full control and eliminating frustrating limitations.

Here’s how Bettermode helps.

Bettermode is a fully modular platform, adapting to your specific needs. You can toggle features and tweak layouts to build an experience that fits your vision without limitations.

They provide core modules like Discussions, Knowledge Base, Job Board, Wishlist, Academy, Events, and Directory. This comprehensive suite unifies various community activities, from content management to event coordination, supporting diverse use cases.

Additionally, AI Search and AI Moderation enhance engagement and ensure community health with minimal effort. Plus, features like Analytics & Reports, Notifications & Inbox, and Localization & Translation give you powerful insights and global reach.

The result is a thriving community.

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Key features:

  • Unified Customer Community Platform: Centralize customer engagement and support by bringing together discussion forums, knowledge bases, event management, and more into one cohesive platform.
  • Modular and Customizable Design: Build an experience that fits your vision by toggling features, tweaking layouts, and leveraging custom CMS options to extend your brand’s identity.
  • AI-Powered Engagement & Moderation: Utilize AI Search for smart, personalized results and AI Moderation to ensure community health and safety with reduced manual effort, fostering active participation.

Bettermode features, pricing, & alternatives →

Verdict: Bettermode is an excellent choice if you’re seeking the best online community management software that brings everything together into a unified, branded platform. Trusted by over 2,000 thriving customer communities, its modular design and AI capabilities make it ideal for growth-stage companies needing scalable, flexible solutions for engagement and support.

4. Khoros

Khoros Homepage

Struggling with fragmented customer interactions and support costs?

Khoros offers a unified platform for self-service support, education, and collaboration through Khoros Communities.

This means you can provide like-minded customers and partners with a safe space to connect, self-serve, and engage, leading to millions of dollars in deflected support costs.

This transitions into building powerful communities that are built to last.

Khoros Communities are designed to be a central place for your customers to find information, share ideas, and get answers, requiring far fewer resources. You can also equip agents with an AI-powered solution to resolve cross-channel inquiries and enable more automation. Additionally, Khoros provides purpose-built software for social media management, bringing global accounts and campaigns into one place for faster execution. This allows your teams to execute cross-channel campaigns faster, without the headache or risk.

The result is increased customer happiness and significant savings.

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Key features:

  • Khoros Communities: Provides self-service support, education, and collaboration, creating a safe space for customers to connect and engage.
  • Khoros Service: Delivers an AI-powered solution for excellent automation and digital service, helping you improve support and cut costs.
  • Social Media Management: Offers purpose-built software to centralize global social media accounts, campaigns, and teams for streamlined operations.

Khoros features, pricing, & alternatives →

Verdict: Khoros is an excellent choice as the best online community management software for growth-stage companies seeking to unify customer interactions and reduce operational overhead. With proven results like saving $500M annually via self-service and generating 2-5X more revenue from engaged members, Khoros helps you create vibrant communities with fewer resources.

5. Discourse

Discourse Homepage

Are you struggling to foster meaningful community engagement?

Discourse offers powerful tools designed to elevate your online community, turning passive members into active participants. This means you can finally achieve the high engagement and vibrant discussions you’ve been chasing.

Discourse addresses the common pain point of fragmented communication by integrating chat and long-form discussions, fostering deeper relationships and shared knowledge creation. This transition helps your community thrive.

Discourse excels in creating thriving online communities.

It provides a robust platform for support, teamwork, and overall community building, allowing you to track product feedback and share creations effortlessly. Here’s how, with powerful moderation tools and AI assistance, you can keep conversations healthy and on track, protecting your brand’s reputation. The result is a community that feels safe and productive for everyone. Additionally, you can fully customize your forum to match your brand and integrate it with your existing tech stack, ensuring a consistent user experience. This empowers you to unify activities, maintaining complete control over your community’s identity.

Your community’s online home.

Key features:

  • Integrated chat and discussions: Facilitate both quick interactions and in-depth conversations within a single, unified platform for stronger connections.
  • Robust moderation tools: Utilize best-in-class features, including AI assistance, to maintain healthy, on-topic discussions and eliminate inappropriate content effectively.
  • Full customization and ownership: Keep your community on brand with endless customization options, and retain full data ownership with open-source software.

Discourse features, pricing, & alternatives →

Verdict: Discourse is a strong contender for the best online community management software because it directly addresses the need for unified community activities and brand control. With powerful moderation and customization features, it helps growth-stage companies achieve seamless user adoption and measurable engagement metrics for their specific use cases, as demonstrated by over 3 million posts created last June.

6. Higher Logic

Higher Logic Homepage

Struggling with member engagement and retention?

Higher Logic provides powerful online community software to build lasting relationships with your audience. This means you can spark real conversations and unify community activities, fostering deeper connections.

You can create an inviting destination where every connection matters. The platform helps you meet your customers, members, and employees at every stage of their journey to drive impact.

Discover your community’s untapped potential.

Higher Logic’s approach combines AI with human insight, helping you deliver more personalized, relevant experiences at scale. This allows you to effortlessly connect people, knowledge, and ideas within your community.

You can reduce clicks for your members and make it easy for them to get to the sections they care about. The platform also enhances member engagement and internal efficiency, helping you scale growth and build advocacy. This fosters brand awareness, loyalty, and even helps scale your customer support team, reducing response times significantly.

The result is increased traffic and customer engagement, leading to exponential growth.

While community management focuses on ongoing engagement, understanding festival management software can also be crucial for organizing large-scale events.

Key features:

  • Member Engagement & Retention: Strengthen your association by keeping members coming back, growing your audience, and building lasting relationships.
  • Customer Support & Feedback: Scale your customer support team through case deflection, listen to and engage your customers, and foster brand advocacy.
  • AI-Powered Personalization: Leverage the combined strength of AI and human insight to deliver more personalized and relevant experiences at scale.

Higher Logic features, pricing, & alternatives →

Verdict: Higher Logic is ideal for operations managers and community leads seeking the best online community management software. Its ability to unify activities, improve member engagement (like ACHP’s 27% surge in new member logins), and enhance support efficiency (Bitdefender decreased support response time from 12+ hours to two) makes it a top choice for growth-stage companies.

Conclusion

Ready to unify your community?

Choosing the right platform is overwhelming. It’s tough finding a tool that centralizes scattered discussions, events, and content without complex, costly integrations.

The right tool makes a huge difference. Organizations using specialized software achieve 40% faster decision-making and see a 22% reduction in operational inefficiencies. This impact directly boosts your ability to foster genuine engagement.

So, what’s my top pick?

After reviewing these options, Hivebrite stands out. It excels at uniting your scattered community activities into a single, powerfully branded, and easy-to-manage hub.

I love how it automates processes while providing a custom URL and mobile app. The best online community management software should make engagement feel seamless, and Hivebrite truly delivers this.

I suggest you visit the Hivebrite website to explore how its all-in-one platform can transform your scattered community into a thriving ecosystem.

You’ll build a more connected community.

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