Bettermode

The short version

Bettermode (it was called Tribe until 2022) is on this site because it comes up in "Circle alternatives" searches and because it has a self-serve plan. But be clear about what it is: a customer-community platform for software and product companies. The case studies are about support ticket deflection and "resolution rate via community." The integrations are Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce, HubSpot, Mixpanel. The feature set is Spaces, Q&A, a wishlist, a changelog, a help centre.

What it is not: a way to charge members. There is no paywall, no Stripe connection, no subscription product, no course builder, and no mobile app. If you're a creator looking to sell a membership, this is the wrong listing and you can stop reading. If you're a company that wants a branded community for customers you already have, keep going, because it's good at that.

Pricing we checked

No free plan. 14-day trial, no card. Yearly billing saves up to 25%.

• Starter: $199/mo monthly, or $149/mo billed yearly ($1,788/yr). Up to 10,000 members, 5 collaborators (admins and moderators). Core apps (Q&A, Discussion, Events, Polls), custom domain, remove "Powered by Bettermode," private messaging and group chat, social login, basic analytics, limited API, email digest, Slack/Discord/Mailchimp integrations, US or EU data residency. The MCP (AI connector) is capped at 10 calls a day.
• Growth: $1,750/mo monthly, or $1,500/mo yearly ($18,000/yr). Up to 25,000 members, 10 collaborators. Adds Ask AI and federated search, full API and webhooks, a sandbox, sender-email customisation, OAuth2 and JWT SSO, activity log, onboarding and migration support, and the business integrations (HubSpot, Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Hotjar, Fullstory).
• Premium: contact sales. 100,000+ members, 20+ collaborators, Advanced Design Studio, custom CMS, SAML, SOC 2, 99.9% uptime SLA, 90-day audit log, dedicated CSM, custom billing.
• Toggy is a separate add-on: "the AI team that runs your community," from $750 a month.

The gap between Starter and Growth is nine times. There's nothing in between. Starter is for a small team that wants to self-serve; the moment you need webhooks, SSO or a sender email that isn't Bettermode's, you're at $1,500 a month.

Transaction fees

Not applicable. Bettermode doesn't process payments. Recorded as 0%.

Payments

None. No built-in way to charge for access, sell a product, or gate a Space behind a subscription. If you need a paid community you'd run billing elsewhere and grant access via API, Zapier, or SSO. Rated "None."

Community and gamification

Spaces are the containers, each with its own posting permissions and content type: Discussion, Q&A, Events, Polls, or a custom type (job board, reviews, wishlist). Collections group Spaces in the navigation; tags cut across them. Private, public, and invite-only Spaces. Rated "Yes" for spaces.

Feed: "a personalized activity feed keeps members hooked with content driven by the Spaces and topics they follow." So it's ranked by what you follow, not chronological. There's also an Explore page you build out of blocks: banners, featured posts, Space lists.

Design Studio: a no-code block editor for layout, navigation, header, sidebar, colours and type. "Advanced" Design Studio and a custom CMS are Premium only. This is the feature Bettermode is proudest of and the reason it describes itself as "modular."

Members: directory, profiles with custom fields, roles (member, moderator, admin), filters by any field, bulk actions.

Badges: two smart badges that assign themselves (Role, for admins and moderators; New Member, for the first 14 days) plus custom badges you create with a name, colour and style, assigned one at a time from a profile or in bulk by filtering the member list. Automatic awarding for anything else (say, after ten posts) is done through Zapier or the API, not in the product.

Leaderboard: the feature index says it will "automatically surface your most reputed members to build healthy competition." There's a reputation score behind it, but nothing on the pricing or feature pages says what earns points or whether anything unlocks. Rated "Points or badges," because a leaderboard with nothing to unlock is a scoreboard.

Events as a Space type with RSVPs. Rated "Yes."

Moderation: AI spam detector, reports, moderator roles. Translation and multilingual interfaces. SEO controls and Open Graph settings, which matter more here than on most platforms because a public customer community is meant to rank.

Courses

None. Rated "No."

The three email questions

Does it send members a digest? Yes. Admin-activated, weekly by default, members can switch to daily. It bundles a notifications summary (mentions, reactions), unread DMs if enabled, and "new posts and highlights" from the member's joined Spaces. Admins can pick which Spaces feed it. Rated "Digest with content (daily or weekly)."

Can you email your members from inside it? No. Notification emails and the digest, nothing else. No broadcasts, no sequences. Rated "None."

Can you get your list out? Yes. Administration → People → Members → filter if you want → Export, choose displayed fields or all fields, and a CSV goes to your admin email. One trap the help hub flags: you must have notification emails switched on in your own account or the export never arrives. For live sync, there's a native Mailchimp integration on every plan that syncs members to a list. Rated "Native ESP integration."

Getting in and getting out

Members in: bulk email invites. Administration → People → Invite Members → Multiple at once, paste comma-separated addresses, assign the Spaces they'll auto-join and their role. The help hub even links to a converter for turning a CSV column into a comma-separated list, which tells you there's no CSV upload button but also that there's no practical limit on pasting. Account creation without the invite step is possible through the GraphQL API. Rated "Yes."

Members out: members CSV. Posts and comments: nothing in the admin UI that we could find; it's the API. Rated "Members CSV only."

Courses in: there are no courses. Rated "No courses."

Mobile app

None. It's a responsive web app, plus embeds so you can drop the community into your own site or product. Rated "None."

Affiliate program

Referral program: 50% of the referred customer's monthly subscription, up to $1,000 total per referral, paid via PayPal or Venmo. You need a Bettermode account to get a link.

Who it's for

• Product and software companies that want a branded support community with Q&A, a wishlist and a changelog, and will plug billing and identity in from their own stack.
• Teams that care about SSO, data residency and SOC 2 more than they care about a leaderboard.
• Anyone who needs the community to rank in Google: the SEO and OG tooling is unusually complete.

Who should skip it

• Creators. There's no way to charge anyone.
• Anyone who needs a mobile app.
• Anyone whose needs sit between Starter and Growth. The $1,550 jump has no stepping stone.

Known limitation

No payments, no paywall, no courses, no mobile app. Starter has limited API access and the AI connector capped at 10 calls a day; webhooks, SSO and custom sender email start at $1,500/mo. No email broadcasts. Member CSV export only arrives if your own notification emails are on.

Sources

Checked 26 Oct 2026 against the Bettermode pricing page, the feature index (bettermode.com/product/feature-index-bettermode), and these help hub articles: How to export a member list; How to invite members and manage invitations; How to create and assign member badges; Introducing the Email Digest; Create members using Bettermode's GraphQL API; and the referral program page.