Which community and membership stack is best for you? I break them all down and show you what their sales pages won't say out loud!
A social network on your own WordPress. Free open-source core, paid plans from $99/yr (renewing at $199), groups, forums, feeds, a daily or weekly digest since September 2026, gamification on Scale, and a white-label app from $499/yr. You own everything, and you maintain everything.
BuddyBoss turns a WordPress site into a social network: profiles, connections, activity feeds, groups, forums, private messaging, and a theme that makes it look like an app rather than a blog. Add LearnDash or MemberPress and it's a course and membership platform too. Add the BuddyBoss App and your members get a white-label iOS and Android app with your name on it.
It's the fullest version of "own your platform" on this site. The database is yours, the domain is yours, the members are yours, and no company can change the rules or the reach. The price for that is the WordPress tax: hosting, updates, plugin conflicts, and the afternoon you lose when a theme update breaks something. If you don't already run WordPress, that's the whole decision.
BuddyBoss renamed its plans in 2026 (Platform Pro became Launch, Platform Plus became Scale) and prices now show a 50% introductory discount with full-price renewal. Read both numbers.
Extra site licences are $99 each. The open-source BuddyBoss Platform plugin is free; the digest article refers to Free and Lite tiers below Start, which the pricing page doesn't show.
The app is separate: Solo (one platform) $499/yr renewing at $999, or $99/mo. Launch (both platforms) $999/yr renewing at $1,999, or $199/mo. Managed $2,999/yr renewing at $3,999. Plus Apple's $99/yr and Google's $25 developer accounts.
14-day money-back guarantee. No trial.
Monthly equivalent of the cheapest plan: about $8.25 in year one, $16.58 after. We've entered the year-one figure.
2.9% on Start for sales through BuddyBoss's own Memberships and Courses. 0% on Launch and Scale. If you sell through LearnDash, MemberPress or WooCommerce instead, BuddyBoss takes nothing on any plan; you pay whatever those plugins and your processor charge.
Whatever your commerce plugin supports: Stripe and PayPal through MemberPress or WooCommerce, more through WooCommerce's gateway list. BuddyBoss's native Memberships and Courses run their own checkout, which the pricing page references without naming a processor. Rated "Built in, multiple processors," with the caveat that "built in" means "in your WordPress."
This is where BuddyBoss earns its keep. Social groups with group types, discussion forums (bbPress under the hood), activity feeds with reactions and polls, member profiles with custom fields, connections and following, private and group messaging with optional real-time delivery via Pusher, web push via OneSignal, moderation with reporting and blocking, and member invitations.
Gamification is Scale-plan: points, badges, ranks, leaderboards and competitions. On lower plans you can bolt on GamiPress, which is what most people did before Scale existed. Rated "Leaderboard and levels with unlocks," because ranks plus leaderboards plus unlockable rewards is the full set.
Not native in the Skool sense. BuddyBoss provides the social layer and integrates with LearnDash, LifterLMS, Tutor LMS and MemberPress Courses on Launch and up. BuddyBoss has also added its own Memberships and Courses (the thing the 2.9% Start fee applies to). With LearnDash you get one of the deepest course builders anywhere: quizzes, certificates, drip, groups, SCORM via add-on. Rated "Yes," with the note that it's your LMS plugin doing the work.
Does it send members a digest? Yes, as of September 2026 (Platform v3.5.0). Members pick Daily, Weekly or Off. Daily bundles the day's eligible notifications into one email at a time you set; Weekly does the same on a day you set. Ten notification types across social, group and message categories, each one admin-controlled. New members inherit your default; existing members stay on immediate until they switch. Start plan and above. Rated "Digest with content (daily or weekly)."
Can you email your members from inside it? Not from BuddyBoss. It's a community plugin, not an ESP. You'd add FluentCRM, MailPoet, or connect Kit or Mailchimp. Rated "None" for native email, which on WordPress means "pick a plugin."
Can you get your list out? Yes, completely. It's your database. User exports via WordPress tools or any of a dozen plugins, and a full site export or database dump takes everything: members, posts, groups, courses, messages. ESP sync is a plugin away, and the plugins are first-class (Mailchimp for WordPress, FluentCRM, WP Fusion). Rated "Native ESP integration" on that basis, and "Everything incl. courses" for export, which only a self-hosted platform can claim.
Members in: CSV import through a WordPress user-import plugin, then add to groups. Rated "Yes," via plugin.
Members out: Everything. See above.
Courses in: Depends on the LMS. LearnDash doesn't import from Teachable or Kajabi natively; you rebuild, or use a migration service. Rated "Manual rebuild only."
A white-label React Native app on iOS and Android, published to your own developer accounts, from $499/yr for one platform. Push notifications, in-app purchases, offline mode, LearnDash and MemberPress inside the app. Rated "Your own branded app." It's the cheapest real branded app on this site, and it still costs more than most people's whole community budget.
Self-hosted WordPress: you handle hosting, updates and plugin conflicts. Introductory prices double on renewal. Gamification is Scale-plan ($349/yr, renewing at $699). Branded app is a separate subscription from $499/yr. No email marketing without another plugin.
Checked 16 Oct 2026 against the BuddyBoss pricing page (plan names, prices, renewal prices, fees, app pricing, 14-day guarantee) and the BuddyBoss blog post "Email Digest on BuddyBoss" (published 22 Sep 2026, updated 28 Sep 2026) for digest behaviour and plan availability.
The open-source forum that runs half the internet's support communities. Free hosted plan with unlimited members, Pro at $100/mo, or self-host for nothing. Trust levels that unlock abilities, weekly activity digests built in, full data export, Stripe subscriptions on Pro. No courses, no app of your own.