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!
The funnel builder, with a community app bolted on in 2024. Launch is $97 a month for 10,000 contacts, 50,000 emails and 3 courses; 0% transaction fees; 14-day trial plus a 30-day guarantee. The community has groups, topics, post approvals and a daily digest of unread activity. No gamification, no member app, no events calendar. Import and export are both real CSVs.
ClickFunnels is the funnel builder. The current product (the one everyone called "2.0" until the company dropped the number) is a workspace of apps: funnels, pages, a store, email, workflows, courses, appointments, an affiliate centre, and since late 2024, a Community app. This listing is about that last one, in the context of what you pay for the rest.
The pricing page blocks automated readers, so every price below comes from ClickFunnels' own help-centre article "ClickFunnels Pricing," updated 12 October 2026. We'd rather cite that than a third-party review.
Four tiers. 14-day free trial, and a 30-day money-back guarantee after it, which the help centre adds up to "44 days risk-free." Annual billing is ten months for the price of twelve.
If you downgrade past a limit, existing content stays but you can't create more until you're back inside it. The retired Basic, Pro and Funnel Hacker plans are grandfathered for anyone still on them.
Two things to notice. The contact cap counts every email address in the CRM, not members. And the course cap is low: three on Launch, which is fewer than Simplero's Starter and far fewer than GroupApp's unlimited on $65.
0%. The help centre FAQ: "Does ClickFunnels take a percentage of my sales? No. You'll keep every penny you make." Rated 0%.
Three routes. Payments AI is ClickFunnels' own multi-gateway layer: connect several processors and route transactions between them by country, currency, product or amount, with automated dunning rules for failed subscriptions. Stripe direct, including importing products and prices from your Stripe account. PayPal at checkout. Rated "Built in, multiple processors."
The Community app went live in October 2024 (the help docs are dated from then) and it's a reasonable first version of the Skool shape.
Groups are the top level, each with a name, description, URL path and card image, and an access level: Open (anyone in the community can join), Private (visible, but joining needs permission or a purchase, with an "Upgrade URL" you point at a funnel), or Secret (hidden, members added by hand). Topics sit inside groups and are the actual discussion threads; each has its own access level, a posting toggle (so you can make admin-only announcement topics), and a "hide from main feed" switch. Rated "Yes" for spaces.
Post approvals can be required community-wide and overridden per group or topic. Public sign-up lets a visitor to a public community hit "Get Access" on a post and either create a free account or be sent to an order form. Quick Actions fire workflows when someone joins a group or topic or creates a post, which is the part that's actually ClickFunnels: "joined the free group, tag them, start the nurture sequence" is three clicks.
A community can be Live or Draft, public or private, and membership can be granted and revoked from workflow steps ("Grant Community Access" and "Revoke Community Access"), so a refund can pull someone out automatically.
Gamification: none. No points, levels, badges or leaderboard anywhere in the community docs. Rated "None."
Events: no community calendar. The Appointments app is for booking calls, not member events. Rated "No."
A proper course app with modules and lessons, drip, and enrolment driven by purchases and workflows. The caps are the story: 3 courses on Launch, 6 on Scale, 10 on Optimize, 20 on Dominate. Rated "Yes."
Does it send members a digest? Yes. Community Settings has a "Send Digest Email" toggle that sends "daily summaries of unread activity to members," and members can opt out in their own settings. Daily only; no weekly option in the docs. Rated "Digest with content (daily or weekly)."
Can you email your members from inside it? Yes, this is the product. Broadcasts and multi-step workflows with delays, conditions and triggers, capped by the plan's monthly send limit (50,000 on Launch). Rated "Sequences and automation."
Can you get your list out? Yes. Customers → Contacts → select → Export, pick the fields (email, phone, lifetime value, tags, last updated, custom fields and so on), optionally schedule the export for a date, then download from Customers → Exports. There's no native sync to a separate email tool because ClickFunnels is the email tool. Rated "Native ESP integration" on the same basis as Systeme, GoHighLevel and Simplero.
Members in: Customers → Imports → New Import, upload a CSV under 50 MB, map columns to contact fields and attributes (email is mandatory), and reuse the mapping next time. One import at a time. Then grant community access by workflow. The docs add the usual warning that contacts must be over 18 and have given marketing permission. Rated "Yes."
Members out: contacts CSV. Community posts and comments: no export we could find. Rated "Members CSV only."
Courses in: rebuild by hand. Rated "Manual rebuild only."
None for members. The community is a web page under your domain. Rated "None."
ClickFunnels runs one of the best-known affiliate programs in the industry; the program page is at clickfunnels.com/affiliate-program, which blocked our fetch, so we haven't verified the current terms here.
No gamification, no member app, no events calendar. Three courses on the $97 plan. Contact caps count every email in the CRM. The pricing page blocks automated readers; prices here come from ClickFunnels' own help-centre pricing article.
Checked 26 Oct 2026 against the ClickFunnels help centre (support.myclickfunnels.com): ClickFunnels Pricing (updated 12 Oct 2026); Getting Started with Community; Creating and Managing Community Groups and Topics; Community Settings (updated 19 Mar 2026); How to Export Contacts (updated 30 Sep 2026); How to Import Contacts From a CSV File (updated 5 Oct 2026); Accepting Payments: Introduction to Payments AI (updated 20 Oct 2026).
The free plan that's actually free: 2,000 contacts, unlimited emails, one course, a community, 0% fees on your own Stripe or PayPal. The funnels and email are the point. The course builder and the community are the compromise. We use it, so this one's first person.
An agency CRM with a Skool clone inside it, down to the exact points table. $97/mo, 0% platform fee on your own Stripe, unlimited contacts, groups and channels, levels that unlock courses, a Skool importer, and a white-label app for $497/mo on top. Built for agencies, not creators.
A 2009-vintage all-in-one for coaches: courses, email, CRM, funnels, payments and a community with forums, groups, badges and a points leaderboard. 0% transaction fees on every plan, your own Stripe or PayPal, and the cheapest plan is $70 a month for 500 contacts. No free plan, 14-day trial with everything unlocked.