Disciple

The short version

Disciple is the one platform on this site where the app comes first and the website is the afterthought. Every plan includes your own white-labelled iOS and Android app listed under your name in the stores, with a web version alongside. The company is London-based, has been doing this for about 12 years, and says it has built 2,000 apps. The customer list leans toward non-profits, associations, wellness brands and professional networks rather than solo creators.

That shapes everything. The feed, groups, DMs, livestreams and push notifications are all designed around a phone. The courses are basic. The email tooling is thin because push is the channel. And the price starts at a level that only makes sense if "our own app" is the point, not a nice-to-have.

Pricing we checked

Prices are shown in your local currency (the page checks your IP); these are the US dollar figures. No monthly billing: quarterly or yearly only, with yearly giving two months free. There's a free trial with support, but no free plan.

• Branded App: $599/mo billed yearly, or $699/mo billed quarterly (£449 / £519, €549 / €639). Your branded app plus web, custom domain, unlimited members (fair use), 5 admin seats, 10 groups, a success manager, 1 monetisable course, 10,000 video minutes, data exports, scheduled posts, custom badges, standard analytics.
• Branded App Pro: $999/mo yearly, or $1,169/mo quarterly (£799 / £929). Unlimited admins, groups and monetised courses, 20,000 video minutes, multi-tier member pricing, multi-host livestreams, advanced analytics, Zapier, early access to features.
• Organisation: from $3,400/mo billed yearly (from £2,500), tailored proposal. Strategic support, bespoke development, custom integrations and API, SSO (SAML/OIDC), CRM sync, migration support.

The "unlimited members" on the base plan is the real differentiator against GroupApp's $485 branded-app tier (20,000 members) and Mighty's branded-app pricing. If you have a large free audience and want them in an app, the per-member math favours Disciple. If you have 300 paying members, it doesn't.

Transaction fees

Disciple takes nothing. Its own meta description says "0% transaction fees," and the help centre says it does "not handle any member transactions." But read the next section, because the app stores do.

Payments

Three processors, and which one applies depends on where the member buys:

• On the web: Stripe, connected to your Console. The help centre says Stripe "only supports Subscriptions and Courses via the Web Platform." Coupon codes work on Stripe; free trials don't.
• In the iOS app: Apple, through your own developer account. Apple takes 30%, or 15% with a Small Business Developer account. You can't refund or manage cancellations yourself.
• In the Android app: Google, through your developer account, same 30%/15% cut. Refunds via Play Console.

A subscription bought on one platform works on all of them. No PayPal. Rated "Built in, multiple processors," with the caveat that two of the three processors take a 15 to 30% cut that isn't Disciple's and is unavoidable if members buy in the app. We've recorded the platform fee as 0% because that's what Disciple charges; your effective fee on app purchases is much higher.

Community and gamification

Groups are the structure: unlimited public and private groups in four types (Mandatory, Public, Private, Secret), with 10 groups on the base plan and unlimited on Pro. Posts take text, video, images, links, deep-links into the app, polls and GIFs. There's an activity feed, hashtags with their own feeds, @mentions, following, and a member directory. Rated "Yes" for spaces.

Messaging: DMs and group chats. Members request to message from a profile. Private messages aren't visible in the Console, which the help centre states plainly.

Livestreaming to the whole community or a group, with live chat, saved to the Console afterwards with viewer counts. Multi-host streams need Pro. Events can be online or restricted to an audience. Rated "Yes."

Immersive Wall: a mobile-only, full-screen swipeable feed of images or videos, one per app. The closest thing here to a Stories format.

Moderation is unusually complete: verify, report, shadowban, nominate moderators, members can block and report posts and DMs. This is the association-and-non-profit DNA showing.

Gamification: badges, assigned by hand. Three defaults (New to a Group, New to the Community, Group Admin) plus a Subscriber badge on freemium setups. You can create up to 20 custom badges with a name, description and icon, then assign them to members from the Members list, individually or by filtering a group. No points, no levels, no leaderboard, and no automatic awarding that the help centre describes. There's a "Ranking" score per member visible to admins, but it's an analytics figure, not something members see. Rated "Points or badges."

Courses

Lessons can hold text, uploaded media (an audio player is mentioned), embeds (YouTube, Google Forms, Spotify, slides), links, and basic HTML and CSS. The help centre doesn't describe quizzes, drip, prerequisites, completion tracking or certificates, and the lesson article doesn't mention them. One monetisable course on the base plan, unlimited on Pro. Rated "Basic." If courses matter, this isn't the platform.

The three email questions

Does it send members a digest? Yes, weekly. The Weekly Digest Email sends each member the "4 most popular Posts that they have missed over the previous week," popularity measured by reactions and comments, only from groups they belong to, only if they've logged in within 90 days, and only if they've opted in. Members are prompted to opt in at login and re-prompted every seven days until they say stop. Admins toggle it on or off in Console → Engage → Emails and can't change the content or the frequency. It also won't send if your Terms and Privacy Policy aren't set up, or if you're over your member limit. Rated "Digest with content (daily or weekly)."

Can you email your members from inside it? Barely. Push notifications are the broadcast channel, targeted and personalised, from the Console. On the email side the help centre describes two things: the weekly digest above, and a Reactivation Email, a one-off campaign to members who haven't visited in 12 weeks, sent at about 1,000 a day, once per member ever. No broadcasts, no sequences. Rated "None," because notification emails don't count and a one-time win-back campaign isn't email marketing.

Can you get your list out? Yes. Members → three-dots menu → Export starts a CSV, emailed to you; larger lists take longer. The help centre doesn't list the columns. The homepage promises "Members, posts, and analytics export in full whenever you ask for them. No lock-in or exit fee," which reads as a request-based process for anything beyond the members CSV. For syncing to an email tool you own, it's Zapier (Pro plan) or the API, or CRM integrations on Organisation. Rated "Zapier or API only."

Getting in and getting out

Members in: no CSV upload. Invite links with a use cap (up to a million), expiry, and automatic group enrolment, with CSV export of your links for tracking. Email invitations by pasting addresses, which the help centre says to send "in batches of 20," with an allowance you can ask support to raise. Or Zapier and the API. Rated "Via Zapier or API only."

Members out: members CSV self-serve; posts and analytics on request per the homepage. Rated "Members, posts and comments" on the strength of that promise, with the note that only the members CSV is documented as self-serve.

Courses in: rebuild by hand. The "How do I migrate my existing community?" article is about promoting your new app to your old audience, not moving data. Rated "Manual rebuild only."

Mobile app

This is the product. Your own app on iOS and Android, you listed as the developer, on every plan, with Disciple building and maintaining it. A web version runs from the start of the trial as a progressive web app with "a slightly limited feature set." Rated "Your own branded app."

Affiliate program

None that we could find.

Who it's for

• Organisations with a large audience that want their own app on day one and have the budget: associations, non-profits, membership brands, training providers.
• Anyone for whom "no Facebook algorithm, no bans, our own push notifications" is the whole pitch.
• Communities in the EU that care about data residency: you pick EU or US hosting at onboarding, and the company is ISO 27001 certified.

Who should skip it

• Solo creators and anyone under a few hundred paying members. $7,188 a year is the entry price.
• Anyone selling courses as the main product. The course builder is text, media and embeds.
• Anyone who needs email marketing inside the platform. Push is the channel here.

Known limitation

No free plan and no monthly billing; the cheapest entry is $699/mo quarterly or $599/mo yearly. In-app purchases carry Apple's and Google's 15 to 30% cut on top of Disciple's 0%. Courses are basic. No email broadcasts; the only member emails are an opt-in weekly digest and a one-time reactivation campaign. No CSV member import. Badges are manual, no points or levels.

Sources

Checked 26 Oct 2026 against the Disciple pricing page and these help centre articles: The Disciple Feature Set; Understanding Badges; Managing your Members; How to Invite Members to Your Community; Managing your Community Member's Transactions; Weekly Digest Email; Reactivation Email; All About Courses; How to Create a Lesson; How do I Migrate my Existing Community.