Best Platforms for Building a Community: Honest Answer

The best platforms for building a community are Discord, Circle, Mighty Networks, Facebook Groups, and Slack, and Discord alone serves over 150 million monthly active users, according to Discord's 2022 Year in Review. Rented platforms like Discord and Facebook Groups win on reach and near-zero cost. Owned platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks win on member data and revenue. Choose by one question: do you need distribution now, or control later?

What are the most effective platforms for building a community?

The most effective platforms are Discord, Circle, Mighty Networks, Facebook Groups, and Slack. Each fits a different stage: rented platforms for reach, owned platforms for revenue and control.

Reach is easy to underrate. Facebook Groups report over 1.8 billion monthly active users, per Meta's Q4 2022 earnings report, so your members are already there. Discord's 150 million-plus monthly active users skew younger and real-time. Slack fits professional and B2B groups; its 2022 Future of Work survey found 77% of respondents prefer working in communities aligned with their interests.

The split matters. Rented platforms cost nothing but own your members and rank your posts. Owned platforms charge a subscription but let you export your data, brand the space, and charge members directly.

How do I choose the right community-building platform for my business?

Choose based on three things: who your members already are, whether you plan to charge, and how much control you need. If your audience lives on Discord or Facebook, start where they are and skip the empty-room problem.

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Then weigh money against ownership. Mighty Networks' 2022 Community Survey reported that 75% of community builders use their community to drive revenue, which is far easier on an owned platform with native payments. Circle's 2022 Community Trends report found that 62% of communities use a mix of online and offline engagement, so check whether the platform supports events, not just chat.

Use this checklist before you commit:

1. Are my members already active on this platform?
2. Can I charge for membership natively, without a bolted-on tool?
3. Can I export my member list and content if I leave?
4. Does it support the format I need — chat, courses, or events?
5. What does it cost at 100, 1,000, and 10,000 members?

What features actually matter when selecting a community platform?

At Botensten we ship production software with AI every day and build in public, so we tested this the hard way. We started our community on a rented chat platform because it was free and fast. It worked until we wanted to charge members and email them directly. We could not export a clean member list, and every announcement fought an algorithm for reach.

We moved the paid tier to an owned platform and kept the free chat where the crowd already was. That two-layer setup is what we now recommend: rent for the top of the funnel, own the part that makes money. The features that actually earned their keep were native payments, a real member export, and email that reaches everyone instead of a ranked slice.

The trade-off is honest. Owned platforms cost ~$40-$100 a month and start empty, so you trade reach for control. For a business, control of the member relationship is the asset. HubSpot's 2022 State of Community survey found 71% of respondents believe community is crucial to their business strategy, and you cannot build a strategy on a list you do not own.

How can I measure the ROI of my community-building efforts?

Measure community ROI with retention, revenue, and engagement, not member count. A community of 500 buyers beats 50,000 lurkers. Higher Logic's 2022 Community Benchmarking report found that 85% of organizations with communities see an increase in customer engagement, and engagement is the leading signal that revenue will follow.

Track these four metrics from month one:

• Active member rate: members who post or react divided by total members.
• Revenue per member: subscription plus product sales divided by active members.
• Retention: percentage of members still active after 90 days.
• Support deflection: questions answered by peers instead of your team.

Community-led growth is a deliberate strategy for 55% of businesses, according to a 2022 survey by Commsor, precisely because these numbers compound. Ads stop the day you stop paying. A community keeps returning members and answers, so your cost per outcome falls over time instead of resetting every month.

What are the future trends in community-led growth?

The near-term trends are owned-platform migration, hybrid online-offline events, and AI-assisted moderation. Businesses are moving revenue-generating communities off rented platforms to protect member data and margins.

Hybrid is already mainstream, with Circle's 2022 Community Trends report showing 62% of communities blend online and offline touchpoints. Expect more small in-person meetups tied to online spaces. AI is starting to handle first-line moderation and member onboarding, which lets a solo operator run a larger community without a full team. Books like The Business of Belonging and Get Together map where this is heading if you want the long view.

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