We make Drry, one of the alternatives below, so read accordingly. The six Skool alternatives worth your time are Drry, Circle, Mighty Networks, Kajabi, Discord, and Patreon, and which one fits depends on whether your product is the community itself, the live gatherings, the marketing machine, the chat, or the content feed. Most "best alternatives" posts are written by one of the vendors and pretend otherwise; we would rather tell you in the first line and then earn your trust with the rest of the page. Every claim here is qualitative on purpose, prices and fee structures change, so verify current terms before you commit to anything, including us.
First, credit where due: Skool got a lot right. One community, one course area, one calendar, strong gamification, no feature sprawl. If people are searching for alternatives, it is usually for structural reasons: Skool has no free plan, it charges a transaction fee on every member payment on top of the monthly price (steepest on the entry plan), there are no landing pages or funnels so you bolt on a page builder, and your community lives on skool.com rather than your own brand; we broke down what the plans and fees actually add up to in our Skool pricing guide. If those are your frustrations, here is the honest field, including us. For a feature-by-feature look at just the two of us, see Drry vs Skool.
Drry: the fee-free one (ours)
Our product, so treat this section as a pitch with the numbers you can check. Drry is a paid-community platform for coaches: community feed, video courses, audio, member emails, and funnels in one branded space, at your own address like grace.drry.com or your own custom domain on paid plans.
- Best for:coaches who want Skool's focused community-plus-courses shape, but with a real free plan to start, landing pages and email built in, and no cut of member payments.
- Pricing structure: a genuinely free plan (100 members, 5 GB, unlimited courses, one funnel, no card), then flat subscriptions at $29 and $99 a month. 0% of member payments on every plan; money flows through your own Stripe account.
- What you give up:Skool's gamification (leaderboards, levels, points) has no equivalent, the ecosystem is younger with fewer integrations, and there is no marketplace of communities sending you discovery traffic.
Circle: the polished one
Circle is probably the most refined community product on this list: clean spaces, events, courses, and a professional feel that suits established brands. It is the closest thing to a default choice for well-funded creator businesses.
- Best for: creators and companies who want a premium, design-forward community and are happy to pay a real subscription for it.
- Pricing structure: paid plans only (after a trial), and a platform transaction fee on member payments on every plan, smaller on the pricier tiers.
- What you give up:there is no free plan, the fee means the platform grows with your revenue, seeing each member's activity is reserved for the top Business tier, and there is no funnel builder with per-page conversion analytics, the site builder makes pages but does not close the loop to revenue.
Mighty Networks: the events-first one
Mighty Networks bundles communities, courses, and a notably strong live-events layer, with its own mobile apps and a philosophy built around member connection and cohorts. If your community IS the gatherings, it deserves a serious look.
- Best for: coaches whose model centers on live events, cohorts, and challenges rather than a content library.
- Pricing structure: paid plans only (after a trial), with a platform transaction fee on every plan that shrinks on pricier tiers.
- What you give up: simplicity, mostly. The surface area is large and takes real setup. Landing pages are templated per plan with no funnel analytics, member email runs through a built-in Kit integration on higher plans rather than fully natively, and deeper analytics sit on higher tiers.
Kajabi: the marketing-suite one
Kajabi is a different animal: a full course-and-marketing suite with funnels, email sequences, podcasts, and websites. Community exists but is not the center of gravity; the pitch is replacing your whole marketing stack.
- Best for: established course businesses that want funnels, email automation, and courses in one heavyweight tool and can absorb a suite-level bill.
- Pricing structure:notably pricier, plans run from around $89 up to hundreds a month, with no free plan. Payments have their own catch: Kajabi's 0% claim requires its in-house processor, which keeps billing locked to Kajabi and still adds a recurring-payment fee on subscriptions; outside processors pay a platform fee.
- What you give up: community depth (it is a feature, not the heart), the entry price, and payment portability. If you mostly want a home for members rather than a marketing machine, you are paying for a lot of machine.
Discord: the free one
The honest budget answer. Discord is free, real-time, and your audience may already live there. Plenty of thriving paid groups run on it. But Discord is a chat tool, not a membership business tool, and the difference shows up exactly where the money is.
- Best for: free communities, gaming and dev audiences, and coaches validating an idea before spending anything at all.
- Pricing structure: free, genuinely. Paid cosmetic upgrades exist but nothing you need.
- What you give up:nearly everything a paid membership needs natively. No built-in payments for your membership (you wire up third-party bots and checkout tools yourself), no courses, no landing pages, no member email, and a fast-scrolling chat where yesterday's gold is buried by lunchtime. Chaotic is the honest word: great energy, weak structure, and you own the duct tape.
Patreon: the percentage one
Patreon is the lowest-friction way to charge for your work: fans pledge, you post. For artists and podcasters with an existing audience it remains a fine answer. For a coaching community it gets thin quickly.
- Best for: creators monetizing content and behind-the-scenes access, where a post feed is the product.
- Pricing structure: free to start, then Patreon takes a percentage of everything you earn, forever. No monthly fee, but the cut scales with your success.
- What you give up:a real home. Courses are limited, there is no true community space beyond posts and comments, your page lives on Patreon with limited branding, and the percentage cut compounds as you grow. Members are Patreon's users on Patreon's pages, not yours.
How to actually choose
If you want the side-by-side version of this with all nine dimensions laid out, our comparison hub covers each of these platforms against Drry in detail, same disclosure, same rules: qualitative claims, verify current terms.
Questions coaches ask
Is Skool bad? Should I leave?
No, and not necessarily. Skool is genuinely good at what it does: a simple, focused community with courses and strong gamification. The reasons people leave are structural, not quality: the transaction fee on every member payment (steepest on the entry plan), no free plan, no landing pages, and everything living on skool.com instead of your brand. If none of those bother you, stay.
What is the cheapest Skool alternative?
Discord is free forever, if you accept doing payments and courses with duct tape and third-party bots. Among real platforms, Drry is the only one on this list with a genuinely free plan (100 members, 5 GB, unlimited courses, no card), and we make Drry, so verify that claim yourself rather than taking our word. Every other platform here starts at a paid subscription or a percentage of your earnings.
Can I migrate my Skool community to another platform?
There is no one-click migration between any of these platforms. In practice a move means recreating your courses and spaces on the new platform, announcing the move with a clear date, and inviting members to the new home. Communities under a few hundred members usually complete a move in a week or two. The recurring lesson from coaches who have done it: move once, so pick the next platform for where you are going, not just where you are.
Does Drry really take 0% of member payments?
Yes, on every plan including free. Member payments run through your own Stripe account, so only Stripe's standard processing fee applies and the customer relationship belongs to you, not us. That is also our business model being different, not us being charitable: we charge a flat subscription ($0, $29, or $99 a month) instead of a percentage of your growth.