7 excellent alternatives for Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups have been the preferred method of engage with your customers build trust in your brand and grow your company. However, the issue is that Facebook isn't the owner of your Facebook Group. Facebook owns it.
We'll look at the reasons why more content creators are seeking alternatives to Facebook Groups, and which are the ones that made it onto our top seven list.
Why are online creators looking for alternative options for Facebook Groups?
With 2,934 active users each month -- 1,8 billion are active in groups on a monthly basis, Facebook is certainly a fantastic platform to interact with your followers.
Although Facebook Groups used to be an effective way of bringing your business closer to your customers, recent scandals regarding privacy of users, and a myriad of other concerns, have increasingly frustrated and even the business owners that rely on the social giant.
Many are beginning to search for alternative options for Facebook Groups.
What exactly are these problems, you ask?
In the first place, even though Facebook Groups are quick to create, the you can only customize them in a limited way. Everything from the font as well as the user interface manner your users interact with you is controlled by Facebook You have nothing to say about it.
That brings us to the next part: your Facebook Group isn't owned or managed by the group's owner or manager--it's the Facebook's. This means you may be unable to promote certain types of content or engage with members in the way that you'd prefer. It also means you're counting on Facebook to ensure that its platform is up and running efficiently, and that's often not the situation. Can we bring back the social media outage in 2021?
Another downfall one of Facebook Groups is visibility and revenue. If you don't upgrade your advertising budget, posts that are not paid for receive about 2.2 per cent of viewers. In other words, if your Facebook Group has 1,000 followers but only 22 will see your posts!
The algorithm of Facebook also favors posts by friends and relatives over businesses, so it's much more difficult to attract your audience with your content amazing as it might be.
Additionally, running a Facebook Group can be hard task. Apart from dealing with unpleasantness from trolls and spam accounts, you can't customize your admin controls. This means you'll be relying on Facebook's features to let users in, post and regulate.
Which Facebook Group alternative is best to meet the needs of a creator?
The question is one you need to decide on your own, because what works for different businesses may be a bad fit for yours. But, we wrote this post to provide you with some solid advice to make the right choice for you.
These are the most important things to be aware of in deciding on an alternative to Facebook Groups:
Features
Can you customize the system? Are you able to operate it easily? Can you set everything up quickly and effectively? Are you happy with how it works with your other business?
When choosing a platform, it is important to ensure that you choose a platform that has the best capabilities for your business. This will be discussed further in the next section as we examine specific platforms below.
Platform Interface
What do you think of the interface? Do you feel comfortable creating it, making changes, and using it? Are you at a loss or overwhelmed by it? If yes, are there great solutions for support to help you get familiar with the platform and help you troubleshoot? If you're having trouble understanding a system and you're unable to get the assistance you require you should look into different options.
User experience
The online community is thriving when your audience is engaging with the platform, which is why it's extremely important to consider what experience users have when using the platform.
What do you think it looks like from a user perspective? Do you find it easy to use and navigate?
If you are struggling to understand, chances are your community members will too.
Check it out using your viewers' point of viewpoint and then decide if it's something they're happy engaging with, or could be improved.
Budget
Some Facebook Group alternatives are more expensive than other alternatives, so it's important to find one that fits your budget.
The more expensive option doesn't necessarily mean better--check the above factors before choosing one platform over another.
What you don't want is to end up with an expensive platform , whose interface and client experience are difficult to figure out.
What are the most effective alternative to online communities to Facebook Groups?
There are many options out there that allow you to start your own online community outside of Facebook, and today we bring you the top seven best alternatives to Facebook Groups.
Let's dig in!
1. DISCORD
What started as a platform for gamers has become the most popular social-networking platform.
Discord offers a variety of great tools that can help you build your community that isn't on Facebook like private and secure public channels, private channels, customizable bots that can interact with members and admins, instant messaging between members and admins, audio and video calls and custom permissions to distinguish between users and admins.
You may also download and use it for absolutely free. You can also upgrade it for $99.99 per year for other options.
The process of setting up the Discord community isn't an intuitive procedure, and you'll be confronted with a lengthy learning curve which could hinder your community building process.
Your Discord server is also able to coexist alongside the other communities that are online on this service, which means that you'll have to make sure you stand out so your audience engages with the content you post instead of rivals.
For branding, Discord employs a black and white theme that could or might not be in line with your brand aesthetic. However, it isn't able to be customized.
Finally, you can't charge your users for access to your Discord server. If you'd like to do this, you'll need create a paypal page for each user separately.
Overall, Discord is a great alternative to Facebook communities that offer better functionality and features. But if the goal is to make money from your followers and grow your company, Discord may not give you all the tools you want.
2. REDDIT
With over 50 million people who are active on Reddit daily, this site is an enormous contender for building an online community that isn't Facebook.
Reddit utilizes a forum-like format, where each topic gets classified into a subreddit or the subreddit.
One of the best things regarding Reddit is that it's totally free, you can create a public or restricted subreddit, and it's easy to set up and utilize .
However, much like Discord the platform isn't equipped with customizing options for your brand and also monetization options to your users. Similar to Facebook the platform isn't completely control the subreddit you have created.
It is possible for your subreddit to be suspended if management believes that you or any of your users have violated rules through posting or commenting.
Subreddits are a huge part of the site is extremely high too, so producing content to connect with the audience could be an effort.
Although the platform itself is completely free, you will need to pay for an advertisement-free version.
Reddit is an excellent way to start a free online community, but like Discord, it's not the best option if you're trying to make money from your community online.
3. MIGHTY SUPERNETWORKS
Mighty Networks allows you to create an online community and offer your course on the same space.
Through this platform, you can make free or paid community to your members, apply customized branding, create an app for mobile devices, as well as create private zones where your followers can interact.
Mighty Networks also allows for live streaming, group and private chat messaging, and unlimitable number of moderators and members.
But, it doesn't provide a no-cost plan and transaction fees are charged in addition to the monthly fee.
If you're after online course features, you'll have to join their Business Plansfor $119/month. Also, If you're in need of additional devices, like payment processing, email marketing, a good website builder, or a landing page creator--you may have be paying extra for these features.
Mighty Networks plans--and the transaction costs that go with them -- are their Free Trial ($0/month and 5percent transaction fee), Community Plan ($39/month and 3% transaction fee) and Business Plan ($119/month with a 2percent transaction cost), and Mighty Pro (custom prices).
This platform is a great tool to create an online community. However, it's important to take note of the transaction costs since they could quickly add up as your community gets bigger.
4. TRIBE.SO
Tribe is a community-building online tool intended to be utilized through websites of businesses or through phone apps.
The benefits of Tribe are that you can make a choice to set up a public or private community, and integrate it easily with other apps (such such as Slack, Google Analytics, or Intercom for instance), to mention a few) or customize it to fit the aesthetics of your company. In addition, it comes with an array of community management tools.
Tribe lets members post content using different categories tags.
The Tribe app is available for purchase Tribe for free for the first 100 members.
Then, you'll be able to select from the Plus plan($59/month) which allows as many as 2,500 members and expand your choice of apps and apps; or the Premium Plan($299/month) that allows you to remove the Tribe branding and increase membership up to 25,000 members.
The biggest issue is Tribe doesn't allow for instant messaging. This makes it difficult for administrators as well as members to communicate with each other.
Like the other options, Tribe doesn't offer any options for paying members to your community on the internet or for selling digital items to your members.
The monetization tools Tribe gives you will require you to solve these issues and set up payments that are not part of Tribe's platform. Yikes! Another tool you can add to your tech stack.
Tribe is an ideal option for businesses with a long history that are looking to grow their community online because it's focused on building brand loyalty.
It's just not well suited to connecting you with your audience that can compromise your efforts to build a community, especially if you're just starting up.
5. PODIA
Podia is an online community designed for creators and is a good alternative to Facebook Groups.
With Podia it is possible to control the way you interact with customers, give free and paid membershipsand also sell digital products.
Podia also supports direct messaging web development, direct messaging, as well as email marketing, making it easier to create connections and integrate your business to your community online.
Because Podia integrates payment systems it isn't necessary to fret about needing to create them independently. This allows you to make money from your content and make the most out of your online community.
Because you can create your site in Podia from the ground up and you can have a 100 percent customizable platform, which can match your brand's identity.
With Podia, you can use their no-cost plan, although you get charged an 8.8% charge on transactions that are made via the platform.
Paid plans don't charge you any transaction fees and currently include three plans: Mover Plan ($39/month), Shaker Plan ($75/month), and Earthquaker Plan ($166/month).
If you'd like to gain access to webinars or affiliate support it is necessary to change to the Shaker Plan.
One of the downsides of Podia is that it has a standard template that has limited customization options so you'll have to spend much time creating resources from scratch.
Podia doesn't offer an overview of the progress users are making with your courses either--you can check users' progress individually, which is mega time-consuming--making it harder for you to see at a glance whether your audience is engaging with your training.
If you require assistance in gaining the most out of Podia Be aware that you'll only have one Q&A session every week, which could not be enough assist you in setting up your community online and make the most of its power.
6. HIVEBRITE
Hivebrite is a community-building website which permits a huge variety of people to join it.
This platform gives you a high level of customization, live feeds, different access rights for members, free or paid memberships. You also have the ability to add other features when your community expands and evolves.
More than 500 businesses are currently using Hivebrite Their customer service has been reported as outstanding.
However, Hivebrite doesn't display its rates on its website, however it reportedly starts at $500/month. To get specific pricing information and other key details, you must sign up to try a trial.
Hivebrite can be a great alternative for large-scale enterprises looking to build an online community that they can profit from, but due to its high cost and technical complexity, it might not be the best option for creators who are independent and smaller businesses.
7.
lets you create safe public and private communities, customize the platform to match your branding, and set up paid members. With the acquisition of the best-in-class community platform Vibely and Vibely's community platform, the company will soon include live chats, challenges leadersboards, accountability tools live chat in real-time, and more!
Y ou can tie your business to your online communitythanks to 's custom domain tool as well as website builder. These allow you to add video backgrounds, sales pages, or pop-up forms among other features.
consolidates all of the integrations needed to create, grow and then monetize an effective online community. It will save you costs while also enabling you for a quick increase in your income.
With , the monthly fee is all that you require to manage your company and run your online community, so it's not necessary to use multiple platforms to manage and grow your company.
Three payment options are available:
- The Basic plan($119/month) provides an online store that sells at least three products, and three pipelines. You get an unlimited number of landing pages as well as marketing emails. Additionally, you can have up to 1,000 active members.
- The Growth Plan($159/month) includes one website which can sell up to 15 items and pipelines and expands the active user count up to 10,000. Additionally, you can set up 10 administrators, and remove the's logo.
- The Pro Plan($319/month) provides three websites that can sell as many as 100 items and pipelines. It is possible to have up to 20,000 active users with 25 admin users.
is an excellent alternative is a great alternative to Facebook Groups for community owners or course developers, as well as coaches. Plus, it's a cost-effective option to manage your own business since you only have to pay a single monthly fee for an entire suite of growth tools for businesses.
Which is the best alternative to Facebook Groups?
Communities on the web are great places where you can consolidate your branding identity, distribute audience-focused content, and show prospects and customers you're keen on what they've got to say.
Be aware of your target audience's needs and opinions could help you create strategies that work for your brand; they're a gateway into the mind of your potential clients, which means you can make sure that your products and content are aligned with your target audience more accurately.
It is your own personal decision as to what you want and need from an online community-building tool. However, getting acquainted with options can help be sure you are making an educated selection.
The majority of business owners appreciate being able to access a variety of tools that can help grow and profit from their community all together and at zero hidden costs.
The package includes a variety of business software in one neat package and a wide range of resources including product templates and free webinars for making the experience more enjoyable.
What's the most exciting part? You can test it no cost for 14 dayss to decide whether this is the best option for you.
Try it for free for 14 days
is everything your online business will require. All in one place. Yes! Let's go!