Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover community platforms. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Disciple | Discourse | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $399 | From $100 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut | None | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web, iOS, Android | Web, Linux |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions | Community Platforms, Website Builders |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Nothing in particular |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
Your community as an app in the app stores
Disciple builds a branded community app and puts it in the Apple and Google stores under your name, rather than sending members to a website that happens to work on a phone. It takes nothing from what members pay, which matters at the price it charges. That price starts at several hundred a month, so it is a business decision rather than an experiment.
Our note
Zero transaction fees against a high fixed cost is the whole shape of this, and it favours communities already collecting real money. Below roughly $8,000 a month in member revenue, a platform taking a percentage costs less.
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Forum software, hosted or run yourself
Discourse is the forum the internet settled on: threaded, searchable, indexed by Google, and open source, so a community that outgrows the hosted plans can take the database and run it on its own server. That escape hatch is the argument for it over anything closed. The hosted pricing starts where a hobby project stops, and self-hosting swaps the bill for a sysadmin.
Our note
The reason to choose this over Circle or Mighty Networks is that the conversation is public and indexed, which makes the forum an asset rather than a cost. The reason not to is that it is a forum, and an audience raised on Discord will find it slow.
Ratings are the average of reviews readers left. The facts are stated by each tool’s own listing and are not verified by CloutStack. How we make money.
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