Growing an audience
Running the business
Both cover community platforms and memberships & subscriptions. Here is what separates them on price, billing, what you can take with you, and coverage.
| Disciple | Heartbeat | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $399 | From $49 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free trial, then paid |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | Not stated | 14 days |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Everything, in an open format |
| Their cut | None | 5% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web, iOS, Android | Web, iOS, Android |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions | Community Platforms, Courses & Coaching, Memberships & Subscriptions |
| 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.
A community with courses and events built in
Heartbeat runs channels, threads, events, courses and a member directory in one place, which is the shape most creator communities end up wanting after outgrowing a Discord server. Payments run through it and it takes a cut that falls as the plan rises. There is no free plan, and a community that stops paying is deactivated rather than frozen.
Our note
Work out the transaction fee at your own revenue before comparing headline prices: at $5,000 a month collected, Grow costs less in total than Build. Against Circle and Mighty Networks this is the one with courses and events genuinely built in rather than bolted on.
Only on this side
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.