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.
| Discourse | Honeycommb | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $100 | From $24.99 |
| Pricing model | Free plan, paid tiers | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | Yes | No |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Not stated |
| Free trial | Not stated | 14 days |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | Not stated |
| Runs on | Web, Linux | Web |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Website Builders | Community Platforms, 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 |
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.
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A branded social network for one community
Honeycommb builds a private social network under your name rather than a forum, with a feed, profiles and posts that behave the way members already expect. Pricing is by how many people have registered, not by which features you want, so the whole product is on the cheapest tier. Branded iOS and Android apps are a separate add-on with its own launch fee, and that is the line item most budgets trip over.
Our note
Read the add-on column before the plan column, because the apps cost more than ten times the entry subscription and they are the reason most people arrive here. Without them this is Circle at several times the price.
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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