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.
| Heartbeat | LaunchPass | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $49 | From $29 |
| Pricing model | Free trial, then paid | Free plan, paid tiers |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Monthly or annual | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days |
| API | Yes | Not stated |
| Data export | Everything, in an open format | Not stated |
| Their cut | 5% of what you earn | 3.5% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web, iOS, Android | Not stated |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Courses & Coaching, Memberships & Subscriptions | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions, Monetization & Payments |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | Discord |
| Founded | Not listed | Not listed |
| Reader rating | No reviews yet | No reviews yet |
| Live deals | None right now | None right now |
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.
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Charge for access to a Discord or Slack group
LaunchPass puts a paywall in front of a chat community you already run, and hands out and removes the roles as people pay and lapse. It connects to Discord, Slack and Telegram, and the money arrives through your own Stripe account. It manages access rather than hosting anything, so the community stays where your members already are.
Our note
Sensible if your community is already somewhere and already wanted. Compare it against DoorFee if the community is on Discord, since DoorFee sells the membership as well as gating it, and against Circle or Skool if you were half thinking of moving anyway.
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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