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.
| Honeycommb | Memberful | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $24.99 | From $49 |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Paid subscription |
| Free tier | No | No |
| Billing | Not stated | Monthly or annual |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | 4.9% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web | Web |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions | Memberships & Subscriptions, Community Platforms, Monetization & Payments |
| 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 |
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.
Paid memberships bolted onto a site you own
Memberful sells memberships from a site you already run rather than moving your audience to a platform, and it is the tool most WordPress publishers reach for when they start charging. One price covers everything and the money is charged on top as a percentage. Nothing is billed until a first payment comes in, so a launch that never launches costs nothing.
Our note
The 4.9 percent is the number to model, because it is charged on revenue rather than on profit: at $2,000 a month collected it is about double the subscription. Against Ghost, which takes nothing, this wins on flexibility and loses on arithmetic once you are large.
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.