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 | Patreon | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | From $24.99 | Free |
| Pricing model | Paid subscription | Free |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Billing | Not stated | Usage-based |
| Free trial | 14 days | Not stated |
| API | Not stated | Yes |
| Data export | Not stated | Not stated |
| Their cut | Not stated | 10% of what you earn |
| Runs on | Web | Not stated |
| Covers | Community Platforms, Memberships & Subscriptions | Memberships & Subscriptions, Community Platforms, Monetization & Payments |
| Works with | Nothing in particular | YouTube, Podcast, Discord |
| 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.
Membership tiers and posts for paying supporters
Patreon is still where most audiences expect to pay a creator monthly, and that familiarity is worth something. Tiers, member-only posts, and now paid courses and shops. The platform fee is 10 percent of what you earn, before payment processing.
Our note
Patreon costs more than Ko-fi and more than running memberships yourself, and what you buy with the difference is recognition: a listener who hears the word already knows what to do. Once an audience would follow you anywhere, that premium stops earning its keep.
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.