If you want to build a community website, you’re probably in a reddit spiral. You’re hearing about WordPress plugins, child themes, integrations and Zapier zaps. And maybe you’ve watched 20 vids on the best community software (and you’re more confused than when you started).

It’s exhausting.

And honestly? It doesn’t need to be this hard. Would-be community builders can concentrate so hard on tech stacks that they forget the fundamentals–the stuff that actually separates ghost towns from $1 million communities.

And that obsession with tech stacks? It can lead to WAY overcomplicated software solutions, when it’s actually pretty simple.

In this article, we’ll talk about the tech behind community websites, but also the foundational work that’s going to make your community website profitable, and successful.

We’ll cover:

• What a community site actually is.

• Why you need a community website.

• And the software + strategy you need to succeed.

The right community website software AND the right strategy will make your community sing. Let’s dive in.

A community website is a virtual space where people with shared motivations come together–to master an interesting topic together, or get closer to reaching a personal or professional goal.

These communities are usually led by a host (maybe that’s you!). You set the structure, create the culture, and connect members around something they care about.

But here's what separates a real community website from a glorified forum or Facebook group:

• Member connections: What's the engine of a thriving community website? Simple: members engaging with each other. Our data lets us predict with 93% accuracy which communities will thrive and which will flop. This is the variable. If your software builds member-to-member connections, you're golden.

• Creative expression: Both host and members need space to co-create. Content. Conversations. Learning experiences. Livestreams. A community website isn't just a collection of features—those features are what let you and your members make things together.

• Vehicle for transformation: The best communities run on transformations. Learning metal guitar. Training for a marathon. Starting a craft business. Landing the promotion. Transformation drives engagement. If transformation is the WHAT, your community website is the HOW. Look for tools that deliver it: courses, events, masterminds, challenges, gamification. These are the vehicles. Transformation is the destination.

• Business engine: Not all communities are monetized—customer communities, brand communities, and hobby communities can thrive without charging a dime. But if you need your community to be a business, you need business infrastructure baked in. Ways to sell. Collect payments. Bundle products. Track metrics.

Figure out which of these matter to you, then choose software that delivers. That's the starting line.

So why a community website? Discord is free. So is Facebook. Linkedin is apparently about “connecting the world’s professionals. “

What’s wrong with these?

Well. The hard reality is that these are where communities go to die. Discords are a dime a dozen–and you don’t own it. Facebook lets you have ONE long conversation thread and you literally fight the algorithm.

The bottom line is that social media is built on a broken promise: that if you create enough content, you’ll grow.

It doesn’t work.

We need to change the way we think about creating our online space, and a community website is part of it.

So why build a community website?

Social media companies aren’t built for your business. They’re built for theirs. It’s their brand that grows, their ad dollars that earn them money. You bring the eyeballs and they monetize them.

A community website gives you ownership. Build under your brand. Cultivate connection without distractions.

Free communities get shallow connections. Social media catches attention, but this doesn’t always create change.

Community website software has evolved a lot since the 2000s. But one thing doesn’t change. The value comes from the transformation it offers. If you’re ready to transform lives in a dedicated space, this is the way.

Social media has an amazing growth strategy–it becomes more valuable as more users join. It’s called the flywheel or network effect.

The problem is, if you build a community on social media, you don’t benefit from this. The social networking giants do.

Creating on your own community website channels attention and energy into something you own, and you build your own network effect–that gets more valuable as more people join.

This transformational, flywheel community website that you own becomes something else: a business. You can charge for access. Create recurring revenue. So why build someone else’s business when you could build your own?

• Maybe you’ve started. Maybe you haven’t. But if you’re bringing a group of people together around a transformation, this is the play.

• The coach or expert scaling: You're serving clients 1:1. You've got a few offers. Bringing everything into a community—and building your own flywheel—helps you scale without burning out.

• The business or brand that wants real connection: It’s more than just “customer service.” A community website is a customer community that mixes conversation, market research, and loyalty into one space. And yes… it all comes down to transformation.

• The course creator craving completion: You’re a natural teacher, but asynchronous learning just isn’t cutting it. A community adds a learning journey—with members ready to connect, not just consume.

• The person with no audience, but ready to transform lives: Great communities start here too. Instead of grinding on social media, start with a few people on a community website. That’s where real, sustained growth comes from.

Notice what’s not here?

• Someone with 100 hours of content to upload.

Content isn’t the play. Transformation is!

Let’s talk tech. Because there’s so much bad information out there.

If you’re researching the best way to run a community website, you’re probably seeing something like “Just pair WEBSITE SOFTWARE with EMAIL SOFTWARE with FORUM PLUGIN with PAYMENTS PLUGIN and tie it all together with a bunch of zaps.”

Sure, it can be exciting to nerd out on software. But why use 5 platforms when one will do?

The old way: Frankenstein’s tech stack

The old way of building a community website looked something like this.

• Start a WordPress website.

• Find a membership plug-in like LearnDash or BuddyBoss.

• Integrate with WoCommerce or MemberPress for payments.

• Maybe add a Zoom integration for events.

• Use Zapier to duct-tape it all together.

If you’re reading advice that tells you to do this, STOP!

Here’s the hard truth about this approach.

• It’s complicated (duh!)

• It’s expensive! (Even those “free” WordPress plugins often require premium paid features. + Hosting.)

• It’s ugly. WordPress is tough to style well. And you might need professional help.

• Stuff breaks. That complicated tech stack is just more things that can go wrong.

• And it’s still not really built for what you actually need!

The middle ground: Forums + Plug-ins

Then there’s a sort of middle ground. It’s still DIY, but it feels a tiny bit more sophisticated.

• Take a forum platform (e.g. Discord, Slack, Facebook Groups).

• Add a payment plugin or zap.

• Charge for access.

This is a bit better than a WordPress solution. But you’re still cobbling solutions together to try to get enough to serve members something familiar.

But the hard truth:

• It’s still complicated.

• There’s a ton of friction in getting members paid and in.

• It’s still not built for real engagement–it’s just getting you the basics.

The better way: A built-for-use community website software

Here’s the real deal. A community platform isn’t a tech stack. Nobody needs a tech stack to run a community (unless they like paying extra for solutions that don’t work as well).

Community website software is purpose-built for communities. It should have:

• Community features like activity feeds, content creation, events, livestreams, and more… all in one place.

• Member tools like profiles, moderation, and opportunities to connect.

• Options to create lots of digital products and experiences to help with transformation: live & pre-recorded courses, paid events, small groups, masterminds, premium content, paid livestreams, etc.

• All the tools you need to turn this into a digital business: payment gateways, landing pages, checkouts, multi-currencies, and options to bundle products or tier pricing. And analytics to understand it all.

• The freedom to build under your brand and business, not someone else’s. Styling. Branding. Logos. And a look and feel that’s yours.

• A community app!

Don’t start with software. Start with strategy. It’s the foundation.

Start with an Ideal Member. Think of it like this: human being + transition = Ideal Member.

We study communities and most of the ones that work have this in common. People in transitions will join, commit, and even pay if the transition is important to them.

Here are some examples of transitions people pay for:

• Life changes: e.g. moving to a new city, parenting teenagers, retiring to Mexico

• Skill-learning: e.g. learning jazz piano, running a marathon, starting an e-learning business

• Professional changes: e.g. first manager job, career shifts, mastering public speaking

• Health & wellness: e.g. cooking vegetarian, learning goat yoga, life at perimenopause

• Creative pursuits: e.g. writing a novel, learning to paint, growing an Instagram following

As we say at Mighty, forget your niche! Find a transition instead!

And get specific! Don’t go with “wellness enthusiast.” Try “first time dad sleep-training a baby.” These are the transitions that resonate with people.

Then define their Best Year Ever!

What would it look like next year if your community website gave them that transition? What would be true about their life?

From there build a Big Purpose

This is your pitch to them. It’s a simple formula: Big Purpose = Ideal Member + Best Year Ever.

“We bring amateur jazz drummers together with lessons and drop-ins so they can gig, jam, and perform!”

That’s a transformation! And these work.

Homework Here’s a quick exercise. Grab a paper and pen. Look at your story, whether it’s your personal story or your business story.

Answer these 4 questions:

1. What transitions do I know about?

2. What do people in these transitions want and need?

3. What’s stopping them?

4. What could their Best Year Ever look like?

You've seen the Frankenstein tech stacks. WordPress + 7 plugins + Zapier + prayers. Skip it. What you actually need is purpose-built community software.

Here’s what to look for:

• All-in-one: community, courses, events, payments in one place

• Member connection features: profiles, DMs, introductions, activity feeds

• Monetization built in: subscriptions, bundles, one-time purchases, content gating

• AI and automations: Look for an AI community platform—software that puts your admin and growth on auto-pilot

• Native mobile experience: Your members live on their phones. Webapps don’t cut it!

• White-label option: your brand, your app, your experience, even your notifications (with a white-label app)

If this sounds like a straightforward wish-list, we’ve got news. It’s not. There are still a lot of solutions claiming to be purpose-built community platforms that just aren’t.

Here’s what to avoid:

• Stitching together tools to talk to each other.

• Platforms built for top-down content creation, but not member connection.

• “Free” solutions that cost you more than you can afford in headaches, lost time, and restarts.

Try Mighty Networks

It’s G2’s top-rated community management software, and it’s perfect for community websites. A bunch of brands and creators you know and love use it: think Mel Robbins, Marie Forleo, Tiffany Aliche, BODi, keap, and the Daily Stoic.

Mighty is:

• Community content in flexible Spaces. Build in live or pre-recorded courses, events, content, discussions, challenges, or pages.

• Software built for engagement: New member journeys, gamification, unlocks, and leaderboards.

• AI engagement created to connect: Profile help, member suggestions and 1-click introductions, discussion question generator, lapsed member re-connect, instant course outlines, and the “make it better” text editor.

• Branding control, urls, light & dark mode, and even white-label, branded apps for established brands and creators.

The first step of starting a community website is finding a platform to build with. Again, this should be purpose-built community software.

Here are three things you can build as you plan your community experience.

1. Monthly Themes: As you look at the best year ever, break it into 12 chapters. 12 focus themes that help your members get what they want.

2. Weekly Calendar: These regular touchpoints form the habits and conversations that make up your community activities. For example, Monday could be a regular challenge. Wednesday might be office hours.

3. Daily Polls & Questions: These prompt members to share their stories and experiences–NOT just to consume your content!

Your Big Purpose + a membership price gives you your first offer. It’s that simple.

If this is your first time, here’s our advice. Keep it really simple and start with membership as a core offer. A membership offer is:

• A monthly recurring membership price (the average on Mighty is $48/mo). This is important! Transformations take time.

• Priced for results. The value of a community is based on the transformation you offer. How much would they pay to get it without your community? It doesn’t need to cost that, but it’s a start for your thinking.

You’ve already got your Big Purpose, so here are a few things to include:

• Access to the community.

• The monthly themes & weekly structure.

• Live events, office hours, or member spotlights.

• Foundational courses and/or events (if applicable).

Don’t overdo it!

With the plan in hand, you’re ready to build the framework of your community. This might take less time than you think. Because it’s not about filling your community website up with hours and hours of content.

But here’s what you should do before members get in:

• Add your brand & styling: Customize your community website, add logos, styling, profile fields, and customize relevant Spaces.

• Add landing pages and offers: You’ll need somewhere for new members to land and register. A landing page. Maybe one or a couple tiers. Don’t overcomplicate it! A simple offer is enough to get started–you can add more as needed.

• New-member welcome sequence: Set up an automated new-member sequence to guide members through their first steps into a community. Prompt them to create a profile. Introduce themselves. Create their first post. And so on!

• Add your first week calendar: Plan your first month of activities, with the weekly calendars.

Don’t overdo it! Keep it simple. Adding a ton of tiers or Spaces at this point will create member fatigue. Get your first members in the same Space on the same journey, and maybe even on the same tier. You can add more later.

It doesn’t take 10,000 followers. Or 100 hours of content. It just takes a community of 10-15 Ideal Members to launch a $1 million community. Give those first 10 members the transformation they’re looking for, and you’ll grow!

The average first month of a Mighty Network has 10-24 people.

So if you get 10 people in your launch, that’s a success! Show up for them and be patient–growth will happen over time.

How to get your first members?

• Some people do Ideal Member interviews. This can be an awesome way to make sure you have the right Ideal Member. But these people are also the first ones you can invite to your community website!

• You can invite people! If you know people who would benefit from the transformation you’re offering, drop them a line directly.

• Post on socials. If you have any sort of following, announcing your offer can help gather your founding members.

• Share the news! Online message boards (if allowed). Facebook groups. Publications. Or even community bulletin boards. Use the channels you have to announce your offer.

There’s something nobody tells you about community websites. Success comes from members connecting to each other!

We can predict successful communities at a 93% accuracy–and it all comes down to this.

Members who connect to each other stay and get the transformation they need. Even better, they often spread the word and invite others! That’s community growth!

Here are some ways to engage your members on a community website:

• Prioritize member profiles: Members need to fill out profiles. It’s what helps them find each other! Encourage this in your welcome sequence. (Mighty helps them do this in seconds with AI-boosted profiles.)

• Encourage introductions: both in community and direct. Members can create their intro posts, but they can also reach out to other members and say hi. (Mighty’s software points them to the most relevant members and starts a convo with one click!)

• Use conversation starters: Your goal isn’t to create content. It’s to start conversations. Questions and polls are perfect for this. (Mighty has a question generator built in!)

• Host events: Connecting members live via livestreams and group sessions is a great way to put a face to an online profile. Small group events can also add accountability! (BTW Your community website software should absolutely allow for native live events).

• Member spotlights: Do a weekly showcase of a member and their story! It’s perfect for connecting.

These are just a few ideas. But by focusing on connections instead of content, your community will grow faster. And it’s less exhausting than trying to create endless content!

If your community grows at 10 or 20% a month, where does that leave you in a few years? Thriving! You don’t need to explode overnight. Just keep getting the basics right and be patient.

As you grow, you can consider scaling into different tiers. Different offers. Go slow, and always focus on how these new things help your Ideal Member achieve that transformation.

For example, you could add:

• Group coaching or a mastermind.

• Premium paid events.

• A pre-recorded or live course.

• Challenges or unlocked premium content.

• A branded app.

And make sure to keep learning. Audit what’s working. A good community website should come with analytics to help to diagnose what’s working and what isn’t.

• MomSet is helping moms of all backgrounds transition the challenges of raising a family.

• the gamehers mixes women gamers for connecting over specific games, exploring industry jobs, and co-playing.

• The Saxophone Academy helps saxophonists take their playing to the next level.

• Fear Club brings members together around the love of their YouTube show, Project Fear.

• Marie Forleo runs her flagship entrepreneur training programs on Mighty’s community website.

• John Browne runs a community to teach metal guitarists to shred.

• Joanie Simon teaches food photographers to build thriving businesses.

• Be the host, not the hero. Focus on giving people the transformation and connecting them to each other. That’s what causes growth.

• Be consistent. Winning a community happens in months and years, not days and weeks. Keep showing up and don’t burn out.

• Use the tools at your disposal. AI prompts and community automations can make your job a lot easier.

• Enlist your supermembers. As you grow, there will be people who keep showing up. Get them onboard with moderating, creating, and even co-hosting.

• Celebrate wins loudly. Share member results. Tell their stories. It creates amazing community culture.

• Build a safe culture with community moderation.

• Polls and questions are rocket fuel for community growth. You can also use community management tools like an automated question generator and scheduler–only Mighty Networks offers this.

• Watch your data. It tells you where people are spending time. Use it to learn and grow.

If you’re ready to launch and grow your community website, start here! G2’s #1 community software is free to try for 14 days, no credit card required. Give it a shot! Your thriving community business might be closer than you imagine.

If you're ready to start building, choose a platform that lets you build a thriving culture. With Mighty's cultural software platform, you get to build something that's yours, tailored to your members, and give them exactly what they need.

So, if you're ready, why not try your hand at launching a Mighty Network? It's free to try, no credit card required. Come see what you could build!

It’s not hard if you have the right tool. Like we said above, you don’t need the frankenstein play of trying to tie a complicated tech stack together. Keep it simple. And get started.

With Mighty Cohost’s community flow, it really only takes a few minutes to get your basic community up and running. If you’re adding your own custom branding, Spaces, etc., it might take 1-2 hours.

Try it now!

No. That’s the whole point of community website software. It does everything you need. And while some people might opt to connect a Mighty Network to a subdomain of an existing website (e.g. community . yourwebsite . com, it’s not necessary.

The whole point of a community website platform is to do everything for you: building, hosting, and payments. And you can add your own branding and domain too.

You don’t need to overcomplicate it.

Usually! Check if you can export member lists. Unfortunately, Facebook Groups doesn’t let you do this. But other platforms like Circle and Discord do. Some platforms will let you export posts too, but it depends on the platform. You may need to individually export the posts you need.

But remember, the goal isn’t to fill up your new space with content (especially old content). Focus on creating a new conversation and experience for your members.

Mighty can integrate a custom domain on any of its plans, so that starts from $49/mo. You’ll need to connect a domain that you own–usually this starts from about $10-$20 per year with popular hosts.

You can read more about using your own domain with Mighty here.

With Mighty Networks, you do. Always. You can export it any time you want. There’s more info on your member data here.

Yup! Mighty lets you do all these together, even in the same Space. Flexible spaces mean you can integrate these things seamlessly on your community website. There are lots of templates to choose from, or you can create your own custom Space with features like: Courses, Events, Chat, Messaging, Discovery, Member List, or a Page.

Yes. Here are some of the things Mighty’s AI can do: Instant member profiles, “show similarities” tool for finding interesting members, and 1-click introductions. 1-click re-engagement messaging for Hosts to reach out to lapsed members. AI question generation and auto-posting (with your approval). Mighty CoHost as your coach as you build a community. Instant course outlines and “make it better” text editor. AI boosted design and landing pages.

It always starts by creating a culture of moderation, including clear community guidelines and expectations. From here, a suite of built-in moderation tools help you keep members safe and conversation flowing.

• Hosts can control posting, ban members, and set guidelines.

• Hosts can enlist moderators to help with moderation and management.

• Members can report posts and content that violates guidelines.

• Hosts and Mods can review these and make a decision.

We have a full article on building great community moderation here.

Mighty comes with native ConvertKit and Zoom automations, plus over 2,000 embeds with other tools like Calendly, Loom, Notion, etc.

Yes it is! You can read more about our compliance here.

Yes, Spaces on a Mighty Network can be public, private, or gated. You have access control at the level of the individual Space.

Yup! You have lots of options for creating great checkout pages. This includes flexible payment options like promo codes, installments, and quarterly subscriptions. You can sell on the web, iOS, and Android–and the apps have built-in payment notifications. Mighty integrates with popular affiliate platforms for easy promotions, and you can connect external checkout systems if you prefer.