7 fantastic alternatives for Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups were the most popular way to reach out to your target audience, establish brand trust, and grow your business. However, the issue is that you don't own your group--Facebook does.

We'll look at the reasons why the content creators are searching for alternative options to Facebook Groups. Which of them made the top 7 list.

Why are online creators looking for alternative options in Facebook Groups?

With 2,934 active users every month -- 1,8 billion are active in groups every month -- Facebook is certainly a fantastic platform to interact with your target audience.

But, even though Facebook Groups used to be an effective way of bringing your company closer to customers, recent scandals concerning user privacy, along with a laundry list of other concerns, are causing a lot of frustration and may even hurt business owners reliant on the social giant.

This is causing many to look for alternatives to Facebook Groups.

What are all these issues are you asking?

In the first place, even though Facebook Groups are quick to create, the they are not customizable in any way. Everything from the fonts as well as the user interface way your audience interacts with you is managed by Facebook, and you have nothing to say about it.

This takes us to the next point: your Facebook Group isn't managed or owned by you--it's the Facebook's. This means you may not be able to share certain types of content or interact with your group members the way you'd prefer. This also means that you're relying on Facebook to ensure that its platform is functioning well, but that's not always the case. May we remind you of the Facebook outage of 2021?

Another downfall of Facebook Groups is visibility and revenue. If you don't upgrade your advertising budget, posts that are not paid for receive around 2.2% of views. For example, if your Facebook Group has 1,000 followers and only 22, then just 22 will see your posts!

Facebook's algorithm is also able to prioritize posts from family and friends over posts from businesses. This makes it much more difficult to attract viewers with your posts however awesome it might be.

Finally, managing the administration of a Facebook Group can be hard task. Apart from dealing with unpleasantness from trolls and spam accounts You can't alter the administrative settings, which means you'll be relying on Facebook's system to let people join, publish and manage.

What Facebook Group alternative is best for the needs of an artist?

The question is one you have to answer for yourself because what works in other companies might be a bad fit for yours. But, we wrote this article to give you some solid advice to make the best decision for your needs.

Here are the main things to keep in mind when choosing a substitute for Facebook Groups:

  Features  

Are you able to customize the system? Is it easy to use? Do you have the ability to setup everything quickly and effectively? Are you happy with how it works into the other aspects of your business?

In selecting a platform you need to make sure you choose a platform that has the best features for you and your brand. We'll dig into this more in the next section as we examine specific platforms in the next section.

  Platform Interface  

What do you think of the user interface? Do you feel comfortable installing it, personalizing, and using it? Do you find yourself confused or overwhelmed by it? If so, are there great support options that can help you get on the right track and resolve issues? If the platform you're using is unclear and you're unable to get assistance you should look into different options.

  User experience  

Your community online thrives when your audience is engaging in a meaningful way, and it's extremely important to consider what experience users have when using the platform.

What is it from the perspective of a user? Does it seem easy to use and navigate?

If you are struggling to grasp, that your neighbors will as well.

Try it out from your audience's point of viewpoint and then decide if it's something they're happy engaging with, or whether it could be enhanced.

  Budget  

A few Facebook Group alternatives are more costly than others, and you should choose an option that's within your budget.

The more expensive option doesn't necessarily mean better--check the above factors before deciding between one or the other.

The last thing you want is to have an expensive system whose design and user experience are difficult to figure out.

What are the top online community alternatives to Facebook Groups?

There are a variety of options on the market that let you create your own online community that isn't on Facebook We bring you the top seven best alternatives to Facebook Groups.

Let's dig in!

1. DISCORD

The platform that was initially designed as a place for players has evolved into an extremely popular platform for community building.

Discord offers a variety of great tools that can help you build your community outside of Facebook like safe public and private channels, custom-made bots to interact with your members and admins, instant messaging between admins and members audio and video calls, as well as custom-designed permissions that differentiate between administrators and users.

You can also use the app for no cost, or upgrade to $99.99 per year for more features.

However, setting up the Discord community can be a difficult process, and you'll be confronted with a lengthy learning curve which could delay your online community-building process.

Your Discord server is also able to coexist with other communities on the internet that use this service, which means that you'll have to make sure you stand out so your audience engages with your content rather than your competitors.

In terms of branding Discord has a darker theme that may or not work the aesthetic of your company. However, it isn't able to be customized.

In addition, you cannot cost your customers for the use of your Discord server. If you'd like to do this, you need create a payment page on your own.

All in all, Discord is a great alternative to Facebook community groups, offering greater functionality and more features. However, if your goal is to monetize your audience and grow your company, Discord might not provide the features you need.

  2. Reddit

With over 50 million users interacting on Reddit each day, the Reddit site is an enormous contender when it comes to building an online community outside of Facebook.

Reddit has a forum-like design, where each topic gets allocated to a specific category, referred to as a subreddit.

One of the best things about Reddit is that it's totally cost-free, and you can set up an open or restricted subreddit, and it's straightforward to create and use .

Similar to Discord the platform isn't equipped with customizing options for your brand and also monetization options to your users. Similar to Facebook, you don't fully own your subreddit.

This means your subreddit can be removed if the platform's management believes that you or any of your users have violated rules through posting or commenting.

Subreddits are a huge part of the website is quite high too, so creating content to engage the audience could be an uphill struggle.

Even though the platform is completely free, you will need to purchase an advertisement-free version.

Reddit is a great option to build a completely open online community. However, similar to Discord isn't an ideal choice if you're looking to monetize your community online.

  3. MIGHTY Networks

Mighty Networks allows you to build an online community and sell your courses in the same place.

On this tool, you'll be able to build free or paid communities for your followers, use personalized branding, offer an app for mobile devices, as well as create private zones for your members to interact.

Mighty Networks also allows for live streaming, group and private chat messages, as well as an unlimitable number of moderators and members.

However, this platform doesn't provide a no-cost plan and transaction fees are charged over the monthly fee.

If you're interested in online-based course options, you'll need to sign up for the Business Plansfor $119 per month, and should you require any other devices, like payment processing, email marketing, a reliable site builder, or landing page maker--you might have be paying extra for these features.

Mighty Networks plans--and the transaction charges that come with them--are their free Trial ($0/month with 5percent transaction fee), Community Plan ($39/month with 3% transaction fee) and Business Plan ($119/month with the transaction fee of 2%) as well as Mighty Pro (custom prices).

This platform is a great way to build an online community. However, you need to be mindful of the transaction costs since they could quickly add up as your community gets bigger.

  4. TRIBE.SO

Tribe is an online community-building tool designed to be used via websites for businesses or via phone applications.

Some of the benefits of Tribe is that you are able to make a choice to set up a public or private one, connect it with various other applications (such like Slack, Google Analytics, or Intercom, to name some), and adapt it to match the style of your business. In addition, it comes with a great variety of community management tools.

Tribe lets members post content using different categories tags.

It is possible to join Tribe for free to the first 100 users.

Once you've completed that, you'll have the option to pick from your Plus plan($59/month) which allows up to 2,500 members , and increase the number of apps available; or their Premium plan($299/month) that allows you to remove the Tribe branding and increase membership to 25,000 users.

One major downside is Tribe does not allow immediate messaging. This makes it harder for administrators and members to get in touch with each the other.

Similar to the options above, Tribe doesn't offer any options for paying members to your community on the internet or for selling digital items to members.

This means the monetization options Tribe gives you will require you to solve these issues and set up payment methods that aren't part of the platform. Yikes! Another new tool to be added to your arsenal of tech tools.

Tribe is an ideal choice for established businesses that are looking to grow their community online because it's focused on building brand loyalty.

But it's not well suited to reaching out to your target audience, which can slow your efforts to build a community, especially if you're just starting up.

  5. PODIA

Podia can be described as an online marketplace designed for creators and a great alternative to Facebook Groups.

With Podia it is possible to control how you interact with the customers, give free and paid subscriptions, as well as make sales of digital items.

Podia also supports direct messaging web development, direct messaging, as well as marketing via email, which makes it easier to create connections and integrate your business with your online community.

Since Podia incorporates payment methods, you don't have to worry about having to create them separately. This helps you monetize your website and get the most of your online community.

Because you can create your site in Podia starting from scratch and you can have a 100% customizable platform to match your branding.

With Podia it is possible to use their no-cost plan but you get charged an 8% fee on transactions that are made on their platform.

Paid plans do not charge a transaction fee and currently include plans like the Mover Plan ($39/month), Shaker Plan ($75/month), and Earthquaker Plan ($166/month).

If you'd like to gain access to webinars, affiliate support and more You must move to Shaker Plan.

A further drawback of Podia is the fact that it provides a template for a product that has limited customization options so you'll have to spend much time making your own resources.

Podia doesn't offer an overview of the progress users are making with your courses either--you can check users' progress individually, which is mega time-consuming--making it harder for you to see at a glance whether your audience is engaging with your training.

If you need help in gaining the most of Podia, keep in mind that you'll only have one Q&A session every week, which may not be enough to help you set up your community online and make the most of its power.

  6. HIVEBRITE

Hivebrite is a platform for community building which permits a huge number of members to use it.

This service offers you an extremely customizable experience and live feeds. It also gives you different access rights for your members, either paid or free memberships. You also have the ability to add additional features as your group expands and evolves.

More than 500 organizations are currently using Hivebrite as their service provider, and their customer support has been described as fantastic.

However, Hivebrite doesn't display its prices on its website but reportedly starts at $500/month. To find out more specific pricing information along with other details you must sign up for a demo.

Hivebrite is a good choice for companies with large budgets to create an online community that they can profit from, but due to its expensive price and the technical complexity, it might not be a great option for creators who are independent and smaller businesses.

  7.

allows you to create secure public and private communities, make the platform more customizable to fit your branding and even set up paid subscriptions. In addition, following the recent acquisition of the most popular community-building platform Vibely, it will soon feature live calls, challenges, leaderboards, accountability tools, real-time chat, and much more!

Y you can connect your company's web-based communitiesthanks to 's custom domain tool as well as website builder. These allow you to add background videos and sales pages as well as pop-up forms among other elements.

consolidates all of the different integrations you need for the creation, growth and then monetize an effective online community. It will save you cash while allowing you to easily ramp up the amount of money you earn.

With , the monthly fee you pay covers everything you need to run your company and run your online presence, which means you won't need to utilize multiple platforms to manage and expand your company.

Three payment options are available:

• The Basic Plan($119/month) provides an online store that sells at least three products, and three pipelines. It comes with an unlimited number of landing pages and marketing emails. You can have up to 1,000 active members.
• The Growth Plan($159/month) comprises a website which can sell up to 15 products and pipelines. It also increases the active user count up to 10,000. You can also create 10 administrators and you can remove 's logo.
• The Pro Plan($319/month) includes three websites, which can offer up to 100 products and pipelines. It is possible to have up to 20,000 active users as well as 25 administrators.

is an excellent alternative an excellent alternative Facebook Groups for community owners, course creators, and coaches. Additionally, it's an affordable method of running your company, since you only have to pay a single monthly fee for a full suite of software for business growth.

Which is the best alternative to Facebook Groups?

Online communities are great spaces that allow you to build your branding identity, distribute audience-focused content, and show your customers and prospects that you're interested in the opinions of those who are part of them.

Be aware of your target customers' needs and preferences could help you create strategies that work for your brand; they're in the minds of your potential clients that means you'll be able to connect your product and information to your audience accurately.

You'll only know what you want and need from an online community-building tool. However, getting acquainted with options is an excellent way to ensure you make an informed decision.

That said, most online business owners appreciate being able to access a variety of instruments to build and profit from their community all at a single location and with no hidden fees.

It offers an array of business software together in a neat bundle and an array of tools like product templates and free webinars that will make your life easier.

What's the most exciting part? You're able to test it free for 14 days to determine if it's the perfect choice for your needs.

Try for free for 14 Days

It has everything your online business needs. Everything you need in one location.        Yes! Let's go!