The best platforms for running a community and why?
Hey hackers 👋
I’m new to the community building projects and wanted to know from your experience what the best platforms are and why.
I’ve been part of communities on Facebook before and most recently slack- which obviously have pros and cons- but I want to know what others are out there and why you’d prefer X over Y.
Thanks a bunch ✨
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I am working on habitate.io, it's super simple to use - customizable to your branding needs and more importantly integrated to your website. The traffic and data belongs to you.
You can check out the demo experience at community.habitate.io
Would love to know more about your needs, your story and make it happen! I am up for a quick chat.
I like it! Thanks for sharing - I'll hit you up about it :)
I'm trying to build a new community right now, and am having the same struggle you are. I've been part of a lot of communities, and pretty much everyone defaults to Slack, or Discord. In my opinion these are horrible tools for being the main component of a community. It's way too noisy!
Ideally, I'd like two things to make my community.
1: A form tool. Basically a white label IndieHackers software.
2: A way to make Notion pages secure and only accessible to logged in users.
Hey! I'm actually working on something that might be useful to you. Would you mind if I messaged you privately about it? What would be the best way to reach you?
Sure thing. You can find my email by clicking on my profile. (Don't want to post it here to get scraped by bots)
Hey @shanefromfargo, you can give habitate.io a try maybe - I am working on it. Soon after you create a community - you will get an email from me helping you customize it.
For demo experience, you can check out - https://community.habitate.io
Would love to collaborate with you on this! Let me know. I am up for a zoom coffee chat.
Thanks Shane! This is exactly the issue I have. It's way too noisy, gets overpopulated when not controlled and you just can't really find what you're looking for a lot of the times. Not to mention the missed opportunities for connections... the worst :(
Those 2 things are very interesting. Definitely going to do more research on these and hit u up if I find/build anything to solve them.
Personally, I'm using Circle and I've asked for feedback and people quite like it. It's nice it's being actively developed and you can host it on your own domain. Some bugs and quirks but overall, it's good.
For the communities I'm in, I simply don't visit Slack often because I find it to be too much. Same with Discord. Those are ones I visit less often, though they seem really active. Facebook groups are where I spend most of my time, practically.
Circle keeps popping up quite a bit and it's the first time I'm hearing about it! Thanks Monica, I'm gonna give it some research time.
Also a question about you spending more time on Facebook groups - Is it the simplicity and it being not as active as the mentioned?
And are you an active Instagram user?
Thanks, I'm trying to see something :)
I'm not an active instagram user, no. I think with Facebook it's just that feeds from all the groups are in one place so it's easier to kinda keep up with, when you're in many groups.
Got it. Thanks for sharing that
Looked into Disciple and some others but went with building my own in the end, my requirements are pretty heavy. Needed stuff designed to protect identity and registration.
Ahh cool! Real hacker out here 🙃
Depends on where/ who your target audience is... what do they use?
I'm on Discord and Slack, because that's where my audience is- if you know yours is on FB, then just use FB. But if they're not on FB, you're not necessarily going to convince them to come until you can provide enough value to get them there.
This specific audience very heavily use Instagram and Pinterest, so I'm not sure if that changes where their communal activities would be on the internet. Perhaps Facebook because it's Instagram's parent company but I don't think they'd switch to FB from Instagram because of FB's usability. Instagram is visual and easy to maneuver.
I guess what I'm questioning now based on what's come up from reading your comment is -Where does an audience who uses Instagram (heavily) go to gather as a community? What's the platform equal to Instagram for community? Because honestly personally I don't think it's FB
Best way to start, imho, is with an email list and a blog/website. Build up your audience, get to know your people, then it will be much easier to make a decision on what tool(s) to use.
This is the avenue I’ve decided to take actually. Currently building out a website to get an email list going and then move on to next steps-most likely testing out which one works for my audience and field. Realised you never actually know until you’re deep in the woods tbh. Thanks Rosie :)
I currently run a mentorship academy on https://mightynetworks.com and looking at https://tribe.so/ for another project
Would you be willing to give habitate.io a shot? You can try the demo experience at https://community.habitate.io
I am up for a chat!
I built my own platform, from scratch on https://midnight.pub. I know it's not always an option to build from scratch, but it's a nice change for people visiting your community. You also get to build something that's exactly tailored for your audience. Happy to help if you have any question!
The interface is rad! What language you using to build?
Thanks a lot! It's built with React (using NextJS)
Nice!
Hey I made two resources for community builders a while ago. The first one is tools, the other is great examples of online / digital communities.
Community Tools
https://www.notion.so/sxhx/f66249d79a0746d486de52c52766a371?v=d7be9c71bfda4e009dd1107ad6294581
Best Communities
https://www.notion.so/sxhx/A-Community-Resource-re-Community-ddaf5cce08314eb8a9feaa50514e5d5b
Noice! Thanks for this Sergio such a helpful piece of work.
Also you might wanna go through the thread to add some of the mentioned communities IHs are building too 🙂
That is awesome! Might I ask to see our Crowdstack.com in there too?
Hey! Nice collection. It would be nice to see our name, habitate.io on the list too.
Just added you and sent some feedback via your help desk
I'm happily using Discord for Mailing List Hackers. I think that for small communities, chat like Discord/Slack makes a ton of sense to get people engaged and coming back every day.
Circle is super interesting. I would love to get some of my community on there for long-form discussions, but I think it dictates having some core members ready to start contributing. Seems like a great alternative to Facebook groups where you're locked in to how Facebook decides to share your content with your members.
Thanks for the explanation. I’m really liking Circle the more I learn about it. Also kinda reminds me of that movie with Tom Hanks of the similar name, I think 💭 the one about a Tech company that operates in a communal Silicon Valley fashion but is likened to a man eerie tech dystopia... anyhooo I think it might’ve be a better alt to FB
Have you tried to look for a solution on Virtual Mojito - I’d recommend Discord, Commsor, Circle and Might Network as well.
I haven’t no- need to do that! Thanks for the recommendations.
I love Discourse it's fast or your can try something new like
https://forem.dev/ from dev.to
Nice, thanks! Isn't dev.to it's own platform though? Does it allow you to develop your own community platform or forum?
yup they opensource dev.to into forem
got it, thank you
Great thread.
I'm working on Guildflow. It is targeted at technical meetup communities and like some of these others has more data access and privacy controls. Check out the 70 second introduction video. Thanks!
https://guildflow.com/
Super cool just signed up! Thanks for sharing so others can benefit too :)
Community is the people. It's not the product. If you have an existing audience/followers who trusts you on what you do then you can start on literally any platform irrespective of chat or forum based.
Also, it depends on lot of factors.
In Slack, conversations get buried quickly if you miss something.
In Discourse, Circle and Forum based platforms, that's not the case. Interesting conversations can be pinned and tagged for clarity.
The primary reason 70-80% of communities are on Slack and Facebook is because everyone uses it already and for people to join any new community which exists on these platforms is a no-brainer.
There is a new trend where I've seen platforms are being build which is a mix of forum and chat based approach like Circle, Tribe.
You’re right, it is the people and where they’ll flock to for sure.
Thanks for the clarification and if you get any names for those new combo style platforms please do share on this thread :)
Been looking in to Mighty Networks and it looks very useful. Have not tried it though.
Facebook groups has been a great platform to grow our community.
The thing is, people already on Facebook and they are on it most of the time, having them sign-up or join yet another platform to stay up to date and be part of a community can be challenging, unless you could bring the community right into your app!
That's exactly the problem I'm having with FB groups right now. The people I surveyed are actually tired of being part of so many FB groups that revolve around similar things which makes me hesitant to continue pursuing a community through FB.
Very interesting insight 🤔 I would have thought it was the opposite as they’re already on the platform so they’d wanna just join anyways and not sign up elsewhere.
Thanks Leo!
Just out of curiosity (Im building a related product), why not use Facebook groups?
I know you have already mentioned it, put i am a fan of Facebook groups still. Have a couple of different ones with 1k +. What I like is there is leas barriers as most already have a facebook account and they seam to be pushing new products into groups.
Having a FB community makes the community expansion job much easier !
That’s cool didn’t know they had new products going. Also, are yours all paid communities or free?
Thanks :)
Yeah more like extra features in the group such as chat rooms, better insights and learning blocks. All free groups that compliment other sites or projects.
Got it! Thanks for your help Ryan 👍