They may be monetizing your content or using it to steal your audience and outrank you on Google. As a result, you get less traffic and make less money.

There are a few steps you can take to make it more difficult for others to steal your content.

For example, you can protect your content by restricting access to subscribers only. Or you can search out stolen content and have it taken down.

In this article, we’ll show you how to protect your website’s intellectual property, such as your written content, images, and videos.

How Does Content Theft Hurt Your Bottom Line?

You work hard to create an effective content plan for your website that will attract the right visitors to your website. These visitors allow you to make money online as they purchase products and services, click ads or affiliate links, pay subscriptions, or make donations.

Unauthorized copying and scraping of your content can hurt your income and your reputation as a creator, brand, or business.

With that being said, let’s take a look at the best ways to protect your content in WordPress. Here are the topics we’ll cover:

1. Copyright or Trademark Your Content, Business Name and Logo

When you create a WordPress website, your content is automatically covered by copyright laws. This protects your intellectual property, brand, and business against legal challenges, plagiarism, and unauthorized use.

You should clearly display a copyright notice with a dynamic date on your website. This will make others aware that your content is copyrighted and may discourage them from stealing it.

Displaying a copyright notice will also help if you need to file a DCMA complaint to take down your stolen content. Later in the article, we will show you how to do this.

You can also apply for copyright registration online. For detailed information on that, check out our guide on how to trademark and copyright your blog’s name and logo.

2. Make Your WordPress RSS Feed More Difficult to Scrape

Your website’s RSS feed lets users keep up to date with your latest posts, but it can also be used by thieves to scrape your content. Luckily, there are a few changes you can make to your feed to protect your content.

First, you can configure your RSS feed to include only an excerpt instead of the entire article. Without the full text, content thieves will have nothing to steal.

You can find this setting on the Settings » Reading page of your dashboard. Simply select the ‘Excerpt’ option and then click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

The second thing you can do is delay posts from appearing in the RSS feed right away.

This will give time for Google to index the post on your own website and see you as the authority before the content can be stolen and published on other websites. As a result, your search rankings shouldn’t be penalized.

The easiest way to do this is using the pre-configured ‘Delay Posts in RSS Feeds’ snippet in the free WPCode plugin.

For more ideas, see our quick and easy tips to optimize your WordPress RSS feed.

3. Password Protect Your WordPress Content

One way to protect your most important content is to password-protect it. This lets you make some pages private while the rest of your site can be accessed by anyone.

WordPress comes with built-in settings to allow you to password-protect any post or page. From the content editor, simply change the Visibility setting from ‘Public’ to ‘Password Protected’ and then enter a strong password for the page.

Once you publish or update the page, it will be protected so that only users who know the password can view it.

Once they enter their password, the page contents will be revealed.

You can learn more about protected pages and how to customize them in our guide on password-protected pages in WordPress.

But there are problems with this approach. First, it can become difficult to manage all of the different passwords for protected pages. And second, once you give someone a password, you can’t control who they share it with.

You can use a free password plugin like PPWP or Passster to have more control when password-protecting pages. For example, they allow you to create a list of passwords to unlock content and expire passwords after a certain number of uses or a specific time interval.

With Passster you can also generate unique links that automatically unlock protected content and share them with certain users.

You can learn about these plugins in our guide on the best WordPress content protection plugins.

4. Restrict Content to Registered Users

Another way to protect valuable web content is to restrict it to registered users. This provides a better experience than using passwords because once a user logs in to your website, they will automatically be able to access premium content without constantly entering passwords.

A simple and affordable way to do this is with the free plan of Restrict Content Pro. This plugin allows you to create different access levels, accept payments, and restrict content by level or user role.

You can find step-by-step instructions on how to set up the plugin in our guide on how to restrict content to registered users in WordPress.

However, some very specific websites, such as membership and eLearning sites, restrict content to registered users. If you have a site like this, you may have a better experience by installing a plugin like MemberPress, which is designed for that exact type of website.

You can learn how to create these types of sites by following one of the guides below:

• Ultimate Guide to Creating a WordPress Membership Site
• How to Create and Sell Online Courses with WordPress (Step by Step)
• How to Create a Client Portal in WordPress
• How to Create a Paywall in WordPress (with Preview Options)
• How to Create a Pay-Per-View Site with WordPress

5. Restrict Content to Newsletter Subscribers

Alternatively, you can restrict content to newsletter subscribers. Offering access to locked premium content is a great incentive for users to subscribe to your email list, and it also keeps the restricted content out of the hands of potential thieves.

OptinMonster is the best lead generation plugin for WordPress. Its excellent content-locking feature makes it the best choice when using exclusive content to grow your email list.

When this setting is enabled, users will be able to see the first part of a post but will be prevented from viewing the rest of the content by showing a content-locking inline campaign. Once the user subscribes to the newsletter, the content is unlocked.

We show you how to configure OptinMonster for this task in our guide on how to add content locking in WordPress.

6. Disable Right Click and Text Selection

You can discourage manual copying of your content by disabling right-click and text selection on your website. However, this provides a poor user experience to anyone who wants to copy your text for other reasons, such as sharing your post on social media.

It also won’t stop tech-savvy users from copying your work because they can view your site’s source code or use the Inspect tool to copy a web page.

So, we only recommend you use this method if you feel it’s truly needed to combat content theft.

You can learn more in our guide on how to prevent text selection and copy/paste in WordPress.

We also have a guide on how to add no right-click on WordPress images that is incredibly useful.

7. Disable Hotlinking of Images

When someone copies content from your website, the actual images in the post are not copied, just the URLs to where to load those images.

This means that while the images are displayed on the other person’s website, they are, in fact, being loaded from your site. This is known as hotlinking, and you can stop it by adding a code snippet to your .htaccess file.

You can learn how to do this in our guide on how to prevent image theft in WordPress.

After that, the other websites will no longer show your images. Visitors will only see the alt text for each image, which looks like this.

This gives anyone reading your stolen content a poor user experience, which can, in turn, damage the thief’s reputation with visitors and search engines.

8. Add Watermarks to Images

If you have a photography website or portfolio, then you can protect your images by adding a watermark. A watermark is a semi-transparent logo, text, or pattern overlaid on top of your images.

Watermarks allow your users to view your photos, but they cannot download and use unmarked files without buying them.

This can prevent image theft by making it difficult to use your images without permission.

You can learn more in our guide on how to automatically add a watermark to images in WordPress.

9. Set a Canonical URL

A canonical URL is a WordPress feature that shows search engines the official (or canonical) version of a web page. This shows Google which page to prioritize in its rankings and can set you up as an authority on the topic.

Setting a canonical URL won’t stop others from stealing your content. But it will help search engines recognize your website as the original source, even if scraped content exists elsewhere.

This can potentially give your website a ranking advantage over any content thieves. It will also let Google know which article to index if your site has duplicate content.

The easiest way to properly set up a canonical URL is using All in One SEO (AIOSEO), the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market, used by over 3 million websites.

After you install and configure AIOSEO, you can simply scroll down under the content area of the WordPress block editor to find the AIOSEO Settings area. Once there, click the ‘Advanced’ tab.

Here you will find a field where you can type the canonical URL. In most cases, this will be the URL of the article you are editing.

10. Scan the Web for Content Theft

You probably won’t know if your content has been scraped or stolen unless you look for it. You can do this using a number of online tools.

One way to do that is using Google Alerts. Simply enter the name of your website and your URL, or use a portion of your article.

If you finish every blog post with the same call to action or other text, then you can set up alerts for that text and get notifications whenever it appears online.

Another tool is Copyscape. Simply enter the URL of your website, post, or page to see if it has been copied and stolen.

A third tool is Grammarly, the popular online grammar-checking tool.

The premium version has a built-in plagiarism checker. It can run scans to find matches online to your pasted content.

For detailed instructions on how to use these tools, see our guide on how to easily find and remove stolen content in WordPress.

11. Block IP Addresses

If you find that someone is stealing your content, you can block their IP address from accessing your website. However, this can be tricky because hackers typically use a wide range of random IP addresses from around the world.

That’s why we recommend you use a web application firewall (WAF) like Sucuri. This kind of plugin monitors your website traffic and automatically blocks common security threats before they reach your site.

However, advanced users can find the suspicious IP address by looking at the ‘Raw Access Logs’ in their web host’s cPanel dashboard. Take note of any IP addresses with an unusually high number of requests.

Next, you should check those IP addresses using an online IP lookup tool to find out more about it. You can block the addresses you are confident belong to content thieves by adding them to your site’s .htaccess file like this:

Deny from 123.456.789

You can add multiple IP addresses on the same line, separated by spaces.

For detailed instructions, see our guide on how to block IP addresses in WordPress.

12. Issue a DMCA Takedown

Finally, you can send a request to Google and other search engines to remove your stolen content on the internet in order to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

But you should do this with care. Filing a report requires solid proof, and a false report can get your account in trouble.

There are a few ways to file a DMCA complaint, and we recommend Google Search Console.

First, you need to link your WordPress site with Google Search Console. You can learn how to do this in our guide on how to add your WordPress site to Google Search Console.

After that, you can use the Google Search Console Copyright Removal Tool.

Simply click the ‘+ Create a report’ button and select ‘New DMCA report’ from the drop-down.

This will take you to a screen that explains what happens next and lets you add the relevant information such as your contact information, the posts that were stolen, and the URLs where you found them.

An alternate tool is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) tool which helps you both find and report stolen content.

You can learn more about both of these methods and much more in our guide on how to easily find and remove stolen content in WordPress.

Bonus: Take Advantage of Stolen Content

As you can see, protecting your WordPress content is a lot of work, and it becomes almost impossible to keep track as your blog grows.

That’s why, at WPBeginner, we also try to take advantage of websites that are stealing our content. If someone is going to post our content on their own site, then we try to make sure we can make money or gain traffic from it.

For example, we make internal linking an important practice. That means that any stolen content will contain many links that bring readers back to our own website. These links are also counted as valuable backlinks, which improves our SEO.

We also automatically add affiliate links to our content. These links will appear in the scraped content, so the content thieves help us make more money.

Finally, you can use the All in One SEO plugin to add a banner promoting your products and services to the footer of your RSS feed. The banners will also appear in the stolen content, giving your site free promotion.

We use the same method to add a disclaimer at the bottom of posts in our RSS feeds. This appears on the scraper’s site as well, letting users know that the site is stealing our content and signaling to search engines that we are the authority.

For further details, see the ‘Take Advantage of Content Scrapers’ section of our beginner’s guide on preventing blog content scraping in WordPress.

Expert Guides Related to WordPress Monetization

Now that you know how to protect content in WordPress, you may like to see some other guides on making money online and protecting your investment:

• Proven Ways to Make Money Online Blogging with WordPress
• How to Make $5000 of Passive Income Every Month in WordPress
• Low Cost and Easy Online Business Ideas that Make Money
• How Much is My Website Worth (REAL Value)
• How to Sell Your Website or Online Business
• How to Easily Find and Remove Stolen Content in WordPress
• Beginner’s Guide to Preventing Blog Content Scraping in WordPress
• Ways to Prevent Image Theft in WordPress
• Best WordPress Content Protection Plugins

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post 12 Ways to Protect Content in WordPress (Ultimate Guide) first appeared on WPBeginner.

In our experience with using WordPress maintenance services, they are typically worth the investment. However, many small business owners and website admins wonder how much website maintenance and support costs and whether they can afford it.

That’s a tricky question because the price depends on a few things. These include the types of maintenance, the level of technical support you get, and the size of your website.

In this article, we will look at different WordPress maintenance costs and how much you should pay.

We will cover website maintenance costs in detail, but here’s a quick overview of how much it will cost depending on the type of website you have and the level of maintenance required:

What Is WordPress Maintenance?

Before we dive into costs, let’s talk about what website maintenance actually means.

Imagine your WordPress website is like a well-oiled machine. Maintenance means taking care of that machine with regular tasks to keep it running smoothly.

Here are some key things included in WordPress maintenance:

• Updates: Just like your phone needing software updates, WordPress, your themes, and plugins need updates to fix bugs and improve security.
• Backups: Regularly backing up your website is like having a spare tire for your car. If something goes wrong, then you can restore your site from a backup.
• Security: It is crucial to keep hackers out. Maintenance includes tasks like checking for security vulnerabilities and keeping your login information safe.
• Performance: A slow website means a poor user experience, a drop in rankings, and lost revenue. Maintenance helps optimize your site for speed, giving visitors a good experience.

What Affects the Price of WordPress Maintenance?

A lot of factors can impact your site’s maintenance costs.

A simple personal WordPress blog with a few pages won’t need as much care as a giant online store with hundreds of products. The more features and things your website has, the more maintenance it usually needs.

Updates are another factor. These updates can be for WordPress itself, the theme that gives your site its design, and any plugins you use for special features. If you need updates frequently, then they can add to the cost.

Plus, the level of support you need for your site can also impact maintenance costs. For instance, if you require custom development, the cost will go up because many companies charge for the number of development hours.

Similarly, having multiple support channels can also affect the price. If you require maintenance through different mediums, like live chat, email, phone calls, or video conference, then maintenance costs will typically be higher.

Besides that, it is also important to keep your website safe from hackers. Some WordPress websites might just need basic security measures, while others might need web application firewalls (WAF). The more advanced your security needs, the more maintenance might cost.

That said, let’s see the amount you’d have to pay for maintaining your WordPress website.

How Much Does WordPress Maintenance Cost?

Now you know some of the factors that can impact the price of website maintenance, let’s break down rough estimates of the costs for different types of websites:

• Personal Website: $10-$30 per month or free. This is a pretty basic setup, so maintenance costs are low. You can do the maintenance yourself and only have to pay for tools and plugins. Most of these plugins are also free to use, so the costs can be even lower.
• Professional Blog: $30-$100 per month. These blogs might have more features and need more frequent updates. Plus, you might need to invest in a good security tool that secures your site or purchase on-demand development services for custom features or website design.
• Business Website: $100-$300 per month. Business websites often have contact forms, appointment bookings, and other features that require more care. This means you’d need regular updates, backups, strong security, custom development, and continuous uptime monitoring.
• eCommerce Store: $300-$1000+ per month. Online stores have a lot going on, with payments, product listings, and security needing close attention. The maintenance costs can be higher for larger eCommerce stores, which might need speed optimization, stronger security, custom coding, and constant monitoring.

That said, let’s look at the different types of maintenance approaches you can choose from.

Which Type of Maintenance Should You Choose?

Your WordPress website maintenance costs will also depend on the approach you take to maintaining your site.

DIY Approach

For instance, if you have a personal blog or a new website, then you can take the DIY (do it yourself) approach.

You can simply maintain the site yourself, use free plugins and tools to create backups, run malware scans, manually update plugins, themes, and core files, and keep the overall costs low.

For more details, you may like to see our guide on the WordPress maintenance tasks you need to do regularly.

Freelance Developers

You can also hire freelancers for specific tasks.

For example, if you need help debugging a technical issue or maintaining your site’s database, then you can reach out to a developer or an experienced professional.

The cost of hiring a freelancer depends on your project’s complexity and size, the developer’s experience level, and the overall budget. As an estimate, freelancers can charge anywhere between $25 and $100+ per hour for maintaining your website.

There are many websites freelance websites where you can connect with developers and other WordPress experts.

For instance, Codeable is a site that helps WordPress developers find work. Unlike other platforms, they carefully watch the project-to-developer ratio, ensuring that all freelancers have the opportunity to land jobs.

For more options, please see our complete list of the best places to hire WordPress developers.

Maintenance Agencies

If you are looking for a team of experts to handle all the maintenance for you, then there you can pick a WordPress maintenance agency.

By outsourcing your website maintenance to professionals, you will save a lot of time and can focus on growing your business. Meanwhile, a team of experts will ensure your website is up to date, gets regular backups, is safe from cyberattacks, and there is no downtime.

The cost of hiring a WordPress support agency depends on the services you want. A basic maintenance package can cost between $60 and $100 per month. If you require on-demand development hours, advanced security options, and other maintenance services, the cost will increase to between $500 and $1000+ per month.

That said, one of the best and most affordable maintenance agencies you can choose is WPBeginner Pro WordPress Maintenance Services.

We have over 16 years of experience in the industry and have helped over 100,000 users with WordPress. Our team of experts will manage all of your website maintenance behind the scenes, including security monitoring, cloud backups, and more.

Besides that, we also offer emergency support services, so you can quickly get your site fixed in case something goes wrong.

We hope this article helped you learn about WordPress maintenance costs and how much you should pay. You may also want to see our guide on how to make a disaster recovery plan and crucial WordPress maintenance tasks to perform regularly.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post WordPress Maintenance Costs – How Much Should You Pay? first appeared on WPBeginner.

Whether you’re looking to create a social space for your customers, a forum for like-minded individuals, or a support network for your products and services, choosing the right community platform is crucial.

On WPBeginner, we have used Facebook for a long time for our WPBeginner Engage group, which has 98,000+ members. We have also more recently been experimenting with platforms like BuddyBoss for creating social networks and using MemberPress to power our video tutorial site.

This has helped us gain valuable insights into which community platforms work best for different needs. That’s why we now have a deeper understanding of community management and the strengths and weaknesses of different tools.

In this article, we will share our list of the best online community platforms, highlighting their pros and cons. We have gone out of our way to test lots of different options for all kind of needs so that you can find the best one for your online project.

If you are in a hurry, then just take a quick look at our top expert picks to make a decision.

How We Test and Review Online Community Platforms

To give you the best recommendations, we tested and reviewed popular community platforms.

We wanted to give you a list of well-rounded and reliable tools, so we paid special attention to the following criteria:

Ease of Use: We have prioritized user-friendly community platforms that come with an easy navigation system and allow you to customize your platform according to your community’s needs.

Features: An ideal community platform should include discussion boards, forums, gamification, polls, surveys, and other interactive elements. It should also allow for the easy creation, organization, and sharing of content.

Reliability: We have only recommended tools that we have tested ourselves on real websites. We also examined each platform’s loading speed, uptime, and scalability for growing businesses.

Integration Capabilities: For this showcase, we have explored each platform’s capabilities to integrate with email marketing services, CRMs, social media platforms, and analytics services.

Support: We have investigated the quality of customer support for each community platform. We also checked the tutorials, guides, forums, and knowledge bases offered by each tool.

Having said that, let’s take a look at our list of the best online community platforms with their pros and cons.

1. BuddyBoss

BuddyBoss is the best online community platform on the internet. It allows you to transform your site into a social media platform, build forums, create social groups, introduce new activities for users, and more.

The plugin comes with a comprehensive suite of features to help you create an interactive space for your members.

For instance, users can follow each other in the community, send private messages, and view activity feeds of different members.

You can even create private or hidden groups for focused discussions and collaboration.

In addition, you can create different membership levels in your community, integrate with learning management systems to sell courses, and even sell your merchandise alongside community memberships.

For more details, see our tutorial on how to create your own private community with WordPress.

In our opinion, BuddyBoss stands out as the best platform for building a social media network. We particularly like that it allows you to create a custom-branded mobile app for Android and iOS devices, which can be a game-changer for growing your community.

This, paired with its seamless integration with WordPress, makes BuddyBoss the ideal choice for building thriving online communities.

Pros

• BuddyBoss shows real time notifications to keep members engaged and informed about activity within the community.
• It allows users to share photos, videos, and other media content.
• We particularly liked the tool’s gamification elements, such as points, badges, and leaderboards.
• It allows users to create profiles with their details and images.
• BuddyBoss supports various membership models, including free, paid, and tiered memberships.
• The plugin can integrate with tools like WooCommerce for eCommerce capabilities, Zoom for broadcasting and meetings, and page builders like Elementor for customization.

Cons

• The plugin has a free plan. However, to unlock some of the features, you will need the pro version.

Why we recommend BuddyBoss: Overall, BuddyBoss is the best online community platform because it’s user-friendly, scalable, and comes with a lot of social features. Plus, the plugin works right in your WordPress dashboard, so you won’t need to set up any integrations.

2. MemberPress

MemberPress is the best WordPress membership plugin on the market. It also offers a number of features to build a thriving online community around your membership site.

The plugin lets you create different membership tiers with varying access levels and benefits for members. Once you have done that, you can build an exclusive forum to discuss topics, share knowledge, and build relationships.

You can also allow users to create their own groups within the community to foster engagement. Additionally, users can view each other’s profiles and remain updated about recent activity, posts, and discussions.

Over the past few years, we have been using MemberPress on our video membership site. It has played an important part in managing our subscription-based model and creating a sense of exclusivity for our members.

We particularly appreciate the ease of setting up different membership tiers with varying access levels to our video content library.

Plus, we believe that MemberPress can be a great option for creating a strong community among subscribers through features like private forums and member directories.

Pros

• MemberPress can integrate with BuddyBoss to boost the functionality of your community.
• If you want to earn some money while building a community, then you can restrict community features to paid members only.
• When working with the plugin, we were impressed by its drip content feature. It lets you release content gradually to members based on their membership level.
• The tool also comes with different moderation features and lets you create guidelines for community behavior.

Cons

• MemberPress has a free plan, but most of the features are locked in it.
• It is not a conventional community platform, so it may lack some of the features offered by other tools in the list.

Why we recommend MemberPress: If you already have a membership site and want to boost conversions, then we believe MemberPress is the choice for you. It allows you to create membership levels and an exclusive community for users who join your group. This can encourage free users to become full-time members.

For more details, you can see our complete MemberPress review.

3. Circle

Circle is another amazing tool for creating online communities in just a few minutes. It lets you build a huge community and then organize it using ‘Spaces’ for broad topics and ‘Groups’ for more focused discussions within those spaces.

Users can also personalize their profiles with bios, avatars, and social media links, fostering a sense of connection. Using the built-in tools, they can create text, images, and video content to share with the community.

Other than that, Circle allows direct messaging and even lets you host live video sessions for announcements, Q&A sessions, or interactive workshops.

Pros

• We love that Circle lets you create and manage events, both in-person and virtual, to bring your community together. This is a unique feature not available in many other tools.
• You can add interactive polls and surveys within your community.
• Circle creates a centralized activity feed for each user showcasing recent posts, discussions, and events.
• It lets you create different membership levels to generate revenue. You can also charge fees for specific events or offer exclusive events to paid members.
• The tool lets you add, remove, or edit member profiles and manage their access levels within the community. You can also manage discussions, comments, and content with built-in moderation tools.

Cons

• Compared to platforms like BuddyBoss, Circle offers less flexibility for customizing the look and feel of your community.
• In our opinion, Circle would be better if it had a more powerful chat functionality.
• We found it a bit annoying that it does not integrate with many LMS and membership tools.

Why we recommend Circle: If you prioritize features like live streaming, monetization, and mobile access for a smaller or medium-sized community, then Circle can be a great option.

4. Thinkific

Thinkific is a self-hosted platform that lets you build and sell online courses. However, you can also build, host, and monetize your community with it.

It comes with a drag-and-drop builder that allows you to create custom-branded communities and discussion groups for your students.

For instance, you can set up a specific group where users can interact, ask questions, and share insights.

Our favorite feature is the live chat prompt, which allows instructors and students to communicate seamlessly. This makes it a great option for online learning websites.

Pros

• Thinkific has built-in functionalities like user profiles, activity feeds, and private messaging.
• We were pleasantly surprised to learn that the tool automatically creates discussion forums for each course to facilitate student engagement.
• The platform lets you create different tiers of community access based on course enrollment or membership level.
• It tracks and reports community engagement and performance with detailed analytics.

Cons

• Thinkific’s core strength lies in course creation. While it offers community features, they might not be as feature-rich as other community platforms.
• It is not a great option for large communities, which can be a dealbreaker for enterprises and huge businesses looking to build a forum.

Why we recommend Thinkific: We would recommend Thinkific for course creators because of its focus on education. It will allow instructors to build a community around their courses.

5. BuddyPress

BuddyPress is a free WordPress plugin that can convert your WordPress site into a functioning social network or community.

It lets users create their own profiles and follow each other through friend connections. Users can then share updates, photos, and links, creating a newsfeed-like experience.

BuddyPress allows you to build groups, send private messages, and create forums. It also sends real-time notifications about activity, mentions, and messages.

For details, see our tutorial on how to turn your WordPress site into a social network.

Pros

• You can extend BuddyPress’ functionality using different plugins and themes specifically created for it.
• It offers a responsive design for optimal user experience on mobile devices.
• One thing we really like about BuddyPress is that it doesn’t cost anything to use. This lets you save money and focus on building a community without worrying about extra fees.
• It can be used for various community types, such as internal company networks, fan communities, or online forums.

Cons

• BuddyPress can sometimes conflict with other plugins, leading to compatibility issues. In our opinion, this can be frustrating for beginners who do not know how to troubleshoot errors.
• Upon testing, we realized that the tool can sometimes hurt website performance, depending on the number of members and activity.

Why we recommend BuddyPress: If you are looking for a free plugin that lets you build large-scale communities on your WordPress site, then you should pick BuddyPress.

6. MemberMouse

MemberMouse is a well-known membership plugin for WordPress sites, but it can also be used to build a private community for your members.

The plugin has core features like a member directory, private messaging, and the ability to create basic groups where members can interact with each other.

We were particularly impressed by its content restriction feature based on membership levels, which creates a sense of exclusivity.

Pros

• MemberMouse lets you create drip content that is released gradually over time.
• It handles recurring subscription payments easily.
• We liked that it lets you send push notifications to users based on actions like adding new members, canceling memberships, receiving payments, and more.

Cons

• It does not have a free plan.
• We found that it doesn’t have extensive moderation tools, which can be a dealbreaker for some users.

Why we recommend MemberMouse: While MemberMouse is primarily a membership management plugin, it offers a solid foundation for building a community around your paid content.

For more information, see our MemberMouse review.

7. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is a super popular online community platform. It lets you create discussion groups for dedicated topics, host live streaming videos, and allow real-time messaging.

The tool also lets you create and promote virtual events, offer different membership levels, create polls and surveys, and much more.

You can even sell online courses and products to your community members using Mighty Networks.

Pros

• We found out that Mighty Networks creates a specific section with highlighted tags. This lets you get an idea of topics currently trending within your community.
• It lets you send push notifications to bring back inactive members. You can also use its AI feature for conversation starter ideas.
• The platform offers premade themes for your community.
• You can easily establish community guidelines and moderate the content.

Cons

• Mighty Networks is more expensive than other community platforms, especially for larger communities.
• Over the years, some users have reported inconsistencies in customer support quality and response times.

Why we recommend Mighty Networks: If you want to create a medium-sized community, then Mighty Networks can be a good choice. It’s a powerful platform that uses AI-powered features to build a community.

8. Podia

Podia lets you design online communities around online courses or digital products.

You can create community hubs for different discussion topics and allow members to participate through posts and comments. Other than that, it offers features like user profile customization, direct messaging, and a centralized community feed.

Overall, Podia is an all-in-one platform that can also act as a website builder, email marketing service, course builder, page builder, and more.

Pros

• Podia lets you offer community membership as an add-on or exclusive benefit for course or product purchasers. You can even sell the membership as a standalone product.
• It has a user-friendly interface, ideal for beginners.
• The platform has an amazing analytics feature.

Cons

• Podia’s primary focus is on creating and selling online courses and digital products. This means that its community features are built around this core functionality.
• In our opinion, its management tools are basic compared to dedicated community platforms.

Why we recommend Podia: If you sell digital products and want to build a community around them to create some hype, then Podia is a great choice. You can build a community, create landing pages, and promote the product through email marketing features using just one tool.

9. Bettermode

Bettermode is a versatile platform that empowers you to create engaging and interactive online communities. It offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to build connection, collaboration, and knowledge-sharing among your members.

You can create spaces, build detailed member profiles, send direct messages, add groups, and facilitate open conversations through threaded discussions.

The tool also offers a live chat option for members and can connect with other platforms to boost functionality.

Pros

• With Bettermode, you can organize and promote virtual or in-person events.
• We liked that the tool lets you award badges and points and keep scores on the leaderboard to improve engagement within your community.
• It uses AI to suggest content ideas to members.
• You can have a fully branded community experience without visible Bettermode branding.

Cons

• Bettermode is expensive, and its free plan has limited features.
• While Bettermode can handle growing communities to a certain extent, it might face challenges when scaling for extremely large communities.

Why we recommend Bettermode: If you are looking for a community platform that is super flexible and offers many customization options, then Bettermode is a great choice.

10. Hivebrite

Hivebrite is an impressive platform designed for building and managing online communities, particularly for enterprises, associations, and alumni networks.

It comes with all the features expected from a community platform, such as discussions, forums, member profiles, groups, and event organizations.

However, you can also host live streaming sessions within your community to engage members in real time.

Hiverbrite can integrate with existing enterprise systems, complies with strict data policy, and offers custom branding, making it a great choice for large and growing online communities.

Pros

• The platform keeps all community members informed by showing personalized activity feeds.
• It comes with gamification elements, advanced reporting, and integration with other third-party tools.
• You can create and manage various content types, including articles, documents, and multimedia, directly from Hivebrite.

Cons

• It has a steep learning curve and may not be an ideal choice for beginners.
• Hivebrite’s main focus is on enterprise clients, which means that some features more suited to smaller communities are less developed.
• When researching, we concluded that the tool’s customer support isn’t as good as some of its competitors.

Why we recommend Hivebrite: Hivebrite is an excellent choice for organizations looking to build engaging online communities. It is especially ideal for users with specific needs like enterprise-level security, scalability, and customization.

11. Discord

Discord is a popular communication platform mostly known for its gaming community, but it has evolved into a versatile tool for various groups and interests.

You can easily create a free account and build a Discord community in just a few minutes. Once you do that, you can embed the widget on your WordPress site so that users can view the total members of your Discord server and join the group using the provided invite link.

For details, see our tutorial on how to embed a Discord widget in WordPress.

Pros

• It offers both private and group chat options with various formatting features.
• You can also send voice messages and connect with your community members over video calls.
• Discord lets you create dedicated channels for specific topics. You can also create a separate voice chat channel for different activities.
• We were particularly impressed to learn that Discord supports various bots for automated tasks, moderation, and entertainment.

Cons

• Discord’s channel-based structure can become overwhelming for larger communities, making it difficult to organize and find specific information.
• Discord focuses on real-time communication. This means content can disappear quickly, and you won’t be able to archive or reference information later.
• Managing a large Discord server can be time-consuming and challenging due to the volume of messages and the potential for spam content.

Why we recommend Discord: It can be an ideal choice if you want to build a gaming community or promote real-time communication among your members.

12. Patreon

Patreon is a community platform designed to help creators build an income by offering exclusive content and experiences to their supporters, known as patrons.

It allows you to create multiple membership tiers with varying benefits and pricing to cater to different patron support levels. You can then schedule posts in advance to consistently provide new content to your community members.

Patreon also comes with features like direct messaging, live streaming, discussion groups, and Discord integration.

Pros

• When testing, we liked the Creator Dashboard feature where you can easily manage membership levels, posts, patron communications, and earnings.
• Patreon lets you sell physical and digital merch to community members.
• It also provides insights into patron behavior, demographics, and revenue.

Cons

• The platform’s emphasis on financial support could create an environment where community members feel pressured to contribute financially to access your content and participate in discussions.
• While Patreon can be a great platform for established YouTubers and influencers, building a following from scratch on the platform can be challenging.
• It offers limited customization options.

Why we recommend Patreon: It is a good choice if you already have a following and want to build a community to earn extra money by sharing exclusive content with patrons.

Which Is the Best Online Community Platform?

In our expert opinion, BuddyBoss is the best online community platform on the market. It allows you to build a social media site in WordPress, create a forum, set up activity feeds, and so much more.

Alternatively, if you want to create a community with exclusive content based on membership levels, then you can opt for MemberPress. It is the best membership plugin that lets you build a thriving online community around your membership site.

On the other hand, if you sell courses and want to build a community for your students, then we recommend Thinkific.

Similarly, to build a large-scale community with no platform costs, you can go for BuddyPress.

Frequently Asked Questions About Community Platforms

Here are some questions frequently asked by our readers about community platforms.

What is an online community platform and its key features?

An online community platform is a software application that lets people with shared interests, goals, or experiences connect and interact with each other.

Key features for an ideal community platform include user profiles, forums, groups, private messaging, live chat, events, and analytics.

What is the best online community platform for businesses?

If you have a small business site, then you should consider platforms like Circle, Mighty Networks, or Hivebrite.

These tools offer features such as membership management, analytics, and integration capabilities that can help you grow your community.

How do I choose the right online community platform for my needs?

When choosing an online community platform, you should prioritize factors such as community size, desired features, budget, and technical expertise.

This will help you make an informed decision according to your business needs.

Related Guides for Community Platforms

• How to Add a Forum in WordPress with bbPress
• How to Create Chat Rooms in WordPress for Your Users
• Ultimate Guide to Creating a WordPress Membership Site
• How to Make a Gaming Website With WordPress (Step by Step)
• How to Create a User-Submitted Events Calendar in WordPress
• Best Website Ideas to Launch an Online Side Business 

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The post 12 Best Online Community Platforms in 2024 (Pros and Cons) first appeared on WPBeginner.