GroupApp Review – Is This A Good Community Platform?

It may not be the most popular community platform but GroupApp is definitely worth checking out.

My GroupApp review will give you insight into why that is. Read all the way through if you’re looking for a community platform where you can also build courses and offer a great learning experience.

In this review, I’ll go over some of the key features of GroupApp and how I rate them. I’ll talk about the pricing and plans, the pros and the cons and also some alternatives and how they stack up against GroupApp.

And if you didn’t already know, GroupApp gives you a 14-day free trial to test the platform so you can go set up your community and courses and see if it works for you.

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Table of Contents

What is GroupApp?

GroupApp is a platform where you can build your courses alongside a community to boost retention, increase course completion and to improve learning outcomes.

The platform uses a community-first approach for creators to sell their courses and make money from their expertise. As a community platform, there are many community features that enable creators to confidently use GroupApp as an alternative to the popular Facebook Groups.

GroupApp has been steadily adding features and improving on what they already have. Native live streaming isn’t available yet, but the platform has matured considerably and now includes Android and iOS mobile apps so your members can stay connected on the go.

As a course platform, GroupApp can stand with other more well known platforms like Teachable and Kajabi with it’s easy to use interface and features to engage students. You can either charge membership subscriptions to your community and give access to courses or use any of the flexible pricing options to charge for courses.

To get started with GroupApp, you can sign up for a free account or better yet, take a 14-day free trial of a paid plan. You’ll need to have our credit card to get the trial but you can cancel at any time.

Who Is GroupApp For?

GroupApp is for any creator who wants to employ a community-first approach to selling their courses.

Most course platforms let you sign up and create courses and provide you with all the tools to do everything from email marketing to offering sales promotions. But the hardest part is actually getting students to join and then to get them to complete courses and stick around. Providing support is another issue altogether.

A community-first approach allows you to build a community around a certain interest and then offer them courses. The issue of support is no longer a problem as it can be offered through peer-to-peer discussion or announcements and regular community involvement from creators.

Creators that can benefit from GroupApp may include:

• YouTube creators who want to bring together their subscribers and teach in a more structured way with less distractions.
• Brands that want to migrate from Facebook groups so they can be in control more and own their platform.
• Course creators who want to build a community around their expertise and offer membership subscriptions.

You can find here some examples of brands and creators who are successfully using GroupApp. Here are just a few of them.

• Little Flower Yoga – teaches mindfulness and yoga for kids
• Bose’ Akadiri – offers Goal Grinders community for high achievers navigating career change
• SCALING:Lab – teaches members how to scale their own businesses and offers group coaching and support.
• Wealth Nation Money School – offers entrepreneurs and high achievers membership subscription to help them grow their knowledge of money and lifestyle control.

GroupApp is also a great alternative to any course or community platform that you’re currently using and want to migrate from.

GroupApp Interface

When you log in, your default view is your community page. This makes it easy for you to see what your members see and browse new activity.

The interface has a clean look and you can add sections such as “new members” and “upcoming events” to your homepage from your settings panel.

On the right hand side, there’s the community menu where you and your members will find links to the most important pages such as messages, your profile, members and a link to invite new members. When you add courses, events and resources to your library, these links will also appear in your community menu.

Below the menu, there’s the channels navigation where you’ll find channel groups and related channels within.

On the right side, you’ll have a checklist of things to do to get started with your community. This list will automatically disappear once all the tasks have been checked off.

Also on the right side sits a card that has the picture and description of your community.

Clicking on any channel gives you access to the post editor.

Here, you can choose which post type you want to start with and then you’ll get the actual post-editor to start the discussion you want to add to the community.

I love the editor but it kind of reminds me about the post editor from another community platform. It’s still good though.

The real admin panel though can be accessed through a button in the top bar of your community in the top right hand side. This opens up all the settings you can use to control all the different parts of your community.

There’s a lot you can do inside the admin panel including setting up your custom domain, moderating activity, building courses, populating your library and more.

GroupApp Features

GroupApp has some really great features that enable anyone to focus on building and growing a community-based business. The platform is still very young but there are an impressive number of new features being added on a regular basis and even more coming.

To review what is already available to creators and brands, I will highlight a few of the key features.

Here are the ones that make GroupApp a great choice for your community or course.

1. Community Builder

In GroupApp, there are several components to building a great community. There are a lot of features that are essential to any community platform that contribute to organizing content, branding and growth.

When you’re first getting started and setting up everything, there is a convenient checklist to help you get the most important things set up first.

The checklist includes a list of items and a link to a help article to walk you through getting each item checked off. The steps included are:

• Customize community – add community logo, cover image and custom color.
• Activate homepage – lets you configure and add different sections to the default community layout you see when you log in. You can add an announcement, new members section, content section and more.
• Create channels – Channels help you organize your community so members will know where to post or access content relevant to their interests.
• Create a course – Add courses to create a learning community. You can sell your knowledge to anyone even if they’re not a part of your community.
• Set up subscriptions – Turn your community into a membership site by adding flexible subscriptions. Integrations like Stripe allow you to collect payments.
• Add community resources – add helpful documentation and resources like PDFs, videos and more to build your community library.
• Complete your profile – add your photo, bio, links and more so users can get to know you when they click on your profile. This helps to build trust with members.
• Invite members – finally, there is no community without members. You’re encouraged here to invite your first 20 members.

Most of these tasks will be done by accessing the admin panel and navigating to the relevant setting. You can invite members right from the homepage since members can help build your community by inviting new members.

Once you get these tasks done, you’re basically on your way to building a thriving community.

There are a couple of features though that need a deeper review as other community platforms have similar features that are unique in their own way.

Channels

Channels help members navigate the different topics within GroupApp. It is up to you to properly organize these topics by adding the relevant channels you’ll need for your community.

You can do this in the admin panel by going to the “Channels” menu item.

You can add a set of related channels to a collection. You’ll need to create the collection and then add the channels as subtopics.

For example, in the GroupApp Community, there are three collections – Community, GroupApp Product and Knowledge Base.

Members can create discussions in the “Community” channels called “Discussions” and “Ask For Help”. The Knowledge Base collection has different channels for each feature that members can look through to find the relevant help files. You can look through the “Online Courses” channel, for instance, if you’re looking for help with creating courses.

Creating a channel is simple and the settings are very flexible and allows you to customize your channel the way you want it.

You can add a description, a channel image and assign it to a collection. The best thing about channels though are the settings that allow you to set different access levels, visibility settings and posting permissions.

With access levels, you can have an open channel where anyone can view the discussions and take part. Or you can make it private or only for paid members. A couple of other access levels make it even more flexible.

You can set whether the channel is open to posting by community members or only by admin.

Other general settings allow you to do things like require a cover image to be posted with discussions, or exclude the channel from the weekly digest or allow auto-join to the channel.

I love how channels are set up in GroupApp and how flexible you can get with them.

Landing Page

Your landing page allows you to welcome people who you invite to your community. You can customize this inside your admin panel under Onboarding.

By default, your GroupApp landing page looks like this:

In your Onboarding settings, you can change the background image, your tagline and activate more sections on the page.

Available sections you can activate include:

• a member counter
• community description
• a video
• plans
• FAQ

You’ll need to add the info to these sections before activating them so that they can show up on your landing page.

Library

The library in GroupApp is a place in your community where members can access resources in a number of different formats.

You can offer video, audio, PDF documents and embedded content.

It’s also an opportunity for creators to make more money by offering products other than courses for sale. When you upload content in the library, you’ll have settings that allow you to charge for products. The same settings for courses and channels including accessibility and visibility apply to library material.

In the Library, you can add templates, spreadsheets, pdf guides and more that are all available to view or download.

2. Community Features

GroupApp has essential community features to help members get together and communicate. As a creator, you can offer support and connect with members through these features which include events, direct messaging and group chat.

To create events within GroupApp, you’ll need to go to the admin panel and find Events in the menu. Then it’s as simple as clicking the “New Event” button and going from there.

Fill in the title and click the next button to fill in the event details.

The event details view allow you to:

• set the start and end time and date
• choose between online and in-person location
• add the url for online events or address if it’s in-person
• set a cover image for the event
• add the event description
• set the access level whether it’s for free or paid members or if you’re charging for the event

The visibility settings can be set to public meaning persons don’t have to be part of your community to be able to join your event. Or you can set it to restricted to only allow certain members to join.

The settings view allows you to apply more rules to the event like hiding the location from non-attendees and enabling/disabling discussion.

There is no live streaming as I’m writing this post but it is one of the features that is coming to GroupApp. Live streaming will allow for live cohort courses and live events as well as video chat.

3. Course Builder

GroupApp works as a course platform as well and is a good alternative to other community-first platforms like Circle and Mighty Networks, both of which also have course building features.

The course builder in GroupApp is easy to launch and use. Just go to the admin panel and select courses from the settings menu and you’re ready to start.

Any courses you have already built will be shown on the page or it will be empty if you haven’t created your first course as yet. You can hit the create button to start building your first course.

1. Name your course

The first step after you hit the create button is to name your course. You can then hit the “Next” button to continue.

The interface is clean and simple and lets you focus on the immediate task. I like it already.

2. Add content to the curriculum

After naming your course, you’re sent directly to the course editor where you can start adding sections and lessons to the curriculum editor.

You can click the “Add Section” button to begin adding your course material. The form that comes up lets you put in the section title and description.

From here it gets a bit user-unfriendly as there is no indication of where lessons are added or a preview of how it is going to look to the end-user.

In the screenshot below, I chose the embed video option from a list of 6 ways to add course content. You can also upload video directly, embed content, upload an audio file, add a text lesson or upload a PDF.

Each lesson is added to the section by choosing one of the options. If you’re going to be uploading video lessons, you’ll keep clicking on either upload video or add web video. Or you can mix the content type as you want them to appear in the section.

After the first time, you’ll know how the content is laid out and it wouldn’t be so bothersome.

In the GroupApp free course, here is how the course looks to the end-user.

The sections are in bold and the lessons have check boxes for when you’ve completed them. This is a text lesson. The video lessons look even better. I’m not sure I like having the complete and continue button at the top though but that could be a matter of preference for some. There is no customization option to move it.

Back to the course editor, you can drag and drop lessons or sections to reorder them. This is useful especially if you add new lessons content and want to insert it between two existing lessons.

3. Other Tabs

After you’ve added course content, you’ll need to go through to the other tabs to finish setting up your course. The next tab is for adding Drip settings. You can schedule sections to be released some days after enrollment or on a specific date.

The enroll tab allows you to see who is enrolled in the course and lets you manually enroll students. You’ll see their progress on this page.

The pricing settings let you add a price for the course. You’ll need to add your Stripe account to begin doing this.

Finally, in the settings tab, there are a lot of settings for you to play with to set up your course the way you want it. You can add a course video intro, a thumbnail and background image for the course page and add the course description.

The visibility setting is set to Public by default which means you can sell your course to anyone who isn’t even in your community. Or you can change it to community so they must be a community member to enroll. The other option is Restricted where only certain users can gain access.

I like the flexibility these settings give you for getting your course in front of the right viewers. The only thing I don’t like about the course builder is the lack of a preview option while building the course and the fact that they don’t indicate that you’re adding lessons inside the sections.

4. Email Marketing

Besides direct messaging and group chats, sending broadcasts to all members, segments or specific channels is an available feature in GroupApp that is very important.

If you don’t have an email marketing automation suite then you can use this feature to do your email marketing inside GroupApp.

It isn’t as powerful as the email marketing setups in some of the other course platforms I’ve reviewed (ie. Kajabi), but it gets the job done. You can use integrations if you’re already using MailChimp, Drip, ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign and want to connect them with GroupApp.

Email marketing messages can be managed inside your admin panel under the Messaging menu item.

5. Integrations

Platforms like GroupApp work better when you can work with external tools that you already use and love. Some of these tools are just plain essential and unavoidable.

GroupApp integrates with a number of these tools so that you can get the best out of your community business.

Some of these integrations are native and required while others are a matter of choice.

Here’s a list of integrations that you can use in GroupApp.

• Stripe – you need this in order to take payments for your community memberships and your courses.
• Google Tag Manager – you can add your code to get site analytics, conversion retargeting and other functions.
• Google Analytics – get insights into your community engagement, session duration and more within your community.
• YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia – natively used to embed web video in the course builder, library and elsewhere in your community.
• Hubspot – automate marketing workflows, segment lists and more with this useful suite.
• Facebook Pixel – track your ad conversions with Facebook Pixel
• MailChimp, Drip, Intercom, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign – Use your email marketing suite of choice if you don’t want to use the built in email marketing feature. Segment into lists and more.

I did not see Zapier in the list of integrations although there is a post in the GroupApp Community channel for integrations that has documentation for the use of Zapier with GroupApp.

Other than Zapier, there are also integrations for Pabbly and Integrately. Other integrations are also being added from time to time and users can make requests for new features and integrations they want to see made available.

What’s Missing

For a community platform, GroupApp has most of what creators need to run a learning community. There are still a few things I’d like to see added though.

PayPal integration – To accept payments, GroupApp has Stripe which is something that almost all course and community platforms have native integration for. It would be good to see PayPal as an option for creators whose audience prefers it.

Affiliate management – This one was a little surprising for me. There is no feature that lets you reward community members for referring paying members. Most course platforms have some kind of affiliate or referral system built in. GroupApp doesn’t have one yet, which is a gap worth knowing about before you commit.

Live streaming – Still not available on the platform. This would make GroupApp a much stronger Facebook Groups alternative and open the door to live cohort courses and native events. Hopefully it’s coming.

These are some of the missing features of GroupApp that other community and course platforms have available. GroupApp is always adding new features and integrations so I’ll update this review as I learn about any new additions.

GroupApp Help & Support

Help and support are very easy to get in GroupApp. The main way to get help is to join the free GroupApp Community on GroupApp.

The help menu item in the admin panel sends you directly to the GroupApp community. There is no live chat or even a bot to answer any questions. All help is given inside the community which is maintained by co-founder Dornubari Vizor.

Here’s an overview of how to get help in GroupApp through the GroupApp Community.

GroupApp Community

The best place to get help in the GroupApp Community is the #Ask-for-Help channel. This channel is for:

• Asking about particular use cased and how to accomplish them
• Helping other community builders by contributing to posts and sharing your knowledge
• Asking for feedback on your community

Here you can find helpful discussions that might solve your problem. You can always use the search function or ask again.

Other channels are helpful as well. There is a video tutorials channel and a general discussion channel. You could also check out the Knowledge Base channels which are collections meant to walk you through various aspects and features of GroupApp.

Does GroupApp Have Training?

GroupApp is also a course platform and it would be weird if they didn’t provide training in the form of a course.

The courses section has a course that is free to enroll in and complete. The “How to Build a Membership Community” course has 17 lessons. They’re all in text (no video) but it’s a great read that will help you build your own membership community with GroupApp.

GroupApp Pricing & Plans

There are two ways to get started with GroupApp for free. You can join with a free forever account and start building your community from there, or start a 14-day free trial on any paid plan.

Free trials don’t automatically roll over to a free account when they expire, so you’ll need to decide how you want to proceed before your trial ends. The advantage of starting with a trial is that you get full access to everything the paid plan includes, rather than the more limited experience you get on a free account.

There are four paid plans and all of them have zero transaction fees. Annual billing takes 25% off any plan. Each plan has limits on members, channels and admins, so you can start small and upgrade as your community grows.

Here’s how the four plans break down.

Launch Plan

The Launch plan costs $24/month and is designed for creators starting a paid community with discussions and events. You can have up to 200 members, 5 channels and 1 admin on this plan.

It’s a solid starting point if you want to test the waters with a smaller community before scaling up. The low entry price makes it easy to get going without overcommitting.

Grow Plan

The Grow plan is $64/month and is built for creators running learning programs with courses and coaching. You get up to 1,000 members, 20 channels and 2 admins.

This is the plan to move to once your community is finding its footing and you’re ready to add courses as a core part of what you offer.

Scale Plan

The Scale plan costs $144/month and is GroupApp’s recommended plan. It’s designed for businesses running multiple programs with automation, and gives you up to 5,000 members, 50 channels and 5 admins.

If you’re running an active community with multiple course offerings and need more room to operate, this is the plan that covers it.

Organization Plan

The Organization plan is $384/month and is aimed at larger operations that need custom integrations and priority support. You get up to 20,000 members, unlimited channels and unlimited admins.

Like most plans at this tier, the value is more in the service and support than in additional core features.

Basically if you want to start a learning community, then you could start with the free plan, build your community out and scale from there.

However, the Scale Plan with the 14-day free trial would be my recommended way to get started as you can have access to everything from the very beginning and enough resources where you wouldn’t need to change your plan.

GroupApp Pros & Cons

There are some things that I just loved about GroupApp and others that i disliked. In this section, I’m going to point out some of the strong elements of this platform and some of the weaker ones too so that you can have a balanced overview of GroupApp.

I personally like the simplicity of the GroupApp platform and the stuff that they don’t have does not bother me much. I’m more bothered by the clumsy course builder when you’re just getting started. After you get accustomed to it, you will have an easy time but it needs to have a live preview so you can see how the course is laid out as you’re building.

GroupApp is still a relatively new platform and they’re adding new features and the one I’m most excited to see is the addition of live streaming which will allow for live cohort courses, native events and video chat.

One feature that is not available though, that should be added is affiliate program management. Community creators should be able to reward members for helping to build the community by inviting new members and promoting courses and memberships.

Everything aside, GroupApp has a pretty solid product for people who want to build a learning community.

GroupApp Alternatives

GroupApp isn’t perfect and though I’m impressed by the simplicity of this rather robust platform, I’ll admit that there are other community and course platforms worth considering.

This doesn’t mean GroupApp isn’t worth a try – it might be exactly what you’re looking for. But if it isn’t, here are four solid alternatives and how they compare.

1. Skool

Skool is one of the closer comparisons to GroupApp in terms of philosophy – community-first, with courses and events built around that model. It’s also one of the most talked-about platforms in the creator space right now, and for good reason.

The biggest practical difference is pricing. Skool’s Hobby plan starts at just $9/month and includes the full feature set – community, courses, native video hosting, live calls, built-in payments, gamification, and mobile apps. For creators just starting out, that’s a very low barrier to entry compared to GroupApp’s Launch plan at $24/month.

Skool also has something GroupApp doesn’t – built-in community discovery. Around 30% of Skool members find communities through the platform itself, which gives new creators a meaningful head start in building their audience.

Where GroupApp has an edge is in channel limits and structure. GroupApp’s plans give you more room to organize your community with dedicated channels, which suits creators who want more control over how content and discussions are arranged.

Skool offers a 14-day free trial on both plans, same as GroupApp, so you can try both and see which one fits how you like to work.

2. Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks is one of the closer comparisons to GroupApp in terms of community-first philosophy and the combination of courses, events, and community in one place. I was so impressed that I put Mighty Networks at #1 on my list of best community platforms here on TrialBear.

Their Launch plan starts at $95/month, making it a noticeably more expensive entry point than GroupApp. They offer a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

Compared to GroupApp, Mighty Networks gives you more flexibility in how you structure and monetize your community, and it includes native live streaming which GroupApp doesn’t have yet. Worth a look if community is your primary focus and you want more customization options than GroupApp provides.

4. Circle

Circle is a well-designed community platform that has built out courses, events, and gamification alongside its core community features.

The Professional plan at $89/month is the most comparable entry point to GroupApp’s Scale plan, but there’s a significant catch. Circle only offers annual billing, which means you’re committing to $1,068 upfront just to get started. GroupApp’s Launch plan at $24/month is a much easier entry point if you’re not ready to make that kind of upfront commitment.

Circle does offer a 14-day free trial with no credit card required so you can try it before committing. It’s a strong platform, but the annual-only pricing is a real consideration.

Final Words

Although GroupApp falls short on some of the features that would make it a great all-in-one option, they do have a lot to offer and the platform has grown considerably since it first launched.

They offer a variety of product types that you can sell besides courses and community memberships. You can sell access to individual channels, access to events, digital downloads, audio and video from your library.

The course builder is a little bit confusing the first time you use it and doesn’t show a live preview, but after you get your first course up you’ll get the hang of it. It’s also quite flexible with the access and visibility settings so you can sell your course to just about anyone, even if they’re not a part of your community.

GroupApp now has Android and iOS mobile apps, so your members can stay connected wherever they are. Native live streaming is still on the wish list, but for most learning communities that’s not a dealbreaker.

If you’re looking for a community platform with a solid course builder and a clean interface that won’t overwhelm you, GroupApp is worth a serious look.

Start with the Launch plan at $24/month, get your community going, and scale up from there as you need to. They offer a full 14-day free trial and you can even get an extension if you need more time.