In this Mighty Networks review, we’ll look at Mighty Networks as both a community and a course platform. By the end, you’ll be able to decide for yourself if you want to use it to achieve your own business goals.
Mighty Networks is considered one of the best community platforms online in 2023 and there are a lot of good reasons why. But as a course platform, how do they compare to other platforms that focus mainly on providing a course solution?
Most course platforms also provide community solutions also because both products go hand-in-hand to provide an interactive and engaging learning experience for students. Members are more likely to stick around and complete courses if they can learn something together with others who share the same interests.
Mighty Networks provides a community-first approach to offering courses but you can also create a following for your brand, YouTube following or expertise and make it a paid membership.
So with other community and course platforms competing for your attention, is Mighty Networks the platform for you? Read to the end of this Mighty Networks review to decide for yourself.
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What is Mighty Networks?
Mighty Networks is a community platform that also offers courses. Creators can build their community and allow free membership or charge for access via the web or through their own branded mobile app.
According to the website, Mighty Networks promises that whatever you’re offering, whether it’s a podcast, blog, course etc, it will grow faster on their platform.
Mighty Networks offers an alternative to Facebook Groups and other third party community platform that businesses normally send their audiences to gather and have discussions. With your own platform, you can make and play by your own rules and get rid of the distractions and algorithms of social media sites.
You are also in control of monetization as you can charge for access and also offer courses to your audience without them having to leave your community.
With your own branded apps, your audience can access your community with the tap of a finger at any time or place they choose.
Mighty Networks offer some great features that make them one of the best community platform online. On Mighty Networks, you can:
- engage in rich discussions (share images, video, gifs, rich text etc)
- live stream with native video
- create events (online or in-person)
- direct message and group chat
- …lots more.
Who Is Mighty Networks For?
Anyone who is serious about creating an engaging community can sign up to Mighty Networks and give it a go.
If you have one of the following goals then Mighty Networks is the perfect platform for you to build your community.
With a wide variety of community features available, Mighty Networks lends itself very well to a range of uses.
The platform is perfect for:
- Anyone with a following – podcasters, bloggers, YouTubers, influencers
- Brands – product owners, course creators
- Anyone with an existing group on a platform you don’t own – Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Subreddits, Twitter communities, Slack channels, Discords etc.
- Anyone who wants to use a community-first strategy to launching their first course.
- Anyone who wants to start a fan-club.
Whether you’re a beginner with a clear vision of the community you want to build or a brand with a large, loyal following, Mighty Networks has all the tools and education you’ll need to get your network up and running.
There is also no barrier to entry since you can sign up for a free trial and you don’t need a credit card to get started.
Mighty Networks Dashboard Interface
As the host of your community, you’ll spend much of your time in the admin dashboard managing various parts of your business. It’s important that you have a great user experience when doing do and also that your members have a great user experience too.
The admin dashboard of Mighty Networks welcomes you after you sign up with a clean interface with lots of white space and a cleanly organized menu with about 5 to 6 items. When clicked on these menu items open other sub-menus and management sections in a block that slides in from the right hand side of your screen.
The dashboard also shows the main community interface and presents several actions that encourage you to get started building your network.
For example, at the top, you’ll find a box where you can make a quick post to your community.
When you click on the plus symbol in the corner, several post types are revealed so you can start the type of content you want to share. You can share from this box:
- a photo, video, audio or any supported file type.
- a poll you created
- a gif
- start a live video
Alternatively, you can just click the + button above the box to show other options for content you can create. These include:
- start a live video
- write a quick post
- write an article
- add a question or poll
- create an event
Members also have the same interface but since they’re not hosts or moderators, their options are limited to creating quick posts and questions/polls and they can only share gifs, photos and files but no native video.
When you click on Manage, it opens your “network settings” so that you can manage or set up various aspects of your community. .
Elsewhere on the dashboard, you’ll see sections that help you get started with setting up your community. In the “Get Started” section for example, you’ll see tasks that help you check off your Mighty Checklist, which is a list of things you need to do to set up your network.
You can add an icebreaker question or you can watch the video demo on using Mighty Networks. If you click “See More” in this section, you’ll open up a huge checklist which as I mentioned before is your Mighty Checklist of things to do to get set up.
The “Discovery” section lets you view different activity in your community such as top posts, members near your location, upcoming events and more. This is cleanly laid out in grids and when managing, you can drag and drop these sections to reorder them.
The “Members” section shows you the members in your community and you can invite new members or access member management with the relevant button.
The “About” section is where you go to set up your landing page, the first thing people see when you invite them to join.
In the right-hand corner of the dashboard, you’ll also be able to do some things with the buttons there.
You can see your checklist (only for hosts), and all members can invite others, create posts, chat live, see notifications and view your account settings and profile by clicking on your avatar.
The dashboard interface is simple enough to navigate and packs a lot under the few front-end navigation links. You may need to click around a bit in the beginning when looking to manage a feature but after a while, you’ll be able to manage your community with your eyes closed.
Mighty Networks Features
What makes Mighty Networks one of the best community platforms currently in existence? The wide range of features that can do everything and more than what popular options like Facebook can do.
In this section, I’m going to review some of the best Mighty Networks features that will allow you to build a thriving community business. I’ll mention both the good and the bad about these features and walk you how you can use them within the platform.
1. Community Builder
The community builder helps you to setup the core feature of Mighty Networks. As soon as you join, you’ll be working on building out your community with a set of features guiding you to set up your network.
Right in the home screen of your dashboard is a section called “Get Started” that gives you steps to start setting up your community.
Steps include adding an ice-breaker question, publishing a welcome post, setting up member onboarding and choosing a custom domain name. These items are removed as you complete them. These are all actions that can be completed by visiting your Network Settings, a key part of building out your community.
Having this type of guidance is super-useful and Mighty Networks has all these great features that make for a really good experience for members joining your community.
The Mighty Checklist
Another super-useful feature for hosts is the Mighty Checklist, an even more detailed guide on setting everything up. As a matter of fact, the “Get Started” items are actually part of the checklist under the “Launch” section.
The checklist gives you items to check off as you complete each task towards building out your community. Each task has an explanation on what to do and why it’s important as well as a guide or two (usually in video or pdf format) to help you understand each step.
As you check off each task, you’ll see a progress graph move up toward 100% completion. When you complete all the tasks in the checklist, you should have a solid community already built and doing all the right things. You’ll only need to repeat some of the tasks to grow your membership and earnings.
Invites
You can’t build a thriving community without inviting people. That’s why there’s a link or button always visible for you (or members) to do this very important community building task.
There’s a link in the sidebar menu for inviting and there’s an icon at the top of the page that you can click to start inviting new members.
You can share a link or invite by sending emails to people you have permission to contact. Members can invite other members while hosts can invite others as hosts, moderators or members.
You can also invite directly from a Facebook or LinkedIn group though you would have to visit your members settings to find this feature.
Network Settings
The Network Settings let you set up your community the way you want it. You can do stuff like:
- Add name, tagline and description of your community
- Customize your Mighty Subdomain or get a custom domain name
- Set your community to public, private, secret or paid
- Allow/Disallow search engine indexing of your content
- Set which content types are allowed and who can create them
- Manage your members and download your member data
- Set up your landing page
- Manage your payments
- Enable the ambassador program to reward your members
- Toggle on new premium features like courses and groups
- Enable integrations
- …a lot more.
The network settings help you to customize your community how you want it and the options are very flexible.
Topics
Finally, topics are an important part of your community’s structure. Topics are like areas where could post content that is relates to a specific interest within your overall niche.
You can organize and customize these topics in the Network Settings as well.
Managing topics lets you add different topics as well as customize how it is displayed and who can contribute to the topic (hosts & moderators or everyone).
There’s also the landing page builder which customizes how your community looks to new members who have yet to sign up. I’ll cover this below as this is a feature that deserves more than a few words.
Overall, the community building experience shouldn’t be too hard especially when you have so much detailed guidance in the form of the Mighty Checklist and the Mighty Community.
2. Community Features
Mighty Networks has a number of community features that boosts engagement and encourages and active community.
As an alternative to Facebook and other social media communities, Mighty Networks has to be able to replace the features available on those sites.
Here are some of the best community features on Mighty Networks.
- Nearby members – once a member adds their location, they’re able to see members near them who have also added their location.
- Member chats – you can chat with other members in the community or join a group chat
- Group chats for courses – If you’re a part of a course, you can chat with members who are also doing that course.
- Content creation – members and hosts/moderators can create interactive content. You’ll be able to turn on/off they content types in settings and who can post such content.
- Quick posts – these are like statuses – short posts that allow users to share text content, gifs, images, links and more.
- Articles – These are like blog posts within your community. By default, only hosts and moderators are able to post articles but you can change this to allow members to post.
- Polls/Questions – allow members to post multiple choice polls, questions, percentage polls and hot & cold polls.
- Events – Events allow you to bring together your members online or in real life with text chats, meetings, live video or local events. Events have RSVP, messaging and integrations with third party services like Facebook, YouTube and Zoom
- Live streaming – Normally reserved for admin, you can do live streams with native video. You’ll be able to record the live stream and notify members that you’re going live.
Creating events in Mighty Networks is one of my favorite features that lets you do a whole lot with this engaging feature.
If you have a course, you can choose between creating the event for the entire community or with just members of that course. Mighty Networks allows you to have unlimited course communities so you can separate activity from your main community and your course communities.
The event creator is very flexible.
If you connect your Zoom account, you can do a Zoom meeting or choose from other event types for online events.
With other event types, you can paste a link to your favorite services like GoToWebinar for webinars, Google Meet for meetings and YouTube Live for live video. These are just some of the options.
You’ll also be able to add a header image or video and a description to customize your event page.
Overall, Mighty Networks has some excellent features that will make your community just as exciting as any Facebook group can get minus the distraction of unrelated feeds and algorithms that can sometimes bury your content. It’s this experience that makes Mighty Networks the best community platform you can use to build community in 2022 and beyond.
3. Course Builder
Courses are more of an addon within Mighty Networks than a core feature. You can only access this feature during the free trial or on the Business Plan. And you’ll also need to activate it instead of it just being a feature you’d access naturally.
To easily activate courses, there’s a link in the sidebar menu under “Try these features”.
Or in your “Network Settings” under “Premium Features” , you could just toggle on Courses. By default, the feature is set to “Off”.
Whichever way you choose, you’ll get a prompt to set up your first course.
The course settings will let you change the name courses to whatever you would like to call them. So if you don’t want to say courses but classes or workshop then you can change it to one of those options. You also have the option to create a custom name.
When you’re done with this step, you’ll be able to create your first course. The first steps before you can access the course builder are to enter some basic information about your course such as the course name, description and pricing.
By default, your course is set to secret but you can make it either private or public.
In the next steps, you can change what you’d like to call the default names of your Table of Contents, Lessons, Sections and Instructors. You’re given a couple of options and can also choose a custom name.
At the end of these set-up steps you can choose to price your course or continue to the course builder to build out your course. You can always go back to these settings from the course builder by clicking on the “Manage” button.
In the course editor, you can build out your course by adding sections and lessons. A pre-built section is available with lessons you can edit before publishing. Section are invisible by default but you can just mouse over the section and click the three dots to access actions. From there, you can make the section visible.
While you can edit your course in this view, there is also alternate distraction-free view you can use to edit your course.
To access this view, you can click to edit any section or lesson then choose the “expand” tool in the header of the page. You can click it again to go back to the previous view.
When adding a lesson, you can make it as rich as you want. You can upload native video, audio files, images, embedded video, links and more. There are also formatting options for adding lists or making a divider.
There were a few minor issues that made for a bad experience.
I found it tough to get rid of a video I uploaded to a lesson and had to delete the entire lesson instead of just that element. Although you can upload audio, there isn’t an audio player so files open in a new window so that you can listen. There is also no bulk uploader.
The editor isn’t perfect but it is easy enough to use for even a beginner.
4. Sales & Marketing Features
There are a few sales and marketing features to help you grow your community and course sales. There are some that are typical of course platforms that are missing from Mighty Networks also. For example, there is no way to create and offer coupons or bump sales.
Here’s what’s available.
- Ambassador program – to encourage members to invite others, you can turn on this feature to reward them with Gold, Silver and Bronze badges when they refer a certain amount of members. You can also set up other rewards that can be physical or digital.
- Bundles – You can offer bundles such as two or more courses for a set price.
- Invites – Invites allow you to grow your network. You can invite an existing Facebook or LinkedIn group directly to your community or gamify the invitations for members.
- SEO – depending on how you set up your network, you can allow search engines to index your content which can allow your network to grow organically.
When pricing your course, you can set it up in several ways. You can include it with paid access to your community or you can have members pay for your community and then pay for the course. Or you can have a free community and paid courses. These settings can all be configured in the payment settings for your course.
5. Landing Page Builder
When you click the About menu link, you can get a preview of your Mighty Networks landing page, the page new visitors see when they’re invited to join.
By default, it’s just a basic page with little information but you can set it up so that it’s shows off your branding and gives the visitor more information.
In your network general settings under under Branding, you can manage and edit your landing page.
The theme options are pretty limited. You can choose between a creator template and a community template. The creator template focuses on the host while the community template focuses on the brand as a community.
You can switch between both templates and edit different parts of the page including all the text, the logo and the large header image. For the body of the page, you can choose from a two column or a one column layout and delete or add sections.
When you create a course, a page is automatically generated for you and you can edit and customize that as well.
You can host your community on it’s own custom domain. However, in the meantime, all communities get a default Mighty Networks subdomain. This subdomain can be edited so it’s shorter and better reflects your brand.
For the landing page, I thought they should have more template options to choose from and make the course landing pages easier to edit.
6. Integrations
If you want to use your favorite external software with Mighty Networks, there aren’t much available without Zapier.
The platform has native Zoom integration where you could just log into the account and connect but besides that you have three other external integrations.
- Google Analytics so that you could understand the activity inside your Mighty Network.
- Slack – You can see a real time feed of the activity inside your community
- Zapier – connect thousands of apps to your Mighty Network.
Thanks to Zapier, you can use almost any external app with your Mighty Network. To use these integrations though, you would have to be on the Business plan.
Mighty Pro Upgrade
Mighty Pro takes everything that is available in the web version of Mighty Networks and puts it in your own branded app on the iOS and Android app stores.
This is a great way to have your own apps under your own brand (and without any Mighty Networks branding) so that members can access your community at the tap of a finger. They’ll be able to access your network, do courses and chat with other members from anywhere.
Many well-known creators and brands who use Mighty Networks use Mighty Pro and are able to grow faster with this set-up.
On Mighty Pro, you can send out push notifications to engage your members and get them back into the community. You’ll also get a different level of support to help with migrations and strategy. There’s no set pricing for Mighty Pro advertised on the website. To get started with this plan, you’ll need to request a demo.
Mighty Networks Support & Help
One thing I’ve noticed while trying out Mighty Networks is that you’ll never be lost while trying to get things going. There is help for everything, even if you don’t ask. From the Mighty Checklist to ensure you’re building your network correctly to the live weekly calls when you join Mighty Community, you’ll get to know the ins and outs of running a business on this platform.
Here are some of the help and support channels available on Mighty Networks.
1. Help Center
The Help Center on Mighty Networks is a collection of help articles divided into two categories – one for hosts and the other for members.
It is recommended that you go to the Help Center first before contacting support and you can access this knowledge base from your dashboard. In the bottom right hand corner, you should see a button marked “Need Help?”
Clicking on the “Need Help?” button lets you message Mighty Networks support as well as search and get results from the Help Center without leaving the dashboard.
Alternatively, you can access the Help Center by clicking on Help in the footer of the Mighty Networks website.
The Help Center articles are filled with detailed explanations to frequently asked questions and video that explains certain concepts visually.
2. Mighty Community
Another place where you can get help is Mighty Networks’ own community for hosts, the Mighty Community.
As soon as you start your free trial and hit the dashboard, the first task they ask you to complete on the Mighty Checklist is to join the Mighty Community.
Inside the Mighty Community, you get the same experience your members would get when they join your community. You can chat with other members via group chat or direct message. You can respond to posts, join challenges and watch live streams and events.
It’s a community designed to teach you how to run your own network by being part of a community.
I found the community experience very helpful, joined a few live streams and learn more about Mighty Networks as well as strategies for building community. You will also get access to the free course “Free Resources Hub” which is filled with lots of great information on setting up and launching your network.
3. Messaging
As a host, I was surprised to learn that there is no live chat available. When you click on the “Need Help?” button in the lower right hand corner of the dashboard you open a support screen but you can only chat with a bot at first.
When you choose to “talk to a real person”, you will be able to type your message and send it but you’ll have to wait for a support agent. The expected wait time for a response is under an hour once you contact them between 6am and 6pm daily.
You will get an answer to your question though. It would just be better if it was faster.
4. Community Design Accelerator Course
If you’re more into structured training, the Community Design Accelerator Course is a paid course that will teach you how to “build a thriving community you can charge for”.
It is priced at $349 however Business plan subscribers can get it for $149.
The course gives you everything you need to confidently charge for a paid community, course or membership. This includes plans, guides, calendars, templates and more. Some parts of the course are even taught by Mighty Networks CEO and founder Gina Bianchini who is also active in the community.
There are some other paid cohort courses that are built around the Community Design course. Also included are lots of live bonus sessions and material.
Mighty Networks Plans and Pricing
Mighty Networks offers a 14-day free trial of the Business Plan to get started. The Business Plan is the highest of two plan tiers offered by the platform and the most popular.
After the free trial, you have the option to choose from the two plans which offer access to your Mighty Network on the web. You also have the option to upgrade to Mighty Pro, the plan where you can get iOS and Android apps for your business.
The main difference between the two plans are that one offers the core community features and the other adds course creation.
The two plans are:
- The Community Plan – $39/month ($33/month when you choose annual billing)
- The Business Plan – $119/month ($99/month on annual billing)
Subscribers get 2 months free when they choose annual billing.
The Community Plan
This is the entry plan which offers the core community features which include a website, native video and live streaming, chat and messaging, Zoom integration, events and the ability to charge for membership within your community.
The plan allows for unlimited members, unlimited hosts and unlimited moderators.
The Business Plan
The Business plan is the plan that free trial users experience and you can continue using the same familiar features by choosing this plan.
On the Business plan, you get everything from the Community plan plus the ability to create and offer courses, live cohort course creation, Zapier integration and analytics. You also have allowance for unlimited members, hosts and moderators.
$119/month to offer courses is similar pricing to what other course platforms charge on their entry or mid-level plans.
On both plans you have the ability to migrate to Mighty Pro and offer your community on you own branded mobile app on iOS and Android devices.
In addition to the plan pricing, Mighty Networks charges transaction fees on all of their plans. On the Community plan, transaction fees are 3% but they go down to 2% when you upgrade to the Business plan.
Mighty Networks Pros & Cons
While Mighty Networks might be the best community platform online right now, there are things that I liked about it and there are things that I didn’t like so much.
Here’s a breakdown of some of these things.
Mighty Networks Pros
Mighty Networks Cons
I could do without having an affiliate program to allow members to promote my community or courses but if you like the power of affiliate programs and you’re coming from a platform that offered it, you might feel like you’re missing out.
There is an ambassador program that you could turn on and your members are rewarded for inviting new members to your community. You can offer them physical rewards for bringing a set number of members and with the built-in gamification, they can get gold, silver, and bronze badges.
I also didn’t really like the transaction fees on the plans that you’re already paying for. If there was a free plan that you could sell on, that would be fine.
The fact that you could create a white-label app for your community makes Mighty Pro worth it and this is what Mighty Network users should be aiming for when they start using this platform.
Mighty Networks Alternatives
On Trialbear, Mighty Networks ranks as the best community platform and is also one of the best course platforms in 2023.
Depending on what you’re looking for in a course or community platform, Mighty Networks may not satisfy your every requirement. In this section, you’ll find a handful of alternatives that you could use instead of Mighty Networks.
1. Circle
Circle is a community platform where creators and brands can build feature-rich communities with all the perks that can be found on Mighty Networks.
Core features include rich member profiles with group chats and private messaging, events, paid memberships and engaging discussions. Upgrades include native live stream video and the ability to host courses.
Circle is just as popular as Mighty Networks and the pricing is similar though Circle comes in a bit more affordable on their second tier pricing. A free 14-day trial is available on all three of their plans which includes the pricey Enterprise plan.
2. Thinkific Communities
Thinkific is one of the top course platforms available on the internet in 2023. They certainly have a better course product than Mighty Networks but this is because that is their main focus as a platform.
Thinkific also has Thinkific communities which (along with courses) makes it a powerful alternative to Mighty Networks.
Features available include rich member profiles and @ mentions, live events that turn your community into a classroom with coaching, workshops, and more, reactions, threaded conversations, and lots more.
You can get started on Thinkific with either a free plan or a full 30-day free trial of one of their most popular paid plans.
3. Kajabi
With a primary focus on courses, Kajabi is an all-in-one platform that also allows you to build communities. You can offer access to customers of your courses or other Kajabi products or it can be a standalone, paid membership or subscription.
Communities on Kajabi aren’t as feature-rich as Mighty Networks and the pricing is about 4 times more expensive to get started. However, if you’re more focused on doing courses, podcasts or coaching then Kajabi might be an option to check out.
There is a 14-day free trial available to join Kajabi and check things out but no free account to fall back on when the trial is over.
4. Honeycommb
Honeycommb is an alternative to Mighty Networks that allows you to have your own branded apps for iOS and Android. They also have a Web-only version that allows you to present your communities on the web.
Honeycommb has a host of features including native video for live streaming, member profiles, groups, direct messaging, paid memberships, engaging members’ content, and more. Members can even have verified profiles that are based on the definitions you create.
There are no fixed pricing plans on Honeycommb but rather pricing based on community growth. This starts at $89 for the first 1000 users. Some features are available as add-ons and have their own individual pricing.
To get started with Honeycommb web version, a 14-day free trial is available and you’ll need to enter your credit card for this.
Access to the web version is immediate while the Full suite (iOS and Android apps) version is ready in 1-3 days.
5. Uuki
Another option for Mighty Networks is Uuki, which creators and brands can use to build engaging communities around their products and offerings.
Uuki is a great alternative if you want a cheaper option as plans start at $19/month. Posts and discussions, member profiles with private messaging and group chat, and paid membership are some of the core features available. It is not as feature-rich as Mighty Networks and you can’t do courses or live stream.
Uuki offers a 14-day free trial without a credit card to get started.
Final Words
Mighty Networks is an excellent option if you’re looking to launch and grow a community for your brand or for you to bring together an existing following.
Perhaps you’re a YouTube creator and want to get all your subscribers together. Or you may already have a big Facebook group and want to get away from algorithms and distractions. Mighty Networks is the perfect solution.
From live streaming and group chats to online and local events, there are lots of features to make you and your members want to build and grow a thriving community on the web. It’s even better with the apps for iOS and Android on Mighty Pro.
To get started, you don’t even need to enter your credit card. Just sign up and get the first 14 days free before upgrading to one of the two web plans.
