Ever since Skool has been accessible to the public outside of the beta users in 2022, the platform has attracted a lot of interest.
But the website is still rather bare and doesn’t give much details about pricing and what you’ll get.
We’ll review and break down all of that as well as how Skool compares to other online community and course platforms.
Skool Pricing Overview
Skool’s pricing is pretty straightforward:
It’s free for 14 days, and $99/month after that.
This isn’t very easy to find but when you sign up and try to create your own group, this is what you’ll find:
What you’ll get with that price is pretty much the whole suit of features Skool offers:
- Course creation (no video hosting)
- Community creation with user created content
- Members’ profile, direct messaging and chat
- A leadership board for gamification and reward
- A visual calendar to organize online/offline events
Note that If you’re wanting to use the platform to host video courses, you’ll need to add a video host subscription to your costs.
How Does Skool Compare with Competitors?
Ok, but you may be wondering whether $99 per month is a good deal, compared to other alternative solutions to Skool.
So let’s put that price in context and review how other platforms are pricing similar features.
We’ve selected 3 community platforms for this comparison: Mighty Networks, Circle and Kajabi/Vibely.
How does Skool pricing compare to Mighty Networks?
Skool and Mighty Networks have quite a few similar features, depending on which plan you’ll get.
The platform also has a 14 days free trial and two paid plans:
- Community ($33/month billed yearly): this will give you access to a community with:
- Native Livestreaming & Video
- Chat & Messaging
- Events & Zoom Integration
- Paid Memberships
- Business ($99/month billed yearly): you’ll get everything in the Community plan plus:
- Online Courses
- Live Cohort Course Creation
- Featured Pages & Events
- Analytics & Member Data
- Zapier APIs & Workflows
Really, to compare the closest plan and feature to Skool, you’d probably be looking at the Business plan, which is exactly the same price then.
There are a few other differences between Skool and Mighty Networks to be aware of, and you might want to check out our full review of that platform:
MORE ON MIGHTY NETWORKS:
How does Skool pricing compare to Circle?
Circle is another widely used community platform by membership and online course creators.
Circle has a 14 days free trial and 3 pricing plans available:
- Basic ($39/month billed yearly): this plan gives you access to a lot of basic features Circle offers, note that it’s limited to a 100 members:
- Engaging discussions
- Rich member profiles
- Unlimited events
- Group chats
- Private messaging
- Moderation
- iOS app
- Easily accept payments
- Custom domain
- Professional ($89/month billed yearly): if you upgrade here you’ll also get:
- Courses
- Live stream video experiences
- Fully White Labeled
- Advanced analytics
- Custom CSS
- Enterprise ($360/month billed yearly): this probably won’t be needed for most creators.
Quite a few goodies Circle offers and potentially a few more bells and whistles than Skool at the moment.
Prices are also very similar so this is a serious alternative to consider!
How does Skool pricing compare to Vibely?
Kajabi acquired a community platform called Vibely at the end of 2022 to strengthen their feature stack in that area.
The platform is extremely popular for online course creators and now also offers a solid community feature, which is interesting to compare here.
Kajabi has a 30 days free trial and offers 3 pricing plans.
Kajabi pricing breaks down as follow:
- Basic Plan – $149/month ($119/mo paid annually)
- Growth Plan – $199/month ($159/mo paid annually)
- Pro Plan – $399/month ($319/mo paid annually)
Note here that Kajabi is an all-in-one platform and aims to cover a lot more bases than Skool, feature-wise.
Including:
- Online course design and hosting
- Website and funnel builder
- Email marketing & Automation
- Funnel & Affiliate programs
This is what justifies the higher price between Skool and Kajabi but could be a good fit if you’re looking for more than just a community tool.
Skool Pricing FAQs:
Let’s make sure we’ve covered all of your questions here with Skool and how its pricing works:
Q. What other costs should I consider?
There are no hidden costs to Skool apart from the subscription mentioned.
That being said, Skool is not an all-in-one solution and most membership owners and course creators will need a few more tools that will require additional costs.
For example, you’ll probably need a proper website and funnel builder and an email marketing software.
Q. Do I need to put in a credit card to get started?
Yes you do, Skool’s 14 days free trial does require a credit card on file, you can of course cancel before getting charged from your account.
Q. Is Skool worth the money?
This is a difficult question to give a straightforward answer to.
Skool’s mission is very simple: helping online creators build a simple and engaged community for their audience.
That’s certainly a mission accomplished!
So in that way we can say that Skool is worth investing in if it makes sense for your business and where you’re at.
Q. The website looks so bare, is this platform really good?
You can read our full review to understand our thoughts on the platform, but yes Skool is definitely a great option for many.
The company keeps things very lean on the marketing front but puts all of its time and effort into the product and has built a large customer base.
It’s definitely risk-free to try on the free trial and make up your mind about whether or not this is a good fit for you.
