Knowing how to price and package your community can be difficult. To help you navigate the options, I researched 135 paid communities of practice looking at what they offer. I dug into everything from pricing and benefits to primary selling points, member requirements, and platforms used.
5 community types emerged:
- Peer to peer
- Course
- Cohort
- Data
- Exclusive
In this report, I outline the key traits of each type along with examples, so you know exactly what your options are and when best to use them.
Key Traits
To differentiate the community types we looked at 8 key factors:
1. Size
How many members are in the community? Across all of the communities included in the research, this ranged from 10 members to 120,000 members.
2. Price
How much do members pay for access to the community? The price points, cadences and plan types differed between communities, so I normalized the data to a monthly fee, priced in US dollars for easy comparison.
Pricing ranged from $1 to $20,000 per month. The average was $414/month but this is inflated by a few high-priced offerings. The 90th percentile was $141/month but almost ⅔ of plans were priced under $100 per month.
3. Plan Types
- Overall, pricing plans were split pretty evenly between a single plan (49%) or tiered pricing with multiple plans (51%).
- However, the majority (62%) of those tiered plans were just offering discounts for longer commitments, like subscribing quarterly or annually rather than monthly. Just 38% differentiated plans by non-time based factors. 20% offered a lifetime plan option with 8% offering a trial, either free (82%) or for a small fee, e.g. $1 (18%). A further 8% had a freemium offering, so some community access was free but with optional paid plans to unlock additional access and benefits.
4. Primary Selling Point
- If you boil down all the different community offerings, regardless of vertical or type, they all had one of the following primary selling points:
- Accountability (2%), achieving a specific outcome (3%), career development (18%), group support (16%), business growth (23%), learning a skill (6%), making money (16%), shared learning (8%) or some other form of personal growth (8%). However, different types of community focused on certain goals more than others.
5. Offer Elements
Beyond the community itself, most communities sold a range of benefits. These benefits constitute the community offering. 4 additional benefits was most common (23%) but it ranged from 1 (8%) up to 9 (<1%).
The most common benefits offered were events, which were offered as part of 57% of communities. That covers a range of types, most common were workshops (36%) but also facilitated calls (15%) and meetups (9%) as well as AMAs, among others.
48% of communities offered resources, most commonly articles (49%), templates (26%), guides (22%) as well as a range of more specialist offerings. These included tools (20%), tutorials, playbooks, case studies, newsletters, and podcasts.
A course or program was another common option, featuring in 29% of offerings, while discounts on relevant software and services were included in 25%.
Beyond that was a large range of more niche offerings, including coaching (13%), accountability (10%), a member directory or portal (7%), and member matching (6%) among others.
Where tiered plans were offered, it was common to offer 1 additional big ticket benefit (27%) or multiple, ranging from 2-7 with 5 being most common (27%).
These additional benefits mostly focused on things that don't scale. So more personal or small group activities, like masterminds or cohort courses, in-person events, 1:1 or group coaching or audits, as well as training. They also included access to datasets, discounts, content archive access, courses, as well as promotion opportunities.
6. Proof Points
- Whatever outcome you’re selling, you need to provide proof that you’re able to help people achieve it. That was well understood by almost all communities researched with over 98% having some type of proof point(s) on landing pages.
- Most common were testimonials (70%) – getting members to share their experiences. Photos or videos of members often featured (54%) as did numbers (53%) – some impressive stat that shows your ability to deliver results. Logos (30%), star ratings (26%), and member content (11%) were also used.
- Most combined multiple different types of proof:
- - 44% use 3 types
- - 36% 2 types
- - 27% 1 type
- - 19% combine 4 or 5 types of proof
7. Member requirements
Less than 15% of the communities researched had an application process or member requirements. The rest gave anyone willing to pay access to the community.
When there was an application process, a quarter had no formal requirements. When requirements were defined, these were mostly based on the company revenue, job role, or company size. Most used these fields as a filtering mechanism to only allow relevant people to join. In some cases this was used to prevent service providers, those working for vendors or consultants, from joining.
8. Platform used
Slack, Circle, and Discord were the most common platforms used. Skool, Telegram, WhatsApp, Facebook Groups, Kajabi, Teachable, Heartbeat, Discourse, Disco, Uscreen, and Campfire also featured. However, the popularity of platforms varied significantly by community type as you'll see below.
Paid Community Types
Using the above traits, let’s dive into the community types and how they differ:
Course
A course community is one where the core value proposition is the course or access to multiple courses. While it may have a community component, it’s often supplementary, providing a space for course participants to discuss their progress or ask questions.
- Courses, especially self-paced ones, have notoriously low completion rates. Providing a community element can help to maintain motivation and stay accountable to their goals.
- For you, adding community to a course can be a useful way to generate recurring revenue and move beyond the unpredictability of new course or module launches.
- The bulk of a member’s engagement in the community happens when they’re actively working through the course. But the community can prove to be a useful resource for members afterwards, providing them with access to peers on a similar path. Over time, the community can become more valuable to members than the course itself.
- Key traits
Size
If you have a large audience, then course communities can be a better fit than cohorts.
Price
The range covered $16 to $166 per month with a 95th percentile of $56/month.
Plan types: 57% of course communities had tiered pricing and almost half offered a lifetime plan – with these, members are mostly paying for the course itself with community being offered as an additional bonus.
Member requirements: None of the course communities researched had an application process or member requirements.
Offer elements: Benefits focused on getting the most out of the course content. This includes resources like tutorials, templates, or worksheets, where you can practice what you’ve learned in the course. As well as events like livestreams or group calls, so you can discuss what you’ve learned and stay accountable.
Proof points: 100% of the course communities researched used testimonials as proof points. The other proof types were evenly split, with over half using photos or videos of members, stars, numbers or logos.
Primary selling point: Courses were split evenly between ‘learning a skill’, ‘group learning’, ‘making money’, with some offering ‘career development’ or ‘accountability.’
Platforms: The most common platforms used by course communities were Circle, Teachable, Disco, Discord and Slack.
Examples: Copyblogger Academy, Building A Second Brain, or Takeoff AI
When to use: If you have a large audience who want to achieve a specific outcome or work towards a shared goal.
Cohort
A cohort community revolves around a group activity like a mastermind. That activity might be fixed-length, gathering at a set time for several weeks or months to achieve a particular outcome. But some are on-going – coming together as a group with a common goal on a regular basis with no specific endpoint.
- The cohort might be the main draw, but the resulting community can be a highly valuable - with each additional cohort a small but tightknit group can form. With bonds built during the cohort, there’s potential for a highly engaged community.
- Key traits
Size
The size of cohort communities were the smallest of all of the types identified.
Price
The range covered $165 to $2,000 per month with a 95th percentile of $490/month.
Plan types: 85% offered a single price with half having a lifetime option for community access.
Platforms: Slack, Circle, and Facebook Groups were most used by cohort communities.
Offer elements: In cohort communities, events featured most often with formats like hot seats, guest speakers, and office hours being popular, serving the need for additional 1:1 help. Mentorship and audits are common, too, as are coworking sessions and accountability calls.
Proof points: Testimonials and photos or videos of members (75%) were the most common proof points used by cohort communities. Logos featured more than average (50%) but numbers (21%) and stars (12%) were rarely used, and member content was never used.
Primary selling point: ‘Growing a business’ was disproportionately represented as the main goal of cohort-based communities – over 60% used this as the primary selling point. Others included ‘learning a skill’, ‘career development’, and ‘achieving an outcome.’
Member requirements: 12% of cohort communities made use of an application process. When used, none had specific member requirements, but some used an interview process to check for member fit.
Examples: Ezra Firestone’s Ecommerce Mastermind, David Perell’s Write of Passage, or ODF
When to use: If you have a smaller audience and/or there are groups of people who want to go deep into a topic or reach the top of their game.
Data
Whether it’s business trends, trading tips, or sure-thing bets – the combination of exclusive data alongside a group of fellow practitioners can make for a valuable community offering.
- Data communities provide just that, with the main benefit being the opportunity to chat about the strategies and results achieved to try and up their game. Some data communities also bundled access to educational resources to accelerate the learning of less-experienced members, too.
- Key traits
Size
Data mixed with a community platform and content delivered via livestream can scale to large numbers.
Price
The range covered $5 to $300 per month with a 95th percentile of $120/month.
Plan types: The majority of plans were offered at a single price point, accounting for 58% of plans.
Member requirements: None of the data communities researched had any entry requirements.
Offer elements: In data-based communities, access to the data combined with the ability to discuss it within a community is the core of the offer. In some, though, there was an education aspect. Additional benefits tended to focus on content like explainers and frameworks, alongside group calls or livestreams where someone is doing the thing and members watch and chat about how and why they are making certain decisions.
Proof points: The types of proof points used by data communities differed quite a bit from other types. Quantitative results are paramount: 92% used numbers as proof points, often detailing performance rather than bragging about group size or some other indicator of success. Testimonials were used in 83% of data communities, too, and star ratings were used in ⅔. Logos were used in just 8% and member content wasn’t used by any.
Primary selling point: 92% of data communities were about making money. Gambling or trading some form of asset are the most common use-cases, but identifying business trends was another popular one.
Platforms: Over 60% of data communities used Discord. Circle, Skool, Telegram, and WhatsApp were popular alternatives. Most used Whop to handle payment and member management with some using Nas instead.
Examples: MicroSaasHQ, Trends Pro, and Highstrike
When to use: If you’ve created research or developed techniques that other people would love to get access to and know how to use them.
Peer to peer
The most common structure for a paid community, a peer to peer community is a flexible option for those wanting to bring folks with a shared purpose or goal together, but who have a range of needs.
- The offer ultimately defines the member experience of a peer to peer community, with some being light-touch accountability groups that keep folks working towards an outcome, while others are complex offerings that cater to multiple member needs.
- Key traits
Size
Given the flexibility of peer communities, this is where we saw the largest range of community sizes. From small groups to large, international communities.
Price
From $1 to $10k/mo. The avg. lowest price point for entry being $49/mo (90th percentile). Highest plan avg. $108/mo with a 90th percentile of $79/mo.
Plan types: 54% of peer to peer plans had a single price point. The rest had tiered pricing with just 12% offering a lifetime plan option.
Member requirements: Only 6% of peer to peer communities had an application process or member requirements.
Offer elements: Events (57%) and resources (55%) feature most commonly, while discounts (22%) are popular, too. Courses or programs are offered in 21% of peer communities. Unlike in a course or cohort, though, this is offered as a supplemental benefit.
This is the strength of the peer format – you can layer in offerings like group (12%) or 1:1 coaching (8%), accountability calls (8%) or member matching (7%) to create differing plans that cater to specific needs.
Benefits on higher plan levels were often personalized offerings. Events featured most commonly (73%) but in formats like in-person meetups, AMAs, sprints, and masterminds. Resources (40%) like access to an archive of content were offered by some. Courses featured in ⅓ with discounts (27%) and 1:1 coaching or audits being a benefit in 20%.
Proof points: 61% of peer communities used testimonials, while photos or videos of members were used by 50%. Numbers were used by 58%, while logos (28%), stars (22%) and member content (16%) were also used for proof points.
Primary selling point: ‘Growing a business’ was top among peer to peer communities (21%). While ‘career development’ (19%), ‘group support’ (18%), and ‘making money’ (9%) were other popular selling points.
Platforms: A wide range of platforms are used for peer to peer communities with Slack (30%), Circle (19%) and Discord (15%) being most popular, but with a long-tail of other options. These included: Mighty, Nas, WhatsApp, Facebook Groups, Heartbeat, Kajabi, Custom, Campfire and others.
Examples: Generalist World, Exit Five, and Small Bets
When to use: It’s the default option – a solid choice for those with a large potential market of people with a range of needs or when your members don’t have needs that require specialization.
Exclusive
Exclusive communities are a special type of peer to peer community. Who is in the community is just as important as what the community offering is. Many are really selling access to an elite group.
- While they might be picky about who can join, they retain the flexibility of peer communities. So the structure of exclusive communities was broad with them bringing members together in a variety of ways.
- The high prices can make exclusive communities look like a no-brainer, but they’re hard to launch. A few of the long-established exclusive communities have standalone brands, like Vistage or Young President's Organization (YPO). However, most are closely tied to that of a well known, charismatic founder, like Joe Polish’s Genius Network, Russel Brunson’s Inner Circle, or Sam Parr’s Hampton. You need credibility to offer such an option. Plus, they have higher operating costs, too. Some exclusive communities employ hundreds of staff members and their reliance on in-person events means they can have significant venue costs.
- Key traits
Size
Exclusive doesn’t have to mean small. Many have a decentralized structure with local chapters organizing in-person meetups or core gatherings in small groups.
Price
The range covered $50 to $20,000 per month. The average was pushed up by a few high-priced outliers, reflected in the 95th percentile of $974 per month.
Plan types: 82% of exclusive community plans were tiered, the rest single, with none offering a lifetime plan.
Member requirements: An application process or member requirements is a defining aspect of an exclusive community. All of the exclusive communities researched used such a mechanism to gate membership.
Offer elements: Events are king in exclusive communities. 100% offered them, often in multiple formats with expert guest workshops, in-person meetups, and small group calls being most common. 70% also offered resources, mainly content or tools, as well as databases (of vendors or contractors) and templates. Discounts (52%), coaching calls (29%) and a concierge or member experience manager (18%) were also offered.
The emphasis of these benefits is less on education (most target folks already at the top of their field) and more about getting the right people together so they can collectively stay on the cutting edge.
Platforms: Slack was the most common platform for exclusive communities (40%). A small number made use of other off-the-shelf platforms like Facebook Groups, Circle, and Discourse, too.
However, custom solutions featured significantly: 33% compared to just 3% of peer to peer communities, for example. Providing a slick, integrated member experience across devices and activity types was the main reason for going custom.
Primary selling point: Primary selling points among exclusive communities were often business-related, with ‘busines growth’ (27%) and ‘career development’ (27%) being most common and ‘group support’, ‘networking’ and ‘shared learning’ also being used.
Proof points: In exclusive communities proof points were often used more subtly. Few used star ratings (12%) or numbers (24%). Instead, the emphasis was on testimonials (77%) and photos or videos of members (74%) with logos being used in almost half (47%).
Examples: Hampton, The Lab, and Dreamers & Doers
When to use: If you have an extensive network of leaders in your field, then exclusive communities can be a good way to differentiate your community offering in a crowded market.
Takeaways
Pricing and packaging of communities is hard. There's an array of possibilities and it's not always clear how best to combine them. However, from doing this research there are some key takeaways:
- - There was no correlation between size of community or the price charged to members and the number of elements in the offer. While it can be tempting to pack more things in to your offer, it's better to select the right things.
- - The value of benefits is subjective. One community can charge $20 per month for the same benefits offered by another that charges $2,000 per month. The difference is who you're selling to and what that benefit means to them. So think through exactly who your ideal community member is and what their needs are.
- - When considering the mix of benefits, don't forget in-person or personalized - they provide opportunity for you to upsell or charge higher rates.
- - Don't just default to charging monthly. Consider different cadences that may be a better fit for the value you create and timeframe members need to see results.
- - Use the community types to think through what's the right approach for you and your members. But don't overthink it, you can always change things later – Small Bets, for example, started off as a cohort but is now a peer community as that's where its members got the most value.
.webp)
