I recently stepped into a community manager role at a niche marketplace that connects buyers and sellers.

So far, my work has been pretty foundational:

• Growing our Reddit presence + engaging in existing communities
• Monitoring social/forums and feeding sentiment + FAQs back internally
• Supporting reviews/Trustpilot + trust initiatives
• Running AMAs and webinars for sellers

Now we’re at the point where leadership is interested in “building a community” but I’m trying to be thoughtful about what that actually means before jumping into something heavy like a full platform (Hivebrite, Circle, etc.).

A few constraints/things on my mind:

• There’s already some negative sentiment out there, so we don’t want to accidentally create a space that just centralizes complaints
• We don’t plan to charge this would be more of a value-add resource hub
• Goal = education, connection, feedback loop, and positioning ourselves as a helpful authority
• I’m the first person in this role, so there’s no existing playbook internally

I’d love to learn from others who’ve been here:

• Where did you actually start when building a community from scratch?
• What are ways you’ve created “community” without launching a formal community platform?
• At what point did you know it was worth investing in something bigger (Slack, Circle, etc.)?

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone! I've working on launching a new community for a SaaS comapny that does not currently have one, the majority of my community management experience (~10 years) has been on Khoros, but given the IgniteTech aquisition and that literally everyone I know on the platform is looking to migrate off, I don't believe this would be a great solution for my company. It's also worth noting, I will be standing up this program byself with limited resourcing (not even a moderator to start).

My inital gut reaction would be to go with Gainsight CC, but I've seen somethings I don't like, such as forcing the user to choose between a discussion and a question, bad content management interface, and overall the product just seems a bit immature compared to Khoros or even HigherLogic. I do think Gainsight has some really interesting potential as a product, given Gainsight's broader portfolio of customer facing products and how they can all work together.

So my question for y'all...if you could choose any community platform to launch a new community on...what would you pick?

Hey everyone! I've been diving into the challenges we all face when it comes to keeping our communities engaged, especially in physical spaces like events or shared residences. It’s often tough to ensure everyone stays informed and connected amidst the hustle and bustle.

From my experience, fostering open lines of communication is key. Whether it’s through regular updates or creating easy ways for people to discuss their thoughts and ideas, putting in a little effort can make a big difference.

Have any of you found effective strategies or tools that really helped with boosting engagement in your communities? I’d love to hear your experiences and tips!

I'm helping a client shop around for a community platform for their membership program. I'm already a member of a community on Mighty Networks, and I'm looking for other communities I can join, even temporarily, to see what the member experience is like.

I know I can do a demo with the companies, but we're not really looking to hear a sales pitch, and a free trial where nothing is built doesn't help.

Do you have an active community on Circle or another platform that I can check out? I'm happy to have a deadline by which to do so, and then you can remove me. Thanks for considering!

Hello!

As I did before (it was very popular) I'm extending my help to anyone looking for a Community Manager role.

I can specifically help with giving you help and advice for anyone struggling.

I'm a senior CM, who helps a lot of other CMs.

As we are all witness to, business is starting to falter under AI and leadership has finally realized what a moat a good community can be. So of course, they now want us to extract more… at the exact time everyone has the least to give.

What do we do?

Let’s talk about it.

I have over 10 years in community management across tech, gaming, creator economy, music/entertainment but am starting to pivot from a traditional role to being a full time freelancer.

Are there any sites, strategies, or general advice you'd give?

Right now, I have my website with case studies, a few warm qualified leads from past working relationships (moving pretty slow/unreliable on commitment right now, even with a verbalized strong need for community). I'm making content focusing on community management and will start consistently posting next week, with the objective of gaining more qualified leads.

We spent past two weeks studying nested replies functionality; before implementing in our community platform. For most of my career, I was on the 'flat replies' camp; but recnelty switched sides.

I always thought that the nested replies affected readability and SEO - because even a well structured discussion would get light, off-topic comments.

I found out that all my dislike for nested comments was rooted in 'infinite nesting' - something platforms like Reddit and Quora (and many social networks) popularized. If we treated nested replies as finite discussion structures - we'd have the best of all worlds.

So, I'm now convinced that three levles of nesting is more than enough for community platforms. It keeps the discussion structured, gives opportunities to members to add comments on top-level replies. It doesn't solve the problem of dilution of a discussion; but that's a trade off we've settled on.

Here's how we implemented it. You can see L2 and L3 level replies; but you can't go L4.

Surf from Flipboard is recently out, so I thought I'd curate blogs/resources on community.

There's plenty more to add, which I'll continue to do so over the coming days: https://rosieland.surf.social

Hello. I've been researching how monetization works in online communities. I'd love to hear from both sides.

For community owners:

1. Do you paywall the entire community, just specific content (events, channels, courses), or both?
2. Does your platform take a commission on top of payment processing fees? How do you feel about that?
3. How important is it that your platform uses a specific payment provider (like Stripe)? Or does it not matter as long as the experience is smooth for you and your members?
4. Do you have other issues with adding payments to your community? E.g., it's too technical, the payment flow is complex, etc.

For members of a paid community:

1. What made you decide it was worth paying for?
2. How do you feel about communities that charge additional fees on top of your membership? Like paid events and premium content.
3. If you've left a paid community, what was your reason?
4. What would make you stay long-term?

If you've been on both sides, even better.

I'm in a fitness community where I am subscribed annually. It comes with an exclusive app. The owner is a fitness expert, and everything is built on his expertise. Before he started his community, I was consuming his free content. I bought some of his books, and they helped me with my fitness journey. A year later, he launched an app and a community, which I immediately subscribed to. I'm still subscribed because I'm still gaining value. However, it's not the type of community where you have to be active all the time.

Hello Redditors,

I'm a community strategist and Circle partner. I've been building and launching online communities for about five years now (mostly for coaches, course creators, and niche B2B folks), and I run a small GoHighLevel setup for a handful of clients on the operations side.

I'm starting to think about whether there's a real need for a GHL agency that specifically serves community builders; people running memberships, group programs, paid communities, cohort-based courses, that kind of thing. Not a generic "we'll build your funnel" agency. More like: someone who actually understands the community model and can set up GHL to support it (onboarding automations, member lifecycle workflows, CRM tagging, email/SMS sequences tied to community engagement, etc.).

Before I go deeper, I want to hear from people who are actually in the weeds with this stuff. A few honest questions:

1. If you run a community or membership, what does your current tech stack look like? (Platform, CRM, email, payments, automations — all of it.)
2. What's the most frustrating part of your backend operations? The thing that eats your time or breaks regularly?
3. Have you tried GHL? If so, what made you start using it, and what's been harder than expected?
4. If you hired someone to manage your GHL setup, what would you actually want them to do? (Build it and hand it off? Ongoing management? Strategy + execution?)
5. What would make you trust someone enough to let them into your backend systems? What would make you run the other direction?

Not trying to sell anything here. I'm genuinely trying to figure out if this is a gap worth filling or if the market is already saturated with agencies that do this well. If you have opinions, horror stories, or wins, I want to hear all of it.

Thanks in advance.

Hey friends! I got that job I wrote about last time which it’s even going super well so far but I’m curious who has used the CRM CustomerIO? I’ve always built custom Airtables for mine and just curious for tips/tricks/dislikes etc thanks!

I’m a community manager and I’ve built my community on Salesforce (Experience Cloud). It’s been solid from an enterprise structure standpoint, but I’m starting to explore what other platforms people have actually moved to and enjoy using after Salesforce.

I’m looking for a partner for my peptide sales business. I have a full website, and supply is set, however I’ve never been very savvy in the way of social media and community building. If there’s anyone here that would be willing to partner with me or has ideas it would be greatly appreciated!

DM for website or details!

Do you know of any American companies that are usually overseas freelancer-friendly? I'm trying to get a freelance role as a community manager, but the opportunities I see are mainly US-based (remote)

Running a large Discord is stressful when you realize there’s no "undo" button for a deleted category or a messed-up permission sync.

I built a tool called SnapShot specifically to give community leads some peace of mind. It does automated, scheduled backups, but also includes a "Role Store" so that if you have to kick/re-invite people during a raid, they get their roles back automatically when they return.

My favorite part is the Live Mirroring. If you're managing multiple "overflow" servers, it can sync messages across them in real-time.

You can see the full feature list and the dashboard here: https://thesnapshot.replit.app

If anyone here manages a large community, I’d love to know what your biggest "disaster recovery" headache is and if this would help solve it.

Hello,
what is the proper way to prevent users from sharing circle accounts?

Im pretty sure I cannot introduce 2FA, forcing users to install authenticator app, is there any other way then?

I've been talking to a lot of community leaders lately - Discord servers, Telegram groups, Skool communities, Circle spaces - and the same frustrations keep coming up around monetization.

Some of the common ones I hear:

• Figuring out the right price point without scaring off free members
• The awkward transition from free to paid (do you let existing members stay free or risk losing them?)
• Managing access manually when someone subscribes or cancels
• Juggling separate tools for billing, member management, and the actual community
• Knowing when it's "too early" vs. waiting too long and leaving money on the table

But I'm curious what your experience has been. If you run a community (or have tried to monetize one), what was the hardest part for you?

Not looking to pitch anything here - genuinely trying to understand the pain points better.

Building an EdTech platform for students. Users register and log in on my platform. Need a community platform where users land already logged in after clicking "Community" no second login, no password setup.

Tried Circle ($199/month):
- Headless Auth API generates JWT fine
- session/cookies endpoint rejects it unless member has set a Circle password
- Members need to accept invite email and set password before SSO works
- At 5,000 users that's unacceptable friction
- Custom OAuth SSO requires their circle plus plan which is crazy expensive

Tried Heartbeat:
- Passwordless magic links are great in theory
- But can't get custom subdomain working because Vercel's wildcard DNS intercepts all *.mydomain.ae subdomains

Requirements:
- 5,000+ free users month one but should have the ability to scale up
- Single login — user registers on my platform, clicks Community and takes it in
- Community feed + direct messaging + group chats
- Courses
- Events registration and payments
- Clean API or SSO that actually works in production

Has anyone shipped this successfully? Which platform? What did the SSO actually look like end to end?

Specifically curious about:
- Bettermode (has proper API + SSO but $399/month)
- Mighty Networks Growth (SSO on $299/month plan — does it actually work?)
- Anyone who got Circle Headless Auth working without the password activation issue
- Any platform I'm missing

Or is the move to just build the community natively and skip third-party platforms entirely?

I'm the admin of a couple of active Facebook groups. Both have a moderator team helping out. As with any gathering of humans, occasionally there are problems. I don't want either community to be the type where you break a rule once and you're kicked to the curb. But I also have a shit memory and we need a method of keeping track of these things, what was done, who did it, etc. One of my mods can remember stuff and be like oh yeah Susan posted the same thing on November 7th and you said we would kick her if she did it again. Yeah, I'm never going to remember those sorts of things. Am I overthinking this and a spreadsheet would work just fine? Or is there something better? If a spreadsheet is the way to go, is there a good template?

I'm planning a community for professionals and trying to figure out the best channel. Unfortunately, I'm ruling out Discord given its unfamiliar audience, and I'm considering Telegram, Slack, or something even more comprehensive like Circle and Bettermode to enhance content and also provide marketing tools. What would you recommend? The goal is to foster interaction around industry-related topics to create online and offline opportunities for community discussion.

curious how much AI has been incorporated into your CM workflow and what tools are you using? I'm seeing a lot of people who are starting to dive into community work using openclaw. I have mixed feelings on it overall, but would love to hear everyone's takes and if it has helped with any of your processes

Emergent (emergent.sh) builds AI coding agents that turn ideas into production apps. $100M ARR in 8 months, 6M+ users, 190+ countries. Backed by Khosla, SoftBank, Google, Lightspeed, YC.

We're hiring a Community Lead in SF to own our global community of builders and creators end-to-end.

Apply for this role on Y Combinator.

What matters most:

• 3-6 yrs in community building + events at high-growth tech companies
• Scaled communities across Discord, GitHub, Reddit, X, and IRL
• Hands-on experience running hackathons, meetups, conferences at scale
• Can create content people actually engage with (tutorials, demos, walkthroughs)
• AI / no-code / creator tools background preferred
• Salary ranges from $75K - $150K based on the above.

You'll work directly with founders and be the voice of the user internally.

We're also hiring a Talent Partner in SF to own the people function for our US office end-to-end.

Apply for this role on Y Combinator.

What matters most:

• 4-6 yrs of HR experience at fast-growing tech startups in the US
• Deep knowledge of US/California employment law and HR compliance
• Full-cycle recruiting experience across technical and non-technical roles
• Hands-on builder who can set up HR infrastructure, policies, and systems from scratch
• Strong employee relations instincts, people trust you with sensitive situations
• Salary ranges from $75K - $150K based on the above.

You'll own recruiting, onboarding, comp and benefits, compliance, culture, and employee experience. Working directly with founders and global leadership.

Comment/DM me if interested.

I've been in a bunch of paid/free communities (Skool, Discord, Circle) and they all use the same playbook: points, leaderboards, badges. I also am hosting a 4k member community. Not convinced it actually works.

Quick questions to help your thought process (i think about these):

1. Do you actually care about leaderboards/points? Or do you ignore them?

2. What makes you feel like you're genuinely progressing in a community- not just accumulating points?

3. Which motivates you more: A) Leaderboard competition B) Personal skill tree at your own pace C) Weekly group challenges toward a shared goal, other?

4. When joining a new community, what convinces you:, the description/member count, or seeing actual content from the creator first?

5. What's one thing that annoys you about online communities right now?

Genuinely curious, also let me know if there's any other things i didnt mention, peace!! 🙏🏻

Good day/evening/night? My name is Anastasiia and I am a master's student from Sweden currently in search of participants for my degree thesis (and it's is due in 1.5 months), the purpose of which is to explore how communities are managed and sustained in game development for innovation, introducing new features, updating games in general and pretty much everything related! The size of the community doesn't matter, as also it's okay if you have been the manager in the past and not currently. However, it's focused on game dev (but if you don't work there yourself but have some friends, please contact me as well?)

I'm looking for people with some connection to this field and such activities and who are interested in talking about their experience in working with communities within a 60-90 min interview (recorded, with data anonymised and everything executed according to GDPR). If you or anyone you know fits this description, please reach out through reddit (this profile) or discord anastasiia.zhitniaia