Community building or groups gained scale and reach thanks to FB groups. However, FB groups have their own limitations and into this breach stepped user owned community groups as well as communities created via other channels such as Slack, Discord etc. A list of community groups on Capterra gives a pretty good idea if you know what you are looking for.
Facebook has also recently added chat inside groups to compete with the Slack/Discords of this world but so far the experience is a bit confusing
Amongst closed community groups , Circle.so is considered the benchmark for communities. Amongst Lifetime deals Tribe.so now known as bettermode.com seems to be the most popular. There have been other lifetime deals in the past such as
These community products give you options of accessing data, selling subscriptions and courses and overall keeping the community closed within your management. However, feature development and customization is based on the platforms roadmap
There are of course community creation tools via Chats such as Geneva as well as via Slack, Discord etc.
Discoveri : Dealcode : Reach-me
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