There’s an abundance of platforms for creators and entrepreneurs to keep up with when it comes to managing their online courses, communities, and memberships. It can be difficult to keep up with all of them. If this sounds like you, you may want to consider using Skool — the best community and online course platform on the web.
Founded in 2019 by millionaire internet entrepreneur, Sam Ovens, Skool is an amazing platform that allows creators to host their online courses and build communities. Ovens created Skool to fill in some of the gaps in the online course platform industry, and it’s growing at an unbelievable speed. The feature-packed platform is the best option for creators who want to build their online community and connect with their audience more efficiently.
Skool offers a wide range of features from cool landing page builders to powerful community-building tools. Whether you’re a content creator, course creator, or serial entrepreneur, Skool is the only platform you need to help you grow and scale your business. Keep reading to find out all about Skool and why it’s the number one community and course platform.
What is Skool?
Skool is the ultimate community-building platform that streamlines your audience, content, and resources all in one place. Gone are the days when you have to juggle three different platforms just to check on your course students and connect with your community. With Skool, you can create and sell your online courses, and build, grow, and engage with your community, all while managing your subscriptions. The remarkable platform offers a user-friendly interface that allows creators to easily manage their content and for community members to easily access it.
The main benefit to Skool is its ability to save creators time and effort when it comes to monetizing their online presence. So, whether you’re an influencer, blogger, coach, or course creator, Skool is the only platform you need to build, grow, and monetize your community.
Skool’s features
Here are some of the powerful features that enable creators to have the best experience when it comes to building, managing, and monetizing their online presence.
Course Creation Tools
Skool makes it easy for course creators to publish their courses without having to do much heavy lifting. Here are Skool’s key course creation features:
- Drag & Drop course builder: Creators can easily create course content using Skool’s drag-and-drop templates.
- Multimedia uploading: Skool gives creators the ability to add PDFs, videos, audio, images, and more to their course lessons.
- Quizzes and worksheets: Creators can offer quizzes and worksheets to their course students to test their comprehension.
- Drip scheduling: Skool allows creators to drip-feed course content over time to course students.
- Progress tracking: Skool allows creators to keep up with course students’ progress.
Community Building features
In addition to courses, Skool allows creators to build their own engaging communities. Here are some of the key community-building features:
- Groups: Creators can create public or private groups in a specific niche to connect with their members.
- Forums: Skool allows users to discuss various topics openly on a discussion forum. All topics are categorized for easy navigation.
- Direct messaging: Skool allows creators to send private messages to their community members.
- Email blasts: Skool allows creators to send out email updates to their community members.
- Events: Creators can host live webinars and meetups using video features.
- Rewards: Creators can make their communities exciting by taking advantage of points and level upgrades.
Integration options
Skool offers integration options with other platforms which allows creators to have a smooth experience. Here are some of the other places that Skool can be integrated with:
- Website/Blog: Skool can be easily integrated with a website or blog by using a WordPress plugin.
- Zapier: Skool can be integrated with Zapier for workflow automation. The integration will allow creators to connect Skool with other apps to automate specific tasks.
- Stripe: Skool can be integrated with Stripe so that creators can get paid from their communities and course sales.
Subscription & Membership Management
Skool provides various ways for creators to monetize premium content and their audiences. Here are Skool’s paid monetization options:
- Paid channels: Creators can create gated channels that only paying subscribers have access to.
- Drips: Creators can drip email content over time to subscribers.
- Memberships: Creators can offer tiered membership packages to their community. For example: Bronze, Silver, and Gold packages.
Payment processing & Transactions
Skool handles all of the payment processing, so creators can focus on engaging with their community and creating attractive offers. As mentioned above, Skool integrates with Stripe to allow creators to get paid seamlessly. Here are Skool’s key payment processing features:
- Secure checkouts: Whenever users checkout using Stripe, they can rest assured their information is safe and secure.
- Payment schedule: Skool allows users to charge automatically recurring or one-time fees.
- Transaction tracking: Skool allows the tracking of all successful/failed payments so that everything is organized.
- Payouts: Creators can schedule payouts to be deposited to their bank whenever they like.
- Invoices: If needed, creators can automatically generate payment invoices.
Calendar feature
Skool has a handy feature that acts as a personal assistant by reminding users of important events and helping them stay organized. Skool’s calendar feature provides a full view of any upcoming events and deadlines. The user-friendly calendar offers day, week, and month views to ensure users can get the most out of their time.
Skool’s calendar feature even has features of its own, and they are:
- Easy event creation: Users can add events with just a few clicks of a button by entering a few event details.
- Reminders & Alerts: Customizable reminders and alerts allow users to stay on top of their schedules for upcoming events.
- Community integration: Users can view project or group-related activities right from the Community tab.
Skool’s Calendar feature is everything anyone needs to stay on schedule. It’s much needed for anyone looking to stay organized and productive.
Benefits of using Skool
There are boatloads of benefits to using Skool for both creators and community members. These benefits allow Skool to stand out among similar platforms.
Creator benefits
If you’re a creator, you know the struggle of not being able to depend on monetizing your online presence via social media or YouTube. Because you don’t own your audience on those platforms, you’re not in control of your revenue. So, the number one benefit to using Skool is the ability to build your own community. Whether you want to build a free or paid community, you can’t go wrong. When you build a community of loyal, like-minded individuals, you’ll always have paying customers for whatever you offer in the future.
In addition to being able to build your own communities within the platform, here are some other important benefits for creators using Skool:
- Saves time and effort: Creators can manage their community, content, and courses all in one place.
- Makes money: Creators can monetize via courses, paid memberships, and more.
- Ownership: Creators can build a community that no one can take from them. They’re fully in control, unlike other platforms.
- Insight: Creators get access to data that can help them tailor offerings to their audience.
Skool allows creators to take back control over their content and courses while helping them scale income.
Community Member benefits
When users join a community hosted on Skool, they benefit in these ways:
- Ad-free experience: There are no disruptive ads that distract users from the creator’s content.
- Rewards: Users can earn points and badges for engaging in communities and completing courses.
- Interactive: Users can engage with creators and each other through forums, live events, and direct messaging.
- Supportive: Users can join group masterminds and connect with other like-minded individuals.
- Curated content: Users will receive personalized course and community recommendations while on the platform.
- Easy navigation: Skool was designed to be user-friendly allowing users to easily navigate and find the content they’re looking for.
While many course and community platforms focus on revenue, Skool’s focus is on serving their creators and making sure community members have a high-quality experience
Pricing
Skool offers a 14-day free trial to all new users. Once that trial is up, users can continue for $99 per month. Skool prides itself on the fact that they have only one plan with everything included and no hidden fees. In addition to keeping it super simple with pricing, Skool has the cheapest transaction fees among its competitors.
While Skool’s pricing may appear to be pricier than other course and community platforms, it offers unique features that are not readily available among those other platforms.
Skool’s pricing is competitive for all the features that it offers. If you’re searching for a platform that offers a community-centered approach to online course creation and membership sites, Skool is your best bet.
How Skool compares to other similar platforms
Skool is not the only community-based platform available to creators, as there are some other popular alternatives. Let’s take a look at how Skool compares to the others:
Skool vs Discord
Skool is a customized community and course platform for creators while Discord is a general chat and messaging platform for anyone.
Skool provides a wide range of tools specifically for creators to engage and monetize their communities. On the other hand, Discord offers a more open chat and messaging platform that’s not tailored to monetized creators.
While Discord is a popular platform to talk via voice, video, and text, Skool offers specialized tools for creators to build a real online business.
Skool vs Patreon
Skool is an all-in-one, community and course-hosting platform, while Patreon focuses only on creator subscriptions. Patreon does not have any course creation tools or the ability to host courses.
In addition to course creation tools, Skool provides a wide range of features such as community groups, membership tiers, and monetization tools. Whereas, Patreon’s focus is on allowing creators to offer exclusive member benefits to those who pay a monthly fee.
Pricing is completely different for the two platforms as well. Skool charges a flat monthly fee of $99 per month, while Patreon takes a 5-12% commission on all creator earnings.
While Patreon does make it simple to earn recurring revenue from loyal fans, Skool offers a full suite of tools to turn those loyal fans into an engaged community that you can earn from forever.
Skool vs Podia
Skool is a powerful community and course-building platform, while Podia is a platform to sell courses, but is more focused on its e-commerce capabilities.
Skool offers community-building features such as groups, forums, etc, alongside course creation tools. Its competitor, Podia has many cool course tools, but lacks community features.
Skool is a flat fee of $99 per month, while Podia has two pricing plans — one is $39 per month plus additional fees, and the other is $99 per month with everything included.
Skool helps creators leverage courses to build online businesses, while Podia is simply a marketplace where course takers can access their next course.
What people are saying about Skool
Compared to other platforms, Skool wins every time. The powerful platform has mostly positive reviews all across the web from creators who are benefitting from the platform’s amazing features. You’ll find hundreds of Skool reviews by doing a quick Google search, but here’s what regular people are saying about Skool and its unique features:
Final Thoughts
Skool is the ultimate platform and the only one to consider when it comes to building an online community while leveraging courses and premium content. Skool’s seamless experience, easy navigation, customization options, community-building capabilities, and integration options make it the number one choice for creators who want to monetize their content.
The platform blends community building with monetization, which is a better alternative than users getting hit with ads all day.
Millionaire, investor, and serial entrepreneur Alex Harmozi believes heavily in Skool and recently invested a large amount into the platform. News of this has led to a wave of new creators joining Skool to build their online communities.
Skool lacks nothing when it comes to creators building a loyal community and making money online. So, what are you waiting for? Create your account today!
