Best Free & Paid Community Management Tools

Best Free & Paid Community Management Tools

Imagine a skilled community manager effortlessly handling multiple responsibilities, building relationships, and facilitating smooth interactions.

Envision a reality where this scenario is achievable, all due to the exceptional capabilities of advanced community management tools!

In this article, we have meticulously selected and reviewed the finest community management tools to streamline your workload and enhance your community's dynamics.

What is Community Management?

Community management involves creating a genuine community among a company's customers, employees, and partners through diverse forms of interaction. It refers to the ways a brand leverages opportunities (both in-person and online) to engage with their audience, fostering a network where members can connect, share, and grow.

Why is community management important?

Despite its growing popularity and recognition across various industries, community management remains somewhat elusive in its definition. So, what sets it apart? Why should your business implement it? Here are some key reasons why community management is essential for your brand's success today.

Through community management, your business can achieve the following: 

  • Gather insights and ideas from your customers and audience via genuine conversations. 
  • Offer support to your audience, fans, and customers when required. 
  • Enhance awareness of your brand and products among your target demographic. 
  • Understand your customers' desires, expectations, and needs concerning content, products, services, and support.
  • Develop both individual and collective relationships between your audience and your brand. Increase customer engagement, conversions, and sales. 
  • Deliver value to your customers that extends beyond just a product or service.

Best Community Management Tools

Sprout Social

Sprout Social
Source: Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a leading social media management tool, crafted with the user experience at its core, simplifying the process for community managers to schedule posts, interact with customers, monitor reviews, and examine social media data.

What distinguishes Sprout Social is its dedication to regularly updating its platform, ensuring it remains aligned with the most current social media trends.

Additionally, the tool's expert representatives and the abundance of resources available for learning and enhancing social media strategies have received considerable acclaim.

Cost: Sprout Social provides a 30-day trial for all its subscription plans; the standard plan begins at $249 monthly.

Khoros

Khoros
Source: Khoros

Khoros' all-encompassing community management solution provides a variety of customer engagement methods, tools for employee enablement to ensure smooth interaction and moderation, strong enterprise integration, security features, and a specialized services division.

Users commend the platform for its dedication to outstanding community practices and its emphasis on community-centric care, which surpasses numerous other alternatives, including supplementary "bolt-on" solutions.

Cost: Khoros Communities does not publicly disclose its pricing details.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite
Source: Hootsuite

Developing and nurturing social media communities is crucial for brand development, and Hootsuite simplifies this process.

Its intuitive interface allows for effortless scheduling, publishing, and customer engagement across various platforms. Additionally, its detailed analytics aid in refining your strategy. Offering features like content scheduling, diverse integrations, mobile publishing capabilities, and a centralized inbox for message replies, Hootsuite presents numerous advantages for your community management activities.

Cost: Hootsuite offers a 30-day free trial , after that the plan starts from $99 per month.

Wix Forum

Wix Forum
Source: Wix

Wix Forum presents a superb community management option for Wix users, offering a tailor-made space for people to engage and exchange information.

This feature allows you to easily create an online community on your website, enabling visitors to become members, engage in discussions, follow updates, comment, and more, all within an aesthetically pleasing design.

Additionally, you can cultivate an active community with dynamic customization and moderation tools, shaping your forum to mirror either classic forums or contemporary social feeds.

Cost: Wix Forum is available at no charge.

InSided

InSided
Source: InSided

InSided is a dynamic community management platform tailored to enhance engagement among customers across a range of categories and user segments. It offers functionalities to showcase events and news, coupled with sophisticated gamification tactics to stimulate interaction.

This accessible community creation tool provides a solid base for your forum needs, enabling you to highlight content, integrate external links, and employ unique visuals for a visually appealing layout. 

Cost: Insided does not publicly disclose its pricing details.

Statusbrew

Statusbrew
Source: Statusbrew

This instrument enables you to retain complete command over your social media profiles, while also promoting teamwork by including team members and assigning particular access privileges to simplify complex workflow processes.

Utilize the publishing calendar functionality to get a full view of your campaign schedule, keep track of impending deadlines, and collaborate with your team via a centralized, straightforward dashboard.

Cost: Statusbrew provides a 7-day complimentary trial without needing a credit card and has three paid subscription options, beginning at $69.00 per month when billed yearly.

NapoleonCat

NapoleonCat
Source: NapoleonCat

NapoleonCat stands out as an effective community management tool, streamlining the management of online discussions related to your brand. Its social inbox feature enables swift and effortless handling of various interactions, from addressing customer service inquiries to engaging with followers.

Additionally, the tool offers automation for predetermined responses to common queries, freeing up your team's time to concentrate on more demanding tasks like overseeing intricate conversations throughout your brand communities.

Cost: The pricing plan for NapoleonCat begins at $27 monthly for 3 profiles and 1 user.

Keyhole

Keyhole
Source: Keyhole

​​Keyhole's platform provides users with the ability to track social mentions across numerous channels. Whether it's on social media platforms, online forums, or blogs, you'll always be informed when your brand is mentioned online.

Engaging in these discussions is an excellent strategy for enhancing your brand's reputation and broadening your exposure to new audiences. Monitor your competitors, influencers, hashtags, and more to ensure you're always ready to participate in pertinent conversations.

Cost: The pricing plan for Keyhole begins at $79 monthly.

Taggbox

Taggbox
Source: Taggbox

​​Taggbox offers an extremely easy-to-use social media aggregation tool, simplifying the gathering and showcasing of user-generated content from multiple social networks.

It's designed to suit businesses of any scale, providing an affordable way to boost their digital presence.

Additionally, the integration of a mobile app and the variety of engagement features available with Taggbox position it as a preferred option for businesses aiming to enhance their social media strategy.

Cost: ​​Taggbox does not publicly disclose its pricing details.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse
Source: Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a robust social media management tool aimed at developing and fortifying your online community.

Acting as an alternative to Hootsuite, it provides sophisticated social listening tools that allow community managers to track all mentions in one place.

The reporting feature of Agorapulse is notable for its clear and organized presentation, facilitating straightforward interpretation of data.

Cost: Agorapulse offers three subscription plans, each with a 30-day free trial period. Pricing for the Standard plan starts at €69 per user each month.

CoSchedule

CoSchedule
Source: CoSchedule

CoSchedule stands out as an exceptional social media management tool, ideal for enhancing your online community interaction and streamlining your content scheduling.

This comprehensive management platform offers an easy-to-use drag-and-drop content calendar and a collaboration-focused chat system to maintain team alignment.

Moreover, it allows you to allocate tasks to particular campaigns or projects, mention team members for timely completion, and monitor progress for smooth implementation.

Cost: The offer a free calendar, but marketing suite’s pricing details are not publicly available, requiring a demo request for a personalized quote.

SocialPilot

SocialPilot
Source: SocialPilot

SocialPilot is a dependable and affordable social media management tool suitable for businesses of different scales.

Its accessible interface and array of functionalities render it an attractive option for simplifying social media marketing tasks.

Although it might lack some of the more sophisticated features of its rivals, SocialPilot consistently performs well in areas like scheduling, analytics, and team collaboration.

Cost: SocialPilot offers different pricing plans beginning at only $30 monthly with annual billing.

Grytics

Grytics
Source: Grytics

Grytics serves as an optimal solution for overseeing a particular group or online community, such as a Facebook Group operated by your business. Their specialized feature for managing Facebook group communities allows you to gain insights into group engagement, manage assets for group postings, monitor post effectiveness, and more.

Although a Facebook Group represents a more structured community aspect, it's just a segment of your broader community management strategy. Nevertheless, having a tool dedicated to your Facebook Group can be advantageous, especially if it's a key driver of leads and brand visibility for your business.

Cost: Grytics offers its Facebook group management services starting from $99 per month.

Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks
Source: Mighty Networks

Mighty Networks stands as a comprehensive cultural software platform, offering a powerful, integrated solution for community management.

Its user-friendly and engaging design, coupled with sleek and adaptable course options, has earned widespread praise.

This platform is loaded with an array of functionalities tailored to various facets of community development.

Launching a Mighty Network enables you to create tailored Spaces for your community, offering a variety of engagement opportunities, membership plans, online courses, live streaming, events, and more – all branded under your umbrella.

Cost: The community plan of Mighty Networks begins at $33 per month with an annual payment option, including a 14-day free trial period.

Influitive

Influitive
Source: Influitive

Influitive offers a flexible platform designed to cultivate a vibrant community of advocates, encompassing customers, developers, partners, and employees.

This platform motivates members to engage in various activities like challenges, referrals, product reviews, and social media contributions.

Participants earn points, badges, and levels by completing individualized challenges, either solo or in groups. These rewards can be exchanged for professional benefits and privileges. 

Cost: Influitive's customer advocacy plan begins at $1,999 per month.

Conclusion

Selecting the right community management tool requires careful consideration of several critical factors to ensure it meets both your objectives and the needs of your community.

Key considerations include:

  • User-friendliness - An intuitive interface and easy navigation are crucial for effective community management and enhancing the overall user experience.
  • Capabilities and Features - Examine the app's offerings like content scheduling, analytics, member oversight, and integration with other platforms. Determine which features are essential for your community and focus on tools that address these specific requirements.
  • Customizability - The option to tailor both the look and functionality of the platform is important for maintaining brand consistency and fostering active engagement.
  • Growth Capacity - The tool should be able to accommodate your community's growth, handling more members and functionalities without a drop in performance.
  • Support & Learning Materials - Dependable customer service, a detailed knowledge base, and available resources are important for smooth implementation and continued operation of the tool.
  • Financial Considerations - Assess the pricing structures and evaluate the value each tool offers. Factor in both immediate and future costs of utilizing and sustaining the platform.
  • User Insights & Evaluations - Explore feedback and reviews from current users to understand the tool's real-world effectiveness and the experiences of other community managers.

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