Skool

Skool is a community and course platform founded in 2019 by Sam Ovens and Daniel Kang, designed to let creators build sustainable online businesses around their expertise or passion. Rather than juggling separate tools for community hosting, course delivery, live streaming, and payments, Skool combines all of these into a single interface. The platform has grown into a genuine alternative to fragmented creator stacks, particularly for anyone wanting to build a monetized community without managing multiple subscriptions.

The core value proposition is simplicity: creators can launch a Skool space, invite members, create courses with lesson sequences, sell memberships at whatever price they choose, host live calls or stream events, gamify engagement with points and levels, and accept payments, all from one dashboard. There's no need to plug in Stripe separately or sync data between a course platform and a community tool. Everything lives together, making the creator experience straightforward and the member experience cohesive.

What you actually get is a branded space that functions as a private social network crossed with an online school. Members join via a link or direct invite, log into a portal with a customized URL (or use a custom domain if you upgrade), and see content organized however you structure it. You can create categories to organize discussions, post media and text updates to your feed, set up courses with lessons that become available sequentially or based on membership tier, schedule and host live video calls within the platform, and earn money through membership subscriptions, course purchases, or a combination of both. The platform also includes basic moderation tools, role-based access so you can appoint community moderators, an affiliate program so members can refer others and earn a cut, and gamification features like member points and status levels to encourage participation.

The monetization path is flexible. Creators typically choose between a membership model (charge a recurring monthly or annual fee for access to everything), a course model (charge upfront for individual courses), or a hybrid model where membership gets you the community and certain courses, with premium courses available à la carte. Prices are entirely up to you. A fitness coach might charge $19 a month for access to workouts and community support. A business educator might charge $297 for a standalone course or $199 a month for memberships that release new modules weekly. A community organizer might offer free membership to build audience but charge for premium courses or coaching calls offered inside the community.

Skool's fee structure is straightforward relative to what you're building. The platform operates on two pricing tiers: Hobby at $9 a month with a 10% platform fee on transactions, and Pro at $99 a month with a 2.9% platform fee. Both tiers come with unlimited members, unlimited courses, unlimited video storage, unlimited live calls, a custom domain, and access to the affiliate program. The difference is mainly in the transaction fee. At the Hobby level, 10% of every membership payment and course sale goes to Skool, so a creator charging $99 a month for memberships keeps roughly $89 per member. On the Pro tier, the 2.9% fee is significantly lower, making the monthly cost easier to recoup if you have any real transaction volume. For someone with a few dozen paying members or a few course sales a month, Pro pays for itself immediately.

Payouts happen automatically to your bank account via Stripe Connect. The specific payout schedule isn't heavily advertised on the site, so it's worth checking your account settings or reaching out to support for exact timing, but the general model is that your revenue settles from the payment processor and transfers to you on the platform's standard schedule. Payment methods accepted include credit cards, and the underlying processing runs through Stripe, so most common payment methods are supported internationally.

Compared to other membership and course platforms, Skool occupies a middle ground. Patreon is focused on recurring subscriptions to a creator's work without course structure built in, though it does have community features now. Substack started as a newsletter platform and has since added subscriptions and more community features, but it's primarily writing-first. Teachable and Kajabi are course-first platforms with membership add-ons, heavier on the course features but also more expensive. Skool is lighter than Kajabi and more community-forward than Teachable, aiming for creators who want a balance of social interaction and structured content. Ghost is a newsletter and membership platform that skews toward publishers. Membership-focused platforms like Memberful are simpler but don't include community or live calling. Skool's real competitor in the "everything in one" space is Mighty Networks, which offers community with course and event features but doesn't have the same ease of monetization or membership pricing flexibility.

Skool works best for creators with an existing audience or strong personal brand who want to deepen engagement and monetize at the same time. It suits solopreneurs and small group leaders: fitness coaches running live classes and selling memberships, business mentors teaching courses and hosting accountability communities, hobbyist communities charging to keep the space ad-free and funded, consultants selling ongoing access to expertise, and educators selling structured courses with community support. It's less suitable if you primarily want a newsletter or one-way broadcast (Substack fits better there) or if you need heavy course curriculum management and certifications (Teachable and Kajabi do that more thoroughly).

Skool has developed a genuine following among creators and small entrepreneurs, partly because the product iteration is visible and the company is active in its own community. The $9 entry point is low enough to experiment. If you're building a serious membership or course business and want one tool that does all the pieces reasonably well rather than a Swiss Army knife of integrations, Skool is a solid, established choice that rewards you for scaling.

One practical consideration: since Skool handles both community and monetization, migration if you outgrow it isn't trivial. Your member relationships, course content, and discussion history all live in Skool, so moving to a different platform later means exporting and re-importing data. That said, for most creators, the consolidation benefit outweighs the potential switching cost. The product is mature and stable enough that creators aren't looking to leave. The real risk is if Skool's pricing increases significantly or if your business model shifts dramatically (for instance, if you suddenly want to sell physical products, you'd need a separate platform like Fourthwall or Shopify). For creators focused on community, courses, and memberships, Skool remains the simplest unified option.