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Compare · MemBuild Community vs BuddyBoss

BuddyBoss does more. MemBuild Community does less, for free. Which one fits you.

BuddyBoss is the established choice for a WordPress community: groups, forums, a theme, an app, and a yearly licence. MemBuild Community is free, GPL, and light. Here is the honest side by side, including where BuddyBoss is still the right call.

Download MemBuild Community (free)See the demo →
BuddyBoss
The established choice. Groups, forums, a theme, an app.
For a large community that needs forums and groups today, LearnDash templates out of the box, and a branded mobile app, with a yearly licence to match.
Start $99 → $199/yr renewal (2.9% fee on payments) · Launch $199 → $399 · Scale $349 → $699 · one site each
MemBuild Community
Free. Light. Members stay yours.
For a membership that wants a feed, stories, courses, levels and chats members actually open, on a site you already run, with no licence to renew.
free · GPL · no member cap · no fee on payments
Side by side

What you get, and what you pay for it.

 
BuddyBoss
MemBuild Community
Price
BuddyBossStart $99 first year then $199/yr; Launch $199 then $399; Scale $349 then $699. Per site. Points, ranks and leaderboards only on Scale.
MemBuild CommunityFree, including levels, leaderboard, chats, stories and reels. No per-site licence.
Fees on your payments
BuddyBoss2.9% on the Start plan’s Memberships and Courses (Stripe Connect). 0% on Launch and Scale.
MemBuild CommunityNone. The plugin takes no payments; your membership or shop plugin does, with its own processor.
Licence
BuddyBossYearly, per site. Pro features and the theme’s options need an active licence.
MemBuild CommunityNone. GPL: it keeps running whether or not we exist.
Feed
BuddyBossActivity feed, reactions, media. Polls, pinned posts, GIFs and email digests need a paid plan.
MemBuild CommunityPosts with photos, video, files; reactions, threaded comments, pinned posts, Latest and Popular. Plus stories that expire and vertical reels. No polls yet.
Groups and forums
BuddyBossFull groups and bbPress-style forums, with group subscriptions.
MemBuild CommunityOne community feed with member groups for access. No sub-spaces or forums yet.
Courses
BuddyBossOwn LMS (course → section → lesson, quizzes, certificates, drip) and LearnDash/LifterLMS/Tutor templates in the theme.
MemBuild CommunityCourses, modules, lessons, videos and downloads, progress, drip. Unlock by level or member group. No quizzes or certificates.
Gamification
BuddyBossPoints, achievements, ranks and leaderboards on the Scale plan ($349 → $699/yr).
MemBuild CommunityPoints, nine levels you name, streaks, a leaderboard. Free.
Chats
BuddyBossPrivate messages; real-time messaging on Launch and above.
MemBuild CommunityOne-to-one and group chats, docked windows, typing and seen, encrypted at rest. Free.
Theme and page speed
BuddyBossBuilt around the BuddyBoss theme, which carries about 1.6 MB of CSS on a community page. The theme is part of the package.
MemBuild CommunityIts own small app at /community; your theme keeps the rest of the site. Loads only what each screen needs.
Mobile
BuddyBossA real native app, as a separate subscription from $499/yr.
MemBuild CommunityInstallable web app: members add it to their home screen and open it full screen. No app-store app.
Phoning home
BuddyBossLicence checks and usage reporting, as with most commercial plugins.
MemBuild CommunityA weekly anonymous ping: random ID and version numbers. Shown in Settings → Advanced, deletable, switchable off.
Getting your data out
BuddyBossImporters from many platforms coming in; going out, WordPress’s own export tools.
MemBuild CommunityCSV exports of members, posts, comments, files and courses, plus WordPress’s personal-data export and erase.
a green edge marks where we think we're ahead, a dark one where they are. prices and features as published on the date at the bottom of this page.
Where BuddyBoss is the better choice

Pick BuddyBoss if you need these today.

It is the established choice for a reason. If your community is built on any of these, stay, and do not let a free plugin talk you out of it.

Forums and sub-groups
Threaded forums, groups with their own feeds and subscriptions, group-level moderation. MemBuild Community has one feed and access groups; it does not have forums yet.
A native mobile app
If your members want an app in the App Store with push notifications and offline courses, BuddyBoss sells one. Ours is an installable web app, which is good, and not the same thing.
Quizzes, certificates and LearnDash templates
BuddyBoss ships an LMS with quizzes and certificates, and its theme has LearnDash, LifterLMS and Tutor templates. We have courses with drip and progress, and no quizzes.
Years of integrations
Nineteen access-control adapters in Pro, Zoom, OneSignal, Pusher. We integrate through WordPress roles and hooks, which covers most memberships and not every edge.
Where MemBuild Community is the better choice

Pick MemBuild Community if these matter more.

We built it for the memberships we run: owners who want the parts of Skool members like, on WordPress, without a yearly bill or a plugin that gets heavier every release.

The bill is zero and stays zero
Levels, leaderboard, chats, stories, reels: free. On BuddyBoss the gamification alone is the $349-then-$699 tier, per site, every year.
No licence to renew
Nothing to keep active, nothing per site. If we disappeared tomorrow, your community would not notice.
Light enough that members open it
A small app that loads only what each screen needs, instead of a theme carrying about 1.6 MB of CSS on every community page.
Your data, in plain sight
Everything exports to CSV from wp-admin. Private messages are encrypted and never readable by admins. The weekly ping is listed, in full, in Settings.
If you switch

Same site, same members. The feed starts fresh.

On a BuddyBoss site, your members are already WordPress users, so there is no member migration at all. What moves and what does not:

  1. 1
    Install alongside, don’t switch yet
    MemBuild Community lives at /community and ignores your theme. Run both for a week with a few members; nothing on BuddyBoss changes.
  2. 2
    Map access
    Create a member group per membership level and point it at the WordPress role your membership plugin already gives buyers. Courses unlock by group or level.
  3. 3
    Rebuild courses, pin a welcome
    Courses are modules and lessons, so rebuilding is quick. The feed starts empty: pin a welcome post and announce the levels, so the first week has something to do.
  4. 4
    Export what you want to keep from BuddyBoss
    Member lists and anything in your LMS. Forum threads do not move; most owners keep the old forum read-only for a month, then close it.
  5. 5
    Deactivate BuddyBoss when members have moved
    Turn it off once members are on the new feed. Keep the licence until it expires, so you can turn it back on if you need something.
if you want us to do this for you, it is a scoped fix after the Audit. if you want to do it yourself, the plugin is free and the demo is live.
Questions owners ask
Is MemBuild Community really free, or free until it matters?

Free, GPL, no member cap, no fee on payments. Everything on this page is in the free plugin. Premium add-ons will be paid extras later, not pieces taken out.

I already run BuddyBoss. Can I switch without losing members?

Members, yes: both plugins use WordPress users, so on the same site your members are already there. Posts, groups and forum threads do not move yet; you start the feed fresh and rebuild courses. If that is a dealbreaker today, stay on BuddyBoss and come back when the importer ships.

Does it work with LearnDash, MemberPress or WooCommerce?

Alongside them, yes. Members are WordPress users, and courses can be opened to a member group that follows a WordPress role, so a membership or shop plugin that gives buyers a role opens the right courses. There is no LearnDash template layer like the BuddyBoss theme has; LearnDash keeps its own pages.

What does MemBuild Community send to you?

Once a week, a random ID and version numbers (plugin, WordPress, PHP, language), so we can count installs. Nothing about your site address or your members. Settings → Advanced shows exactly what is sent and has a delete button; a filter turns it off entirely.

Who is behind it, and will it still exist next year?

MemBuild, the team that has built and run WordPress memberships on BuddyBoss and LearnDash since 2011. We still build on BuddyBoss where it fits. The plugin exists for the memberships that wanted something lighter and free. It is GPL, so even if we vanished the code is yours.

Try it on your own site this afternoon.

Free, GPL, no member cap, no fee on your payments. If you are running a bigger membership and want us to move you, the Audit covers it.

Download free
Also readvs FluentCommunity →A free Skool alternative for WordPress →Fixing BuddyBoss + LearnDash access →