Most of the communities I see these days are choosing Skool as their platform of choice.
I was wondering - can we learn something from it?
Beside the marketing geniuses behind the project like Sam Owens and now Alex Hormozi - is there something to learn from Skool’s success?
Are there any particular features that are responsible for Skool’s popularity?
This is the first time I’ve heard about Skool
But i liked the nested replies
Hey ludwikc 
I’ve actually never heard of Skool until you mentioned them.
I think that before I go into Skool vs Discourse (Its hard not to make a comparison when talking about success) we need to talk about who Skool’s audience is.
Discourse is better suited (but not limited to) communities that focus around a product, support, KBs. In addition it is very searchable such as Discourses’ ‘Advanced filters’ etc. In all, its a perfect place for communities who want an organised community.
Skool on the other hand for me, after having a quick gander at a random site from the discovery list and my first thoughts are that I feel a bit lost. I know why. My confusion is part of its ‘popularity’
Off the top of my head one reason they are popular is because it has a ‘Facebook - style’ look about it. For example, its ‘Write something’ at the top of the page secondly, the way posts / replies are structured.
Skool hasn’t had to lure people in as such due to Facebook unfortunately being much too convenient for users (eg. pre installed app on phones). Whereas, Discourses’ audience is more specialist? is that even the right word?
Another thought occurs that even though Discourse is modern, it may be seen as traditional to people who use Skool or other products.
Over all, I’m not a fan of the pagination, nested replies. Jay’s reply sums it up 
Never heard of it. But I’ll have a go:
That’s exactly what I meant.
For me, seeing it configured this way, e.g.:
makes it super engaging.
In my bubble many creators and community owners are moving to Skool exactly because of these engagement features and they really work.
My question here is what can we introduce to Discourse to make it more engaging for the users so they will want to become members of Community - with capital C, as in being part of something bigger, that Discourse is enabling.
They do, I was close to actually signing up 
Discourse has their own “cheers” (Discourse Gamification) and badge system, but emphasis on leaderboards is done better at first glance on Skool. I’m pretty sure Discourse can improve their gamification system to be more engaging.
Another thing is that it’s easy to spin up a private (monetized) community on Skool. In Discourse you either have to pay CDCK or be tech-savvy enough to start a free (or low-cost) community. Effectively making the barrier of choosing a platform favored towards Skool - if the target audience is the masses.
Let’s not forget educational content, schools, courses. It seems Skool[1] has a out-of-the-box way of publishing courses - nothing crazy where Discourse can improve, as this comes very close to doc-categories with a % progress bar above the navigation menu 
Thinking about the name, it seems their main focus is educational communities 
↩︎
That’s exactly what I started this discussion - in order to get this machine going! 
To be perfectly honest - this is the reason why I’m here and why I’m migrating my community from Discord + Kajabi + Notion combo to Discourse.
Still figuring out how to do it, but here’s my progress so far: Using Discourse as Learning Platform. Any input is highly appreciated.
Currently Discourse is already very flexible in making things work. I would definitely structure courses (or anything alike) using the new doc-categories plugin. Example structure in production here on meta docs.
There are for sure things that can be done to make Discourse more inviting to this category.
Versus Skool, I’m 100% sure that you have more flexibility in designing the overall structure with on Discourse, Skool looks very simply structured. They only have categories, in Discourse you can combine both categories and tags, but also sub-categories. Discourse on the other hand, can be as simple in structure if you want it too.
Skool seems to be easy for subscriptions, also possible with Discourse Subscriptions but I agree, the Discourse way is not as easy as Skool. You’d have to setup I believe Stripe or a similar payment provider, which makes sense, Skool probably takes a cut on all subs. It’s a whole different structure and more like a freemium route, think of CDCK offering free hosting and monetizing by commission over transactions happening on your community.
I think this is the reason. A quick browse reveals that most of these “communities” are basically paid advice channels or “courses” for influencer-type people. This is a really popular method for generating income especially in the influencer/guru space.
So the fact that it has no barrier to spin one up monetize it are the primary features. In this way, it’s driven from the top down - influencers bringing people to the platform. In contrast, Discourse definitely feels more like a platform meant for grassroots communities built from the ground up. Similarly, these individual Skool pages feel like something meant to last a few months to a year, whereas a Discourse site feels like something meant to grow over a decade or more.
I think the different intention behind both platforms make it hard to do a direct comparison. But if Discourse did want to take some of this influencer marketshare, the top three priorities I would point to are 1) make it effortless to spin up a community 2) more monetization features and 3) more themes that make it look less like an old fashion forum
I’m not sure but I got flagged for saying Skool has a better gamification system with Skool Games.
I honestly love how simple it is to use Discourse but from a marketing perspective Skool made it very simple for a MGM (Member Get Member) perspective that simply works with today creators and influencers.
You can go as far as saying that they stole a page from OF books (where “creators” have a free and a paid community) and made in a why that simplify for Course Creator, Coaches and other businesses share their communities on Instagram and TikTok.
PS: Moderators I’m not saying Discourse is bad - I’m just replying to OP on what I think they are doing better and linking to what I believe to be a prime example of MGM.
It seems so, however, many similar comparisons were made in the past. If Skool was not there, these guru’s would usually choose something like Discord or Slack (CDCK response: chat/channels). They are still communities, and Discord is very suitable for these target audiences imo.
You are right, Discord and Slack are also popular choices for these types of groups. But the chat channels on Discourse don’t do anything to tip the scales in my opinion. The # 1 thing all these platforms have in common is that you can be non-technical and spin up a space for yourself in seconds for free.
Few people think that deeply about the platforms they use and the features available to each. That’s why convenience always wins out.
That is absolutely correct.
But deep down, I really believe that this is exactly where Discourse can standout.
My initial question is not how to make Discourse as popular as these platforms.
My question was how we can make it so engaging for the members, learning from what these platform got figured out really well.
Thank you for your input (especially for the redesigned docs categories!). But we’re obviously looking at it from the different perspectives.
I’m focused more on the end-user/member experience, and you’re focusing on the creators/owners.
I believe that once these features that will keep end-users/members engaged will naturally bring more creators/owners in, even if the bar is set a little higher. Money-wise, if the members will be engaged, creators/owners will want to give them this kind of engaging platform. After all, I’m migrating my users to Discourse after paying thousands of dollars to store my courses on Kajabi.
The two go hand in hand if you ask me. I was simply mixing in my input to your other topic with Skool. Because I replied in this topic, so I’ve generalized your goal and compared it between Discourse and Skool. I believe we have noted the main differences (being barrier to setup, monetization and gamification) here very well.
Your original question was about Skool’s success/popularity. I don’t think the platform itself is doing anything novel or uniquely interesting. Instead, I think the success is from meeting the moment in terms of responding to demand for a platform that can host a monetized course.
I would say any differential in engagement has less to do with something technical and more to do with the topic/specific influencer. A sufficiently popular influencer can maintain an engaging platform whether it’s Skool or Discord or Discourse or whatever.
Maybe Discourse could note some of the features on Skool, but frankly I know very little about the platform outside of just the quick impression I got browsing it now
You are welcome to have an opinion and we don’t moderate with that kind of bias. Your post was flagged because you dropped a referral link into it, which isn’t cool.
Taking a quick overview. This is another Mass platform idea like Reddit, Scored.io, Discord etc…
One of the benefits is no self hosting and the fact of no need to sign up an account for different communities. As one signup generally gives potential access to them all. The other thing like the platforms mentioned you really don’t need to do much in the way of setup. Alot of folks don’t really want to sign up for all kinds of independent communities with a seperate electronic account even with account)PW managers
So on one side it is how we implement our hosted/self-hosted communities. With new plugins like Activity Pub we can interconnect different communities from my understanding.
With Discourse we need to focus on our designs and promoting our contents. However the rewards can be staggering with customization & control over your community & content.
Is there anyone that would be willing to create Skool-like theme for Discourse?
I’d be willing to sponsor it.
The best place to ask is to start a topic in marketplace
Give maybe link to Skool and some screenshots with some details.