Julien Bouvard • Profile on Skool
Julien Bouvard has tracked Skool communities for close to a year through the SkoolMakers catalogue, where he measures their revenue, pricing and turnover. He holds a Skool group on the Hobby plan and has run an affiliate partnership with a Skool community, funded by an annual subscription paid upfront.
$9 - $99/month
14 days
Coaches, course creators, community builders
The best tool we know for community as the product. Whether it works for you depends on your category more than on the platform.
What is Skool?
Skool is an all-in-one community platform that combines community discussion, online courses, events, and payments into a single, streamlined experience. Founded in 2019 by Sam Ovens (CEO) and Daniel Kang (CTO), Skool was built on a radical premise: community should come first, and everything else should serve that core experience.
In 2024, Alex Hormozi, the entrepreneur, author and investor, made a significant investment in Skool and helped launch the now-famous Skool Games competition. This partnership catapulted Skool into mainstream awareness among online creators and coaches.
How big is it? Skool publishes no platform-wide totals, and the figures that circulate, 170,000 communities and 25 million users among them, trace back to no first-party source we could find, so we do not repeat them. What we can count is what we have read ourselves, and that is set out under how we reviewed Skool.
Skool's philosophy is deliberate simplicity. While competitors pile on features, Skool focuses on doing a few things extremely well: fostering genuine community engagement through gamification, making course delivery frictionless, and keeping the interface clean enough that non-technical creators can launch in minutes.
You can browse existing Skool communities on our community directory to see the range of niches and topics covered on the platform. If you would rather start from a shortlist, our ranking of the best Skool communities picks out the strongest ones by category.
How we reviewed Skool
We do not run an active Skool community. We hold a Hobby-plan group used for testing the platform, and we track 205 communities through the SkoolMakers catalogue. That is the first thing to say, because it sets the limits of what this review can tell you, and because every other review you will find is written by someone who runs one for real.
What we have is the other side of the platform. Each of those 205 English-language communities is read from its own About page rather than trusting a third-party estimate; the current catalogue holds readings taken between July 16, 2026 and September 18, 2026. We recrawled Skool's Discovery rankings in July 2026 and again at the end of August 2026, which is where the turnover figure on this page comes from. We read the Skoolers leaderboard for revenue, and what that source does and does not support is set out on our Skoolers listing. And we have operated an affiliate partnership with one Skool community, which has its own section below rather than a line buried here.
What this review does not have. No admin screenshots. Our test group is not a live community, and a dashboard with nothing in it would show a reader nothing; and nothing here is borrowed from someone else's. Where a claim would depend on using the product day to day, we say so instead of asserting it.
Skool Pricing in 2026
Skool has two plans and nothing in between. The subscription is simple. The transaction fee is where the detail lives, and it is the part most summaries flatten.
| Feature | Hobby ($9/mo) | Pro ($99/mo) |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly price | $9 | $99 |
| Transaction fee | 10% + $0.30 | 2.9% + $0.30 up to $899 3.9% + $0.30 above $900 |
| Admins | 1 | Up to 30 |
| Members | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Courses | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Custom URL | No | Yes |
| Advanced plugins (AutoDM, Zapier) | No | Yes |
| Affiliate / referral system | No | Yes |
| Free trial | 14 days | 14 days |
Break-even point: The switch to Pro pays for itself once your community collects around $1,270/month in payments. Below that, Hobby stays cheaper despite its 10% transaction fee. Above it, the 2.9% Pro fee saves you more than the $90 difference in subscription cost. Full breakdown and a calculator in our Skool pricing guide.
New in 2026
- ✓ Freemium model: Offer free tiers within your community to attract new members, then upsell to paid access.
- ✓ Multiple pricing tiers: Create different access levels within a single community (e.g., Basic, Premium, VIP).
- ✓ One-time purchases: Sell individual courses or content without requiring a subscription.
- ✓ "Buy Now" courses: Standalone course pages that can be purchased independently from community membership.
Skool Features Breakdown
Community
The heart of Skool. The community feed works like a mix between Facebook Groups and Reddit. Members post, comment, and upvote content. Posts can be organized into categories, pinned, and filtered. The feed algorithm surfaces the most engaging content, keeping discussions alive. Every member has a profile with their activity, level, and contributions visible to the group.
Classroom
Skool's course hosting feature lets you create structured learning paths with modules and lessons. Each lesson can contain video, text, images, and downloadable files. Courses are drip-fed or unlocked all at once. The Classroom integrates tightly with the community. Course completions feed into the gamification system, and members can discuss lessons directly in the community feed.
Gamification
This is Skool's secret weapon. Every action earns points: posting, commenting, completing lessons, receiving likes. Members level up on a visible leaderboard, creating friendly competition and habit-forming engagement loops. Community owners can unlock specific content or courses at certain levels, rewarding active participation. It is well designed, and it is worth being precise about what it produces.
The leaderboards the gamification feeds into do not hold still. When we recrawled Skool's Discovery rankings ten weeks after a first pass, 9 of the 33 entries we had logged were still ranked. The other 24 had been replaced. Gamification keeps a community's own members active; it does nothing to keep the community's position on the platform, and that position turns over in about a quarter.
Source: our Discovery recrawls of July 2026 and August 2026. Ranked entries only, 10 weeks apart.
Calendar & Events
Schedule live events, workshops, Q&A sessions, and group coaching calls directly within Skool. Events show up in each member's local timezone. Members RSVP and get reminders. While Skool does not host video calls natively, it integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, and other tools via event links. Recurring events can be set up for weekly or monthly sessions.
Payments & Monetization
Skool handles payments via Stripe with built-in subscription management. You set your monthly or annual price, and Skool handles billing, refunds, and cancellations. New in 2026: freemium tiers, one-time purchases, multiple pricing levels, and standalone "Buy Now" courses. The Pro plan also includes an affiliate/referral system so your members can earn commissions for bringing in new subscribers.
What the machinery produces at the top end is public, because Skool's own community publishes a leaderboard. Among the top 50 communities in each category, the median monthly recurring revenue runs from $78,832 in Money and Business down to $4,084 in Relationships, and the entry ticket at rank 50 runs from $60,862 to $1,752 across the same two. Those are the top of each category, and nothing on that leaderboard describes a typical Skool community.
Source: Skoolers leaderboard, recorded September 10, 2026. Full table by category in our guide to creating a community.
Mobile App
Skool offers native iOS and Android apps that mirror the full desktop experience. Members can browse the feed, watch course videos, RSVP to events, and engage with the community from their phones. Push notifications keep members coming back. The mobile app is clean and fast, with none of the feature parity issues you see with some competitors.
Discovery & Marketplace
Skool has a built-in discovery page where potential members can browse and find communities by category, popularity, and topic. This is a meaningful advantage over platforms like Circle or Kajabi where you must drive all your own traffic. The Skool marketplace acts as a built-in acquisition channel, especially for communities competing in the Skool Games.
What Skool Does NOT Have
Skool's simplicity is a double-edged sword. Here is what you will not find on the platform:
- ✗ No quizzes, tests, or certificates. If you need formal assessments or completion certificates for compliance or accreditation, Skool cannot provide them.
- ✗ No built-in email marketing. Skool does not include email sequences, newsletters, or broadcast tools. You will need a separate tool like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign.
- ✗ No native CRM integrations. Direct integrations with CRMs are limited. The Pro plan offers Zapier access, but there are no native connections to HubSpot, Salesforce, or similar tools.
- ✗ No custom domain. You cannot host your Skool community on your own domain. Pro plan members get a custom URL path, but the domain remains skool.com.
- ✗ No funnel builder. Unlike Kajabi or ClickFunnels, Skool does not include landing pages, sales funnels, or checkout page customization. You will need external tools for complex sales flows.
- ✗ No advanced LMS reporting. Course analytics are basic. You can see completion rates but lack detailed reporting on quiz scores, time spent per lesson, or learning outcomes.
- ✗ Limited design customization. You can set a logo, banner, and colors, but the overall layout and structure is fixed. If brand aesthetics are critical, this may feel restrictive compared to Circle or Kajabi.
Skool vs Alternatives
How does Skool stack up against other popular platforms? Here is a quick comparison across the most important criteria.
| Criteria | Skool | Circle | Kajabi | Teachable | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $9/mo | $89/mo (billed annually) | $69/mo | $39/mo | $41/mo |
| Community focus | ★★★★★ | ★★★★ | ★★ | ★★ | ★★★★ |
| Course features | ★★★ | ★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★ |
| Gamification | ★★★★★ | ★★ | ★ | ★ | ★★ |
| Marketing tools | ★★ | ★★★ | ★★★★★ | ★★★★ | ★★★ |
| Customization | ★★ | ★★★★ | ★★★★ | ★★★ | ★★★ |
| Simplicity | ★★★★★ | ★★★ | ★★ | ★★★ | ★★★ |
Want a deeper dive? Check out our detailed comparisons: Skool vs Discord, Skool vs Kajabi.
Who Should Use Skool
Before the profiles, one number that says more than a list of them. Among the top 50 communities in each category on the Skoolers leaderboard, the entry ticket at rank 50 is $60,862/month in Money and Business and $1,752/month in Relationships, a factor of 35. Whatever profile you fit, the category you pick sets a ceiling before execution comes into it, and no platform feature moves that ceiling.
Source: Skoolers leaderboard, recorded September 10, 2026. Top 50 per category, never a typical community.
With that ceiling in view, Skool is a good fit if you match any of these profiles:
- ✓ Coaches and consultants who want to build a paid community around their expertise and deliver coaching content alongside group interaction.
- ✓ Course creators who believe learning is better in community. If your courses benefit from peer interaction, accountability, and discussion, Skool is ideal.
- ✓ Community builders who want a platform that puts engagement and retention first, with built-in gamification to keep members active.
- ✓ Solopreneurs who want an all-in-one solution without juggling multiple tools. Community, courses, events, and payments, all in one place.
- ✓ Non-technical creators who want to launch fast without dealing with website builders, plugins, or integrations. Skool requires zero technical skill.
- ✓ Creators on a budget who need to start at $9/month and scale up as revenue grows, where the cheapest published price elsewhere is $39 on Teachable and $89 on Circle, billed annually.
See what other Skool creators are building on the platform.
Who Should NOT Use Skool
Skool is not the right platform for everyone. Consider alternatives if:
- ✗ You need advanced course features like quizzes, graded assessments, completion certificates, or SCORM compliance. Look at Teachable or Kajabi instead.
- ✗ You need full marketing automation including email sequences, landing pages, and sales funnels in one tool. Kajabi is the better all-in-one for that.
- ✗ Brand customization is critical. If you need full control over design, layout, and domain branding, Circle or a custom-built solution will serve you better.
- ✗ You run a large enterprise that needs SSO, advanced permissions, CRM integrations, or compliance features. Skool is built for creators, not corporations.
- ✗ You only sell courses without a community component. If community is an afterthought, a dedicated LMS like Teachable or Thinkific will give you more course-specific tools.
The Skool Games
The Skool Games is a quarterly competition created in partnership with Alex Hormozi that challenges community owners to grow their communities as fast as possible within a set timeframe. Participants compete for cash prizes, recognition, and bragging rights.
The competition has become one of Skool's most effective growth engines. It motivates creators to go all-in on community building, share strategies, and push the boundaries of what is possible on the platform. Past winners have built communities generating six and seven figures in annual revenue.
The Skool Games also creates a flywheel effect: the competition generates content, case studies, and social proof that attract new creators to the platform, who then participate in future rounds. It is a clever growth strategy that benefits both Skool and its community owners.
How to participate: Any Skool community owner can enter the Skool Games. There is no additional fee. Just sign up through the official Skool Games community on the platform. Competitions typically run for 12 weeks.
Affiliate income on Skool, and where it actually comes from
Two affiliate programmes, and almost every article confuses them.
Skool's own programme pays 40% recurring, for life, on the subscription of a person you refer who then creates a community. It pays on creators. Someone who joins a community through your link earns you nothing, which is the most common misunderstanding about it.
A community's own programme is a different thing, switched on by the owner inside their group, and open to members only. Three rules decide whether a referral counts. The referrer must hold an active membership at the moment the new member joins. Owners and admins cannot refer into their own group. And a member who leaves and rejoins through an affiliate link generates nothing. Verified on Skool's help centre, September 2026.
What we have actually done
We have earned roughly $90,000 in commissions from a single Skool community. Getting there meant paying for an annual membership up front, so the risk came before the first dollar, and that is the part most accounts of affiliate income leave out.
We are not going to publish the acquisition levers, the permissions we negotiated, or the mechanics. Those are method rather than information, and setting them out would help a competitor more than it would help you. What is worth passing on is where the opportunity actually sits, because it is not where most people look.
Skool's own programme pays on community creation, which is a narrow event. A community's programme requires membership, so you pay to enter before you can earn. The route that works in practice is a direct arrangement with the owner. Once you have one, the channels depend entirely on what they allow, which might be a dedicated site, paid acquisition, video, email or content. The question to open with is what you could build together, rather than where the affiliate link is.
If you run a Skool community and that sounds like a conversation worth having, our contact form has a partnership option. That is not an affiliate link and we earn nothing if you use it.
Our verdict depends on your category, and that is not a hedge
Skool is the best tool we have looked at for running a community as the product rather than as an add-on. The simplicity is real, the gamification works, and having courses, payments and the feed in one place removes a whole class of problems. Judged on how it feels to use, this is a straightforward recommendation.
We would not choose it on that basis, because the platform is rarely the variable that decides the outcome. Among the top 50 communities in each category, breaking into that group takes $60,862/month in Money and Business and $1,752/month in Relationships, a factor of 35. The category sets a ceiling before execution comes into it. And Skool's own rankings turn over hard: of 33 entries ranked in mid-July, 9 were still ranked ten weeks later. Whatever "top community" means, it is not durable.
One figure cuts against the argument we have just made, and we would rather print it than leave it out. When we went back to the 48 ranked communities we had logged in June, only 2 had become untraceable. Communities on Skool mostly persist. It is their position in the rankings that does not, and a churning leaderboard is a much smaller problem than a churning platform.
Skool works if you already have an audience to bring, if your niche is one people pay for, and if you want the platform to stay out of the way. It does not work if you are hoping the platform will supply the audience, if your model needs a real LMS or marketing automation, or if you are pricing below $19/month, where the $0.30 per transaction takes a bite before the percentage is even counted.
What would move our view. Up: published retention data, and a route to a custom domain. Down: any rise in the transaction fee, which is where the platform's margin sits and where a creator has no leverage.
Sources: Skoolers leaderboard, recorded September 10, 2026; our Discovery recrawls of July and August 2026.
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Affiliate link. It does not change anything written above.