The full review
What is Skool?
Built as a community platform, Skool lets you discover existing groups or create your own, with some free and some charging a monthly fee. The vendor describes it as a powerful tool for starting, growing, and managing an online business, and the About page lists what you build with it — your own community, courses, and events — on what it calls one simple platform.
Skool was founded in 2019 by Sam Ovens (CEO) and Daniel Kang (CTO), has 30 employees, and is based in Los Angeles, California. Skool says setup takes less than 30 minutes, and that because the platform is all-in-one you do not need to integrate any tools for it to work, which it says gives you the flexibility to access and run your business from almost anywhere, including your mobile device.
Courses, live calls, and discussion under one roof
The Skool pricing page lists identical core allowances on both plans: unlimited members, unlimited courses, unlimited videos, and unlimited live calls. For a creator moving off a stack of separate tools, that flat structure removes the usual anxiety about seat counts and storage tiers as a cohort grows.
Monetization is built in rather than bolted on. Skool lets you charge subscription memberships or one-time course purchases, and the vendor claims payment setup takes under a minute. Every community also gets a Custom URL and access to Affiliates, so you can run the group on your own address and let members promote it for a cut.
The Skool Games and the owner community
Alex Hormozi partnered with the company in 2024 to create The Skool Games, and the Skoolers community — a private club for Skool owners run by Sam Ovens — publishes realtime leaderboards ranking earnings by category, status emojis that sit beside your name, and physical awards for top performers.
Skoolers also bundles training on starting a community and growing it, weekly news calls, a member map for finding owners near you, and worldwide meetups. For a first-time creator that peer layer is arguably worth as much as the software, and Skool lists Skoolers as a free private group with 161.9k members, run by Sam Ovens himself.
The Skool homepage is not a brochure; it is a live directory. Communities are browsable under categories including Trending, Hobbies, Music, Money, Spirituality, Tech, Health, Sports, Self-improvement, and Relationships, and each card pairs a member count with the community's price — mostly monthly, occasionally yearly. Skool reports 25 million users browsing the site looking for communities, which means a new group is not launching into a vacuum the way it would on a self-hosted forum.
Hobby or Pro
Both Skool plans carry the same unlimited allowances and the same Custom URL and Affiliates access, so the real variable is the transaction fee taken on payments you collect, which drops sharply on Pro. Hobby is priced for someone testing an idea; Pro suits a community already turning over meaningful revenue. Switching the billing toggle to yearly advertises two months free, and both plans open with a free trial, which Skool's Skoolers listing puts at 14 days on the $9/month tier.
Who should choose Skool
Creators, coaches, and subject-matter experts who want a paid community with courses attached will get the most from Skool, especially if they value speed over configurability. If your offer is a cohort, a mastermind, or a skills club where discussion matters as much as the lessons, the bundled model and built-in discovery do genuine work for you.
Skool's pricing page advertises a deliberately short feature set — unlimited members, courses, videos and live calls, a custom URL and affiliates — with no mention of white-label branding or granular course machinery such as drip scheduling, quizzes or learner reporting, so teams that need that depth should look elsewhere; Skool trades that depth for simplicity. High-volume sellers should also weigh the entry-plan transaction fee before committing.
Strengths
- Genuinely simple to launch and run - one clean space for community, courses, and events with almost no setup friction
- Best-in-class engagement mechanics: leaderboards, points, and unlockable levels that measurably drive daily activity
- Flat, predictable subscription with unlimited members, courses, and video on both tiers
- $9 Hobby tier makes it one of the cheapest ways to start a paid community
Watch out for
- Transaction fees are the real cost: 10% on Hobby is steep, and even Pro adds 2.9% + $0.30 on top of Stripe
- Thin as an LMS - no quizzes, assignments, certificates, or drip-content scheduling
- Deliberately minimal customization and branding; every community looks broadly the same
- Limited payment flexibility and reporting compared with dedicated course platforms
Key features
| Feature | What it does |
|---|
| Community + courses in one | A single feed-style community with built-in course hosting, so members discuss and learn without switching tools. |
| Gamification engine | Points, leaderboards, and level-based unlocks that reward participation and are Skool's standout retention feature. |
| Integrated payments & affiliates | Charge subscriptions or one-time access via Stripe, with a built-in affiliate program to recruit members. |
| Unlimited scale on every plan | Unlimited members, courses, videos, and live calls on both Hobby and Pro - you pay the same regardless of size. |
How Skool compares
| Alternative | How it differs |
|---|
| Circle | More polished, customizable community platform with richer branding and integrations, but pricier and less gamified. |
| Mighty Networks | Community-plus-courses rival with native events, memberships, and its own AI tools; deeper features, steeper learning curve. |
| Kajabi | Full course/marketing suite with funnels, email, and a real LMS; far more powerful but far more expensive and complex. |
Frequently asked questions
How much does Skool actually cost?
Two plans: Hobby at $9/mo and Pro at $99/mo (about $7.50 and $82.50 monthly when paid annually, since annual billing gives two months free). Both come with a 14-day free trial.
What are the transaction fees?
Hobby charges 10% + $0.30 per member payment; Pro drops that to 2.9% + $0.30 (rising to 3.9% + $0.30 on charges above roughly $899). These fees, not the sticker price, are usually the bigger cost as your community grows.
Skool ratings on other platforms
Independent user ratings from third-party review sites, linked here for transparency.
These are not our editorial score, are captured on the date shown, and may have changed since.