The only community
platform you need
Our easy-to-use, fully-branded community platform
provides you with all of the tools required to build a
thriving online community across Web, iOS and Android.
Our easy-to-use, fully-branded community platform provides you with all of the tools required to build a thriving online community across Web, iOS and Android.
Class-leading online community platform
Disciple creates fully customisable, branded apps for community builders. Since the day we
introduced the first iteration of our trail-blazing app, we have engaged in a process of continual
improvement and refinement.
The result is one of the best online community platforms on the market. One that prioritises flexibility
and dependability and that offers innovative ways to monetize your community.
A Disciple online community platform will enable you to:
Generate revenue
Generate income by selling online courses, membership subscriptions, and exclusive content.
Drive engagement
Grow revenue by selling member subscriptions and in-app purchases.
Reclaim control
Bring your community together in a safe space that you own and control.
Disciple is the
best choice for communities
These days you have quite a few options when it comes to community apps, but all are not created
equal. Here are just a few ways we stand out from the competition:
A Disciple online community platform will provide you with a plethora of content options that will enable you to keep your members interested and informed. Choose from live streaming, embedded video, blog articles, polls, slideshows and much more.
We designed our online community app to be instinctual and a joy to use. That way, even if someone has little or no experience with mobile apps they will be able to quickly and easily find their way around your online community. Your app provides members with simple and effective ways to engage with one another and contribute to the magic of your community.
At Disciple, we understand that communities come in all shapes and sizes. That’s why we’ve built our platform to be highly customizable, so that you can build an app that feels truly unique to your brand and meets your specific requirements.
You can customize the look and feel of your app by changing the branding, colours and graphic schemes. But we don’t stop there. As the host, you can choose how your app is structured and which features you utilise. You will have a bucket full of the tools you need to manage your community, including a member’s database, custom member profile fields, comprehensive analytics, scheduled posting and state-of-the-art APIs that facilitate the integration of 3rd party features that will enhance the user experience even more.
Your members can also personalise their experience by filtering content based on their interests and opting into or out of notifications. Members can be alerted when someone interacts with one of their posts, they can receive content recommendations based on their location or history and they can engage in threaded comments that enable a higher level of interaction with certain community members.
Some app builders pay little more than lip service to the notion of privacy. At Disciple Media, we take the privacy of your community members and their data seriously. You and your online community members can rest easy knowing the Disciple online community platform is fully compliant with both the UK GDPR and the European GDPR. In addition, our community app is far more resistant to hacking than any comparable website could ever be.
You can have the slickest-looking app on planet earth but if it doesn’t facilitate engagement among members it’s just digital window dressing.
A Disciple Media online community platform provides an array of tools that enable you to determine what your community members are responding to and what they’re taking a pass on.
By cultivating those things they respond to you promote a higher level of engagement than you could ever get with a blog, or standard web forum.
Member data can also be used to segment the community into sub-communities of members with similar interests. This will facilitate interaction and help create a tighter bond between members.
A Disciple community app provides a whole host of monetization options including:
- Freemium and premium multi-tier subscriptions: Charge everyone a flat fee for access. Charge different amounts for different levels of access. Or allow limited access for free and access to key features for a modest fee.
- In app purchases: Community members can purchase online courses, ebooks, music downloads and other digital products through the app.
- Physical purchases: Sell T-shirts, calendars, posters or other items that bolster branding and spread the word.
- Event access: Charge for access to live streamed lessons, concerts, media events and more.
We are passionate about communities and we
are on a mission to make it easy and fun to
create and grow online communities.
With Disciple community apps the possibilities are endless.
Think of it as your own social space where you can gather,
engage and monetize your members.
With Disciple community apps the possibilities are endless. Think of it as your own social space where you can gather, engage and monetize your members.
A closer look at monetization
We touched on monetization above but it deserves a much closer look. After all, while some will be willing to absorb the cost of building and maintaining an online community most others will need to see some return in order to continue to keep the community humming and, even better, growing.
Here are a few of the ways you can monetize your Disciple Media online community platform:
physical products
digital products
Charge a subscription
With Disciple, you can choose a subscription model that works for your community. Our multi-tier subscription options mean that you can create different packages of content and access with different price tags. For example, you could create Gold, Silver and Bronze tiers, providing an experience for every budget.
physical products
Market your own physical products
Even if yours is a community dedicated to advancing a political or environmental cause you can still raise money by selling T-shirts, coffee mugs, baseball caps or other items emblazoned with a signature slogan or related image. The only limit is your imagination.
digital products
Market your own digital products
When it comes to digital products you have a variety of options beyond selling online courses (which we will get to in a moment). If you have information to impart that would lend itself to a book format you can offer ebooks for sale. They can be anything from cookbooks to auto repair guides, diet and exercise plans and more. Another thing to consider is creating one-of-a-kind NFT collectables and offering them for sale during a livestream auction.
Offer online courses
Whether you offer a complete set of courses or sell your courses by the session, online courses are a great way to raise money through your community app. In recent years the popularity of online learning has exploded. People are looking for quality courses they can take in the privacy and comfort of their own home. So if you have useful information to impart, consider offering online courses.
Offer online consulting
If your community is based on a particular type of professional expertise you possess you can offer online consulting services that augment the fixed content offered through your app. Conduct one-on-one or group sessions. Business consultants are in high demand these days, as are therapists, financial consultants, IT consultants, marketing consultants and career consultants.
Consider affiliate marketing
One of the most impressive side benefits of the digital revolution has been the explosion of affiliate marketing. People who might never have been able to secure the capital to start a brick-and-mortar business have been able to prosper by way of affiliate marketing which requires no upfront investment.
Instead, the affiliate marketer simply promotes someone else’s product and provides a link where an interested party can purchase that product. Every time someone does the affiliate receives a commission on the sale. If yours is a thriving community with a large membership base the potential to earn substantial amounts via affiliate marketing are good.
How about dropshipping?
Dropshipping is similar to affiliate marketing in that it does not require you to make an upfront investment. Instead, as with affiliate marketing, you promote someone else’s product to your online community.
The difference between affiliate marketing and dropshipping is that, with affiliate marketing, the customer buys directly from the seller and the affiliate gets a commission for the referral. With dropshipping, the customer buys from you, the community manager. You then buy the product from the manufacturer, include a modest markup for your trouble, and have the product shipped directly to the customer, who covers the shipping charge.
These are just some of the ways you can monetize the branded community you create and foster with your Disciple Media online community platform.
These are just some of the ways you can monetize the branded community you create and foster with your Disciple Media online community platform.
Get the most out of your community platform
Your own-branded
community platform
Make your community more accessible than ever before with a fully-branded online community platform. Simply select the features and branding that suit your needs and in a few easy steps, you’ll be able to launch, grow and monetise your community.
- Web, iOS & Android
- Push notifications
- Livestreaming
- Full customisation
- Multiple groups
- Event Calendar
The importance of building
a strong brand image
Your brand image is how you communicate to members without having to say a word.
Take Starbucks for instance. No matter where they are in the world when fans of Seattle’s most famous cultural export see the Starbucks mermaid it conjures images of a clean, comfortable, sophisticated place to relax, enjoy their favourite beverage and recharge their batteries (sometimes literally).
All of that, all those pleasant, familiar feelings taken together represent the brand image. And it’s important that you strive to create something similar for your online community because a quality product, or a compelling issue alone is not usually enough to sustain a vibrant online community.
Maintaining a strong
brand image
The ancient Egyptians understood the importance of branding. The pharaohs had legions of PR pros working tirelessly to buttress the iconography that sustained the ruling family’s hegemony. Likewise, imperial Rome was no stranger to branding either.
Generals would put soldiers carrying the Roman Standard with the SPQR insignia right at the head of an advancing army so that whoever they encountered would know immediately what they were up against.
Now we’re not saying you need to raise your own army, but at the same time being able to conjure a set of images and feelings in the minds and hearts of your members with just a few letters and/or graphic flourishes ala Starbucks will pay enormous dividends in the long run.
Why? Because
- A strong brand image demonstrates you are serious about creating and fostering something that will last.
- A brand image can be more impactful when it comes to retaining members than any live stream or digital download.
- Most people are creatures of habit. They prefer the familiar to new and untested. Those warm feelings they experience when they spy some aspect of your branding are invaluable.
- If your brand has greater market penetration than others it’s more likely people will choose you simply because they recognise you, even if they don’t have any prior experience with your community.
A Disciple community app will provide you with more ways to create, promote and sustain your brand image than any standard website, blog or web forum ever could. It will also provide myriad ways to learn about your members that will enable you to effectively leverage that brand image you are so carefully cultivating.
Manage and learn
about your community
Publish your content and manage your members with a powerful community management hub. Your community. Your rules.
- Analytics
- Member database
- Moderation tools
- Member profiles
- Scheduled posts
- Integrations & AP
API
We built our public API, so you can integrate your community platform with your existing tools.
Updates
We regularly update the platform with new features and keep an eye on App Store guidelines, so you don’t have to.
Privacy
We provide a secure, GDPR compliant community platform where you own and control your data.
Disciple: the best online
community platform for
savvy community managers
The best online community platforms are user friendly, versatile, offer a high degree of personalisation and provide numerous monetisation tools. They also provide plenty of ways for you to learn about your members, to leverage that information to create a more satisfying user experience and they ensure your user’s data is always safe and secure from misuse or hacks.
If you are in the early stages of planning your online community don’t commit to an expensive web design and hosting contract before you speak to the team at Disciple Media. If you are considering transitioning your community from a traditional web forum to a mobile app, make sure you speak to the experts at Disciple Media.
We make creating, growing and managing an online community as fun as it is rewarding.
FAQs
Starting an online community is a commitment, so you really need to understand why you are looking to create one. There are a number of tried and tested steps to launch your community.
1) Identify your own niche, something that would resonate with peoples’ passion.
2) Find a place for your community to gather. You can do it on social media, but there are too many distractions.
3) Populate your community with content. There is no point of inviting member into an empty community platform.
4) Start inviting members from your mailing list and social media.
5) keep in mind that having a small and engaged community is better than having large one which is not engaged. It’s better both for revenue and engagement.
There are many examples of online communities. From Facebook Groups to gated community platform the number of online networks is growing fast. We have a number of inspiring communities on our platforms, such as A Year With My Camera (community of photographers) Action for Happiness (mental health support charity) and DADAF (community dedicated to dads). Other examples include:
Jasmine Mays is a fitness consultant who chose to migrate from Facebook Groups to Disciple in order to gain more control over her content and community. Tired of Facebook’s intrusive practices and seemingly arbitrary censoring of important content she found in Disciple to be the perfect software platform from which to serve the many people who depend on her fitness courses.
The mental health charity Action for Happiness found that many of their members were uneasy discussing sensitive topics using social media apps. They needed to create a safe space in which people could open up without worrying that their deeply personal input would be monetised or otherwise misused. They found the perfect platform with the Disciple Media community platform.
That’s a tricky one. Community is defined by its members. We believe that the true community should be united by a single passion or interest. That’s why social media is not really a community. It’s a group of individuals with different interests and aspirations.
There is no silver bullet when it comes to community building, but you can start by researching a particular gap on the market. We have a community of dads (something that wasn’t that popular when they started) and a community of window cleaners. When you find a gap in the market, it’s much easier to create your community. When you start with Disciple we also provide you with the best tips to grow and engage your community.
A Feature-Rich Community Platform
Online communities built with Disciple are more than just another message board. The Disciple community platform provides a host of useful, state-of-the-art features that enable you to shape the community experience in ways that benefit both your members and the long term business goals of the community leaders. Those features include:
Private messaging – With some community apps, users need to exit and open a third-party messaging app if they wish to send a private message to other members. With Disciple, they can send all the private messages they want without having to disengage from the community.
Push notifications – Have an important event coming up soon? Disciple push notifications allow you to keep community members up-to-date on all the latest goings-on in the community. Notifications can also be targeted and personalised to reach a precise demographic within the larger community.
Moderation tools – Disciple provides robust moderation tools that enable you to establish exacting guidelines and enforce them discreetly and fairly. Every decision will be based on rules you yourself have established.
Live streaming (mobile app) – This feature is perfect for product launches, live events, important announcements and more. Video quality is typically higher than Facebook or Zoom and you are able to stream to every member of the community or target only specific members.
Activity feed – This powerful feature allows you to provide every member of the community with content tailored specifically to them. It’s a great way to ramp up customer engagement and make your members feel like they’re a part of something special.
Outstanding customer support – While your community is yours we don’t just provide you with an app and cut you loose. We are always here to provide technical support that ensures your community hums along without disruptions. Should you opt for a mobile app you will be provided with your own Customer Success Manager.
The end result of more precise and productive content moderation, as well as having greater control over the community environment as a whole, will be an enhanced user experience that promotes long term engagement, shines a flattering light on your brand, and becomes a net positive in the lives of your members.
A Community Platform You Can Monetise
Of course, you may wish to monetise your community in order to ensure its long-term sustainability. Whereas outmoded community platforms like Facebook seem to issue more and more restrictive monetisation rules on a weekly basis, Disciple leaves monetisation decisions up to you.
Not only that, but we provide a wealth of methods for you to choose from when it comes to monetising your Disciple online community, including:
Subscriptions – You can choose to offer a variety of different subscription levels that provide access to different types of content.
In-app purchases – In-app purchases allow you to offer a variety of goods and services to your community members. If yours is a brand-related community, in-app purchases are a must.
Paid app download – While many community builders offer their community app as a free download, you have the option of charging for yours if you wish.
Sponsorships and advertising – Sponsorship deals and in-app advertising are two great, largely hands-off ways to monetise your community.
Store links – If you have an online store separate from your brand community platform you can link to it through your Disciple app.
Apple/Google Pay – These services enable physical purchases as well as allowing non-profits to collect donations.
Instead of restricting your ability to monetise your community, Disciple provides a multitude of ways for you to generate the income necessary to enable your long term community building efforts.
Disciple is trusted by
communities like yours...
Erika Gayle, founder of The Babes Club
Hari Ghotra, chef, author and teacher
Rod Stryker, founder of Sanctuary
Mark Williamson, director of Action for Happiness
Book your 20-minute
demo with us today
Let’s talk about how you can grow, engage and monetize your community.