10 BuddyBoss Alternatives to Build a Community Platform in 2024

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When it comes to building community sites with WordPress, BuddyBoss has long been regarded as a go-to plugin, powering large online communities and membership sites with ease.

While BuddyBoss stands out for its comprehensive feature set and seamless integration with popular WordPress LMS plugins (LearnDash, Tutor LMS, LifterLMS), there are a handful of viable BuddyBoss alternatives I’ll cover in this piece.

I’ll explore free alternatives, discuss the differences between WordPress & SaaS solutions, look at a few mobile app alternatives to the BuddyBoss App, and provide pricing for each alternative solution to the BuddyBoss Platform & Theme.

BuddyBoss is a great option… but it’s not the only option. Let’s dive into the BuddyBoss alternatives you can use with and without WordPress, to build the ultimate online community platform.

Our Top Picks
Here are our suggestions for each type of BuddyBoss alternative:

Why Look For a BuddyBoss Alternative?

BuddyBoss is popular for a reason, but it’s not for everyone. While it does provide some of the best community features for WordPress sites, some of you might be looking for alternatives.

Let’s take a quick look at what it does well and where it falls short.

BuddyBoss Pros

✅ Price: I also list this as a con, but it depends on your budget. Personally, I think $299/yr. (+ hosting) is a pretty good deal for everything BuddyBoss provides.

✅ Excellent features: For many community sites, BuddyBoss provides everything you’d need. Having it all included in one plugin means less conflicts with other third-party tools.

✅ Beautiful design: Design is subjective, but almost all the BuddyBoss users I’ve interacted with love how it looks.

✅ Built on WordPress: Technically, this could also be a con, but most of you reading this are familiar with the WordPress space, and already know your way around a WordPress site. Compared to a hosted SaaS solution, there’s far less of a learning curve to get BuddyBoss set up.

BuddyBoss Cons

❌ Price: $299/yr. might be steep for some, especially when you include hosting. If you don’t need all the features, there might be free or cheaper alternatives. And keep in mind you’ll need decent hosting, as well (see “Performance”).

❌ Performance: You need powerful (and fairly expensive) hosting to support it, which also drives up the price. BuddyBoss requires a lot of server resources to run quickly.

❌ Theme: You might not want to use the BuddyBoss theme for other areas of your site, but you’ll need it for your community section. This could lead to having two WordPress installations, which you might not want to manage. Or you might just not like the design of the theme, but you’re kind of stuck with it if you’re using the BuddyBoss Platform plugin.

❌ Scalability: BuddyBoss is scalable. There are communities running it with tens of thousands of active members. However, your cost increases drastically when you factor in hosting that can handle large communities.

Plus, it still runs on WordPress, which could have other plugins and things holding your site back. Using a hosted SaaS platform specifically designed for large community sites might have better infrastructure to provide a faster, more worry-free experience.

Considerations for a BuddyBoss Replacement

🎨 Features

Here are some questions you’ll want to ask yourself when replacing BuddyBoss with an alternative solution:

💰 Budget

Budget is a consideration for many. I can’t tell you BuddyBoss is cheap or expensive—that’s for you to decide. What I can tell you is that BuddyBoss costs more than just the $299/yr. price tag you see on their site.

Don’t forget about hosting.

Rapyd is a new WordPress host that built their hosting specifically for BuddyBoss sites (as well as elearning & membership sites). You can run BuddyBoss on many different hosts, but let’s use Rapyd as an example.

The lowest plan on Rapyd costs ~$1,200/yr. Add that to the cost of BuddyBoss and you’re already at ~$1,500/yr.

You bring on another couple hundred active members and scale up your hosting, and now you’re paying ~$1,900/yr. for hosting, for a total cost of ~$2,200/yr.

If you use a WordPress plugin as your BuddyBoss alternative, the price will likely be cheaper than a hosted SaaS solution. One of the main reasons for this is because hosted SaaS solutions include hosting in the price. A WordPress solution does not.

What about maintenance & customizations?

One of the benefits of sticking with a WordPress solution is the amazing community of developers available. If you need customizations or want simple tweaks, developers are available, but that’s an extra cost.

BuddyBoss, and WordPress in general, is more customizable than most hosted SaaS solutions, but it does come at a cost. With hosted community platforms, you don’t have as much flexibility, but that usually means you take what you’re given, and don’t pay more than the listed monthly or yearly price.

📈 Scalability

As I mentioned in the pros & cons, BuddyBoss is scalable. However, it still runs on WordPress, alongside any number of additional plugins, which may or may not scale along with it.

And as you scale a BuddyBoss site, you don’t pay any extra money to BuddyBoss, but you do pay more for hosting.

BuddyBoss promotes unlimited members, groups, etc., which is technically true, but you will pay more in hosting as your site grows.

When you see limits on some of the SaaS alternatives, don’t immediately write them off. You’re going to pay more as your site grows regardless of whether you choose a WordPress alternative to BuddyBoss or a hosted SaaS product.

WordPress Plugins vs. SaaS Solutions

There are two main categories of BuddyBoss alternatives—other WordPress plugins & hosted SaaS solutions.

WordPress plugins will work in a very similar way to BuddyBoss itself. You’ll install them on your WordPress site, configure their settings, enable the features you need, and manage everything from within your WordPress admin area.

This is the tightest integration you can get with a WordPress site, and most closely mimics the BuddyBoss experience.

Hosted SaaS solutions require you to use a hosted service other than WordPress. You will…

pay a separate monthly or yearly fee
set up a new domain or subdomain to use with the service
be limited in what features that service provides (very little customization)
not have a direct integration with your WordPress site

Before choosing a BuddyBoss alternative, this is one of the most important decisions you need to make.

BuddyBoss Free Alternatives

BuddyBoss is a premium solution that offers a lot in terms of both features & design. There aren’t many truly viable, free BuddyBoss alternatives that provide the same value. However, we found two options that come pretty close.

PeepSo & BuddyX both offer free and premium solutions. PeepSo completely replaces BuddyBoss, whereas BuddyX still requires you to use the free BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform plugins, and it provides a beautiful design layer on top.

PeepSo

The PeepSo profile page & activity stream on web & mobile

PeepSo is a super-light, free, social network plugin for WordPress that allows you to quickly and effortlessly add a social network or an online community (similar to Facebook) right inside your WordPress site.

Free Features

✅ Fully responsive, customizable profiles with avatars & cover photos
✅ Custom profile fields with multiple field types
✅ Activity stream with pinned posts, nested comments, reactions, privacy settings, and more
✅ Hashtags, plus hashtag search & filtering
✅ Polls
✅ Word filtering & censoring
✅ VIP users with custom badges & icons
✅ GIPHY integration
✅ On-site and email notifications
✅ Display latest members, online members, quick profile info
✅ White label, GDPR compliance, ban users, and much more

Premium Features – $199/yr.

✅ Groups
✅ Chat
✅ Friends & Connections
✅ Photos, Videos, File Uploads
✅ Social Login

Many of the plugin integrations (below) are only available for premium users.

Explore All PeepSo Features →

Integrations

PeepSo integrates with the following WordPress plugins:

Ecommerce Plugins

LMS & Membership Plugins

Gamification

myCRED
BadgeOS

Ad Plugins

Advanced Ads
WPAdverts

Mobile App Solutions

MobiLoud

Other Integrations

WP Job Manager
Almighty Support
IdeaPush
WP Event Manager

🎨 Better Design
If you like Peepso’s features but would like an improved design, check out the Reign Peepso Theme. You can use it with the free or pro versions of Peepso, and it’s priced affordably at $69/yr.

PeepSo Showcase

Enjoy some of the screenshots of the PeepSo interface.

BuddyX

BuddyX is actually a theme and not a plugin. They have taken a slightly different approach than PeepSo & BuddyBoss.

BuddyX requires you to use the free BuddyBoss Platform plugin, but they’ve added in all the CSS and design that the BuddyBoss theme provides. And where BuddyBoss charges $299/yr. for their theme, BuddyX is only $69/yr. There is also a free version of BuddyX you can try before you upgrade to pro.

WBCOM Designs, the team behind BuddyX, also sells 27 premium BuddyPress add-ons to give your social learning site even more functionality than BuddyBoss.

Premium Features ($69/yr.)

The free version of BuddyX might be all you need, but upgrading to Pro provides the following additional features:

dark mode
deeper integration with WooCommerce & LMS plugins
activity sharing & comment reactions
login page design options
additional blog layouts & functionality
lots of additional header layout, design, and features
popup sign-in & register forms

Check Out BuddyX Pro

The BuddyX theme member profile page

Integrations

BuddyX has an extensive list of integrations with third-party LMS, ecommerce, membership, event, discussion forum, gamification, and other plugins.

bbPress
LearnDash
Tutor LMS
LifterLMS
LearnPress
WooCommerce
Easy Digital Downloads
MemberPress
Paid Memberships Pro
The Events Calendar
Dokan Multivendor Marketplace
WooCommerce Vendors
GamiPress
BadgeOS
Elementor (extra widgets for BuddyPress)
All BuddyPress plugins

BuddyX Free

BuddyX Pro

BuddyPress + bbPress

BuddyBoss is actually a fork of both the BuddyPress & bbPress plugins. This means that BuddyBoss borrowed the code from both plugins, merged it together, improved upon it, and then released it as their own, new plugin.

BuddyBoss has been improving upon their plugin for 5+ years now, whereas the innovation from BuddyPress & bbPress has been stagnant. There’s a lot in BuddyBoss that you won’t find in either of these plugins.

To be frank, there isn’t much upside to using this combo as an alternative to BuddyBoss. The only real benefit is that they’re both completely free. But you’ll miss out on a ton of features, and the design/UI is very outdated.

Add a Mobile App

If you go this route and also want a branded mobile app, I’d recommend you look into using AppPresser. They can turn any WordPress site into a mobile app for ~$700/yr. and officially support BuddyPress sites.

Other Free Alternatives

Some of the SaaS/hosted BuddyBoss alternatives do offer free plans, but they don’t include the same type of features and experience you’d get with BuddyBoss, so we’re not including them in the free category.

WordPress Solutions

These are solutions that integrate directly with WordPress, or make use of a WordPress plugin. Since BuddyBoss is also a WordPress plugin & theme that works directly with WordPress, these alternatives will be easiest to implement, and are more likely to give you the look & feel you’d expect, all from right within your WordPress admin area.

The 4 main WordPress options to use instead of BuddyBoss are:

LifterLMS Social Learning (you must already be using LifterLMS)
PeepSo (works with any WordPress site or LMS)
BuddyX (a theme you add on to BuddyPress or BuddyBoss Platform)
BuddyPress + bbPress (outdated, not recommended)

BuddyBoss does have an official integration for LifterLMS, but if you’re looking for something already built-in to the LMS you’re using, consider the LifterLMS Social Learning add-on. It’s only a viable alternative to BuddyBoss if you’re using the LifterLMS plugin, but it works seamlessly with the LMS components already available in LifterLMS.

LifterLMS social learning plugin screenshots — Member directory & timeline examples in LifterLMS Social Learning add-on

How to use the LifterLMS Social Learning add-on (6:37)

Features

✅ Student profile pages with bios & social media links
✅ Profile photo & cover image
✅ An activity timeline with custom posts & course updates
✅ Student directory that lists all members of your site
✅ Students can add popular social network links to their profile

❌ Discussion forums
❌ Zoom integration

Here’s an example of a LifterLMS Social Learning student profile page:

Here you can see some of the settings for the Social Learning add-on:

Get LifterLMS Social Learning

Pricing

The LifterLMS Social Learning add-on costs $299/yr. if purchased separately. Lifter also sells bundles, and it is available as part of the Infinity Bundle for $1,499/yr. ($749.50 for the first year).