The definitive guide for Community Managers & Owners. Learn how to move beyond simple hosting and start effectively managing your community with the right tools.
When people search "community management software," they're usually looking for one of two very different things:
You need a place to HOST your community
You're looking for:
You want: Skool, Circle, or Mighty Networks
These are hosting platforms where your community lives.
You ALREADY have a community and need to MANAGE it better
You need:
You want: StickyHive (this page)
Software that sits on top of your platform to help you run it efficiently.
Still not sure? If you're just starting → You need a platform first (Skool/Circle/Mighty Networks). If you already have 100+ members and feel overwhelmed → You need management software (StickyHive). Most successful communities use BOTH.
Online communities used to be simple: a few posts, a few comments, a weekly email.
Now you're juggling:
You don't need another platform.
You need software that actually manages the community for you.
That's what community management software is - and where StickyHive lives.
These give you:
They’re the venue where your community lives.
This is the layer on top that helps you:
Think of it as your AI-powered control center for Skool, Circle, and Mighty Networks. These tools for community managers act as a community engagement tool that amplifies your effectiveness.
Most successful community managers use a two-layer stack:
Examples: Skool ($99/month), Circle ($89-399/month), Mighty Networks ($39-199/month)
What they provide:
What they DON'T provide:
These platforms lack the comprehensive tools for community managers that are needed to scale beyond 100+ members.
Example: StickyHive
What it provides:
What it does NOT provide:
Analogy: Your platform (Skool/Circle/Mighty) is like your house. Management software (StickyHive) is like a smart home system - it doesn't replace your house, it makes running your house 10x easier.
If you ONLY use a platform without management software, here's what your day looks like:
Total time per week: 25-35 hours just on community management. You're exhausted, reactive, and constantly worried you're missing important posts. This is why community managers burn out.
Here's an honest breakdown by community size:
Do you need management software? Not yet.
Manual management is still sustainable. Focus on getting to 100 members first.
Time cost: 5-10 hours/week
Do you need management software? Starting to help.
Scheduling becomes valuable. Moderation is manageable but taking more time.
Time cost: 10-15 hours/week
Recommendation: Consider adding scheduling + basic automation
Do you need management software? Yes, strongly recommended.
Manual moderation doesn't scale. You're spending 2-3 hours per day just monitoring.
Time cost: 15-25 hours/week
Recommendation: AI moderation becomes essential
Do you need management software? Absolutely critical.
Impossible to manually review everything. You're drowning without automation.
Time cost: 25-40 hours/week (or you're missing things)
Recommendation: Full management stack or hire team
Let's be transparent about pricing:
| Component | Tool | Cost | What You Get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform (Required) | Skool / Circle / Mighty Networks | $39-199/month | Community hosting, members, posts, courses |
| Management (Optional but recommended) | StickyHive | $49-197/month | AI moderation, scheduling, automation, analytics |
| Total Investment | $88-396/month | Fully-managed, automated community | |
ROI Perspective: If your time is worth $30/hour, and management software saves you 10-20 hours per week, that's $1,200-2,400/month in time saved. The $49-197/month cost pays for itself many times over.
Plus, consistent content + moderation = better member retention = higher lifetime value. For paid communities, even a 10% retention improvement pays for management software 5-10x over.
Most "solutions" for community managers are:
StickyHive is a purpose-built community engagement tool:
“Everything you need for Skool, Circle & Mighty Networks: native scheduling, AI moderation, content generation, analytics.”
Built specifically for:
No copy-paste, no fragile workarounds. Just native, integrated workflows.
Reclaim 8–14 hours every week
Moderation is where most community owners burn out. StickyHive’s Guardian Suite turns it into a background process:
Automatically flags guideline violations, off-topic posts, and safety issues. Get alerts via the Chrome extension so you see the posts that actually matter instead of doom-scrolling every thread.
Track launches, refunds, competitors, health terms, or any custom keyword across your community. No more manual searching for “payment failed” or “I’m stuck.”
Understand the emotional tone across posts and threads so you can spot frustration, confusion, or brewing conflict before it explodes.
Turn posts into tickets in tools like Zendesk, Freshdesk, or HubSpot so customer issues never fall through the cracks.
Leave internal notes on posts so team members can see context, promises, and follow-ups in one place.
Manage multiple communities across Skool, Circle, and Mighty from one unified dashboard instead of logging in and out all day.
Result: fewer fires, fewer late nights, less guesswork.
Cut content time by 4–6 hours per week
Most community managers spend way too long thinking of what to post and then manually posting it everywhere.
StickyHive’s Creator Suite fixes both parts:
Schedule posts directly into your communities - no Zapier, no RSS hacks, no copy-paste. StickyHive is currently the only tool that offers native post scheduling to all three platforms.
Generate 10+ fresh post ideas in seconds, based on your content pillars, community goals, and engagement patterns so your posts stay on-brand and relevant.
Set up sequences like “launch runway,” “onboarding nurture,” or “reactivation campaign” that drip out posts over days or weeks.
Automatically send daily check-ins, weekly wins, Q&A threads, accountability posts, or monthly recaps - once configured, they just run.
Pull in relevant articles from your blog, industry sites, or global news so your community never runs out of fresh conversation starters.
Pre-built templates for welcome posts, polls, announcements, discussion prompts, challenges and more. Just customize and schedule.
Result: no more blank-page anxiety, and your posting rhythm never dies.
You don’t just want posts - you want members coming back, participating, and staying.
StickyHive’s Engagement Suite helps you do that without living inside the platform all day:
Turn 4 hours of manual recap writing into ~15 minutes. StickyHive finds your top posts, writes intros and summaries, pulls key insights, and formats everything into a beautiful email-style digest.
Feed StickyHive your FAQ docs, articles, or internal notes. As you answer posts, it suggests relevant snippets so your replies are faster and consistent.
Save high-performing posts and ideas as a private swipe file. Next time you need inspiration, you already have a library of what worked.
Store and search all your images, videos, and files attached to posts so you’re not hunting through random folders.
Get pre-planned prompts and content ideas around holidays and seasonal events so you’re always timely.
See which posts, topics, and formats actually drive engagement, who your most active members are, and where drop-offs are happening.
Result: your community feels alive, intentional, and well-run - even on weeks when you’re busy.
| Feature | Skool | Circle | Mighty | StickyHive |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting & Community Platform | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | - |
| Courses / Spaces | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | - |
| Community Moderation (AI) | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
| Sentiment Analysis | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
| Off-topic Detection | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
| Engagement Templates | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
| Post Scheduling | Limited | Limited | Limited | ✔ |
| Community Health Dashboards | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
| Multi-Platform View | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
| Automation (AI Responses, Tagging) | ✘ | ✘ | ✘ | ✔ |
StickyHive is a completely different category.
Most community teams piece together:
The problem?
You stop feeling like a systems engineer and go back to being a community leader.
When community managers search for solutions, they usually try these first:
The problem: These are social media schedulers. They don't integrate with Skool, Circle, or Mighty Networks at all. They're built for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook - not community platforms.
Verdict: Wrong tool for the job.
The problem: Technically possible but fragile. Requires 3-5 hours of technical setup. Breaks when platforms update their APIs. No AI intelligence - just blind automation. Costs $20-100/month AND still requires manual work.
Verdict: Works for 2 weeks, then becomes a maintenance nightmare.
The problem: You're managing 4-5 different tools. Content calendar in Notion. Ideas from ChatGPT. Manual posting. Manual moderation. Lots of copy-pasting between tools. Still spending 20+ hours per week.
Verdict: Better than pure manual, but still unsustainable.
The problem: Only work with Discord. Don't apply to Skool, Circle, or Mighty Networks at all.
Verdict: Different ecosystem entirely.
Why it works: Built specifically for Skool, Circle, and Mighty Networks. Native integrations (not Zapier). AI-powered (not blind automation). All-in-one (not 5 separate tools). Maintained by us (not by you).
Verdict: The only tool purpose-built for managing communities on these three platforms.
StickyHive is one of the most comprehensive tools for community managers available today, designed specifically for:
If you’re managing a community on Skool, Circle, or Mighty Networks and you’re:
StickyHive is built specifically for you.
Platform first, always. You need Skool, Circle, or Mighty Networks to host your community. Start there. Once you hit 100-200 members and feel overwhelmed, add management software like StickyHive.
No. StickyHive is management software, not a hosting platform. You need an existing community on Skool, Circle, or Mighty Networks. Think of it like this: the platform is your house, StickyHive is your smart home system.
No. Those are the platforms where your community lives. StickyHive is the AI control center that helps you moderate, schedule, analyze, and grow those communities without burning out.
StickyHive is purpose-built for Skool, Circle, and Mighty Networks, with native scheduling, AI moderation, and engagement workflows tailored to those ecosystems.
Yes, probably too early. At 50 members, manual management is sustainable. Focus on growth first. Once you hit 100-200 members and start feeling overwhelmed (spending 10+ hours/week on community tasks), that's when management software becomes valuable.
Platform (Skool/Circle/Mighty): $39-199/month + Management Software (StickyHive): $49-197/month = Total: $88-396/month. This gives you a fully-managed, automated community. Consider that professional community managers charge $3,000-8,000/month - software is far more affordable.
For most community operations - no. StickyHive replaces a typical stack of zaps for scheduling, moderation alerts, digests, and campaign sequences. You might still use Zapier for advanced business logic (like triggering actions in your CRM), but you no longer depend on it for core community workflows.
Setup is designed to take just a few minutes: connect your communities, install the Chrome extension, and start monitoring and scheduling.
Buffer and Hootsuite are social media schedulers built for Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook. They don't integrate with Skool, Circle, or Mighty Networks at all. Different platforms, different tools needed.
If you're tired of:
Then it's time to upgrade from "community platform" to community management software with powerful tools for community managers that actually work.
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