Skool Pricing [July 2023]: Does One Plan Really Fit All?

It’s extremely easy to use and offers some of the best gamification tools for high student retention rates and engagement. What’s more, it offers a built-in referral program, potentially making it a passive income stream. With this, you can make money on the platform without selling a single course!

However, is this simplicity and ease-of-use worth the price or just a lure for a platform with limited features and products? Truth be told, Skool is viable for most content creators if you know how to get the most out of it.

This article dives deep into the intricacies of Skool’s pricing, affiliate program, and common pricing concerns to find out who exactly this tool is for. It also answers some pressing questions you may have about this platform and suggests alternatives if you decide Skool isn’t for you.

Let’s get into our Skool review and their pricing!

Skool Pricing: In-Depth Look

Skool has a single subscription tier that offers unlimited products and students and unlocks all features.

Skool offers a simple pricing model with one subscription plan at $99/month. It also provides a 14-day trial for free but no annual discount. This plan offers unlimited courses and community members, and the full range of Skool’s features. However, you can only create one community and must buy another subscription if you want more.

Skool Simple Plan: $99/month

As the only plan on Skool’s pricing model, there are also no limits on the available features, so you can use the full range of what Skool offers. This plan is packed with gamification tools like leaderboards, badges, and experience points.

When you subscribe to it, Skool automatically creates a group to serve as the foundation for everything you want to offer your customers. And you can turn the group into an exclusive community where members pay monthly/annual subscriptions.

For example, If you’re an influencer, blogger, or social media personality, this plan’s community forums can be a space for your followers to hang out and interact with each other. From there, they can:

• provide feedback on your products,
• support each other,
• participate in group activities like calls and live streaming events,
• and direct message other members.

Skool’s use cases are endless.

The simple plan also offers an online classroom for creating courses and coaching programs for your audience. This allows your students to learn and collaborate all in one space. And, you can use this plan’s built-in sales funnels to market your products and convert your audience into paying customers.

Ideal Users for Skool Plans

There are three major factors to consider while choosing Skool’s subscription plan: the number of different communities, the diversity of your digital products, and target retention rates. With these in mind, choose Skool’s subscription plan if:

• You want a platform with community, learning, and scheduling all in one place.
• You want industry-leading gamification tools to increase retention rates.
• You’re not offering other products than online courses.

Skool’s Free Trial

Skool offers a 14-day free trial to test all features without any limits or restrictions.

It lets you create a community, sell courses to its members, and master all the tools to generate revenue before the trial duration even expires. That’s because of the intuitive interface and the plethora of support articles and step-by-step guides that explain how to:

• refer people,
• create groups,
• create a course,
• integrate Zapier,
• set up calendars and events,
• and use many other Skool features.

You can also join the official Skool Community of over 15,000 members including the founder, development team, and content creators in the same boat as you, where you can ask any question to solve issues in real-time.

Their own community is built on the Skool platform itself, so you also get to try out its features from your customers’ perspectives.

Skool Pricing: Feature Value

Skool offers the best gamification tools on a simplified platform.

Skool is the go-to platform for course and community gamification. For instance, it offers a lot of ways to reward students for their engagement and progress:

• badges,
• experience points,
• and gems.

But those aren’t just vanity metrics students accumulate for no reason. They can also exchange them for discounts, coupon codes, and other bonuses.

Members can even award each other with their points and gems, which encourages engagement even further. They can also compete for a top spot on public community leaderboards by:

• posting on the community forum,
• participating in group activities,
• helping other members,
• completing courses,
• attending events.

You can also lock courses based on player level, requiring students to level up before they can progress with their learning.

This gamification system seems complex at first glance but it’s actually quite intuitive. It doesn’t require any third-party tools and it’s neatly packaged within one community tool.

Skool pays you through its affiliate program when you invite new users to the platform.

Skool has a built-in affiliate program to encourage all users to invite more people to the platform. Simply share your referral link with friends, group members, or your online audience, and get 40% of their monthly subscription fee as long as they’re signed up.

The program even provides free training on how to promote the platform and earn money and a community where you can exchange ideas with other Skool affiliates — so becoming a successful affiliate is a piece of cake.

Skool combines communities and courses into a single product.

Skool has been described as “Facebook with upgrades” because it was built to replace the need for Facebook Groups.

It has a community at the center, where members can socialize and access every relevant course, module, and learning resource. They can also participate in coaching programs, events, and other community activities.

The online learning Classroom has a dedicated tab on the community feature page. And it’s accessible with the click of a button, removing the need to switch between browser tabs. Moreover, the classroom’s proximity to the community has been proven to increase course completion rates through collaboration.

Embedding video course content is effortless, thanks to Skool’s integrations with video hosting sites like:

• YouTube,
• Vimeo,
• Loom,
• and Wistia.

You can unlock advanced playback tools like timestamps and automatic closed captions by simply pasting the video link into the appropriate section. This feature is especially useful if you have separate communities on these platforms––you only need to upload the video once and use the link in Skool.

Skool’s user interface is well thought out and easy to master.

It has a drop-down menu for switching between different communities that you own or are a member of. This approach is refreshing compared to the more complex learning platforms like Kajabi or Podia where communities are deployed as separate web apps.

Furthermore, you can pin upcoming meetings, events, calendar appointments, and other messages at the top of the community chat feed to ensure members don’t miss important updates. The calendar feature works great for keeping up with important events within any community.

Finally, Skool doesn’t offer a dedicated website builder. Instead, the customizable web app hosts your courses and communities. While this may be undesirable for experienced users that prefer a greater degree of control, it makes Skool more accessible to beginners and enthusiasts that need an easy-to-use tool.

Skool is best for influencers and content creators that want to cultivate a large, vibrant community and keep its members engaged.

All things considered, Skool is minimalist by design, offering highly specialized features and tools that increase engagement and retention rates. It doesn’t market itself as an all-in-one online course platform but as an online community platform.

Although there’s a great course feature, Skool aims to replace your existing social media platforms so you can move your followers into a unified, all-inclusive community.

Skool Pricing: Other Points To Consider

Hidden Costs of Skool

Skool has no hidden costs as it doesn’t offer native third-party integrations or external tools. However, there are some additional costs you may have to pay when using any online learning platform:

• Taxes (country-based),
• Third-party payment processing fees,
• Costs of migrating from other platforms.

Skool Pricing vs Competitor Pricing

With a single subscription plan, it’s a little difficult to match Skool’s pricing model with those of its alternatives. However, some competitors offer unlimited products and customers in some of their pricing plans, so we compared those plans with Skool’s only plan.

While it isn’t the cheapest platform, we believe Skool has the most valuable plan for beginners due to its ease of use, affiliate marketing, integrated community, meetup scheduling, and courses. And after all, it has some of the best gamification tools on the market.

Skool Alternatives Pricing

Skool is one of the most affordable online learning platforms, but it doesn’t offer as many functionalities as some competing products. So, it may not be the best tool if you’re looking to sell more than one online course or integrate it with your existing tech stack.

Here are our suggested alternatives based on some common concerns about Skool:

Skool Pricing: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How many communities can you create on one Skool account?

You can create an unlimited number of communities on one Skool account but you must pay separate subscription costs for each one.

What is the Skool Community?

Skool Community is the official group where existing Skool users, the Skool support team and founder Sam Ovens, and prospective users can provide feedback, get timely support, and collaborate to make Skool better. And the best part? It’s free to join, so you also get firsthand user experience with the product.

Can I change my Skool Community’s URL?

Yes, you can change your Skool community’s URL in the group settings. However, you must have a paid account, and can only change the URL once.

Skool Pricing: Conclusion

To sum up, Skool is affordable but it doesn’t offer many tools for online learning beyond communities, course creation, and gamification. While you can make up for this with the Zapier integration, you may prefer platforms with these features built-in.

Nevertheless, Skool is unmatched when it comes to accessibility and beginner-friendly tools. Also, it boasts some of the highest student retention rates of any online learning platform on the market today so we can recommend it if you want to sell online courses and community memberships only.

Skool is a community-first platform. So, it is best for content creators that want to build a thriving community and turn it into a market for their products.

Click here to get started with Skool!

For more details, check our Skool vs Kajabi article, where we thoroughly tested both platforms and found which one works best for which use case!