Creators

Where to find customers who are community builders

Community builders run a membership as the product: Circle, Mighty Networks, Skool, Geneva, Heartbeat — not a Discord bot stack and not a Kajabi course with a forum tab. They obsess over onboarding spaces, lurker-to-poster rates, weekly prompts, member churn, and whether the courses tab is confusing people who paid for discussion. They argue about Slack-versus-Circle for a professional cohort, founder-led AMAs, and billing that does not fail when a member's card dies. If you sell community platforms, onboarding, moderation workflows, member analytics, or event layers that are not a Discord raid, find them in Circle's own community, Mighty Networks operator groups, r/CommunityManager-adjacent threads, and G2 wars between Circle and Skool. Ignore people asking how to add a bot role. Hunt the operator whose welcome space is empty after a price change. Paste your URL into PainHuntr and keep asking, comparing, and frustrated membership-platform threads.

Where community builders actually hang out

These are the rooms where community builders ask for recommendations, compare tools, and name the competitor they want to leave. Start here before you buy ads.

Forumvendor-hosted, high trust
Circle community (operators)
Circle's own community is where paid-community operators debug spaces, paywalls, courses-tab confusion, and member permissions. Threads about migrating off Facebook Groups, Skool's feed feeling too student-y, or Mighty Networks events colliding with Circle live rooms are buying notes if you sell onboarding, analytics, or a glue layer. This is community-as-product, not a gaming Discord and not a Teachable drip. Search churn, onboarding, spaces, and 'lurkers.'
Rules gotcha: It is full of Circle customers. Drive-by competitor pitches get iced. Disclose. Answer a spaces or billing question with a workflow, not a landing page.
Redditprofessional, mixed orgs
r/CommunityManager
Not every post is a paid Circle — some are brand community employees — but the tool threads that name Mighty Networks, Circle, Geneva, and Skool are gold. People compare engagement scoring, moderation queues, and whether a professional cohort should live in Slack or a paid space. If you sell community platforms or health analytics, filter for independents and creator-led memberships versus Fortune 500 community jobs.
Rules gotcha: Many members are employed community managers with procurement. Do not pitch like a Discord bot vendor. Disclose commercial intent in tool threads.
Facebooklarge, membership P&L
Mighty Networks, Skool, and paid-community operator groups
Facebook still hosts operators who never posted on Reddit: coaches running Mighty Networks, Skool classroom-plus-feed hybrids, and Geneva chats for a paid circle of locals. They ask which platform still emails members when the feed dies, how to price a founding-member tier, and whether Heartbeat is less noisy than Slack. If you sell platforms, onboarding, or member billing, these groups paste screenshots of empty spaces.
Rules gotcha: Guru 'community as the new course' groups are noisy. Leave those. In operator groups, vendors belong in weekly tool posts. Do not DM every churn screenshot.
Reviewshigh intent
G2 Circle vs Mighty Networks vs Skool vs Geneva
2–3 star community-platform reviews are migration diaries: Circle courses tab confusing members, Skool feeling like a classroom when they wanted a forum, Mighty Networks events that did not sync, Geneva search failing at 2k members. If you replace a platform or an onboarding layer, quote those cons. This is not Mee6 or Carl-bot territory — that is Discord community owners.
Rules gotcha: Do not astroturf platform reviews. Vendor replies when named are fine. Harvesting reviewers into a sequence is not.
LinkedInslower, higher ACV
Community-led growth and membership operators
Operators who sell a professional membership — not LinkedIn carousel creators — post about Circle versus Slack, founding-member churn, and community-led growth metrics. Comments include other builders comparing Skool, Heartbeat, and Geneva. If you sell to people whose ACV is a monthly membership, this is where a useful comment gets forwarded to a co-founder. Skip thought-leadership theater that never names a platform.
Rules gotcha: Engagement-bait 'community is everything' posts are noise. Reply under posts that include a member count, a churn %, or a named platform.
Slackinvite, professional
Community builder Slack groups
CMX-descended and independent community-builder Slacks still host #tools and #job-to-be-done channels. That is where someone asks how to move a Facebook Group into Circle without killing weekly prompts, or whether Skool's feed will annoy expert members. If you sell onboarding, analytics, or events, these channels are warmer than public Facebook. Listen for membership-P&L language, not Discord boost counts.
Rules gotcha: Most Slacks ban vendor intros in #general. Ask where suppliers can speak. Never scrape a member directory.

How community builders talk about their problems

Search and replies land when you use their words, not your category name. These phrases show up in threads when they are close to buying or switching.

empty welcome space after a price change
Circle courses tab confusing members
migrating a Facebook Group into Circle
Skool feels too classroom
Mighty Networks event did not sync
lurker-to-poster rate
founding-member churn
Heartbeat versus Slack noise
Geneva search failed at 2k
paywall on a space not a role

What community builders complain about — and what that means

PainHuntr classifies conversations by intent: actively asking, comparing, frustrated, discussing, or a passing mention. The quotes below are the shape of demand, not a promise that a specific post is live today.

Frustrated
“Circle's courses tab is training people to lurk instead of posting. I did not buy a LMS. I bought a membership. The welcome space has been empty since we raised the founding-member price.”
Circle operator community, G2 cons for Circle, and Facebook paid-community groups.
Comparing
“Mighty Networks versus Circle versus Skool — who still emails when the feed dies and does not feel like a high-school classroom? Geneva search already failed us at two thousand members. I am not moving this to Discord roles.”
r/CommunityManager tool threads, LinkedIn membership-operator posts, and G2 comparison reviews.
Actively asking
“Need an onboarding that is not another empty space. People pay, never post, then churn. Who does member journeys for Circle or Mighty that is not a Kajabi pipeline pretending to be community?”
Community builder Slacks, Circle community onboarding threads, and Facebook Mighty Networks groups.
Discussing
“Weekly prompts worked at 400 members and now they vanish. I do not want a Discord bot. I want a membership home that still feels founder-led.”
Slower LinkedIn community-led posts and Skool operator group debates.
Mention
“Membership is still on Circle. Same spaces. Not switching platforms unless billing fails again.”
Casual operator tweets and LinkedIn status posts. Low intent unless a churn thread starts in comments.

Search queries that surface community builders in buying mode

Paste these into Google, Reddit, or X search. They are the manual version of what PainHuntr runs when you paste a product URL.

site:community.circle.so (onboarding OR churn OR spaces OR "courses tab" OR migrating)

site:reddit.com/r/CommunityManager (Circle OR "Mighty Networks" OR Skool OR Geneva) (churn OR lurkers OR migrating)

(Circle.so OR "Mighty Networks" OR Skool) ("founding member" OR paywall OR onboarding) (empty OR switched)

site:g2.com (Circle OR Skool OR "Mighty Networks" OR Geneva) (cons OR classroom OR search)

site:linkedin.com ("member churn" OR "community-led") (Circle OR Skool OR Mighty)

site:facebook.com (Skool OR "Mighty Networks" OR "paid community") (onboarding OR churn) group

How to reach community builders without getting ignored

Lead with the membership-home failure they named — empty welcome space, courses-tab confusion, founding-member churn — and answer that onboarding before your product appears. Community builders reward people who have run a paid space, not a Discord boost pitch and not a Kajabi launch calendar. Never suggest they 'just use Discord' unless they asked. Offer a spaces architecture note, a churn diagnostic at their member count, or a Facebook-Group migration checklist. Do not ask them to hop on a call during a launch week. Follow up in the same thread if they reply. Paste your URL into PainHuntr to find asking, comparing, and frustrated Circle/Mighty/Skool conversations. Do not scrape Circle member directories.

Frequently asked questions

Where do community builders actually buy platforms?

On a business card, after a churn month or a failed Facebook Group migration, inside Circle's community, Mighty/Skool Facebook groups, and G2. They compare Circle, Mighty Networks, Skool, and Geneva in public before they ever sit a demo. If your only motion is a sales-led tour, you will miss operators who decide between weekly prompts.

Is a community builder the same as a Discord community owner?

No. Discord owners buy bots, AutoMod, boosts, paid roles, and raid protection. Community builders buy Circle, Mighty Networks, Skool, Geneva — a membership home with spaces, paywalls, and email. Some people run both, but Mee6 is the wrong SKU in a Circle onboarding thread. Use the Discord community owners page for server-native ops.

How is this different from course creators?

Course creators' primary product is a paid curriculum with a cart on Kajabi or Teachable. Community builders' primary product is the membership. Circle may appear on both pages — as a cohort layer there, as the home here. If they have no course cart and live in spaces and prompts, this is the buyer.

Should I join every CMX-style Slack?

No. Pick one #tools channel where Circle or Mighty already comes up. Most community Slacks are professional and will treat a new vendor in #general as spam. Public G2, Circle's community, and PainHuntr monitoring of asking and frustrated posts will outperform lurker memberships in ten Slacks.

What should I paste into PainHuntr if I sell to community builders?

Your platform, onboarding, or analytics URL plus the incumbent — Circle, Mighty Networks, Skool, Geneva. The engine looks for people asking for a migration, comparing feeds versus spaces, and venting after empty onboarding or founding-member churn, not for every mention of 'community.' Pair that with the queries on this page if you still hunt by hand.

Related audiences

Reading 1,000 threads a month doesn't scale. PainHuntr does.

Paste your product URL. PainHuntr finds the conversations where community builders ask, compare, and complain on Reddit, X, Hacker News, YouTube, and review sites — then helps you reply, track what worked, and do it again.

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