Skool Review: Why You Should Avoid This Proprietary Platform for Building Your Online Community

Skool positions itself as a fresh new online community platform that lets content creators, artists and experts monetise their audience. With its modern interface and its promise of steady income, the platform is winning over more and more creators. But before you dive in, it's crucial to understand the limitations and risks that come with relying on a proprietary platform.

What is Skool?

Skool is a proprietary platform for building and managing online communities. The concept is simple: you can either join existing communities or create your own. Some are free, others paid, allowing creators to generate recurring revenue — a bit like Facebook groups, which were all the rage for a while.

The dangers of a proprietary platform

By choosing Skool, you hand over all of your content and your entire community to a private company.

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If you believe, as many on the internet do, that "Content is king" (thanks, Bill Gates), then producing content on a platform you don't own amounts to working for that platform.

This comes with several major risks:

Loss of control: you don't really own your platform
Total dependence: if Skool shuts down or changes its terms, you lose everything
High commissions: a chunk of your revenue funds the platform
Technical limitations: you have to make do with the features on offer
Limited portability: it's hard to migrate your community elsewhere

Open-source alternatives: true freedom

To build a lasting community, go for open-source solutions. They let you create a real business that you genuinely own and that you can more easily sell on later if you ever want to. Here are a few examples of open-source software below.

Ghost

Perfect for combining a blog, newsletter, monetisation and community
Modern, intuitive interface
Full control over your data
No commission on your revenue

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Discourse

Specialised in forums and discussions
Highly customisable
Great technical flexibility
An active community of developers

WordPress

A rich ecosystem of plugins
Built-in membership solutions
Compatible with a wide range of services
A broad choice of hosts

Why choose open source?

By opting for an open-source solution, you:

Genuinely own your platform
Have complete control over your data
Save money in the long run
Can migrate whenever you want
Customise without limits

Conclusion

Even if Skool looks appealing at first glance, over the long term, building your community on a proprietary platform is like building on sand. Open-source solutions such as Ghost, Discourse or WordPress give you a solid foundation to grow a lasting, independent community.

To succeed over the long term, invest in your own platform rather than fuelling the growth of a private company. Not only will you keep full control over your content and your community, you'll also enjoy unmatched technical and creative freedom — and in time, you could even sell what you've built if you choose to.