Brutally Honest Skool Review 2025: Is It Worth It?
What Is Skool?
Skool is an easy to use platform for building and growing your online community You can choose to grow a
Free community where anyone can join for free.
Paid community with a monthly membership fee.
Inside your free or paid community, you can share online courses and learning materials on topics that your community wants to learn about.
Skool was founded by Sam Ovens in 2019. In early 2024, Alex Hormozi announced that he made the “largest investment of his life” in Skool. With his investment, Alex Hormozi is now a co-owner at Skool.
Alex Hormozi and Sam Ovens came up with The Skool Games in 2024 to get more users on Skool. To win the Skool games, founders of paid Skool communities compete with each other to make the most new monthly recurring revenue on Skool.
What are prizes for winning the Skool games?
Why compete in the Skool games?
I answer these questions and a lot more in my The Skool Games 2025 Review blog article here.
Skool Pricing Plans: Is Skool Worth It?
Skool offers a 14 day free trial and costs $99/month after that for 1 community. Inside each Skool community, you can have unlimited courses and members. Skool also charges a 2.9% transaction fee per sale.
Is Skool worth it?
What are the key features of Skool?
And what are possible alternatives to Skool that you can consider?
Let’s find out! I have used screenshots from my Skool community: SEO School for Founders to share all the amazing Skool features with you.
Skool Key Features
Community
The Skool community section works like your Facebook feed. Whether you are the creator of the community or simply a member of the community, you can “write something” and share your thoughts. Anyone can comment on your posts or like your posts.
As the community creator or administrator, you can choose the posts that you would like to pin. You can also create categories where you and your community members will be creating posts about.
For my SEO School for Founders community on Skool, I created the following categories:
Introductions: For members to introduce themselves.
Workshops: Where I updated the details of new workshops I was conducting.
Tips & Takeaways: Where members shared their lessons from my learning materials.
Share Your Website URL here: Where members could share their website(s) for potential collaborations.
Classroom
The classroom community is where students can access your course and learning materials. Below is a screenshot of my classroom from my Skool community called SEO School for Founders.
You can even make certain courses paid inside the classroom and restrict access to non paying members!
Gamification
Unlike Facebook and most other course creator platforms, you can incentivise members to engage more within the community by offering exclusive content at different levels. This is a smart way Skool uses gamification to increase the participation and engagement of members.
For example, inside SEO School For Founders, I made my module on SEO keyword research only available for level 3 members (whom I called “action takers”). And I made my module on outstanding content creation only available for level 6 members (whom I called “generous founders”).
Gamification helps boost your member retention on Skool significantly. Even more so now with the time unlock feature! This means that you can set that members have to be a part of your community for a certain number of days, before they unlock certain courses.
Calendar
This calendar feature is one of my favourite features inside of Skool. It allows you to update your calendar with live events that you will be hosting in your time zone. Your members will see the events in their time zone!
This way, there will be no confusion around your live session timings.
An alert for your next event is also automatically displayed on top of your community section of Skool.
Leaderboards
Leaderboards increase the engagement in your community. You can set different prizes (or course material unlocks) for different levels that your members reach.
For example, you can throw in a social media promotion, an email list promotion or even a 1 on 1 call with you for members who reach a certain level in your leaderboard.
Mobile App
The Skool mobile app is available on both iOS and Android. It is easy to use, allows you to get push notifications and interact with your community on the go. I love this feature because community members can learn from their mobile phones even while traveling.
Members can even easily switch between different Skool communities they are a part of inside the Skool mobile app.
Email Broadcasts
Email broadcasts are another amazing feature in Skool to keep your community engaged. Write a post and simply toggle on “Send email to all members”. All your members will get notified and be alerted of your post.
About Page
The about page is easy to customise for you to attract new members. You can add images, videos and text explaining to your potential members why they should join your community. Rather than simply highlighting features, include the benefits members will receive by joining your community!
You can check out my SEO School For Founders About Page here.
Affiliate Feature (New!)
As retention and referrals are key to business growth, Skool is building an amazing affiliate feature to address this. The affiliate feature will allow your group members to refer more members to your community and be financially rewarded for their referrals. This feature has not come out yet but will be out by March 2025!
Maps (New!)
With the new maps feature, you will be able to see where in the world everyone in your Skool community is. This will encourage members in your community to build real connections with other members in their same vicinity. Eventually, this feature will help to build stronger friendships and communities, and increase the retention rates of members.
4 Steps to add yourself on the Skool map if you haven’t been added automatically:
Step 1: Head over to https://www.skool.com/games & click on member map.
Step 2: Click on the events tab. You will receive a prompt to add yourself on the Skool map.
Step 3: Enter your Skool ID, Display name and Location
Step 4: Click submit and you have been added!
Meetups Around The World (New!)
Participants of The Skool Games will get to meetup in person with other participants regardless of whether you win. This will be a great opportunity for networking, collaborations and making like minded friends.
What I Love About Skool!
Super Easy User Interface
The user interface of Skool resembles that of Facebook. If you can get around using Facebook easily, you can get around using Skool easily. Whether you are a creator or a community member!
Distraction Free
The lack of features on Skool is a con for many but I think it could also be a huge plus! Because it forces you to focus on areas of your business that matter - such as engaging with your community and marketing.
With minimalistic features and customisations, you can stay distraction free. You can focus on your core task at hand - making your About Us page attractive and growing your community.
Increased Member Engagement from Gamification
When students don’t engage in a classroom, they don’t learn and they don’t implement.
As a result, they don’t get the results they are after and the course/membership doesn’t sell as well as it should.
Increased member engagement as a result of leaderboards, prizes and gamification on Skool enables members to learn better and get better results.
This helps get referrals, grow communities and benefits creators too.
Discover Communities Feature
Your community can be found inside Skool’s discover communities section, when people search for keywords related to your Skool group. This serves as an additional “free marketing channel” for you.
You can find communities that you want to join inside this same “discover communities” section of Skool.
Networking Opportunities
Skool is the best online platform for members to learn from courses and live coaching sessions provided inside the community AND network with each other all at the same time. Similar to how you could interact with your schoolmates, teachers and learn when you went to school.
With the new maps feature and Skool meetups that will be held around the world this 2025, you can expect more networking opportunities to make like minded friends!
Seamless Way To Monetise Your Community
Unlike social media, where you need to take users out of the platform to sell your programs, you can sell your courses and content within your Skool community.
Your community members can buy with a single click significantly increasing conversions.
Supportive Community
The Skool community is extremely supportive. Simply join this skool group called the Skool Community. And ask any questions you have inside!
Whether you want to discuss Skool features, get ideas for growing your Skool group or anything else Skool related, Skool has got you covered.
Skool SEO
Skool has a powerful inbuilt SEO feature that helps your Skool show up on Google searches.
For example, when you search “SEO School for Founders” on Google, my Skool community shows up right at the top.
What I Dislike About Skool
No discounts for potential community members
You cannot offer coupon codes and discounts for members.
Perhaps this is in line with Alex Hormozi’s philosophy of never discounting pricing. See full Facebook post by Alex Hormozi here.
Lack of quiz and assessment features
Unlike most course hosting platforms, there are no quiz and assessment features built inside of Skool.
There are work-arounds around this such as using external quiz builder platforms.
No native hosting for courses
You will need to use Vimeo, Wistia, Youtube or Loom to upload your courses.
Skool Reviews from Users on YouTube
“Skool is a great way of bringing together people, talking about a topic of your interest and making money. The drawback of Skool is that you still need to pay $99/month if the number of members in your community drops.” - Romney Nelson, Global Self Publishing
“Some extra features on Skool will be nice but Skool is not just a community or course platform. It is a built in marketing resource for you to grow your online business.”- Gareth Lamb, Vloggerpreneur
“Overall, I give Skool a huge thumbs up! I think it is the best community based software out there. And if you believe in community too, it is worth giving Skool a try.”- Brian Ellwood, Get Clients With A Book
I totally agree with the positive reviews here!. If you want to create your community using the best community based software right now, sign up for Skool here.
Best Skool Alternatives
Skool vs Kajabi
I have been using Skool for about 7 months now and Kajabi for over a year. Both are great platforms for course and community hosting. Here is how they differ:
Skool is more easy to use and distraction free for beginners getting started.
Kajabi has more features and functionalities but the learning curve is more steep.
Skool has far superior gamification features that can increase member retention.
Skool also has a simple and clear cut pricing of $99/month per community. Kajabi’s pricing packages range from $69 to $399/month depending on the stage of your business and features you need.
Did I mention that your community can also be found by other Skool users within Skool’s discovery section? This is another feature Kajabi does not have.
Based on the above, Skool is certainly more suitable if you are starting a membership or community!
Skool vs Facebook Groups
The user interface of Skool resembles that of Facebook. This makes it familiar for both community creators and members of communities to use the platform with ease.
Facebook groups are free to create whereas Skool groups cost $99/month.
Community members are less distracted inside Skool communities than Facebook groups.
Gamification features enable you to create more engaged communities on Skool as compared to Facebook groups.
Skool vs Mighty Networks
In my opinion, Skool is like the iPhone for building a community. As such
Skool is easier to use than Mighty Networks for both Skool community creators and members of communities.
Skool also has a simple and clear cut pricing of $99/month per community. The pricing packages of Mighty Networks range from $49 to $430/month depending on the stage of your business and features you need.
Skool vs Circle
Circle is one of the closest competitors to Skool in terms of ease of use for building a community. So which one should you use?
If you are looking to grow and scale your community without having to pay extra, Skool will be your best choice.
With Circle’s $89/month professional plan, you cannot send free email broadcasts to your community members if you have more than 100 members. For email broadcasts, you will need to pay an extra marketing hub fee of anywhere between $19/month to $900+/month depending on the number of contacts you have.
With Skool’s $99/month plan, you get free email broadcasts to your community members once every 72 hours. Perfect for keeping your community engaged and growing your community without needing to pay more!
My Special Bonuses When You Join Skool (With My Affiliate Link)
When you join Skool with my affiliate link here, you get a 60 minute 1 on 1 Skool growth call with me. During our 1 on 1 Skool growth call, we will
Come up with a SEO optimised Skool community name.
Write a benefit based group description to attract members to your Skool community.
Design a cover picture for your Skool group on Canva.
Discuss the strategies I used to grow my Skool community to over 350 members. (and rank among the top 1000 communities on Skool)
Try Skool free for 14 days here and drop me an email at seowithsenthil@gmail.com to book your 1 on 1 Skool growth call with me now!
