Are you in the process of crafting your own online community or social network site through WordPress? Fantastic news! I’ve got the perfect solution for you, making the journey smooth and hassle-free. Enter BuddyBoss, a top-tier WordPress social network plugin, crafted by none other than WordPress experts.
In this BuddyBoss review, I’ll delve into the world of BuddyBoss, a platform that takes BuddyPress and amplifies its capabilities by incorporating a range of free BuddyPress add-ons. Together, they form a powerhouse for your community-building needs.
But after receving complaints from many users for BuddyBoss that support is not that great and pricing plans are expensive too, so I have a better solution for you i.e. Mighthy Networks.
Mighty Networks
Having immersed myself in the world of online community-building, Mighty Networks has been an absolute game-changer for my business. From a user’s perspective, it’s not just a platform; it’s a dynamic ecosystem for fostering connections and nurturing thriving communities.
Pros:
- Versatility Beyond Compare: Mighty Networks offers an impressive range of features that empower creators and organizations to craft unique, engaging communities. With discussion forums, events calendars, courses, and seamless integration of paid memberships, it’s a one-stop-shop for community growth.
- Effortless Customization: The platform’s customization capabilities are truly remarkable. You can create a fully branded space that aligns with your identity, making a lasting impression on your members.
- Monetization Made Simple: Generating revenue from your community is a breeze with Mighty Networks. The built-in support for paid memberships allows you to offer premium content while securing your income stream.
- User-Friendly Interface: Whether you’re a tech wizard or a newcomer, Mighty Networks’ user-friendly interface ensures a smooth experience. Setting up and managing your community is straightforward, allowing you to focus on what matters most—your members.
Cons:
- Learning Curve: Like any robust platform, there’s a slight learning curve, especially for those new to online community management. However, Mighty Networks provides excellent resources to help you get up to speed.
Mighty Networks, in my opinion, is a top-tier option for community builders. It has given me the ability to develop and maintain a healthy online community while producing outstanding outcomes. This platform provides the resources and community you need to succeed in your endeavors, whether they be personal projects, business endeavors, or efforts to make a positive impact.
| Feature | BuddyBoss | Mighty Networks |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Starts at $228 per year for a single site | Starts at $28 per month for community plan |
| $81 per month for business plan | ||
| Best Features | – Powerful community-building tools | – User-friendly interface |
| – Extensive customization options | – Affordable pricing plans | |
| – Integration with WordPress | – Dedicated mobile apps | |
| – Membership and eLearning functionality | – Extensive support resources | |
| – Robust support for developers | – Comprehensive analytics | |
| – Integrated gamification features | – Personalized branding options | |
| – Active development and updates | – Active and responsive customer support | |
| Support Quality | Not great | Responsive and helpful |
| Price Comparison | Expensive | Affordable and flexible |
You can surely go ahead and read the BuddyBoss review but I will not recommend it. When you click on BuddyBoss you will be redirected to Might Networks.
BuddyBoss Review In Detail 2024
BuddyBoss is the World’s #1 open-source platform, giving you the flexibility, control, and freedom you need, to create a successful online platform. We highly recommend BuddyBoss for their amazing support and they keep bringing new features to their product. Go to BuddyBoss.com for more information and to test all the BuddyBoss themes, plugins, and social network website solutions.
This is a platform that offers legit themes and plugins that can be used to create WordPress powered online communities. BuddyBoss specializes in BuddyPress and it also offers some of the amazing premium themes and plugins that really take it to another level.
Apart from that it also has some legit complete solution packages that generally integrate with everything including (themes & plugins) that one can use in order to create a powerful online community website.
Even if you want an all-in-one unique and custom-built website then here BuddyBoss even offers custom development so that anyone can build custom tailored, ultra-responsive community site right with BuddyBoss.
What Is The BuddyBoss Theme & Platform ( What Is BuddyPress)
BuddyBoss products and custom development services generally help businesses right across the globe to simply build community platforms on WordPress and BuddyPress. BuddyBoss specializes in BuddyPress and offers amazing premium themes and plugins that take BuddyPress to another level.
BuddyBoss is nearly helping over 13,000 customers along with business growth right with WordPress and BuddyPress. The best part about BuddyBoss is that their themes and solution mainly pushes the boundaries of WordPress and BuddyPress.
Things You Can Do With BuddyBoss
- Build a community/social network: You can have a complete and well-organized community with a news feed, updated user profiles, social groups, email invites and member connects without any extra plugin added as Buddyboss brings it all for you.
- Design an e-learning platform: If you are into selling courses online, you can easily manage or host your courses with this intuitive solution.
- Content Spread: If you want to sell your content using LearnDash and Woocommerce, you can easily leverage this tool for a one-time fee or subscription plans.
- Easy Integration on WordPress: In order to provide a seamless experience for your users, you can use different plugins on your site for creating exclusive events, site-wise interactions, or job posts and Buddyboss does wonders.
Initial Setup of BuddyBoss
As already discussed above in this Buddyboss review, the platform offers a huge range of features and all this requires great coding at the backend too. Don’t worry!
This is not what they are expected to do. However, just sharing that everything at the backend takes some time to set up when you are about to initiate the BuddyBoss plugin on your WordPress account. They have a well-organized video walkthrough to set up the whole thing.
While you are setting up the features for your usage, you may come across certain challenges and We are trying to help you out with some of these.
Quick Steps:
- Simply download the BuddyBoss files
- Login to your WordPress account and go to your Dashboard
- Now, go to “Add New” in the Plugin section in the left panel
- Upload the buddboss-platform.zip files
- Activate it once it is uploaded
- Set up Home Page
Enabling the Components
Once you have installed and activated the platform on your WordPress account, the next step is to enable the various components for the functioning of the platform across your pages. These components include the profiles of users, forums, community activity, and much more.
Now you can see BuddyBoss on the left panel of your Dashboard and there are various features below once you click on ‘BuddyBoss. Click on ‘Components’ and you will be able to see a wide list of features and components you can activate to be functioning on your website.
Select the components of your choice you would like the users to engage in like, private messaging, forum discussions, member connections, and much more.
Simply tick the checkbox and ‘Apply’ and all these selected components will go up and live on your website for usage of your users.
Customize BuddyBoss Theme
Now, this is one step that gives aesthetics to your website. After all, whatever components or features you introduce for your users, need to look impressive so that the users are enticed to engage and use them.
The platform offers unique customization options to help your website look attractive:
- Creative menus for navigation
- Change colors & styling for your BuddyTheme
- Add Logos
- Change Cover Images
- Style Forums
- Make Typography Changes
- Add Unique Sidebars
Content Selling with LearnDash & WooCommerce
BuddyBoss review of mine clearly states that it has a lot stored in for website owners when it comes to social profile and community management. At the same time, it has well catered to the website owners already using LearnDash with quick and easy steps to integrate it with this platform and theme. This makes it seamless to sell courses online in the community of existing users and even attracting more users.
It’s just so easy to even integrate LearnDash if you already have an activated plugin on your WordPress. In this case, you will be able to see LearnDash already in your theme options for BuddyBoss.
That’s not all! Once you have integrated LearnDash with BuddyBoss, you can:
- Customize the Course Pages
- Connect Your Social Groups with Course Pages
Understand better with features listed ahead in this Buddyboss Review.
Quick Feature-Check & Benefits of BuddyBoss:
- Easy To Customize:
Actually, their themes & solutions are easy to customize and they generally come up with the flexibility and options that you generally need to get yourself familiar with it.
- SEO Ready:
BuddyBoss themes and solutions are perfectly designed to be properly indexed by Google. And the best part is that it also integrates easily right with Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) along with the server caches right for optimal performance.
- Translation Ready:
Generally, all of their themes and localized that truly indicates they can be easily be translates right into your languages. And the best part is that they also have tutorials available in order to help you do that. It’s really easy and straightforward.
- Help Center:
BuddyBoss offers a help center for your guys as here you can easily find the answers that you need. Here also you can browse their theme documentation and other help articles as well.
- One-Click Installer:
The best of all BuddyBoss themes comes with a one-click installer. Here the one-click installer allows you to simply replicate your demos right within a few minutes.
- Video Tutorial:
If you need step by step support then BuddyBoss has Video Tutorial for you. As here the themes generally comes with the video tutorials so that it can guide you right through every step. It can help you from basic setup to custom CSS.
- Mobile App Development:
The best part is that they generally build awesome mobile apps for BuddyPress. So that you can easily manage your content right from WordPress and let the users interact right from their iPhone and Android Devices.
- BuddyPress Customization:
BuddyBoss really understands the BuddyPress platform inside and out. And the best part is that their team knows how to create and customize code right from WordPress and BuddyPress.
BuddyBoss Themes: BuddyBoss Theme For LifterLMS: BuddyBoss Pricing
Now I’m going to list some of BuddyBoss’s beautiful and highly functional BuddyPress themes.
- Boss Theme Review: Helps in Launching A World-Class Social Networks
This one Boss is a fully functional and mobile responsive WordPress/BuddyPress theme that lets you build a world-class social network website. And here the premium themes provide a unique and modern design and it comes packed with all features and functionality you need to just create an amazing user experience right on your social network.
Boss Theme Pricing:
- Single Site License- $129
- 5 Site License- $179
- 20 Site License- $229
2. One Social Theme Review- The Perfect Theme For The Community Site
Here OneSocial is one of the responsive WordPress/BuddyPress themes that generally focuses on simplicity and ease of use as well. It has a highly efficient code and generally comes with a heap of great features.
Pricing Plans Of OneSocial theme:
- Single Site License- $99
- 5 Site License- $129
- 20 Site License- $179
BuddyBoss Complete Solution
The best part about BuddyBoss is that here it offers a number of packages solutions that generally combine a theme right with relevant plugins in order to give a complete community website solution and more.
- Social Marketplace Review:
Here Social Marketplace combines right with the WC Vendors right with BuddyPress in order to create a powerful social marketplace. And it includes everything that you will need to create your own professional online marketplace website.
Here the members are able to simply set-up their own store and sell products and also have a comprehensive functionality right for product management, order tracking along with coupon management, commissions, and more.
Pricing Plans:
- Single Site License- $229
- 5 Site License- $289
- 10 Site License- $348
2) Social Learner- LearnDash
The Social Learner combines the LearnDash right with BuddyPress in order to create a powerful social learning platform. It integrates with learn dash or Sensai in order to create a featured learning management system (LMS) website right with some great social learning functionality and integrated gamification.
Pricing Plans:
- Single Site License- $229
- 5 Site License- $289
- 10 Site License- $348
BuddyBoss Plugins
The best part about BuddyBoss is that it also provides very easy to use and fully flexible plugins that one can use in order to create a fully functional online Community.
- BuddyBoss Wall:
With this plugin, you can get the power of Facebook right on BuddyPress! And here your users can easily get the Wall Updates, interact right with their friends, and also “like” their favorite content.
- BuddyBoss Media:
Here your BuddyPress members can easily upload photos and simply organize them right into albums and also tag their friends too. Right on a mobile device, one can easily swipe right through photos with your finger.
- BuddyPress Member Types:
With BuddyPress theme, you can easily create and manage the types of members without the requirement of any code on the backend.
- Location Autocomplete for BuddyPress:
Using this plugin functionality you can let your members easily add locations right to their profiles and groups as well. As here right with Google Verified Data, the accurate address is also suggested while the typing.
BuddyBoss Mobile App Solution:
Here BuddyBoss also offering Mobile App Solutions. Here you can simply choose from the available mobile solutions and allow you to simply build and customize the app right for your needs and requirements.
- bbApp:
This one is a native Mobile App Solution right for the bbPress powered forum.
- LearnerApp for LearnDash:
Here this thing offers a native Mobile App solution right for your LearnDash powered website.
BuddyBoss Pricing
BuddyBoss comes at an attractive price that is sure to entice you for this great deal. By paying just $228, you will be able to manage your entire user list with ease and build a community out of it. They have different pricing plans if you have more than one site and run a massive business.
This is indeed a great deal if you want to save time and spend it on other business management essentials instead. By paying $60 more, you can have 5 sites equipped with BuddyBoss. That’s not all! Once you decide to buy this, you do not need any other plugin or theme for social features.
On top of all this, the pricing comes with a 100% money-back guarantee. They promise to return your hard-earned bucks within 14 days of your purchase in case you are not too satisfied with the product or you believe that this does not fit into your expectations.
BuddyBoss Review: What we Like About It
- It brought popular social networking sites under one roof, features such as private
messages and Facebook groups, making it easier than ever to create an online
community. - It seamlessly integrates with LearnDash and several other WordPress plug-ins
including page builders such as Elementor Pro. - Customization of the theme is comprehensive and has much more features than other
premium themes. - The features it offers are really cheap given how advanced they are.
BuddyBoss Review: What we Don’t Like About It
- Learning the ropes can be challenging and you’ll need to watch videos to find out how
it works. - At first, settings sound everywhere, you can’t seem to locate where anything is,
adding to the confusing sensation for new users. - Certain features lack options for customization.
- Customer support is very bad
Buddyboss vs Buddypress
BuddyPress and BuddyBoss started with the same plugin. Since most of the WordPress plugins are open source, the team made a copy of BuddyPress and named it BuddyBoss. From there, BuddyBoss was further developed as a separate add-on.
BuddyPress is still community-based and the goal is to provide the basic functionality of a community like Facebook. For everything that goes beyond the basic functions, you need an additional plugin. You’ll also need a separate BuddyPress compatible theme.
BuddyBoss, on the other hand, is a largely closed system (we’ll talk about that later). Because of this, it’s fully integrated – you get the plugin, theme, and even an app, and they’re all 100% integrated. You can add BuddyPress plugins, but in most cases, you don’t need or want them as the functionality is built right into BuddyBoss.
Buddyboss Vs Peeopso
Although both plugins are open source. It is PeepSo that offers free support to all users. While the BuddyBoss platform requires a paid subscription to one of their membership models in order to provide priority support to their users.
BuddyBoss offers three unique themes with its plugin. Each theme has a different price that focuses on the different needs of the user.
While PeepSo offers a complete solution theme which is Gecko. Gecko was specially developed with the PeepSo First approach, which allows the PeepSo theme to be fully exploited as a social media platform.
Regular plugin updates keep the website performing at its best. The BuddyBoss platform offers updates, but only for paid members. While PeepSo has promised to provide regular and timely updates to all users, whether free or paid.
What Top Entrepreneurs And Businesses Say About BuddyBoss
Quick Links:
- OneSocial: A Refreshing BuddyPress Theme for all Types of BuddyPress Sites
- BuddyPress Plugins: Best Solution For Complete WordPress Community
- [Latest] Top 22 Best BuddyPress Plugins For The Complete Community in 2024
- How to Add a Full-blown Gmail-like Email System to a BuddyPress Site with BuddyBoss Inbox
FAQs Related To BuddyBoss Review
👉Is BuddyBoss free?
The Buddyboss Platform is and always will be 100% free and open-source under the GPLv2 license.
👉What is BuddyBoss theme?
BuddyBoss Theme is designed to make the BuddyBoss Platform plugin look beautiful.
👉What is BuddyPress used for?
BuddyPress is designed to enable schools, businesses, sports teams, or other niche communities to build their own social network or communication tool. BuddyPress inherits and extends all functional elements of the WordPress engine, including themes, plugins, and widgets.
👉What is bbPress?
bbPress is a plugin to create forums, while BuddyPress is a plugin used to create an intimate social network. Both plugins provide communication platforms, using which people or groups can freely exchange ideas, discuss topics, ask questions, and so on.
👉Is BuddyPress any good?
BuddyPress is the best and easiest way to build a social community for your WordPress site. The BuddyPress plugin brings community functions to WordPress. You have to use a BuddyPress theme, however, as not all WordPress themes are supported by this community plugin.
👉What is bbPress plugin?
bbPress is a WordPress plugin that adds forum functionality to WordPress. Essentially, you can use it to create a full forum, such as: your entire WordPress site. A small part of your existing WordPress site.
How can you update Buddyboss app?
To update your mobile app in the app stores, you can generate a new app build from your WordPress admin area, through the BuddyBoss App plugin. This will use BuddyBoss servers to generate a new app build.
What happens if you stop paying the subscription?
If you stop paying for the subscription, Buddyboss makes several attempts to reach out to you to update your payment information. If after multiple attempts of reaching out to you we are still unable to process the balance owed, Buddyboss will then disable your mobile app.
Do you need to use the BuddyBoss Theme for the App to work?
No, your mobile app connects directly to your WordPress database and uses its own native layout. Thus, the theme you use on your site does not affect the look and feel of your mobile app.
Can you upgrade to a higher plan after making any purchase?
Yes, at any moment you can upgrade or downgrade your Buddyboss to a higher plan. You will pay a prorated amount for the current billing period and your payment amount will be adjusted for the next billing period. For the on-boarding and publishing package, you will have to pay the difference in price between the plan you are currently on and the plan you are trying to upgrade.
Does the BuddyBoss App require WordPress to work?
Yes. The BuddyBoss App comes with a plugin that you install on your WordPress site, as well as a native mobile app that is generated by Buddyboss servers. With Buddyboss mobile app you’ll be able to manage and synchronize data with your mobile app.
Are there any specific server requirements you need to have to run the BuddyBoss App?
The BuddyBoss App is built with performance and scalability in mind. Generally, if your BuddyBoss Platform powered site is running properly on your current hosting setup, then you should have no problem adding the BuddyBoss App to the setup. We do not recommend using websites or apps on shared hosting. So buddyboss recommend cloud hosting such as Cloudways
Does Buddyboss Offer Discount Coupons?
Yes, buddyboss offers 10% Discount Coupon Code. You can use coupon code- HEY15OFFBB. You can select the best offer as per your requirement and get huge discounts.
Conclusion: BuddyBoss Review 2024
So, to sum up, BuddyBoss has some great capabilities for creating online communities, but it’s expensive and has poor support. After much research into several platforms, I have come to the conclusion that Mighty Networks is the best option for anybody looking to build vibrant online communities.
In comparison to BuddyBoss, Mighty Networks is the superior choice because to its affordable pricing, user-friendly design, and wealth of support resources. It offers a variety of tools for creating communities and knows how important it is to have helpful customer service agents available when you need them.
Mighty Networks provides an easy and inexpensive way to start, expand, and maintain online communities. Differentiating it from BuddyBoss are its user-friendly features, customizable branding possibilities, and dedication to superior customer service.
Therefore, Mighty Networks is the best option if you want to build a thriving online community on a budget and with a platform that is truly invested in your success. If you want to be a part of the community building of the future, Mighty Networks is the way to go. Do the right thing and start your path to a top-notch online community with Mighty Networks right now. Mighty Networks provides the finest service possible, since your community deserves nothing less.
The product is fine but they really need to fix their customer service. If you reach out to sales they respond in less than ten minutes. If you contact support it will take days and they’ll never end up actually helping. They’ll just say they are “elevating it.”
It’s wrong of them to market a 24/7 customer service system when there is really no support at all.
I have had the absolute WORST experience with this company and product.
– The customer services barely understood what I was asking and would copy/paste me responses to things COMPLETELY off topic to what I was asking.
– The response times were slow.
– In the rare case they understood the question they would try to sell me “custom work” for things I could do myself if they allowed the ability.
0/10 would absolutely not recommend
I highly don’t recommend that theme/plugin – it takes ages for their tech support to reply to tickets. When sending pre-sales questions there are super fast – like 3 hours waiting time. Where after you buy their product is off you go situation – I’m waiting 4 days and there is still lack of reply. That’s not a way to do a business – very unproffesional team and probably lack of skills within a managment board.