Short answer: if you want to own your member list and pay no platform cut, the closest thing to Patreon is a membership site on your own WordPress install, and Reign with BuddyNext is the one we recommend for a paid fan community with a real community around it. Ghost and Memberful also let you keep the list, but they are publishing and membership tools, not communities, and each takes a monthly fee instead of a percentage.
Reign is the WordPress theme for building a complete community site: social network, courses, member directory, marketplace and job board on one install. For a creator, that means the paid tier, the feed, the member profiles and the private spaces all sit on a domain you control. Nobody can change the fee schedule on you, and nobody holds the email list but you.
Our Reign versus Patreon page has a feature-by-feature view. Below is an honest list of ten Patreon alternatives, a table comparing how each one charges, and a plain account of what you give up when you leave a hosted platform. We make Reign, so we are not neutral. Where another tool is the better fit, we say so.
What does “owning the list and paying no platform cut” really mean?
Two phrases get used loosely in this conversation, so pin them down before you compare anything.
Owning the list means the names, emails, payment history and activity of your supporters sit in a database you can export and move. On a hosted platform you can usually export an email list, but the relationship is mediated: the platform sends the notifications, hosts the posts and decides what a “member” is. On your own site, the member record is yours, along with the content, the comments and the order history.
No platform cut means no percentage of your revenue goes to the company that hosts your page. This does not mean free. You still pay:
- A payment processor. Stripe and PayPal charge their own card fees on every charge, whichever tool you use.
- Hosting for your site.
- Software licences, if you buy Pro plugins.
- Your own time, which is the cost people forget.
That last point is the honest trade. A hosted platform charges a percentage so that you do not have to run anything. A self-owned site charges you attention instead. Whether that trade is good depends on how much your community earns and how much you want to control.
How do Patreon’s fees compare with the alternatives?
Patreon takes a percentage of the income you earn there, plus payment processing, currency conversion and payout fees. Its own pricing page lists the current rate. That percentage is the number worth comparing, because it grows with every new patron.
The alternatives charge in three different ways: a percentage, a flat monthly fee, or software you buy once or yearly.
| Option | How it charges | Owns the list? | Community features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patreon | Percentage of earnings plus processing | Partly: email export, platform-run relationship | Posts, comments, chat |
| Ko-fi | Donation platform with an optional paid tier; check its pricing page for current fees | Partly | Basic supporter page |
| Buy Me a Coffee | Tip and membership platform; its home page does not state a fee, so check its pricing page | Partly | Basic supporter page |
| Ghost | Flat monthly plans; paid subscriptions need one of its higher plans, and Ghost adds no transaction fee | Yes, you can export members | Publishing and comments, not a social network |
| Memberful | Monthly plan plus a transaction fee | Yes, tied to your Stripe account | Gates your own site, no community of its own |
| Circle | Monthly plans plus a transaction fee that falls on higher tiers | Partly, hosted by Circle | Spaces, events, courses |
| Substack | Percentage of paid subscriptions; check its current terms | Email list export | Newsletter and notes |
| Self-hosted WordPress with a membership plugin | Licence fees plus hosting | Yes | Whatever you build |
| WordPress with Reign and BuddyNext | Paid yearly theme licence, free community plugin, optional paid yearly Pro licence | Yes | Full social community |
| A custom build | Developer time | Yes | Anything |
We describe how each option charges rather than quoting its prices, because prices change. Confirm the current figures on each vendor’s own page before you decide.
Which Patreon alternatives are worth considering?
Here are ten, from the lightest to the most complete.
1. Ko-fi
Ko-fi is the easy first step for a creator who wants a tip jar and a simple shop. Supporters can give one-off tips, buy digital products and, with a membership option, pay monthly. It is quick to set up and works well when your audience is small and your goal is “a few extra dollars a month”.
Where it falls short for owning a community: your supporters live on Ko-fi, not on your domain, and the page is a profile, not a place to hang out. It is a good starting point, and a poor home for a long-running paid community.
2. Buy Me a Coffee
Buy Me a Coffee has a similar shape: a supporter page, tips, memberships and a small shop. The appeal is speed and a friendly checkout. It suits writers, developers and makers who want a link for their bio.
As with Ko-fi, the page belongs to the platform. If your goal is a place where members talk to each other, you will need something else alongside it.
3. Ghost
Ghost is a publishing platform with memberships built in. You write posts, set free and paid tiers, and readers subscribe by email. Its pricing page lists flat monthly plans and says Ghost adds no transaction fee on subscription payments.
Ghost is excellent for a newsletter or a publication. It is not a social network: there are comments, but no member profiles, groups or private spaces in the sense a community needs. Choose it if your product is your writing.
4. Memberful
Memberful sells memberships on top of a site you already have. It connects to Stripe, gates your content, and handles plans and billing. Its plans pair a monthly fee with a transaction fee, so it does take a percentage, a smaller one than a social platform.
Memberful is a membership engine, not a community. You bring the site and the content, and it controls access.
5. Circle
Circle is a hosted community platform with spaces, events, courses and paid access. It gives members a real place to talk, and it is the most polished hosted community product on this list. Its plans are a monthly fee plus a transaction fee that falls on the higher tiers.
The trade is the usual one: it is rented. Our fuller write-up is in the Circle alternative guide, and the WordPress versus Mighty Networks and Circle comparison covers the rent-versus-own decision in depth.
6. Substack
Substack makes it easy to start a paid newsletter, with a built-in audience discovery layer. It takes a share of paid subscriptions, so check its current terms. You can export your subscriber list. As with Ghost, it is built for writing, not for member-to-member conversation.
7. Skool and Mighty Networks
These hosted platforms combine community, courses and a leaderboard or app. Both fit coaches and course creators who want everything in one subscription. If you are leaving one of them, see our guides for Skool and Mighty Networks. They are strong products. They are also rented, and your list lives inside their system.
8. A WordPress site with a membership plugin
Pair WordPress with any membership plugin and you can gate posts, sell plans and send members email. This keeps the list on your site and avoids a platform fee. It also leaves you with the harder job: WordPress by itself has no feed, no profiles beyond the basics and no group spaces, so you either live without them or add a community plugin.
9. Reign with BuddyNext (our pick for a paid fan community)
This is the option we recommend when you want your supporters to have somewhere to belong, not just a login. The stack looks like this:
- Reign is the theme. It handles the look of the whole site: home page, profile pages, the feed and the layout of every screen. It is licensed per site, yearly or lifetime; see the pricing page.
- BuddyNext is the community engine. The free plugin gives you member profiles, an activity feed, spaces, notifications and a moderation queue. Direct messages work when WPMediaVerse is also active.
- BuddyNext Pro adds what a Patreon-style site needs: paid plans, gated spaces, Stripe checkout, broadcast email, push, analytics and white-label. It is a paid yearly licence per site.
The result is a site where a supporter pays for a tier, lands in a private space reserved for that tier, and talks to other supporters in a feed you moderate. The payment goes through your own Stripe account. There is no percentage taken by us, and the member list sits in your WordPress database.
Honest limits: this is software you run. You pick the hosting, you keep plugins updated, and you handle support. Stripe’s own processing fee still applies on every charge. There is no discovery marketplace sending you new patrons, either. Patreon’s audience-finding is something you give up, and you will promote the site yourself.
10. A custom build
If you have developers and a very specific idea, you can build your own. It is the most flexible route and the slowest. Most creators should not start here.
When should you stay on Patreon or a similar hosted tool?
We would rather you stay where you are than move for the wrong reasons. Stay if:
- You earn little and your supporters are casual. A percentage of a small income is cheaper than your time spent on a site.
- You want zero maintenance. If updates, backups and a spam queue are not tasks you will do, a hosted tool is the right answer.
- Discovery matters to you. Patreon and Substack send you some new readers. Your own site does not.
- You need a native mobile app today. A site you own works in a phone browser, but it is not a branded app in a store.
If instead you earn enough that a percentage hurts, your supporters would value a place to talk, and you want the list on your own domain, move. The bigger the community, the more the flat cost of software beats a percentage.
How do you build a Patreon-style site with Reign and BuddyNext?
Here is a sensible order. It assumes one creator, one site and a launch within a month.
Step 1: Decide your tiers on paper
Write down two or three tiers before you install anything. For each, list what the supporter gets: a private space, early posts, a monthly live call, a discount on your shop. Keep the first version small. You can always add a tier later, but removing one annoys paying members.
Step 2: Set up the site
Install WordPress on managed hosting with daily backups, then install Reign. Set your logo and colours in the Customizer. Our step-by-step install guide walks through licence activation and importing a demo.
Step 3: Install BuddyNext and create spaces
Install the free BuddyNext plugin. Create one public space for open conversation and one space per paid tier. Keep the public space active, because it is where non-paying visitors can see that your community is alive.
Step 4: Add paid plans
Activate BuddyNext Pro, connect Stripe, and create a plan for each tier. Gate each tier’s space behind its plan. Our guide to building a paid community on WordPress with Stripe covers pricing design, trials, failed payments and refunds.
Step 5: Test the money path
Run a full cycle on a test card: sign up, upgrade, downgrade, cancel, a failed renewal and a refund. Do this on staging before a single real supporter pays. This is the step creators skip and the one that causes the most support email.
Step 6: Move your people
Tell your existing audience why you are moving, in plain words. Give them a date and a reason that benefits them, such as a place to talk to each other. Keep the old page live for a few weeks as a fallback. Do not remove it the day you launch.
Step 7: Moderate from day one
Pick a moderator, set simple rules and check the report queue. BuddyNext includes a moderation queue in the free plugin. Our community moderation guide covers reports, strikes and auto-hide rules.
What does a realistic budget look like?
Numbers help more than adjectives. This example is a creator with one site, using only the published prices from our own price list, and a hosting figure you should replace with your own quote.
| Line | Pricing model |
|---|---|
| Reign, one site | One theme licence, yearly or lifetime |
| BuddyNext Pro, one site | Optional Pro licence |
| Managed hosting (your estimate) | varies |
| Stripe processing | a percentage of each charge, same on any platform |
Software is a flat yearly licence cost before hosting. Compare that with a percentage fee: divide the yearly licence cost by the platform’s rate and you get the yearly income where the two cost the same. Beyond that point, the flat cost of software is smaller. Below it, the hosted platform is cheaper. Do the sum with your own numbers, or use our community cost calculator.
If you prefer lifetime licences, Reign offers one, which shifts the cost to year one and leaves hosting as the recurring line. Check the pricing page for current figures before you commit.
Try it before you buy
You do not have to guess how this feels. Open a live demo, or launch a fresh sandbox site in one click and click around.
- Live demos: the full gallery of Reign demo sites.
- Reign BuddyPress demo: the default community layout with an activity feed, member directory, groups and profiles.
- BuddyPress community starter: a minimal canvas to customise.
- Reign sandbox: a fresh WordPress site with Reign installed.
- BuddyNext sandbox: a fresh site with the community plugin.
- Build guide for a BuddyNext community: the plan for assembling this stack.
- The plugin family: what is free, what is Pro, and what each one does.
Spend an afternoon in the sandbox. Create a space, post in the feed, and see whether it feels like somewhere your supporters would want to be.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a Patreon alternative with no platform fee?
Yes. Tools that charge a flat monthly fee, or software you own on your own WordPress site, take no percentage of your earnings. You still pay payment processing to Stripe or PayPal, plus hosting and any licences, so “no platform cut” never means “free”.
Which WordPress theme should I use to run a paid fan community instead of Patreon?
Reign, paired with the BuddyNext community plugin. Reign designs the whole site and BuddyNext Pro adds paid plans, gated spaces and Stripe checkout. The free version of BuddyNext covers profiles, a feed, spaces and moderation, so you can build and test the community before paying for Pro.
Can I move my patrons from Patreon to my own site?
You can export your supporter email list from Patreon and invite those people to the new site, but you cannot move their payment details. Each supporter has to sign up again on your new checkout. Plan a clear announcement, keep the old page live for a few weeks, and offer a reason to switch.
Do I need a developer to build a paid community on WordPress?
For a basic setup, a careful non-developer can follow the documentation. For migration, custom member fields and unusual tier rules, a developer or agency saves time. Wbcom Designs offers set-up and maintenance if you want help.
How much does it cost compared with Patreon?
Software for the Reign and BuddyNext route is a paid yearly licence for each of the two Pro products on one site, plus hosting. Patreon takes a percentage of earnings plus processing. Where the lines cross depends on your income, which is why we show the sum in the budget section above.
Can supporters see posts without paying?
Yes, that is your choice. Public spaces and public posts are visible to everyone, and each paid tier’s space is gated behind its plan. A common pattern is a lively public space that shows visitors what they are missing.
Ask us before you commit
If you are weighing a move off Patreon and want a straight answer on whether WordPress suits your size and your audience, send us your numbers. We will tell you honestly if a hosted tool is the better fit. Use the contact page or write to support@wbcomdesigns.com.