Love this company
Love this company. Loved the REIGN product. They were there the entire time helping me set things up; and when things went wrong? They were quick to take action and help find a solution.
Mobile-first community · $1500+/mo on annual
Reign vs Disciple Media.
Disciple is mobile-first and apps-included. Reign is web-first + apps require add-on. Pick Disciple if mobile is non-negotiable.
Honest take.
R
Reign wins
Courses, community, media and events on one login, with no embedded third-party player and no second account for students. All four plugins install free, so a bigger membership does not raise the bill. You hold the member records and the email addresses, which for a creator business is the asset that survives any platform decision you make later.
D
Disciple Media wins
Branded mobile apps in both stores, maintained for you, with push notifications that reach members where they actually are. For a creator whose audience lives on a phone that is the whole product, and it is expensive and slow to replicate independently. The bundled experience is also coherent in a way that assembling four plugins is not, on day one at least.
What your members will notice.
Members notice the app first, and there is no softening that. What compensates is the course experience: no bouncing to an embedded platform, no second login, progress and community in one place. Time the move with a new cohort or a new course so the change arrives with something people want rather than as pure disruption. Everyone resets their password once, so make that email short and give it a reason to be opened.
6 comparisons.
| Feature | Reign | Disciple Media |
|---|---|---|
| Cost (3-year) | ~$1k | ~$54k+ |
| Native mobile app | Add-on (AppPresser, ~$500/yr) | Included |
| Push notifications | Via mobile add-on | Native |
| URL | yourbrand.com | Subdomain or custom |
| Source code | Yours, on your server | Closed |
| Job board or directory | WP Career Board + Listora, free | Not offered |
4 of our own plugins, and every one installs free.
Disciple bundles courses, media and events into one subscription. Here they are four free plugins, so a bigger membership does not raise the bill.
BuddyNext
Community engine
Member profiles, activity feed, groups, messages, notifications.
Free to install, Pro from $149/yr
Learnomy
Courses
Courses, lessons, quizzes, student progress, and certificates.
Free to install, Pro from $149/yr
MediaVerse
Media
Member photo and video uploads with albums.
Free to install, Pro from $69/yr
Eventonomy
Events
Event listings, calendars, and free RSVPs.
Free to install, Pro from $69/yr
You buy the Reign theme once. These are ours and they install free, so the theme stays the only purchase until one part of your community earns enough to need its Pro plan.
What you are actually choosing.
Disciple sells a members-only community with courses, media and events, wrapped in branded mobile apps and billed annually. It is aimed at creators who want an app without building one. The decision is essentially about the app. Underneath it, the feature set is a feed, courses, media and events, which is BuddyNext, Learnomy, MediaVerse and Eventonomy here, all free to install. If the app is what your members actually open, Disciple earns its fee. If it is a nice-to-have you talked yourself into, you are paying a lot for four plugins.
What it costs over three years.
Disciple sits around the mid five figures a year once apps are included, and it is an annual contract that grows with your membership. Reign is $99 a year or $249 once, with all four plugins free. The interesting comparison is what a custom app would cost separately: if you genuinely need one, a proper build plus maintenance is not far off Disciple's fee, and they carry the store submissions for you. If you do not, the gap is enormous.
What moving actually involves.
Members and course data usually export as CSV, which imports cleanly. Media is again the slow part, because photos and videos have to come down and go back up, and that is a scripted job at any real volume. Courses need the most care: the content moves easily but enrolments, progress and completion records rarely map cleanly between systems, so decide early whether you are carrying student progress or drawing a line and starting the new site fresh.
When to stay on Disciple Media.
Stay with Disciple if your members are on their phones and the app is how they arrive. Push notifications, an icon on the home screen and an app-store presence change engagement in ways a responsive website does not replicate, and no WordPress plugin closes that gap. The honest test is your own analytics: if app sessions dominate web sessions, the app is the product and you should keep it.
How the pieces fit together.
Everything runs on one WordPress install, which is the part that changes how the site feels to use. One login, one member table, one set of roles. A member who joins the community is already the same person when they enrol on a course, RSVP to an event or post in the forum, because there is no integration between products, only plugins reading the same database. Against Disciple that replaces a bundled subscription with four plugins you own. BuddyNext is the community and feed, Learnomy runs courses natively so students never leave the site to learn, MediaVerse holds the photo and video library, and Eventonomy handles the calendar. The member, the student and the attendee are one record, which is exactly what a bundled platform gives you and what stitching separate tools together does not.
The first week.
Install the theme, BuddyNext and Learnomy, and rebuild one course end to end before touching the rest. Doing a single course properly teaches you the structure and surfaces every formatting question while the stakes are low. Import members from CSV into staging and check a sample. Media and the remaining courses follow over the next fortnight, so launch with the community and one flagship course rather than waiting for everything.
Questions people ask before moving.
- Can I get a mobile app with Reign?
- Not included. Reign is a responsive website, and a well-built one, but an app is a separate project with its own budget and store submissions. This is the clearest gap on this page and the main thing Disciple's fee covers.
- What happens to my courses?
- Course content moves into Learnomy, free to install, which handles lessons, quizzes, progress and certificates. The awkward part is not content but records: enrolments and completion data rarely map cleanly between platforms, so decide up front whether you are carrying history or starting clean.
- Will members have to re-register?
- Yes. Password hashes do not transfer between platforms, so members set a new password on their first visit. Announce it more than once, keep the message short, and expect to lose a few of the least engaged. That attrition is the real cost of any migration.
- How does the pricing compare over three years?
- Disciple is an annual contract in the mid five figures that scales with membership. Reign is $99 a year or $249 once, with the four plugins free. Over three years the difference is six figures for a community of any size, against a one-off setup cost.
- Can I keep the community private?
- Yes. WordPress gives you role-based access, and membership plugins gate content by tier, so a members-only site behaves exactly as you would expect. Private and self-hosted are not in tension; you decide what is public and what requires a login.
- Can I gate content by membership tier?
- Yes. A membership plugin handles tiers and payments, and WordPress roles gate access, so bronze, silver and gold behave as you would expect across the community, the courses and the media library. That plugin is the one paid piece you add beyond the theme.
- What happens to student progress?
- Content moves cleanly; progress records rarely do, because platforms model completion differently. Decide early whether you are carrying history or drawing a line. Starting fresh is often the pragmatic answer, particularly if you time the move with a new cohort.
- Do I need a developer for this?
- For the setup, not necessarily: installing a theme and four plugins is ordinary WordPress work. For a media migration at volume and a clean CSV import, an hour or two of someone technical saves a week of frustration and is worth budgeting for.
- What does hosting actually cost?
- Hosting is the running cost people forget to budget. A small community runs comfortably on shared or entry-level managed WordPress hosting for a few hundred dollars a year. Past a few thousand active members you want managed hosting with object caching, which is more like $50 to $100 a month. That is still an order of magnitude below a mid five-figure annual contract, and unlike a subscription it buys you infrastructure you control rather than access you rent.
- When is the best time to move?
- Between cohorts, or alongside a new course launch. Moving mid-programme means asking people to change platform while they are partway through something they paid for, which generates support load and bad feeling in equal measure. A natural break gives you a reason to announce, a deadline that makes sense to members, and room to fix problems quietly.