Community platform cost calculator. 3-year projection.

This calculator does not recommend anything. It adds up two bills over three years and shows them side by side. The numbers you enter drive everything, which is why we do not fill in the other platform's prices for you. Plans change often, and each platform has several tiers.

It begins with your active members and the share who pay. Paid members multiplied by your monthly price, over twelve months, gives your yearly revenue. Members then grow each year by the growth rate you enter, so years two and three are larger than year one. Revenue grows with them.

On the hosted side, the bill is the plan fee you entered for every month, plus the share of your sales you entered on every paid month, plus card processing. On the WordPress side, the bill is your yearly licences, plus hosting for every month, plus card processing. Card processing is counted on both sides at a standard rate, so it never decides the result. The tool keeps the plan you entered for all three years and does not move you to a bigger plan as you grow, so run it again with a larger plan's fee if your member count would cross a limit.

The first is a flat licence. You pay the same whether you have ten members or ten thousand. Reign works this way: the theme is a flat licence with no per-member fee and no share of your sales, and our plugins install free with Pro plans bought per plugin when a limit hurts. The part of the bill that grows is hosting, once traffic needs a bigger plan.

The second is a plan that moves with your size. Many hosted platforms sell tiers, and you move up as you pass a member or feature limit. That cost is easy to forget in a calculation, which is why this tool asks you to enter the plan you are on and lets you run it again for the next one.

The third is a share of your sales. Some hosted platforms take a percentage of every payment on top of the plan fee. That grows with every member who pays, so it matters most for communities that earn well. If your platform charges its own processing fee in place of standard card processing, enter that as the share of sales.

Use the plan and the share of sales from the platform's own pricing page, for the plan you use now or the one you are considering. Use your real member count and your real price. If you do not know the share who pay, use a lower guess rather than a higher one, because overestimating revenue exaggerates any share-of-sales fee.

On the WordPress side, start with the Reign licence, then add the Pro plugins you plan to buy. The default fills in the theme licence only. Our plugins install free, so many communities start with nothing else. Look at the pricing page for the plans that fit, and add them to the yearly licences field.

For hosting, use a real quote. Hosting is the cost that scales on WordPress, and a community that grows will outgrow a small plan. The hosting page explains what a community site needs, and the scale page shows how larger communities are run.

It leaves out your time. A WordPress site takes effort to set up and some each month to look after: updates, backups and fixes. If you do not want that work, a hosted platform handles it for you, and that is worth something. Our team can handle set-up and migration if you prefer to spend your time on members.

It leaves out add-ons on either side, such as a branded mobile app, extra seats or paid integrations. It leaves out discounts and one-off promotions. It also leaves out the value of owning your member list and your content, which is hard to price but is often the reason people move. Treat the result as an estimate and a starting point for a conversation, not a quote.

Look at the shape, not only the total. If the hosted bill grows faster than the WordPress bill from year one to year three, you are paying for growth. If the two are close, other things should decide: the features you need, how much of the work you want to do yourself and how much you value owning the community.

A small or unpaid community may find the hosted plan cheaper at first. That is a fair result. The case for moving usually rests on what you gain, such as pages that search engines can index, a member list you own, and courses, forums and a directory on one login, as much as on price. The migration guides and the comparison pages go through those, and the guide to building an online community covers the wider decision.

Next step: open the demos to see what a finished site looks like, or read the BuddyNext community build guide.