A Skool alternative for small paid communities, with no monthly fee

If you are looking for a Skool alternative because a monthly fee eats a small community's income, or because you want members to pay into your own Stripe account, Barside Spaces is worth a look. Barside is a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac. A Space can charge a one-time, monthly or yearly price with no monthly platform fee: Barside keeps 8% of each payment, and Stripe charges its processing fee.

It is not Skool under another name. Skool is a complete course-and-community platform with gamification, discovery and phone apps, and for a large community its Pro plan costs less than Barside. This page compares the two honestly, with the math, so you can pick the one that fits your community.

The short answer

Skool does one thing very well: a community, a classroom of courses and a calendar in one simple place, with points, levels and leaderboards that keep members posting. Members use it in a browser or in its iOS and Android apps, and Skool's Discovery page can bring you new members.

Creators look for a Skool alternative mostly because of the monthly fee, because Skool is the merchant for every payment, or because their group is small and close, like a cohort, a mastermind or a coaching circle. Barside Spaces fits those groups:

• No monthly fee. You pay only when members pay: 8% of each payment, or 5% with Barside Plus, plus Stripe's fee.
• Your own Stripe account. Payments are charged on your Stripe account, and Stripe pays you on the schedule you set there.
• The tools a small group uses: chat, polls, shared notes, resources and files, video meetings for up to 6 people, and an AI helper that answers from your own material.

The catch is real. Every member needs the Barside desktop app on Windows, Linux or Mac, and there is no course module, gamification or phone app. If your community lives on phones, runs on courses or sells more than about US$1,580 a month, stay with Skool.

Why creators look for a Skool alternative

These are the reasons we see most, stated fairly. Skool's prices and fees are from its pricing page and help center, as of September 2026.

• A monthly fee before the first sale. Skool Hobby costs US$9 a month with a 10% transaction fee. Skool Pro costs US$99 a month with a 2.9% fee. For a new community with a handful of members, US$99 a month is a lot.
• Skool is the merchant. Skool's help center says all payment processing happens on Skool's merchant account, with payouts to your bank every Wednesday through Stripe Express. Some creators would rather have their customers and receipts in their own Stripe account.
• US dollars only. All subscription prices on Skool are in USD, and members pay in USD.
• One admin on Hobby. You need Pro to have more than 1 admin in a group.
• A small, close group. Cohorts, masterminds and coaching circles often need calls, shared notes and quick answers more than a course library and a leaderboard.

Barside Spaces at a glance

Open Spaces in Barside and sign in with Google or an email code. Create Space asks for a name, a description and a color, and every Space you create is private: people join by invitation, or ask to join through its share link and wait for your approval. The description, up to 500 characters, shows under the Space's name and on each invitation, so people know what they are paying for. Each Space has five tabs: Chat, Notes, Resources, Files and Members.

To charge for it, open Manage Space → Pricing & payments:

1. Enter your Business country and choose Connect Stripe. Stripe runs its own setup and checks your details; Finish Stripe setup takes you back if it needs more.
2. Choose the Access price: Free, One-time payment, Monthly subscription or Yearly subscription.
3. Type the Amount, from 1 to 10,000, pick the Currency (USD or CAD), and choose Save pricing.

Members see a $ on your Space. On their invitation, the Join button shows the price and opens Stripe's checkout, and access starts when Stripe confirms the payment. Memberships & billing lists their memberships, with Stop renewal, and Billing & receipts for Stripe's portal. Files in a paid Space are for members only, and file access ends when a membership ends.

To reach people whose email address you do not have, open Manage Space → Share link and choose Create link. The link opens your Space's card on barside.space, for anyone, with no sign-in: the name, description, color and price, and the member count if you show it, never the members or posts. In Barside, people choose Ask to join, with an optional message, and you or a moderator answer in Manage Space → Join requests. Approval comes first: the invitation it sends shows the price, and the person pays on Stripe only when they accept it. Replace link makes a new address and stops the old one at once. If members may invite others, Invitations from members need approval, on by default, holds each of their invitations until you or a moderator approve it.

Running the community takes a few more tools:

• Polls with 2 to 10 options, one or several choices and an optional closing time.
• Pinned messages. Owners and moderators pin up to 50 messages, such as the rules or this week's call link, and a slim Pinned bar above the chat lists them. The owner can let everyone pin.
• Moderation. Owners and moderators remove posts, review reports and remove members. Slow mode makes members wait between messages (5 seconds to 1 hour), a flood guard is always on, and Who can post? turns a Space read-only for announcements. AI moderation lets your own AI check new messages and report or remove spam and abuse.
• Member numbers. Owners and moderators see total members, who joined and who posted in the last 7 and 30 days, messages per day, the top five contributors and pending invitations. A young community can turn off Show the member count in Space settings, so only owners and moderators see the number.
• A private members list. Turn off Show the members list in Space settings, and members see only you, the moderators and themselves. You and your moderators still see everyone, and people still show with their own messages, reactions and poll votes.
• Meetings for up to 6 people, with email and calendar invitations. Guests can join from a browser.

The full walkthrough is in the guide to team chat and paid communities with Spaces.

Skool vs Barside: feature comparison

The Skool column comes from Skool's pricing page, help center and app store listings, as of September 2026.

Pricing compared, with the math

Skool and Barside charge in opposite ways. Skool has a monthly fee and a lower cut; Barside has no monthly fee and a higher cut. Which one costs less depends on how much you sell.

Here is what each option costs a community that sells US$20 memberships, at four sizes. For Barside we add 2.9%, Stripe's standard rate for domestic cards in Canada, as an example; your rate depends on your country and your members' cards. We leave out the fixed fee of about 30 cents a payment, which both Skool and Stripe charge, and the sales tax on Barside Plus.

The rule of thumb:

• Below about US$670 a month in sales, Barside with no subscription costs the least.
• Between about US$670 and US$1,580 a month, Barside with Plus costs the least, and Plus also brings cloud backup and sync for your notes.
• Above about US$1,580 a month, Skool Pro costs less, and the gap grows as the community grows. If money is the main question and your community is large, Skool Pro wins.

Two more details. Barside's fee is part of the price members pay; it does not add to it. And Skool's help center says it takes a 30% commission on customers its Growth Boost brings you, but not on members you bring yourself.

Where Skool is better

Skool does a lot that Barside Spaces does not try to do. If any of these matter to you, it is the better choice.

• Courses. Skool's Classroom holds courses with video lessons, and you can unlock a course when a member reaches a level. Barside has no course module: lessons are shared notes, with no order, progress or locks.
• Gamification. Points for likes, 9 levels and leaderboards keep members posting. Barside has none.
• Being found. Skool's Discovery ranks groups by member growth, engagement and retention, so new people can find you. Barside Spaces are private; the communities in Discover public Spaces are created by Barside. A share link promotes your Space, but only to people who see the link where you post it.
• Phones and browsers. Skool works in a browser and in its iOS and Android apps. Barside members need the desktop app: Windows, Linux or Mac. For many public communities, this alone rules Barside out.
• Cost at scale. Both Skool plans include as many members, courses, videos and live calls as you like, and above about US$1,580 a month in sales Skool Pro costs less than Barside.
• Live sessions for everyone. Skool Call lets an admin go live in the group, and you have 14 days to download a recording. Barside meetings hold 6 people.
• Growth tools. A custom URL and affiliates on Pro, and a 7-day free trial on subscription groups. Barside has none of them.

What Barside adds

• Payments you own. Charges go through your own Stripe account, so your customers, receipts and payouts are in your Stripe Dashboard, and Barside never holds your money. Barside gives no refunds, but you may refund a payment from your Stripe Dashboard: a full refund ends that member's access, and a partial one keeps it.
• An AI helper that knows your material. The Space helper answers member questions from the Space's shared notes, resources and text files, plus one workspace you choose, using the AI you connect in Settings → AI: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter. With Ask me first, each draft waits in your approval inbox; Post automatically posts at once. Replies carry an Auto-reply label, and questions it cannot answer come to you. It runs only while your Barside is running. See an AI helper that answers community members.
• Moderation with your own AI. Manage Space → AI moderation has the same AI check new messages from members for spam and scams, harassment and hate, sexual content, threats and violence, someone's private information, and the rules you write. It reports problems to your moderators, or also removes clear cases if you choose, and every member sees a note that it is on. It checks messages in small batches to keep your AI costs low.
• A studio in the same app. Record a lesson with the screen recorder and its webcam bubble, cut short clips with captions for social posts, draw a diagram, write the notes, then share them to the Space. Creator Mode keeps recordings, clips, drawings, your notes and Spaces in the sidebar and opens on Recordings.
• Files for members only. Attach files in chat or in shared notes; in a paid Space, only members can open them. See file sharing for teams and communities.
• A library that stays yours. Your own notes stay on your computer, and only what you share goes online, unless you turn on Barside Plus cloud backup or sync.

One honest note: Spaces travel over HTTPS and the server checks membership for every read, but they are not end-to-end encrypted, and hosting administrators can access the data. The paid Spaces privacy notes explain what the server keeps for each membership.

How to move a Skool community to Barside

Barside has no Skool importer. Move in stages and keep Skool running until your members have moved.

1. Download Barside for Windows, Linux or Mac, open Spaces, sign in and choose Create Space.
2. In Manage Space → Pricing & payments, choose Connect Stripe, finish Stripe's setup, then set the Access price, Amount and Currency, and Save pricing. Creator accounts work in the countries Stripe serves, except Brazil for now.
3. Rebuild your lessons as Barside notes: text, headings, checklists, images and short videos. Share each one to the Space. Mind the limits: 20 MB a file (100 MB for a video), 12 attachments per shared note and 250 MB of uploads per account.
4. For longer lesson videos, use share links. Free links take files up to 50 MB and play for 7 days; with Barside Plus, files up to 2 GB, links that never expire and an optional password. Anyone with a link and its password can watch, so a link is not locked to members the way Space files are.
5. Invite members by email from the Members tab, or post your Space's share link in your Skool group so members can Ask to join, and approve them in Join requests. Either way, they install Barside, sign in and choose Join on the invitation, which shows the price and opens Stripe's checkout. Invitations expire after 7 days. Members on a Mac can join with Barside for Mac.
6. Plan the billing switch. Members' Skool subscriptions stay with Skool, so ask each member to cancel there once they are in your Space, and nobody pays twice.
7. Set up moderation and turn on the Space helper. Pin a welcome message with your rules and the next call's link, choose a moderator, and turn on AI moderation if you want your AI to catch spam. The Space's shared notes, resources and text files are always part of the helper's knowledge, so it can answer common questions from your lessons.
8. Move small calls to the Meetings tab. For live sessions with more than 6 people, keep another tool.

Who should switch, and who should stay

Barside is a good fit if you:

• run a small, close group: a cohort, a mastermind, a coaching circle or a paid team room;
• have members who work at Windows, Linux computers or Mac;
• sell less than about US$1,580 a month, or want payments in your own Stripe account, in USD or CAD;
• want an AI helper that answers from your own material, and calls, notes and recordings in one app.

Stay with Skool if you:

• have members on phones;
• sell a course library with progress and levels;
• rely on Discovery, affiliates or free trials to grow;
• sell more than about US$1,580 a month, where Skool Pro's fees are lower.

Other Skool alternatives worth a look

If neither fits, these are the platforms we would check first. Prices are as of September 2026.

• Circle. Community, courses, live events and livestreams, with payments. From US$89 a month on annual billing, with a 2% transaction fee on that plan; custom branded apps come with its top plan, Circle Plus.
• Mighty Networks. Community, courses, members, marketing and payments in one place. The Launch plan is US$79 a month on monthly billing, with a 2% transaction fee.
• Patreon. Memberships for creators, free to start. Patreon keeps 10% of earned income, plus payment processing, currency conversion and payout fees.
• Discord. Text, voice and video chat in servers you set up, for a community that mostly wants to talk. The basic service is free; Nitro, a paid subscription, adds extras.

For a wider comparison, see the best community platforms. If you are choosing a chat tool for a team rather than a paid community, read the Slack alternative.

Works well with Spaces