Heartbeat

Heartbeat is an all-in-one community platform for coaches, course builders and creators who want to charge for access to a community they run themselves. Discussions, courses, events, payments, landing pages, documents and automated workflows sit in one product on your own domain, so a membership business no longer has to live in "six different tabs", as the company puts it. The features page says creators have built more than 37,000 communities on Heartbeat, that over 750,000 members belong to them, and that creators have been paid over $25M through Heartbeat Payments. The pricing page describes the platform as trusted by 40,000+ businesses and creators.

What a community gets

The community is built from channels: organized spaces with threaded discussions, private channels that only certain groups can see (so paid spaces stay hidden from free members), and chat channels for real-time conversation. Members have profiles in a searchable directory with bios, links and badges, send direct and group messages, and get in-app and push notifications plus a weekly email digest. Match-Ups pair members automatically for introductions on a schedule the owner sets, and badges and gamification reward participation. Voice and video rooms let members drop in and talk face to face, with up to 256 attendees per room and unlimited room hours on every plan.

Groups, set by hand or updated automatically, control who sees what and trigger automations, and location, tiers and badges can gate content. Documents hold templates, lesson notes and a knowledge base, with unlimited document storage. Admins get moderation permissions for their team, custom onboarding flows with questions, a welcome video and a code of conduct, scheduled posts, custom sidebar links, and embeds for forms, videos and calendars. Analytics cover engagement, onboarding answers, course participation rates and events.

Courses and live events

Courses run inside the community rather than in a separate tool, and the features page says creators have built more than 30,000 of them. When you create a course you pick one of two structures: evergreen, which is always available with lessons dripped out over time, or cohort-based, with fixed start and end dates for formats such as bootcamps and fellowships. Courses are built from modules and lessons, with assignments, quizzes, progress tracking and completions, and a discussion attached to every lesson. Courses are unlimited on every plan, and native video hosting keeps lesson videos inside the platform instead of behind external links.

Events cover live calls, workshops and recurring series or office hours, with RSVPs, reminders and calendar sync. Heartbeat sets up the Zoom meeting, invites members, tracks attendance and brings the recording back into the community afterward. Events can be online or in person, with separate member and non-member pricing, and an event page can be made public so people outside the community can see it. The pricing FAQ describes public events as a way to bring new leads into the community.

Selling memberships

Payments are built in on Stripe. A creator can sell subscriptions, one-time purchases and tiered memberships, with pay-what-you-want pricing, coupons, trials and offers, and every offer comes with a ready-made sign-up and checkout page. Paid waitlists collect signups and payments before a launch, and unlimited upsells, access groups and memberships come with every plan. Grow adds advanced offer settings such as limits, expiration dates and access rules. Accounts connected to Stripe can take international payments in multiple currencies where Stripe is supported. Landing pages are built by AI from a description of the page you want, and you change whatever you do not like.

Heartbeat keeps a transaction fee on the payments you collect, added on top of Stripe's card fee, which the pricing page puts at typically 2.9% plus 30 cents. The Heartbeat fee is 5% on Build, 2.5% on Grow and 1.25% on Scale.

Workflows send emails and DMs, grant access, and run onboarding and follow-ups when a member takes an action. Build includes five of them. Grow makes them unlimited and adds auto-responder and DM rules plus custom cancellation and retention flows, in which a member who starts canceling is offered a coupon and then a downgrade before leaving. Grow also adds an affiliate program inside your community, so members can earn a commission for referring others, and conversion tracking with Meta Pixel, Google Tag Manager and Google Analytics.

Pulse is Heartbeat's AI co-builder and is included on every plan. The homepage says it learns your brand and voice, sets up the space, channels and first pages in minutes, and can build courses, offers, sign-up pages and workflows inside the community while you stay in control.

The app and the white-label option

Members use Heartbeat on the web and on iOS and Android, and the comparison table lists the mobile app on every plan. Build carries Powered by Heartbeat branding, which comes off on Grow. The branded app is a Scale feature: a white-label iOS and Android app published under your own name in both app stores, with your icon on members' home screens and push notifications for replies, events and DMs. Heartbeat handles design, development and app-store delivery, and deals with Apple and Google after launch.

You need one Apple and one Google developer account, and the team helps set them up if you have none. You get editable Figma files and two rounds of revisions, and the branded-app page gives six weeks from start to launch: logo, colors and account access in week 1, design, build and the move of members, subscriptions and courses in weeks 2 to 4, testing on your own phone through TestFlight in week 5, and release on both stores in week 6.

Plans and prices

There is a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. If you have not upgraded by the end of it, the community is deactivated, and communities that stay inactive for 30 days are deleted automatically. Annual billing saves 17% on Build and Grow and 10% on Scale, and you can switch between monthly and annual billing at any time.

• Build, $49 a month ($40 a month billed annually as $490): up to 350 members, unlimited channels, courses, events and documents, five workflows, one custom landing page, custom domain and brand colors, community and course analytics, Zapier, Zoom and Google Calendar integrations, member data migration, and Heartbeat branding. Transaction fee 5%.
• Grow, $149 a month ($124 a month billed annually as $1,490): up to 5,000 members, unlimited workflows, native video hosting with 50 hours included, white-label emails, 15 custom landing pages, cancellation and retention flows, conversion tracking, the affiliate program, API access, priority support within one business day, and no Heartbeat branding. Transaction fee 2.5%.
• Scale, $849 a month ($766 a month billed annually as $9,200, which the site says saves $988 a year): unlimited members, the white-label branded app, advanced analytics, 50 custom landing pages, 200 hours of video hosting, a dedicated onboarding expert and same-day support. Transaction fee 1.25%.

Member limits count everyone, admins and moderators included, but you are not charged per admin or per member. Native video hosting is also sold as an add-on at $19 a month with 50 hours of storage. The comparison table includes community data export and lists Heartbeat as GDPR compliant. Refunds on Heartbeat's own subscription are handled case by case through support.

Integrations, migration and support

Zapier connects Heartbeat to over 5,000 apps, Zoom creates meeting links and syncs recordings, and Google and Outlook calendars show community events automatically. Grow adds API keys for building custom integrations. For a move from another tool there are imports from Slack, Circle and Peerboard, plus migration support for members, content and payments; the FAQ says subscriptions and payment data, courses and events can be moved self-serve, with the team guiding where needed. Most communities launch in five to seven days, the FAQ says, and more complex setups take up to two weeks.

Support is by email and chat, answered within two business days on Build, one business day on Grow and the same day on Scale. Scale adds 1:1 onboarding with a dedicated expert and custom technical support. Builders can also join The Hearth, Heartbeat's own community, which the help page says brings together the team and 5,000+ community builders, and the company runs live walkthrough sessions of the product.

Partner program

Anyone except a competing community platform can apply to the partner program, which runs on PartnerStack. A partner earns $100 once for each referral who starts a paid subscription, with no cap, and the referral gets 20% off for the first three months. The referral cookie lasts 90 days, people who were already customers or talking to sales in the 60 days before their click do not count, and commissions are paid through PartnerStack by PayPal or Stripe on the 16th of the following month. Agencies and consultants who build communities for clients can apply as agency partners for 1:1 support, custom assets, custom bounties and a commission above the standard $100.

Who it suits

Heartbeat says it was created "for every community builder, from beginners to veterans", and names its customers as coaches, course builders, creators, entrepreneurs and experts. It fits a coach or creator who wants a paid membership, courses, cohorts, live calls and payments under one login, with automation from the first plan. Two homepage testimonials make that case. "I have 250 paid subscribers now, and I'm so grateful. I couldn't do what I do without Heartbeat," says Alex Enfiedjian of Worship Ministry Training, and Nicole Fende of Creatopia says "Heartbeat has my subscribers, classes, freebies, upsells. Everything's in one place."

The caveats are about cost as a community grows. Build caps a community at 350 members and takes a 5% fee on top of card processing, so a creator with a growing paid membership will reach Grow fairly soon, and the white-label app is available only on the $849 Scale plan.