Circle Professional is $89/month (Business $199, Scale $419), Mighty Networks Launch $79, Discourse Pro $100 — all checked 2026-09-26, and every one sells the room, not the program. "Ask HN: Revive a mostly dead Discord server" (Jan 2026) is what a room without a program looks like. This kit is the program: the position → design → seed → invite → onboard → program → moderate → measure → revive loop as 30 files you own — 12 founding-member scripts, a day-by-day launch week, welcome sequences, the 12-week programming calendar, the moderation SOP and the 30-day revival playbook. One payment of $42 — no subscription.
Get the kit — $42One zip, 30 working files — the nine-step loop (position → design → seed → invite → onboard → program → moderate → measure → revive) with a worked example beside every template. No software to install, nothing to subscribe to, any platform.
The niche-and-promise worksheet turns "a community for our users" into one sentence a stranger recognizes — plus a platform scorecard with live-checked prices for Circle, Mighty Networks, Discourse, Discord, Slack and a free forum.
Three space blueprints (support-first SaaS, creator membership, cohort program), a five-step welcome flow with time targets, and the first-30-days rituals table — pick two and run them weekly.
Twelve recruitment scripts (warm DMs to public posts), the founding-member offer worksheet, four announcement templates and a Day 1–7 launch checklist with the failure modes and same-day fixes.
Three welcome sequences (new joiner, silent joiner, fading member), 60 first-post prompts aimed with the "specific + small + no wrong answer" formula, and the onboarding CSV that tracks every step.
A 12-week programming calendar with rotating themes, run-of-shows for AMAs, office hours and challenges, 100 conversation starters, the four-step moderation ladder with six response templates, and a guidelines template (with the not-legal-advice line).
The Friday-15 dashboard: three numbers (activation, WAU ratio, time-to-first-reply), two CSV logs and three trend rules that point each symptom at its fix. Plus the 30-day revival playbook for the room that already went quiet.
Three real files from the kit, trimmed: the niche-and-promise worksheet, the first five founding-member recruitment scripts, and the moderation escalation ladder. Instant download — no email needed.
Download the free sample (zip) Read what's inside first →Verified against the vendors' own pricing pages at the time of writing (2026-09-26). Prices change — check before any purchase, including this one.
| What you get | Circle | Mighty Networks | Discourse | This kit ($42 once) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Published pricing | Professional $89/mo · Business $199 · Scale $419 (annual billing) — admins beyond 3 +$10/mo each, branded email +$40/mo, Email Hub +$99/mo per 10k contacts | Launch $79/mo ($950/yr) · Scale $179 · Growth $354 — 3 hosts + 10 moderators on Launch, 2% transaction fee | Pro $100/mo · Business $500/mo · Enterprise custom | $42 once, printed on this page |
| Cost of month 12 | The room bills again — $1,068+/year before add-ons | The room bills again — $948–4,248/year | The room bills again — $1,200–6,000/year | $0 more — the files are yours |
| What ships in the box | The room and its features — Circle's own pitch is "the essentials to launch and run"; the weekly program is yours to write | The room and its AI co-host — their data says hosts average $48/month memberships; the offer design is yours | Forum hosting and plugins — structure, yes; programming and moderation, yours | The program: 12 recruit scripts, launch week, the 12-week calendar, the moderation SOP, the logs, the revival playbook |
| If you switch platforms | Content lives in their app; migrations are a service tier | Migration services from the Growth plan up | Standard migrations on Business | Markdown + CSV — the program moves with you anywhere |
Sources: circle.so/pricing · mightynetworks.com/pricing · discourse.org/pricing (read 2026-09-26). "Ask HN: Revive a mostly dead Discord server" (2026-01-20) is what the room-without-a-program outcome looks like from the inside.
Designed for someone who has run none of this before. Every step in the SETUP guide ends with a "what success looks like" check.
One folder, 30 files, a manifest that matches. Open START-HERE, see the nine-step loop on one page.
Promise sentence, platform scorecard, your three numbers. The fictional Northbeam example sits beside every blank so you see "done" before you write.
Recruit founding members with the scripts, run launch week day by day, keep the Monday–Friday rhythm, spend 15 minutes every Friday reading three numbers and shipping one fix.
Cheaper than one month of the cheapest community platform on this page — and it outlives every platform switch.
Secure checkout via Stripe · 14-day refund, no forms · sample above if you want to look first
Thirty files that turn "we should have a community" into a room with a promise, a rhythm, numbers on Friday — and a fix for the week it goes quiet. $42 once.
Get the kit — $42