The Best Communities for Community Builders in 2026 and Their Trends (Collaborative Resource)
- Brianna Leever
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
The best community for community builders depends on your role and stage. Senior community professionals may prefer The Community Community, Fractional Community Managers benefit most from Ember Fractionals, early-stage builders should consider The Hive, and mature communities may benefit more from RETAIN or Learn Community.
Why Join a Community for Community Builders?
If you’re building and growing a community in 2026, an essential tool for your chest this year is a supportive and thriving community for community people. As a community strategist in the space, communities for community builders are my favorite source of inspiration for a couple reasons.
Joining a community for community builders gives you a great sense of what it feels like to be a member.
This prompts you to catalog what you like (do more of it in your own community), what you dislike (avoid it!), and you get the visceral experience of being a member again (like when I got kicked out of a community last year 😅!)
Community people are the best members.
It’s a bit of an unfair advantage that communities for community people usually have a leg up and head start in engagement. The people inside know what it means to contribute to and be a part of a group and they are eager to do it. This makes them by naturally helpful and supportive environment. Don't be discouraged if your own community doesn't pick up the same traction and instead, us this as an opportunity to notice what's working and what you like.
These communities are fertile ground for collaborations.
As the zeitgeist of community standards is still forming, community people are often eager to share their brilliance for the common good. Despite my disdain for group projects in high school, they have become my favorite form of collaboration and even networking. Last year I gathered a group to talk about trends we see in community in 2025 and next month we’re dropping a collaborative guide to running sponsorships in your community (subscribe below so you don’t miss it!). If collaborating with other in the form of partnerships or co-creation is in your wheelhouse, look no further than these fantastic communities below.
In my own quest to discover which communities I will invest time and energy this year, I created this breakdown of what I see across the corners of the community world.
This list is by no means exhaustive, so if I missed a community you know and love, shoot me a note, I’d love to hear about it!
The Best Community for Senior Community Professionals: The Community Community
This is still one of my favorite communities to find collaborators in. While the majority of members sit in the customer community space (not my niche, I focus more on the paid communities), I learn a lot from this group as a whole. TCC is run by Nikki Thibodeau, a boss in the community space and a kind and nurturing heart. She’s done a great job of democratizing the leadership of the community and making it feel truly run by and for members.
Other honorable mentions for community professionals: while TCC is my favorite, most intimate space, when I first discovered the community world, I found a ton of value in The Community Club, Led By Community and the CMX Community. These spaces helped me understand the community spaces as a whole, make some fantastic connections, and gave me the context to find my niche.
The Best Community for Creator Community Builders: The Lab
This is one I admittedly have not invested in personally, but it’s been on my radar for a long time now. Jay Clouse creates some of the best content for creators out there and I’ve heard great things about the community. A quick and and creepy stalk on their landing page and I see friends like Becky Person and Charlotte Crowther are in this community and know I’d be at home with some brilliant minds.
As the agency at Ember continues to take shape (we now have 2 strategists, a copywriter, a team of subcontractors for content, and an incredible pool of fractional community managers in our database!) this community is high on my list as my role gets better defined as content creator at Ember.
My only hesitation is when I join this community, I want to be ready to do it right. The sheer volume of content from Jay Clouse outside of the community is intimidating to discern what I need and what I don’t. I’m hopeful the value of the community won’t be giving me MORE but in giving me a clearer pathway through. Fingers crossed!
The Best Community for Fractional Community Managers: Ember Fractionals
There are a LOT of communities for fractional folks, but very few specifically designed for Fractional Community Managers. Ember Fractionals is a program designed to educate, connect, and certify fractional Community Managers for early, growth-stage paid communities. It features a course, certification, discussion channels for feedback and assignments, and complimentary access to an Ember Recalibration Intensive.
While there are plenty of programs to launch your new community (usually for the founder), or for community managers (usually for customer communities or scaled communities with thousands of members), this program finds its niche with community managers who are eager to learn the nuances of managing early, growing, paid communities (usually memberships or paid programs like cohorts).
The Best Community for Customer Marketing: CMA Weekly
This one came up from folks in the customer community space as a wonderfully supportive community, run by my friend Mary Green. Seems to be free to join their slack space and I love the blend of marketing and community worlds.
The Best Community for Community Consultants: The Community Consultants Collective
While I’m admittedly absent from this community, my partner in crime for Ember Fractionals, Kristen Pavle, has taken an active role in this community and it is one of her favorite places to collaborate, especially for the special challenges facing community consultants.
Here’s what Kristen shares about it:
“The CCC is one of the most generous community spaces I've been in, where everyone shares tips and tricks for navigating the community consultant identity. We've got people who've been in the field for 10+ years alongside those just starting out—this mix creates a rich educational context and a genuine 'no stupid questions' culture. I especially love that the CCC is a place to practice what we preach about building community: there are multiple special interest groups where anyone can volunteer to lead or host offerings.”
The Best Community for Beginner Builders: The Hive
Laura Zug is one of the kindest, most supportive and generous voices in the space and if you’re just starting out building paid communities, I highly recommend her community, The Hive! You’ll get the foundations you need to launch, build, and grow. While I haven’t joined her community myself, we have collaborated together in the past and I highly recommend her work.
The Best Community for Early-stage, Paid Communities: Ember’s Recalibration Intensives
For those building early-stage communities posited for growth, look no further than Ember’s Recalibration Intensives. While programs for mature communities will typically focus on equipping you with the systems to optimize, early-stage communities (less than 500-1000 members) need support refining their model, building their member journey and engagement, and marketing it effectively.
This community program contains one full day of live sessions for deep, transformative work reflecting, resourcing, and reorienting your community towards the next season.
The Best Community for Mature, Paid Communities: RETAIN
This is a program I’ve had my eye on for quite some time. Run by Shana Lynn who has worked with notable names like Stu McLaren and Amy Porterfield, this program scales membership empires. At Ember we help you get your community from 0 to the 6-figure revenue mark, and Shana’s program will fine tune the details of your retention systems to take you to the next level beyond.
While I’ve always made my home in early-stage paid communities, I’m keen to learn from Shana and see what it means for the folks who are not scaled enough (yet!) to maximize the value of her work.
The Best Community for Community Automations: Learn Community
Another option I consider for mature communities is Tom Ross’s Learn Community. Rather than a time-bound program like RETAIN, this community membership seems to find it’s focus in automation and scalable systems (and it’s very affordable!). Also great for builders of more mature communities, but too much scale and automation can be misleading for early-stage communities still finding their footing (or first 100 members).
Other note-worthy mentions:
The following communities are marketed broadly across the community space. Their founders are impressive thought leaders and strategists and their communities cater to a vast range of different types of communities and builders. While I couldn't articulate a specific corner of the community world for them, I didn't want to miss the chance to highlight them!
The CMJ Community Membership - this membership community caters broadly to community builders in a wide array of space. Carrie Melissa Jones is a powerhouse in the space, a lot to learn from her!
Brian Oblinger’s Community Strategy Academy - this is a course, not community, but it’s been reported to contain one of the greatest knowledge bases on deep community strategy and knowledge!
The Community Collective by Paz Pizarski - started in Australia, this cohort-based program boasts some impressive numbers and session with speakers like Seth Godin (jealous!).
About the Author
Bri got her start in the community spaces building a multi-million dollar ambassador program for a social enterprise in Portland, Oregon. She’s supported dozens of community creators in launching their community in the 0-1 phase since 2020. She now leads the team at Ember where they serve coaches, consultants, and creators in building and growing thriving paid communities online.
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